Peter Nadas - A Book of Memories

In the clearing, Livia was the first to adapt herself to the new situation; she slipped her hand away, bent down, and with no little astonishment picked up the wounded alarm clock; she said something and giggled, maybe amused that the clock was still ticking, for she was pointing at it; at that moment she seemed to be the wildest of the three, but the other two paid no attention to her, and she proceeded to pick the pieces of broken glass out of the frame of the clock's face and drop them on the ground one by one; she seemed to be enjoying herself immensely; then she put the clock on her head, balancing it carefully, wearing it like a crown, and, self-possessed, stepping out majestically, she moved on.

The other two girls, more sensible, were still standing in place, hesitating, looking and listening, one to the right, the other to the left, and only when with an adroit gesture Livia wrapped the red blanket about her shoulders did they begin to move — maybe because the gesture was a kind of signal.

They ran after her; when Maja wanted to wrap herself in the white sheet, which she picked up on the run, a mild altercation ensued, for Hédi also wanted the sheet, and they tugged it back and forth; I assumed that Hédi thought the sheet would go better with her white dress, the one she had borrowed from Maja, and though the problem seemed to be solved with amazing speed, it became clear that the argument wasn't just over the sheet, over who would get it first, but there was a need to establish a pecking order appropriate for the current situation: the sheet went to Hédi, who on the strength of her beauty always got her way, which made Maja retreat into quiet petulance; the sheet became a train of the white dress, Maja helped tuck it in under the red belt, so now Hédi was the queen, Livia a sort of lady-in-waiting, and Maja the humiliated maidservant who, naturally, lifted the train all wrong, for which she received a kick, and that finally determined her place in the hierarchy.

They did all this quickly, like a well-trained team, but not at all seriously, acting it out, one might say, as if they were only playing at playing, and yet we couldn't laugh at them because, on the one hand, their silliness was so uninhibited and shameless and they were enjoying it so much, and on the other hand, they were very much out of place on this turf; we watched them with bated breath, too shocked to realize that in our hopeless situation they were our saviors.

But I also thought they were obnoxious for meddling in something that was none of their business.

Now they were marching in single file, led by Livia, with the red blanket tucked under the collar of her blouse, the alarm clock on her head, Hédi's train raised high by Maja, who picked up one of the castaway pots she stumbled on and humbly, smiling maliciously, placed it on Hédi's head; they kept perfecting their procession until they reached the collapsed tent.

I must have understood what they were doing at the very moment they themselves realized, without exchanging a single word, what it was they were supposed to be playing.

It had to do with a big book Livia had, Great Ladies of Hungary, which she often took with her to Maja's house — they liked to peruse it together — which had a mournful illustration depicting the dream of Queen Maria, widow of King Lajos, in which she searches for her husband's body among grisly corpses and bloated carcasses on the battlefield of Mohács.

Livia began to move in this dreamlike manner, and the other two quickly caught on and followed suit: they stretched their arms to the sky and walked as in a dream, without touching the ground; to show pain and grief, they raised their hands to their breasts, crying, like the queen in the picture with huge teardrops rolling down her pale blue cheeks.

In front of the tent Livia fell to the ground with her arms still outstretched, the alarm clock fell off her head and rolled away, and she enacted this little scene so the effect would be truly funny.

I didn't find it funny at all; it was disgusting to see her clowning like that for the benefit of her two friends.

Kálmán's mouth dropped open, stupidly; I wanted to step in, ruin the performance, put an end to it.

The two girls looked at Livia, commiserating, leaning over her, blinking their teary eyes, comforting her, and then they reached under her arms and tried to help her up, but now that she had found it, it was with great difficulty that the queen could be torn away from the body of her slain husband.

And when they did tear her away and led her off, supporting her on both sides, just as in the picture, Livia finally found her way into the part: for a few moments the clowning became a true performance, some real feelings appeared in her acting, her performance as a woman out of her mind, her eyes rolling and turning inward, thrusting out her hands and, though seeking the support of her helpers, lurching stiffly forward so the two others had to hurry along, because she was propelled by frenzied pain; before long, the spectacle turned my disgust with Livia into astonishment; she surprised me, caught me unprepared, and just as in the movies when something heartrending or awful on the screen made me want to scream or cry or even get out of the theater, I had to remind myself that it was only an act and therefore the truly felt emotions in it were not real, but in that very instant Maja pulled out her arm from under Livia, moved away, and began to run, which made the two other girls lose their balance and get entangled; Hédi, who couldn't see because of the pot on her head, rammed into Livia and pulled her down, and Livia sought support in Hédi's falling body; noticing none of this, Maja kept running toward the neatly stacked woodpile, most likely attracted by the matches placed next to it, and while the two other girls were rolling around with laughter, she squatted down and put a match to the pile.

A loud scream went up from among the trees, Krisztián's; like an echo, the reply came from the other side of the clearing, Prém's; then Kálmán began to scream, and I also heard myself screaming.

With this exultant harmonious battle cry, blasting through the still raging wind, we swooped down on the girls, Krisztián and Prém advancing from either end of the clearing; with sounds of crashing and crackling we hurled ourselves forward, dirt rolling down and stones flying in our wake; to the girls it must have seemed not that they were being surrounded by four different screams but that they were being hit by a single elemental blow of nature.

The flames tore swiftly into the dry twigs, the wind immediately stirred up the light, darting tongues, blowing them out in long stretches, then sucking them in again; Maja threw away the matches and ran to the other two for cover and then back again; the girls sprang up, and by the time we got there, the whole pile was ablaze.

The three girls took off in three different directions, but they were surrounded, had no escape; without knowing why, I went after Hédi, Kálmán chased Maja, and both Krisztián and Prém went after Livia, who was off like a shot; Hédi was running down the hill, one of her sandals flew off her foot, which she ignored, she threw her head back, her blond hair streaming in the wind, the white sheet sweeping the ground after her; I thought of stepping on the sheet and making her trip, and I didn't know what was happening behind us, the only thing I saw was that Maja had almost got to the trees when Kálmán managed to grab her; just then Livia began to squeal and scream so loudly — and there was no playacting in that — that Hédi abruptly changed direction and, while my momentum stupidly made me run past her, had time to swerve around and start running back up the hill to help Livia.

They were entangled in one whirling mass, twisting and grappling on the ground, the wind whipping long flames over them; like a lunatic, Hédi threw herself on them, screaming, perhaps to let the struggling Livia know she was there, ready to help, and I threw myself on top of Hédi, even though at that moment I could already see what was happening: they were pulling off Livia's red skirt, there it was under Krisztián's knees. It couldn't have been hard to get the skirt off, it was held only by an elastic at the waist, but now it looked as though they wanted to tear off her blouse; while Krisztián used his knees to pin down Livia's naked lower body to keep her from kicking, Prém, kneeling above her head, was trying to restrain her flailing, protective arms and get the blouse off; the completely incredible circumstance that Prém had no underpants on I noticed only at the very moment I was jumping on Hédi's back; Livia kept her eyes shut tight and kept on screaming; above her face, directly above her face, dangled Prém's famed member, flapping, swinging, swaying to the tune of the furious struggle, almost touching her face.