Kornel Esti

by Kosztolányi, Deszö

  “Unfortunately, those poets whom I mentioned earlier were also active. Gradually the old, reliable generation died out. The privy councillors and distinguished lawyers who had declaimed regular ballads, epic poetry, and philosophical analyses went one after another beneath the weeping willows in Darmstadt cemetery. A new generation grew up who no longer respected the boundaries of art forms, and in due course forced an entry into the Germania halls. One callow youth stepped onto the dais and announced that he was going to read his synthetic-exotic novel, but this consisted of only a single word, and a tasteless, obscene word at that. Another similar wretch introduced his loose and disjointed neoclassic-metapsychic dialogues, the content of which the human mind could neither grasp nor anticipate. A futuristic prodigy extolled in his fanciful verse war, the twilight of the universe, the annihilation of the Earth, and its simultaneous reconstitution too. The president clutched his head nervously. At the ends of lines this bloodthirsty futurist either crowed or imitated the explosions of an assortment of weapons—bangbangbang, dagadagadaga and the like. At every crow the president was obliged to open his eyes as if dawn had suddenly broken. That was the first time I saw that coolheaded man aroused. He assessed those immature figures indignantly. He didn’t find fault with their literary tendency, nor yet with their views of the world. He approved them just like any other literary tendency and worldview. He merely dubbed them tactless and ill bred, and—let’s admit it—he was right.

  “Such things were certainly a strain on his nerves. He often looked pale and worn out. But—as I’ve said—he wasn’t president only there. If he’d had three or four lecture sessions in a day, he was fresh again and went home as if he’d emerged from a tempering steel-bath to start work again next day with renewed vigor. Furthermore, he was never put out. He made good his deficiency anywhere. Should need arise, he could sleep anywhere at all, in the theater, during gala performances, during the noisiest revolutionary scenes, when the masses, freed from their chains, were howling and cheering freedom, equality, and fraternity, in the Opera, during the Twilight of the Gods, to the sound of kettledrums and trumpets, indeed, even when exhibitions were being opened, if for no more than a couple of minutes, in the standing position like the soldiers that were driven to death in the Russo-Japanese war. Once I saw him at a reception given by the duke of Hessen, where I’d sneaked in as the representative of a Hungarian paper. The duke came up and greeted him. He was an admirer of his. He immediately brought over his enchanting young wife, who with her bare neck and bare shoulders floated among the glittering flood of light from the chandeliers like a bittersweet swan. The Duchess took the president’s arm and got him to take her to a rococo divan embroidered with pink roses and with a gilded back. She sat him down and sat beside him. She began to chat to him. The president closed his eyes. The Duchess chattered on, laughing from time to time in her ringing contralto voice from behind her diamond-studded feather fan. Baron Wüstenfeld, who was an aristocrat and a recognized witty conversationalist, nodded. By then, however, he was asleep. The most beautiful and most décolleté young women had the same effect on that veteran philosopher as the strongest narcotic. He took every opportunity to recover from the exertions of public life, even the receptions which he likewise held as a matter of conscience at home. Many of the city’s poor also called on him because of his great influence. He received and listened to everyone. In this likewise he had his own system. The widow dressed in mourning, tear-soaked handkerchief at the ready, would plead for his support, implore him to help her, and ask his permission to state the facts of her situation. When the Baron, with a cold and gracious nod, had given his consent, the widow would excuse herself and emphasize that ‘I’ll be brief, very brief,’ and he, who knew that in all cases that meant ‘I’ll be long, very long,’ would close his eyes and then in his sleep, thanks to his tremendous experience, would nod frequently at the right places, sometimes even simulate attention, and sleep quietly for as long as was necessary, so that when he awoke, refreshed and rejuvenated, at almost the final word, he was able charmingly to reassure the grieving, prostrate widow that ‘he would do all that was possible on her behalf,’ knowing beforehand that he would do nothing. This, however, was not bad faith on his part, because the president also knew that those who were so foolish as to canvass the support of others were always doomed, under sentence of death, couldn’t be helped, weren’t even worth helping, because they were nothing but self-deceivers, so feeble that they weren’t even capable of self-deceit and went to others to deceive them instead of themselves, and that they only expected humbug, delusion, and opium, with which the president was not ungenerous. Nor were they ever disappointed. He was respected more and more, his reputation grew and grew, he was considered a charitable man, a gentleman from head to toe, and was loved everywhere.

