Temptation

  It was winter, and it was snowing, but he took no notice. He had them set up a table and chair in front of the inn, and sat—bareheaded and in evening clothes—out in the street. After the first litre of wine, he had them send for musicians, too, to play for him in the snow.

  This was a great occasion in the otherwise uneventful life of the village. There were people who jumped out of bed and ran to the high street half dressed so as not to miss this rare treat. No one dared approach him, because now even those who had thought him a genius were convinced that he was crazy. They just watched him from afar in darkened doorways, or sneaked along on the other side of the street like conspirators hurrying to some secret gathering. Everyone knew that the crazy Schoolmaster was getting ready for something, but as to what that was, no one had a clue.

  The benefit ended at midnight and the ladies and gentlemen started filtering home along the high street. Even that didn’t bother the Schoolmaster. He just sat there in his brand-new evening clothes, his patent leather shoes and white silk gloves, in the snowy street, calling the tunes one after the other.

  When the Count’s trap appeared, galloping along, he went and stood out in the middle of the road and caught the galloping thoroughbreds. The horses stopped—snorting and rearing angrily, but they stopped. They stopped and stood absolutely still in the Schoolmaster’s frenetic grip. Then he calmly approached the Countess and—though at that point he had about three litres of wine in him—with the utmost, impeccable politeness, asked her and her husband to do him the honour of joining him.

  The Count, they say, was so flustered by this daredevil invitation, it was as if he’d been the one who was drunk, and not the Schoolmaster. He muttered something awkwardly about it being late, and him being tired, and so on, but in the end he accepted the invitation because he was afraid of the Schoolmaster and even more afraid of his wilful wife who, never once taking her eyes off the handsome man making his gallant gesture, said why not, one glass really couldn’t hurt.

  “Very well,” nodded the Count. “But only one!”

  “Only one!” promised the Schoolmaster, but he made sure that that glass found itself refilled and who knows how, but the little company found itself still drinking together at two in the morning, the musicians playing on.

  By three the Count was so drunk that the Schoolmaster carried him in his arms to the innkeeper’s bedroom. And then it was the two of them, alone.

  The Gypsy violinist says that at this point, the Schoolmaster proposed that he and Her Ladyship have a little walk in the glorious snowfall, and Her Ladyship replied, why not, we’ll never be this young again. The Schoolmaster swore by heaven and earth that that was so, but that nonetheless, we were going to be forever young, isn’t that right, Your Ladyship? Her Ladyship agreed with the Schoolmaster once more, and they drank to that, as one ought, and then wandered off together into the night. More than one curious onlooker was still loitering by the inn and they, like bloodhounds, sneaked after the unsuspecting couple.

  The next morning, the entire village knew that Her Ladyship the Countess had sneaked into the school with the Schoolmaster; not into his apartments, where Scarecrow was sleeping, but—and this was the principal source of amusement for the village—into the gymnasium. As to what kind of exercises they got up to in there, not even the most curious could tell, because though they tried to peek in through the window, the couple inside lit no lights. Suffice to say that from then on, whenever the Schoolmaster was drunk, he had them play:

  A good horse needs no saddle,

  It still walks with pride.

  My sweetheart’s married to another man,

  But still keeps me by her side.

  This midnight escapade apparently grew into a great and serious affair. Those in the know like to claim that the Schoolmaster even wanted to marry the Countess, who was, however, strangely unwilling to renounce her thirty thousand acres and nine-pointed crown to marry a provincial Schoolmaster. The Countess believed in the rational division of labour, so she kept the Count for her husband and assigned the Schoolmaster a different role in which, if the signs are to be believed, he gave full satisfaction; from then on Her Ladyship was often seen with the firebrand Schoolmaster to whom, it seems, she was set on proving the open and giving nature of the nobility.

  •

  I was always gripped by a strange anxiety if, when we arrived at school in the morning, we could still hear Gypsy music from the Schoolmaster’s apartments. I felt ashamed, and didn’t know why. Till then, I had thought in simple, straightforward terms. X is good, Y bad. Every predicate had only one subject, every emotion only one marker. I loved or hated someone, respected or despised them. These feelings now became frighteningly confused, flowing and mixing into one another. I began to suspect, with a sense of unease, that good people can also be bad and bad people can also be good; and that man is neither perhaps all good or all bad, but is like the stream at the end of the village, which sometimes roars by frothily, and sometimes is so peaceful and clear that you could see all the way to the bottom. My God, I thought, these people have a thousand natures and a thousand faces, and how am I meant to know which is their real one when, it seems, taken separately, none of them are?

  I was bothered by these thoughts for a long time, but I didn’t dare discuss them with anyone. I could smell some strange, suspicious secret to which everyone was party but me, and I was ashamed of being such an ignorant peasant.

  I didn’t understand the Schoolmaster, but I understood myself even less. I was a level-headed peasant lad, outraged by the fact that his Schoolmaster was uproariously drunk at eight o’clock in the morning when he knew that his students could hear him in the yard, but despite that—and this was what bothered me most—I worshipped and adored him and was angry not at the Schoolmaster, but at his students.

