"School of Senses" "I, Lili Csokonai made my entry into this world in the nineteen and seventy-fifth year of Our Lord," "on the seventeenth of September, at dawn of day, in the grey lowlands of Csepel, and has remained faithfully faithless in the true Roman religion ever since and will remain so forever." "My blessed mother, Mistress Kata Vérdai was summoned to a better life by God at the very same hour of my birth, and this brands me as her murderer, though I am innocent of intent and will in this matter." "My loving father." "Master Peter Csokonai gave up his ghost also on the same seventeenth day of the month of Saint Michael, anno domini nineteen and seventy-nine." "In the thirty-fifth year of his sojourn in this world he fell the tree of his life with his own hand in bitter sorrow, for which may his lot be the eternal light of that next world of the blessed." "Previous to that day, I had seen just four springs, four summers, autumns and winters." "From then on I have always had to resort to the crutches of dissimulation." "My life as an orphan made me into the semblance of slow waters, out of which I surfaced only after fourteen great floods." "I 'd rather live in Brazil because life is good there." "Fancy a drop of the hard stuff'?" "I'd prefer tea." "The Brazilians are all mad." "It was in the spring of the year nineteen and ninety-five when I met my husband," "Mérton Kéri, my loving man." "Yes." "And you said in your talk that in the USA fibre-optics cables are now being laid faster than the speed of sound." "Isn't this an exaggeration'?" "No." "On the contrary..." "I calculated the speed myself." "And how did you do it?" "On the basis of specialist literature'?" "Yes, of course." "All I had to do was to divide the length of the cables laid by the annual number of seconds and the resulting figure..." "Let's stop for a moment." "This was the first moment of our shared history and by this moment fatet urned both of us into new beings." "Why are they mad?" "Brazilians?" "Because they live in the South." "Just like yourself." "I'm a Greek." "Only Southern people like God truly." "People in the North want to be loved by God." "And this is the trouble with them." "They said it on the radio that we are going to have another heatwave." "Well, people here don't know a thing about heat!" "Forty degrees in the shadow: that's real heat!" "Okay, I'm bringing you some tea." "There is always a favourite song, and then the same song again and again." "I watch the night turning into day, the landscape becoming visible." "Pure magic." "Do you know what I mean, Lili dear'?" "Humming-top!" "What?" "What humming-top'?" "You always ride it easy." "Why?" "Because you have friends everywhere." "You have a flat of your own." "You have a wife!" "What of it'?" "Everybody has a wife." "Then leave me alone, will you'?" "Go to hell!" "I don't want any of this!" "Of course you do!" "You idiot!" " And then he looked at me and said could I bring him a clothesbrush?" " And?" " And I looked him into the eye and said I'll get it in a sec." " And?" " I got it for him." " And did anything happen?" " Nothing, really." " Then what makes you think he fancies you?" " This is something you simply feel." " You can't be such an idiot!" "Ifs only a toy gun!" "I'm a virgin still." "Ultimately everybody is a virgin, don't you think so'?" "Because I refused to let an alien body enter mine." "And one thing is certain: without exception, everybody is an alien to you." "As there was no love in my heart I had no idea whether I was beautiful or not." "I'll be back soon." "Oh, stop this racket, will you?" "I'm leaving now." "When will you be back?" "Never." "Thai' s good." " What's happening?" " Isn't she coming back?" "I started writing this a good quarter of a year ago." "Whether my writing is trendy or outdated, I have no fear of confessing." "Words are my sturdiest support..." "A shawl threaded with silver." "The way the coolness of the evening wrapped around us." "By then, I was a woman." "I felt content and languid." "We were like one body, like the body of my own body." "I pressed the beautifully delicate hand of my lord and husband to my own body." "Mist had cleared from the lake." "There were swans on the water." "We counted seventeen of them." "A prime number, Kéri said." "And what is a prime number'?" "A number that can be divided only by itself and by one." "The only thing that matters, Kéri added, is the thoughts one has