  “How much I loved him can’t be expressed in human words. I only emphasize that so that you can understand what comes next. Slowly the year went by. Summer came. Every theater, school, and cultural association closed its doors, including the Germania. No lectures were given anywhere. Lecturers rested on their laurels and read one another’s works in order to give out as their own the ideas that they found there, in brief, to gather strength. I put my knapsack on my back and went walking in the wild, romantic country around Darmstadt. One morning in July I had just set off for the Ludwigshöhe to see the view from the tower there, and was tramping briskly through the Luisenplatz with my genial fellow students, singing the Wacht am Rhein and other stirring patriotic songs, when suddenly a truly disturbing sight met my eyes. Two Red Cross nurses in uniform were leading a human wreck along the sidewalk, or rather dragging him, holding him up, like a cripple who could do nothing for himself, who lacked even the strength to walk. I won’t tell you to guess who it must have been. That’s what stupid narrators do who seem to think that their readers are equally stupid. You, quick-witted as you are, have probably guessed straightaway that it was Baron Wüstenfeld, of whom I’ve been speaking, the president, our president. I swear to you, however, that for a moment I didn’t recognize him. That otherwise robust, sprightly, resilient old man had become dreadfully emaciated, a shadow of his former self. His legs were giving way under him like the slender rods of a photographic tripod. He looked like a ghost. What more can I say? He was a pitiful sight.

  “The president was suffering from insomnia. Those who are ignorant of this complaint make light of it. They think that if someone can’t sleep, let him stay awake and sooner or later he will go to sleep. The same goes for lack of appetite too. If anyone has no appetite, let him not eat and he’s sure to become hungry. The only thing is, both conditions can have a fatal outcome. Such was the president’s malady. For weeks he’d been fidgeting in fevered wakefulness, tossing and turning on his pillows without sleep ever coming to his eyes. And so German medicine was confronted with a serious, incomparably awkward case and for the time being could do nothing about it.

  “As you can imagine, all the doctors in Darmstadt and Germany flocked to the patient’s bedside. Dr. Weyprecht, the celebrated general practitioner, attributed the president’s insomnia simply to nervous exhaustion brought on by years of unremitting intensive work. He prescribed that for the time being he should abstain strictly from all excitement, all forms of intellectual stimulus, even forbidding him to read the papers, and recommended that he should relax, listen to cheerful music, take a longish drive every day in his four-horse carriage, and for seven minutes daily—and no longer—take a little stroll in Luisenplatz, near his mansion, on the arms of those scientifically trained and absolutely reliable nurses in whose company I saw him that July day. Professor Dr. Finger, lecturer on gastroenterology at Heidelburg University, prescribed a diet of raw food—rye bread, fruit, and yogurt—with once a day (at seven in the morning) a gentle purgative and once a day (at seven in the evening) an infusion of camomile at 90 degrees, flavored with a couple of drops of lemon juice. Professor Dr. Gersfeld—the famous Gersfeld, who was summoned by t
elegram from Berlin University—spent several days examining the patient and only then reached a decision and made a statement. He ordered warm hip baths, which he prepared himself in the presence of the nurses. These had to be gradually cooled, then heated again, then cooled once more, but this time suddenly. Meanwhile a cold compress was applied to the head and changed every three minutes. The patient performed gentle exercises before retiring, and as soon as he was in bed a modern head-cooler of German manufacture was put on him, in which cool water ran through tubes, pleasantly chilling the bones of the skull and the agitated brain. After explaining these operations in great detail several times and causing the nurses to repeat them, the professor returned calmly to Berlin, but the patient still got no sleep. Dr. H. L. Schmidt, who was a neurologist, tried with narcotics—sodium bromide, veronal, chloral hydrate, and trianol, at first in small doses, later huge ones—but change the drugs and mix them though he might, he achieved no result. Dr. Zwiedineck, Dr. Reichensberg, and Dr. Wittingen, Jr., all three neurologists of high renown, made some use of psychoanalysis, likewise with no effect. The president became weaker and weaker. By now it was whispered in Darmstadt that the doctors had given up.

