Tranquility Read Online Free PDF

land and the laborers tilling it were diminishing, as the half-eaten leg of mutton shriveled into chicken rump bought for a fortune on the black market, as the hunting horns faded out and the cry of hungry children increased in volume, as the yelping offoxhounds subsided and was replaced by the clatter of sewing machines on which shirts were mended, and just as the blood with which the pelican fed its young turned to water, that is how the wealth and power of bygone days increased in one’s memories. So much so, that my mother took to the stage as Juliet, unashamed, as if she were the secret owner of half of Greater Hungary, and she followed the more exciting moments of nationalization by putting together all the bits of gossip she heard in the theater’s snack bar. Which is to say that, like many others, she also received a brief visit from the nationalization team, but in the room she resided at the time, as a subtenant, they found nothing of worth except a first-class violin, and at the time, the working class had no use for a violin made by an Italian master. Moreover, the youthful Miss Weér kept sitting on the kitchen stool, casting occasional bewildering smiles at the three nationalization officials, whom her breasts, outlined alluringly by her silk dressing gown, had nearly jolted out of their beastly role, making them swallow hard, very humanly. Then, stammering, they begged her pardon for the inconvenience, while my mother kept silent about half of Greater Hungary.
    To sum up: by the time I acquired the ancient coat of arms, in the form of a fountain pen’s trademark, the telephone book had become the most reliable family tree. And I obtained not only the Budapest phone book, but also those of the rest of the country. I stole them from phone booths; if they were chained to steel brackets, I cut out the W page with a razorblade. She considered these her favorite gifts, at least during the time we still bothered to give gifts to each other. Sometimes I would hide a promising phone book until Christmas, and she would write to every single Weér that appeared in it. Some of them answered her, but usually to inform her that they had Hungarianized their name from Weérhagen or that their grandfather’sname was simply Vér, but with a name like that, which means blood, one had better not open a private health clinic. Interestingly enough, those whose ancestors were born with the name Weér never responded; the ones who learned about the more exciting moments of nationalization not in the theater’s snack bar and for whom the displacement of undesirable persons was not a fairy tale heard from a third party. They were the ones who did not intend to correspond with never-seen relatives or with eight- or ten-times-removed cousins, something I began to understand in time, though my mother understood it less and less.
    They must have changed their address, Son.
    Yes, Mother, their address must have changed more than once, but now you should really go to bed, it’s past four in the morning, I said, and when I saw that wealth kept increasing even in its demise and the former estate of the Weérs kept expanding by a few counties every year, I began, on my own, to chop up this phantom country, this cancerous giant tree. Very carefully, at first, because this is the well-known case of cutting off the branch on which one sits, but then I took an ax to it and for years I hacked away at the branches reaching into nothingness and the roots clinging to wishes and desires, until I arrived at the only palpable reality: my sister’s superb master violin.
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    The firewood was wet, even with the help of kerosene we had a hard time getting the fire started in the potbelly stove. After the third or fourth attempt, the priest went outside for another batch of newspaper, while I took a closer look at the bookcases made from the weapon racks of the workers’ militia. Finally, we