Satantango Read Free Page A

shorter there. I’ll rent a little land near some town that’s growing and spend the day dangling my feet in a bowl of hot water . . .” Raindrops were gently trickling down both sides of the window because of the finger-wide crack that ran all the way from the wooden beam to the window frame, slowly filling it up then pushing their way along the beam where they divided once more into drops that began to drip into Futaki’s lap, while he, being so absorbed in his visions of far away places that he couldn’t get back to reality, failed to notice that he was actually wet. “Or I might go and take a job as a night watchman in a chocolate factory . . . or perhaps as janitor in a girls’ boarding school . . . and I’ll try to forget everything, I’ll do nothing but soak my feet in a bowl of hot water each night, while this filthy life passes . . .” The rain that had been gently pouring till now suddenly turned into a veritable deluge, like a river breaking over a dam, drowning the already choking fields, the lowest lying of which were riddled with serpentine channels, and though it was impossible to see anything through the glass he did not turn away but stared at the worm-eaten wooden frame from which the putty had dropped out, when suddenly a vague form appeared at the window, one that eventually could be made out to be a human face, though he couldn’t tell at first whose it was, until he succeeded in picking out a pair of startled eyes, at which point he saw “his own careworn features” and recognized them with a shock like a stab of pain since he felt that what the rain was doing to his face was exactly what time would do. It would wash it away. There was in that reflection something enormous and alien, a kind of emptiness radiating from it, moving towards him, compounded of layers of shame, pride and fear. Suddenly he felt the sour taste in his mouth again and he remembered the bells tolling at dawn, the glass of water, the bed, the acacia bough, the cold flagstones in the kitchen and, thinking of it all, he made a bitter face. “A bowl of hot water! . . . Devil take it! . . . Don’t I bathe my feet every day . . . ?” he pouted. Somewhere behind him there was the sound of choked-off sobbing. “And what’s bugging you then?” Mrs. Schmidt did not answer him but turned away, her shoulders shaking with the sobs. “You hear me? What’s the matter with you?” The woman looked up at him then simply sat down on the nearby stool and blew her nose like someone for whom speech was pointless. “Why don’t you say something?” Futaki insisted: “What the hell is wrong with you?” “Where on earth can we go!” erupted Mrs. Schmidt: “The first town we come to some policeman is bound to stop us! Don’t you understand? They won’t even ask our names!” “What are you blathering about?” Futaki angrily retorted: “We will be loaded with money, and as for you . . .” “That’s exactly what I mean!” the woman interrupted him: “The money! You at least might have some sense! To go away with this rotten old trunk . . . like a band of beggars!” Futaki was furious. “That’s enough, now! Keep out of this. It has nothing to do with you. Your job is to shut up.” Mrs. Schmidt would not let it rest. “What?” she snapped: “What’s my job?” “Forget it,” Futaki answered quietly. “Keep it down or you’ll wake him up.” Time was passing very slowly and, luckily for them, the alarm clock had long ago stopped working so there wasn’t even the sound of ticking to remind them of time, yet nevertheless the woman gazed at the still hands as she gave the paprika stew the occasional stir while the two men sat wearily by the steaming plates in front of them, not touching their spoons despite Mrs. Schmidt’s constant badgering for them to get on with it (“What are you waiting for? Do you want to eat at night, soaked to the bone in the mud?”). They did not turn the light on although objects