Kornel Esti

by Kosztolányi, Deszö

  His sentences crawled along, pausing amid a thousand doubts and changes of mind, like the wheels of a train descending a mountain. In the middle of one sentence he stopped. Did not finish it. His mouth remained open. Suspicion gleamed in his dark eyes. He jumped up again. He wagged a forefinger at Esti and said, in a tone that brooked no contradiction:

  “You were working.”

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “Yes, you were,” he repeated darkly, like a prosecuting counsel. “And here am I round your neck, holding you up, and you secretly—and quite rightly—are wishing me to the devil.”

  “I hadn’t the slightest intention of working.”

  “Are you telling the truth, Kornél?” he asked, smiling like someone who has caught out a child in some crafty fib, and while the smile spread over his face like a mask he wagged his raised forefinger slightly and began to threaten his friend. “Kornél, Kornél, don’t lie to me.”

  “I’m not,” Kornél protested. “I haven’t been able to get anything done for a week now. I hate all work. Especially my own. The stuff I’m scribbling at present is so atrocious that if my enemies and the people who envy me were to find out how little I think of my talent they’d surely start to argue with me, rise in my defense, and finally accept me as a friend forever. Today I’ve just been sitting about and feeling bored. I was just hoping that one off my creditors would call me and take my mind of things a bit, but even they aren’t speaking to me. Then I wanted to swat some flies, but there aren’t even any flies in my apartment. Then I started to yawn. If someone’s very bored, even yawning is an amusement of sorts. I yawned for about two hours. Finally I got tired of yawning. So I stopped yawning and just sat in this armchair where you see me now, waiting for time to pass, getting a couple of hours older, a couple of inches closer to the grave. Please get this straight: at present, the thought that that terrible acquaintance of mine, whose idea of a joke has for years consisted of calling his wife ‘old girl,’ would knock on my door, that some complete stranger would come in and ask me for a loan of a hundred pengős for ten months on his word of honor, or that some unappreciated writer would do me the favor of reading me the novel he’s working on—that thought would have made me happy at once, but the thought that you would call, Dani, you, for whom I constantly thirst, who shared my former years of beggary and my vagrant fame, my brother in ink and passion—that thought would have rendered me ecstatic, and so enticing, so remote a thought was it, so like a fairy vision, that I didn’t dare even to dream it. Excuse me, don’t interrupt, I’m talking. As to my work plan for today, I’m free until nine, for two whole hours, and at your disposal. We’ll drink coffee here, chat or sit in silence together, and then I’d like to go for a walk, because I haven’t been out of this dump all day. If you’ve no objection I’ll keep you company, see you home. All right?”

  “All right.”

  Dani breathed more easily and took a gulp of his espresso. He spoke again about the circumstances of his coming, of the irrelevant Buda hills, the irrelevant idea that had whirled him to Esti’s, and the request to which he would come in a moment, but with which he would not trouble Esti yet because it was important only to him, not to Esti, and therefore it too was irrelevant. Suddenly he was silent. Something had come into his mind. He said:

  “Besides, I’ve only come for a couple of minutes. I know, I know. You’re very kind to me, but you are to everyone. ‘Don’t take seriously the polite request to stay.’ I’ll stay for seven or eight minutes at the most. Did I say seven or eight? I’ll stay for seven only. Exactly seven minutes. Where’s your pocket watch?”

  “Why?”

  “Please get it out. I’ll get mine out as well. There now. Thank you. Goodness knows, I always feel more relaxed if I can see the time. So—when the minute hand gets to—look, here—I’ll be gone and that particular stone will fall from your heart and you’ll be able to sigh ‘at last he’s gone,’ and do whatever you feel like. Promise, however, that you’ll remind me. As soon as the moment of release comes—let’s call it that—you’ll stand up and say to me word for word ‘Dani, I’ve been glad to have the pleasure of your company, but even more so to be rid of it, off you go and God bless.’ Yes. Throw me out so fast that my feet don’t touch the ground. Or don’t even say that, just look at me. It’ll be enough for you to look at me, not crossly, but as you do at other times, the way you’re looking at me now. I assure you, there won’t be any need of that either, because in seven minutes’ time—beg your pardon, six minutes’ time—I shall have vanished, and only the painful memory of my presence will linger in the air of this room.”

