Athena Dobos

After the departure of the strange visitor the girl descended to the chair again and opened her book. She took out a plastic-wrapped sandwich from one pocket and a rounded-up notepad from the other. As she took some small bites she tried to achieve what she had been running up to at least a dozen times by now - the tantamount task to translate a Hungarian poem into English. It took some time for her to realize again that now was not the time to succeed. In fact, 'now' was not the time for anything to succeed in her universe. She finally tuck the automatically refolding notepad back to her pocket and threw down her pen. She would not translate those poems - so what. She could read them anyway.

Her wall of reverence was shattered by the arrival of the noisy movers an hour later. The chief mover, a Spanish-Indian half-breed planted himself in front of her with the expression reserved for the mentally disordered on his face. He was a large, muscular male, and when he put his hands on his hips Athena got the goose bumps.

'I thought you would not be packed. Would your diploma be pruned if you used your hands to do some manual work for a change? Sure we are here to take care of all instead of you!'

'As far as I know the library is still open today for visitors' retorted Athena.

'Open… yeah, sure. And how many visitors did you have? You could not start packing because of the people packed, huh?'

The pals of the goliath found this rather amusing for some reason and started chuckling.

Athena looked at them in a way that the next-of-kin of a death-row inmate looks at the firing squad.

'There WAS a visitor today', she exclaimed with tantalizing dignity.

'Of course, the cleaning staff came to dust the shelves…'

'No, I had a fine lady visitor.'

'A fine lady… yeah, sure. Ain't she had a name?'

'She did… though I do not know it.'

''Cause she was just a mirage.'

Athena decided to negotiate no further. She looked at the rows of shelves and books longingly as she spent almost a full year with them. Shaken by the thought of separation, she recited a Nagy László poem - in Hungarian, of course. She saw the movers stare at her, with their stance eased and their glare melting. A skinny half-breed took a step backwards.

'Relax', he said. 'Take it easy, no sweat. Get up your scooter and pull on the gas. You know your way home, don't you?'

'Home…yes, sure', replied Athena, not so sure. She was reluctant to leave them there in a moment when art had visibly touched their inner self. At last she turned around, emptied the contents of the desk drawers into her pockets and left with a sigh of goodbye.

Out on the street she approached her moped and opened the countless locks, chains, ropes and bars securing it with immeasurable patience. Then she mounted the moped and began to pedal. Though the engine failed to catch, it emitted promising sputters and burps from time to time. The chains thrown in the basket were rattling as in a cocktail shaker, which was an especially frustrating feeling for Athena, but the moped, together with its primitive security system, was a gift from her uncle, so she had to put up with it. Though she did not look around when pedalling, she knew exactly that the inhabitants of the town observed her with a pinch of uncertainty… they considered her as a strange one, or to be more precise: a complete idiot. She accepted this stigma and wore it like she wore her camouflage overalls. She actually had three complete sets of the camouflaged piece hanging in her wardrobe, with little more to choose from. She adopted this dress code in her college years as a mean to express her anti-militarist views. During those years she actually had some medals and decorations on her chest, serving also as further tools of protest. Her excellent psychological skills, though, suggested that such decorations would not be welcomed in the neighbourhood, so she choose to part with them.

To be completely honest, her whole being was not very much valued by the local citizens at all. Athena felt a pang of guilt because of this - the picture was clear, she was not doing her job the right way. She should have gathered loads of new readers and put the existing ones under the charm of her personality, but most likely she was not only lacking the charm but the personality aspect as well.

Fuelled by her doubts she devoured on the books, searching frantically for the volume that would enlighten her. Sad as it may be, writers did not give a damn to make the life of Athena Dobos easier. In certain books she found fragments of the essential knowledge that could answer the questions pressing on her innermost soul, but the One Book that could serve as her bible was never written - or if it was, the writer failed to send a copy for the attention of Athena Dobos, addressed to the Ends of The Earth.

Immersed in her depressing thoughts, Athena continued to pedal her moped. The sleepy street went on living its slow and measured life, not gearing up to speed by any means. The hotel, together with the small shopping mall opposite to it sat sleepily in the blistering sunlight. Someone else was also moving, movers were packing up furniture onto a truck in a relaxed pace.

No one particular was in a real hurry, except for the driver of the jeep appearing from the side street. Athena did not see the supersonic jeep, since, despite all her pedalling, the moped's engine failed to catch. The collision was unavoidable, though the excellent reflexes of the jeep driver commanded him to slam the brakes in the last instant. The moped chose the very moment to spring to life and Athena pulled on the gas.

The handles were suddenly ripped out of the hands of Athena, who began to look up to see what was happening. By that time she was already in mid-air, emerging gracefully from her seat. Her flight was interrupted by the windshield of the jeep. At the climax of her trajectory the crash put out all the senses of Athena Dobos.