My Happy Days In Hell

by György Faludy

  Lorsy took off his glasses and examined de la Brouquière’s childish, insolent features, probably to determine the degree of the young man’s drunkenness. Then he explained that man’s ties to his principles are much looser than is generally believed. Our thoughts, our favourite expressions are not, usually, reflections of our character or of our mind. We learn them, hear them, or simply borrow them from others and they have little or nothing to do with our real being.

  I felt the time had come for me to interfere.

  ‘You, Monsieur de la Brouquière,’ I began cautiously, ‘were just telling us that it was your father’s views, your reading, your environment and chance experiences that led you towards fascism. But had you been born one thousand and six hundred years earlier and were we now in Alexandria, at the time of Emperor Jovian, drinking wines no less tasty but mixed with honey, you would probably explain to us that a world in which the Son was consubstantial with the Father was not worth living in, and you would commit suicide or permit yourself to be beaten to death in the street for your Arian conviction.’

  ‘Nothing could be further from my mind than materialism,’ Lorsy interrupted me in a dreamy voice, ‘but let me confirm the saddening fact that we have very little in common with the principles and ideals we so proudly call our own. We own a woman when she is lying in our arms, we own this wonderful cognac which is in the process of blending with our blood and we own the magnificent dinner proceeding from our stomachs to our intestines. We own these much more completely than the indigestible thoughts in our heads or than ideals that are fundamentally alien to us. Let us admit with Christian humility that we are much more closely related to the food in our stomach than to our thoughts, and that we have more right to call our bottom our own than our head.’

  After pronouncing these words he hid his head in his cognac glass. Monsieur Grimaud smiled triumphantly and de la Brouquière digested Lorsy’s words with a worried face. It was Bandi who interrupted the long silence by speaking to Lorsy in Hungarian.

  ‘If you don’t broach the subject of our visas immediately I shall push this nail-file up to the hilt into that part of your body you call your own.’

  ‘Give me another five minutes, until I have progressed from Charles VII to the island beginning with an M.’

  ‘Why Charles VII?’

  ‘You shall see …’

  And indeed, Lorsy began to speak about the French patriot who lived in British-occupied territory in about 1425. He was not in a position to join Jeanne d’Arc; but if he deposited a declaration of loyalty to Charles VII with a notary public he could even kiss the English king’s horse’s arse in the street without endangering his future. The situation was similar after the battle of Leipzig when nobody in France knew whether Napoleon or the Bourbons would win. One could place a bet on Napoleon or again one could place a bet on the Bourbons, but the most rational course was to place a bet on both; that is, to reserve a passage on the ship of the opponent who was preparing to sink the frigate on which one already was. From Napoleon Lorsy went on to Josephine, who was born on the island of Martinique. After discussing the beauties of Josephine and those of Fort-de-France he turned to Monsieur Grimaud, asking him to help his friends obtain visas for that island. Monsieur Grimaud replied that he would do what he could for us, but that the passports must be sent to Vichy with the recommendation of M. Nogues, the Governor, and if Vichy approved, they must be sent on to Martinique for the approval of the Governor of that island. This procedure would take at least one year.

  ‘We don’t have quite so much time at our disposal,’ said Bandi, ‘and therefore we shall no longer abuse the hospitality of these gentlemen. We have a great deal to do. Come on, Ernö!’

  Monsieur Grimaud threw Bandi a surprised glance and Lorsy a conspiratorial smile, but Lorsy did not smile in return. His eyes caressed the bottle of cognac on the table before him, he filled his glass to the brim and downed it at one gulp.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Bandi commanded. ‘These gentlemen will take care of the bill.’

  Lorsy rose from his chair with surprising agility and without paying the slightest attention to our hosts’ unbelieving amazement, or even taking leave of them, he led us triumphantly from the restaurant. When we reached the door he smiled broadly.

  ‘I am happy that you have not obtained your visas,’ he said. ‘At least we can remain together in this Garden of Eden until the end of the war.’

  Lorsy was mistaken, however. We remained in Casablanca only for another two months, while the subtropical summer turned into autumn. I grew so accustomed to my way of life that I regarded it almost as a permanent summer holiday; a summer holiday from which there was no returning home, at the end of which no permanent occupation, no determined object of life awaited me. I was waiting for the arrival of the American visas: I thought I would put my wife on the ship and, before it sailed, disappear with Amar in the desert. On the morning of the last day of October we received the unexpected news that the Casablanca police were going to intern refugees in the smaller towns of Morocco: Agadir, Mogador and Mazagan. Valy, Bandi and I were ordered to proceed to Marrakesh the following morning. Of all the refugees only Lorsy was allowed to remain in Casablanca. This measure was not one inspired by the Gestapo; on the contrary, it was an attempt of the Moroccan police to hide us from the Gestapo.

