Temptation

by Janos Szekely

  It was lying there, biding its time in the window of a bookshop on Vilmos Császár út, as if waiting specially for me. My heart fluttered when I saw it. It was a nice thick book with a colourful cover and a big band around it:

  LEARN ENGLISH PERFECTLY

  IN ONLY SIX MONTHS WITH THIS BOOK

  NO TEACHER REQUIRED, IN THE COMFORT

  OF YOUR OWN HOME

  Beneath it was a piece of white cardboard that said:

  USED COPY, GOOD CONDITION, 2.20.

  I’d never in my life had two pengős and twenty fillérs, but the thought that if I did have it, I could buy this book with it reassured me no end. I swore right then and there that I would get my hands on that two pengős and twenty fillérs if it was the last thing I did. The only thing that worried me was: what if they sold the book meanwhile?

  The next day after work I hurried out to Vilmos Császár út to check if it was still in the window. It was. I was relieved. And from then on, I took a detour on my way home every night to visit the English book. I made eyes at it through the glass like a poor boy at his secret love, surrounded by rich suitors—to one of whom her evil father has probably already promised her.

  One day, I saw the head porter looking something up in a Hungarian-English dictionary. That dictionary stayed in my thoughts all day, and the next day I decided to take the plunge. I went to the head porter.

  “Sir,” I said excitedly, “could you please lend me that Hungarian-English dictionary for ten minutes?”

  “What for?” he asked. “You’re not learning English?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Could I please have it? Ten minutes, I promise.”

  “All right,” he said. “But bring it back in ten minutes, I might need it.”

  “Yes, sir! Thank you very much, sir.”

  I quickly purloined a bit of writing paper from a writing desk and copied out as many words as I could in ten minutes from the dictionary. It wasn’t many, since I was constantly interrupted by the arrival of guests and had to stop writing each time. Ten minutes later, I returned the dictionary and started learning the copied words. It wasn’t easy. I’d only known Hungarian words all my life, I’d heard no others before I came to the hotel. But whatever I managed to learn, I never forgot. I still, to this day, sometimes mispronounce the words I copied out of the head porter’s dictionary: that’s how well I mis-learnt them.

  From then on, I borrowed the dictionary every day. I never dared keep it more than ten or fifteen minutes, because I was afraid I wouldn’t get it again the next day. But if the head porter went off to lunch or dinner and there happened to be no one else around, I quickly sneaked the dictionary and copied out as many words as I could. I kept raiding the dictionary the way other children raid the jam jars in the pantry, and the more I had, the greater grew my appetite. I was insatiable.

  •

  One evening, the boy who was relieving me said:

  “There’s a letter for you at reception.”

  At first I thought he was joking. Who would write to me, especially at the hotel? But then my heart fluttered. Patsy! I thought, and ran all the way to reception.

  It wasn’t a letter, just a postcard. It was from Paris; I remember, it had the Arc de Triomphe on it. She only wrote a few words, but what I read into them would have filled a hundred postcards. I was so happy I wanted to turn cartwheels.

  From then on, I was constantly waiting for a letter. I had to wait a long time. The next postcard was from New York. She wrote that they’d arrived safely and that she couldn’t wait for next summer to see me again, but that I should write to her meanwhile “much and many detail”. That was all well and good; this card made me even happier than the one from Paris. But then I realized that the post office had stuck the stamp over her address in such a way that it was now impossible to make out. So I waited for the next card; what else could I do? But I waited in vain. It didn’t come. Tomorrow! I reassured myself, and the next day I again said: tomorrow!

  In the meantime, I tried to learn as much as I could about America. If I found a newspaper, the first thing I read was the American news. I devoured the stories from across the pond as if each one had featured a close personal friend. Once, I recall, one of the Sunday papers printed a biography of a famous American millionaire who had come to America as a pauper when he was a child. I cut that article out of the paper and from then on kept it always on me, in between the photograph of Patsy and the two postcards. When life was mean to me, I would comfort myself with the thought that it would all be different in America. Whenever I saw something to make my blood boil, I would say: that could never happen in America. America for me became the Promised Land, and Patsy the Sleeping Beauty awaiting my arrival across the sea.

  I was very grateful to her. One afternoon at the apprentices’ institute, they taught us how to fill out a receipt. That night, I wrote the following poem:

  RECEIPT

  A receipt, this my tune

  Made out for

  Immense good fortune.

  Thanks be to those up high

  For the few weeks’ lease of

  The finest star in all the sky.

  They called in their loan apace

  But, like Moses did with God,

  At least I got to see her face.

  Though the memory now stings

  I follow that star,

  Like the three Wise Kings.

  I see now how dreams are made,

  And what I must fight for,

  Like a Knight of the Crusade.

  This receipt, first of all

  I give to the heavenly

  Office responsible.

  A receipt is this, my tune

  Humble proof

  Of a poor boy’s great boon.

