Kiskutya - A Musician's Tale

iii

  Red peppers hang like curtains around the walls. An aroma bitten with desolation envelops me. Anna's mother and father are delightful. Something in their pleasure, in their clumsiness, reminds me of another time, long ago... piano lessons, a room immaculately cleaned, still pervaded by the essence of dust, closed doors and old faces...

  We exchange kisses, and again those words Isten hozott. Their hands are cold and strong. As my senses quickly adapt to the darkness I can feel there is much stored in this room - a table with an old embroidered cloth hanging down low, deep red. I am shown to a small seat - a trunk with a blanket thrown over it. I look around me. There's a long curtain hanging between us and the kitchen. In every corner modest belongings are covered over with white cloths.

  No. It is not that. Another place. Earlier still. Teenage years, running up and down that hill, over the bridge, along the waterfront and back. Teenage years that ended where they all end over there. It's Guinness I can smell. It's the cloths. And, now that I think of it, the curtain across the doorway at the back of the gloomy bar... I'm sitting on that stool again, surrounded by the lads, old Soap with his odour of sick and tobacco, whose voices are clearer now than their faces. One voice more than the others. She's there, as always, in the corner, elbow up on the window sill, scowling. I watch her eyeing me. Those dark knowing eyes, brimming with insecurity. The teasing mouthfuls in the spoons of her cheeks, the tight corners of her gob. She's nodding. I can hear her thoughts, her directives, after hours, you and me? A coastal wind pushes at my back, towards the cliff edge, tries to rip off my shirt. She leans against the wall, hair flung back, a wild one to be sure. She's looking into the wind. Out to sea. Waiting. I kiss the stuff splashed all over her neck. Then her lips. It's all too easy. The not-so-fair maiden against the juts in the Black Castle.

  The old couple sit close together, across from me on a beaten up sofa. She mutters something quietly to him while looking me in the eye. She is softly spoken and plump in her flowery dress. I'm either the chief suspect in an unknown crime, or a face long lost. We seem to be waiting for someone else to appear from behind the curtain, but it hangs still. Photo frames are scattered everywhere, Anna with friends, Anna with parents, Anna young and smiling. I remember that I am the guest. They are talking, look as if they have just lost something. I patiently notate the movements of their eyes and mannerisms, the dissonance in their expressions. I am a patient, expectant guest, but the curtain remains still.

  Sitting down beside her in one of Pest's many 'corner' bars, Anna looked directly at me and laughed, putting me immediately at my ease. She seemed to unlock a flippant side to my nature, a childishness which allowed me to question her brazenly. She described herself as an atheist, an October baby with a sense of humour - could swap jokes with horses, yes she had a sting in her tail! She asked about the letter I had sent, if I'd received a reply - I hadn't. But she did know the restaurant on the river where I played piano in the evenings. Would she come to listen?

  She drank kiskutya, small dog, a mix of red wine and coke. When in England the previous year, no-one had believed her and she'd had to order the two drinks separately and mix them herself. She had wanted to be an engineer but had been persuaded to take up languages instead. Now she translated trivia to and from English, Russian and Estonian. All of this made me realise I knew no-one I could really call interesting. We talked and talked. The bar was smoky and crowded, and it seemed to me that everyone had the same thoughts as I, men and women alike, looking over at us as if we were having all the fun and giddy romance of their youth too, as if they were somehow already beyond. But now it was me, I was the recipient of her stories, her enticing radiance.

  My mind began to wander. As she spoke I imagined myself riding along beside her, shouts lost to the wind, laughing, dismounting at some clearing deep within the forest - dry wood crackling underfoot - where we would build a fire, throw a heavy cloak over our feet and, as night approached, get slowly ragged together. I imagined her lying down beside me, smoking, her translator's sixth sense trying to decipher the muddle in my eyes, waiting expectantly for the first brush of bodies, lips... fingers entangling between us. And after warming each other with the embers of late-night words, collapsing at last into a cautious embrace - allowing our eyes and mouths to be nourished by the other's silver-crested lips, the plentiful fruits of the moon. And then falling asleep, with our palms open, oblivious to the broken cries of forest animals, her breath heavy against my chest, strands of her hair caught on my lips, my tongue...

  My gaze slipped from her eyes down to her neck. Did she know? Did my pupils dilate for her? She talked quietly, playing to me as if she were a chamber group, hushed, intricate, intimate, moving at times, but then light, spiritoso. As time raced by the bar became smokier, the walls closer, and even though light-headed and grasping at my thoughts, I was sure my heart was pumping hopelessly in tandem with hers. I forgot that I doubt everything, that such beautiful moments pass over me - I began to wonder what the night might have in store for us. And at the very moment, without my being prepared, something appeared at the window, fluttering in the shadows. I awoke from my dreamy kief. But too late, for she had seen it too. She became serious. She had to go.

  Why? I asked.

  Because I'm riding in the morning. I have to pick someone up.