Читать книгу No Stopping Train - Les Plesko - Страница 9

She had needle and thread, they had fish. They had torn clothes, Margit knew how to mend. Erzsébet poked a raw chunk of fish in a fire of mattress guts, newspaper scraps. Remnants of older fires littered the steps down the Danube’s steep bank. Sandor stoked char that smoked more than burned, there was ash on his lips. One drifty eye swam behind black-framed lenses, his other eye studied her, then they switched. Margit turned away, blushed.

Erzsébet laughed out loud. “You never know if he’s looking at you or some glorified future,” she said.

Margit kept her gaze on the shore where thin ice abutted the bank. Opaque as the sky, it gave the illusion of firm. “Maybe he sees the past,” Margit said.

“So you’re a philosopher,” Erzsi said.

The river encrusted two pigeons, a stump. Waves lapped a corpse, licked its face of split teeth and raw bone. Margit swallowed against its sweetness, like ice cream left out in which the vanilla has spoiled. It seemed almost to breathe, Margit thought. She wondered how it would be if hers was the body half sunk, what if she grew gills? Her hair casually turning aquamarine, the water’s chlorine in her lungs. Under the panel of ice, there’d be no thinking of food, only the hiss of her own body’s fumes, its bubbles escaped into green. If she stayed underneath long enough, she’d forget there had been a war, even land.

“Where’d you find fish?” Margit asked. She made herself turn from the corpse, its burst checkered shirt, its red-white-green boutonniere.

“Swapped a kiss,” Erzsi said.

Margit looked at her mouth, then Sandor’s.

“Not with him, he has nothing worth trading for it,” Erzsi said.

Sandor did not take offense. He offered Margit the stick with the fish. Margit burned her lips and her tongue and the roof of her mouth but she managed swallowing it.

“Blow on it first,” Sandor said. His glasses were mended with tape. Margit had an urge to tamp its loose ends but she was too shy and her fingers were greasy with fish.

“What are you, DPs?” she asked.

Sandor grinned. “Who isn’t?” he said. “In a philosophical sense.”

“He’s back from the front,” Erzsi said. She patted his shoulder like this might excuse whatever came out of his mouth.

Sandor leaned into her touch. “I found her all rags and bones in a camp.”

Erzsébet narrowed her eyes. “I told you, don’t talk about that.”

Sandor shrugged, poked the fish. Erzsébet pulled out a strand of her hair seemingly without noticing it.

“My father died at the front,” Margit said. She couldn’t say why but she wanted a way to get close, she felt anxious and nervous for them. “He said war was inevitable, that it couldn’t be helped,” Margit said.

“Nothing helps,” Erzsi said.

Margit watched her to gauge if this was just typical after-war cynicism. “Some things can,” she replied, though she couldn’t have said what these were.

Erzsébet took a lipstick from her coat. She twisted the tube, made a pout, smeared a round O on her lips, licked the edge of her mouth, her gestures flamboyant, outsized. “You haven’t fucked anyone just so you won’t have to starve, I can tell,” Erzsi said.

Margit tried not to show she felt slapped.

“Leave her alone,” Sandor said.

Erzsébet smiled. Her lipstick gleamed reckless against her wan cheeks, her orangy hair appeared perishable in the light. “You done that lately? Fucked to eat?”

Margit hugged herself. Behind her, pigeons beat wings on the steps. Someone swept, scrubbed red stains, stacked smashed bricks. On the opposite shore, boys played soldier with limbs torn from trees. The sun almost broke through the clouds, its porous warmth miserly across her shoulders and legs. What she had done or not done: it was wartime, after all. “Fucking’s not such a big deal,” Margit said, nonchalant.

Erzsébet bit a mouthful of fish, wiped its grease on her sleeve. “For you it’s abstract because you had a choice,” Erzsi said.

Sandor flapped his cuffs. “We’ve all become philosophers from the war.”

Margit took out her needle and thread. “I’m a seamstress,” she said. “I believe in the practical use of my hands.” She was making it up as she went.

Across the water, a boy raised his stick like a gun. Bang, you’re dead. Margit shivered, tugged Sandor’s crease straight, licked the thread carefully, more slow than was necessary, threaded it.

“Careful you don’t stick him,” Erzsi said.

Margit inhaled fish and fire, the body floating in cattails and muck, Sandor’s smoky scent. She smoothed his slacks with her slick open hand. “Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing,” she said. She almost believed it herself.