The Pendragon Legend

by Antal Szerb

  Ó, be titkosak, különösek

  Ezek a nyári délutánok.

  (Under a strange, lilac-blue sky

  The girls stroll to their assignations;

  Mysterious, enigmatic

  Summer afternoons.)

  “Very nice. But you don’t fool me. That was Hindustani. It means: ‘Noble stranger, may the Gods dance on your grave in their slippers.’ I’ve heard that one before. However, since you’re the first Hungarian I’ve met, let’s do something to celebrate this splendid friendship. Come and have dinner with me tonight. Please, I’m asking you. If you find me a bit mad, don’t worry—you’ll get used to it, everybody does. And anyway there’ll be three of us. I’ll introduce you to a very clever chap, just down from Oxford, nephew of some Lord or other. He’s a scream. He can get his mouth round five-syllable words you’ve never even heard of, easy as you could say ‘hat’.”

  After a little hesitation I accepted. I love meeting new people, and as it happened I had nothing else to do. To tell the truth, I was rather bowled over by the fact that he was inviting me to the Savoy, a place so grand I would never have been able to afford to go there at my own expense. I even began to see Maloney in a new light. Mad, I said to myself, but a gentleman.

  We met that evening in the bar.

  I found him there in the company of a young man: a tall, very slim young man with a remarkably engaging, delicate and intelligent face; rather effeminate, perhaps, with the athletic sort of effeminacy that characterises so many interesting Oxford men.

  “Allow me to introduce you to the Hon Osborne Pendragon,” said Maloney.

  “Pendragon?” I exclaimed. “Would you perhaps be related to the Earl of Gwynedd?”

  “As a matter of fact, I have the honour to be his nephew,” he replied, in a curiously exaggerated and affected drawl. “What’s your cocktail?”

  My least concern just then was a cocktail.

  “Might you be spending your summer vacation at Llanvygan?” I asked.

  “That is absolutely correct. I’m off to the family home in Wales the day after tomorrow.”

  “I’m going there myself, fairly soon.”

  “Bathing no doubt in the sea off Llandudno? I prefer a private bathroom, myself. Fewer people, and rather more select.”

  “No, no.”

  “Or perhaps you’re off to climb Snowdon?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Where else does one go in North Wales?”

  “Llanvygan, for example.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The Earl has very kindly invited me to his place at Llanvygan.”

  At this point Maloney gave vent to an ancient Irish battle cry.

  “Man, man!” he roared, and almost dislocated my arm.

  “Well?”

  “So we can travel together! Osborne has invited me too. What a coincidence! First of all, I ask myself, how did I end up in the Reading Room of the British Museum? Well, we all have our moments. And of all the five hundred freaks sitting there, it happens to be this gentleman I start to pester, and go on badgering, until it turns out we’ll soon be staying in the same place. Magnificent. Let’s drink to it!”

  And indeed it was a strange coincidence. I felt truly exhilarated. It was as if the mystical power of Llanvygan Castle had projected itself all that distance. I felt the hand of Fate upon me, and was once again seized by the old, pleasurable angst that had so often haunted me, the feeling that once again things were stirring around and above me; that the Parcae were teasing out the threads of my future.

  But then again: neither the half-wit Maloney nor this thoroughly affected young aristocrat carried the mark of destiny on their brows, unless it were the mocking destiny of a degenerate and cynical age such as our own.

  Through all this, the young Pendragon had remained perfectly impassive. Then:

  “These days even Fate has become debased,” he remarked, his voice rising towards the end of the sentence. “In Luther’s time, for example, the notion of Chance consisted of no more than a bolt of lightning striking the ground before him. It didn’t even have to hit him. And the result was the Reformation. Nowadays it means nothing more than two chaps going off together on the same holiday. Where now is ananké, where is Destiny? Or the amor fati Nietzsche praises, if I remember correctly, as the noblest thing a man could pursue?”

  “Osborne is amazingly clever,” said Maloney.

