Which aroused his suspicion. Could they have been the ones who brought on the police to take care of the others — that’s what he thought, but he knew well that he could no longer live without them even if they were police agents.
He might even want them more if they were.
Only a few more seconds and he’ll be at the right spot and then, luckily, that scandalous thought — that nothing matters so long as they are willing to do it with him — will no longer live in him. Still, it was precisely this scandalous thought that made it seem that he was celebrating a victory over fate. After all, for the first time in his life he’d succeeded in attaining this scandalous bliss, and without getting caught or beaten up by the cops, avoiding the risk that his aunt would have to bail him out of one of the detention centers; he shuddered at the thought.
There is no punishment; there won’t be any. His last hour was becoming the best hour of his life; at least they could not humiliate him for it. His fate has no more time to invent and inflict new punishment. Death will not be a punishment for his innocent pleasure but, rather, a lavish present, a huge bonus, he told himself, and he did not fear it, not at all; he already loved it in advance, deeply desired it, desired nothing else. At least death knew how gravely fate had erred throughout his short life. He should have settled in another body because he was completely innocent, and he learned from his impending death that other people, when they were happy, were happy because of their damned offenses.
Or what sort of hope of happiness is it when the hope that men pursue treacherously abandons them, when they cannot give it up but it runs ahead, away from them, on swift feet. Thirst had parched his lips and the hollow of his mouth; nausea made painful sores in the corners of his mouth and chapped his lips.
It was uplifting — to be aware of what he had learned about himself and about other men for the first and last time in his life. And other men can just stay in this world with this knowledge if they want to.
He was taking with him the taste and smell of strange men’s lips, gums, teeth, saliva, and cocks; he cherished this, as he did his own imminent death, for which he had to take only a few more, possibly painful steps. He will take everything with him; he won’t share anything with anybody. And with the thought that he’d have nothing to relinquish in the new world, he wished that feeling would come back to his parched mouth, despite his nausea, yes, they should kiss it, thrust their muscular tongues into it, these other men, anybody. More than for the depth of the swirling water, more than for its surface made silky by the churned-up mud, he longed for the thick lips of the mustached man, the taste of his heavy sweat, the strange smells left by his spritzers, meat stew, and perpetual cigarettes. With his stinking mouth he should kiss the rest of his life to pieces, fuck him to smithereens. Gobble up every last bit of leftovers, wipe the juicy bottom of the pot with a piece of bread, chew clean every little bone and bite through every bit of gristle.
This somebody who temporarily was still himself was taking with him the stale odor of tar and urine in his pores, on his skin, on the fuzz in his nostrils, and on his wet clothes.
Only a few seconds are left, all he has to do is get to the middle of the bridge with this miserable creature. Nothing is more clearly known than this and never will be.
Joining these sensations was the silt-filled, all-pervasive smell of the water intermingled with the bitterness of smoke from nearby factories and, separately, the sweet breeze of jasmine.
On his short-cropped blond hair, a mixture of strangers’ sperm was drying.
And while she kept on trying, once, twice, even five times in one instant, because she didn’t want, just this once she really didn’t want to fudge it, she was really trying to put this fucking F sharp in its proper place as required by the sense and style of the phrase, treating it as objectively as Margit Huber, this Médike, demanded of her, and why shouldn’t she be able to treat it as a technician would, since after all she does have a brain in her head and knows I can hold back a little here and let go a bit there; still, defying all her good intentions, her shoulders trembled with suppressed tears.
Much pain and happiness intersected during this exceptional moment.
When Kristóf again broke into a run on the bridge, he was fleeing to safeguard the sweet and childish images of his own death from the images of Ilona’s rice chicken and innocent freckles.
Which would like to keep him here for his life and for his future.
He was the only one making a noise on the dully resonant sidewalk of the bridge with his running steps, and yet he acknowledged, with some delay, the sound of trotting coming close behind him. And he envied Ilona’s pale little boy, in advance, for his terrible fate. He was fully prepared to hurdle over the railing. Quick little taps like those made by a dog’s feet reached his consciousness first. The nails tapped more rapidly than he himself was running. His heart skipped a beat; the black dog was going to catch up with him, his black dog.
It had gotten free, broken out, or the night watchman must have heard its echoing, persistent barking. And now the dog was coming after him on the bridge so he would have to continue to live his life for its sake, for a dog.
No, this was too much.
He had to figure out something; he could not run any faster.
As if he could not decide where he was in time and space, what had happened to him earlier or later.
Good Lord, she sighed, and I reproached this sweet dear man, telling him he was working inside me like a stupid little technician.
Without a soul.
Cheeky person that I am.
It was Margit Huber again, speaking out of me.
She was surprised in any case by her delayed realization that this Médike had managed to get inside her and reach every part of her with her words so insidiously meted out.
What the hell was I talking about, that he was a technician, what a dumb thing to say.
Next thing I know she’ll decide what I should tell my lover; that’s all I need.
I can’t let that happen.
As if she had suddenly realized the intoxicating beauty and horror of the osmosis, the exchange of personality, the symbiosis that occurs between people.
This woman had moved inside her with her entire being, not only her stupid singing lessons; she had wormed her way into Gyöngyvér’s every sentence and every thought. In the end she’ll be telling me what I should say to whom in every situation. As if Médike, with her relentless smile, had expropriated Gyöngyvér for herself. Let the devil be happy with her, not me, let the devil shine and glitter, what I need is a man, not her artistic glittering. Or maybe Gyöngyvér had expropriated Médike’s being along with her smile, I’ve robbed her of her smile, though she still didn’t understand how a permanent smile like that worked, the one she had stolen. Such an illuminating, multifaceted smile — which displayed myriad colors and levels of emotional intensity, which flickered, wavered, and fluttered on Margit Hubert’s lips as she taught, and with which she compelled no one to do anything — was not calculated into Gyöngyvér Mózes’s dark and difficult life, only, at most, into her tuition. Not enough that I’m paying for my lessons, I’m supposed to be happy too. Let your damn mother be happy, that Swabian. Gyöngyvér was amazed, where does this Médike get the strength for her constant smiles. And as she imitated Médike, Gyöngyvér began to comprehend that the airily sustained smile indeed contained something cool, treacherous, and obsessively persistent that would prove indispensable to singing and that she could not do without.