And this strange countenance also saw something of what others were doing around it.
However, he could not tell when he wound up on the flagstones.
He could feel with his naked buttocks that he was lying in cool wetness and he could feel, through his wet shirt, that his back was in contact with the floor. Who did this. Maybe he was lying not in water from the faucet, which was still dripping behind the open door, but in piss, other people’s piss. This must have been his first thought when he regained something of his consciousness. Then he saw enormous shadows towering above him. He couldn’t have counted how many men were there, all of them making strange little sounds, as they went on slinging sperm onto his stripped body now lying on the stone floor.
The sperm landed on his belly and chest with soft splashes, warmly.
From this he finally understood that although he was neither aware of nor feeling anything, and although his perception was considerably delayed, he too must have reached his satisfaction earlier and the two men he loved so much, and who within a few short seconds had induced in him this now-dissipating pleasure, had already left him.
Had thrown him to the floor.
Had vanished in the night in search of other gratifications.
These two were really vampires, in which case he no longer had any blood, and they had also sucked the marrow from his spine and now death was happening.
Their black dog had been death’s harbinger.
The giant from the twenty-forint bill, with whom he wanted to share his entire life, had vanished.
Without an embrace, without a kiss, without either of them saying a single word to each other. He had no word for me, not a solitary word.
From now on an entire long life will have to be spent in death.
A Brand-New Civilization
When Ágost opened his eyes again — he could not tell when he had closed them, if he had closed them at all — what he saw was an opalescent surface on which he did not immediately find his bearings.
He was lying on his back on a drenched bedcover, above him the wide-open window of the maid’s room and beyond the window the empty nocturnal sky.
He was staring into this emptiness.
The sky of diffused yellowish red reflected the city lights. As if he were looking into a geometrically designed space whose dimensions he was unable to conceive, unable to conceive his own life. In the depth of the motionless summer stillness the distant Váci Road was knocking, hammering, clattering, booming, and whistling with all its factories working through the night, and nearby something clicked.
He concluded that the lights were carried on an invisible mass of air.
Gyöngyvér had just come back from somewhere.
This told him he was involved with a woman again or at least had come up to her uncomfortable rented room.
A few years earlier, when they had unexpectedly recalled him from his post abroad, he had found the city’s cramped interior spaces especially exciting.
Forced into such congested conditions, people here live in intimate proximity.
They must move more carefully, maintain the goodwill of others. They cannot be cold and distant with one another, since they see into one another’s lives and with their every movement interfere with them. But for quite a while now he has found this behavior compulsive, unfolding like a pointless irritation from which they should free themselves. But this narrow space had no exit.
Where did you go, he asked lazily and sleepily.
Meanwhile he was glad he’d finally found the correct spatial perspective.
Even though every wall was depressingly close. And it quickly occurred to him that the strange feeling matched perfectly his own fate.
If matter has no mass, it cannot appear in the physical space and its perspective cannot be experienced.
I took a shower, but there’s lots of hot water. I left plenty for you.
I got lost, he thought, I got lost in this woman, I must admit.
I should scrape myself out of her.
I could have one more day, though; all right then, I’ll give myself another day.
I don’t feel like getting up, he said aloud. If it’s all right with you, if I don’t bother you with my excretions, I won’t go anywhere.
You don’t have to worry about the old woman because I can hear her way before she gets to the door.
I’m perfectly all right without a shower.
If you want me to, I can stand guard in the hallway and won’t let her in.
What time is it.
I don’t know.
About.
Probably not enough time to sleep.
That sounds like a rebuke. I hope you’re not offended by my importunity.
At this, they both laughed.
I haven’t heard any streetcars. One thirty, two thirty, I really don’t know.
Did you open the window?
Who else. The first streetcar comes at three thirty.
Help me stand up, please.
What, you really want me to help you.
Out of love for a fellow human.
My God, how I must have exhausted you. How could I ever compensate you for your squandered energies.
Hearing this, the man began stretching pleasurably; he yawned a big yawn and pretended that down there on the floor he was struggling helplessly. Now he sat up, now he sank back on the piss-soaked cover, pressed and cracked his limbs and knuckles, and then drew his hands across his darkly shining, hairless chest.
Pay for it, he said from behind another yawn, that’s how you can, the simplest solution. Let’s see, I’ll be generous and not count the days, so just pay for the full four nights.
It would have been more honest if you’d told me this before. We could have clarified whether you wanted a separate payment for each round or a lump sum for everything, the woman replied equably. And we still have to talk about how much you want for special activities.
The idea appealed to her because, knowing herself, she might indeed have been willing to pay him.
With great pleasure, they submerged themselves in the sight of each other’s nakedness. The man thought a bit more about the price, but he had no doubt he’d accept it.
I’d be happy with, let’s say, three hundred per round.
They were peeling each other out of the darkness, less with their eyes than with their inner vision, and with a mutually seductive self-gratification that was also pleasurable to demonstrate: the abundant flesh and the light-minded irresponsible words.
Well, let’s try to add it all up.
Although they both felt that these words were becoming morally dangerous.
I don’t think we’d arrive at the same sum.
They might injure each other with words.
Of course, you’ll try to deny a few rounds.
Ágost’s hands, on his stomach, finally stopped moving.
This self-satisfied gesture flattered him with a renewed erection.
He countered it with another gesture; he had had enough of erections; he dug into his dense pubic hair with its trillion little curls, scratched it and kept scratching. Which in Gyöngyvér’s eyes was more comical than seductive, and rather beastly. His way of carrying on, his tossing and snuggling — dogs act like this when absorbing the odors of a newly arranged litter to sleep on or of strange feces. Then he slipped his hands between his thighs and reached for his testicles as if his hands were one large ladle.
And this brought to Gyöngyvér’s mind the image of reapers on their break, sitting on the ground, spooning hot thick goulash soup from a common bowl which a blond woman brought to them. She had to think about this woman, because she did not know where she knew her from and why the sight of her gripped her with fear.