Read Online The Melancholy of Resistance by László Krasznahorkai - Free Book Online Page A

room stuffed with plants which made her feel she was in some meadow or yard full of loose clods of grass, she switched back to her low murmur—for no other reason now than to amuse herself—to remark by way of acknowledgement: ‘Well, that’s how it is. It’s every townee’s desire to bring nature indoors. We all feel like that, Piri, love.’ But Mrs Plauf did not answer, she did the least she was constrained to do and simply gave a little nod of her head, which was a signal clear enough for Mrs Eszter to comprehend that she should get on to her business. Of course, whether Mrs Plauf did or did not agree to play her part in the matter—since she couldn’t have guessed that she had already said ‘yes’ by failing to prevent the invasion of her flat, the sheer presence of her visitor being the whole point—her willingness or otherwise was of little importance; nevertheless, having painstakingly described the situation for her (in the manner of ‘don’t for a moment think, my dear, it is I who want him, no, it’s the town that wants Eszter, but to persuade a man as busy as everyone knows he is to act is so hard only your nice gentle son can do it …’), and having addressed her in the friendliest manner possible while looking directly into her eyes, she was undeniably and unpleasantly surprised by the immediate rejection, because she could see perfectly well it wasn’t that relations between Valuska and Mrs Plauf ‘had totally broken down some years ago’, and that it was Mrs Plauf’s ‘parental duty to distance herself from anything to do with Valuska, though one could well imagine what pain and bitterness one suffered having to say this of one’s own son who did not lack a heart but was distinctly ungrateful and useless’, but that all her suppressed fury at her feeble helplessness had been concentrated into this ‘no’ which would serve to pay Mrs Eszter back for the indignity of the last few minutes, for the fact she was small and weak while Mrs Eszter was large and powerful, that, however she would have liked to deny it, she had been forced to admit that it was her son who was ‘a lodger at Hagelmayer’s’, her son who was a village idiot whose abilities barely qualified him to be newsboy for the local post office—and that she had to own up to all this before a stranger disapproved of by all her friends. There was enough evidence for her to have grasped this anyway, and seeing that Mrs Plauf, ‘this midget’, was quite impotent before her, as if only by way of recompense for the fact she had been forced to sit for almost twenty minutes and endure ‘that infuriating smile’ and those mock-pious looks of hers, she leapt from the deep apple-green armchair with a contemptuous aside to the effect that she must be going, cut her way through the thick foliage, accidentally brushing a tiny sampler from the wall with her shoulder, and, without another word, stubbed her cigarette out in a never-before-used ashtray and snatched down her enormous black fake-fur coat. For while she was perfectly capable of coolly appraising a situation, knowing she could no longer be surprised by anything, once anyone dared say no to her, as Mrs Plauf did just now, her gorge immediately rose and she practically burst with gall, for she had no clear idea what to do in the circumstances. The fury simmered in her, the anger consumed her, so much so that when the neurotically hand-wringing Mrs Plauf addressed a question to her just as she was snapping the last steel clip of her coat into place (her eyes flashing, her lips tight, neck craned back, staring at the ceiling), something to the effect that she was ‘terribly anxious’ (‘… This evening … when I got back from my sisters’ house … and … I hardly recognized the town … Has anybody explained why the streetlamps are no longer lit? … This sort of thing never used to happen before’), she practically screamed at the terrified housewife: ‘You have every