For some reason, they closed the store a little early that day. Luckily I’d gone down before that to stand in front of the building. My heart was racing; I thought it would burst. I was preoccupied with all the time I had to wait. I couldn’t understand why I was so restless, so weak and childish because of a woman. Who doesn’t interest me very much. I was angry with myself. I felt as if I were doing something important the wrong way. Or doing something I shouldn’t be doing. First I followed her from across the boulevard, and when her boss disappeared in the lobby next door to give the steel box to the concierge, I went over to her side. She was just turning into Szófia Street when the bell of the Terézváros church began to peal. Like a secret signal that I did not understand. Maybe I couldn’t relax because of the blustery evening wind. She kept walking and I followed her. It didn’t seem likely that I could call after her, and even if I managed to calm down, where could we have gone in such weather. I did not understand what I was doing, but I could not avoid doing it. It was not completely dark yet, the sky was aflame, and gigantic clouds were swimming in it. It was no longer raining, but with each new squall I felt light spray on my face. The streetlamps’ yellow lights were swaying. The city, with all its wet flags, was deserted.
In this dark little street, she had to hear my footsteps. She was tapping in my brain with her fine little high heels, or maybe in my soul. I did not want to catch up with her, because I really didn’t have anything to say to her. I couldn’t figure out what I should say to her. Still, I was counting on her stopping suddenly, was hoping for it, yet could not imagine what we would do if she did. Since she’d started out and I’d followed her, she gave no sign of noticing me at all. It would be hard for me to say how I felt. Maybe I wasn’t feeling anything. Because I was more interested in what she was feeling, or what she was thinking about, or why was she doing it in this particular way. That’s what I wanted somehow to intuit from her, from her carriage, from her steps, from anything. And to know whether she heard my steps and was only pretending she didn’t. Because if it meant nothing to her that I was following her, then she must have forgotten me, she wasn’t running away from me, she wasn’t leading me anywhere but, having finished work, was simply hurrying someplace. And that would be the end of our story, I’d have to accept that. But at least I’d see whom she was going to meet. Because I knew she was going to meet somebody, I just did.
It was as though I simultaneously had two unrealizable hopes, equally strong. If she was going to meet someone, I could simply avoid her; just keep walking. But if she didn’t meet anyone, there’d be no more excuses; I knew that too. If we could not talk to each other, open our mouths and understand each other, then our relationship would remain a painful illusion, a disgrace, a defeat. And I wished for nothing more than such a defeat, accepting in advance that I would be the loser. Or rather, I’m not sure I could imagine such a great defeat. But if I had to open my mouth, I might have nothing to say to her. This was just too much; I can’t talk about it. And I wished nothing more than that I should have nothing to say to her. Then at least it would be over. In the meantime, it was most important that I could see her, follow her, adjust my pace to the patter of her high heels. I had never before seen her walking on the street from so close up, and this became more important than anything. Whatever happens later, this I will find out now. Or maybe I already have. Even though I couldn’t know in advance what I wanted to find out. But I knew I was curious about this monotonous sight that changed every second, though I had no idea why. I drank up the vision, blotted it up, and was not disappointed by a single moment of it.
Maybe her coat caused a slight disappointment. If not disappointment, a little confusion. She wasn’t wearing her own coat; it had to have been somebody else’s; I could see that it wasn’t hers. No stores sold such coats, it was too big, sand-colored, made of some light material and maybe a man’s coat. And this sand-colored blotch was leading me down dark Szófia Street. The coat not only bothered me, this ill-fitting coat that made it so I couldn’t see her, see who she was, but bothered the tenderness I felt for her. It was not her body I wanted to see, or maybe it was. The silence of her naked body, unhindered. When I’d seen her from a distance or in her white work coat, nothing disturbed my sense of her beauty. And nothing restrained my fancy either. As if only in the finest garments could I appropriately dress her beauty. But her coat reminded me of socialist reality, of the disagreeable and recurring thought that I was pursuing just an ordinary woman who worked in an espresso bar, and then this couldn’t be more than an awkward little adventure anyway. Which I didn’t need. And if I was already thinking this, it was almost as if I had already offended her. As if a wicked aunt were calling to me from the pages of a pulp noveclass="underline" you can’t belong to each other anyway. I’ve always made allowances for women, but it was high time to admit to myself that I was more passionately interested in men, since what I’m really interested in is what I am like. Seeing her in her white work coat, there might have been room for a romantic imagination yearning for elegant richness, but seeing her in her awkward penury made that impossible. As though nothing was or could ever again be in its right place. Women were not the ones. I couldn’t find my own way, or anyone else’s, or anything at all. Perhaps this inability of mine lent weight and strength to her beauty, but I didn’t want to retreat from my illusions. Luckily for me, she did not stop and gave no sign that she heard my steps. She hurried on as if she had urgent business somewhere.
Her wonderful footsteps gave me a respite.
She was probably wearing a tight-fitting skirt under the ugly coat, for her steps were very short though very determined, the patter of her high heels almost aggressive. I wouldn’t have thought she had nice legs. I was seeing something of which I had to say that I’d never seen anything so beautiful, but I’m sure I did not elaborate on the sight, not with words. I knew that men paid special attention to legs. But this too was one of those things I didn’t understand about men. It was as if there was a direct relationship between their sexual potency and the sort of legs this or that woman had. While men talked about women’s legs, I looked incomprehensibly at the men or at their legs. I was engrossed in her straight posture, in the unbroken rhythm of her steps, in everything that was entrusted to her feet, rising in a pleasing arc to her ankles and to strong and shapely calves in silk stockings. Earlier, I hadn’t even thought that I would or ever could need a woman, because the crudely declared need for possession rather nauseated or scared me. I considered it absurd, ominous, arrogant, and crassly stupid when a man declared something like this out loud, or made eyes or gestures to make his intentions clear to the woman in question. In myself, I couldn’t arouse anything that even remotely resembled an urge like that. Earlier, the very assumption of something like this would have made me sink into the floor with shame just to think of it, let alone do such things. That I’d be interested in someone’s legs or might want someone because of her legs, ass, or breasts. And I especially did not understand about the ass; why the ass, what could men do with women’s asses.
So now that’s what I was thinking about. As if somebody inside me had said it straight out, loud and clear. Well, this woman certainly has great legs. I want this woman. And there was nothing to add, not that I wanted to, because the statement referred not to her soul but to how she walked, to everything that this impossible coat so cruelly concealed, to her ass. I wanted to look at her ass, to see her ass and her breasts and her belly.