Read Online Satantango by László Krasznahorkai - Free Book Online

forehead: “Look, don’t be cross, but I just can’t bear listening to such stuff right now! . . . You can tell me all about them tomorrow, for now I’d sooner you talked about a good steaming bowl of bean soup!” But Irimiás ignores this too and goes on undisturbed. “Then, wherever the shadow falls they follow, like a flock of sheep, because they can’t do without a shadow, just as they can’t do without pomp and splendor either (“For God’s sake! Cut it out old man, please! . . .” Petrina cries in his agony), they’ll do anything not to be left alone with the remnants of pomp and splendor, because when they are left alone they go mad: like mad dogs they fall on whatever remains and tear it to bits. Give them a well-heated room, a cauldron bubbling with paprika stew, a few dogs, and they’ll be dancing on the table every night, and even happier under warm bedclothes, panting away, with a tasty piece of the neighbor’s stout wife to tuck into . . . Are you listening to me Petrina?” “Ayayay,” the other sighs in reply and adds in hope: “Why? Have you finished?” By now they can see the blown-over fences of the roadside houses, the tumbledown shed, the rusty water tank, when right beside them, a hoarse voice calls them from behind a high stack of weeds: “Wait! It’s me”” A twelve- to thirteen-year-old boy, completely chilled and soaked to the bone, wearing trousers rolled up to the knee rushes towards them, drenched, trembling, his eyes shining. Petrina is the first to recognize him. “So it’s you . . . ? What are you doing here, you little good-for-nothing!?” “I’ve been hiding here for hours..,” he announces with pride, and quickly looks down. His long hair hangs in knots over his spotty face, a cigarette glowing between his bent fingers. Irimiás takes patient stock of the boy who steals the odd look at him but immediately lowers his eyes again. “So what do you want?” Petrina quizzes him, shaking his head. The boy steals another glance at Irimiás. “You promised . . .” he starts, stutters and stops, “that . . . that if . . .” “Come on boy, spit it out!” Irimiás hassles him. “That if I told people that you were . . .” the boy finally blurts out kicking the ground all the while,” . . . dead, then you’d fix me up with Mrs. Schmidt . . .” Petrina pulls the boy’s ear and snaps at him: “What’s this? No sooner hatched and out of the egg but you already want to climb up ladies’ skirts, you little scoundrel! What next?!” The boy frees himself and shouts, his eyes flashing in anger. “I tell you what you should be pulling, you old goat. The skin off your dick!” If Irimiás did not intervene there’d be a fight. “Enough!” he bellows. “How did you know we were on the way?” The boy stands a careful distance from Petrina, rubbing his ear. “That’s my business. It doesn’t matter anyway . . . Everyone knows by now. The driver told them.” Petrina is cursing, looking up at the sky but Irimiás gestures for him to be quiet (“Use your brains! Leave him alone!”) and turns to the boy: “What driver?” “Kelemen. He lives by the Elek turning, that’s where he saw you.” “Kelemen? He’s become a bus driver?” “Yeah, since spring, on the cross-country route. But the bus isn’t in service at the moment so he has time to loaf around . . .” “OK,” says Irimiás and sets off. The boy hurries to keep pace with him. “I did what you asked me to do.. I hope you’ll keep your part of . . .” “I generally keep my promises,” Irimiás answers coolly. The boy follows him like a shadow; sometimes he catches up with him and squints up at his face then falls behind again. Petrina trails still further behind, a long way back, and though they can’t make out his voice they are aware he is continually cursing the ceaseless rain, the mud, the boy, and the world at large (“to hell with it all!”) “I still have the photograph!” says the