Satantango by László Krasznahorkai Page B

into the fire. The doctor was enjoying the heat and thought to stay a little longer, to dry out and warm up, then pull himself together and set out for the bar. He stared dozily into the fire, faintly whistling as he breathed in and out. The elder Horgos girl broke the silence. Her voice was tired, hoarse and bitter. “You know, I am over twenty now, and she will soon be twenty herself. When I think about it — and that’s what we were talking about just now when you turned up — I wonder where all this is leading us. A girl gets fed up. Have you any idea how much we can put away in savings? Can you imagine?! Ah, I could kill people sometimes!” The doctor gazed at the fire in silence. The younger Horgos girl stared indifferently straight ahead of her: her legs were spread and she was leaning back on her hands, nodding. “We have to support the little criminal, the idiot child Esti, not to metion mother, though she can’t do much apart from complain about this or that, or ask where we have stowed the money, and demand we give her the money, the money this and the money that — and what’s with them all!? Believe me, they are quite capable of robbing us of our last pair of panties! And as for us finally going into town and leaving this filthy hole, if you could only have heard the abuse hurled at us! What on earth did we think we were doing, blah, blah, blah? . . . The fact is we are utterly fed up with this life, isn’t that right, Mari, haven’t we had enough of it?” The younger Horgos waved a bored hand. “Forget it! Don’t rock the boat! You either go or stay! You can’t say anyone is keeping you here.” Her older sister immediately rounded on her. “Yes, you’d like it if I pissed off, wouldn’t you? You’d do all right here by yourself! Well, that’s exactly why I’m not going! If I go, you go too!” Baby Horgos made an ugly face, “OK, but don’t moan so much, you’ll make me cry already!” Horgos the elder had a reply ready but could not get to the end of it because her words were lost in a volley of throaty coughing. “No sweat, Mari, there’ll be cash enough here today, cash by the sack full!” she broke the silence. “Just see what’s going to happen here pretty soon, just see if I’m not right!” The other turned to her, annoyed. “They should have been here ages ago. Something doesn’t smell right about this, that’s my feeling.” “Aah, leave off. Don’t bother your head about it. I know Kráner and all the rest. He’ll be here right enough, panting and chasing tail, the same as ever.” “You don’t imagine he’s going to cough up the lot? All that money?” The doctor raised his head. “What money?” he asked. The elder Horgos made an impatient gesture with her hand. “Forget it, doc, just sit there and make yourself warm, and don’t pay any attention to us.” So he sat a while longer then begged two more cigarettes and a dry match and started down the stairs. He got to the door without any trouble: the rain was slanting in through the gap. His headache was a little better and he no longer felt dizzy in the slightest, there was only the tightness in his chest that didn’t want to go away. His feet quickly grew accustomed to the dark and felt perfectly at home knowing which way to go along the path. He made rapid progress in view of his condition, only rarely brushing against a branch or some shrub; so he pressed forward, his head held to one side so the rain wouldn’t beat at it so hard. He stopped for a couple of minutes under the eaves of the shed before the weighbridge but soon went on in a fury, silence and darkness before and behind him. He cursed Mrs. Kráner aloud and dreamed up various forms of revenge all of which he immediately forgot. He was tired again and there were moments he felt he simply had to sit down somewhere or else he would collapse. He turned down the metalled road that led to the bar and decided not to stop until he’d got there.