The Pathseeker by Imre Kertész

Author:Imre Kertész [Kertesz, Imre]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-61219-327-4
Publisher: Melville House
Published: 2013-07-09T00:00:00+00:00

THE PALM COURT. THE VEILED WOMAN

He got there at the right moment: he and his wife had hardly greeted each other when the bus loomed on the bend of the highway, so that the question that had been, as it were, hovering on the wife’s lips was left hanging. Fortunately, the grinding noise (the driver was obviously applying the brakes on the downward section of the route) drowned out all other sounds, so that there was no chance for conversation during the journey—but then, what could he have said? He had no right to enlighten his wife; he could not belie the seriousness of her look, turn it against himself; he could not ask what was the meaning of those scant few meadow flowers in her lap that she was perhaps taking home to preserve as a devotional object of her mute alliance, or where she had been while he conducted his inspection, what he had been convinced of, what trap he had been led into, and what sort of appearances he had fallen prey to. A revolt of forbearance was the sole disdainful answer that could be given to the provocative ridicule of the hard facts; he had to protect his secret, the responsibility—this consuming emptiness—was his alone to carry.

Why, instead of gratitude, did he feel the irritation of an ill-tempered resentment if he saw the wife assisting him with mute compliance? That was a senseless question that now would only deflect him from his work.

He helped his wife down from the vehicle. They saw their square again; the noon traffic was bustling on the melting asphalt. They decided to have lunch; they were hungry. A brief consultation took place between them over the direction—both of them quoted Hermann’s instructions and it became clear they had interpreted them differently—until they left it to the gaps and paths opening up amid miniature palaces, dreaming squares, parks with clipped hedges and dozily sundrenched osier-beds, as if they had confidence that, in the end, their appetite would help them to their goal.

There could be no mistaking it: this proud façade, this weathered revolving door, this betasseled and epauletted doorman, half serious, half comic in his finery, could not be deceiving them. A nod of the head was the greeting for cronies, a stretching-out of his arm an invitation for kings into an enchanted realm. They cut across a dingy anteroom, their feet sinking into thick carpets, all around the spell of sparklingly lacquered little tables and soft draperies, like the song of mute sirens calling on those who know how to die happy to run aground in these luxurious shallows. They were received at the entrance to the restaurant by the maître d’hôtel; they were handed on to a waiter in tails, who led them—unexpected high seas—into the palm court. Selection of a menu was a ceremony of the devious sounding-out of the initiated, of guardedly concealed questions and replies of a magic power which dispelled all doubts and led to flitting obligingness without reservation.

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