SATANTANGO by László Krasznahorkai
Translated from the Hungarian by George Szirtes
"profoundly unsettling" -James Wood
"In that case, I'll miss the thing by waiting for it." - FK
THE DANCES
THE FIRST PART
I NEWS OF THEIR COMING
II WE ARE RESURRECTED
III TO KNOW SOMETHING
IV THE WORK OF THE SPIDER I
V UNRAVELING
VI THE WORK OF THE SPIDER II
THE SECOND PART
VI IRIMIÁS MAKES A SPEECH
V THE PERSPECTIVE, AS SEEN FROM THE FRONT
IV HEAVEN VISION? HALLUCINATION
III THE PERSPECTIVE, AS SEEN FROM THE BACK
II NOTHING BUT WORK AND WORRIES
I THE CIRCLE CLOSES
Notes from book:
"Οne morning near the end of October not long before the first drops of the mercilessly long autumn rains began to fall on the cracked and saline soil on the western side of the estate (later the stink-ing yellow sea of mud would render footpaths impassable and put the town too beyond reach) Futaki woke to hear bells." Page 3
" and suddenly they were both at the door. Schmidt led with Futaki hobbling behind with his stick, the wind snapping at the edges of his coat as he held on to his hat to prevent it flying away into the mud and tapped his blind way in the darkness, while the rain poured pitilessly down washing away both Schmidt's curses and his own words of encouragement that eventually resolved into a repeated phrase: "Don't go regretting anything, old man! You'll see. It'll be cushy for us. Pure gold. A real golden age!" page 21
"He enters a field and the darkness swallows him. On either side of the highway there are gloomy patches of woodland as far as the eye can see, mud covering everything and, since the fading light blurs all clear outlines, consum-ing all traces of color, stable forms begin to move while things that should move stand as if petrified, so the whole highway is like a strange vessel run aground, idling and rocking on a muddy ocean. Not a bird is stirring to leave its mark on the sky that has hardened to a solid mass that, like a morning mist, hovers above the ground, only a solitary frightened deer rises and sinks in the distance ‐ as if the mud itself were breathing - preparing to flee in the far distance. " page 43
"so that the roads would become impassable and they would be shut off from the outside world, from town and from the railways; that the constant rain would turn the soil into one enormous sea of mud, and the animals would vanish into the woods the other side of the Szikes, into the narrow park of the Hochmeiss estate or into the overgrown park of Weinkheim Manor because the mud would kill off all forms of life, rot the vegetation and there would be nothing left, just the ankledeep cart tracks of the end of summer that had filled up with water up to your boot tops, and these pools and puddles of water, as well as the nearby canal, would be covered over with frogspawn and reeds and tangled weeds that in the evening or early twilight, when the moon's dead light reflected off them, would glitter all over the body of the land like a galaxy of tiny silvery blind eyes gazing up at the sky." Page 66
"Greatness is always compounded of simple things." page 96
"Because in Halics's eyes Mrs. Schmidt was the embodiment of summer, a never-to-be season unattainable to one acquainted only with "the ruins of autumn, a winter without desire" and a hyperactive but frustrating spring." Page 102
“If she could bear to live with a man as repulsive as that beetroot-faced halfwit Schmidt, why worry about the hazards of life with someone like Irimiás?! There was only one man she knew-Irimiás-who could thrill her so deeply in both bed and life; Irimiás who had more virtue in his little finger than all the men in the world put together, whose word was worth more than all the gold... In any case, men?!... Where were the men around here, except him? Schmidt with his stinking feet? Futaki with his gimpy leg and soaked trousers? The landlord- this thing here, with his potbelly, rotten teeth and foul breath? She was familiar with "all the filthy beds in the district" but she had never met one man to compare with Irimiás, before or since. "The miserable faces of these miserable people! What are they doing here? The same piercing, unbearable stench everywhere, even in the walls. How come I'm here? In this fetid swamp. What a dump it is! What a bunch of filthy polecats!" page 105
" what is behind me still remains ahead of me. " page 135