  “Yes, but only because it’s so unfashionable in England. If I’d been born in France I’d have become an idiot, just to spite them. So what do we say to getting stuck into that dinner?”

  The dinner was superb. Over the meal, Maloney did most of the talking. His adventures became more and more richly-coloured with each glass of Burgundy.

  His first story concerned a routine tiger hunt, but he went on to set entire Borneo villages aflame to make the point that Connemara men could light their pipes even in a stiff breeze, and he ended by tying the tail of a king cobra in a knot while its head was held by his tame and ever-faithful mongoose William.

  “I envy our egregious friend,” observed Osborne. “If only a quarter of what he relates in the course of a dinner is true, his life could be described as decidedly adventurous. It seems things do still happen, out there in the colonies. A merry little tiger or king cobra might produce a pleasurable frisson even in the likes of me. My one wish is to go there myself. To some place out in the back of beyond, where missionaries remain the staple diet of the natives.”

  “So why don’t you?”

  “Sadly, since my grandfather of blessed memory died of some wonderful tropical disease my uncle has concluded that the air in those parts doesn’t agree with us. I have thus to spend the greater part of my time in Wales in our electrified eagle’s nest, from which every self-respecting spook since the time of the late lamented Queen Victoria has been driven out. Sir, three years ago, the last remaining ghost in Wales was assaulted with tear gas: the poor fellow—an elderly admiral—was sobbing like a child. But for me, belief in these things would be extinct in the region. However I have some interesting plans for the summer, and I hope you’ll assist me in them. I’ve had terrific success at Oxford with my supernatural recordings on the portable gramophone. I can produce heartfelt sighings in the most improbable of places, together with the rattling of chains and lengthy prayers in Middle English. But of course this is just sport. Real adventure is dead and buried. It couldn’t take the smell of petrol.”

  “You’re eighteen, are you not?” I asked.

  “I am.”

  “On the Continent, young men of your age have a quite different idea of adventure.”

  “I’m not sure I follow you.”

  “I was thinking of women.”

  “I don’t even think of them,” he replied, faintly blushing. “I’m very fond of them, at a distance. But the moment they approach me I feel a mild horror. I feel that if I took hold of them they would somehow fall apart in my hands. You are a Continental … have you never had that sensation?”

  “Not at all. I can’t recall a single woman who might have disintegrated in my hands. Why, has it ever happened to you?”

  “To be perfectly frank with you, I’ve never risked the experiment.”

  “Permit me to observe that I think it precisely on account of this seclusion that you feel your life to be uneventful. On the Continent, relations with women are considered to be what life is all about.”

  “Then I must repeat the words of Villiers de L’Isle-Adam: ‘Living? Our servants will do that for us.’”

  As we left the Savoy I found myself, under the influence of a great quantity of Burgundy, in a thoroughly buoyant mood. It just wasn’t true, I said to myself, that London is boring, and I congratulated myself on having met two such splendid young men. It was ridiculous to pass my days surrounded by books. One should live! And I meant this word in its Continental sense. A woman … even in London … would be good occasionally.

  At Maloney’s prompting
we went on to a night club. These are places where you can actually drink all night, and we availed ourselves of the privilege. One whisky followed another, each with less and less soda. Osborne was sitting rather stiffly. The general ambience of the place clearly made him uncomfortable, but he was too proud to show it.

  Maloney had reached the high point of a yarn in which he had roped a Malay girl to a tree when, just at the crucial moment, ten of her uncles appeared brandishing their krises.

  We never discovered what followed, because he spotted a woman at a nearby table, roared out a loud greeting and abandoned us. I watched ruefully as he chatted to her on the friendliest of terms. She was very attractive.

  “Strange fellow, this Maloney,” said Osborne. “If I came across any of his stories in a book, I’d throw it away.”

  “Do you think any of it is true?”

  “Oddly enough, I believe a lot of it is. I’ve seen him do some quite unpredictable and crazy things—things that completely defy logic. If I may say so, this whole evening has been entirely typical, though I suppose I shouldn’t talk like this.”