  “Listen here, you lunatic,” said Esti to him gently, in the confident tone of established friendship, “I don’t want you to go away, I want you to stay. But if you absolutely insist on these seven minutes—or these six minutes—that too I’ll accept conditionally. I’ll only ask one thing of you. While you’re in my apartment, don’t have misgivings, don’t fidget, don’t make excuses, but feel at home. So tell me quickly

  what you want. Then we’ll talk. What? You can rest assured. Yes, yes. I’ll do as you wish. As soon as I’m tired of you I won’t beat about the bush, I won’t even look at you one way or another, but I’ll get up, grab you by the collar, and throw you out—even kick you downstairs if you tell me to. I hope that makes you feel better?”

  Dani accepted this unselfish promise of amicable generosity with obvious pleasure. He seemed to gather strength from it, and he gulped his espresso. But how long did the effect of Esti’s calming solution last? Scarcely a minute or two. After that he began again, and had to be disarmed again. In growing waves of self-accusation and soulsearching he continued to explain why it was not his custom to steal other people’s valuable time, he pondered and dithered, returning again and again to his former excuses and objections, then to Esti’s arguments and remonstrations too, but as he wished to quote everything verbatim and couldn’t remember the words he became confused, stared in front of him, and wiped his perspiring forehead.

  Esti listened to these expositions, these allusions, these digressions, these references, these hints, these circumlocutions, these angles and aspects. By this time he too was pale and weary. Now and then he stared in exhaustion at the ceiling and at his pocket watch as it ticked away in front of him. Nine o’clock passed, as did half past nine. Then slowly, with a certain solemnity, he rose and began to speak, at first quietly, then more loudly, as follows:

  “Look, my dear fellow. You told me to let you know when six minutes were up. I’m telling you that those six minutes were up a long time ago. It is now, by Central European time, nine forty-two, almost a quarter to ten, so you can see that you’ve been squatting here for two and three-quarter hours, but you still haven’t been able to utter a single proper sentence, and you haven’t been able to bring yourself to tell me what on earth I have to thank for this honor. Dani, consider, I too am a man, I too have nerves. Are you holding me up? Infinitely. Am I tired of you? Inexpressibly. There’s no word for how damn tired of you I am. Just now you were so kind as to advise me how, at the right moment, I should show you the door, and, scrupulous as you are, you presented me with a script for the purpose. That script, which I have in the meantime been considering carefully, would have more or less expressed my feelings, but only an hour after you arrived, at about eight. I’ll confess that at about half past eight I was already thinking of adding a dose of cyanide to your coffee and poisoning you. Then toward nine I decided instead that while you were talking there I’d get out my revolver, fire a shot or two into you, and kill you. As you can see, the situation hasn’t changed at all. Your script now strikes me as pale and feeble. I can’t use it, and I return it to you—do whatever you like with it. At this moment I could do with a spicier, more elaborate script, an eloquent cascade of reproaches and insults compared to which the tirades of Shakespeare’s heroes would be lemonade. But I gave up the idea of exterminating you with poison, bullet, or words because I consid
er you such a pitiful worm that you aren’t even worth it. Instead, I’m telling you like this, quietly and in friendly fashion, to get out of here. Get out, this very minute. Did you get that? Get lost. I’m not joking, I swear, take your hide out of here, because I can’t stand the sight of you, and don’t have the ef rontery ever to come back, I’m fed up with you, sick and tired, you rotten egg, you dead loss …”

  Esti was by this time howling so that he choked, his lips writhed, and he gesticulated. One of his gestures swept the water jug off the table, smashing it to fragments, and the black liquid that it contained soaked into a white silk Persian rug.

  Dani burst out laughing. He laughed heartily and happily. Only now did he realize that he had been gladly allowed to remain and that he had been a burden to no one. He settled down comfortably, lit a cigarette and his tongue was loosened.

  He explained his business.