  “Imagine my condition on hearing this news. I couldn’t allow that irreplaceable treasure, that benefactor of humanity, to be lost. One day I called on him at his luxurious palace. When I stepped into the huge bedroom, which was completely darkened except for a single green electric light, I glanced at the president and my heart sank. There he lay in the bed, propped up on pillows piled high, his head clamped in the cooling helmet, like the wounded soldier of science and literature. I caught a heavy scent of poppy seed, wafted toward him by an automatic electric apparatus at his bedside. Facing the bed—clearly on medical instructions—could be seen the colored image of a magic lantern projected on a screen, a calm lake surface, for the purpose of evoking sleep, the redeemer, long desired in vain. All the time, however, the president was trying to jump out of bed. Two nurses were holding his hands. His face was as white as chalk.

  “He was pleased to see me, for he knew me and once or twice had actually spoken to me after lectures—an unforgettable distinction for me. Now his deathly pale hand took mine and squeezed my fingers nervously. I recommended him to call in my young friend Zwetschke, who had opened his practice only recently but whom I knew to be a clever man and trusted implicitly. His apathetic entourage—an old lady, a retired colonel, and a legal adviser—seized upon my proposal. They sent for him, and a few minutes later he appeared.

  “First of all Zwetschke opened the shutters and turned out the electric light and the magic lantern. The light of noon flooded the bedroom. He sat down at the patient’s bedside and smiled at him. He didn’t examine him. Like me, he knew him very well from the Germania lecture sessions. He didn’t sound his chest, didn’t look studiously at his pupils or take his pulse, nor tap his knee with the little steel hammer that he had. He took the ridiculous cooling gadget off his head and advised him not to worry about a thing, to go on living as before, not to spare himself at all. He would have thought it best if he could call an extraordinary session at once, or a special committee, but because of the summer recess that was not possible. Zwetschke shook his head and bit his lip. Suddenly he got up. He told me to get the president dressed, then turned on his heel and on the way out whispered to me to stay with him.

  “We had scarcely given him his frock coat, his black cravat, and his sharply creased trousers when from outside, from the next room, from behind the closed double door, we heard Zwetschke’s distinctive voice. He was giving orders in a somewhat Prussian tone: left, right, forward, forward. We all listened in astonishment. Even the president himself raised his gray head inquisitively. The double door of the bedroom opened. Then we saw six footmen, under the personal supervision of Zwetschke, slowly but surely bringing in the familiar massive oak table from the Germania. Another servant carried the presidential chair. Zwetschke watched the scene without saying a word. He gave a nod of approval. From his pocket he took the presidential bell and placed it on the table. At that he led the president to the table with infinite tact and delicacy, sat him in the chair, and asked him to ring and open the session. The president rang. ‘I declare the session open,’ he said. And then there took place the miracle which medical science and anxious public opinion had been awaiting in vain for a month: the president’s eyelids closed and he sank into a deep, healthy sleep.