in the last five minutes before one falls asleep." "Five is also a prime number, I remarked, after some weak cogitation." "And I thought five being a prime number was a good sign." "What is it now, Naxos'?" "Dinnertime." "I can tell the woman to prepare a meal if you want something to eat." "I want nothing to eat." "Can I bring it now'?" "Did you like it'?" "Afterwards it always feel bad and cold." "What's wrong with that'?" "Nothing is wrong with that." "Except I can't take a bath on my own." "This is the only thing that's is wrong." "Tomorrow, Lili dear, tomorrow." "Naxos, your bloody whore!" "What's wrong, Lili dear'?" "You've forgotten about it." "About the chair." "Okay, what shall I get for you, Lili darling?" "Yes, this is not a unique piece, other people have something like it, but it is silver!" "Is it your birthday today?" "This is something, isn't it'?" "I'm fifty-two." "And this is the first silver cigarette case I've ever had." "I find mornings very hard to bear these days." "I drink far too much of the hard stuff." "It's a present from my wife." "She is a good woman." "I think of God all the time." "He should think of me one of these days." "She is a very good woman." "Yesterday she wanted to go to the beauty parlour and get the hair on her leg removed." "I didn't let her do it." "I like hair." "Hairy legs, that is." "Ifs only for two days!" "You must understand!" "I don't want to understand it!" "You know howl hate scandal." "I don't want to understand it!" "It's only two days, okay?" "I don't want to understand it!" "Where is my jacket'?" "Give it back to me, please." "I don't want to understand it!" "I don't want to understand it!" "Give it back, will you?" "I don't want to understand it!" "I don't want to understand it!" "Give it back!" "Give it back!" "I don't want to understand it's me." "Listen, you go and register as tenant of the ﬂat right away..." "He gave reason for suspicion when he departed and was gone for two days to put in an appearance at home!" "From one woman he went to another." "Why is the man I love is so prudent in everything'?" "Why should he care so much for his happiness, why should he record every moment of his life with such obsessive care'?" "Why did he put on this act of fooling when he left'?" "Why did he say I should behave myself, and make sure I don't go astray while he is absent'?" "Hello!" "Actually, I asked her to take care of you." "And who is taking care of you?" "She was about forty." "Her three children were all violinists." "Her husband was a ski instructor, away on business." "Oh, we had a laugh about that, about a ski instructor being away on business in the heat of the month of May..." "May is the month that tempts you with love." "So is April." "Will you be my snowplough in May?" "Here's to love!" "To love!" "How beautiful hands you have!" "My hands?" "Hasn't anybody ever told you that?" "Are they really?" "Show your hand to me!" "Wonderful!" "Your nails, your fingers!" "Wait, wait!" "How long it is!" "And your skin!" "Wonderful!" "It's so nice you're saying these things!" "So my hands are beautiful." "Let me see your hand now!" "Oh, yours is beautiful, too!" "How soft and warm your palm is!" "Let's have a swim." "I dread the thought of waiting." "I like the present, I fear the future." "Even if I will like it as present when I get there having no choice in the matter." "She was walking ahead of me, her head lowered deep." "I found both of these things irritating." "Lili!" "Lili!" "I wrote down my phone number here..." "Will you phone me'?" "Thank you." "How can you stop the car like this?" "Don't shout at me like this!" "Don't shake your fist at me like this!" "Of course I knew that..." "Come on, Lili, come!" "Is this where we're going to live together'?" "Congratulations!" "What for'?" "For getting Marci." "Oh, for that." "He told me it was over two months ago." "Only I haven't been able to move out so far." "But it's definitely over." "Hey, who is she?" "It doesn't matter." "You know he is married, don't you'?" "Yes, I do." "Why, do you know her?" "Yep." "What's she like?" "Is she a blonde?" "Yes." "A gorgeous blonde." "Great." "I still have to find a new guy I can move in with." "I'd stay here till then." "For me, there was no way of loving Mari." "She was like a mirror, and it was myself I loved in its reflexion." "As she never made me jealous or envious of her I was able to think of myself tenderly." "She sold pieces of her