Temptation

by Janos Szekely

  By about half past one, I could no longer control myself. I went to the night porter and asked him to replace me for a few minutes.

  “I have to step outside, sir,” I said, the way we did on such occasions. But instead, I went down to the kitchen and wet my whistle thoroughly.

  After that, I heard the “yes” more emphatically: yes, yes, yes, she would call for me!

  Around two, her guests started drifting out, and at half past three the waiters followed them.

  “They all gone?” I asked.

  They said yes, and I thought: she must be getting undressed.

  If a phone started ringing somewhere, my heart skipped a beat: now, now, now! . . . No, that’s not it . . . Maybe she’s having a bath first? . . .

  Suddenly, the door to the bar sprang open, and I almost screamed for joy. It was Franciska, and he was heading straight for the lift. So I hadn’t been wrong. She had telephoned for me. And now they were going to get Franciska to stand in for me—him of all people! How odd. But who else could they have got to stand in for me?

  I pretended not to see him and looked the other way. I could hear his steps as he came towards me . . . he’s about to stop right before me, and . . .

  He didn’t stop. He jumped in the lift.

  “Second floor,” he said quietly, a little hoarsely, and turned away.

  I must have been very drunk by that time, because I didn’t realize what had happened straight away. Mechanically, I closed the door and started the lift. We stood, silent and stiff, not looking at each other at all. The lift sped upwards. I was dizzy.

  We’d passed the first floor when I caught sight of the champagne. He had a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket and four glasses on a tray . . . just like I used to. The blood rushed to my head—I was overcome with fury, and if something hadn’t happened just at that moment, there’s no question I would have been at him.

  It was a small thing, a ridiculously little thing, but almost everything in life comes down to such ridiculous little things, and what’s more, I was drunk. All that happened was that someone downstairs rang for the lift. We were on the second floor by then, and before I could recover from my surprise, Franciska had got out and the lift, I, and the whole world around me, went plummeting down. A couple were waiting on the ground floor. I took them up to the third, then the lift stopped once more on the ground floor, and everything that happened after that was, so to speak, pure automatism on the part of my hands and feet. I came and went like a worm someone had cut in two: my head and body were completely separate. It was as if the link between the two had simply ceased. I knew, and yet was completely unaware of, what I was doing: I was a trampled worm, headless, dragging itself hopelessly on.

  I ran down to the bathroom, took the gun out of my locker, and put it in my pocket. Then my feet once more took control by themselves—basement, stairs, corridor, stairs—one foot after the other, onwards.

  When I got back to the lobby, I was alarmed to see that the lift wasn’t in its place on the ground floor. I was just thinking of taking the stairs when the lift suddenly appeared in front of me, and the night porter got out.

  “You’ve got a bloody nerve,” he said, red as a beetroot. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Sir, I . . .” I mumbled, “I . . . I . . .”

  I couldn’t say any more. I was overcome by dizziness, started sweating profusely, and a chilling tremble ran through my insides.

  The porter looked at me with concern.

  “What’s the matter with you? You’re white as a sheet. You haven’t got the shits, have you?”

  I said yes, that was it, I had the “shits”. He softened a little.

  “You could have said something!”

  I agreed that yes, I could have said something. At that, he proceeded to tell me in great detail how, back at the front, he’d always get the shits before an attack, and how by the end, he could tell in advance when they were coming and could prepare.

  “There’s this powder,” he explained. “A powder, you know, that stops it right away. Go get yourself some at a pharmacy on your way home.”

  I said yes, I would go and get myself some in a pharmacy on the way home. He finally left, and I was just about to get in the lift at last when he stopped suddenly and turned around.

  “Oh yes,” he said. “I almost forgot. Your father’s here.”

  “My father?” I blanched. “What does he want?”

  “I don’t know. He’s in front of the main entrance.”

  The main entrance . . . at three in the morning! I was suddenly completely sober. Tomorrow’s the first! I realized, and remembered Herr Hausmeister’s grimacing face as he dropped the knife in pain. The eviction notices would have come today . . .

