Her vagina was burning, hurt from so much rubbing.
She could not choose freely among her sensations, and there was no musical note that, driven by a single controlled instinct, might have addressed and elicited a response from the enormous mass and weight of the impersonal past.
In the bluish-yellow early-summer night, transilluminated by moonlight, an aura of everything-has-passed settled on Mrs. Szemző’s rooms.
It settled stubbornly on Gyöngyvér’s shoulders; with the insanely yellow reflected light it settled on the entire quarter of the city, sunk in a nightmare. And the solitary semitone was not strong enough to address or lend body to the enormous mass of sensations of things past.
She could not muster enough strength to break through.
She has a singing teacher who never but never lets her sing. She tortures her, nags her, sadistic woman; how can she break through. Keeps making her stop all the time, in the interest of expression separately squelches every single note in her. So how can she sing effortlessly and naturally, how can she give form to her notes. This female frazzles my nerves completely; I don’t believe a word she says anymore.
There was no room to move in the historical thicket of objects, and she wasn’t getting anywhere with that damn F sharp either.
Those two F sharps, my child, you must really work them out.
I am not your child.
What I wish with all my heart is for you to be more patient with yourself.
Please note, I am not anybody’s child.
I know well whose child I am not, and I am not the child of Aunt Margit Huber.
I’m the child of my whore mother, whom somebody knocked up on the fly, if you understand this kind of talk.
You are susceptible to hysteria, dear child, and the question is whether you’ll be able to overcome this inclination of yours. And there’s another big question too: with what approach might I be of help to you. Giving a lesson to oneself requires self-discipline, that’s for sure. Now calm down, and let’s take it from the top. Like an ordinary technician, think of it that way, I’m an ordinary technician who ought to find the source of this damn breakdown in communication.
Let’s try it staccato.
We must hear what you deign to do with these two F sharps, for they deserve a better fate.
Please don’t tell me that I deign to do something.
You should put every note individually in its proper place, Gyöngyvér, not in general, do not sing in general. Try it staccato.
It won’t kill you, don’t worry.
There, you see.
If you can’t manage to bring out that sound when you sing slowly like this, carefully separating each note from the rest, what will it be like, for heaven’s sake, at the proper tempo.
Don’t hurry, where are you rushing to, for the love of heaven, don’t smudge it so roughly, don’t smudge it like that.
It won’t be nice if the high note is strained.
You have days, dear child, when instead of singing you try cleverly to avoid the notes; you want to get away with not singing. I know you’ll be offended again, but again you’ve failed to sustain it.
I’ll gladly lend you my ears, I’ll rent them out to you, but you must do the singing. You want to get away from the notes. A singer, my pet, should not sing in general, even though one’s stage instinct might suggest it, to pretend and pretend some more instead of playing for real, but please, don’t go that route. You have your own voice, yet you want to sing by cribbing from others.
That turns into self-complacency or self-pity. That is not your best voice, Gyöngyvér, it still isn’t your very best. It’s as if you are forcing it. To be sure to have every note, first you must bring your body into the right position and together with your emotions, we’ve talked a lot about this and in great detail. All along the way, one beat in advance, you should know what you want to do next. And don’t forget that in German the letter ü is short, even if the tempo wants it longer.
Repeat after me, Glück.
Glück.
Gyöngyvér, please, shorter, shorter. You are happy, you understand, happy.
Glück.
Because of the tempo, you may double a vowel, but be careful, no strange sound between the two vowels. Please don’t get in the habit of that embarrassing spl-ee-ee-ee-ting of words. You’re singing about happiness, not cooing to a baby.
Of course others do that, but we don’t understand them. All you’re doing is imitating the weak points of others.
You’ve got enough of your own.
Glück, say it after me, one more time, and shine, make your voice glisten.
Not with your little mug, Gyöngyvér, with your eyes! Glitter and glow with your eyes, shine them out of your pretty little face.
You can indicate by miming what you’ll do in your great happiness, for all I care, the dramatic situation allows for it. But you, my dear, are doing it the other way around: you are demonstrating retroactively what you failed to deliver with your voice. You make faces, but I want to hear something about happiness.
As it is, it’s worthless, nothing, zero, nada. It’s as if you mixed up cause and effect.
We can’t mix apples and oranges either.
You can’t give me the visual instead of the acoustic.
And now I’d like to hear at last that you’ve put the notes in their proper place.
Glück, I want to hear this shorter, Gyöngyvér, shorter, and let your voice glisten.
Gyöngyvér Mózes, filled with doubts, kept hitting the F sharp while outside it was fast becoming light, and at the very same moment the tormented and humiliated Kristóf Demén, not so far from her, made good on his promise to himself.
He was trudging toward the Pest shore, not on the Margit Bridge but on the Árpád Bridge.
He did not pick this bridge just because it was closer and seemed to be the safest way to escape the raiding police.
The others, who did not manage to escape, were soon beaten with nightsticks, the blows falling wherever their bodies could be reached on their backs, heads, and arms raised in defense. He wasn’t sure that other police units might not be combing the interior of the island; he couldn’t flee that way. And if he had good luck, the incredible luck to slip through the dragnet, he still thought that on this bridge he had the best chance of not falling into a trap again.
It wasn’t advisable to meet other human beings in his condition.
The chances of this happening were greater on the Margit Bridge or Lipót Boulevard.
In another twenty minutes city traffic would slowly wind down, but given his condition he couldn’t have gotten on a streetcar in any case.
He picked this escape route because the surest way of throwing himself successfully into the depths would be from the Árpád Bridge. Before meeting anyone. He only had to hurdle the railing.
As if his entire life until now had been nothing but preparation for this lovely nightmare that, lo and behold, came to him while he was still awake.
Under the blows of nightsticks, several men fell or collapsed into the tarry pissoir; they screamed, but the police went on beating them, they cried and begged for mercy while the police yelled.
Headlights of a police assault van provided light through the open door.
Will he have the fortitude.
Now he can realize it; all his great hopes lay in this last, long-gestating plan whose every little detail had been worked out.
In the glimmer of dawn, which had not yet obliterated the deep grayness of the world, he was running headlong, all alone, on the bridge. His bodily contentment was panting along with him, deriding his sense of morality and disgracing his conscience. He carried his joy with him. He was fleeing from policemen who were not pursuing him. They probably hadn’t even noticed that someone had escaped or, if they had, they were glad to have one less faggot at the station.