The Melancholy of Resistance by László Krasznahorkai Read Free Book Online Page A

her room with a jar of boiled cherries in rum; then, before settling back into the apple-green armchair, more out of habit than genuine curiosity, she turned on the television. She leaned back and stretched out, resting her tired feet on a little pouffe, and, refreshed as she was by her shower, in the by-now-pleasant warmth, she was delighted to see that it was operetta time on TV again: perhaps there was hope after all, perhaps the old sense of peace and calm was returning. For she knew very well that while the world remained as infinitely beyond her reach—in her star-struck son’s idiotic phrase, the one he loved to repeat ad nauseam —‘as light exceeds vision’, and realized perfectly clearly, that while those, including herself, who snuggled down in quiet little nests, in tiny oases of decency and consideration, continued to go in fear and trembling of events outside, the furious hordes of the anarchic unshaven would instinctively assume command: it was simply that she never rebelled against the ways of the world but accepted its incomprehensible laws, was grateful for its little joys, and therefore felt justified in believing that she could proceed on the assumption, she consoled herself, that fate would spare her and her mode of life. It would spare her and protect the miniature island of her existence; it would not tolerate the possibility that she—and here Mrs Plauf searched for the right words—she who had never desired anything but peace for herself and her fellow human beings, should fall prey to them. The charming delicate strains of the light operetta (Countess Maritsa …! she recognized with an immediate thrill of pleasure) swept through the room like a gentle spring breeze, and once she was away, rocking on ‘sweet waves of song’, the startling images of the emergency train with its freight of vulgar folk which had risen anew to terrify her no longer did so, for what she felt for them now was not so much fear as contempt—in fact, precisely what she had felt at the outset of her journey, when she had first glimpsed them in that filthy compartment. The two distinct elements of that unsavoury crowd (‘crude gregarious types scoffing salami’ / ‘silent murderers’) had become so confused in her mind that she felt free at last to look down at them from her eminence, to rise, as it were, above her sorry circumstances, just as the music that flooded from her set rose and covered the earth and all its terrors. It might well be, she speculated thus emboldened, splitting another sweet cherry between her teeth in front of the television, that for now the scum gathered out there in the darkness of night had the run of the place, but, in due course and proper manner, once the racket they made had finally become quite unbearable, they would scurry back where they came from, because, thought Mrs Plauf, that is where they belong, beyond the pale of our fair and ordered world, excluded from it for ever without remission. Until that day arrived, and proper justice was meted out, she went on ever more certain of her own opinions in the matter, let all hell break loose, she would ignore it: she had absolutely nothing to do with this mess, this inhuman tyranny, these people who were nothing but jailbait and, while things were as they were, the streets being occupied by such, she would not so much as put her foot outside the house, would refuse to have herself involved in any manner, would not hear another word about it until this disgraceful state of affairs came to an end, until the skies brightened and mutual understanding and sober restraint were once again the order of the day. Lulled and fortified by these thoughts, she watched the triumph of Count Tasilo and the Countess Maritsa as, after many trials and tribulations, they found each other at last, and was about to melt weepy-eyed in the overwhelming happiness of the introduction to the finale when, unexpectedly, she heard the buzzing of the intercom in