Fingers Pointing Somewhere Else (12 page)

Suddenly the man next to her stood up; I had not noticed him before over the high divider between their seats. He stepped over her legs without a word, and because the tray further narrowed the already impassable gap between her and the seatback in front, he had to press his whole body against her. He did not look at her, nor she at him. She did not even symbolically move her legs aside to show that she wanted to make way for him, and he did not make the slightest effort to pass more considerately. There was no apology for entering each other's bubbles. He overcame her like a geographical obstacle; she went on moisturizing her hands. They were from different universes where different laws applied. It looked terribly rude, even though nothing had happened. But there was a warning of sorts in that mutual disregard. It was a banal moment, but a defining one as well; there was a mute, lurking evil about it. The man worked his way through to the aisle and walked quickly toward the dining car. He did not notice me. It was Dr. M.

The woman's face gave nothing away. She recapped the cream and put on her seven lures of beauty. The wedding band was the one I knew from his hand. I vanished, resettling three cars down, and once in Budapest I took great care not to meet them, even by accident.

In January we met as usual. The incident on the train had taken root in my mind. I did not understand it, nor did I want to. I wanted to have a companion to protect me from the outside world,
but one without any rights — like a folding screen.

Prague was completely socked in that winter. It was pretty side up; the tattered, dirty obverse stayed face down. We were returning from a movie, walking quite exceptionally arm in arm across the expanse of snow. It was that twilight hour, when everything is suspended. The snow had the crunch of a freshly created world. Suddenly, unbelievably, from out of nowhere came the smell of violets.

Mythical elements of reality! Archetypal natural settings! We cannot escape them; there is no way out. The emotion at the heart of those twilight winter moments: the lively hush of whirling snow, the nearness of a warm, foreign body. A lyrical drumstroke, when amid the frost and the dwindling light, the scent of spring flickers past like a flying carpet.

The veil of snowflakes parted; a lanky boy stood in front of us in a rather flimsy coat for such a cold winter, a thicket of tangled, rust-colored curls hanging down past his ears.

“Hi!” he said to me, and then smiled radiantly. We had never seen each other before. M. pressed me a bit closer to himself.

“So this is her?” the youth continued, this time to M., but without taking his eyes off me. “The writer?”

“What are you doing here?” Dr. M. replied evasively. He sounded strange: as if he were carrying a tray of delicate, long-stemmed wineglasses, putting one foot carefully in front of the other. “I thought you weren't here. You promised you'd be gone.”

“I was waiting for my tram on Peace Square. I was just about to get on when the Holy Spirit stepped on my foot. So I guess I'm supposed to be right here. I told you, I let myself be guided.”

“What do you mean, on Peace Square? You were supposed to be out in the bush long ago.”

“Guess not, if I'm here.”

Again he gave me a conspiratorial smile. “He doesn't believe I'm guided. Still doesn't want to believe me. I'm always in the right place. Exactly where he needs me at that very moment. Like those avalanche dogs.”

“Look, we're in a bit of a hurry.”

We were not in a hurry. All three of us knew that no one was in a hurry. The kid did not have the generosity to let it pass, and gave a grimace of indulgent disbelief.

“He's lying,” he pointed out chummily to me, “and he has no reason to. He couldn't even explain why he's lying. He thinks I'm his adversary, some sort of antipodean. But he's the antipodean. Except he doesn't want to admit it. It's the anesthesia, I think. Most of the time he's under anesthesia. Right?”

Ropes of steam, imbued with their own independent lives, flowed from their mouths and twined about each other long after the sound of their words had died away. Dr. M. grew more and more nervous. Through the layers of our sleeves I felt his arm instinctively pulling me away, but his feet stood obstinately still as if this odd conversation would last into the night. The boy suddenly pulled out a crumpled band with a door key hanging from it.

“I'll take your measure.” He glanced at me encouragingly, as if he were promising me some sort of fun. “I'll measure your writer,” he informed Dr. M. “You know I'm never wrong.”

It was like a dream. An archetypal setting: the deepening darkness and the deepening whiteness of the snow, the hot clump of violets in the frost, the illusion of isolation on an island, while around its borders anonymous shadows glided past — all of this gave the episode a sort of latent, cryptogamous meaning, a plot invested for future interest. Violets: the boy had a woven sachet of herbs around his bare neck. Snowflakes melted on his rusty curls. He approached me, took my hand unaffectedly, turned it palm up, and started to swing the key above it.

“Don't be afraid,” he said sweetly. “The Holy Spirit guides me. I don't hurt anyone.”

The key, suspended from between his pinky and thumb, slowly began to sway. Transfixed, I watched the gradually increasing motion, which truly seemed to flow from some source outside the youth's will. Not even his fingers moved, but the key gyrated ever more wildly, till it was whirling like a dervish in ecstasy.

