They looked at it, they whimpered, they moaned and gaped along with the spurt, biting each other’s lips. They felt they were experiencing a great, mutual victory.
And then silently.
They kept nibbling, biting each other’s lips and sliding them around on their flowing saliva.
Until it stopped.
This brought them to the other side of a barrier whose existence neither of them had known about before. They literally submerged themselves in the unfamiliar fragrance of fresh urine and, holding on to each other, spread out in it. As if the sweeter scent of the woman’s urine had overcome the man’s more pungent and bitter one.
They remained lolling in it, awed and motionless, for a long time.
Ilona’s Rice Chicken
I felt nothing in the first few seconds, but then it hurt terribly, I was grabbing my leg, wriggling in the dark. The pain of the tibia reached my brain; I was writhing helplessly.
It was blood, of course it was blood.
And in that case, everything was perhaps over after all, and in a way other than I had planned, I’d bleed to death. Blood was smeared on my fingers, I was writhing, with my knee drawn up to my chest, my whole body swaying on the lawn, soaked wet with the night’s dew, as if I were swinging the pain on my spine.
I still had the presence of mind to listen, from behind the pain, for any noise.
Was somebody coming after me, should I continue to flee; I did hear some very strange clattering on the road.
It seemed to be coming from a different direction, not the one from which I’d have expected the sailor if he had picked up my trail and followed me. But judging by the sounds, it had to be a monster. No human could make such noises. His stride was irregular and the footsteps kept unexpectedly breaking off. It sounded as if somebody were flinging pebbles into the night in short, quick, sharp bursts, then stopping for a while, then starting up again unpredictably.
The black-haired giant had turned into a monster.
I might as well give up hope of his following me, of all people.
I had tumbled over the wrought-iron fence that separated the plane-tree-lined promenades from the enormous smooth lawn behind the Grand Hotel of Margit Island. How could I have forgotten it. The neo-Baroque fence imitated the tendrils, the winding, twisting stems, flowers, and huge round buds of plants. I had banged into the flower petals and the bud knobs with my shin. If only I could bleed to death quietly. I’d weaken and gradually lose consciousness, or blood poisoning would unceremoniously finish me off in a few days. This wasn’t a hopeless wish, since scales of rust were wedged into the leg wound; I felt their edges as my fingers groped around in the pain and slipped in blood.
The ground-floor terraces were empty, the striped sunshades were folded above the tables, and all the windows were dark.
Not a single hotel guest seemed to be awake.
What a strange feeling — that it had to happen at this place. It was as if I were observing, with my old views, from behind the dark window of the corner room on the fourth floor, and saw myself writhing on the lawn in the deep shadow of the plane trees.
Every year during the autumn housecleaning my grandparents would move here from Stefánia Boulevard, always renting the same suite.
It was an exceptional place where nothing ever changed over the years. Always the same breeze in the loose foliage of the plane trees, bringing the smell of the river and carrying the wavering light of the gas lamps; and whenever a stronger wind blew, the branches banged and the heavily veined, five-pointed leaves noisily rubbed and slid over one another. Rain pattering on them sounded like drops falling on stretched leather.
In those years, my grandmother’s women friends still thought that everything should be maintained and well preserved until the Americans came, when the Russians would clear out and life would return to its old routine.
The white funnels of petunia blossoms hanging from the carved clay pots were swinging gently on the rain-beaten balustrades.
Slowly the pain began to subside.
The insane reflected light of the city fell from the cloudy sky like a fine yellow drizzle.
With my writhing on the lawn, my black shirt and pants had gotten wet, but the coolness of the dew eased the pain somewhat. I no longer cared how I looked. I must have looked shocking, but that wouldn’t stop me from getting home somehow. If I hadn’t had to urinate and if I hadn’t been so thirsty, I might have lolled around on the lawn for a while. It was pleasant to hear again the city’s familiar noises and thuds, its closer or more distant shrieks. I felt protected by the night, as if lying under the giant shade of the plane trees I was invisible.
It turned out that nobody was coming down the promenade, neither human nor beast; my ears must have deceived me earlier.
I should have decided to leave as soon as possible and, because of Pisti, never come back again. I’d seen what he was up to; he was indeed at home here. I couldn’t get over this, because he was certainly the darling of girls and women if anyone was. And having seen him here, and not only that other boy, Königer, and I did see him with my own eyes, then I’d never understand anything about what was happening around me, and who knows whom I might meet here tomorrow.
Just about everybody is doing it.
I never imagined that in the nocturnal multitude I’d run into somebody I knew.
I couldn’t tell him that I had wound up here by chance and opened my fly by accident.
But the threatening image of this never come back again, which took hold immediately, was like a hardly feasible self-mutilation.
How can I restrain myself when I see that what I hardly dare dream about, others extravagantly indulge in every night.
Something had revealed itself: a realm of unfamiliar activities and secret compulsions that for the sake of rationality I should have locked up in the world of unfamiliarity forever. It’s over, that’s what I should have yelled. I shall ignore it. Since until now I had had no idea what men did under the cloak of night, I could easily forget it or pretend to know nothing of it.
Nobody’s presence should ever remind me of this again during the day. I’ll walk back to Pest not on the Margit but on the Árpád Bridge, and that way I might get away with it without being exposed.
Never again, never, I kept promising to myself. Maybe one last time I might still get away with it.
That would be the only reward for my self-punishment: that I’d get away with it. A reward one does not receive physically. If somehow one received it in one’s hands and carefully unwrapped the fine rustling paper, one would find something threatening and ominous, something one had managed to avoid or that had avoided one only by accident.
The worst did not happen.
And what sense would it make to wind up in an embarrassing situation because of such a loathsome adventure. Now I knew about Pisti, but maybe he didn’t yet know about me. I couldn’t risk more than that. And not only I but he couldn’t explain this away; nobody could. I went on lying in the cool darkness, full of warm currents. I closed my eyes to listen to the mysterious rustling of leaves and to recall something of the night’s emotion-filled occurrences, which I should have loathed. And to make my escape a certainty, in my imagination I made my crossing between the blackened facades of tenements on the poorly lit, deserted side streets of Pest. Nobody I knew should see me in such a state, especially not Pisti. I quickly planned my route and directions.
It was as if I were constantly crossing to another side of the street, even though the street had only two sides.
I was wading into the deserted jungle of the city, and there was no way back. Because I ardently wished that there would be no way back.