István Kemény
Dear Unknown
Excerpt from the novel
The hip flask of spirits that was left over on August 21st was finished off under
rather unusual circumstances. The walk in the woods was disturbed by a
seemingly trivial incident: that summer the evolution of the human race truly
did come to a halt. A few weeks after man had walked on the moon. Just like
Doc once said in the toilets, though admittedly he was talking about human
progress, which is something slightly different. But back then when a person
talked about the evolution of mankind they were thinking about so-called
human progress, the speed of light, photon rockets, space exploration and
in the meantime a love life of happy promiscuity. In that context, Doc’s idea
that all that was on hold now of all times, at the very moment the Moon had
been conquered, was alarmingly revolutionary. He could not have known
then that from this point on history—at least in respect of the human race—
was on a downward path, in the direction of another species to which
humanity would give rise.
This inaugural moment was lived through by ‘Uncle’ Olbach’s crew on János
Hill on the western edge of Buda. The moment was not blatant, and the subsequent
decades seemingly passed in much the way as earlier ones had. The
difference amounted to nothing more than that new discoveries, from then on,
did not serve the goal that they ostensibly served, which is to say the prosperity
of the human race, but precisely its extinction, albeit in the most humane
manner possible. In truth, they served the quiet putting to sleep of the species
and experimentation with a more perfect new breed and the preservation of
human knowledge in that… I myself, in writing these lines in twenty-o-eight, am working on that process; that is what I make my living from. But don’t let
us race ahead of the late afternoon of August 21st nineteen-sixty-six.
The wonder juice worked on Ervin Gál just like any ordinary hooch would. It
turned a cowardly, awkward 32-year-old who had set off on a steep spiritual
decline into a brash daredevil; he took a third swig at the bottle and was already
throwing himself down in front of an oncoming car in order to act the tough in
front of Emma. He did not have a child yet, which is why he reckoned it would be
a nice trick if he only needed two bounds to leap across to the far side of the
highway in the wood and in front of the taxi, which was doing an amazing speed
when it appeared at the bend in the road. Had he made it across he would cock a
snook at Emma from the far side; but he didn’t, he fell prostrate in the middle of
the road. Its brakes screeching, the taxi came to a halt inches from Ervin Gál’s
head. The shouts of ‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re playing at, you
crazy fool!’ died down; silence fell. Two seconds must have passed by when the
taxi driver executed some strange manoeuvre and began to reverse back up the
slope to disappear in a trice at the bend, among the trees, in the direction from
which he had come. That was a startling response, alarming, nigh-on supernatural,
as if time itself had gone into reverse; yet it reminded one of nothing so
much as a simple case of hit-and-run, so ‘Uncle’ Olbach and Patai paid no
attention to the darker side of the incident. That is to say, they noticed; how could
they not? Indeed, both immediately jumped to the same thought: the cusp
between Pisces and the age of Aquarius, but, being both of them enlightened men,
they would have been ashamed to say that to one another’s face. And so, counting
as among the wisest men of their years, it was not then they noticed a change in
world epoch was taking place, but a good while beforehand, and in connection
with other events. Both of them had long, long ago been clear that their whole life
happened to coincide with an epochal change, and they would be entirely wiped
out. In short, they were well past recognising that, so the dawning of the age of
Aquarius did not even come to mind then and there, but they simply began
cursing in frank and forthright fashion the taxi driver’s parentage, and Ervin Gál,
staggering to his feet, escaped any serious dressing down.
In fact, his first words to Emma, as if he had not even blinked were:
“So who’s dead?”
He was still being dusted down. Being familiar with the dumb, old answer
to Ervin Gál’s dumb, old question, Emma, despite the fright she had been
given, riposted with the grin of a six-year-old:
“Louis Kossuth.”
[...]
István Kemény
is best known as a poet with eight volumes of poetry and a volume of essays to his
name. Kedves Ismeretlen (Dear Unknown, 2009) is his second novel. It is reviewed by
Tibor Bárány on pp. 119–120 of this issue.
