Mátyás was clammy and freezing when his mother found him at daybreak. She had laid firewood in the oven, her hands shaking as she tried to light the matches, she was barefoot and felt fluid running cold down her thighs, and while she squatted and stared ahead, her gaze wandered out to the first light and the apple tree with its thin, knotted crown, and there was a shadow within it, her boy lay with his head on the moss and his arms like claws around the branch and didn’t come down, not until after she had run up the hill in a soundless line and grabbed him and didn’t let go until the heat of the bathwater reached his neck, and he finally fell asleep under three down quilts and she looked at herself, furtively and suddenly old, that’s what she thought as she stood knee-deep in the leftover lukewarm water, soaping herself until her hands were blue, and the scent of the fine lavender soap drove away all thoughts of uniforms and boots in the night and the cold emanating from the soldier, of the hairy hand, after the door was closed and she just tried to be quiet, always quiet, because of the children, and on awaking a cold light, pale with rage, rose over the houses and the sheds, and only when she found her son clinging to the tree did she understand that the light wasn’t angry but powerless, and her hair hung down in long strands in the lukewarm water, the soap helped nothing.
He’d waited a long time, and it was now noon. Mátyás’s horse had come closer, it had run its nostrils over the dry wood of the tree trunk against which he sat. He could see the veins under its thin coat, the forelock, the eye. Something gleamed inside it. A deep brown that seemed to open into a wide, choppy landscape. There was the storm from that night, and he could taste the salt. Only the brown, and between the crests of the waves it sank again and again—Waclaw reached out his hand, the head jerked back, and in a few steps the horse was gone across the meadow. Maybe this horse was the only decision Mátyás had made in the last years—a buoy, a marker, a forgotten new beginning. He heard the waves hitting the jacket legs.
He went back into the room, too tired to leave or to stay. Simply and mechanically he took the sheet off the bed and placed it on a chair, the only piece of furniture in his room.
He was awoken by the noise of several cars. The darker light under the roof beams. He still had his shoes on, and the duffel lay next to him. On the floor, a beetle crawled in small circles; now and then it tried to spread its wings, but it couldn’t lift off, so it reversed direction, crawled on, and didn’t fly. Waclaw watched it for a while. Voices could be heard below, chairs were moved, glasses clinked.
He opened the window. Someone had rammed a pole with a lamp on it into the ground next to the path; there was a light wind, and he saw the quivering glow of the oil lamp on the terrace. When he heard steps on the sand, he pulled his head back inside. The mattress must have been filled with something scratchy.
He was awoken later by steps on the stairs.
She smelled of alcohol and said she’d been looking for him.
The room was narrow and small. Patrícia sat on the edge of his bed, she’d just said something. He was thirsty. His mouth was dry.
What are you doing here? he asked.
Emerging from sleep, he sat up. He heard her voice.
What did you say?
She leaned against the wall, the outline of her limp breasts visible under her shirt. She pulled her legs up to her body.
Didn’t anyone hear Mátyás in the night?
What are you saying?
I’m asking whether no one heard him. She was speaking louder now.
Close your eyes, he said. He slid closer to her and placed both his hands flat over her ears.
Can you hear? he asked. He pressed his hands harder, her hair rubbed against the wall.
Can you hear! he screamed. The roaring!
He pressed her head against the wall.
That’s what the storm is like!
She opened her eyes, but he held her even tighter, she gasped for air.
Stop it!
You asked!
A wave came over her body, she tore at his arms. Idiot! She struck at his wrists and pushed him away.
These are things that you know nothing of, he screamed, and his voice was hoarse. He was fully awake now, and he watched her hurriedly gather herself. In the doorway, she turned back to him once more.
There are friends here, they want to see you. Her voice was husky, as if she were fighting back tears. Waclaw shook his head slowly.
These people aren’t here because of me, and you know it. He paused.
They called me, he said. I have to be back the day after tomorrow.
On the coast?