  •

  Slowly, I started writing poems. It began like pneumonia—with light, pleasant bouts of fever, subtle, almost unnoticed. Instead of daydreamt stories, I now made up poems going home, and I ascribed no more importance to them than I had to my stories previously. I wrote the way a dog barks. There were weeks when I wrote a couple of poems a day. I didn’t care if they were good or bad. I liked them, but if someone had told me they were awful, I would almost certainly have believed them and would not have lost much sleep over it. I had nothing to compare them to: I only knew the few poems we’d learnt in school. The truth is, I had never even been all that interested in poems. I’d always been more “academically” minded and was interested especially in history and geography. I wanted to learn languages, lots of languages. But poems . . . what for? I thought.

  Now all at once I got a taste for them and I devoured rhymes voraciously—there were plenty of literary journals lying about in the hotel. I cut the poems out of the back issues and read them all. I had a strange feeling about them. They were good, very good, but still . . . Who knows? They reminded me of the dolled-up, porcelain-faced ladies who floated into the lift on a cloud of perfume in their toothpick stilettos. I was in awe of them, but I didn’t like them. Not that I thought my own poems superior. Not at all. I knew that the porcelain-faced ladies were finely bred and I was just a filthy peasant; and I was completely convinced that what I was reading was literature and what I was writing was nothing more than idle scribbling. I wasn’t upset about it; I merely noted the fact. I liked writing poems, and what’s more, it was free—so I kept writing them.

  But all at once, I was beset by worrying symptoms. I fell in love with my own writings and would curse “upper-class poetry”, as I called it at the time. They’re like pastries, I said to myself. They’re for jaded gentlemen who no longer know what to do with their stomachs and their souls. But I was a sensible peasant boy and soon got over this superiority complex. I told myself: it’s a case of sour grapes, you filthy peasant. I started to doubt, I lost faith; but I paid just as little attention to my feelings of doubt as I had to my feelings of superiority. I was torn between extremes and couldn’t find my place. One day I had an idea.

  At first, I was
frightened by my plan, but eventually I said, why not? I cut the address off some hotel writing paper and carefully copied out my poems. There were already thirty or forty by that time. I gave the “collection” the title When You’ve Got No Dog to Bark at Night, You’ll End Up Barking in Its Stead. Then I put them in an envelope and addressed it to the biggest daily in Budapest. The problem was that the postal service back then did not deliver poetry, no matter how good, without a stamp, and I had no stamp, nor money with which to buy one. I waited a few days for some spark of inspiration, and then had an idea that saved the day. I took the letter into the newspaper’s offices and gave it to the first office boy I saw.

  “A gentleman sent it,” I lied. “Told me to deliver it here.”

  With that, and without waiting for a response, I turned and fled out into the street.

  From then on, I no longer opened the newspapers at the front, but at the back, at the “Messages from the Editor” section, waiting anxiously for the fateful judgement. I don’t know how long I waited—all I remember was that it seemed an unbearably long time; which of course doesn’t mean anything, because when you’re fifteen and have your whole life ahead of you, oddly enough you’re far more impatient than later, when your years are already numbered.

  One day, when I opened the newspaper, my heart skipped a beat. Among the messages from the editor was the following:

  Béla R. His poems signal the emergence of a tumultuous, raw, but astoundingly original talent. We will be printing “My Harmonica” in this Sunday’s issue. Please come see us at the offices between five and seven p.m.

  Fireworks went off inside me. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I ran to the toilets, locked the door, gratitude overflowing within me—to the extent that it poured out of my eyes as tears.

  “Thank you, Lord!” I whispered, my hands clenched together in prayer. For want of a more fitting altar, I fell to my knees right there before the porcelain bowl; I hope no one in heaven took that amiss.

  The next day was my day off. I spent the morning in a state of tremendous excitement. I prepared for my visit to the editors like a young man going off to find himself a bride. And this was, indeed, a betrothal—a lifelong and serious betrothal—only I didn’t know it at the time. I was getting betrothed to my destiny.

  I left home at noon so I’d be at the offices by five on the dot. It was the end of November, but the weather was still amazingly clement. I ambled slowly towards Pest. I was gripped by an inchoate fear, and my mouth was bitter with excitement. I tried to imagine the conversation, the editor’s questions, my responses, and generally every possible and impossible eventuality. Whether they would pay for printing a poem, I didn’t know, and as to how much, I was even more uncertain. My God, I thought, if they gave me two pengős for it, I’d run straight to the pawnshop and get back my mother’s cross.

  By the time I made it to the offices, my stomach was grumbling anxiously. There was only an office boy in the lobby, licking envelopes at a desk. He was a stocky, thirtyish man with the face of a sergeant-major, a louche blond Germanic moustache above a harsh mouth. I could see, when he looked me up and down with his liquid blue eyes, that in his mind, he’d already thrown me out.

  “Well, what is it?” he demanded.

  “I’d like to speak to the editor, please.”

  “Which one?” he mumbled. “They’re nineteen to the dozen here.”

  That threw me. I hadn’t anticipated the question. The front page of the newspaper just said “editor”, like that, in the singular, so I had thought there was only one editor. And since the section in which they’d written to me was called messages from the editor, I had assumed that my message came from the editor. I didn’t know what to say.

