The Rebels Read Free Page B

her because she spoke softly and attached herself to them, to both of them, to father and son, with all the inexhaustible and ruthless love of the barren and constructed her life around them. She was the sort of old maid who kept people instead of dogs and cats for pets. Ábel knew that Etelka would happily give her life for him. It was a long time since they had been able to bring themselves to talk to each other. With each day that passed that low, oppressive, one-story dwelling was becoming ever more like a hothouse. There was something steamed up, close, and damp about it. Its yellow walls sank under the weight of its double roof. Red guttering framed the yellow façade and the gate, from both sides of which hung cast-iron lamps, lacquered green. Even the garden, that tiny old urban patch of grass, with its minimal cramped proportions, felt like a terrarium. Tall fire walls surrounded it on three sides. In the summer it was densely overgrown with lush weeds. The three of them, Etelka, Father, and Ábel, had lived there, in that house and in that garden, in utter seclusion since the death of his mother, with an occasional, rare change of servants. Later Ábel wondered if Etelka nursed some feelings for his father, if there had been a time when there was more than she let on in her heightened devotion to him. But no one ever spoke of that. He too only recalled it the way one remembers something that has failed to happen, like some mood before a potential shower in childhood, when the room darkens for a moment but no downpour follows the vexed dark that is immediately dispelled by the sun. Only the sensation of waiting remains embedded in the nerves.
    You slept for a long time, his aunt was telling him. I wanted to wait until you woke up. I noticed you had been drinking spirits, sweetheart. Beware of hard drink, it can be harmful at your age. I’m just an old woman, Ábel, and can only beg you to look after yourself. You are launched on life now, my child. Do be careful what you do at night. Boys are so impulsive at this age. When is the party to be? It doesn’t matter how late you come home: look in on me. The cost of starch is up again. Eggs too. Should your father come home he should bring some provisions with him. We’ll write him a letter tomorrow and tell him you have passed your exams. Give me a kiss.
    She tipped her head towards the boy’s face and squeezed it. They remained like that a moment. People live together but there are long periods when they know nothing of each other’s lives. Then one has the sensation that the other has vanished off the map. This was one corner of the world: his aunt’s furniture inherited from his mother, the garden, his father, the fiddle playing, Jules Verne, and the walk in the cemetery with his aunt on All Souls’ Day. This world had such power that nothing external could destroy it, not even the war. Just once each year some unforeseen thing broke through a chink in it, another world. Everything changed. That which had hitherto been sweet was now bitter, that which had been sour was now like gall. The hothouse became a primeval forest. And his aunt like a corpse, or less than that.
    He slammed the glazed door, the bell swung and rang, the sound swam through the air and penetrated the silent house. He looked back from the gate: his aunt stood at the glazed door, her hands linked, and stared at him.
     
     
     
    T HE WINDOWS OF THE THEATER WERE LIT . A CAR was waiting by the side door that led to the upstairs boxes. He cut across the high street and decided to call on Ernõ’s father.
    The cobbler had returned home some eighteen months ago with a serious wound in his lungs and had been spitting blood ever since. He lived in a high apartment block down a narrow alleyway among fishmongers, in a cellar that was five shallow steps down from the street and served as both his workplace and his accommodation. The entrance was surrounded by painted signs that he himself had made,