Satantango

just as she knew that they were rising above her to the point that if she once looked up and saw them, their image might crack right across, because their intolerable right to tower above her was so unarguable that the vision she had of them might well be enough to explode them. The ringing silence extended only as far as the unmoving door, beyond that she struggled to distinguish her mother or sister’s angry command from the pounding noise (“You’re enough to give anyone a heart attack! Why are you rushing about like that? There’s nothing for you here! Go on, get out and play somewhere!”) that quickly faded as she ran away to hide behind the barn or under the eaves, so that relief might overcome panic, of which she was never quite free because it could start again at any time. Of course, there was no playing for her, not that she had a doll, or story book, or a glass marble to hand with which — if any stranger should appear in the yard or if the people inside glanced out of the window to check on her — she might pretend to be engaged in a game but dared not, because her constant state of alert had prevented her, for a long time now, from being immersed in any kind of game. Not merely because her brother’s rapidly changing moods determined what objects presented themselves to her to play with — ruthlessly deciding what things she might keep and for how long — but because the games she was expected to play, that she might play as a kind of defense to satisfy her mother and sister’s expectations of “the kind of games she should play,” for, this way, they were not forced to endure the daily shame of her (“If we let her!”) “peeping at us, like a sick thing, watching everything we do.” Only up here, in the old unused pigeon loft, did she feel at all safe: here, she didn’t have to play; there was no door “that people might walk through” (her father having nailed up the door as the first stage of some never executed plan in the dim and distant past) and no window “that people might look through,” since she herself had taken two color photographs torn from newspapers across the projecting pigeonholes so that there might be “a nice view,” one of them showing a seashore with setting sun, the other a snow-covered mountain peak with a reindeer in the foreground. Of course, everything was all over now, forever. A draft blew through the space once occupied by the old attic flap: she shuddered. She felt for her sweater but it wasn’t dry yet so she took one of her greatest treasures, a scrap of white lace rescued from among the rags in the back kitchen and spread it over herself rather than go down into the house, wake her mother, and ask her for some dry clothes. She wouldn’t have believed herself so daring, not even one day before could she have imagined it. Had she got soaked yesterday she would immediately have changed her clothes because she knew that, if she fell ill and had to be confined to bed, her mother and sisters couldn’t abide her crying. But how could she have suspected that as late as yesterday morning, there would be this event, like an explosion that did not knock things flat, but, on the contrary, made things stronger and that, having been purged by “a belief built on the tempting sense of dignity” she’d been able to sleep and dream in peace. She had noticed a few days earlier that something had happened to her brother: he held his spoon differently, closed the door after him in a different way, would wake suddenly on the iron bedstead beside her in the kitchen, and spent the whole day puzzling over something. Yesterday, after breakfast he came over to the barn but instead of pulling her up by her hair or — what was worse — simply stand behind her until she burst into tears, he pulled a piece of Balaton Slice candy from his pocket and pressed it into her hand. Little Esti didn’t know what to make of it and she suspected something bad might happen in the afternoon when Sanyi shared with her “the most fantastic secret ever.” She never doubted the truth of what her brother told her, and was far more inclined to disbelieve and find inexplicable the fact that Sanyi had chosen her of all people to ask for help, she “who was completely unreliable.” But the hope that this wouldn’t turn out to be just another trap overcame her anxiety that it would; so, before the question could be resolved, Esti — immediately and quite unconditionally — agreed to everything. Not that she could have done anything else, of course, because Sanyi would have forced a “yes” out of her anyway, but there was no need because once he had revealed to her the secret of the money-tree he immediately won her unqualified confidence. Once Sanyi had “finally” finished, he looked to see what effect he had had on his sister’s “dumb mug,” she was practically in tears with this unexpected burst of happiness, though she knew from bitter experience that crying was not an advisable course with her brother. Confused, she handed over the little treasure she had scraped together since Easter, as her contribution to the