Choosing the most shameful escape route, I was about to back away so I could sneak off, disappear, never to return, hoping to reach the garden gate unnoticed and be able to slam it shut really loudly, but just then, using both feet, Szidónia caught Maja's neck in a vise, and simultaneously Maja grabbed hold of those powerful feet and tried to pry them off her, and the hammock swung back, so that Maja lost her balance and was dragged along on the grass; it was now impossible to see just what was happening, and as they were pulling, pushing, clawing, and kicking at each other, with hands and feet, suddenly Szidónia tumbled out of the hammock right on top of Maja; Maja cleverly slipped out from under her, sprang up and started to run — by now they were both shrieking, letting out terrific screams — and Szidónia took off after her; they were like two rare butterflies, flitting and flashing into and away from each other, Maja's loose purple dress billowing against the wings of Szidónia's rising and falling waist-length hair streaming above the white undershirt as they plunged down the garden's steep slope, at the bottom of which they finally crashed into each other and, I did see it, kissed each other, but in the very next moment, grabbing each other's hands, their bodies arched, they were whirling round and round, and they kept it up for a long time, until one of them must have let go, because they flew apart and went sprawling; they stayed there on the grass, panting hard.
It wasn't me Maja liked but the mark Szidónia's teeth had left on my neck.
Later, when those lips began to stir on my neck, the unexpectedly coarse friction sent shivers down my back, the sudden chill making me feel how our bodies were intertwined.
I'm bleeding, said the lips resting on my shuddering skin.
And while curled in my mother's lap, my lips resting inside the crook of her elbow, where under the skin there were yellow and blue splotches caused by the frequent taking of blood samples and where the muchabused vein was such an invitingly tender place for the mouth, I should have told her about this, too, and somehow I had the vague feeling that I had.
Maybe the touch itself told her the story, for I gave her back what Maja's mouth had given me on the spot where Szidónia bit me.
But as much as I would have liked to talk about it, I could never put into words this painful confusion of touches, impossible even to begin the story, because each touch had to do with many other touches, and Krisztián's mouth was also part of the story.
Well, come on, I said, but we didn't move.
I could tell she enjoyed whispering into the skin of my neck; I shouldn't be angry with her, she said, the reason she was so nervous before was that she was bleeding and that always made her very nervous, as I probably knew, and that was another thing she'd never tell anyone else, ever.
On days like that she's very agitated, and much more sensitive than I can imagine, and she needs to be loved, otherwise she'd start crying again.
And I should have removed my finger from her underpants; under the weight of her body my arm fell asleep, and what I took to be sweat, moistness of skin, was probably blood; and my finger was in it, I suddenly realized, I was dipping it in her blood, but I did not move my finger, I didn't want to be rude, I sensed I had to guard a feeling in her which I myself could never feel, and I did envy her for that bleeding; I stayed the way I was, letting my arm grow more numb, and most of all, I didn't want her to know how much she had upset and terrified me, how I feared getting menstrual blood on my finger.
The truth is, I wasn't exactly sure how this whole bleeding business worked, and she might have been lying to me, for all I knew, making it all up just to be more like Szidónia.
I wouldn't want her to cry now, would I? so I shouldn't make her.
I had to be careful not to move, not to let her body feel that I knew it was all a sham, that whatever she was saying or communicating with her movements was not meant for me, and whatever I felt to be mine just seconds ago was not mine at all; she had deceived me again, and the only reason she had given anything to me was that I happened to be there, at hand, and the one she would really like to do this with she couldn't, wouldn't dare.
I should love her, she said, the way she loved me.
And I was cheating, too, of course, because I'd come to her house not because of her, not to play detective, but in hopes of finding Livia there, yes, Livia, whose very name was now abhorrent to me, whom that afternoon I had waited for by the wall, in vain, since once again she didn't show up, and I couldn't stand it anymore, I just had to come, I had to see her, if only for a second, and if she would look at me again, the way only she can look! but with her it's different, I couldn't even bring myself to speak to her, let alone touch her.
At the same time, in spite of our cheating bodies — feeling in Maja what Kálmán should be feeling, and involuntarily giving of myself what I should have given to Livia — it was so good, so infinitely good to hear Maja whisper into my neck, to smell her body, to feel her blood, her weight, my arm growing numb, and our body heat, and in the dark joy of betrayal to know that again I was coming into possession of something that did not belong to me and that there was no deception from which I'd be able to spare myself.
That I could think of Livia at all just now, not of her so much as of her absence, made me feel that I had hurt her feelings irrevocably, dragged her into the filth in which I liked to wallow, and that I hated her for not showing up.
I just know I'll be a whore, Maja said.
But this sentence wasn't hers either, she was merely echoing one of Szidónia's exclamations; like a lifeless stone that drinks up the heat of the sun and then breathes it back into the night, she had drunk in and breathed back into my neck echoes of the words of Szidónia, whom she desperately wanted to resemble, whom she clung to, whom she kissed, whose every move she adored, and this indecent behavior reminded me so much of Krisztián, and the memory was so painful, that it was like someone sticking me with a pin; last night, she went on in the same breath, because she didn't want me to interrupt and say something hurtful, well, maybe it wasn't night yet, but pretty late, everybody had gone to bed, and Kálmán again climbed in through her window; just imagine, he must have been crouching under her window all that time until the lights were out; and he scared the life out of her, she had almost fallen asleep, and she couldn't even scream she was so terrified, and he was begging her right here by her bed that all he wanted was to sleep here for a little while, sleep by her side, nothing more, and she must believe him, would she please let him in; imagine waking up to somebody wanting to get into your bed with his cold feet; but she didn't let him in, she pushed him away, and Kálmán just cried and cried, so much that in the end she had to comfort him, rotten bastard! she had to promise that one day she'd let him in, except that she never will, never, did I understand? yes, she'd be a whore, but she'd never do it with him, never! still, she'd promised she would, but only to get the hell rid of him, because he kept crying and she wanted to be nice to him; she stroked his head and his face, while he held her hand and cried some more; she told him she'd scream if he dared get into her bed, and would he please stop kissing her hand, because she really hated that; and she wanted him to get lost, her hands were a mess, tears and snot, he was really bawling something awful, and she had to swear she loved him; she said she'd scream and then her father would come running and would beat him up, so he should be reasonable and leave like a good boy and then she would even love him a little.