Temptation

by Janos Szekely

  I didn’t see her again for weeks. Before, when I was running away from her, I kept bumping into her all the time, and now, when I sought her company every waking moment and did nothing but wait to see her again, I never did.

  I grew more uneasy by the day. I was afraid of what I wanted, and I wanted what I was afraid of. I grew so bold that I started slamming the doors in the morning, though I knew full well what would happen to me if I woke her. But I didn’t care. Yes, I wanted to wake her, wanted her to call out to me, wanted to be able to go in to her. I was no longer in my right mind—I was completely drunk.

  In the end, I got what I wanted. One morning, when I had let Cesar into the suite, that high voice called out from the bedroom.

  “András . . . is that you?”

  I don’t know what came over me at that moment. Instead of replying, instead of being happy, I turned on my heels in panic and ran all the way down the stairs.

  “What’s the matter with you?” asked the porter when I reached the lobby. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “I don’t know,” I mumbled and wiped the perspiration off me.

  “Go stretch your legs,” he suggested. “A bit of fresh air’ll do you good.”

  I went and walked to the Vigadó theatre. There, I suddenly stopped. She must have thought I hadn’t heard her, it occurred to me, and I was dead sure that she was telephoning for me at that very moment. So I ran right back to the hotel to get what I had run away from a few minutes before, and—giving in once and for all to my fate—waited for her to call me. I waited for some time.

  Almost four months, in fact.

  11

  SPRING SEEMED TO HAVE DRIVEN everybody wild. The boys came in with circles under their eyes in the morning, whispering together like conspirators. Their faces were full of mysteries and spots, they kept showing each other letters and photos, and anyone who was anyone at all carried a lock of a girl’s hair in his wallet. Some of them really did lose their hearts, like Antal, for example, who was “fatally” in love with Flóra, the third-floor maid. There were others who got whatever they could, like Gyula, who would “pick up” women on the street or in the park, and announce triumphantly next day that they’d “given up the goods”. And there were some who got into serious trouble, like Lajos, who only just avoided becoming a father: it being spring, he could finally take his Ilus to the forests around Hűvösvölgy. In the winter, they had to confine themselves to petting down at the cinema. But lots of the boys were all mouth and no trousers. They would make up all sorts of stories to deflect the terrible suspicion of virginity, though in those crazy days, you could never tell if what you’d made up as a story to tell in the morning wouldn’t be true by sundown. Love rushed at us in this early spring of our teenagerhood like the big, warm drops of a summer storm you could see approaching from a distance. You yourself were still dry, but you could see the dust rising off the ground not far off as the raindrops hit, and you knew that—sooner or later—it would reach you, too.

  All the talk was of women. The boys exchanged their hard-won bits of technical know-how in the field of love like stamps. Only raw recruits in love and first-year medical students are capable of the level of detail and insistent pedantry with which the boys discussed the secrets of the female body. They talked very loudly, very dirtily and very haughtily, but I still often had the impression that they were just as frightened and confused as myself. Some mornings, they’d come into the changing room brooding and grumpy, touchy and silent for days, only daring to ask one of their fellows for advice much, much later.

  “Say, old man,” they’d whisper in some quiet corner, “has it ever happened to you that . . .”

  Yes indeed, all this was the fault of spring. Love was costly in winter and the boys couldn’t afford it. Only Franciska had money, but he didn’t spend it on women. The others, who were interested exclusively in the gentler sex, had their seven lean years of love in the winter. Their girlfriends didn’t have flats of their own either—at most, they could have taken them to a cheap hotel, but they didn’t have the means. That left petting in darkened doorways, on abandoned benches in snowy parks or under the exotic arcades of the Fisherman’s Bastion in Buda, where people routinely smashed the light bulbs every night until the authorities eventually gave up replacing them. Then there was the cinema, of course, the cheap, suspicious little side-street fleapits of Pest. If you got an unexpectedly large tip, and things were relatively OK at home, you took “the little woman” to one of these fleapits. The next morning, the gushing reviews wouldn’t be about the film, but about the lady’s breasts, and to be perfectly honest, not just them. For some of the fleapits had very correctly understood the spirit of the age and adapted ingeniously to the needs of their clientele. In these establishments, lovers could get discreet little cages referred to as “boxes” on the price list outside, and in those boxes, as the boys used to say, “anything went”. Before the lights came back on, they would ring a little bell, a tactful but obstinate bell that helped guide couples back down to earth from their respective paradises in time—you could thus feel completely at ease. But this, too, became a question of money, which is to say an intractable question, since these “boxes” cost a lot more than ordinary seats, and the boys barely had enough to cover even those.