  “My friend and I stood side by side in excitement and watched—he with the understanding of the expert, I with only the curiosity of the writer. Zwetschke took out his pocket watch, started the timer, and measured his rate of respiration. He glanced at me triumphantly. The chest was rising and falling rhythmically, the pale face was slowly gaining color, filling out almost visibly. The organs that had so long been driven were at rest. Blessed Mother Nature herself had taken over the cure. The president was now asleep, as he could only be in the lecture hall, within a framework of decorum and etiquette. His head sank down and rose again. That circumstance increased my admiration for him even more, because it indicated that he behaved at home as elsewhere, that he was a real gentleman. He slept for twelve hours without a break. Zwetschke, who didn’t leave his side for a moment, even taking his lunch and dinner beside him, was surprised to see as midnight approached that the president picked up the bell, shook it, and declared ‘the session is closed,’ which meant that he’d had his sleep out, but also that we’d saved his life.

  “The president wouldn’t even allow Zwetschke to leave the mansion. He opened a separate wing for him, and he had to stay with him for a fortnight until he was back on his feet. Actually, the matter was hardly any trouble. If the president wanted to sleep—always fully dressed and buttoned up to the chin—he would sit in the presidential chair, ring the bell, and when he woke up ring it again. He only made use of this remarkably simple treatment (which the German medical professional journals didn’t record) until the start of the season. Then, once the lectures had begun again, there was no need of it. He didn’t, however, forget Zwetschke. He appointed him his doctor, and as Zwetschke had excellent connections despite his youth—he was still only just twenty-six—he was appointed doctor in charge of the nervous and mental department of the local hospital, and six months later was awarded the title of privy councillor.

  “So that was my German adventure. The bill, please. Dinner, Bull’s Blood, four coffees, twenty-five Mirjáms. Goodness me. I’ve been talking all this time. I’ve only just realized. Look, dawn’s breaking in the January mist on the streets of Pest and smiling in at the window of the Torpedo. Dawn, rosy-fingered with dirty nails. Well, let’s go and get some sleep. Or are you staying? In that case I’ll have another coffee and tell you how it ended. My only entertainment these days is the sound of my own voice.

  “I didn’t hear anything about the president for a long time. War broke out, and I lost touch with everyone. Last year I was traveling in Germany. By a roundabout route I called at Darmstadt. I was changing trains and went to see Zwetschke. Oh, it was strange. I found my old friend there in the nervous and mental department, where I’d left him fifteen years before. He came to meet me in his white coat and embraced me. He was wearing a pince-nez with ivory frames and he’d acquired a beer belly, like the rest of the German scientists whom we’d made fun of in the old days. I just stared at him. He no longer had the tempestuous, impudent chuckle of his young days. Instead, however, he laughed all the time, slowly and prolongedly. Do you know the sort of people who laugh after every sentence, whether they’ve got something happy to tell us or something sad? That’s how he told me that he’d got married—hahaha—had a little girl—hahaha—then she’d died at the age of four from meningitis—hahaha. I wasn’t shocked at this. I knew that all psychiatrists had their personal peculiarities.

  “He kept perfect order in the department. The corridors gleamed, as did the windows and the floors. Every spittoon was in place. The nurses were more frightened of him
than of the raving lunatics. He had prepared demonstrations, charts, illustrative graphs. He was engaged in the study of brain tissue. In the laboratory diseased brains floated in formaldehyde, and he cut them with a machine like a bacon slicer, but much finer, into slices no thicker than skin, and from those he tried to make out the secret of the human soul and intellect. He took me round the department. Such a thing was not new to me. I’ve been irresistibly drawn to such places since my childhood. At all points on the earth mental departments are uniform, like parliaments. It seems that in all peoples of every clime, nature wants to pass the same message through the medium of mental disorder. The female ward dances and shrieks, the male ward is sunk in gloomy and meaningful cares. Outside in the garden, the idiots daydreamed beneath the trees, deep in their infantile foolishness. A stone mason’s assistant blew his nose like a trumpet day and night, because his body was full of air, but his efforts—such was his boast—were having good results. Seventeen years previously, when he’d been admitted, the air went up as far as his forehead, but now it had gone down to the level of his chest. We worked out together that if, in the meantime, no untoward event interfered with his activity, he would be completely free of air by the time he was seventy. Even there everyone has his occupation and amusement.