attire to me for almost nothing;" "pieces she may well have been given by Keri." "I'm going to sing the vocal because it needs a higher voice." "Because it's never been nice..." "Because it's never been nice!" "Because it's never been enough!" "Because it's never been enough." "Because it's always been hurting..." "Because it's always always been hurting And you've never been around for long You should put the safety belt on." "Oh, leave me alone!" "Now the next bit." "Because it's never been nice..." "Click!" "Click!" "Because it's never been nice." "Click!" "Click!" "Because it's never been enough!" "Now let's have it all over again!" "Because it's never been nice." "Because it's never been enough." "Click!" "Click!" "Because it's always been hurting." "Click!" "Click!" "And you've never been around for long..." "I liked working." "I knew everything about dirt, its nature, its slow spread." "And I waged an angry war of total destruction on it." "And when I saw the retreat of dirt, I had this vision of order visited upon me, thinking that due to my efforts the Kingdom of God has gained some foothold in this world." "Something wrong, dear?" "Something wrong?" "Yes, something is wrong." "The in thing today is the World Wide Web, this electronic cobweb around the globe, which is the most expensive service of the Internet." "They are spending millions on it" "Hello, Lili!" "I've some big news." "I'm moving out." "Please please take me there!" "Are you going now'?" "You could stay and help with the packing." "I'm leaving early in the morning." " I'll go and see him!" "Go to where?" " You don't now where he lives." "But you do, don't you'?" "I'm going to Vienna." "Who knows, the guy might marry me." "Don't you want to know who he is?" " Let's get moving!" "Come!" " What for?" "Throw it in!" "Go ahead and throw it in!" "That's it." "I got this one also from him." "Want it'?" "I'm in love with him." "Congratulations." "I'm no longer in love with him." "He loves me, too." "Did he tell you he loved you'?" "Yes, he did." "He never told me he was in love with me." "Does he love his wife, too'?" "You're really beautiful." "What of it'?" "I'm going to steal him from you." "As a matter of fact, I've already had." "Do you know this?" "What do you want'?" "You'd better stop pretending you don't understand what it's all about." "Are you mad?" "I'm pregnant with Márton's child." "We're going to have a baby." "A wonderful baby..." "The Saturday issue of the advertisement paper "Express" appeared in a format smaller than usual because the designer of the software, paper uses halted the program by phoning in a coded instruction." "We managed to reach Mr. Mérton Kéri, the general manager of the company that designed the program, here in the concert hall of the Academy of Music, where as the chief sponsor of a concert of electronic music..." "Excuse me." "As the sole sponsor of the concert..." "Yes." "Sorry." "As the sole sponsor of the concert..." "I'm happy to announce that the conductor of the concert tonight will be a computer or, rather, our software that is running on the computer here." "The software, though we had some assistance from the USA in designing it, is the result of a long process of" "Yes, but my question is about something else." "Do you think that halting the computer was perfectly legal, an act within the law?" "Look, as the general manager of Computer Technology Limited I can assure that..." "I'm pregnant!" "Do you hear'?" "We're going to have a child!" "I love you, Mérton!" "I love you!" "Sorry about that." "Secondly, as a matter of fact..." "This woman is stark raving mad!" "We must tell everybody that we love each other and we're going to have a wonderful baby!" "I don't even know this woman." "Secondly, as a matter of fact we announced that..." "Get the hell out of here!" "I want to be here." "I told you to get out of here." "Is that clear'?" "Okay, get moving!" "I'll drop in and talk things over in a day or two." "Get moving!" "I don't want to go." "For Chrissake, what is it you want then'?" "You're driving me mad!" "...which is a component of the motherboard of every DX 2-system computer." "Sincerely yours, signature, etcetera..." "Could you call back when you're ready?" "Fine." "Thanks." "You know you will have to have an abortion, don't you?" "I love you!" "Is... is it okay then'?" "I love you!" "Listen, I'll take care of everything..." "I'd like to give birth to a child." "To