The strictly confidential text he had been translating from the Italian remained by his typewriter just as he had left it when four days ago he got up and went to the swimming pool. To comply with regulations, he should have locked it up. And Gyöngyvér should go to sleep, she must sleep, because she had to get up at five in the morning to begin her work at the kindergarten at six. It would have been a lie to claim they didn’t see the sober, gray workaday life ahead of them. But they couldn’t deal with it correctly. To get up now because I have to make a phone call. Or to say, oh, I think I’d better get some sleep. When either of them said or did something, it was impossible for the other to abandon the rhythm created by the first one. Even though their physical proximity no longer had a calming effect but, rather, frighteningly increased their sense of frustration. And this indefinable something had no arms for hugging or lips for kissing. Nothing with which to soothe the raw pain of emptiness.
While busy with these thoughts, he felt the strange female body shivering in his arms; someone he had nothing to do with, whom he did not know and with whom he had no reason to become acquainted. It was as if he were pressing to or thrusting away from himself a helpless being, trembling from head to toe. He could not possibly do that. Now that he had ruined her. But if he did not thrust her away, his own muscles would take on the strange trembling. And he did not let that happen. Such gentleness would make him falter. He set his protective armor in place.
It wasn’t the first time that Gyöngyvér had trembled during that evening and night.
It seemed, rather, that the trembling kept sending her back to her more treacherous and unpredictable ways, squeezing barely audible little whimpers out of her.
My sweet, my darling, what have I done, I’ve ruined you.
As he uttered these tender and emotional words, surprising himself with them, and as he put his arms around the woman’s strong shoulders, he broke into a sob.
No, don’t mind me, he said, choking. I don’t know what this is.
The words came from the very depths of his chest, one might say from an unknown, primal time.
It was like two consecutive bellows from an animal. He didn’t hold back; he had neither the time nor the presence of mind for that. Perhaps his back muscles, or his tautening abdominal muscles, didn’t let it break free. The invisible armor under his skin would not let it out, would not allow others to penetrate him with their superfluous emotions, but also would no longer let him out. He must live and die locked into himself. Which, to his shame and without producing another sound, made tears burst from his eyes and flow down his face.
Which felt good.
Mortified, he felt he had to be ashamed of his muscles holding him back. He had had, once, a more vulnerable life, and that was the reason he’d told the woman so much about those ancient times, which he himself did not remember, no matter how much he looked for them, and which, even if he’d found them, he could never get close to. His hardness and much forgetting would not let him.
And this hurt more than anything else. He shuddered, but did not want to allow himself even that.
As if he were saying, no, I won’t allow anything.
Which made Gyöngyvér break down too, bubble over. As when at the sight of one another’s trembling shoulders, every girl in a boarding-school dormitory cries, under the covers.
She had never seen a man cry, and now, of all men, to see this one cry.
In her joy she accompanied him with tiny bursts of laughter, which is what brings on hysterical, happiness-filled bawling in a dormitory. She was grateful to him — after all, he was crying because of her — but this also frightened her. Her entire body trembled and her teeth chattered, as if she had a high fever. She mourned someone while laughing at her own sorrow. She mourned someone unknown who should have perished long ago. I will destroy my mother.
To tell the truth, you know, I have a twin, she said, sobbing inconsolably.
She had just invented this so as to have something to say.
Where is this sibling, how would I know you had one. You’ve never mentioned it, sniffled the man.
She invented the twin to avoid thinking of her mother. Who, truth to tell, should have perished long ago in her daughter. Otherwise the daughter cannot love this man either. Her mother was the deceased twin. These things were as clear to her as given elements in a formula.
Ever since I was born, she said aloud, I’ve been carrying this other one inside me. She’s the only one I love, nobody else. There are such things, you know, you can wonder all you want.
Forgive me, but you’re talking drivel, you’ve gone out of your mind.
One can feel this, believe me, I am never alone. It’s been proven scientifically that in the womb one ovum can absorb, digest the other one.
Oh right, that means I’m here not with one woman but with two, obvious, isn’t it, the only thing is I can’t see the other one with the naked eye.
Never, I am always two women; with me, you can never be with one woman, for that you must look for somebody else.
She alternated between using the thread-thin voice of a mischievous, affected little girl bent on embellishing her flowery text, and her natural register, the warm mournful alto; it was as her latter self that she giggled.
This reminds me, you’ll have to meet my two good friends, the man continued, sniffling with a pleasure that surprised him. You’ll love them, at least I’d like you to love them because they’re really good boys.
As if he were consoling the woman by saying, don’t be so afraid of yourself, I am not alone either; the three of us are one. Even though this time he felt that he’d never had and could never have anyone, and that made him feel sorry for himself. His self-pity became his sole consolation.
They both understood themselves; to some extent, they even saw themselves from the outside, but they did not understand each other.
They stared at each other; it would have been good to understand truly and profoundly the subject of their admiration and aversion.
Gyöngyvér instantly tried to lick and with her tongue spoon into her mouth the tears rolling down the man’s face.
To lower her tongue to their source.
At the same time, she saw how distorted, frightening, and coarse the man’s beautiful head had become.
But why are you crying now, really, please tell me.
I don’t know.
Then she began to cry too, she felt so sorry for the man.
At the same time she thought to herself, why did I lie to him, why do I have to lie to him, why must I be such a rotten whore.
I don’t know either, she wailed aloud, maybe because of you, maybe I am lying and I’m really crying for myself, because of me, but I can’t express anything either, nothing, believe me.
Her trembling made it hard for her tongue to find the tears rolling down the man’s distorted face.
Her tongue fluttered, slurped around on his velvety skin pierced with new stubble; she kept on licking, searching for tears.
They were sitting on the wrinkled bedcover, tucked in many layers under their limbs. They yanked at each other but could not budge. Ágost was sitting on his pulled-up legs so as to support the woman with his tight thigh muscles, while his arms were around her shoulders; she had her arms around his neck.
Their torsos did not touch, the woman was trembling and shaking and her breasts with their gigantic nipples shook. Tears and mainly the inner expansion that came with the flow of tears seemed to have loosened up the man a little.
He loosened up enough to try with his tight-skinned full lips to catch the tongue hovering in front of his nose or at least the woman’s trembling lips.
Their bodies slipped over each other; they sought support with their tongues in the hot hollows of each other’s mouth.