"But there is no such word as "can't" for Irimiás! And then of course you'd need luck, because there's no point in anything without luck! But luck comes with intelligence! And Irimiás's mind was sharp as a razor. Even back then, Futaki recalled with a smile, when he was appointed boss of the works, it was to him everyone ran in case of trouble, the managers too,because, as Petrina said at the time, Irimiás was "an angel of hope to nothing to hopeless people with hopeless difficulties." But there was nothing to be done with bottomless stupidity: no wonder he walked away in the end." Page 153-4
“Eventually everyone was resigned to the sense of helplessness, hoping for miracles, watching the clock with ever greater anxiety, counting the weeks and months until even time lost its importance and they sat around all day in the kitchen, getting a few pennies from here and there that they immediately drank away in the bar. Latterly he himself had got used to staying in the old engine room, only leaving it to call at the bar or round at the Schmidts' place. Like the others, he no longer believed that any-thing could change. He had resigned himself to staying here for the rest of his life because there was nothing he could do about it. Could an old head like his set itself to anything new? That was how he had thought but no longer: that was all over now. Irimiás would be here soon "to shake things up good and proper"... page 154
"I could be referring to our friend Futaki here, with his endless, depressing talk of flaking plaster, stripped roofs, crumbling walls and corroded bricks, the sour taste of defeat haunting everything he says. Why waste time on small material details? Why not talk, instead, of the fail-ure of imagination, of the narrowing of perspective, of the ragged clothes you stand in? Should we not be discussing" page 178
" before propping himself up on his elbows and making a survey of the bleak room. Doing so, he understood why he had, time and time again, put off the idea of making the decision to leave: he had rid himself of the one single security in his life and now he had nothing left; and, as before he hadn't had the guts to stay, so now he lacked the guts to leave, because having packed up for good, it was as if he had denied himself even greater possibilities, and had simply exchanged one trap for another." page 193-4. (Maybe Futaki)
" Irimiás replied after a long silence. "It doesn't matter what we saw just now, it still means nothing. Heaven? Hell? The afterlife? All non-sense. Just a waste of time. The imagination never stops working but we're not one jot nearer the truth" page 227
“ When, far above the unbroken layers of cloud, the moon rolled unob-served down the western horizon and they peered blinking into the gaping hole that had once been the main entrance or through the high window cavities into the frozen light, they slowly understood that something had changed, that something was not quite where it had been before dawn, and having understood this, they quickly realized that the thing they had secretly most feared had actually happened: that the dreams that had driven them forward the previous day were over, and it was time for the bitter awakening... Their first feelings of confusion gave way to a frightened acknowledgment of how stupid they had been to rush into "things"; their departure having been the result not of sober calculation but of an evil impulse, and that because they had, in effect, burnt their bridges, there was no chance now of taking the sensible course and returning home. It was dawn, the most miserable of hours: their stiff limbs were still sore and there they were, shivering in the cold, their lips almost blue, foul-smelling and hungry, struggling to their feet among the scraps of their possessions, forced to face the fact that the "manor" that only yesterday had seemed the fulfillment of their dreams, was today-in this pitiless light-simply a cold, relentless prison. Grumbling and ever more embittered, they roamed through the deserted halls of the moribund building, exploring in somber chaotic fashion the dismantled parts of rusted machinery and in the funereal silence the suspicion grew in them that they had been lured into a trap, that they were, all of them, naïve victims of a low plot to dump them there, homeless, deceived, robbed and humiliated. Mrs. Schmidt was the first that dawn to return to the miserable pros-pect of their makeshift beds; she sat down shivering on the crude bundles of their belongings and stared in disappointment at the light as it grew brighter... the memory of the few magical hours spent with "him" was not enough to allay her fear-especially now that it was plain that Ir-imiás had simply reneged on his promise-that all was lost now... It wasn't easy, but what else could she do: she tried to resign herself to the fact that Irimiás ("... until this matter is finally closed...") would not be taking her away, and that her dream of disentangling herself from Schmidt's "filthy paws" and taking her leave of this "stinking hole of a place would have to be postponed for months, perhaps years ("Good heavens, years! More years!") but the terrible thought that even that might be a lie, that he was now over the fields and far away in search of new conquest, made her clench her first. Page 237-9
