“You have no ambition,” the woman said to the boy in the narrow corridor, which they used for changing their clothes and of which there was only one, so they had to share. Sometimes the women used it for undressing, at other times the boys, the two of them, so it was inevitable that occasionally, however polite they were with each other, they could still catch a glimpse of the other’s half-naked body, and the woman, knowing all too well what a perfect body she had, never missed an opportunity like that. The boy lowered his eyes on some occasions, at other times he did not, he knew the undressing was not meant for him, those Venus-like curves did not reveal themselves to him.
But this word hurt him really bad. Especially, as it was because of the money, the woman thought the primary task of a man was to earn money, and for that “a man has to create himself.” The woman, besides the word ambition, always used this overused clichéd sentence. The boy actually rarely spoke to the woman, she was new here in the shop, and you could expect that she would not stay for long, she was not interested in books, she was too busy with her own beauty. This time they were asked to go somewhere together, during the day they were not in the shop, they started talking, and then this happened. The woman did not look at the boy when she said that sentence, she was adjusting one of her high heels, balancing on the other. Behind her short-cut hair the boy could see the tanned skin of her neck.
The boy turned away. He did not have a good day because, back in the morning, before he got on the bus with the woman, so in the morning he had to help the driver. The driver took the bends aggressively, he was fretting and fuming, swearing at everyone else on the road. The boy did not understand why, but before they left for lunch, the driver had told the boy that he would not get any of the tip they received from the deliveries the day before. Because it is his, meaning the boy’s, duty to help the driver deliver the books, that is his job, so he is not getting any of the tip. The boy did not understand it as they carried the heavy packages of books together, in most cases to offices on upper floors, and the driver himself offered half of the few forints they received as a tip.
It was not much money, the boy thought, it may have been twelve forints if that altogether, half of that is six, and you cannot buy much for that. Five ounces of boiled sausage, which is not bad, actually. Two slices of bread cost another sixty pennies, they do not always charge for the mustard, if they do, that costs only pennies, too. The small bottle of coke is the most expensive, really, three forints. Nevertheless, this also made the boy feel bad, although he laughed at it, how someone can be so obsessed with money.
It was always about money, he thought, he did not earn much, but it never really bothered him. That’s why the woman said what she said, because in the afternoon, on the bus, she asked what he wanted to achieve in his life, and he said that, to be honest, nothing besides university, he wanted to go to university.
“And a big house and a car? You don’t want to drive?”
“I’ve never been interested in that,” replied the boy. “I’m not interested in driving.”
“But everybody drives these days,” the woman was surprised and shook her head. Even that suited her because her earrings started dangling back and forth. She had small round blue earrings, they matched her blue eyes. Her dress was also blue, the boy recalled. This woman was really strange though, for she was beautiful, but he was not attracted to her for some reason. Maybe because she looked down on him so much.
“Have you got a girlfriend,” she asked, and he started to feel really bad in his sweaty work clothes he was wearing when he got on the bus with this beautiful woman, who of course had changed before they left, she had put on her best blue dress, probably all her dresses were blue, and this colour suited her and her dark brown hair so damn well.
They had to deliver some important documents to the headquarters, documents that could not be posted for some reason, and two people were needed to deliver them just to be safe, of course. It was always two of them who went to the post office too, just before it closed, to send the takings of the day they had in the till.
“Have you got a girlfriend,” the woman asked, and he did not have the courage to look her in the eye. He looked out of the window, watched the trees pass by and the houses, which were smaller and smaller here, and which were really talked down once by his best friend, or at least the boy thought he had been his friend.
They travelled together back then; his friend, meaning the guy he thought to be his friend, visited them for the first time, and he kept moaning on the bus about how far they, the boy and his parents, lived and what an awful area it was, where all the houses were only bungalows. The boy did not understand what his friend’s problem was, he had always lived here in this area since he was born, and those single-story houses were followed by ten-story block buildings, he lived on the sixth floor with his parents, but his friend, or rather the guy he thought to be his friend, talked down the block buildings, too. And he could not say anything to it, he just started sweating then, as he started sweating now when the woman in the blue dress asked if he had a girlfriend. It felt as if time had stopped on the bus, he thought of the verses he had written on the wallpaper at home, with tiny letters next to the Csontvary repro, which was also stuck to the wallpaper, words like the sun is setting in the sea and the train is taking me, I am following you and in your arms.
But he did not say anything out loud, just shook his head, and the woman laughed. “You don’t want a house or a car, and you’re only interested in reading. No wonder you don’t have a girlfriend. You have no ambition.” This is what she said when they took off the bus. And she said it again in the narrow corridor while adjusting her high heels. As she bent over, her skirt slid up a bit and let the contours of her thigh be seen. The boy knew that the woman, who was much older than him, was right, but he also knew, or rather felt, that time would prove him right later. But while the latter was just a weird and uncertain feeling, the first was a concrete thought. An expectation that almost everyone around him had, everyone pushed for it in that late- or rather mid-Kadar socialist era, when nineteen fifty-six and the retaliation that followed were still too close and those who did not leave the country were too busy filling themselves with the four-forint boiled sausage.
The boy was obviously bugged by many thoughts after this, and one day he decided to go and see the girl. At grammar school the girl once told him that she liked him, but the boy was so confused and even back then he was only interested in reading, which made him fall behind with his studies and did not have any sense of accomplishment, did not think much of himself, and the feeling of being inferior nestled deep in his heart, therefore he thought he had heard it wrong, it must be some kind of misunderstanding that someone likes him, and even if then what, what is the next step, what are you supposed to do, so the boy did not answer, just muttered something like it was alright, so nothing was alright because the girl thought that he did not like her even though that was not true, not true at all. But nothing happened except that once, when they were going home from the compulsory apple harvest, they lay down next to each other on the train, head to toe, and even though their hands did not, their feet touched.
He went to see this girl now; it was spring, little green leaves sprouted from the ends of the branches, and the bushes were all green and flowery, but he still had to drink a few rums to pluck up the courage and ring the girl’s doorbell. She did not let him in, of course, just spoke to him standing in the doorway, and made it clear how much she despised him because he was drunk and stank of alcohol. The girl already attended a university, he did not, he did not learn how to drive either, he was not building his own house and he only read in the cellar of the bookshop. Then what does he want anyway.
He could not remember what they had talked about, he could only remember that it was that evening when he had last seen the girl and never heard of her again. She never turned up at the reunions either, she might have sent a message once that she felt so alienated among them, she had nothing to do with them, and they should just leave her alone, she would never meet them again, even if… if…
He was slowly walking down the stairs, the girl lived on the third floor, and her hair looked like Jimmy Hendrix’s, just like his, they had that in common at least, if nothing else, he thought. He looked around on the empty street and wanted to scream at the top of his voice, he wondered what would happen if he did, how many people would jump out of their beds, or rather their armchairs, from in front of the TV. Blue light was cast onto the streets, the bluish-grey light of the era before colour TVs. Everyone was watching it. The light penetrated their bodies, and their souls did their dance of death on its rays.