“She's okay,” the boy pronounced confidently. He licked the key on both sides and then squeezed it between his palms. “With time she'll get better. But not for you.”

“That's enough,” Dr. M. answered in a level, expressionless tone. “We have to go.”

The boy simply ignored this news. Again his fingers lowered the key; it came to life and fidgeted restlessly, like a horse pawing with its hoof.

“Release her!” he ordered sharply. M.'s arm grudgingly loosened. The key flew here and there for a while and then — as if it had found its trajectory — began to swing sharply between us like a pendulum.

“You see?” the youth said amiably. “Tuck in your fore-wings. This writer isn't for you.”

He stopped the key and turned my way, looking me right in the eye, the way most people never do. Despite the absurdity and disjointedness of the whole situation, he was so nonchalant that he did not come across as frightening or intrusive.

“He's not the one,” he announced confidentially. He unbuttoned the doctor's coat and cheerfully tapped a finger against the man's chest.

“Anyone there?”

M. just stared past his shoulder. The streetlamps flared to life and a cone of light fell down on us as on a stage.

“You see?” the boy said. “He's not there. But where is he? He's afraid of what's inside, because he has an evil sprite in his heart. He's fine, really, but the sprite keeps giving him bad advice. My advice is good, but what can I do when he's not here? And when he is, he's under anesthesia. That's so he can pretend he doesn't hear me.”

He glanced at the key, placed it on his palm, and stuck out his hand. The way people give presents to small children. For a moment time stopped or, at least, slowed to an imperceptible crawl. Everything stood stock still, the snow paused in its fall. Then M. took the key and put it in his pocket. The pink band on his
forehead sparkled with frost. The boy laughed softly and ran off down the street. The rusty tuft of hair quickly dissolved into the snowy darkness.

Invisible violets, a dancing key, an evil sprite in his heart. Mythical elements in the logic of fact. This is the logic of fact, at least the logic of biased memory.

When the youth left us, we walked off quickly, without a word. We no longer walked arm in arm. Since we often did not talk on our strolls, today we could easily conceal what we were so stubbornly silent about. Cold and confusion were battling within me. A fit of shivering came over me, and I wanted to be home as soon as possible. The moment of twilight had passed, the snow had stopped falling, and a bare winter darkness had descended.

At the gate I found I did not have my keys. There was no point in ringing the bell of an empty house, but there was the aforementioned route past the construction site.

“Just so I know you're home safe,” he mumbled, and we stumbled through the dark over the frozen planks, the tattered cardboard, and the frozen, desolate disorder of the abandoned lot. I clenched my teeth firmly so they wouldn't chatter, and my face hardened into an obdurate expression of defiance and pique.

We ended up at the cellar door. I had my hand on the icy doorknob.

“You wouldn't marry me,” he said suddenly, without a question mark, rhythmless, in the flat tone of an inconsequential statement. I was cold. I didn't want to know anything, didn't want to make any decisions. My bubble stiffened with frost and would not let the news inside.

“No,” I said, just as unemphatically. It was a reaction right from my spinal cord, a simple reflexive arc that bypassed my brain. I did not know why I said it. It was not a genuine question, nor a genuine answer.

M. nodded slightly, then symbolically raised a finger to his cap and left. I did not wait for him to disappear from view. Inside I found the gate key fallen into a fold in my bag.

That night I had a dream, I believe the first one that had ever featured M. I am at the railway station in Budapest. The dream, as if focusing in on its core, rushes through several episodes until suddenly I see the empty trackyard. Dr. M. is walking along a track, tie after tie, on his hands. He has an ecstatic expression, one I've never seen on him, and in his eyes is the dull gleam of madness. He says something, implores me deeply, with a visionary's emphasis on every word, except that I understand nothing. I run along the track, trying with all my strength to understand, but in vain: I hear his voice and his words make no sense. Then a train emerges from beneath the horizon.

With this the dream takes on a tinge of terror, and of terribly ruinous responsibility. The train comes nearer, M. is still unaware of it and continues speaking in a feverish rapture. Rising through me is a sheer, violent whirlwind of horror and love, a jet from the bottomless absolute, beyond all imagination; destruction hurtles closer and closer until in a panic I shout out two words. The words are: “I know!”

I don't know what I know. I don't know in my dreams, nor when I'm awake, but I must say it because it is the only way I can avert the catastrophe: everything depends on my knowing something. Except it's too late, or my knowledge is too weak: the dream answers with a dreadful clash of matter. My own scream awakens me, I am gripped by a raging fever and an all-engulfing sense of powerlessness.

Since that moment twice-seven years have passed. I am thirty-seven, married for the second time. I am sure that my life never had and will never again have a greater intensity than at the moment of that scream. No bliss or distress has ever seized me that
way. In concentric and ever widening circles various bliss-tresses revolve around me, but they weigh less. No one has ever been nearer to me.