  “Tell me, all the same. We Continentals are relatively so much less discreet, we reckon an Englishman can afford to let his hair down once in a while.”

  “Well, take this example. Yesterday, Maloney had no more than thruppence ha’penny in his pocket. For weeks, I am quite sure, it’s all he had in the world. And this evening he’s treated us like lords. It seems to me quite probable that last night he knocked someone down in a dark street. No harm intended, of course—he just wanted to prove that Connemarans can knock a man down with the best of them. Then he helped himself to the chap’s money, as a way of combining business with pleasure.”

  Maloney returned.

  “Would you gentlemen mind if my very old friend, Miss Pat O’Brien, joined us? She’s also from Connemara, which tells you all you need to know. She’s in the chorus at the Alhambra. A supreme artist.”

  “Delighted,” I said, perhaps too readily.

  But Osborne’s face was stiffer than ever.

  “Well … er … Much as I admire your compatriots—I’m a Celt myself, of the same stock—wasn’t the general idea supposed to be that this evening was for men only?”

  “My dear fellow,” said Maloney, “you’re the cleverest chap on earth and, upon my word, it brings tears to my eyes to think I have such a friend; but it really wouldn’t hurt you to spend ten minutes in female company once every few months. You’d certainly make some surprising discoveries. Not so, Doctor?”

  “Without question.”

  “Well, if you gentlemen insist,” returned Osborne, with a gesture of resignation.

  Maloney had already brought her.

  “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year,” she proclaimed, and sat herself down with the smile of someone confident of having contributed her share of witty conversation. Given that it was still summer, I smiled dutifully at the remark. Osborne made no such effort.

  “Cheer up, young fella,” the girl said to him, raising her glass; and she sang a little song conveying the same basic idea.

  “I’ll do whatever I can,” Osborne solemnly declared.

  This Osborne is an idiot, I said to myself. The girl was simply stunning, in the innocent, rosy-cheeked way which, together with the manly British character, is the finest ornament of these islands.

  She certainly enlivened me, and she listened in respectful silence to my fumbling compliments—not something Englishmen lavish on their women. With us, if we are even slightly drawn to a woman, we tell her we adore her. An Englishman hopelessly in love will merely observe: “I say, I do rather like you”.

  “Come away with me to the Continent,” I urged her in my rapture, stroking her bare arm. “You should live in Fontainebleau and glide three times a day up the crescent staircase of Francis I, trailing your gown behind you. The moment they set eyes on you, the three-hundred-year old carp in the lake will find they are warm-blooded after all. Miss France herself will panic and give birth to twins.”

  “You’re a very sweet boy, and you’ve got such an interesting accent. But I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”

  This cut me to the quick. I am very proud of my English pronunciation. But what could a Connemara lass know of these things?—she spoke some dreadful Irish brogue herself. I left her to amuse herself with Osborne while Maloney and I made serious inroads on the whisky.

  By now Maloney was looking, and sounding, rather tipsy.

  “Doctor, you’re a hoot. We certainly hit the jackpot when we met. But this Osborne … I’d be so happy if Pat could seduce him. These English aren’t human. Now we Irish … back home in Connemara, at his age I’d already had three sorts of venereal disease. But tell me, dear Doctor, now that we’re such good friends, what’s the real reason for your visit to Llanvygan?”

  “The Earl of Gwynedd invited me to pursue my studies in his library.”

  “Studies? But you’re already a doctor! Or is there some exam even higher than that? You’re an amazingly clever man.”

  “It’s not for an exam … just for the pleasure of it. Some things really interest me.”

  “Which you’re going to study there?”

  “Exactly.

  “And what exactly are you going to study?”

  “Most probably the history of the Rosicrucians, with particular reference to Robert Fludd.”

  “Who are these Rosicrucians?”

  “Rosicrucians? Hm. Have you ever heard of the Freemasons?”

  “Yes. People who meet in secret … and I’ve no idea what they get up to.”