  I hated the sly little boys who didn’t dare to so much as move a muscle when the Schoolmaster was sober but let loose the second they were unattended. They knew that the village was gossiping about the Schoolmaster they loved so well, and yet they still got up to the sort of antics on these mornings that had people crowding round the school. I wanted to grab them by the throat, or beg them to control themselves, but I just sat in the corner and said nothing because I was afraid they’d think me a brown-nose, thick as thieves with the upper classes.

  I did lose my temper once. That morning, the gentlemen in the Schoolmaster’s apartments were singing a dirty tune, and of course that was all the invitation the children needed. They roared along with the filthy chorus and thumbed their noses at the adults standing around the school railings shaking their heads disapprovingly.

  Poor Scarecrow tried in vain to drive them into the classroom, but the wild horde of children didn’t so much as glance at her.

  “The shame of it!” someone commented outside the railings. “A fine little school this is! A fine schoolmaster, I’ll say!”

  Scarecrow, completely powerless, burst into tears. She leant against the wall and her slender shoulders were shaken by sobs.

  At that moment, I was overcome with a frightening anger I’d never felt before. I jumped up and screamed so loud at the boys that I scared even myself.

  “Inside, now!”

  As if by miracle, a minute later the yard was empty. The boys fell over themselves scrambling into the school, and in the wink of an eye, everyone was sitting in their places in deathly silence. I stood before them and shuddered. What was that? What had come over them? What had come over me? I didn’t mean to shout, and yet I shouted. I had the uncanny feeling that someone else had shouted using my throat and the children had obeyed him, not me. Or that they had run into the classroom only because they thought I’d seen the Schoolmaster, and now they were petrified he might come in at any moment.

  I was flustered. I didn’t know what to do next, and the children felt that in an instant. The spell was broken. People started fidgeting here and there, broke out in whispers. And since nothing bad had happened to them, a h
uge peasant lad in the last row stood up and, playing the big man, called out to me:

  “Well, go on, then, what you going to do? What you standing there like a damn gendarme for?”

  The boys started to giggle. I could feel my knees trembling. For a moment I was lost, but no longer. Then that frightening anger I’d never felt before took hold of me again, and the blood rushed to my head. I ran over to the boy and smacked him in the face so hard that he fell right over. I was no longer thinking—I probably didn’t even know what I was doing—but I was nonetheless filled with a wonderful sense of certainty, that mysterious force and equanimity of the soul that guides sleepwalkers safely along rooftops at night. I climbed up on the pedestal and brought my fist down on the podium.

  “Move, and I’ll bash all your brains in!” I screamed. “Textbooks out! Recite your lessons. Alföldy, you first!”

  And the miracle came once more: Alföldy stood up and obediently recited his lessons—and the others didn’t dare make so much as a peep.

  No, I didn’t understand. Till then, I had measured power so simply: that boy is stronger than me, and I’m stronger than that other. But the class I was now facing off against was a hundred times stronger than me, and yet, God knows why, I was more powerful than all of them. For the first time in my life, I felt, vaguely, obtusely, and with awe, that mysterious forces are at play in this world, forces impossible to define or quantify.

  These were wonderful moments. I was gripped by a sort of festive, almost sacred feeling. My God, how mysterious your world is, I thought, trembling.

  •

  From then on, whenever the Schoolmaster was drunk, Scarecrow would call me over and quietly say:

  “Béla, keep order!”

  Keep order I did, and how! For poachers make the best gamekeepers. If a boy got out of line, I gave him a lesson he wouldn’t forget till his final day in school. No one dared tell on me to the Schoolmaster, because they were afraid that he, too, would give them what for. So, slowly but surely, they got accustomed to the new order of things, and there were no more crowds of onlookers outside the school gates.

  The summer was well advanced—and it was almost the feast of St Peter and St Paul—when we got our annual reports. In other years, I had always steered clear of the house on St Peter and St Paul to avoid the gloating children. The first-years were fit to burst that they were now officially second-years, the second-years that they were third-years, and my heart would break when I reflected that I, I was nothing. But this year, all that was different. This year had not passed in vain. I had learnt to read and write and knew that my report would be all “outstandings”.

  But then there was a snag on the last day of school. The Schoolmaster told us to put on our Sunday best for St Peter and St Paul, and that was the first problem in school I was unable to solve. For how could I have put on my Sunday best for St Peter and St Paul when I’d never had Sunday clothes at all?

  I sneaked into the gymnasium, decorated for the festive occasion, like a beggar afraid of getting barked at by the dogs. Primped-up ladies and gentlemen sat all around the speaker’s dais, and even the children had made an effort. When anyone glanced at me, I immediately blushed, because I thought they were looking at my ragged clothes. When the reed organ piped up for the prayers, I almost burst into tears. What use all those outstandings, I thought, when the notary’s son still has the finest clothes, though it was only out of pity that the Schoolmaster didn’t fail him.

  The reed organ fell silent, and the speakers piped up instead. Speech followed sermon, sermon followed speech. The words spattered like autumn rain. I wasn’t listening. I wanted to cry.