can’t lose” experiment, because she had intended this collection of dimes she had picked up from visitors to the house for Sanyi anyway, and she didn’t know how to tell him that she had hidden it away for months and lied about it, just so that it — her savings — should remain a secret. . But her brother showed no great curiosity and, in any case, the joy she felt at being able, at last, to take part in her brother’s secret adventures immediately overcame any sense of confusion. What she couldn’t explain was why he should be landing her with this dangerous confidence and why he should risk failure in this way since he couldn’t possibly believe that his sister was capable of executing a mission that demanded “courage, endurance and the will to victory.” On the other hand she couldn’t forget that beneath all the harsh suffering he inflicted on her, under all the ruthless cruelty, there’d been one time, when she was ill, that Sanyi allowed her to creep into the kitchen bed with him and even let her cuddle him a little and so fall asleep. That would explain it. And there was that other time, some years ago, at her father’s funeral, when, having understood that death, which was “the most direct way to heaven and the angels,” was not only the result of God’s will, but was something that could be chosen, and she herself was determined to find out how that worked, it was her brother who had enlightened her. She couldn’t possibly have worked it out by herself: she needed him to tell her, what exactly to do, a solution she might perhaps have stumbled on by herself, which was that “rat poison would do the trick too.” And then yesterday, when she woke at dawn, when she had finally overcome her fear and decided to wait no longer, and was feeling a real desire to be raised to heaven, and a mighty wind seemed to be lifting her, so that she saw the earth beneath her receding further and further, the houses, trees, the fields, the canal, the whole world shrinking below and she was already standing at heaven’s gate, among the angels who lived in a blaze of scarlet — it was again Sanyi with his talk of the secret money tree who had yanked her back from that magical yet terrifying height, and so, at dusk they set out together — together! — for the canal, her brother happily whistling and carrying the spade on his back, she a couple of strides behind, excitedly clutching her little hoard of money, tied up in a handkerchief. Sany dug a hole in the canal bank in his customary silence and, rather than chasing her away, even let her place the money at the bottom of it. He instructed her more strictly that the money-seeds they had sown should be generously watered twice daily, once in the morning, once in the evening (“or it all dries up!”) then sent her home telling her she should return “precisely” an hour later with the watering can, because he had to utter “some magic spells” while she was gone, and he had to be absolutely alone while he uttered them. Little Esti conscientiously went about her task and slept badly that night, dreaming of being pursued by escaped dogs, but when she woke in the morning and saw it was raining heavily outside, everything took on a more cheerful air, a warm miasma of happiness settling over her. She immediately went back to the canal so she could be certain of giving the magic seeds a truly thorough soaking in case they weren’t getting as much water as they needed. At lunch she whispered to Sanyi — she didn’t want to disturb her mother who was asleep because she’d been making hay all night — that she hadn’t seen anything so far,”. . nothing, simply nothing,” but he argued that it would take at least three, possibly four, days for the shoots to appear, and there would certainly be nothing till then, and even that depended on whether “the spot had been properly watered.” “After that,” he added impatiently, in a voice that brooked no contradiction, “there’s no need for you to spend the whole damn day crouching there to watch it. . that won’t do any good. It’s enough for you to be there twice a day, once in the morning, once in the evening. That’s all. Do you understand, retard?” Giving her a grin, he left the house and Esti decided to stay up in the loft until the evening if need be. “Until the shoots come through!” How often, after that, did she close her eyes so she might imagine the shoot rising and growing ever more lush, its boughs soon bending under the tremendous weight when she, with her little basket with the torn handles, might — abracadabra! — gather up the fruits, go home and tumble the coins out on the table!. . How they would all stare! From that day on she would be given a clean room to sleep in, one with a big bed with a really big eiderdown, and there would be nothing for any of them to do other than to make a daily visit to the canal, fill the basket, and dance and drink cup after cup of cocoa, and the angels would be there too, fleets of them, all sitting around the kitchen table. . She wrinkled her brow (“Hang on a minute!”) and, bending to and fro, began to sing: