He knew why he was going upstairs.
They made each other moan and howl, just like the men on Margit Island.
While, like a dog, I was supposed to guard his car for them.
I felt as if I were being butchered; imagination made my heart pound in my throat; I was suffocating. I have to leave even if it’s just jealousy playing tricks on me, and I have to leave even if I’m making empty accusations. My breathing grew fast and heavy. Impulse carried me across the dark lobby; I ran out of the building.
But I stopped with the wind hitting me in the face.
Because I could hear noises from within.
A slamming door, a man’s voice from the depth of the courtyard, the quick tapping of a woman’s shoes. In which case it was only my jealous imagination playing tricks on me; nothing had happened in the bathroom.
Then silence, and again a door slammed.
Minutes were ticking by but they were not coming out.
And against my better judgment, this compelled me, as if I were a sneak thief, an assassin, a lousy little peeping Tom, to step back into the dark lobby. To stand next to the stinking garbage cans, listening intently. Not to go away, not to leave after all. The stench and the cold were not improbable at that moment; they were sole proof of the existing world order. But it was completely incredible that I had once again sunk so low, and the sinking wasn’t yet over, since I kept exposing myself to these things. Although nobody was forcing me, it was not a free choice. The power of the body brazenly made me do these things; I was sneaking in. The only pleasure in this was that while shamelessly obeying the compulsion, I could call myself despicable.
Perhaps for the first time in my life I realized that my physical being had nothing to do with my moral ideas or my upbringing.
While I sneaked upstairs in the dark, clinging to the peeling walls of the stairwell, all my limbs and inner organs were gently trembling with shame.
That I was capable of doing anything.
I didn’t want to fight down the sensation, yet I couldn’t imagine such a life.
In this familiar mute building, I wanted to gratify my body.
Maybe the moonlight suffused the rushing clouds, or the city lights were reflected in the sky. I really didn’t know what I was doing. In any case the well of the courtyard was shining blue. I was glad my shoes had rubber soles so that my steps were silent.
I stopped for a moment at the open gallery on the second floor. The iron railing cast an unfamiliar shadow on the patterned stone floor. As a child I’d of course never been out here at such an hour. I recalled winter afternoons when the air slowly darkened yet the yellow walls continued to glow. I wanted some certainty — about anything; or to ring their bell, to do anything that would stop the feeling of helplessness. To run up to the fourth floor, throw myself over the railing, hear the thud of my body, the shouts and screams; to end it all on the yellow ceramic paving of the courtyard.
Nothing stirred in the dark building.
I stopped on the last step and leaned my shoulder against the cold wall. No noise filtered in from the street. On the roofs, the wind continued to boom, occasionally strumming a tile or a section of the eaves.
I waited, ready to pounce.
Their apartment was the first one to the left of the stairs. If anyone crossed the foyer in the apartment, I’d hear it. The empty minutes of the waiting were measured only by my breathing. Again, I had to look in through the half-open door of the bathroom, and from what I saw there, my desire congealed in my guts. I could not help following her.
In my fear and pain I kept losing my breath, yet I was standing in front of the patterned glass of the entrance door.
The long foyer was dark, the kitchen was dark. I could see that the bathroom door was not half-open. I could hear no movement anywhere.
Their apartment did not differ from the piano teacher’s. Opposite the bathroom was the larger room’s opaque glass-paneled door on which only a weak light from the smaller room was reflected. Or who knows, maybe some light from the street, I could not decide.
Then they must be doing it in there, in that room.
By now I was not even ashamed.
On the patterned glass my breath collected as vapor.
I seemed to smell the woman’s fragrance in the air, which was the reason I had come this far and why I kept sinking ever lower. The effort not to ring their bell and a dread that I might break down the door weakened me, or my mind became hazy because in my pants fear had made my cock rear up.
Out of ideas, I staggered back down to the second-floor landing; that’s all my remaining sense could dictate to me. But my cock had stiffened to the point of real pain and hindered my walking.
The Noose Tightens
As if the question had called for him to rack his brains, the leather-capped driver did not reply for a long time.
Now and again he studied his passenger’s face in the rearview mirror, her seriousness, her self-imposed severity, the embarrassing sensuality of her features, her mildly wounded pride, and her haughtiness, which she was deploying so clumsily against him.
There was barely any light in the backseat of the Pobeda, but the oval side-window illuminated the older woman’s face. The driver scrutinized, analyzed, and seriously considered which of her features showed that she was Jewish. As a cadet in the Trieste Naval Academy he had learned from his Croatian platoon commander how to recognize Jews. Everyone had eyes, ears, a nose, and a mouth, but from that it does not necessarily follow that everyone is equal at birth. When out on individual passes or when amid much noise the big gates on Via Belpoggio were opened and the cadets marched out together in smart ranks formation, they paid close attention to passersby and to the girls hanging out the windows.
That is how he explained to himself retroactively that it was not from meanness but at the dictates of their blood that they’d had an aversion for the Gottlieb child. He clung to the petty officer’s every word. Should he be tormented, as a devout Catholic, were they not obeying their racial instincts when they let the older boys take care of the Gottlieb boy.
Ever since then, observing racial features in any situation excited him.
Even though he had to keep his eyes on the wet road.
He was always able to behave very amiably with Jews, he did not make them feel what he truly thought about their race, and he was especially fond of his own gallantry and generosity.
But his momentary daydreaming, focused on moderate self-admiration, was not without danger.
The hastily applied lipstick on the lady’s mouth, the large amount of rouge and powder, could not conceal the devastations of pain, ice-cold indifference, and constant anxiety but, rather, mocked her.
The driver’s eyes meandered over the woman’s disintegrated features.
In accordance with her upbringing, the passenger considered herself a perfect being, a unique specimen, different in everything and from everyone. She had deflected all doubts about herself, because her upbringing had been perfect, flawless, and that is why she knew how to behave so amazingly well in any situation. Moreover, as the favorite grandchild of Grandpapa Demén, she’d remained a pampered child forever. It was as though the driver, prompted by the map of this strange face, was reciting the lessons of his own life, burdened with much self-aggrandizement.
I never learn anything from anything, he’d sometimes say to himself, and he was very proud of this.
Although there were different emphases in the way these two had been brought up, their tones were similar. They made the same mistakes and notoriously repeated their own errors time after time, since they were convinced that they’d risen above their mistakes and that their high position today was appropriate.