the Grace of Jesus! She dismissed the harsh sense of obligation to love her husband, “because a dog has more honor than he has,” but what next? It must, after all, be written in the book of fate. There might perhaps be a quiet corner of heaven prepared for her, but what of Halics? What could his sinful crude soul expect? Mrs. Halics believed in providence and placed her hope in the powers of purgatory. She waved the Bible. “It would be better for you to be reading this!” she declared severely, “while you still have time!” “Me? You know, that I don’t. .” “You!” Mrs. Halics cut in: “Yes, you! At least you won’t be completely unprepared for the end times.” Halics was not moved by these grave words, nevertheless he took the book from her with a sour grimace because “one might as well get some peace.” On receiving the weight of the book in his hands he gave a nod of acknowledgment and opened it on the first page. But Mrs. Halics snatched the book from his hands. “No! Not the Creation, you idiot!” she cried and, with one well-practiced movement, went straight to the Book of Revelations. Halics found the first sentence rather difficult but didn’t spend time struggling with it because, Mrs. Halics’s attention being less keenly focused on him, it was enough to pretend to read. And though the words never made it as far as his brain, the smell of the pages had a pleasing effect on him, and he could listen with half an ear to the conversation between Kerekes and the landlord, and between the driver and the landlord (“Is it still raining?” “Yup,” and “What’s up with him?” “Drunk as a newt”) because, the terror roused by the prospect of Irimiás having evaporated, he was slowly recovering his sense of orientation and had some idea of the distance between the counter and himself, as well as a notion of the dryness of his throat and of the security of being sheltered in the world of the bar. He felt immediately better that he was able to sit here, whiling away his time “among other people,” certain in the knowledge that harm was less likely to befall him in company. “I’ll have my wine by tonight. Who cares about the rest!” And when he saw Mrs. Schmidt at the door, another shudder of “mischievous little hope” ran up his soft spine. “Who knows? When all is said and done I might even get my money.” But, being under the sharp eye of Mrs. Halics, he didn’t have much time for dreaming, so he closed his eyes and leant over the book like a school dunce facing an exam, struggling with his mother’s uncompromising glare on one side and the temptations of the hot summer beyond the classroom on the other. Because in Halics’s eyes Mrs. Schmidt was the embodiment of summer, a never-to-be season unattainable to one acquainted only with “the ruins of autumn, a winter without desire” and a hyperactive but frustrating spring. “Oh, Mrs. Schmidt!” the landlord leapt to his feet with a faint smile and while Kelemen was swaying here and there, looking on the floor for the door wedge so that the door could be kept closed, he led the woman over to the table he tended to work at, waited for her to sit then bent close to her ear so he could breathe in the powerful, rough scent of cologne rising from her hair that just about overcame the bitter tang of her hair gel. He didn’t really know which he preferred: the scent of Easter or the exciting aroma that, come spring, leads a man — as it does the bull in the field — to the focus of desire. Halics couldn’t even begin to imagine what had happened to her husband. . “What horrible weather. What can I bring you?” Mrs. Schmidt shoved the landlord aside with her “delicious, practically edible elbow” and looked around. “Cherry pálinka?” the landlord persisted confidentially, continuing to smile. “No,” replied Mrs. Schmidt. “Well, maybe just a drop.” Mrs. Halics followed every movement of the landlord, her eyes sparkling with hatred, her lips trembling, her face burning; the fury in her whole body now suppressed, now rising, with the irresistible sense of injustice over what was owing to her, and now she couldn’t make up her mind what to do, whether to march out of “this notorious den of vice” or to give that lecherous swine of a landlord a sharp box on the ears for trying to inveigle innocent creatures into his wicked web by craftily getting the innocent soul drunk. She would much have preferred to rush to Mrs. Schmidt’s defense (“I’d sit her on my lap and be nice to her. .”) so she should not be subject to the landlord’s attempts “to force himself on her,” but there was nothing she could do. She knew she must not betray her feelings because they were bound to be misunderstood (weren’t they always gossiping behind her back about precisely this?) but feared the poor girl might be seduced by such wiles and dreaded what would await her at the end. She sat there, her tears welling up, her body overblown, the weight of the whole world on her shoulders. “And have you heard?” asked the landlord with disarming courtesy. He put the glass of pálinka down in front of Mrs. Schmidt and, as far as possible, tried to hide his potbelly by breathing in. “She’s heard! She’s heard all right!” Mrs. Halics blurted out from her corner. The landlord sat back in his place with a solemn expression, his lips tight, while Mrs. Schmidt delicately raised her glass to her mouth using only two fingers before — as if having properly considered the matter — throwing back its contents and swallowing it all in one manlike gulp. “And are you all sure it was them?” “Absolutely sure!” the landlord retorted: “No mistake.” Mrs. Schmidt’s entire being was filled with excitement; she felt her skin tingling over, a myriad scraps of thought swirling chaotically in her head, so she grabbed the edge of the table with her left hand in case she should betray herself in this great rush of happiness. She still had to pick her own things out of the big military chest, consider what she would need and what not, if, tomorrow morning — or perhaps this very night — they were to set off, because she was not in any doubt whatsoever that the unusual — unusual? fantastic rather! — visit of Irimiás (how like him! she proudly thought) could be no accident. She herself remembered his words to the letter. . but could they ever be forgotten? And all this now, at the last possible hour! These last few months since the terrible moment she had first heard the news of his death had completely destroyed her faith: she had given up all hope, abandoned all her best-loved plans, and would have resigned herself to a kind of poverty-stricken — and preposterous — bid to escape, just to be away from here. Ah, but you stupid people of little faith! Hadn’t she always known that this miserable existence owed her something? There was after all something to hope for, to wait for! Now at last, there would be an end to her sufferings, her agonies! How often had she dreamed of it, imagined it? And now here it was. Here! The greatest moment of her life! Her eyes shone with hatred and something like contempt as she gazed at the shadowy faces around her. Inside, she was almost bursting with happiness. “I’m leaving! Drop dead the lot of you, just the way you are. I hope you get struck by lightning. Why don’t you all just kick the bucket. Drop dead right now!” She was suddenly full of big, indefinite (but chiefly big) plans: she saw lights; rows of illuminated shops with the latest music, expensive slips, stockings and hats (“Hats!”) floated before her; soft furs cool to the touch, brilliantly lit hotels, lavish breakfasts, grand shopping trips and nights, the NIGHTS, dancing. . she closed her eyes so that she might hear the rustling, the wild hubbub, the immeasurably joyful clamor. And, under her closed eyelids, there appeared to her the jealously guarded dream of her childhood, the dream that had been driven into exile (the dream relived a hundred, no a thousand times, of “afternoon tea at the salon. .”) but her wildly beating heart was, at the same time, beset by the same old despair at all those delights — all those many delights — that she had already missed! How would she now — at this stage of her life — cope in entirely new circumstances? What was she to do in the “real life” about to break in on her? She was still just about able to use a knife and fork for eating, but how to manage those thousands of items of make-up, the paints, the powders, the lotions? how should she respond “when acquaintances greeted her”? how to receive a compliment? how to choose or wear her clothes? and should they — God forbid — have a car as well, then what was she to do? She decided to pay heed only to her first instinct and in any case, she would just keep her eyes peeled. If she could bear to live with a man as repulsive as that beetroot-faced halfwit Schmidt, why worry about the hazards of life with someone like Irimiás?! There was only one man she knew — Irimiás — who could thrill her so deeply in both bed and life; Irimiás who had more virtue in his little finger than all the men in the world put together, whose word was worth more than all the gold. . In any case,