If later, when Hédi was saying goodbye and looking at me pleadingly, expecting me, an eyewitness, to confirm what still seemed unbelievable, if I could have talked about this, or if she herself hadn't been convinced that talk was futile, then I should have talked about that strong, soft, and warm hand, the palm of a friend's hand, and not about the ultimately useless fact that he died, that it was the end of him, he was dead, and we dragged him across the street into the lobby of a house, and then into an apartment, though it was of no use, he died on the way, or maybe before that, on the spot, but the man who helped me and I both pretended that by dragging him like that we could make him live a little longer or that we could revive him; his whole body was full of holes, but one had to do something, so we carried him, his dead body, and as we did, his blood was dripping, dripping, trailing us, it wet our hands and made them slippery, his blood lived longer than he did, he was no more, he was dead, his eyes were open, and so was his mouth in his mangled bloody-jellied face, he was dead, and all there was left for me to do that evening was to tell his mother, who worked in Szent János Hospital; and then, a few days later, two months before his suicide — with János Hamar's light summer suit in my hand — I had to call my stealthily returning father a murderer; and that, too, I did as I was supposed to.
It wasn't about my friend's death, or about any of the other deaths and funerals, or the cemeteries glowing with candlelight and all the candles of that autumn and winter that I wanted to talk about, but about the last touch of his living body, that I was the last one he touched, and how he was holding that lousy slice of bread with plum jelly he'd gotten from a woman, a woman in the window of her ground-floor apartment at the corner of Pushkin Street who was slicing bread, spreading the slices with jelly out of a jug, and handing them to everybody passing by; I should have talked about the unmistakable smell and feel of Kálmán's hand, about the uniqueness of muscles and skin, of proportions and temperatures, that enables us to recognize a person, about the soft, warm darkness that suddenly makes us forget every historical event and with a single touch leads us back from the unfamiliar into the familiar world, a world full of familiar touches, smells, emotions, where it's easy to pick out that one unique hand.
And to make him understand me, at least some of all the things I'd been telling him, I should have told Melchior about the very last, happy little coda of my story: on that cold, harshly lit Berlin square in front of the theater I should have told him about the soft darkness settling on my eyes in which I recognized Kálmán's hand! — or was it Krisztián's? no, it was Kálmán, Kálmán! — should have talked about this last little remnant of childish pleasure, and since I had no free hand, what with the drawing board in one hand and my schoolbag in the other — which later I lost— I had to use my head to break free of his clasp, I was so overjoyed that he should be there, about as unexpected and unbelievable as when you look for a needle in a haystack and actually find it.
Silently Melchior watched my silence; there was something to see in that, I suppose.
And on that December afternoon, too, it wasn't I who moved first but Hédi; she lowered her head.
She wanted nothing more to do with our mutual silence over recent events, or with the agreed-upon no with which we denied them; she asked me to see her out.
Even at the front entrance of the house we did not look at each other; I looked at the darkening street while she poked around in her pocket.
I thought she wanted to shake hands, which would have been odd, but no, she pulled out a small, shabby brown teddy bear; I immediately recognized it as her and Livia's mascot; Hédi squeezed it a couple of times, then told me to give it to Livia.
And when I took it and her hand accidentally touched my fingers, I had the feeling that everything that might stay here of herself she wanted to entrust to Livia and me.
She left and I went back into the house.
My grandmother was just coming out, probably escaping to me from the annoying, consoling chatter of Aunt Klara.
She asked me who that was.
Hédi, I said.
The blond Jewish girl? she asked.
Dressed in black from head to toe, she stood motionless and expressionless in the dimly lit foyer in front of the closed white door.
She asked if anybody had died in the girl's family.
No, they're going away.
Where to? she asked.
I said I didn't know.
I waited for her to start for the kitchen, letting her pretend she had something to do there, then I went into Grandfather's room.
It had been a month since anyone had entered it; without Grandfather it had become dry and musty, nothing stirring the layers of dust.
I closed the door behind me and just stood there for a while, then put down the little teddy bear on his table, where books, notes, and writing implements, the excited traces of his last days, lay scattered about.
On the third of November he began working on an election reform plan, but could not finish it by the twenty-second of November.
I recalled his story about the three frogs that fell in a bucket of milk: I couldn't possibly drown in such an awful, sticky mess, said the optimistic frog, and while talking, his mouth stuck together and he drowned; if the optimist went down, why wouldn't I, said the pessimistic frog, and promptly drowned; but the third frog, the realist, did the only thing frogs can do: he kept treading milk until he felt something hard under his feet, something hard, dense, and slightly bluish, from which he could push off; of course he didn't know he had churned butter, how could he, he was only a frog, but he could jump out of the bucket.
I had to take the teddy bear back from the table, I felt that leaving it there would be a mistake.
The only thing I knew about Livia was that she went to study glass grinding; once, about two years later, walking on Prater Street, I happened to look through a basement window propped up with a stick; a group of women were sitting behind shrieking, grinding wheels; Livia was among them, a white smock casually unbuttoned at her chest; deftly she was working a stemmed glass on her wheel; she was pregnant.
The same summer I got a letter from János Hamar, a very friendly letter mailed from Montevideo; he wrote that if ever I needed anything I should let him know, I should write to him, he'd like to see me as his guest, but I could stay with him permanently if I liked; he was posted there as a diplomat and had a pleasant, easy life; he was staying for another two years and would gladly go on a long trip with me; I should answer him at once for he, too, was all alone and didn't really want anyone anymore; but the letter arrived much too late.
I continued to believe that everyone who was still alive would eventually return, slip back quietly, cautiously, but I never saw any of them again.
When years later I came across the little teddy bear, I looked at it; it hurt too much; I threw it away.
In Which He Tells Thea All about Melchior's Confession
On our evening or nighttime walks, on whichever of our usual routes we chose, our matching footsteps always resounded like a strange hostile beat in the darkness of the deserted streets, and our conversations or silences were never so all-absorbing that we could free ourselves of the constant, rhythmic beat even for an instant.