Which nobody in his right mind could comprehend or accept.
In the Lukács Baths, regardless of the season, cabin attendants always wore white linen pants and white sleeveless undershirts; only the bath masters wore short-sleeved white shirts. He now felt as if an icy wind had rushed at his bare shoulders, as when an icy wind clings to hot perspiration. But wind does not cling to anything. What happened, he asked himself, alarmed, what has this woman done to me; what’s happening to me here. Which did not necessarily refer to the place he was standing. The question grew large and loud, though in fact he couldn’t say a word. But he too, deeply disgusted, acknowledged the stinking smell of garlic. A dried-out, mute mouth, from which he could not disgorge the smell that nauseated him. He had cleaned up enough puke, pumped enough toilet bowls blocked with shit and toilet paper, and now it was as if all his experiences were pouring back into his mouth, as if he were retching them up from his stomach. Exactly the way this rotten woman had described it to him. He mustered out of the army six months ago and thought things would be better because in the army they were constantly fucking with him. He had to hose down and wash muddy corridors; in the laundry room, he was the one who had to stuff the shitty underpants into the machines, and they made him scrape all the soapy hair from the drains and gratings. If he didn’t hustle fast enough, his trainer cursed his whore mother and he had to take it, he had to take whatever they dished out. Still, he had never felt so humiliated, done with such cunning, as he did this time. No matter where he looked, he saw nothing but closed doors, and nothing had changed on the rotten woman’s smooth face. Then why am I feeling this rotten cold on my back. As if he could never break free of those motionless eyes; of the ridiculous eyebrows drawn on her shiny forehead; of the blood-red beads rattling on her neck, ears, and arms. No matter how scared he was, how much he cursed her, how he raged inside, this female saw it all, everything, because on him everybody could always see everything.
To scream; he would have liked to scream, but he stifled it; the intended scream turned into a pitiful whimper, barely passing his throat. Which surprised him so much he didn’t know what to do. Suddenly his tears began to flow and something gripped his throat, squeezing from it one last pitiful whimper. His body stiffened, he ceased shaking his feet, and he stood in front of the woman’s table as if he were nailed down. In his misery, he alternately threw his head back and let it drop forward, all the way to his chest. His crying bubbled up in spurts. His face is also cute, thought the ticket taker, without giving any visible indication of her thoughts. But what can one do with such a big crybaby. She was prepared for everything, including the possibility that the new attendant might lose his mind and even attack her. She was fairly immobilized in her corner post next to the entrance; she wouldn’t have a chance to rush out. In a fraction of a second, she took all the necessary preventive measures. And luckily, those strong men were still there at the end of the corridor.
She kept the ball of yarn in a plastic bag, the bag resting in her lap. She now lifted the bag and, along with the completed crocheting, wrapped it around her finger, put it expectantly on the table. She quickly turned the needle outward from between her large thick fingers, so that it protruded from between her blood-red nails like a dangerous weapon. She will defend herself. She leaned forward a little. If the young man attacked, he would first upset the table. She readied her legs. But I’ll poke out those little pig eyes of his if he attacks me.
The men at the end of the corridor must not have noticed anything. Their intimate moment ended quickly when Ágost, not too gently, shoved them away. Which didn’t mean that he managed to break free of their embrace.
Come on, let me go, he said petulantly. And please, stop pawing me. I’m sick of both of you.
Which sounded to the other two men like an unhoped-for confession of love. They burst into laughter, huffing and puffing with delight. A victory that had to be celebrated and enjoyed.
They often pronounced things that were true, only to forestall their true effects. Or, conversely, they would tell a lie in a way that would make it transparently obvious. Hans chuckled haltingly, André roughly and too loudly. They enjoyed it when their words did not express what they meant and strengthened their secret dialogue with its concealed meaning. Ágost’s aim, however, was to stop them from using the language of their little secret dialogue. There was an off-limits area here that neither they nor any strangers were allowed to enter. Ágost too enjoyed the situation, enjoyed the game. He had nothing against Hans’s hesitant chuckles and André’s violent guffaws, these adolescent sounds that might have struck an outsider’s ears as unpleasant. Their irritating exaggeration only meant that they accepted the cards Ágost was dealing them. Or at least pretended to accept them.
Even if he couldn’t get out of the noose immediately, he was moving in the right direction.
To avoid letting their guard down and entering the off-limits area, almost everything conveyed in their own language meant the opposite of what it would normally mean. They had never entered the forbidden area.
No woman was allowed to enter it either.
If he succeeded in getting out of the noose, if even his secret family could not hold him back from doing anything anymore, then he was a free man. At last, he would be alone; he would fall. And although his two friends were high-minded and noble-spirited men who until now had instinctively done everything to prevent this accident, they would not sink so low as to limit anyone in his self-destructive freedom. On the contrary, in their own considered interest they would allow it, and would enjoy it too. They would affix to it the blood-red stamp of nihil obstat. So be it. Indeed, existence has no palpable significance. Let him do it. Anything. Everybody should be allowed to do anything.
And because this current situation had arisen so suddenly, Ágost was on the verge of speaking. This would have been the other solution: to give, or at least to lend some meaning to certain things for limited periods of time. His exasperation was credible because it referred to his own genuine helplessness. He did not have the strength, or the humor, to look into his own nihilism, even though he was the only one among them who did not entertain notions about a better future.
To simplify things, he should have freed himself of his inability to speak.
He could not claim he had no language for what he wanted to say; the whole damn thing, with all its intricacies, was not so complicated that one couldn’t intelligently relate it. Boys, he could have said lightheartedly, the stinking situation is that for months my life has been completely void of joy. But this he could not say, could not ease his terrible anxieties, because these vultures well knew he wasn’t impotent and he wished to deflect their attention only because his mind was struggling with even greater, more insoluble problems. However, he wanted to say something impressive, weighty, which might even be partially true, only to stop them from involuntarily drifting into the forbidden area where they would glimpse one another’s true faces. Or he could have said something else. Boys, the problem is that I’ve fallen in love again. This sentence could have been easier to say. Le coup de foudre. Yet it might have carried them into even more dangerous territory. After all, these vultures well knew that he was not in love, as he had never been and never would be, but again he wanted desperately to solve something; he also knew that he was fleeing. He wished he were at least impotent, if life had to be so utterly dreary and joyless.