give birth to a child of yours!" "Sorry, but this is impossible." "No way." "For God's sake, no!" "Get it into your head, will you!" "No way." "Whether in the body or in the soul, I feel nothing." "A little pain, perhaps." "And the impropriety that other persons rummaged in my inside." "It was only a quick snip, though." "As if people had been playing some silly new game of snip-snip-snip in there..." "Who were they?" "And who am I?" "Who?" "A puny master of life and death!" "I'm not holding it against you but it pains me to no end that I cannot love you the way I could and would." "Yes, Oh, my poor man, poor Master Kéri!" "Oh, my waning love, oh, my fickle lover!" "A black beast is sneezing in its dark velvet." "A black box is galloping across the alien land." "It's the first time I travel in a carriage that is for sleepers." "We are three." "We jolt, we rock, we fidget." "A wakeful pipe dream, rotten rest." "And then, after some noise, a hand cusps my buttocks, explores them, then it takes off to visit other parts, pries the hem of my damp knickers away from my flesh, but spends only a breath of time in there as if it were only checking." "I feel half sorry for the owner of the hand, a weak creature, dead tired..." "In the morning I take a look at my travel companions, at the man and the woman." "Which of the two did it'?" "I look at their hands." "They're both polite persons with quiet good manners." "I have only one body." "Do you realise how awful you look this way?" "I thought I looked great." "Don't I?" "You don't." "What is this for'?" "It's because you like blondes." "You must be out of your mind!" "Why'?" "Your wife was a blonde, Mari is a blonde..." "You're driving me mad!" "Okay, let's go." "You sit here and wait till I'm back." "When will you be back?" "Sooner or later." "Excuse me." "Where is the lady's?" "The toilet?" "Par Ia, mademoiselle!" "I go to the female section." "I lift it up." "I pull it down." "I sit." "I wait." "The outer door opens." "I hear somebody breathing." "Then silence." "In my head I stage what I'm going to go through, guessing where I would put my leg up, which corner of the wall I would lean against or get a hold on." "It'll be a wonderful experience, I say to myself grinning at the tiles of the ﬂoor." "Black, white, black, white, yes, yes!" "At this very moment a sudden bursting of dams: blood starts flowing out of my inside, clots of blood the size of walnuts." "That's what I am, those dark clotted chunks of blood." "My monthly curse arrived in time, when it had to." "What a piece of bad luck that I have only one body!" "Look, you should have told me it was the wrong time." "Not because you..." "Why?" "You didn't mind." "I do now." "Get it'?" "What would the hotel people say if we bloodied the sheets?" "Eh'?" "Who cares about them?" "What'?" "Look, I do care." "You know I..." "I always stay here." "I work here, you know." "And this matters a great deal to me." "All right." "Let's go out, buy me a present." "Let's do some shopping or go for a walk, but let's do something." "Go fuck your club-footed auntie in Siberia!" "Have some fun with her instead of bothering me!" "Or with your boiler-suited, smelly-footed father!" "Koniets!" "My husband won't be back till Tuesday." "Skiing again?" "Yes." "Something like that." "Will you really come'?" "Yes." "My whole weekend is free." "While on the way there, I imagine every word, every movement, every person involved, myself and her." "What is going to happen?" "Will it be good or bad'?" "When and where is the limit?" "How about strangling her'?" "Making her suffocate to death'?" "In the thicket of acacia the corpse was found with her severed sexual organ in his mouth." "Cause of death: suffocation." "Shee took my secret and shame with herself." "I must take my knickers off." "Standing on one foot, I'm trying to keep my balance." "I take hold of her shoulder." "She puts my knickers into her pocket." "And we walk on, for long." "She keeps her hand under my skirt all the time." "She watches my steps." "She listens to the noise my thighs make as they rub against each other." "She sticks her index finger between them." "I'm a tangle of moss floating in greenish blue water." "I'm saturated with flavours, and I'm frightened, then triumphant, and finally coagulated as churned butter." "I notice that my body changes." "My hair is softer, its black mellows into auburn, my lips of love lose some of their rosy hue, my buttocks