The little chameleon has finally betrayed herself. The pained artificial little smile, which she had built on a true headache, might have been provoked by a memory of real pain, but she had buried it under the unceasing pain she felt because of Ágost, which filled out her skin and made her face beautiful, even though her soul was filled with scab-encrusted injuries, purulent sores, and open wounds.
While her gaze wandered elsewhere. Unblinking, with an all but shameless lack of empathy, they kept looking into each other’s eyes.
Who in fact was an old gentleman, this dear old lady colleague of yours, if I’m not mistaken, came Lady Erna’s venomous response.
Immediately she thought she shouldn’t have said this, but the sentence had spilled out of her with elemental force. As if she had said, I know you were nothing but a whore and you still are. And now, with your mawkish sentimentality, you are trying to put one over on my son.
She could see through the young woman, who herself had the feeling she shouldn’t have come up with such a big lie.
And I’m blushing, too, so the old bitch can see how big a lie it was.
They were both slow to say more. The two statements remained hanging in the air. Neither one could be retracted.
But why say such things to me, why, Gyöngyvér whimpered under her breath, as if still moaning and whining about her headache, and as if, above all, she must convince herself that something terribly unfair had taken place. Though she sensed that her childish self-pity led her to an open clearing where there was no shelter. I don’t understand, she whined, I don’t understand at all why you hate me so much.
What are you talking about, may I ask.
I feel it, yes, I feel that you hate me.
Well, if that’s how you feel, one can’t argue with feelings, Lady Erna answered severely. But you constantly prevaricate, my child. And that’s putting it mildly.
Their faces seemed to be glowing in a peculiar light.
They could not acknowledge the source of the light, they could not look aside, and right now neither of them could afford even a flutter of eyelashes without risking the other drawing conclusions. Neither of them had room to move to let the other one pass by. As if they had been trying to avoid this very moment, or rather, as if they had been on the way to it. This is what they both felt. Lady Erna was filled with restrained expectations, Gyöngyvér with light-headedness, with the mature vitality and explosive superiority of youth. As in a game of team handball, when her movements were most intimately her own, dexterity, anticipation, and strength all working together. And these feelings now painted vaguely ironic smiles on their faces, which simultaneously spoke to itself as well as to the other.
At least for a moment, they both laid down their weapons.
Which made Gyöngyvér the more audacious one; Lady Erna’s audacity gave her permission. The way it usually happens on the handball court when she gets the ball, makes a lightning-quick movement with it, feints, steps to the side, takes off, and has already broken through the line of outmaneuvered girls. She seized Lady Erna’s hand, the older woman was ready for anything but this, and did what she should have done minutes earlier but could not without permission: she pressed it, held it in her hand, and kept it there.
The elderly heart-patient friend had indeed been a gentleman who kept her, she admitted, but fortunately he was no less seriously ill than her female colleague might have been. Somehow, there was some truth in all her lies. She apologizes for every one of them, belatedly and in advance. And here I am holding your hand because for a long time I’ve been admiring and envying your beautiful hands, your delicate fingers, your exquisite rings and the fine, thick gold bracelets that slide down your bony wrists. I love it all, love it. Perhaps the way I love every bone in your son’s body, his skin, his hair, his smell, his voice, his breath; to me they are jewels. I’d like to adorn myself with them every night. I love him, love him. There is no part of him I can do without.
Oh, I would die without them.
Now, as at other times, she turned her self-pity into a passionate humiliation. With her slippery subservience she matched the selfishness, rejection, and superiority emanating from Lady Erna — eerily reminiscent of how she treated her son. She rejected him; there was hardly anyone in her life she had not rejected for the sake of some unfulfilled desire. There was no such person. Her daughter had rebelled against her and perished because of her; but her son, nevertheless, followed her loyally and unconsciously. Like a dog. For not only their flesh but also the quality of their selfishness and sense of superiority were alike.
Gyöngyvér went so far as to bend over and kiss the beautiful hand. She usually took men’s cocks into her mouth when she bent over so nicely.
Surrendering to their childlike selfishness.
In this fleeting moment, the silver box in her hand both confused and somewhat hindered Lady Erna. Her hand would have felt good clasping Gyöngyvér’s gloved fingers. The skin of the glove was smooth, tight, and cool. She saw the nape of Gyöngyvér’s neck for a moment. She was strongly tempted to kiss the closely shaved female nape, thin as a child’s. Her sense of aesthetic proportions would have demanded as much, as did her desire erupting from the depths, hitting her briefly and bluntly.
She shuddered; she was so moved her body grew damp.
If only Gyöngyvér’s lips had tarried a moment longer on her hand. They were soft, silky, and cool, like the touch of a lizard. But Gyöngyvér quickly sat up.
She could never count on mutuality or reciprocity; Ágost had never pampered her with either.
The dark gray clunky Pobeda reached the entrance to Margit Island and slowed down. Not so much because of the turn but because of the terrific northerly gusts of wind. This is the highest point of the bridge as it rises from the two riverbanks. Arriving from the Pest side, and with nothing else to do, one registers the sight of the hills ahead. But the cabbie could not have seen much of them now. The windshield wipers were working at top speed and the wind pressed the rain’s myriad drops like a robe around the taxi. An opaque curtain was dripping down each window. It was as if nocturnal darkness had descended on them, but with something continually illuminating or flashing in it. The sky turned black and dense over the entire city; but beyond, somewhere in the south, over the flatlands of Csepel, and in the west and north, behind the hills of Buda, the clouds opened up. The rim of the sky was clearing fast in a wide arc and from there a flat, white light shone into the bottom of the darkness. The mass of clouds, gathered and piled up by the strong winds, slowly began to move eastward where flatland, clouds, rain, and city seemed to touch. And the flatly falling light was reflected in the mud-darkened foam on the surface of the Danube, illuminating from below, under the swirling firmament, the faces observing each other. There was something frightening, otherworldly in this phenomenon, though it may have had a simple explanation.
The cabbie correctly sensed that something unusual was happening between the two women behind him.
They were both laughing, but very quietly. It was a vocal confirmation of the knowing twinkle in their eyes.
As if Gyöngyvér were saying, you see, I’m not lying now, I admit it; and Erna were responding, my sweet, as far as I’m concerned you can lie all you want. I understand you even when I pretend not to. And the laughter had nothing to do with the old female colleague in Gyöngyvér’s life who happened to be an old gentleman with heart trouble; they were beyond that already, had forgotten all about it, had brushed it aside. And they were laughing not at the sudden revelation but out of embarrassment, at their mutual state of exposure.