I may be trembling even more now, as this confession compels me to evoke a series of moves long completed and irrevocably ingrained in me.
Fear is primordial, immeasurable, and seems real only when put into words; it's what we hope is ephemeral but what proves to be permanently alive.
I was trembling quietly then, but not out of fear, and that makes all the difference — not this dark, faltering feeling I have now, but a simple excitement, light, clear, and pure, the kind we experience when placing our limbs beyond the influence of our will, letting insidious desires have free play; for a long while nothing happened; it was warm and dark under the desk, a little like sitting in an overturned cardboard box whose open end, like a mouth, was waiting for her arrival, waiting to swallow her up.
I was conscious of the smell of the wood, that raw smell furniture never loses completely, reminding one of origins, giving one a sense of security, protection, and permanence; I could even smell the characteristic dusty-paper smell of the prosecutor's office (my desk was a superannuated government issue which Father had brought home for me one day); she wasn't moving, but I knew she would come, because after the first move there was always a tension that demanded release and completion — that was our game; then I heard her heavy, clumsy footsteps, she was walking as if she not only had to bear the weight of her body but had to keep moving it forward.
I was sitting like a spider under the farthest corner of my crate-like desk, pinching the head of the pin between my nails, pointing its tiny tip in her direction, when her long white nightshirt appeared, she dropped to her knees, and on her face there was the broadest of grins; I can say that at that moment I was free of all emotion, though it might be argued that the opposite was true, that the moment distilled all my possible emotions; she began to crawl so fast toward me that I thought she wanted to pounce on me, but after a few hasty moves her nightshirt caught under her knees and wouldn't let her go on; suddenly losing her balance, she bumped her forehead into the edge of the desk and fell forward, her head hitting the floor with a thud; I did not stir; according to the secret rules of cruelty she had to reach me unaided.
Her resourcefulness was as unpredictable as her memory; she straightened out, grinned even more broadly and eagerly, if that was possible, as if nothing had happened at all, and with a very natural movement pulled her nightshirt from under her knees, quite casually; I said very natural movement, because this time she found a natural connection between the nightshirt and her fall, while in other, much simpler and more transparent situations, she had not made the connections — for example, wanting to have some fruit, she could quite easily climb up a tree but couldn't come down; she would sit on a swaying branch until somebody noticed her, hold on tight and whimper quietly, though it was no more difficult to come down than to climb up — at times she crept so high that we had to use a ladder to get her down; perhaps only joy, the desire for pleasure, made her resourceful, and as soon as she had satisfied her desire, the object of which may have been a red cherry, a shimmering peach, or even myself, her memory went dark, her resourcefulness expired, and she returned to a world in which objects existed in isolation: a chair was a chair only if someone sat on it, a table was a table only if her plate was placed on it; for her there was no connection between the events that happened around her, which simply happened if they happened, and at most may have blended into one another; it was her impossibly exaggerated grin and her eyes widening into unblinking immobility that suggested a desire to impose some order; now on her bare knees she was creeping closer and closer until she was completely under the desk, where she felt protected, where no one could find out what we were up to; in my own way, I must have been just as blinded by desires as she; she began to pant excitedly and I was breathing louder, too; my hearing sharpened by the straining senses: I could hear, like some strange music, the separate yet harmonious rhythms of our breathing, and if I hadn't raised my hand to point the pin straight at her eyes — her eyeball simply attracted the tip of the pin— she probably would have flung herself on me, for she liked to wrestle, and she didn't shrink back now, her grin didn't fade, either, but remained as it was; hoping for some resolution, she paused for a moment, catching her breath.
She did not flinch, her lids did not flutter, even though the pin point was only a few centimeters from the glistening curve of her eyeball. And my hand didn't move either, I only felt my mouth opening slowly, because I really didn't want to do anything to her, but there she was, wide-open, defenseless, and behind the visible part of her there may have been another being whose senses were more alive, who would have flinched, whose lids would have fluttered, who would have been afraid; if the slightest thing were to happen at that moment, like her hand accidentally swinging toward me or mine moving just a bit forward, who knows what would have been there to prevent the most dreadful end; but there was something, an invisible obstacle, a wall, a mere shade, something that seemed to be the manifestation of a force outside me and just as independent of my most mysterious and secret intentions as it was somehow bound up with them, even if I myself was unaware of them, of my curiosity, which had always triumphed over everything in me — except now! — but even if the thing were to have happened, I could not fault myself, because the insatiable desire to explore what lay behind the seemingly indifferent exterior of things and phenomena, to make the indifference speak and bleed, to conquer it, to make it my own, as I had done with Krisztián's lips and with so many lips after his — this desire made me the victim of that strange outside force; but the dreadful thing could not happen, although I am not sure that what happened instead did not turn out to be even more dreadful.
The frozen, unpromising moment passed, and her body plopped down, lightly, resting on her heels. The new distance between us had a sobering effect. The pin, still pressed tightly between my fingers, was nothing but the evidence of my absurd inanity, a bit of foolishness to be dismissed with a shrug, something that hadn't happened though it could have; I had to close my mouth again; once again I had to listen to the stupid excitement of my own breathing, and hers, too, which kindled in me a kind of simple and ordinary anger, therefore completely mine, mine alone; I failed to reach her; I was locked again in my own solitude; but I did reach after her, just as she was moving away, and with a single movement jabbed the pin into her naked thigh.
And once again nothing happened; she drew back, her body taut, no sound passed her lips; it was as if a moment ago we had been standing on the heights and now were sinking into the depths; she stopped breathing, but not from pain; her nightgown rode up to her belly and exposed the open slit between her outspread thighs, the darkened orifice between two firm, reddish mounds — my pin took aim; I couldn't not do it, but the pin did not prick or even touch the skin, it penetrated the opening. Then I stabbed her in the thigh again.
Not as lightly as before but hard and deep; she screamed; I could see her grin vanish, as if the physical pain had also ripped an invisible veil; and I could also see her look, seeking refuge, but by then she was upon me.
There was no doubt of it, the dark coat on the rack could mean only one thing: a guest had arrived, an unusual guest at that, because the coat was stern-looking, grim, quite unlike the coat that usually hung on that rack, so shabby and threadbare I didn't even feel like doing what I usually did when left alone with strange coats in the hallway and go through the pockets and, if I found some loose change, cling to the wall, listen for noises, wait for the right moment, and then steal a few fillers or forints.