  “Can I have a word with him?” I asked, my mouth all dry.

  “Yes,” he replied, “but . . .”

  He didn’t finish the sentence, and I knew why. There was no way you could let a man as ragged as my father into the lobby of the hotel.

  “You know what?” he said generously. “Go take my place at the entrance. I’ll mind the lift till then.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you for your kindness.”

  I hurried out. My father was pacing up and down in front of the hotel. I could see him from afar as I came down the steps, but he didn’t notice me. He was staring at the pavement, as if he were looking for something, and only looked up when I came out onto the street. He kept blinking, as if he were just waking up, and his eyes were so fuzzy I thought at first that he was drunk.

  I couldn’t summon words, and he, too, struggled. He cleared his throat and tried to smile.

  “I was just passing,” he said, awkward and hoarse. “Thought I’d look in.”

  I remember, everything became clear to me in that moment. They’d got the notice, and my mother . . . my mother . . .

  “Just passing?” I repeated dully.

  “Yes,” he nodded, and his face almost twisted with the forced smile. “I was . . . in the hospital,” he mumbled and looked at me, adding quickly: “She’s . . . out of the woods now.”

  As to who, he didn’t say and I didn’t ask. Anyone who’d actually grown up with their mother couldn’t quite understand what I felt at that moment. Feelings ripen slowly in the gentle climate of a home, love for your mother just as slowly as the opposite: the knowledge that sooner or later, you’re going to lose her. Most people discover in these moments with alarm and surprise the extent to which they are already subconsciously prepared for the loss of their mother, and how relatively easily they can withstand the blow. It was just the opposite with me. Until now, I couldn’t even have said, hand on heart, that I really loved her. Vague, incipient and awkward feelings moved within me and it was only now, when there was trouble, that I realized what lay behind this timid pull: the immense intensity of my emotions. The abandoned little boy in whom savage loneliness had petrified all emotion now cried out inside a strapping, six-foot lad: Mother! . . . Mother! . . .

  I couldn’t speak for some time, and even then, I just asked:

  “Did we get our notice?”

  I might just as well have said: “Are we done for?”

  My father nodded. I shivered.

  “She drank the lye?”

  “Not . . . too much,” he said, slowly. “I got there in time . . . um . . .”

  He took off his hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead. I stood there beside him, not saying a word. He, too, was silent. We were quiet together as only peasants know how.

  It was still dark, there was no one on the street, the silvery tarmac mirroring the powerful moonlight. There was a breeze off the Danube, the faded leaves of wild chestnuts rustled on the pavement, and somewhere far off a ship’s horn cried hoarsely.

  “If I’d come a minute later,” my father said at last, without finishing the sentence. He stared out into the distance and shook his head. “One minute,” he said pensively to himself. “What’s a minute? Lightin’ up a cigarette. That
was all that stood between her and death. Luckily, I saw right away she’d left the key in the lock when she locked herself in and ran straight to the window. That was locked too, I broke it with my fist. Look,” he indicated: his hand was still covered in dried blood. He swallowed hard and stared once more at the pavement. “I’d never have thought it,” he muttered, “that that timid little woman could want something as much as she wanted to die. For the first time in her life she was forceful, poor thing. She wouldn’t let go of the bottle and wrestled with me though she could hardly stand on her feet. I carried her downstairs like a child, I ran down to the tavern to phone. There was a big crowd out on the street by the time we got out, then the ambulance came.” He gave a wave of his hand. “Anyway, enough.”

  “What did the doctor say?”

  “She’ll feel lousy, he says, but won’t come to no greater harm. The . . . baby’s all right too,” he added softly with a timid awkwardness, “because . . . um . . . we ain’t had a chance to tell you yet, but . . . your mother’s expectin’ . . . I don’t know how she could do such a thing.” He looked at me. “Do you?”

  I didn’t reply. I stared at my shoes, the way my mother did. We were silent again for a space.