  But now, all that had changed. It was spring, and the boys would report enthusiastically in the morning:

  “I took the little woman to the Mauthner Hotel last night.”

  The Mauthner Hotel was what paperback writers used to refer to as “the great outdoors”. It was named after the largest supplier of seeds in Hungary, who used to put up little signs in the public parks advertising the fact that their lawns had been planted with Mauthner seeds. The Mauthner Hotel should, therefore, properly be plural, because there wasn’t just one, but lots, a franchise—an entire chain in fact—that welcomed free of charge its impecunious and impatient guests.

  Gyula was the most experienced Mauthnerite among us. We thought him a low, unscrupulous, heartbreaking skirt-chaser, and that of course made him highly respected. He was a freckled, lanky teenage boy, very nice and very dumb. He liked his women wholesale, so to speak, and would open up their letters, photos and occasionally items of intimate clothing to public display, as well as giving a detailed account of their skills and failings in the bedroom. He loved to gloat; so much so that he used not to go home at all after his exhausting late-night sessions, but would sleep in a corner of the basement just so he could get up and recount his latest conquest while the experience was still fresh.

  This pocket Don Juan, this good-hearted, simple Lothario, turned out to be the first victim of spring. One morning, to our general amazement, he announced:

  “Boys, I think my goose is cooked. I’m so in love it ain’t true.”

  The boys, of course, started pressing him as to “what lady is that which doth enrich the hand of yonder knight?”, to which Gyula admitted—to our great surprise—that he himself didn’t actually know.

  “Ain’t got a clue,” he said. “It all started on the tram. She wanted to close the window, and I of course helped her. We got talking, and then we ended up fooling around before going out to Hűvösvölgy. But get this: she wouldn’t even tell me her name. She says: ‘Don’t ask questions, I won’t either. It’s springtime, and we’re young.’ What d’you say to that? I’d always thought this kind of thing only happened in the movies! Not that I’d swap her for one of them bottle-blonde Hollywood tarts, no way! Oooh, boys, if you only knew how fine she was!”

  We, of course, wanted to know all about how fine she was, and Gyula did not need coaxing. He gave us a full physical description, the long and the short of which was that this woman was the prettiest, most elegant, most mysterious and just generally finest woman in the world.

  “And?” Lajos asked. “What happened at the Mauthner?”

  Gyula gave a low whistle.

  “You ain’t seen nothin’ like it! There we are in the pitc
h-black forest and she won’t let me so much as take her hand. She gave me such a slap when I tried to kiss her I thought my eye’d fall out. Well, I said to myself, this ain’t going to end well, so I tell her my grandmother’s sick. All right, she says, she’s got to go as well. What about a farewell kiss, then, I ask. All right, she says, if I behave myself, she doesn’t mind. But only a little one. That little kiss became a great big one, and now listen. She got so excited from all the kissing that she gave me the goods right there! Now tell me, you ever heard anything like that?”

  No, no we hadn’t, but that only made the story more exciting. The serialized stories in the movies, on radio and in the papers were so full at the time of thrilling sexual encounters that secretly we all longed for just this kind of Mysterious Woman. We kept up with further developments anxiously, but they, alas, did not turn out the way they used to in the serials. First of all, the woman did not show up to the next rendezvous, which in itself would not have been out of place, given the thriller-like mood of this mysterious liaison. What was more out of place was that Gyula did not grow downhearted, like the hero in a novel, but started chasing after the new kitchen maid. But all that was by the by. The surprising twist was yet to come.

