Laszlo Krasznahorkai - War & War

It was remarkable that the chosen stone, which was about the size of a child’s fist, had succeeded at the first attempt in shattering one of the windows, so that they could not only hear it over the clattering of the train but see it too, as one of the many speeding panes of glass broke in a fraction of a second into a thousand tiny splinters and shards, for the train had arrived, as they explained the next day, a few minutes late, they said, but they attacked it as soon as it appeared, rushing down the embankment to the prearranged cover, and as soon as the train hove into sight they leapt into action, firing, three of them with slingshots, three with regular ones, one with only his bare hands, but all coordinated in attack formation, firing, peppering the six forty-eight, so that a window in the first carriage was immediately blown to pieces, not that they were satisfied with that alone but launched a second wave of attacks and had only to watch out for the possible shriek of the emergency brakes, though that was something they had to devote intense attention to in order to make an on-the-spot assessment as to whether the brakes had been applied or not, and no, they hadn’t, because there was not a squeal that might signal its possible application, for there was probably overwhelming panic up there by the window where people had been sitting and the whole thing, difficult as it was to figure, they said as they gave a detailed account of the affair in front of the Bingo Bar, was the work of less than a minute, no more perhaps than twenty seconds, or maybe even less, they added, since it’s really tough to be precise about it, though one thing was certain, which was that they were, all of them, on full alert, as they had to be, listening out for the possible application of the emergency brakes, but since there was no evidence of that in that certain twenty seconds or so, they tried a second volley, and they could hear its effect, that it struck the carriages on the side with terrific force, with a loud ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta, to show that one of the last volleys had once more reached its target, that another window had been smashed, for they could hear it as the train roared by at terrific speed, making a terrific racket as the glass shattered, though later, when they sized it all up, that is to say once they had withdrawn to a safe distance and, in their own fashion, with ever greater elation, considered the matter in detail, the general feeling was that the second direct hit must have been on the mail car, whereas the first, and their voices broke with excitement at this, was a perfect bull’s-eye, a word they kept repeating, going round and round in circles like a finger tickling a sensitive spot, repeating the words, passing them on, one to the other, so that by the end they were all choking, gagging, gurgling, helplessly rolling on the ground with lunatic laughter, a laughter that, once it had possessed them, would not let go now, and had gripped them in the past, so they kept exclaiming, bull’s-eye! all the while clapping each other on the shoulder and hitting each other, repeating: bull’s-eye! fuck it all! what about that then! what do you say to that, you prick! you prick! you prick! wrestling and pounding each other, crying, bull’s-eye! until they were exhausted, at a safe distance from the scene of the crime, from the surmise that they had actually killed someone, without Korin suspecting any of this of course, for he wasn’t even sure what happened to the seven children once they had suddenly leapt up and disappeared from the bridge, disappeared like camphor, as if they had never been there at all, all seven of them, all seven storming off into eternity, at which point he too took off, not glancing back, simply running in the opposite direction, anywhere to be away from the place, with but one thought pounding through his head, to be away, away, as far as possible from here, his chest shaking with the single urge, his one imperative in his great haste not to miss the route into town, for that was the point after all, to reach central Budapest and find some place where he could shelter for the night, warm himself, and perhaps get a bite to eat, but, failing that, to find some accommodation, some free accommodation, for he couldn’t spare the money not knowing how much the ticket next day would cost him, as he explained at the MALÉV office, for all he wanted was some place where he would be left in peace, that was all he desired when, quite unexpectedly, he found his way free again, the children suddenly having disappeared, without explanation, without a word, while he, with his stiff leg, no longer clutching the wound that had stopped bleeding, seized the unhoped-for chance of escape, running and running until he could run no more, getting ever closer to the denser lights up ahead, slowing to a walk in his exhaustion, utterly drained by the terror he had just endured, so that he no longer cared what people said to him, and frankly he no longer gave a damn whether he ran into his pursuers or not, but stared directly in the eyes of those going the opposite way, confronting them in mid-gaze, seeking the one man that he, in his hungry, spent condition, might find it worth his while to address.

That’s the kind of person I am , said Korin, and spread his arms wide, having arrived at a crowded place and spotted a young couple, yet immediately conscious of the impossibility of telling them who he was, and of the general lack of interest likely to be evinced by anyone else in the matter, simply adding: Yau wauldn’t happen ta knaw a place where … where I might spend the night?

The music, the venue, the crowds, or rather, that mass of young faces; the dim light, the volume of noise, the wreaths of rolling smoke; the young couple he had addressed and the way they helped him when he, like them, was being frisked at the cash-desk, the way they led him in and explained where things were while constantly reassuring him that, of course, they could solve his problem, the best solution being to enter and remain in the Almássy, where there was likely to be a real hard-core gig, with Balaton as the main band featuring Mihály Víg, and he needn’t worry because it would be the kind of gig that would go on till dawn; and then it struck him, the extraordinarily dense crowd of people, the stench and, by the end, all those dazed, empty, sad eyes everywhere, in other words what with everything happening so suddenly and all at once, said Korin the next day at the MALÉV office, after those long days of solitude followed by the hour of terror when he was attacked on the railway bridge, he suddenly felt utterly exhausted and had barely spent a minute in there before his head ached and he felt dizzy, unable to adjust to anything, his eyes being accustomed to neither the dim light nor the smoke, his ears, after all the mad panic he had been through, unable to cope with the peculiar, quite unbearable racket, and, heaven knows, at first he was incapable even of movement — as he recounted next day — among this “crush of desperate pleasure seekers,” being hemmed in, rooted to the spot, then gradually swept one way then the other by close groups of perspiring dancers, eventually fighting his way through to the wall where he managed to insert himself between two silent huddles who happened to be hanging about there; and there, and only there at last could he try to come to terms with the noise level by adopting some kind of defensive posture against it and against all the misfortunes that had so unexpectedly befallen him, to begin to collect himself and assemble his thoughts, for, having reached this point of security, however infernally crowded and chaotic it was, his capacity for thinking had simply been shot to pieces, shot utterly to pieces, and the more he tried to concentrate the more his thoughts fell apart, so he would have far preferred to abandon the idea of thinking altogether and lie down in a corner, but that was out of the question, though that, on the whole, was his last coherent thought in a long time, the last decision he was capable of making while he continued standing there, gazing first at the band while one thought after another disintegrated before rising to the surface, then at the mass of people, then at the band again, attempting, without success, to catch something of the words of the rapid succession of songs, hearing only the odd phrase, such as “it’s all over” and “everything’s finished,” responding chiefly to the ice-cold melancholy of the music that immediately communicated itself to him despite the sheer volume of noise, and he gazed at the three performers, at the green-haired drummer who stood at the back thrashing his drums while solemnly staring straight ahead, at the blond bass-guitarist beside him lazily rocking his body to the rhythm of the music and the singer, a man of roughly the same age as Korin himself, with his microphone at the front whose severe expression suggested terminal exhaustion and the desire to talk of nothing but terminal exhaustion, who occasionally directed his severe expression at the seething mass below him, as if he would happily have climbed off the stage and disappeared forever but remained there and continued singing, and, to tell the truth, Korin explained, there was something in this ruthless melancholy that incapacitated him, drugged him, defeated him, that tightened his throat, so that frankly, those first two or three hours of the hard-core gig at the Central club in Almássy Square simply offered him no refuge at all.