Patrícia turned away abruptly. He heard her steps on the stairs.
Then he lay there, and the voices of the guests reached him from below; it was late when he got up and went out. It was the first time he’d seen flames in the fireplace, from outside he could see their uneasy light against the windows. Patrícia stood by a long table where a group of older people sat; she had makeup on, and the rouge on her cheeks made her look like a doll. The vines were thick on the wall and the fire gave the faces sharp contours. Everything reflected, as if wine and schnapps and candles could breathe life into this old love. He didn’t know why they’d made a fire—sweat was running into their eyes and their faces shone, he saw schnapps in the glasses.
It was three men and five women whose voices he’d been hearing since Patrícia had disappeared from his room. A few old men with honest eyes, livestock feed specialists with gray manes, perhaps János was among them. Waclaw stood in the dark, not listening; he was the set of a Western, left standing though the filming was long over. They were both in over their heads, he and Mátyás, it was no longer a game they knew how to play.
The lamp from the celebration stood on the windowsill, illuminating the darkness outside. He sat on the path. The smell of horse dung, the sand still warm, fluff floating down from the poplars, falling in inch-thick drifts on the ground, everything around him seemed brightly illuminated and in motion. He tried to think of Mátyás, of the coming departure, Rabat offshore, he’d go back to Morocco, and there was Milena’s chin-length hair. But everything passed by, it was all just names of unfamiliar cities spoken into a pay phone, and the only thing that connected them now was the feeling of warmth in his back, the even movement of his abdominal wall, rising and falling under his hand. Hungary, too, would pass by, he’d seen too many places over the last twelve years, and it was only at the beginning that this distance had been a relief.
Waclaw lay still, everything fell upon him from far away. The pollen stuck to the dark cloth on his legs, the leaves trembled, then there were the sounds of the old people, still singing, drinking. Somewhere amid it all, an image of Mátyás, rocking slowly, a leaf on a river, whirling along before the water swallowed it. He had to think of the fact that he’d known a different Mátyás, but that the people on this tiny farm were the only other ones in the world who missed him. And that they loved him for far less than he and Mátyás had ever tried to be.
11
White Egrets
There was dust in the corners. The room seemed emptier than it had days ago when he’d seen it for the first time. He put the picture book back on Mátyás’s bed, left the door open, and put on his jacket; he felt how the dark cloth made him stand taller. Outside it was already light, and the shadows of swallows crossed the thirsty land, he walked through the shades of gray and layers of branches until the bus shelter grew dimly visible.
It was a bus stop with a metal roof, painted green. The station couldn’t be seen from the farm. Falusi utca, the sign read. Waclaw waited, long after the sun had risen. He heard noises on the roof. As if hundreds of birds were perched there, their claws scratching the metal. A few of them took off, flew in a circle, and landed again.
He could see them.
Egrets, after a long night on Cantarell in the Gulf of Mexico. They circled the West Vencedor, attracted by the artificial light on the water. They’d swarmed counterclockwise around the p
latform all night. A few of them had landed, exhausted, on the crane boom. The men jeered at them, it was shift change. Some threw little bits of iron up at them: screws, nuts, even a tool or two. After nearly two weeks on deck, the birds were a welcome change of pace. They’d never talked about it afterward, but on that morning they’d all stood there for a while, looking into the floodlight where the birds circled like a silent oversized mobile. Then Shane had broken away from the group and crossed the deck to the ladder. The others suddenly fell silent while he climbed up, far out onto the jib. It was high, and the metal swayed. The outlines of the birds seemed unreal against the night, and Shane crawled on all fours and held on with his hands, wedging his work boots in the spaces between the iron struts. He looked straight ahead. A few birds took off as he came closer. He waited. And the men waited too, with all the tension of an NBA final. Waclaw heard a few of them whisper, making bets, maybe. Then he saw Shane’s stocky body shoot forward as he reached out for a bird, once, and then again, until he caught one of the animals. He grasped the egret’s leg and the leg broke. He held the bird out like a trophy, its head hit the iron. Then he held the egret up so everyone could see it and began to swing the body around over his head like a lasso, and the men relaxed and whooped, and the bird slid into the water headfirst like an arrow, without spreading its wings. Without a sound.