  “They’ve given us till October first,” my father grumbled, and came closer. “Son,” he said, looking me straight in the eyes. “If we can’t get the money together by then, it’s all over, she’ll do it again.”

  “She said so?”

  “Not her. Her eyes. I saw it in her eyes, my boy . . . Do you get me?”

  “ ’Course I do. How much do we owe?”

  “Seventy-six for arrears, twenty for the rent. It’s ridiculous!” he burst out angrily, his voice full of disdain. “Ninety-six pengős! . . . I could get that in half an hour if . . .” It was only then he noticed that he had said too much, because he suddenly fell quiet. “I’ll explain all that to you, one of these days,” he said, more quietly. “The important thing now is to get hold of that ninety-six pengős.”

  “We can’t let it all fall apart over that!” I waded in. “There’s three of us, damn it, all three of us working people. I’ll bring home every last scrap they give me here for mother, the two of us’ll manage somehow. It ain’t so easy to starve to death, you know.”

  “That’s right!” my father rallied, and it was as if he had once more grown younger. His fine grey eyes were full of life, full of daring, full of the Dappermishka spirit. “By God,” he cried, “ninety-six pengős ain’t the world! And I’ve got all sorts of schemes, let me tell you. Take the railway stations. People these days don’t have the money for porters, but the old boys really can’t carry their bags themselves any more, can they? If I get ’em in front of the entrance, ’cause of course they’ll never let you inside, I’d be bound to get a few krajcárs together, wouldn’t I?”

  “ ’Course you would!” I encouraged him, and I, too, was awash with plans. “And I could go down the river after work and look out for the late ships. If I give half my pay to the longshoreman, he’s bound to give me a few sacks to carry, ain’t he? And I could try before work, and all. The merchant ships come in at dawn—”

  “And then there’s all them lah-di-dah drunks!” my father interrupted eagerly. “After midnight, when you can’t get no other work anyway, I’ll keep an eye out round here at the bars, and if there’s one comes along, I’ll open his car door for him and hold out my palm. Most of them give you somethin’, they say, if you call ’em sir. Well, damn it all, I’ll call ’em Your Grace! It’s a good title, ain’t it?”

  It seemed a great idea, and I immediately had another that he was very keen on. Later, when I remembered these days, I could never understand how my father, who was a clever, experienced man, could believe in such silly ideas. These days, I know that you either believe in something or you drink lye, and if you believe, it makes very little difference in what. In life, as in a song, it’s never about the words, but about how you sing them. Dappermishka often got the words wrong, but his tune was always right. Now and then he would ignore the people who wrote the lyrics and the laws, but he was always loyal to the spirit of the piece. All his cunning and idealism, his actions, intentions and thoughts all seemed to be written for a recurring theme which would break through at the end of every movement, saying live, live, live! and to hell with all the rest. No, he would never have drunk lye, and on that early morning I learnt that I wouldn’t either. That was the first time I had felt, in an almost bodily sense, that my blood was his blood, and however much the words in our two lives may differ, the underlying tune was the same.

  I had never felt anyone as close to me as I did him in those moments. The words poured out of us, flying from mouth to mouth like a well-thrown ball; our plans went back and forth, igniting each the other, entrancing us both. Live, live, live! That was the theme that marked our words, and we took even the most outlandish plans seriously—the way believers will take seriously the rituals of their religion. Because, beyond the words and the outward forms, they represent for them the core: Jesus, Jehovah, Buddha, or some stony-faced, bloodthirsty, gentle or debauched god—it was all life, life, life! We grew drunk on our words and believed in them so hard we couldn’t even understand what we’d been so upset about before. Then all of a sudden, we found ourselves laughing.

  “Well, by the holy-hairs-on-the-heads-of-the-heavenly-host!” my father cried, his fine, strong teeth flashing as he laughed. “If you and me put our heads together, brother, Beelzebub himself ’ll be shitting himself, ain’t that right?”

  “It is!”

  “So should we put our heads together, then?”

  “We damn well should!”

  “Put it there!”

