As soon as they rounded the bend and lost sight of the people waving and hanging around by the bar, his heavy-as-lead sense of exhaustion vanished and he no longer felt any of the agonizing sleepiness that had practically glued him to the chair by the oil stove, because ever since Irimiás had told him something he had never even dared to dream of (‘All right, go and talk it over with your mother. You can come with me if you like…’) he couldn’t bear to close his eyes, and spent the whole night turning over and over in his bed with his clothes on so as not to miss the arranged dawn meeting; and now, when, through mist and half-light, he saw the road ahead arrowing into infinity his strength was redoubled and at last he felt ‘the whole world opening up before him’, and he knew that whatever happened he would stay the course. And however great the desire in him to give voice somehow to his enthusiasm he controlled it and unconsciously measured his steps in a more disciplined fashion, following his master even while burning with the fever of his election, since he knew he could only carry out the mission granted him if he responded not as a snotty-nosed kid but as a man—not to mention the fact that if he did speak without thinking the constantly irritable Petrina was bound to come out with some new mocking remark and he couldn’t bear to be humiliated before Irimiás, not even once. It was perfectly clear to him that his own best option was faithfully to copy Irimiás in every small detail because this way he was sure not to get a nasty surprise; first he watched his characteristic movements, his long easy stride, his proud bearing and raised head, the now challenging, now threatening movements of his raised right forefinger the moment before he made a significant remark and, most difficult, the falling cadence of his voice and the heavy silence between the distinct elements of his speech, noting the control of his resonant proclamations, and trying to capture something of the undoubted confidence that so generously permitted Irimiás to articulate his thoughts with such precision. Not for a moment did his eyes leave his master’s slightly stooped back and narrow brimmed hat pulled firmly down so as to prevent the rain beating against his face; and seeing that his master paid no attention whatsoever to him because his mind was clearly intent on something else, he too walked on in silence with an earnestly wrinkled brow, because by concentrating his attention like this he liked to think that he was helping Irimiás’s own thoughts reach their goal more quickly. Petrina scratched his ear in agony because, seeing the tense expression on his companion’s face, he himself did not dare break the silence, so, however he tried to give the kid a look to indicate that he should keep mum (‘Not a peep out of you! He’s thinking!’) he too felt constrained and was so desperate to ask questions he could only breathe with difficulty, making first whistling, then dry hoarse sounds as he did so, until eventually it became plain even to Irimiás that the heroic figure holding his tongue beside him was practically choking, so he made a face and took pity on him. “Go on, out with it! What do you want?” Petrina gave a great sigh, licked his cracked lips and started blinking rapidly. “Master! I am shitting myself here! How are we going to get out of this?!” “I must say I’d be pretty surprised if you weren’t shitting yourself,” Irimiás replied, annoyed “Would you like some paper to wipe yourself with?” Petrina shook his head. “It’s no joke. I’d be lying if I told you my sides were splitting with laughter…” “In that case shut your mouth.” Irimiás gazed haughtily down the road fading in the distance up ahead. He stuck a cigarette in the corner of his mouth and lit it without breaking step. “If I were to tell you that this was precisely the opportunity we had been waiting for,” he confidently declared, looking deep into Petrina’s eyes, “would that reassure you?” His companion flinched a little under his gaze then bent his head, stopped and thought a little, and by the time he had caught up with Irimiás again he was so nervous he  could hardly get the words out. “Wha…wha… what are you thinking?” Irimiás made no reply but continued gazing mysteriously down the road. Petrina was so tortured by anxieties that he tried to seek some explanation for the profoundly meaningful silence and so—despite knowing the effort to be vain —tried to delay the inevitable disaster. “Listen to me! I have stood by you all this time, through good times and bad times. I swear, if I do nothing else with my miserable life, that I will flatten anyone who dares to be