TE23 Double Feature

The Hangman’s House

Andrea Tompa

with her, fulfilling her plan, but in any case Antal looked up menacingly in the direction of the laughter and there was silence at once, so he went on, X-A, goodness! her sister, well, what had happened? she wondered, and her sister was standing right in front of her, but Antal didn’t lower his voice but went on through the list as if he were uncovering a whole gang of criminals: X-A, Csapó , and then X-A, Palocsay—fighting , the inseparable friends! and the girls went shivering out into the middle of Square, the VIII-C Girl looked with interest at those in X-A, Palocsay’s lip was bleeding, her sister was holding in her hand a pocket torn off her uniform as Csapó had hung onto it, but Csapó was unharmed, looking very smart in the new, cyclamen-blue woollen coat which her mother had knitted, now smiling smugly as if the proceedings didn’t matter to her because she knew that she was leaving to go to Art school, and the fight had happened as follows: in chemistry Csapó had written to Palocsay that the third member of the gang 354

and DT had slept together and she’d become a woman , and so the two girls decided by letter to cut her out of the gang, not for sleeping with dt, after all Csapó wasn’t a virgin either, but for keeping it a secret and not telling them, whereas the three of them had sworn allegiance for life or death, and when in break neither Palocsay nor Csapó answered her sister when she asked whether they were going for a coffee to the Arizona in egyetem utca, she shrugged and went to look for Moravek—the fourth member of the gang, who was in XI-D—a pure romanian technical class—who knew all about it and furthermore had done it and boasted about it, and Moravek had told her straight that she’d let them down and ought to be ashamed, then turned her back and went into the lavatory for a ciggy and then her sister had gone for Csapó in the loo as she was just having a ciggy with that idiot Ambrus, who was a Catholic and whom she never talked to, even though Csapó was a Catholic as well, but it suited her, when finally in came 355