"You can see for yourself," she said casually, but she didn't fool me, I knew she enjoyed reporting painful news.
"She's not coming today?" I asked, needlessly, only to emphasize that I hadn't come to see her, let there be no misunderstanding about that.
"I'm getting a little tired of Livi, maybe she won't show up today, but Kálmán said we'd see her anyway, because Krisztián is doing some kind of theater."
She might as well have stuck a thorn in me; of course nobody had told me about this, and she knew they meant to leave me out of it.
"We'll see them, then?"
"I guess so," she said innocently, as though the plural included me as well, and for a moment I almost believed it.
"Did she say that I should go? That you should invite me?"
"Why, didn't she tell you?" With just a touch of mock indulgence, she savored my embarrassed silence.
"She did mention something," I said, knowing well she could see through my lie; she seemed to feel a little sorry for me.
"Why shouldn't you come if you feel like it?"
But I wanted no part of her pity. "Then our whole day is shot again," I said angrily, inadvertently betraying myself, which of course pleased her no end.
"Mother is out."
"And Szidónia?"
She shrugged, which she did with inimitable charm, raising a shoulder just a little, but somehow this made her whole body sag, reaching the limits of its inertia, and after an indefinable moment of transition she relaxed again, flung her pencil on the desk, and stood up.
"Come on, let's not waste any more time."
She acted as if she really wasn't interested in anything else, but I couldn't shake my anger so easily, and besides, I wasn't quite sure what she was getting at, since all I knew was that once again something had happened behind my back which I had to scream out of my system.
"Just tell me this one thing, will you: when did you talk to Kálmán?"
"I didn't," she said with a gleam in her eye, almost singing the words.
"You couldn't have, because he walked home with me."
"You see — so why don't you just leave it at that?" she said, grinning pertly, eager to let me know she was enjoying my annoyance.
"But may I ask how you found out about their plans, then?"
"That's my business, don't you think?"
"So that means you have your own little plans, right?"
"Right."
"And of course that's where you want to go."
"Why not? I haven't decided yet."
"Because you don't want to miss out on anything, right?"
"I'm not going to tell you, so don't get your hopes up."
"I'm not interested."
"So much the better."
"I'm an idiot for coming here."
There was a moment's silence, then very quietly and hesitantly she said, "Want me to tell you?"
"I couldn't care less. Keep it to yourself."
She stepped closer to me, very close, but the look in her eyes faltered, turned opaque, as though she'd been deeply touched by something, and that fleeting uncertainty made it clear that she didn't see what she was looking at, didn't see me, didn't see my neck, although she seemed to be looking at it, at the bite mark, but that's not what she saw; in her thoughts she was roaming that secret region which she wanted to hide from me and which I was so curious to see, to know, and above all, I wanted to feel Kálmán in her, feel her every move, hear the words she had whispered in his ear; then, hesitantly, as if trying to convince herself I was really there yet not fully realizing what she was doing, she pinched together the collar of my shirt, tugging at it absentmindedly, and lowering her voice to an ingratiating breathlike whisper, she drew me even closer.
"The only reason I am going to tell you is that we promised we wouldn't keep any secrets from each other."
And like someone who has managed to hurdle the first and most serious obstacle posed by her own sense of shame, she sighed, even smiled a little, using this smile to find her way back to my face and, looking straight into my eyes, continue what she had started: "He wrote to me, sent me a letter, Livia brought it over last night, that I should come, too, on account of the costumes, you see, and that we'd meet in the woods this afternoon."
Now I had the upper hand, because I knew that this wasn't the whole truth.
"You're lying."
"And you're completely off your rocker."
"You think I'm a fool and can't tell when you're lying to me?"
I grabbed her wrist and simply yanked her hand off me, she had no business pawing me like that, but I didn't let go of her completely, I just pushed her away — she shouldn't be the one, certainly not with her transparent little lies, to decide just how close we should get — and I made this move though her affection expressed by such proximity, letting me feel her breath on my mouth, and even her dangerous lying that might have deceived just about anybody else pleased me very much, yet it was as if I had realized that the body, seductive and warm though it may be, never wants to possess another without attaching some moral conditions to this possession, and that precisely for the sake of a perfect and total possession, so-called truth is more important than the warm body or its momentary closeness; this truth, of course, does not exist, yet one must strive for it, for this inner truth of the body, even if it turns out to be only provisional, ephemeral; and so I acted like a cool-headed manipulator, deliberately and ruthlessly interfering with the process in the interest of some dimly perceived goal, rejecting the body in the hope of regaining it more completely sometime in the uncertain future.
There is no harsher move than pushing someone away, deliberately, contemptuously: I lost her mouth, I gave up my attraction to her beauty in favor of a deeper attraction, but I did it in a shrewd, calculating way, so that she should be even more beautiful when I got her back, when she'd be all mine, because it was my rival, of course, the usurper, the stranger who was also my double, Kálmán, whom I had to evict from her mouth when I insisted that this perfectly formed mouth should not lie; therefore, I hoped to gain as much through the harshness of my gesture as I had to lose by it.
"Forget it, it's not that important," I said to her mercilessly.
"Then what d'you want from me?" she cried out, choking with anger, and snatched her wrist out of my hand.
"Nothing. You're ugly when you lie."
Of course lying did not change her looks — if anything, her wounded feelings made her more beautiful; again she shrugged her shoulders, as if she were not at all interested in how I happened to see her at any given moment, a nonchalant shrug that was in such stark contrast with what she must have been thinking that she had to lower her lids, chastely, her wide-open, always astonished eyes disappearing behind the lazy, thick lashes, leaving her mouth free to rule her face.
I couldn't have wished for anything more at this point than to watch her motionless mouth: perhaps what made this mouth so unusual was that the upper lip, a perfect twin of the lower one, arched straight toward the little groove running down from the nose to the edge of the lips, without the two usual peaks breaking its rise or the tiny hollows at the mouth's edge interrupting its downward slope; the symmetrical pair of lips formed a perfect oval.