disrespectful to you! But…don’t do anything crazy! Listen to me just this once! Listen to good old Petrina! Let’s forget it, forget it now, immediately! Let’s hop on the first train and get out! These people will lynch us the moment they discover the dirty trick we’ve pulled on them!” “No chance,” Irimiás mocked him. “We are taking up the demanding, indeed hopeless, cause of human dignity…” He raised his famous forefinger and warned Petrina, “Listen, jackass! This is our moment!” “God help us then,” groaned Petrina, seeing his worst nightmares realized. “I’ve always known it! I trusted…I believed…I hoped…and here we are! This is how it ends!” “You must be joking!” the “kid” behind them butted in: “Can’t you take things seriously for once?” “Me?!” squealed Petrina, “me, I’m happy as a pig in shit, you can practically see me drooling…” Grinding his teeth he looked up to the heavens and shook his head in despair. “Be honest with me! What have I done to deserve this? Have I ever hurt anyone? Have I spoken out of turn? I beg you boss, have some regard, if for nothing else, for these old bones! Take pity on these gray hairs!” But Irimiás was not to be swayed: his partner’s words went in one ear and out of the other. He just smiled mysteriously and said, “The network, jackass…” Hearing the word,  Petrina immediately perked up. “Do you understand now?” They stopped and faced each other, Irimiás slightly leaning forward. “It’s the network, that enormous spiderweb, as woven and patented by me, Irimiás …Am I getting this through your thick head? Has a light come on there? Anywhere?” Life began to seep back into Petrina, first as the faint shadow of a smile flickering across his face, then as a distinct sparkle in his beady eyes, his ears reddening with excitement until his whole being was visibly moved. “Somewhere…wait… Something rings a bell…I think I’m getting it now…” he whispered hoarsely. “It would be fantastic if…how shall I put it…” “You see,” Irimiás gave a cool nod. “Think first, whine later.” The “kid” was following at a respectful distance behind them but his keen ears helped him pick up their conversation: he hadn’t missed a word and because he had not the slightest idea of what they were talking about he quickly repeated it all to himself so he shouldn’t forget it. He pulled out a cigarette, lit it and, like Irimiás, slowly and deliberately pursed his lips and blew out the smoke in a faint straight line. He did not try to catch up but followed, as he had done, some eight or ten steps behind because he felt ever more hurt that his master had not chosen to “let him into the secret”, though he should have known that he—unlike the constantly complaining  Petrina—would have given his soul to be part of the plan: he had, after all, promised to be unconditionally faithful to the end. The tortures of jealousy seemed infinite, the bitterness in his soul growing ever more bitter since he was obliged to see that Irimiás thought him unworthy of a single remark, not one! His master ignored him altogether, as if “he simply wasn’t there”, as if the idea, “Sándor Horgos, who is not after all a nobody, has offered his services” meant absolutely nothing to him… He was so upset he accidentally scratched an ugly acne spot on his face and once they reached the fork at Póstelek he could bear it no longer but rushed to catch up with them, looked Irimiás in the eyes and, trembling with fury, cried: “I’m not going on with you like this!” Irimiás regarded him with incomprehension. “What was that?” “If you have any problems with me tell now, please! Tell me you don’t trust me and I’ll get lost right now!” “What’s up with you?” Petrina snapped. “Nothing in the world is wrong with me! Just tell me whether you want me with you or not! You haven’t said a single word to me ever since we set out, it was always just Petrina, Petrina, Petrina! If you’re so fond of him, why invite me along?!” “Now hold on a second,” Irimiás calmly stopped him. “I think I understand now. Listen hard to what I tell you because there won’t be time for this later… I invited you because I need a capable young man like you. But only if you can do the following: One, you only speak when I address you. Two, if I entrust you with anything you’ll do your best to get it done. Three, get used to the idea of not giving me lip. For the time being it is up to me to decide what I tell you and what I don’t. Is that clear?