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

the gateway. She clutched at her heart, shaking with terror (‘He has found me! He has followed me!’) then, assuming a mask of outrage (‘Really! How dare he!’), she glanced up at the clock on the wall and hastened to the gate. It couldn’t be either a neighbour or a friend, since, originally as a matter of breeding, and nowadays for lack of courage in tackling the town after seven o’clock at night, people did not call on each other, and so, having dismissed from her mind the likelihood that it might be the nightmarish figure in the broadcloth coat, she had little doubt who it actually would be. Ever since she had moved into this sublet of the Harrers, it had, unfortunately, become the practice of her son to turn up at least every third night, often in a wine-sodden state, either to plague her for hours with his mad obsessive talk about stars and planets, or, more frequently on recent occasions, tearfully, bearing flowers his disillusioned mother was convinced he had stolen ‘to recompense her for all the pain he had caused her by his disobedience’. If she had told him once, she had told him a thousand times, in fact every time she finally managed to get rid of him: he was not to come, he was not to bother her, he should leave her in peace, she didn’t want to see him, he shouldn’t so much as set a foot inside her flat, and yes, she really meant it, really didn’t want to see him, that twenty-seven miserable years spent in his company was quite enough, that not a day, not a minute, went by but she blushed in shame at having such a son. As she confessed to her sympathetic cronies, she had tried everything she could think of, and later announced that just because her son was incapable of becoming a decent human being she did not see why she should suffer for his behaviour. She had suffered with Valuska senior, her first husband, who had been completely ruined by alcohol, and she had suffered more than enough with her son—she stressed this time and again to all her acquaintances. They advised her—and she often followed their advice—that ‘until this mad son of hers gave up his bad habits she should, quite simply, refuse to let him in’, but not only was this hard ‘for a mother’s tender heart to bear’, she also had to admit that it was no real solution. After all, it was useless laying down the law while the will that might have enabled him to adopt a normal lifestyle was clearly weak or absent; it was pointless him calling, pointless for Valuska junior—still playing the vagrant—to look in on the third day and proclaim with a radiant expression on his face that ‘his will was now resolved’, not once but again and again. Resigning herself to the hopeless struggle, to the knowledge that nowadays, in his incurable simplicity, he wouldn’t even understand what his mother wanted of him, she invariably sent him packing and that is what she intended to do right now, though when the answer came over the phone, instead of the usual stuttering plea (‘It’s … it’s only me … mama …’), she heard the confidential murmur of a woman’s voice. ‘Who?’ asked Mrs Plauf again in her surprise, and for a second she held the receiver away from her ear. ‘Only me, Piri love! Mrs Eszter!’ ‘Mrs Eszter?! Here?! At this time?!’—she exclaimed, and started to fidget irresolutely with her gown. This woman was one of those people whom Mrs Plauf—and as far as she knew, everyone in town—‘kept at arm’s length’, indeed it was as if they were practically strangers, for apart from giving her the unavoidable but naturally cool nod in the street when they met, she had hardly exchanged a dozen words with her about the weather in the course of the whole year—in the circumstances, therefore, her visit was more than surprising. It wasn’t just Mrs Eszter’s ‘scandalous past, loose morals and currently confused family situation’ that made her the perennial topic of her friends’ conversation,