  There was a parcel lying on the table on the dais tied up with a tricolour ribbon in the colours of the national flag. This was the traditional prize book. In our bitterly poor school, they gave only one book as a prize each year, and even that was bought by the teacher out of his meagre salary. He always gave it to the student in the final year who had been the best student over his six years. The boys had been arguing excitedly for weeks now over who would win this prize, and now I was trying to cheer myself up with the thought that in five years’ time, it would surely be mine. It was a nice thought as it went, but cold comfort, because when you’re ten, five years seems like fifty, and for a bastard child, each year counts double.

  The shower of words finally came to an end, and the Schoolmaster picked up the parcel with the red-white-and-green ribbon.

  “As long as I’ve been a master at this school,” he said with un accustomed formality, “a sixth-year has been awarded our annual prize. This year, I’m going to depart from this custom and give it to a first-year instead, because never, in all my years as a teacher, have I had such an outstanding student. They work this poor peasant boy like a serf at home, and he still outshines his fellows in school. With this gesture, I want to prove both to him and to the rest of you as well, children, that nothing is impossible: with learning and tireless effort, the last can indeed be first!”

  He held the prize aloft.

  “For Béla R.,” he enunciated clearly in the ceremonial hush, “the pride of our school!”

  I thought my heart was going to stop. I could feel everyone looking at me, but I couldn’t move. I just sat there, eyes lowered, petrified, like a catatonic. In the end, my neighbour elbowed me in the ribs. I jumped up, but my legs were trembling so hard I could barely mount the dais.

  “Never forget your worth, my boy,” said the Schoolmaster as he presented me with the book, and I believe he, too, was a little moved.

  “Th-thank you kindly, s-sir!” I mumbled, as the tears flowed into my mouth.

  The Schoolmaster put his arm around my shoulders and led me over to the guests. They all smiled at me, they all shook hands with me, even the bullish old notary.

  I was the man of the moment.

  Who’d have thought it?

  You can stare at my patched trousers all you like now! I thought, and would have liked to jump for joy, like a kid.

  There is a point at which joy comes to resemble suffering. The human soul, it seems, can only be heated to a certain point, and beyond that, it doesn’t matter whether it’s the fires of heaven or the fires of hell that are heating it: if it’s too much, it dies. No wonder Hungarians say “I almost died of joy.”

  And that was what happened to me. I went around in a fever. I had never in my life left a crumb of my meagre rations, but today I hardly touched my food. The old woman, who must have known what happened, looked at me mockingly, and when a child told her the big news “officially”, her only derisive response was:

  “Better he give him pair of trousers so arse don’t stick out.”

  But today I couldn’t be angry, even at her. Mad as a hatter, I thought indulgently, and smiled. Today, there was only goodness and love in my heart, as if this fiery joy had seared all else out of it. I was drunk with joy, and like a drunk, I wanted to embrace everybody.

  After lunch, I got away from the children and walked out to the edge of the village with the prize under my arm. It was a feast day out there, too. There was no one on the land; only occasionally did I see a young lad and his sweetheart, pressed up close, disappearing into the thickets of the little forest, as if seeking shelter from some invisible foe. Nothing moved. The ripe fields basked sleepily in the calm, and the landscape seemed to have drawn its jaunty hat over its eyes and nodded off under its elegant sheepskin jacket. There was silence; that mature, buzzing, lukewarm early-summer silence that almost hung in the air like gossamer.

  I settled down in the grass and began to read. I lay in my usual place, where I had previously cried so much alone. The grass was flattened here and trampled, as if under the weight of those past heavy hours, and perhaps my former sorrows were still crawling around here somewhere in the form of invisible worms. My God, how the world had changed for me, how the sun had come out over me! I wasn’t much of a one for religion, but now I felt that God was looking down from his heaven and smilin
g at me.

  I read aloud, syllable by syllable, like we used to in school. The book was Fairy Tales by Elek Benedek. It was a wonderful book, as wonderful as only one’s first book of fairy tales can be. Later, I read it so often I knew it all by heart, and even today, I could recite more than one passage verbatim. I remember that my favourite story began:

  “Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, a crooked mile beyond the great blue sea, where all the fleas were shod with brass to stop them tripping over every little wrinkle, there lived a young serving boy. When he’d served three years, he went to his old father and said:

  ‘I won’t serve no more, Father, I’ve had enough of eating others’ bread. I have a hundred silver forints of my own, and I’m going to put them to some use . . .’ ”

  Yes, I thought, I too would have a hundred forints one day, and I, too, would put them to some use—and maybe I, too, would find a beautiful fairy like Tündér Ilona waiting for me on my travels.

  My God, how wonderful life is!

  My God, how much I still have before me!

  My God, you just have to want it, and the last shall be first and even a lowly servant can win Tündér Ilona’s hand!

  My God, my God, my God!

  I could feel that if I didn’t do something, I would go mad with joy on the spot. And then, as if I’d found the key to all the mysteries, I knelt down in the great empty field and called out to the deserted horizon:

  “Praise be to the Lord, Jesus Christ, for ever and ever, Amen.”