  His request was simple, indeed, extremely simple.

  He was asking a favor, a huge favor, which obviously was only huge to him, but perhaps not all that huge to the person who would do it, though perhaps it was huge, or significant, though it could also be that it was nothing at all, but even so he pointed out in advance that his friend might refuse it, no need to say why, just look at him, or not look at him, just say nothing, he’d understand and wouldn’t take it amiss, the friendship between them would continue just as smoothly as before, as if nothing had happened: to put it in a nutshell, the point was that he would be interested in seeing the latest number of the neoactivist-simultanist-expressionist-avantgardist literary periodical Moments and Monuments, and would like to borrow it for twenty-four hours on condition that on the expiration of those twenty-four hours he himself brought it back entire and undamaged—naturally, however, if Esti himself hadn’t read it yet or had read it and would like to read a few things in it again, or not actually to read properly but just to skim through, merely dip into it here and there, or keep it by him on the off chance, or give it to somebody else—or if he had the least shadow of suspicion that he wasn’t to be completely trusted and would lose the copy or tear it, sell it to a bookseller or goodness knows what, do or not do with it all sorts of things which it was impossible really to detail or list fully there and then—then he should not undertake this favor however much he might press him, and then he would abandon the whole idea from the start, his request would be null and void, and it should be considered that he had not said a single word.

  That sentence, which was in fact much more exhaustive and exhausting than that, he finished at two minutes past eleven.

  Esti thereupon went to the wastepaper basket and took from it the latest, still uncut, number of Moments and Monuments. Dani thanked him for it, clarified a few secondary obscure points, and made to leave. Esti escorted him to the stairs. That did not pass off quickly either. When Esti had closed, locked, and bolted the gate behind him and returned to his room, his watch said that it was seventeen minutes past twelve.

  XVIII

  In which he gives an appalling description of an everyday tram journey and takes his leave of the reader.

  “THE WIND WAS HOWLING,” SAID KORNÉL ESTI. “THE DARK, the cold, and the night were lashing at my face with icy rods.

  “My nose was a dark purple, my hands blue, my fingernails lilac. Tears were streaming down my face as if I were weeping, or as if such life in me as had not yet frozen into a solid mass of ice were melting. Black side streets yawned all around.

  “I just stood and waited, stamping my feet on the rock-hard asphalt and blowing on my nails, hiding my numbed fingers in the pockets of my overcoat.

  “Finally far away in the mist there appeared the yellow light-eye of the tram.

  “The tram screeched along the rails. It took a slight bend and stopped in front of me. I was about to get on, but scarcely had I reached for the handrail than unfriendly voices shouted at me, ‘Full up!’ Bunches of people were hanging from the steps. Inside, in the doubtful red half-light of a single-filament bulb, living beings were moving, men, women, and children in arms.

  “I hesitated for a moment, then with sudden decisiveness jumped aboard. I couldn’t afford to be fussy. I was so cold that my teeth were chattering. And then, I was in a hurry and had a long way to go; I simply had to get to my destination.

  “My situation at first was more than desperate. I clung to the human bunch, and myself too became another indistinguishable grape. We hurtled over bridges and through tunnels at such a wild speed that had I fallen off, a terrible fate awaited me. Now and then I brushed against a wall, a wooden fence or a tree trunk. I was playing with death.

  “The knowledge that my fellow passengers loathed me caused me greater suffering than the danger. Up on the platform of the tram they were laughing at me, but down on the step those to whom fate had welded me would clearly have greeted my falling off and breaking my neck with a sigh of relief—that’s what it would have cost them to be rid of a nuisance.

  “It was a long time before I was able to get onto the platform. I found a tiny foothold on the very edge. But I was up there, on firm ground. I clung tightly with both hands to the rear of the car. There was no longer any need to be afraid of falling off.

  “True, popular feeling turned against me again, and strongly. Down below I had become more or less used to it. My existence had been noted as a sad fact, and after a heated exchange no further attention had been paid to me. Up there, however, I was the next to force an entry, the newest enemy. They all united in burning hatred toward me. They greeted me openly and covertly, aloud and silently, with complaints, humorous curses, and coarse, despicable remarks. They made no secret whatever of the fact that they’d rather see me six feet underground than there.

