Tranquility by Attila Bartis Read Free Book Online

electric bill, stand on your own two feet, man! Seize the opportunity!” The salesgirls in the boutiques, however, start the day by hanging out signs for salesmen to stay away, and the ones who don’t bother with the signs already own a gilded, gift-cased cutlery set, and are waiting for a different salesman peddling multi-purpose cosmetics and underwear with a panther design, which has proved itself so well – Robi literally ripped it to pieces. Well, one or two of this kind of salesman take these trains, as well as a few visitors with their flowers and boxed refreshments on their way to a hospital. There are also compensation-seekers, their pockets bulging with old contracts – written with indelible pencil about the three gold crowns’ worth of plough-land in question – or depositions from their fellow POWs stating that after twelve years of captivity they walked home together all the way from the shores of the river Yenisey. “Where, for the sake of old God’s balls, could I get you a letter of discharge?! Anybody whose hands didn’t freeze off had to sign a piece of paper that he was never there, and then the guard kicked us in the ass at the lager’s gate, telling us to get the hell out of there; we wouldn’t get on the truck, were afraid of getting shot in the back, get it? Are you out of your mind, young man? You think it was a homo-ring that was rippedout of my ear? Don’t you quote the law to me, just look at this: this is not the place of a homo-ring; this is where a rat chewed part of my ear off, in the barracks! And it’s too bad I didn’t wake up, because if I did, we could have eaten some meat, too!” In short, mostly this kind of people took the Monday morning trains. It was harder to find empty compartments than at dawn with the commuting workers, or on weekends with the local tourists; both groups like to be with their own kind; sixteen of them would squeeze into eight seats so they can curse their foreman or physics teacher while the bottle is making its round and music blares from some tape-recorder. However, these beginning salesmen, hospital visitors, and compensation seekers want to be alone; they draw the curtains, at every stop they pretend to be asleep so the new arrivals won’t bother them and if the compartment door latch works they turn that too, so only the conductor can get in.
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    I did find an empty compartment in the last car. I closed the door, turned the latch, drew the curtain, and then I thought I had better put the story of the priest Albert Mohos into the yellow file, where I kept all my misbegotten creations. Judit’s erstwhile sheet-music case became the dunce’s bench, the pillory of fiascoes, because I could never get myself to commit these awkward stories either to the waste bin or to the oven. In fact, I kept the yellow dossier on my desk, among the rest of the manuscripts, proofs, and other papers, so that in my absence my mother could read them to her heart’s content. That’s how we conversed. If I was at home, she hardly ever crossed my threshold, but once I left she immediately rummaged through everything, filled my room with the heavy fragrance of her makeup, spilled her mint tea and left behind some of her fallen hair. My manuscripts weresticky with smeared lipstick and eyeliner because she had the habit of alternately licking her fingers and rubbing her eyes. I never mentioned these telltale signs to her; after all, I could have locked up my writings in the drawers, but then she wouldn’t have been the first one to read them.
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    I can neither write nor read on a train; the landscape running parallel to me constantly interferes with my reading. The sight of the most stunted woods can put to shame superb topographic descriptions, which is worth mentioning only because, in contrast, people don’t bother me at all. I can read all right on