He blackmails her with that too.
She doesn’t want even one from him, from such a fickle character, Kristóf should believe her.
Of course she understands him. Still, it hurts terribly.
This is the terrible, incomprehensible paradox in their relationship.
Kristóf did not know what a paradox was, though he had heard the word several times before.
When she bleeds for weeks on end, Simon becomes inhuman. Since they can’t do it — and they can’t, they tried a number of times — she could let him do it by himself, and sometimes she does, for a while. But she doesn’t feel anything then — someone plashing about in her blood, that’s all she feels, nothing more. It’s as if she’s slowly silting up, and why should she let this happen. And when she doesn’t, he goes to have intercourse with other women, gets angry and rebukes her for never but never understanding what’s going on in a man at times like that, and keeps throwing things around and swearing.
But she won’t tell all this to Kristóf, because she can’t humiliate herself so much with her story.
You’re a neurotic, selfish slut.
And maybe she was neurotic, if she couldn’t control her jealousy and couldn’t help Simon.
An indifferent beast, like your mother and your whole class and your entire son-of-a-bitch clan, egoist beasts, all of you.
I resent that. I am on my own.
You people don’t know what human warmth is, or self-sacrifice.
Then go fuck your own social class, you dumb animal, not me.
But that’s not even true, what am I saying, she corrected herself.
Saying things like this about herself would be unjust, because Simon was always a drinker. He had been a drinker way before he had met her, and he drank because he was so much in love or he drank because they happened to be breaking up, he always had a reason to drink. He’s a pig, a boar, she doesn’t know what else to say about him, Simon is a prole wild boar from Angyalföld, she said, as if bragging proudly with her negative judgment, so she could at the same time berate him and love him, love him and worship him. Kristóf must see what a wonderful man this man is. There’s not one man in his family who isn’t a drinker. They all drink, the women too. And why shouldn’t they. She has nothing against drinking; otherwise, it would be impossible to put up with this rotten life and with what sober people thought was reasonable drinking. They drink like fish but, Kristóf must try to imagine this, they don’t drink together on holidays because they’d probably kill each other if they did, so they go drinking separately and then come home one by one, all of them drunk. Let those dumb proles drink themselves to death. She understands them. What’s not to understand here. Now and again she joins them and tosses down a few, right along with them. Only their mother doesn’t drink, she’s a pathologically sober woman, she doesn’t need alcohol, not even to keep her mind sober. For a long time she thought that their love would save Simon from this swamp, this family morass, these wild boars who enjoy grunting and wallowing in their own filth. Simon would gain so much from her that would help him relax, calm down. She’d bear children for him, lots of little girls and boys. Or at least three. She had no intention of fucking up her life with too many stupid births. That’s how she said it, fucking up. This dumb prole family immediately accepted her, she said with feeling, even though they were all, except for a few stray Hungarian Nazis, reds. She needed this, and they sensed her weakness, what with her hating her own mother, and her sister really getting on her nerves with her unbearable habits. Her older brother, well, she feels sorry for him. She has no family, she walked out on them, disowned them all, doesn’t need them. And they’re fairly numerous too, when they come together for Easter or New Year’s it’s like a big funereal show of waxworks, and not a single live being among them. And these stupid proles are all fanatic atheists. But she doesn’t deceive herself. Her mother-in-law disdains her instinctively, in her heart of hearts, in her guts. What she thinks about her is, what is this little high-class cunt doing putting on airs with her permanent bleeds and her affectations, knocking herself to the ground and fainting left and right, pretending to have migraines; she said it like that, high-class cunt.
And that’s what I am, what else could I be.
Where does she get off claiming I don’t have migraines.
And I’m supposed to cast off my real self for these stupid proletarians. I’m not going to change myself for them, I can’t.
But where do you get all this contempt for others, where do you get the courage for it, what do you get out of it.
I do have migraines, yes. One can have migraines even if these people have never heard the term.
Come on, what’s the point of your hatred.
What hatred, what contempt, I haven’t any kind of feeling. I don’t feel anything for anyone. That’s the absolute truth, my lover has desensitized me, that’s the naked truth, what else, and that lover is my love, so there we are.
She kept quiet for a long time, staring somberly before her, and then obsessively began again.
Compared with him you are a coward, you milksop, you I don’t even hate because I have nothing to do with you, you’re a stranger, someone I don’t even know, and that’s it.
She could not solve her life. She thought she could, thought she’d have enough strength for it. And her mother-in-law keeps giving her advice that, despite her best intentions, she cannot accept.
She simply cannot.
And very quietly, then ever more loudly, she kept obsessively repeating that she cannot accept.
Kristóf didn’t know what she was talking about, what would she not accept, and what did her mother-in-law advise her, but that was no longer interesting. With her gloved hands Klára grasped the steering wheel as if to shake it; she could not accept it, no, no, she could not.
Sooner or later she’ll start drinking too.
She cannot accept it and, yes, she is full of hatred. She doesn’t know what to do with their prole pieces of advice, she hates her miserable life and she’d be glad to blow it all up. If she had any dynamite. Simon would probably be better off with a strong woman, one of those clumsy, wide-hipped bitches. While she can’t even bring a child to full term, a real shame.
I am a dumb little high-class cunt.
Nevertheless she cannot accept it.
That man will kill her.
But even then she cannot accept it.
He has already killed her; because of him she has disowned her entire family.
She cannot accept it, but then why does she love him so much.
Kristóf grasped her hand and shoulder; he didn’t know exactly what he was grasping. To make her stop shaking the steering wheel so senselessly and so he wouldn’t have to be disgusted with her and her every word, or with his own self-hatred. With her body, her mentality, her bluntness, her commonness, with everything she had taken upon herself or forced on herself, with her words. She had soiled everything with her words; he detested her and the scent of the borrowed mink coat disgusted him.
He was not sorry for her.
At least she should stop shaking the steering wheel.
But Klára swept along, almost tearing herself away from Kristóf’s calming hands and arms.
She can’t accept it, she shouted in the darkness, while the windshield wipers kept slowly flapping back and forth.
Don’t you touch me, she shouted in the darkness, I won’t be responsible for myself if you dare to touch me, not one finger.
I can’t accept it, no, I cannot.
I don’t want your touch.
Oh, please don’t be so good to me, you, you goody-goody sensible little boy, you make me laugh.
His main task was not to protect the miserable creature from her hysterical eruption and its tectonic force, but to overcome his own shocked physical aversion. It was as if he were responding to the same thing with his own aversion, saying exactly the same thing. Not only don’t I want to make you pregnant, I don’t even want to touch you. Or he should get out of their filthy, cold car because he’d really had enough of her, and just leave. Although he couldn’t say where he’d go. And never see this shameless woman again. He seized her firmly to free her, he shook her to let the hysteric come to at last. She shouldn’t add to her troubles with this fit. Bumping against the steering wheel and dashboard, they struggled briefly in the narrow space. His fingers kept slipping on the mink coat, or rather the silk lining of the coat kept slipping on her dress, on her bare skin, it slipped backward, he couldn’t get a grip on it, could not find one; Andria Lüttwitz’s lousy mink coat slipped down, stripping her bare.