  “Whoever,” I got out at last, and to show him that I wasn’t trying to be cheeky, I added: “Whoever’s free.”

  “You can’t talk to whoever,” he replied acerbically, “Mr Whoever is out to lunch. You’d best write to him instead.”

  “But please,” I said anxiously, and was about to explain that they had asked me to come, when one of the doors opened and a gentleman called out:

  “Bence!”

  Bence left me standing there and hurried into the room. I was alone. I spotted myself in the mirror.

  It was a frightening moment. In our little mirror at home, I saw only my face, and the mirrors in the hotel showed a well-proportioned, scarlet-uniformed, quite handsome lad. Now I saw a frightened, ragged beggar in impossibly shabby clothes and shorts with no stockings. My God, I thought, if the editor sees me like this, he may not even print my poem on Sunday! He must have imagined some fine gentleman when he wrote that I was an “astoundingly original talent”, and now . . .

  I heard the door opening and jumped quickly away from the mirror.

  “Yes, sir,” I heard Bence saying. “I’ll call the print room right away.”

  I made up my mind then and there. By the time Bence had come back into the lobby, I was out in the corridor, running for the stairs. I never did find out which editor had written that wonderful message, and the editor never found out who he’d been writing to, because I never again set foot in those offices.

  This happened on Monday or Tuesday; I wanted to retreat to a cave, like a bear, and sleep the week away till Sunday.

  I don’t know what I was expecting from that Sunday. A life-changing event, a celestial sign, a miracle? You only wait like this once in your life: when you’re waiting for your first poem to appear in print. These were days full of wonder and terror. Sometimes, I was seized by superstitious fear that I would die before Sunday and wouldn’t get to see my poem in print. I would start awake at night and recite the poem for hours, rejoicing over a line I found good, despairing over a sub-par adjective. It was enough for me to spot a guest reading that newspaper for my heart to skip a beat. You don’t so much as notice me now, I said to myself, but on Sunday you too will be reading my poem, yes, my poem! You’re a gentleman, sure, and I’m only a filthy peasant, but this filthy peasant can write poems, unlike you, despite your manicured nails.

  The whole world revolved around my poem. My God, I thought, if I could only send it to Patsy! What would she make of it? Next summer, when she came back, we’d go out to Margit Island again one day and sit among the ruins where no one ever goes, and I would hand it to her without a word. How did you write something so beautiful? she’d ask, overcome, and I would reply: I had you for a muse! Then she would embrace me and kiss me like she did in the lift before they left, and this time I would kiss her back, and that would be our betrothal. And when they asked her in America who her fiancé was, she would say: a poet. A real poet.

  These were my daydreams, night and day. By Saturday, I was sick with anticipation. I had a splitting headache and stomach cramps—my throat kept clenching up with stress. All day long, I couldn’t wait for it to be evening, but when evening finally came and my shift ended, I was seized by a strange emptiness, an inexplicable disappointment.

  I couldn’t go home. I wandered the streets and suddenly found myself in front of the newspaper’s offices. They must be printing it by now, I thought, and walked round the building, my heart thumping, like a murderer stalking the scene of his crime. The print room was in the basement, and its windows opened onto a quiet little side street. I stopped in front of the open door and looked in. I was struck by the bitter, exciting smell of printer’s ink, fatal perfume of the muses. That was the first time I’d smelt it. It was a great moment. Down in the basement, the printing presses clattered on, the paper rushing on the rollers. They’re printing my poem, I told myself, and my eyes welled up. Only young poets can feel this way when their first poem is being printed, or ageing fathers helping their daughters into their bridal gowns.

  I didn’t sleep till dawn. In the morning, when I was going to cadet practice, the Sunday paper had already hit the streets. But despite it being right there, I couldn’t buy it—where would I have got the sixteen fillérs for it? I asked every boy
at practice whether they had the paper, but even if they did, it wasn’t the one I was after. In the end, I was forced to turn to my mother.

  “Muther,” I said clumsily, awkwardly. “Could you give me sixteen fillérs?”

  “What for?” she asked in surprise, because I had never before asked her for money.

  “I want to buy the paper.”

  “You gone mad? You don’t really mean to spend our hard-earned money on a newspaper?”

  I reddened. My writing poetry was the biggest secret of my life, one I guarded with an almost obsessive jealousy. I had never told anyone about it, least of all my mother. Now, however, I was forced to reveal it.

  “I . . . wrote something in the paper,” I mumbled.

  My mother looked at me, astounded.

  “I did.”

  “What?”

  “A poem.”

  “And they printed it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because . . . well, they liked it.”

  “How d’you know?”

  “They said so. Here, look.”

  I took out my little diary into which I had pasted—just to be safe—the message from the editor so that I wouldn’t end up somehow losing it. My mother read it, looked at me and—as if she couldn’t believe her eyes—read it again. Then she was silent for a space.

  “Where d’you learn to write poems?” she asked at last.

  “I didn’t, Muther.”

  “Then . . . how d’you do it?”

  “I don’t know. It just came.”