Waclaw remembered Shane’s yellow work gloves. It was the time before Mátyás, and there was no one there. Before it grew light, several animals plummeted into the sea from exhaustion. Others left with the first light, which freed them from the uncanny circle. White egrets.
It was an old-fashioned blue-and-white bus, and Waclaw hefted the duffel onto his shoulders to make his way through the narrow rows of seats. From the very back, he looked through a dirty window at a country that was already becoming foreign to him again. The windows vibrated to the noise of the engine, and he saw the driver’s bare elbows, and the blurry flicker of a tattoo. Maybe an anchor or a name. He felt a mild pang. The radio played in a foreign language, in front of him sat a woman whose bag had little sequins sewn into it. They threw the light around like a thousand tiny mirrors.
The bus filled gradually. No one spoke. Everyone was still tired. They carried only the bare workday necessities with them. Waclaw had no image of the end of this journey, nothing he could head toward. Occasional smoke above factories. Highway. Empty land.
He bought some juice boxes at a kiosk and took the bus to Kőbánya-Kispest. The lemonade tasted harsh and artificial, and he saw dilapidated workshops, faded blue streetlamps with big silver numbers. Then the swinging hand straps in the subway. The light fell into the shafts as if through a sieve, yellowish, he sat in one of the long rows parallel to the windows. His suit, and then the duffel with his old work boots tied on to it. He felt the looks; his hands had grown brown, his body didn’t speak the language of a business traveler. He left two calls from the company unanswered. As if where he was going were still undecided, as if it were just an early afternoon and he was on his way home. His own face was reflected blurrily in the subway windows. He’d sometimes wondered how Mátyás had seen him: spent, a bit stiff because of his back. Often Waclaw had found some excuse not to go out with the others, and instead had simply lain in the hotel room and waited. And for what. It had been hard for him to cover it up, the feeling of being forced to sit on a bar stool, unnaturally stiff. It was only recently that it had been getting so difficult.
In the distance he saw the façades of buildings, the tall windows, counted the stories. He imagined Jány, up there with his records, his composers, the big names, but none occurred to him. How Jány would look down at the old, summery city. As if the people were still dressed as they had been back then. As if clothing were something internal. He imagined visiting him—a brass door plate—but he remained sitting where he was. He thought of the tailor’s cough, the bright light of the table lamp. The way one sews oneself into fabric, tenderer than we. There were the dark windows of the subway cars passing.
A light wind blew across the tarmac. He’d had to wait in Budapest, and in Ankara it had been a long time before the connecting flight arrived. He’d sat on the airport cushions, he’d stared at the screens. Tigers in rings of fire. Marilyn Monroe. He had no idea it was possible to be this tired.
Ankara shone in the hazy air of early evening. It was warm. He’d left Patrícia some money. He didn’t know that she’d gone all the way from Bócsa to Rome to beg him, come back, Matyi, what are you doing to us out here? He didn’t know what Mátyás had answered, he didn’t know that Mátyás was playing for time, that he’d held her off, while Waclaw wanted to believe: in the key, in the door that could be locked, Haven, the shutters that kept out the light and the noise, and they could rest, finally rest, and lie down, and Mátyás’s hand traced the whole length of his back, he wanted to believe in that hand.
The land was dark, they rode out across the tarmac, the illuminated white belly of the plane in front of him. On the gangway, the boy in front of him suddenly stopped and turned around. He wore a crocheted takke and a white robe, and he breathed in the warm air that blew over the tarmac. Waclaw was the last passenger after him, and the boy didn’t seem to be in a hurry. He looked back at the distant lights on the horizon. Everything about him seemed like a promise. The day behind him was not ending, with his big, uncertain eyes he would remember everything. When he continued and the tall man followed him slowly, his steps sounded hollow, like big dogs barking in the dusk.
