The Rebels Read Online Free PDF

quite right in the head, but the manner in which he performed his speeches was so calm and disciplined that, eye to eye, he did not feel he was talking to a madman any more than when listening to certain views of adults generally. In its proper context, in its own way, everything he said was sober and to the point. When he thought about it he couldn’t quite free himself of the uncomfortable feeling that there was something attractive in the cobbler’s obsession, something he couldn’t just skip over, get on with his life, and ignore. The cobbler fascinated him, but not like Ernõ did, or like Tibor, not even like the actor—nothing like them, quite the contrary in fact, but that contrary was irresistible to him. From time to time he felt obliged to seek the cobbler out.
    The cobbler was Ernõ’s father, and Ernõ was one of the gang. Indeed, Ernõ was one of the pillars of the gang. Each time they launched out on something afterwards it seemed to him that the silent and secretive Ernõ had somehow initiated it. He hadn’t known, of course, that the cobbler had actually hanged men at the front. Ábel was taken aback but felt no horror. He looked at the cobbler, at those hands that had furthered the process of “cleansing,” and neither hated nor shrank from them. It was beyond his comprehension: his mind could not grasp it. The whole thing had happened too quickly: childhood, the hothouse, Father’s sessions with the violin, then that something else that other people called the war, but which changed nothing in his life, and suddenly there he was, standing among adults, burdened with guilt and lies, hatching life or death schemes with the gang whose members a year, a day, or one hour earlier were as much children as he had been, living in a different, gentler, tamer world, knowing nothing of danger. They didn’t have time to bother with what the adults were doing. Their fathers went away, their elder brothers were called up, but these obscure and, as far as they were concerned, far from terrible but boring and everyday occurrences, indeed anything anyone did in those faraway places, were of no interest to them. He couldn’t begin to cope with excess knowledge, such as the knowledge that Ernõ’s father had hanged people. That was something to do with fathers and elder brothers. One heard of other things like that. The world he had known had smashed and he felt he was walking on its shards. It might be that in a few weeks or a few months he too would have to hang people. If Mr. Zakarka regarded this as a form of cleansing, that was his business. People cleanse themselves as best they can.
    The cobbler often employed the term “cleansing.” Ábel found it attractive but couldn’t understand what exactly he meant by it. The cobbler quoted the Bible. Ábel liked his turn of phrase. His manner of speech affected him like a kind of seductive singing, a singing that was off-key and full of missed notes, yet the voice was alive and full. It had something of the wayside preacher in it. At one point he had referred to himself as “a minor prophet” and lowered his eyes.
    Sometimes he had the feeling that the cobbler knew everything about them. He knew some surprising things about the town. He rarely left his miserable room, yet it was as though he had invisible emissaries: with a word here and a word there he let slip that he knew what was going on and kept his eyes on everything. He hardly ever spoke when his son was present. When Ernõ entered their poor quarters the cobbler would give a deep bow and fall silent. He would speak respectfully of his son even in his presence but he would never address him directly. Ábel watched him with amazement. Each time he came he had to restrain himself from pouring his heart out to him. Sometimes, just now in fact, as he was walking down the street, he felt an irresistible temptation to call on the cobbler and tell him everything. Perhaps I should ask him to turn the light off, he