  “That’s it. The Rosicrucians were different from the Freemasons in that they met in even greater secrecy, and people knew even less about what they did.”

  “Fine. But surely you at least know what they did in these meetings?”

  “I can tell you in confidence, but you must reveal it to no one.”

  “I’ll harness my tongue. Now, out with it!”

  “They made gold.”

  “Great. I knew all along it was a hoax. What else were they making?”

  “Come a bit closer. Homunculi.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Human beings.”

  Maloney roared with laughter and slapped me on the back.

  “I’ve always known you were a dirty dog,” he said.

  “Idiot. Not that way. They wanted to create human beings scientifically.”

  “So, they were impotent.”

  We were both thoroughly tipsy, and found the idea hilarious in the extreme. In my hysterics I knocked over the glass in front of me. Maloney immediately sent for another.

  “Now tell me, Doctor, how did you get to know the Earl of Gwynedd? He’s very unsociable.”

  “I’ve not seen that. I met him at Lady Malmsbury-Croft’s, and he immediately invited me.”

  “How did you manage that?”

  “I suppose, with all this stuff about alchemy—making gold.”

  But I was no longer enjoying the conversation. It was too much like the sort of conversations I remembered from Budapest. I’d lived in England too long. I’d got out of the habit of being quizzed in this way. Interrogated, in fact.

  Suddenly I smelt a rat. Drink always brings out one’s basic character, and in me it reinforces my most fundamental trait: suspicion. Wait a minute. What if Maloney was talking advantage of my drunkenness to winkle some private information out of me? True, I hadn’t the faintest idea what sort of secret I might be hiding, but there must have been one. The man on the telephone had also behaved as if I had.

  However, I might be able to turn the tables on him. Maloney wasn’t too sober himself: he’d drunk a lot more than I had. Perhaps I could prise out of him what the secret was that he wanted to prise out of me.

  With a spontaneous-seeming gesture I knocked my glass over a second time, exploded into a loud drunken laugh and stammered out:

  “These glasses … When I grow up I’ll invent one
that stays upright. And a bed that automatically produces women.”

  I studied him. He was looking at me with unmistakable satisfaction.

  “You speak true, oh mighty Chief! The only problem is, it’s all gobbledegook.”

  “I? What do you mean?”

  “All this miraculous Rosicrucian stuff—it’s a load of old cobblers.”

  “Never say that!”

  “I know perfectly well that you’re a doctor.”

  “Maloney!” I exclaimed. “How did you guess?”

  “You’ve only got to look at you. And anyway, you say you’re a doctor. You see … you’re not even denying now that you’re an expert on tropical diseases.”

  “Well … that’s true. I’m especially fond of the tsetse fly and sleeping sickness.”

  “But even more, of that disease with the long name that the Earl of Gwynedd’s father and William Roscoe died of.”

  “Roscoe?”

  “Roscoe, Roscoe the millionaire. There’s no point pretending you’ve never heard the name. Let me remind you about him.”

  “Please do.”

  “I’m talking about the Roscoe who was financial adviser to the old Earl, when the gentleman in question was Governor somewhere in Burma.”

  “Ah, you mean the old Roscoe? Of course, of course—my brain is a bit fuddled; it always is when I’m drinking. You mean the Roscoe who, later on … who went on to … ”

  “ … to marry the lady who was engaged to the present Earl of Gwynedd.”

  “That’s it. Now it all comes back to me. But why aren’t we drinking? Then the poor chap died of the same disease as the old Earl, which was very strange.”

  “Extremely strange. Because it was a disease with a very long name, and, for a start, old Roscoe had been back in England for years and years.”

  “Yes, true. And yes, that is the reason I’m going to Llanvygan. But for God’s sake don’t tell anyone. But can you just explain this—I’ve never been clear on this one point: what exactly is the link between the Earl of Gwynedd and old Roscoe’s death?”

  “Well, it’s not something they’re likely to let you in on. But since you’ve been straight with me, I’ll tell you a secret. Come a bit closer, so Osborne can’t hear.”