  About two or three weeks later, when we’d already started to forget the incident, we noticed odd changes in Gyula. He didn’t boast about women any more; he wasn’t interested in anything, and he even “ditched” the kitchen maid. He visibly lost weight, grew deathly pale, and walked among us like he was mourning something.

  “He can’t let her go,” Antal—an expert in hopeless love thanks to Flóra—announced, and the others, too, were convinced that this failed affair was what was eating Gyula.

  But one morning, Gyula spilt his secret. By the time I came into the changing room, he’d finished talking, and it was only by the boys’ faces I could tell that important news had been imparted.

  “I saw my brother’s when he got it,” Márton said a little while later. “If it’s the same, I can tell you right off.”

  “Let’s go to the toilets,” Franciska, ever careful, said. “Anyone could walk in here.”

  They trooped into the lavatories, locked the door behind them, and when they came out, they all looked awkward and strangely scared.

  “My brother’s was nothing like that!” Márton declared. “You’d best show that to a doctor.”

  “Like I’ve got the money!”

  “Then go down the Public Infirmary.”

  “Yeah, right,” Gyula waved angrily. “I wouldn’t let them touch my little finger, let alone my . . .” and he told them what.

  Gyula was not alone in his opinion of the Infirmary. Whoever could, went to a “proper” doctor. The boys didn’t insist. Besides, it was late, and everyone went off to their various duties.

  Elemér, who had been in the changing room throughout, hadn’t said anything. He combed his hair in silence, put on his uniform, and generally pretended not to care about the whole thing. But when Gyula made to leave with the others, he called after him to stay behind.

  “If you want, I can get you in to see a doctor,” he said. “He won’t charge you.”

  “Won’t charge me?” Gyula asked, giving Elemér a somewhat suspicious look. “What kind of doctor is he, then?”

  “A very good one.”

  “Then why won’t he charge me?”

  “Workers’ solidarity,” Elemér replied, his prematurely aged eyes glittering. “He’s a comrade,” he said, more softly. “A Socialist.”

  “But I ain’t in the Party,” Gyula protested.

  “If you were, you wouldn’t have got yourself into this kind of mess,” Elemér responded strictly. “You’d be enlightened. Not just a man, a Mensch. But that’s not important right now.” He shrugged. His voice was neutral as always, but very determined. “Go see him today, all right?”

  “Yes,” replied Gyula, and the huge boy stood there in front of Elemér—thin, spare, and half a head shorter than him—as if he’d been his father. “Yes,” he repeated, “I’ll go today.”

  But the next day he didn’t show up in the changing room.

  “Anybody seen him?” Elemér asked.

  “No,” replied Lajos. “Looks like there’s something wrong.”

  We waited for him a little while longer, because we were all curious as to what the doctor had said, but in the end we had to get going. Elemér and I were the last to leave. When we, too, were getting ready to leave, the bathroom door opened suddenly and Gyula stood before us.

  “You been here all this time?” Elemér asked in surprise.

  Gyula did not reply. He just stood there, in front of the toilets, white as a sheet and immobile, as if he hadn’t heard Elemér at all.

  “Did you go and see the doctor?”

  Gyula nodded, but still didn’t say anything. There was an unbearable silence.

  “And?” Elemér asked eventually.

  Gyula came closer and slumped down on a bench. His mouth opened; he wanted to say something, but no sound came out of it. He lay down on the bench and started crying, wailing like a small boy.

  “Sy-phi-lis!” he sobbed. “Sy-phi-lis!”

  We didn’t know what to say. We watched him wail with childish fright, lost and dumb. Then Elemér went and sat down next to him and put his hand on Gyula’s shoulder.

  “They can cure it,” he said quietly.

  “Not for sure,” Gyula snivelled. “Yesterday, I read in a medical book that many times it comes back again. And even if it don’t, you can go mad from it, and . . . what about Katica?” he exclaimed without any warning.