become softer." "This is one side of the matter." "On the other side, my legs are long, my thighs elegantly shaped, my lips full, my belly and bosom silky." "This makes up for the ten years I lose on the other side." "A deer springs up behind the bush." "Its eyes are like human eyes." "I'm calling it to me." "The deer is very cautious, it doesn't trust me just as I don't trust it." "I start crying." "The deer takes pity on me." "Comes up, presses its warm nose against my body." "Or is its nose cold?" "I love you, I tell the gentle creature." "Silence ensues and in the whistle of acacia leaves the deer says, in a voice of glum seriousness:" "You have only one body!" "On the twenty-third day of July, in the small hours of the morning the candle of my life was nearly snuffed." "My lord and husband, Master Mérton Kéri's self-propelled witch-cart speeded up and crashed into a huge oak, sending me flying like a bird, then falling like a weighty rock." "He survived the accident unscathed." "He came to, then took me up and carried my listless body to where other people could give him help." "Thank God, I was lucky enough: they brought me back to life in the hospital." "But they had to take off both of my legs." "Since then I've been confined to a chair with four little wheels." "Why?" "Don't waste your time with me." "I like boys, dear, that's why." "Say something, please." "Say something." "You fucking, no good, whore!" "What are you laughing at now'?" "Eh?" "Why are you laughing?" "Stop it, will you'?" "Stop laughing!" "Exploded poppies in my mouth." "Winter blooms out of summer." "My face is black." "Coldness oozes into the woods." "Dusty shadow on snow." "My crotch is black." "Smell of petrol: a slap across your face." "I pulsate, a field of wheat." "My man is black." "My arms wide open." "A cross, mud, a lump of earth." "The sky is underneath." "My solace is black." "He herded me out of his life." "But nobody can do that to me!" "To give him an excuse:" "I would have never thought anybody could leave me." "Me." "Who was the plenitude of love incarnate." "And of course he knows this full well." "I don't ask him to leave his family." "I don't ask him to fall out of love with his wife." "I ask for nothing except him." "Everything could be as you want everything to be." "I'm even willing to share you with others." "Who would wish for more than that'?" "Good morning!" "Will you take me downstairs, Naxos'?" "I get dressed and then we can go." "Want me to fetch...'?" "To fetch a towel?" "Do you'?" "And a drop of the hard stuff'?" "And you want me to take you downstairs for a walk?" "Good, I'll take you downstairs." "Cheers!" "A mains pipe is burst on the second floor." "Hey, Naxos, get moving!" "Why the hurry'?" "Is it so urgent?" "Yes, it is." "Leave everything there and come to me!" "Stop giving me instructions, will you?" "After all, I'll have to pack everything." "Go back to your ﬂat." "To your wife." "I know she doesn't like you pushing my wheelchair about." "The burst mains, you know." "I'll be back..." "in an hour." "Okay?" "I want to marry Mérton Kéri." "And I want to marry myself." "And I want to marry my mother and, at long last, my father." "Because I want to come into the possession of a little happiness in some way or another and attain heavenly succour by holy matrimony..." "Oh, father!" "Give me a straight answer, say yes or no!" "I'm stranded." "I need advice and help!" "I've been asking you for such a long time, and you've been promising an answer for such a long time..." "I want to know: does the life I live please God?" "Speak to me!" "Why don't you love me, my sweet little Lili'?" "We went to a pig-killing feast, my father and myself..." "I stuck my hand into the opened belly of the pig, among the steaming, wriggling, warm bowels..." "They had to drag me away from the carcass." "Warm bowels are good, they are like Brazil." "My life is a messy tangle." "It is a cowardly life." "It is not governed by the vulnerability of love." "A life of comfortable duplicity." "I'm a scheming, lecherous nun." "Love?" "Good." "But what is love anyway?" "Another convention." "I destroy things wherever I tread." "I destroy under the seal of love." "Who else do we love except ourselves?" "I'm casting about for excuses, a shrivelled old ham actor, that's what I am." "Father dear!" "I will not be lax in consummating my love for you with due obedience!" "Try to understand it!" "It's over." "Never!"