without warning step on any common or garden weed that got in her way’. And, as if to underline the point, she gave her suitcase a swing, though Harrer—labouring under the false impression that this gesture indicated she was on her way to meet him—was beyond being deterred by anything, and so it happened that when she was just about to turn right, bypassing the house, and make her way across the garden to the old kitchen-laundry which served as Valuska’s home, Harrer suddenly leapt out from behind the door, threw himself in front of her and—silently, desperately—raised his haunted face to her with a look of entreaty. Mrs Eszter—seeing at once that her guest of last night, incapable of comprehension, was waiting for a forgiving word—showed no mercy; without so much as opening her mouth she sized him up in a glance and shoved him aside with her suitcase as lightly as she would some bent twig in her way, wholly ignoring his existence, as if all the guilt and shame—since Harrer now remembered last night all too well—which racked him counted for nothing. After all, no point in denying it, it genuinely did count for nothing, as did Mrs Plauf and the fallen poplar; nor did the circus, the crowd, not even the memories of times spent with the police chief, however sweet, mean anything now; so, when Harrer, with all the ingenuity of people hardened to bitter disappointment, and scarlet with ‘guilt and shame’, came full tilt round the other side of the house and stood silently before her, once more blocking the path to Valuska’s shack, she merely spat, ‘No forgiveness!’ at him and pushed on, for there were only two things that occupied her mind in its present state of fevered activity: the vision of Eszter leaning over the suitcase and understanding how truly trapped he was, and of Valuska, no doubt still lying fully clothed on his bed in that filthy hole of his, stinking of stale tobacco and staring with his brilliant eyes up at the ceiling without realizing that it wasn’t the twinkling night sky above him but a sheet of cracked and badly sagging plaster. And right enough, when after two sharp knocks she pushed the decrepit door open, she found precisely what she expected to find: under a ceiling of badly sagging plaster, in the stink of stale tobacco, the untidy bed; only those ‘brilliant eyes’ were nowhere to be seen … nor for that matter was the twinkling sky above.
THE WERCKMEISTER
HARMONIES
Negotiations
SINCE MR HAGELMAYER, THE PROPRIETOR OF Pfeffer and Co., Licensed Victuallers of Híd Road, or as it was more popularly known, the Peafeffer, was usually longing for bed by this time and had begun to consult his watch with an ever sterner look on his face (‘Eight o’clock, closing time, gentlemen!’), which meant that his rasping, already angry voice took on an even heavier emphasis and that he would shortly turn down the steadily purring oil-heater in the corner, switch off the light and, opening the door, usher his reluctant customers out into the unwelcoming icy wind beyond—it was no surprise to the happily grinning Valuska, squeezed in, as he was, among donkey jackets and quilted coats which had long been unbuttoned or thrown about the shoulders, to be called upon, indeed encouraged, to explain this business of ‘the erf and the mune’, for this is what they had asked for last night, the night before and goodness only knows how many nights before that, if only to distract the stubborn attention of the loud if sleepy landlord and allow for one last all-important spritzer. After such endless repetitions the explanation, which, as a piece of entertainment, had been polished as smooth as possible and simply served to occupy the time, had long ceased to be of interest to anyone. Certainly not to Hagelmayer, who valued the pleasures of sleep above all, and who, to keep things orderly, would call time half an hour early so that they should understand he was ‘not to be taken in
THE WERCKMEISTER
HARMONIES
Negotiations
SINCE MR HAGELMAYER, THE PROPRIETOR OF Pfeffer and Co., Licensed Victuallers of Híd Road, or as it was more popularly known, the Peafeffer, was usually longing for bed by this time and had begun to consult his watch with an ever sterner look on his face (‘Eight o’clock, closing time, gentlemen!’), which meant that his rasping, already angry voice took on an even heavier emphasis and that he would shortly turn down the steadily purring oil-heater in the corner, switch off the light and, opening the door, usher his reluctant customers out into the unwelcoming icy wind beyond—it was no surprise to the happily grinning Valuska, squeezed in, as he was, among donkey jackets and quilted coats which had long been unbuttoned or thrown about the shoulders, to be called upon, indeed encouraged, to explain this business of ‘the erf and the mune’, for this is what they had asked for last night, the night before and goodness only knows how many nights before that, if only to distract the stubborn attention of the loud if sleepy landlord and allow for one last all-important spritzer. After such endless repetitions the explanation, which, as a piece of entertainment, had been polished as smooth as possible and simply served to occupy the time, had long ceased to be of interest to anyone. Certainly not to Hagelmayer, who valued the pleasures of sleep above all, and who, to keep things orderly, would call time half an hour early so that they should understand he was ‘not to be taken in
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