“... There was no doubt about it now, they had to admit it was pointless to hang around any longer since Irimiás had promised to come "before daylight" and dawn was practically over. But not one of them dared break the silence or pronounce the appropriately grave words "We've been completely screwed over" because it was extraordinarily difficult to regard "our savior Irimias" as "a filthy liar" and "a low thief," not to mention the fact that what had happened was still something of a mystery... What if something unexpected had delayed him?... Maybe he was late because of the bad roads, because of the rain, or because... He sat back in his place and spoke in an unexpectedly trem-bling voice. "Listen... I have a feeling... that... we've been conned!..." Hearing this, even those who had been staring vacantly into space low-ered their eyes. "I tell you, we've been conned!" Kráner repeated, rais-ing his voice. Still nobody moved and his harsh words echoed menac-ingly in the frightened silence. "What's the matter with you, are you all deaf?" screamed Kráner, quite beside himself, and leapt to his feet.
... "He promised," Kråner ranted on, "he promised to build a new Eden! There! Have a good look! There's our Eden! That's what we've come to, damn the miserable scoundrel!" page 240
"Futaki was making halting progress, feeling close to collapse under the weight of his cases, and when he reached the first crossroad he dropped them, loosened the straps and, after a little thought, threw one of them into the ditch and went on with the other. He wandered aimlessly down street after street, from time to time putting his suitcase down so as to get his wind back, then off he went again with a bitter feeling... If he met anyone he would hang his head because he felt that if he looked into the stranger's eyes his own misfortune would seem even worse." page 256
"Get it into your thick head that jokes are just like life," Petrina grandly declared: "Things that begin badly, end badly. Everything's fine in the middle, it's the end you need to worry about." page 258
“He turned his head toward the east, once the home of a thriving industry, now nothing but a set of dilapidated and deserted buildings, watching while the first rays of a swollen red sun broke through the topmost beams of a derelict farmhouse from which the roof tiles had been stripped. 'I really should come to a decision. I can't stay here any longer.' He snuck back under the warm duvet again and rested his head on his arm, but could not close his eyes; at first it had been the ghostly bells that had frightened him but now it was the threatening silence that followed: anything might happen now, he felt. But he did not move a muscle, not until the objects around him, that had so far been merely listening, started up a nervous conversation (the sideboard gave a creak, a saucepan rattled, a china plate slid back into the rack) at which point..." page 281-2
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"Mrs Schmidt was a bird happily flying through the milk of theclouds seeing someonedownthere wavingather soshedes cendeda littleand could hear Mrs.Schmidtbawl-ing whyisntshecooking youscoundrelcomedownim mediatelybutshe flewoverher andshechir ruppedyou won'tdieof hun gerbeforetommor-row shefeltthe warmsunonher backsudden lySchmidtwas therebeside-herStopit immediatelybutshe paid noattention anddescendedfurther shedhavelikedtocatchaninsect theywerebeating Futakisback with-anironrod Hecouldntmove hehadbeenboundwithropestoatree
tenselyshefelthow theropewasstraining alongopenwoundacrosshis. thatwasdigginganenormousditch amancameover andsaidhurry back shelookedawayshecouldntbearit shewassittingonanexcavator shedugtheditcheverdeeper itkeptcollapsing she tri tr triedagain becausesyourenotgetting anymorefuel howevermuchyoubegmeforit butinvainandshecried asshewassittingattheengineroomwindow andhadnoideawhatwashappening itwasdawnandgettinglighter oreve ningandgrowingdarker andshedidntwantitall evertocometoanend she-justsatandhadnoideawhatwashappening nothingchangedoutside itwasneithermorningnoreveningitjust carriedondawnortwilight-whichever..." page 213-214
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