  “I didn’t give up the fight, however. ‘Just hold out,’ I encouraged myself. ‘Take the flak, don’t give in to it.’

  “My obstinacy paid off. I got hold of a hand strap and hung from it. Soon someone pushed me, but I fell forward so luckily that I went farther inside. I was now no longer standing right by the exit but was wedged rock-solid in the very middle of the crowd standing on the platform. I was being crushed and kept warm on all sides. Sometimes the crush was so strong that I couldn’t breathe. Sometimes an object—an umbrella handle or the corner of a suitcase—poked me in the stomach.

  “Apart from annoyances of a transitory nature, however, I couldn’t complain.

  “Then my prospects gradually improved.

  “People came and went, got on and off. Now I could move freely, unbuttoned my overcoat with my left hand, extracted my purse from my trouser pocket, and was able to satisfy the conductor’s repeated and solemn, but so far fruitless, appeals to buy a ticket. What a pleasure it was at least to pay.

  “After that another little trouble arose. On climbed an imposing, fat inspector, whose 250 pounds almost caused the crowded tram to overflow like a brimful coffee cup into which a lump of sugar is dropped. The inspector asked for my ticket. Once more I had to undo buttons, this time with my disengaged right hand, and feel for the purse which I had only just put into my left trouser pocket.

  “I was, however, definitely in luck. As the inspector forced a passage, bored a tunnel between the live bodies into the interior of the tram, a powerful surge of humanity swept me inward too and—at first I couldn’t believe my luck—I was in there, right inside the tram: I had ‘arrived.’

  “In the process someone hit me on the head and a couple of buttons were torn off my overcoat, but what did I care about such things then? I swelled with pride at having got so far. There could, of course, be no question of a seat. I couldn’t so much as see the distinguished company of the seated. Those standing, straphanging, obscured them completely as they stood now on their own feet, now on other people’s, as did the vile fug, redolent of winter mist permeated by garlic-laden gastric exhalations and the sour effluvia of damp clothing.

  “At the sight of this compressed and reeking herd, devoid of all human dignity, I was so disguste
d that the thought haunted me of abandoning the struggle and not continuing my journey, close as I was to its end and achievement.

  “At that moment, though, I caught sight of a woman. Poorly dressed, wearing a rabbit-fur stole, she was standing in one dimly lit corner and leaning on the side of the vehicle. She looked weary and woebegone. She had a simple face, a gentle, clear forehead, and blue eyes.

  “When I felt the ignominy to be unbearable, when my limbs ached and my stomach churned, I would look for her in the rags, among the bestial faces, in the foul air, and play hide-and-seek among the heads and hats. Mostly she stared in front of her. Once, however, our eyes met. From then on she didn’t remain aloof. It seemed as if she too thought as I did, as if she knew what I thought of that tram and everything to do with it. This consoled me.

  “She let me look at her, and I looked into her blue eyes as hospital patients look into that blue electric light which is lit at night in the ward so that they shall not be quite alone in their suffering.

  “I have only her to thank that I didn’t finally lose my fighting spirit.

  “A quarter of an hour later I actually found a place on the bench, which was divided into four seats by brass rails. At first I only had space enough to lower myself onto one thigh while the other dangled. Those sitting around me were horrid, small-minded persons, ensconced in their thick furs and the rights they had acquired, from which they would yield nothing. I made do with what they gave me. I made no demands. I pretended not to notice their paltry arrogance. I behaved like a sack. I knew that people instinctively hate people and are much quicker to forgive a sack than a person.

  “So it was. When they saw that I was indifferent, the kind of nobody and nothing that didn’t count, they moved up a little and ceded a tiny bit of the seat that belonged to me. Later I was able to take my pick of the seats.

  “A few stops farther on I obtained a window seat. I sat down and looked around. First I looked for the blue-eyed woman, but she wasn’t there—she’d obviously gotten off somewhere while I’d been engaged in life’s grim struggle. I’d lost her forever.