  “Who’s that?” Elemér asked in surprise.

  “My . . . my . . . fiancée,” Gyula sobbed. “I was goin’ to marry her as soon as I was making a bit more, and . . .” He couldn’t continue, descending into inarticulate noises.

  We listened, shaken. This show-off, loud-mouthed teenage boy, who had told us all about his many adventures, had never—not once—mentioned Katica.

  There was a long silence. Then Elemér said:

  “You have to take her to the doctor too.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” Elemér repeated irritably. “She’s bound to realize you gave it to her eventually.”

  “Katica?” Gyula looked at him in surprise. “You don’t think? . . . I never laid a finger on her! I want to marry her . . . or, that is, I wanted to,” he added bitterly and started sobbing once more.

  That was sensational news, of course. Though the boys tried to discuss “the affair” like seasoned medical doctors, men who have seen something of the world and are no longer surprised by anything, you could see the terror in their eyes whenever they looked at Gyula. He was our first victim, and these carefree soldiers of love who had marched out to battle with whoops of joy, now looked on horrified and felt like hiding behind their mother’s skirts. Some vowed eternal chastity, and no one so much as mentioned women . . . for three days. Then they slowly emerged from their terror and tried to convince themselves they’d never been scared. One morning, they were once more gathered round someone who, “Oooh, boys!”, had had some extraordinary and amazing adventure, and were excitedly pressing him to tell them “what lady is that which doth enrich the hand of yonder knight”, laughing a great deal, nervously, at the dirty details. No one mentioned Gyula if they didn’t have to, in the same way that soldiers didn’t talk of fallen comrades. They pretended nothing had happened, and it all started over again.

  •

  The hotel guests, of course, did not have to visit the Mauthner franchise, but they, too, had their own difficulties in love. It was strictly forbidden for guests to “take a woman up” to their rooms. This moral prohibition, to which all the finer hotels adhered, was just as immoral as the system to which it owed its existence. For, if you had a suite, you could take up as many women as you liked. And even for those who could only afford a room, there was nothing to prevent them renting another for the lady, who would “unexpectedly
depart” a few hours later. The problem was that all new guests had to submit to certain formalities, and young ladies of good family—who guarded their reputations jealously—as well as respectable ladies anxious to preserve the sanctity of their marriages, did not want to take the risk. Among other things, they had to fill in a police registration card. This in itself may not have been a problem, because you can put whatever you like on one of these cards, but they were afraid that someone might spot them doing it and think ill of them, though they’d been motivated by nothing but good intentions when deciding to do it.

  In such cases, the gentlemen would approach us confidentially and we would tactfully “take the woman up” to their rooms without any fuss. This smuggling of women was one of our primary sources of income. It’s what brought the greatest tips, and it had other benefits besides. Thanks to this sideline, if there was a honeymoon, we always knew precisely where and when it would be, and if there was no one staying in the room next door, we’d take turns decamping there in groups of various sizes. The rooms were separated by doors, and those doors were thin enough to satisfy, at least in part, our limitless thirst for knowledge. If there was no key in the lock, and we’d make sure that there wasn’t, then we could not only listen to, but also watch these romantic interludes, which—I hardly need tell you—were extremely instructive, given that you get all sorts in a hotel; and these various sorts of people had their various ways of practising the endlessly elaborate art of love.

  I had been living like this for more than a year now. It was the hotel’s swampy, feverish climate that had produced in me this venereal malaria from whose fever I’d been suffering for months. The other boys, no matter if they were lying or telling the truth, could at least expel the poison, or at least a part of it, through talk, but I was silent as the grave. I buried my secret and sometimes even I could believe that it had died. I was disgusted by the things I did and saw, and now and again I really did manage to snap out of it all. But this daytime sobriety was always interrupted at night by that high voice, and up to two or three times a week, I would wake to find that I had been trying to feel, up and down stairs, my way to her bedroom in my dream, before what used to happen at this juncture happened again.