THE THICKET FOREST around the running track was silent. The shadows of the branches disappeared into the deepening dusk. A pair of light-coloured trainers struck the sawdust of the running path with dull, regular thumps. Her legs pounded the earth, their strong, pumped muscles working efficiently, her pulse beating at the optimum rate. She didn’t need a heart-rate monitor to feel it; she would never buy one. She knew her body well and knew what it required at any given time. After the first kilometre the initial stiffness began to recede, her legs felt lighter and her breathing steadied, and her running achieved that relaxed rhythm which could carry her to the ends of the earth.
It was easy to breathe in the damp, oxygenated air, fresh from the rain. Her lungs drew it in and pushed it out again like a set of bellows that today, at least, wouldn’t be tired. Sweat had covered the full length of her body. If I stopped now and stripped off, she thought, I’d glisten like the damp forest. Her toes felt warm. She had long since taken off her gloves and stuffed them in her pockets, though her hands had felt the chill when she’d set out. The sweatband round her head absorbed the droplets trickling down into her face, and her thick dark head of hair was soaked at the root. Her feet hit the ground in steady paces; the world shrank around their monotonous rhythm, and her thoughts seemed to empty themselves for a moment. There was just one step after another, step, step, step, nothing more in this malignant world.
She felt a twinge in her knee. Her breathing turned shallower, faster; she was becoming tired after all. She slowed down a notch, just to have the strength to walk up to the front door. Not far now. She could make out the figure of the fallen tree that marked the start of the final straight. As it had fallen, its thick, foreboding trunk had taken a couple of slender birches with it. Now its roots jutted into the air like a troll. She’d often thought how easy it would be for someone to lurk behind them.
On another running track the stillness was broken only by the rhythmic hiss of a solitary jogger’s tracksuit. The forest was silent, not even the rush of the sea could be heard. Surely the birds haven’t left already. Perhaps they’ve already gone to sleep, the jogger thought just as a crow squawked right next to her ear. The noise took her by surprise, her heart jumped with fright, and immediately afterwards came the sound of rustling, as though the branches had been pulled away and flipped back into place. Someone was moving through the woods. No, not someone, something – a bird, a hedgehog, an insect. For crying out loud, what kind of insect would make a sound like that? A fox, perhaps, or a badger, forests are always full of different creatures; there’s no need to be frightened, she nervously repeated to herself, trying to calm herself but not really succeeding. She sped up and started running too fast. All the crises in her life were whirling in her head in a single cacophonous clamour, and she ran to try and empty them from her mind; all summer until this very evening she’d been running like one possessed. If only term would start again soon, she thought, I can get away from here, away from the past. This she had repeated to herself since the day the letter of acceptance to the university had arrived. Still, she felt as though she might never make it.
She was already on the second floor by the time the downstairs door clicked shut. This was her final spurt: up the stairs to the fifth floor at full speed, and though it felt as though her calf muscles were ablaze, she knew she’d make it. Tonight’s run was one of the gentler ones in her weekly regime, less than an hour’s light jogging at a comfortable pace, unadulterated pleasure and enjoyment. She pulled off her sweaty clothes and threw them in a pile on the hallway floor, stepped into the shower, turned on the tap and let the warm water sprinkle down across her ruddy, pulsing skin, washing the beads of sweat and foaming soap down into the network of drains beneath the city, now the concern of the workers at the water purification plant. The idea amused her. As she stepped out of the shower, she wrapped herself in a thick white dressing gown, twisted her black hair into a towel, cracked open a can of beer and went out on to the balcony for a cigarette. Nothing but bleak concrete and floor upon floor of dark windows. Suburbia. What the hell had made her want to move back here? She laughed out loud at a suburb that, true to form, was trying to trick her. Now it was pretending to be asleep, but she knew it for what it was. She had seen everything that lay hidden behind those concrete walls. Thankfully after a good run it didn’t bother her, and strangely enough neither did the challenges of tomorrow. Endorphins were racing through her body, turning her nerves into an amusement park, and the feeling of exhilaration remained with her until she went to bed. Jó éjszakát, she whispered to herself and drifted to sleep.
Gasping for breath, the runner jogged through the now silent, darkening woods. Raindrops glistened on the dark-green foliage, water that hadn’t made it to the ground. Behind her came a loud crackle. It must be a moose, she thought, or a fox, but still didn’t quite believe it herself.
She scanned the area around her. It’s too quiet, she thought, unnaturally muted. She cursed to herself that she’d run so fast, couldn’t run another step, and though she was genuinely afraid and wanted to get out of the woods quickly, she had to slow to walking pace. This is no way to burn fat, she thought. It’ll only turn to lactic acid, and tomorrow I won’t have the energy to do anything. But I have to get my body into shape. I must. Everything had to change, she kept reprimanding herself, trying to take her thoughts away from the threatening woods around her, whose shadows seemed to be watching her. This is crazy, she muttered under her breath. I’m going crazy – and it serves me right. I just need to forget everything, put an end to all this sin and lick my wounds. What bloody stupid clichés, at least try to come up with something original. Her voice was drowned out by the sound of rustling from the trees.
Breathing heavily she walked the final half kilometre back to the car, feeling as though she didn’t have the energy, that the journey would never end. Just as she made out the shape of the yellow car behind the bushes and was smirking at her overactive imagination, she saw a dark figure in front of her. Someone was crouching down on the running track. The figure stood up and started walking briskly towards her.