And one pair of hands again grabbed the other pair, and the two men literally laughed in each other's face, coarsely, loudly, knocking against each other in their drunken laughter, and then the laughter suddenly drowned in silence, which must have never left them, not even during their laughter, which had been there all along, biding its time.
I was still standing in the door, unable to tear myself away or to follow the events with my body and make it enter the room; I suppose this is the state we describe as being beside oneself; I had to turn away; I saw my little sister, still clutching her spoon, with her big head tilted, who was staring at the men; now with little giggles and a grin, now with drooping lips and whimpering sounds on the verge of sobbing, she also seemed to be experimenting, trying to decide what would best suit this unusual occasion; she could experience any emotion now, most likely experienced a great many, could perceive the situation as friendly, just as easily feel it to be hostile, and because she was not choosing between fine shades of emotion and was perhaps terrified by the impossibility of choosing, she began a dreadful bawling.
Which anyone who had never lived in close proximity to a mentally defective child might have considered the capricious creation of chance.
Later, it was Father who had to push me to the table; I was so paralyzed by my sister's bawling I couldn't make it there on my own; I remember using the excuse that I wasn't hungry.
Grandmother came in with a steaming soup tureen.
As precisely as my memory has preserved the events leading up to this meal, it has buried just as deeply those that followed it; I know, of course, that memory mercilessly retains everything and I do admit my weakness: some things I don't want to remember.
Like how Mother's face slowly turned yellow, a very dark yellow, I could actually see it happening, but she kept pretending there was nothing wrong, and that's why I didn't dare say anything to her or to anyone else.
Or what happened earlier, when she came in wearing her navy-blue skirt, a white shirt, showing off her long, pretty legs in high-heeled lizard shoes which she saved for the most special occasions; as she hurried over to my little sister, I saw a colorful silk scarf tucked under the wide-open collar of her blouse; I hadn't seen her dressed for months, and that scarf showed just how much weight she had lost, she looked as if she had been put into the clothes by accident and the scarf was supposed to hide the weight loss; when my little sister behaved like that, it was best not to touch her, so Mother crouched down next to her and made a bunny rabbit from the napkin.
And the way János was watching all this.
And how Father yelled, Get her out of here!
And how, as she was dragged out, the silence of the three men remained behind, and how her screams faded away.
And the feeling during the hours that followed, that somebody had to be silenced, and the silence, and the voracious eating.
And how the end was so long in coming; the thing was not going to end, kept lasting, there was still more of it no matter how much everyone tried to eat it off their plates; and how everything that occurred to any of them as a solution or possible evasion, everything was part of the end that wouldn't come.
And then they shut themselves in another room, and only random words and stifled cries could be heard; but I didn't want to draw any conclusion from these scattered words; the message, to me, was the same.
And it must have been late at night when I took the screwdriver, I didn't turn on the light and didn't even close the door behind me — there was no point in being cautious anymore, and in fact I didn't much care what I was doing — inserted the screwdriver between the desktop and the drawer, raised the top, the lock snapped open, and just as I was taking the money out of the drawer Grandfather walked across the dark room.
He asked me what I was doing.
Nothing, I said.
What did I need the money for? he asked.
No reason, I said.
He stood there for a while longer, then very quietly told me not to be afraid, they were just straightening things out among themselves. And then he left the room.
His voice was calm and serious, and this voice, as if coming from a different source, this reasoning of his, coming from such a different way of thinking, exposed, showed up for what it was, what I'd intended to do; for a long time I stood in the dark room, thus exposed to myself; Grandfather wrecked my plan, yet also put me at ease a little; the money, two hundred forints, I put in my pocket anyway.
I left the drawer open, with the screwdriver on top of the desk.
I also remember that I fell asleep that night with my clothes on, which I noticed only the next morning; during the night somebody covered me with a blanket; at least I didn't have to get dressed in the morning.
And I mention this not to be amusing but to point out with what trivial little advantages one is ready to console oneself at a time like this.
And when I came home from school, the two coats, Father's heavy winter coat and that other coat, were still hanging on the rack; and I heard the men's voices from the room.
I did not eavesdrop.
I don't remember how I spent the afternoon, though I vaguely recall standing in the garden and not taking off my coat all afternoon, I stayed just as I was when I'd got back from school.
I remember it growing dark as some kind of mitigating circumstance, a red twilight with a clear sky, the moon was up, and everything that had thawed out during the day now refroze, snapping and crackling under my feet as I cut across the forest.
Only when I got as far as Felhő Street up on the hill, and saw Hédi's window, the closed curtain and the light inside, did I become conscious of the air, of the piercing cold I was inhaling.
Two little girls were coming down the darkening street, pulling and yanking a sled that kept getting stuck in the dips and mounds on the icy roadway.
A hell of a time to go sledding, I said to them, the snow had just about melted.
They stopped, gave me a dumb look, but one of them tilted her head a little, stuck her neck forward angrily, and said very quickly, That's not true, on Városkúti Road there's still plenty of snow.
I offered them two forints if they went in and told Livia to come out.
They didn't want to do it or didn't understand, but when I took a handful of change from my pocket and showed it to them, the one with the big mouth took a few coins.
I'd taken the money from János's coat before I left the house; I just scooped it all out, every last coin.
They dragged the sled with them across the schoolyard; I kept pointing and yelling to show them which door to take to the basement.
It took them a long time to maneuver the sled down the stairs, but at last it was quiet, the horrible grating and scraping sound stopped; they just had to drag that rotten sled with them, the little jerks, fearing I might steal it; for a long time nothing happened, and I was about to leave — I decided several times that I wouldn't wait anymore, I didn't want Hédi to see me — when Livia appeared, wearing sweatpants and a blouse with its sleeves rolled up; she'd been washing dishes perhaps, or mopping the floor, and was now lugging the sled up the stairs.
She wasn't so surprised to see me standing by the fence; she put the cord in the girls' hands, they could now pull it themselves, which they did, and again the sled made terrible sounds as it scraped along the slushy schoolyard, but they also kept looking back, whispering and giggling, curious to see what the two of us might do.
Livia strode across the yard with deliberate steps, she seemed cold, kept slapping her shoulders, stooped over a little to protect her breasts from the cold; when she heard the giggling, she gave the girls such a stern look they shut up and tried to get away as fast as they could, though their curiosity slowed them down.