  He squeezed my hand and I was so overcome with emotion I was afraid I’d cry; and that is something you can only fully understand if you feel your father’s hand for the first time at fifteen, and for the last two years later. How much gentleness there was in that tough hand, how much that could never be put into words! There was a torrent of feelings within me, my eyes grew wet as a leaky roof. I turned away, but by then the rainclouds must have been gathering inside my father, too, because without any further ado he mumbled “so long” and left, just like that.

  It was at that moment I decided. I wiped away my tears and ran after him.

  “Father!”

  “What is it?” he asked, flustered.

  I took the gun out of my pocket and gave it to him. There was something richly symbolic in that gesture, and my father, it seems, understood it. He looked at me, surprised, but didn’t ask any questions.

  “Sell this,” I said quietly. “It’ll be a start.”

  “All right,” he said without looking at me, and slipped the revolver in his pocket. “I’ll be off,” he muttered then. “I want to be up early in the morning. Evenin’.”

  “Evenin’,” I muttered too, grabbing his hand.

  It was the first time I had kissed his hand. I can still see the way he looked at me: I could never forget that face. He was trying to smile, but wasn’t having any luck. In the end he turned and left without a word.

  I watched him go, out on the street at dawn, and cried. It had been a long time since I’d been this happy.

  •

  I simply forgot all about her. I was calculating soberly how much I could put aside after paying my instalments when it suddenly occurred to me that I had almost killed the Constable not long before. There was nothing awful about the thought. It was simply unlikely; it had lost its charm, like a dream you remember while tying your shoelaces, after the first cigarette of the day, the sun outside shining. I suddenly awoke from something, realized something all at once.

  An old memory was rattling around within me, the memory of an eerie November night when our priest went to say mass in a neighbouring parish and took us altar boys with him. It was a vicious autumn, fit to murder you, and I caught a nasty cold in my rags, lined as they were only with the wind. I didn’t say anything to the priest
because I was worried he wouldn’t take me along; I climbed with the others onto the rickety peasant cart, shivering with fever. The village was sleeping by the time we got there. It was dark and foggy, with a howling wind. The cart sank to its axles in the autumn slush and we proceeded at a snail’s pace. I stared out into the darkness, shuddering; I’d never seen a more dreadful village. Not a light, not a soul, just small houses huddled in the fog, and the darkness, and slush. I’d never seen such funny-shaped houses outside my dreams. Occasionally, a peeping face blinked whitely behind the tiny darkened windows, dubious shadows slipped past in the darkness, and when we reached the cemetery, I was horrified to see someone duck behind a headstone. The wind brought strange, moaning sounds. Something had happened in this village, and sometimes I clearly heard someone sharpening a knife. By the time we arrived, I was half insensible with fever and fear. The old lady with whom we were staying got some cinnamon mulled wine down me—no better cure for the cold has ever been devised. I woke free of fever and ran straight out of the house to get a look at this village out of a Gothic novel. The fog had lifted by then, the wind had calmed, and the horror-novel village was neither horror-inducing nor at all novelistic in the sleepy grey dawn of that autumn Sunday. It was a nothing-special little Trans-Danubian settlement, just the same as ours—the same as all the rest. I woke up somewhere other than where I went to sleep; but it was the same place, nonetheless.

  The same thing seemed to have happened now. My situation hadn’t changed, in much the same way as in that no-name little Trans-Danubian village, but it was still completely different than half an hour ago, because I was looking at it through different eyes. I had awoken something; I had realized something. I still knew there was a reason that the frog-faced Major had complimented me on my soldiering skills, and that the one-legged “Doctor” was up to no good. I still hated that blinking, thin, nervous spider who had me caught in his web, but killing him . . . what for? Should I really go and tell my mother, if they ever fired me from the hotel, that she should go ahead and drink the lye, because the game was all up anyway, and from now on I was going to go around shooting people up like the tough guys with the bloodshot eyes you saw at the pictures? No, no, I didn’t have time for the pictures, prison and a broken heart. My mother’s life hung on a matter of ninety-six pengős, and I had no right to think of anything else.