Scandal in Soho.” “Really?” nodded the landlord. The table beside Halics made a creaking noise and the rotting wood of the bar gave a slow sigh like the quiet easy movement of an old carriage wheel over the buzzing chorus of horseflies: it conjured the past but it also spoke of perpetual decay. And as the wood creaked the wind outside, like a helpless hand searching through a dusty book for some vanished main clause, kept asking the same question time and again hoping to give a “cheap imitation of a proper answer” to the banks of solid mud, to establish some common dynamic between tree, air and earth, and to seek through invisible cracks in the door and walls the first and original sound, of Halics belching. The farmer was snoring on the “billiards table,” the saliva trickling from his open mouth. Suddenly, like a distant rumble on the horizon, from a vague shape that is slowly getting closer, though you can’t quite tell whether it’s a herd of cows being driven home, a school bus, or the sound of a marching military band, from the deep pit of Kerekes’s stomach rose a quite unclassifiable grumble that eventually reached his lips and issued in words like “. . bitch” and, “really” and “or” and “more” though that was all they could make out. The grumbling culminated in a single movement, a blow aimed at someone or something. His glass tipped over and the pool of wine on the baize cloth assumed the shape of a flattened dog before absorbing various other shapes into itself as it soaked in, ending up in a form of uncertain character (but had it soaked in? or had it simply run between the strands of cloth to lie on the surface of the riven boards to establish a series of isolated and conjoined pools. . though none of this was of the least significance as far as Halics was concerned because. .). In any case Halics made a hissing a noise, “Damn your drunk mug!” and shook his fist in the direction of Kerekes, helpless with rage, as if not wanting to believe his eyes, turning to the landlord to mutter a furious explanation: “Now the bastard spills the stuff!” The latter gave Halics a long significant look before finally glancing over at the farmer, not in fact directly at him, but in his general direction, just enough to register the damage. He appraised the inexperienced Halics with a supercilious smile then, giving several little nods, changed the subject. “What a huge ox of a man, a real animal, eh?” Halics stared in confusion at the mocking light glimmering under the landlord’s half closed eyelids, shook his head and took a long look at the bull-like figure of the prostate farmer. “What do you think?” he numbly asked. “How much does a beast like him need to eat?” “Eat!?” the landlord snorted. “He doesn’t eat, he feeds!” Halics went over to the bar and leaned against it. “He eats half a pig at a sitting. You believe me” “Sure, I believe you.” Kerekes gave a loud snore and that shut them up. They looked at the enormous, immovable body, the big bloodshot head and the muddy boots protruding from under the shadowy reaches of the “billiards table” in astonishment and fear, the way people take stock of a sleeping predator, doubly assured of safety by the bars and by sleep itself. Halics was seeking — and indeed had found! — a minute or a second’s worth of comradeship with the landlord, if only in the way a caged hyena and a freely circling vulture discover a warm, mutual unselfconscious partnership that welcomes any disaster. . But they were awakened from this reverie by an enormous clap, as if the sky was cracking open above them. Immediately after the bar was lit by a great flash, so you could practically smell the lightning. “That was really close,” Halics would have remarked, but at the same time someone started beating powerfully at the door. The landlord leapt to attention but didn’t immediately rush over because, for a moment, he was sure there must be some connection between the lightning and the knocking at the door. He only gathered himself together and set to open up when whoever was outside started bellowing. “So it’s you and. .?” The landlord’s back was in the way so Halics saw nothing at first, then two big heavy boots became visible then a windcheater, and finally Kelemen’s puffy face hove into sight, his soaked driver’s hat perched on top. Halics stared at him, his eyes wide. The new arrival cursed as he shook his coat free of water and threw it angrily on top of the stove before turning on the landlord who was still struggling with the bolt and had his back to him. “Are you all deaf in here! There I am trying to wrestle with that bloody door, almost struck by lightning, and nobody comes to open it!” The landlord retreated behind the counter, poured a glass of pálinka and pushed it in front of the old man. “Given the noise of the thunder it’s really not that surprising. .” the landlord answered by way of excuse. He was fiercely scrutinizing the newcomer, trying quickly to guess what had brought him here in the rain, why the glass was trembling in his hand, and what he was hiding. But neither he nor Halics asked him anything yet, because there was another great crack in the sky and all the rain seemed to fall at once, in one great sack-full, battering at the roof. The old man tried as best he could to wring the water out of his broadcloth cap, pushed it back into shape, replaced it on his head and, with a careworn look, threw back the pálinka. Now, for the first time, since searching for the lost track in dense darkness, a track no one could remember using (the track covered in weeds and rank grass) the excited profiles of his two horses flashed before him as they, inexplicably, kept glancing back at their helpless but determined master, their tails nervously twitching, and he heard again their heavy panting over the squeak and creak of the cart as it rattled over dangerous potholes, and he saw himself standing in the driver’s seat, then holding onto the reins, up to his ankles in mud, leaning against the driving wind in his face, and it was only now he really believed what had happened, that, but for Irimias and Petrina, he’d never have set off, because there was “no power greater than theirs” that could have forced him, because he felt quite certain now that it was true because he saw himself in the shadow of their great power, like a common foot-soldier on the battlefield when he senses rather than hears the order given by his commanding officer and goes about his duties without anyone having told him to do so. And so the images moved silently past his eyes in ever more stilted sequence, as if everything man might hold dear and consider vital to protect existed as part of some independent, indissoluble system, and while one’s memory was still functional enough to furnish it with a degree of certainty and bring into existence its lightly fleeting