The Rebels by Sándor Márai Read Free Book Online Page B

bare bottom till it was red. Then Etelka turned up, saw us, and gave us a beating. I was four. The girl three. Etelka was forty. Once she left the door open to the cupboard full of underwear and I pulled out a shred of cloth and played with it, tying it round my head the way the maid does her headscarf. Etelka grew quite red when she saw me, snatched the cloth from me, and smacked my hand. Today I know the thing I was playing with was her brassiere, that the piece of cloth she dashed off with was a brassiere fresh from the laundry. I was four. How do I know now that the shred of cloth was my aunt’s brassiere? No one told me. And what was there so outrageous about the fact that my aunt had breasts that required support? How warm that hand is. His hand is so soft that my index finger sinks into the pad of flesh in his palm. Amadé’s wig is nicely fixed. When I found my aunt’s hair in the cupboard behind the books I thought I had finally unmasked her. My aunt had no wig but she did wear hairpieces. I discovered two fat shiny pigtails. I might tell Tibor that later in the evening. Or perhaps Amadé. Maybe neither, but just Ernõ. If I told Amadé he would answer with some nonsense rhyme like “Round pig, little pig, open mouth, and jig-jig-jig!” And he’d open his mouth and stick his fleshy tongue out between his thick lips as he always does. He’s laughing now and I can see his gold teeth. The actor released his hand. They went in through the revolving doors.
     
     
     
    T HE REVOLVING DOORS MOVED ROUND WITH them and they entered the café. It was the sort of hour at which cafés in provincial towns are empty but for the usual roster of dubious characters. The only signs of life were in the separate card rooms. In one room sat two lawyers, the editor of a local paper, and a very short man with hair carefully parted in the middle, his outfit selected with painstaking refinement. Opposite the door sat Havas. He was holding cards in his hand, his bald head glistening with drops of perspiration. Now and then he dipped his hand into his pocket and wiped his brow with a red handkerchief. The man who used to run the mill, now the owner of the town pawnbroker’s shop, declared, Three-card run, two aces, game, as they passed him. The actor and Ábel stopped to greet them. Havas made as if to rise from his chair but never moved: the vast body remained glued to his seat. He congratulated them. Your friends are already here. He seemed absent-minded, radiant with a kind of happiness that quickly drew him back to his cards. He declared himself in for the next round. The air in the card room was sour, worse than in the main part of the café. This might have been because the card players, having played for several hours, had grown careless of social niceties, or because it was difficult to air those little booths and the players were perspiring rather heavily. They threw their cigar butts on the floor. One or two of them spat on the remains and the dying stubs filled the lower regions of the café with acrid smoke. The gang sat in a little booth as they used to do when the café was still strictly out of bounds to them. The actor immediately sat himself at the head of the table. Ábel took his place by Ernõ.
    Someone has cheated, he announced calmly.
    He took out the cards and spread them out on the table. He had never felt so calm before.
    I don’t want to take ages over this, he said, and noted with astonishment his own perfectly level voice.—I had no idea what I was going to do about it on my way here, what I was going to do or say, or if indeed I was going to say anything at all. But there we are: now I have said it. I don’t know if he has been cheating for long or whether this was the first time. He brought two aces with him, one heart and one acorn, and two tens, a leaf and a bell. While we were weighing things up he dropped a ten instead of an ace, or picked up three cards including a ten and didn’t ask for more, but