Raw strength overwhelmed his refinement, responding crudely to his weakness. A born self-destroyer, a cool, clever ignoramus. He was put together well enough so one could not take one’s eyes from him and could not know just where one stood with him.
A dangerously long time passed without either of us saying anything.
The mutually risky game was precisely a challenge to take an open-eyed account of each other’s traits and abilities, not furtively or in secret; we should do it openly, the way animals do. Now I remembered that the oddity on his forehead, lupus in Latin, was called wolf skin in Hungarian. This name summed up my presentiment. He would be the wolf in the tale. For which one instantly feels pangs of conscience. How could I link physical attributes with a moral judgment; how could I be so unfair. The reflection of everything he could see on me quickly showed in his eyes and in the bitter lines framing his mouth. As if the aversion-provoking mark on his body was telling me that I had no chance in the current situation. There was a mildly vibrating mockery at the corner of his eye; still, I didn’t know what he saw or how he judged me. I only sensed he wanted something other than what is usual or acceptable in a relationship between two people. Perhaps his lumpy wolf’s spot filled me with disgust and his look with abject terror. I did not want to acknowledge the delight, the contemptuous satisfaction with which he was watching my face. And if, nevertheless, I opened my mouth, if I couldn’t bear the silence anymore or his supercilious and brazen visage, then the secret game would be over, because I’d refused to take a risk on the next moment, on my future.
I asked him what floor they lived on; in my confusion I looked back at the building and saw a light go out in a room on the second floor and another light go on in an adjacent room. I hated my own hoarse, hesitating voice.
He asked me in return, ready to attack, why I was asking. His glance was distrustful, as if he feared an ulterior motive.
I didn’t understand what he could be afraid of; I didn’t want to understand how I might possibly have offended him. I said, I asked because I’ve been in this building before, which is to say I know it pretty well.
He asked, when, why, how did I know the building. He was not interested in questions, and he would definitely not answer any of mine. As he spoke he pushed himself away from the car, stepping back a little, but did not let go of the open door, didn’t let it slam shut.
As if I had to follow his every move, I straightened up too.
In his leather coat, he became like an experienced interrogating officer.
I said, it was pretty long ago when I was here last, but it wasn’t just once or twice then, because my childhood is connected to this neighborhood. The woman who taught me, my piano teacher used to live here.
I see, the piano teacher, that’s very interesting, he replied sarcastically and aggressively, as if he had to retaliate instantly against my piano lessons. He hoped I’d had nice successes. My childhood must have been very happy.
I hastened to reassure him that that was not at all the case; though I got some idea of the instrument I never really learned to play well; and I didn’t understand why I was making such an effort to keep up this chatter. I said the only reason I asked was that I’d be interested to know if my piano teacher still lived here. She was a very kind, older German lady. More correctly, she was a very strict woman, I was pretty afraid of her. If she still lived here, he might know her. But I didn’t understand why I was making this report; what on earth was I explaining myself for. In Budapest apartment houses people don’t know one another, or they pretend they don’t. It was unpleasant to hear my anxious voice. Perhaps, if he knew the story of my childhood, he might be more forgiving. I won’t tell them the story. But I could not give up my false conversational style completely.
She had one of those silver-handled, black-lacquered canes, I explained; because of an accident or some illness, she limped heavily. Her hairdo and her cane made her look very refined. And the piano was in the same room where just a minute ago the light went on.
I received a short, dismissive, openly sarcastic laugh as a reply. Which meant that my refined manner, intended to smooth over all inequalities, had failed to convince him.
People who like to hide and be mysterious take every banal question as a frontal attack against them. But however I looked at them, my questions seemed harmless. People like that see a secret motivation behind every word or movement; their thinking is nothing but their own projections. Or perhaps he paid no heed to my questions so that he could ignore my presence altogether. I could not help thinking that this man might be involved in some sinister affair and I’d better keep clear of him.
Or jealousy had driven him crazy, in which case I should be more considerate.
I was angry.
I failed to understand how I could accept his surliness. Nothing should be the way I might like it, and certainly not the way his wife would. As if he were taking revenge and enjoying it immensely. Which was quite understandable, and I willingly reached out to him with my loquaciousness, to ease the tension between us, not to let the situation remain so raw; we needn’t be so vulnerable to each other. If we were already at this point and did not know how to wriggle free of each other, then at least we should give some acceptable form to the useless few minutes we were spending together. It’s really not such a big deal. But for him, it seemed, the very suggestion of a form was unacceptable and ridiculous; he judged contemptible the very method with which I meant to save what could be saved.
Every hypocrisy of the sunken bourgeois world crawled to the surface. He obviously was not familiar with what he so profoundly hated. He was a believer in openness and brute force, but at best, guided by such a belief, we could have a fistfight. I had to be the understanding party, after all, since I had elbowed my way into their life. And in that case, what was I doing trying to tone down my own surliness with this chattering tone of mine.
He could easily give himself over to any danger since he was not afraid of altercation. He saw no reason why he should let propriety restrain his emotions. He was not even afraid of running over someone with his car. I am always on guard, listen carefully, wait to see how things develop, and make myself believe that I might somehow blunt the sharp edge of existence; I continually talk beside the point. Go ahead and consider him surly, uncouth, or immoral, said the gaze, but his response was that despite my proposed method I was nothing but a wriggling worm.
I saw that he saw through me.
But that made me see him even better.
Now he is demonstratively silent, now he preaches shamelessly; he plays simultaneously with rejection and allurement, now he is talkative, now taciturn, because it’s important for him to remain unpredictable. He’s playing a calculated game with others as well as with himself, but his calculations are strictly confidential. I was even excited by the unpleasantness of the game, with him attacking me at my most vulnerable point. Because of my attempts at restoring predictability, he practically ran me down. As if saying to me he not only knew another world in which the rules of human contact were different in every imaginable way, which is to say unpredictable, but also knew me better than I could possibly know myself, and therefore, if I were brave enough, he’d offer to me this secret and unpredictable world.