…” The “kid” lowered his eyes in embarrassment. “Yes, I just…” “No “I just”. Act like a man. In any case, I know what you’re capable of, my boy and I don’t think you’ll let me down…But enough now. Let’s get going!” Petrina gave the “kid” a friendly slap on the back but then forgot to remove his hand and propelled him along. “See here, you little piece of shit, when I was your age, I didn’t dare open my mouth when there were adults present! I fell silent, silent as the grave, if an adult was anywhere near! Because in those days there was no back talk. Not like today! What would you know about…” He suddenly stopped. “What was that?” “What was what?” “That…that noise…” “I don’t hear anything,” the “kid” said, puzzled. “What you mean you don’t hear anything! Not even now?” They listened, holding their breath: a few steps ahead of them Irimiás stood stock-still too, listening. They were at the Póstelek fork, the rain gently pattering, not a soul to be seen anywhere, only a few crows circling in the distance. It seemed to Petrina that the noise was coming from somewhere above him, and he silently pointed to the sky but Irimiás shook his head. “From there, rather…” he pointed towards the town. “A car?…” “Maybe,” his master answered, clearly troubled. They did not move. The humming neither strengthened nor weakened. “Some kind of plane, perhaps…,” the “kid” tentatively suggested. “No, not likely…,” said Irimiás. “But in any case we’ll take the shorter route. We’ll go down the Póstelek road as far as Wenkheim Manor, then we’ll take the older road. We may even gain four or five hours that way…” “Have you any idea how muddy that road is?!” Petrina protested in fury. “I know. But I don’t like this sound. It would be better for us to choose the other road. There we are sure not to meet anyone.” “Meet who?” “What do I know? Let’s get going.” They left the metalled road, and set off toward Póstelek. Petrina was continually looking back over his shoulder, nervously scanning the landscape, but didn’t see anything. By now he could have sworn that the noise was coming from somewhere above them. “But it’s not a plane…It’s more like a church organ…ah, that’s crazy!” He stopped, went down on hands and knees and put an ear to the ground. “No. Definitely not. It’s crazy!” The low hum continued, no nearer, no further away. However he searched his memory the humming wasn’t like anything he had ever heard before. It wasn’t the roar of a car or a plane or of distant thunder… He had a bad feeling about it. He swiveled his head left and right, sensing danger in every bush, in every scraggy tree, even in the narrow wayside ditch covered in frogspawn. The most terrifying thing was that he couldn’t even decide whether the menace, whatever it was, was close at hand or at a distance. He turned a suspicious eye on the “kid.” “Look here! Have you eaten today? It’s not your stomach rumbling?” “Don’t be an idiot, Petrina,” Irimiás remarked over his shoulder. “And get a move on!”…They were some quarter of   mile from the fork now, when they noticed something else beside the worryingly continuous humming. It was Petrina who first became aware of it: incapable even of saying a word, it was only through his eyes he could register the shock. His dull eyes started from their sockets, gazing at the sky, indicating the source. To the right of them above the marshy lifeless ground, a white transparent veil was billowing in a particularly dignified fashion. They hardly had the time to take it in before they were startled to see the veil vanish as soon as it touched the ground. “Pinch me!” groaned Petrina shaking his head in disbelief.

[...]

Published in 1985 and made into a seven-hour film by Béla Tarr that has by now attained cultic status, Satantango is Krasznahorkai’s breakthrough work. The novel takes place in a dilapidated, weather-beaten village, unnamed but unmistakably Hungarian, whose inhabitants eek out a miserable existence. “Their world is rough and ready, lost somewhere between the comic and tragic, in one small insignificant corner of the cosmos. Theirs is the dance of death,” writes George Szirtes, the translator of the novel. With the onset of autumn rains, life has come to a virtual standstill for the villagers when two vagrant characters arrive. Long believed dead, Petrina and the grandiloquent Irimiás are small-time swindlers who promise redemption while craving it themselves. In this excerpt they are joined by the kid, a character responsible for the suicide of his sister. As they march along in the battering rain they are surprised by a chilling apparition: the girl’s veiled corpse hovering in the fog.

Satantango, translated by George Szirtes, is forthcoming in February 2012
by New Directions. This excerpt is published by arrangement with
New Directions Publishing, New York,
Copyright © 1985 by László Krasznahorkai and
Copyright © 2012 by George Szirtes, all rights reserved.