They stowed the luggage over their heads and Waclaw felt his back. He traveled with only one duffel. In front of him the stewards acted out an emergency with yellow plastic whistles, as if the land and the water far below were a giant ear, and they looked indifferent, like village altar boys at an Easter vigil.
Waclaw sat up straight and slept sitting up straight, sinking again and again into scraps of sleep; once he saw Mátyás before him, laughing in the little room with the rugs, once a few bars of a melody came into his mind. His father had joined the newly formed choir of Ruhr Coal, Inc., as if he didn’t know his lungs were no longer any good for singing. Melodies, interrupted by coughing.
The night was dark for a long time. A flight attendant woke him and asked insistently if he wanted a sandwich. Chicken or cheese? His face was young and clean-shaven, and Waclaw didn’t know what to say. If the plane had some defect, his answer would be the last thing he’d ever say. Mátyás had been afraid of flying since two years ago a helicopter had almost missed the platform off Aberdeen. One runner had slipped over the edge, it wouldn’t have taken much. But some nights Waclaw thought that the reason wasn’t the helicopter or the fatigue, but something else that came and was with them always. Chicken or cheese. The boy next to him had pulled the blanket up to his chin. Sir? The flight attendant gave him something shrink-wrapped and soft, and he put it down in front of him.
Suddenly he had the distinct feeling that everything would be different, and also that this was a feeling he already knew. The plane was brightly lit; far below, little villages gleamed against the rugged landscape. The happiness of those years was like the tiny pricks of a needle. Promontories, studded with splashes of light. He flew on through the night.
12
An Orange (Sidi Ifni)
A couple came over to him, perhaps because he was the only other person on the beach far and wide, and asked for a photograph. Picture, they said. Waclaw pressed the shutter without looking through the viewfinder. The woman wore a long blue robe. He gave them the camera back and walked on. The Atlantic sent big, impatient waves toward shore.
In the hotel, the halls smelled of chlorine cleaner. An acquaintance, Victor, stood near the reception. They’d worked off Rabat together a few times; he saw Victor’s hand and the chocolate bar in it sink when he saw Waclaw. Behind him shone the light of two vending machines, whose contents—little cakes and candy bars wrapped in plastic—he must have scoured for anything edible. There was something about the way he held
himself that Waclaw had often noticed, cheeks that hung almost vertical, even over the places where talking and facial expressions usually leave marks. It was the ceaseless talking, conversations that no one heard, the men dragged these behind them like the train of a dress. On deck, Victor was a crane operator, an important position, and it was dangerous for everyone involved when the sea was rough and the supply boats danced beside the platform like broncos. But out here there was none of that, he seemed lost in the lights of the vending machines, his hands far too big around the shrink-wrapped chocolate. A buoy that had lost its tether, that signaled nothing, for no one. Maybe he’d heard already. Waclaw just nodded briefly and took the stairs up to his room.
From his balcony everything suddenly drove him crazy again. The weather, a landscape stripped bare, the feeling of being suddenly numb. A throbbing in his forehead. Nine hours before departure and he already had the rubbery stink of the survival suit in his nose. The new platform wasn’t elsewhere, it was only a few nautical miles away.
A woman’s voice had told him the time of departure from the heliport. She said: Sidi Ifni. Six thirty. He said: Yes. Then he hung up. She hadn’t even mentioned Mátyás.
And he was tired. Somehow wrecked inside. He lay on the bed and thought of Victor, he saw his lathered head in the hands of a hairdresser, he thought of blowfish that travel slowly through shallow water, producing poison in their round bodies, some realm within them, black from being alone.
He lay awake all night, but it wasn’t just his back that made him uneasy. He thought of the promise he’d made to Francis. Of course, he’d said, of course I’ll be back.
High as the Waters Rise Page 9