  While Bandi and Valy ran about, nervous and excited, to say goodbye to our friends, I went to the café where I was to meet Amar at eleven o’clock. There was no point in my going to Marrakesh to live under police supervision until the American visas arrived and I could see Valy safely off; thus I made up my mind to dissociate myself from this war and my past as quickly as possible and go off to the desert that same night. On the terrace of the café I wrote a brief letter to Lorsy, leaving my wife in his care, and drank absinthe. I observed contentedly that the leter completely lacked pathos and was rather cheerful. Then I turned my eyes towards the white skyscraper on the street corner from where Amar would appear. Not far from where I was sitting, along the garden wall, bushes were shedding coloured berries that were rolled by the breeze across the snow-white pavement towards the middle of the road; but the autumn gathered only a meagre harvest, the palms continued to raise their green swords towards the sky as if taking an oath, and the woolly clouds danced against the vibrating azure of the sky like cool, drying handkerchiefs. I stretched out both legs under the table: the happy tingling that I felt in my ankles and thighs rose until it reached my chest and made me shudder with joy.

  It was a quarter past eleven, and Amar had still not shown up although he was usually very punctual. I pulled my feet under me and thought that in the valley of the Draa, in Amar’s kashba, the autumn would be even more powerless than here and that I would sunbathe on the roof throughout the year until the brown films of the sun would accumulate, layer upon layer, under my skin as it did with the Arabs, and not only on the surface as it did now. I recalled the story told us by Sidi Mohammed, the bandit chief, and I established with contentment that I had now become the hero of the story. Then I thought that if my father walked by, he would certainly not recognize me as I sat there in burnous and fez. This saddened me a little, though not too much.

  When Amar did not arrive by half past eleven I began to be a little anxious, wondering what could have happened to him. He often took Czechoslovak pilots or Gaullists in a motor-boat to Port Lyautey, from where they could easily cross to Tangier and Gibraltar, but he never told me about these excursions until after his return. If he were arrested it would be no more than annoying because, thanks to his connections, he would soon be released; but, knowing him and his protégés, I was certain that they would not surrender to the patrol boat without a fight, and besides, the sea had been pretty rough for days. I noticed that I was impatiently moving my toes in my slippers and tried to concentrate on my environment. First I drew arabesques on the marble table top with the few drops of water that had dripped down from the neck of the soda bottle, then I watched a fat p
asha who had come into the café and was now walking up and down in the darkest corner on unsteady feet, green, inflated, purposeless, like a man drowned.

  Towards a quarter to twelve I began to be anxious not only because of Amar but also for my own sake, since my fate was tied up with his. I began to count and decided that at a thousand I would rise and go home, but that until then I would keep my eyes away from the street corner. However, at my favourite number, sixty-six, I broke my pledge and when I reached six hundred and sixty-six, Amar appeared around the corner in his red fez and pale blue tie.

  ‘Forgive me, something unexpected has happened,’ he began, sitting down next to me.

  ‘I am not interested in your unexpected something,’ I said angrily, although I was not angry at all, and I closed my eyes, smiling happily. I took a deep breath and inhaled the perfume of his djellaba washed in herbs, not in soap, his perfume of withered flowers in an arid field. I felt this perfume not only in my nostrils but in my throat and further down in the ramifications of the bronchia, right into the apex of my lungs. I resolved to listen to his excuses and lies, and then to tell him about my decision to follow him into the desert. But Amar kept silent.

  ‘Do you already know?’ he asked in a frightened voice when I opened my eyes.

  ‘I don’t, I can only guess.’

  ‘You guessed?’ he asked and bent his head in shame. Two feverish red roses blossomed in his cheeks up to his long lashes. I was a little moved by his being so ashamed.

  ‘If you have already guessed, then let me tell you the whole thing the way it happened,’ he said in a relieved voice.

  ‘I am not interested,’ I repeated absentmindedly.

  ‘But you forgive me?’

  ‘Of course I forgive you.’

  ‘In that case,’ he said, ‘let me confess the whole thing. I had a little family trouble, that is all… At eight o’clock in the morning, as she was going to the market, my poor wife was run over by a truck. At nine she was brought home, by ten she was laid out, by eleven buried, by twelve forgotten… That is why I was a little late. I hope you are not angry with me.’

  An hour later, as we were wont, we walked down to the sea-shore. It was too cool to bathe, so we kept walking up and down along the cliff-edge that felt harder than usual to me today. Amar said how pleased he would be if I could at last make up my mind to follow him to his kashba and I thought that if Amar had killed his wife himself, or if he had driven the lorry which ran her down, I should now admire him for his manliness. The source of the trouble was that he trusted me and had thus made me an accomplice.

  I gave no reply to his renewed invitation, upon which he collected flat pebbles and began throwing them into the suddenly calm, frighteningly green sea. He had no luck: the majority of the pebbles sank right away. Even the best jumped only two or three times. I tried to beat him at the game, but without success, until, angrily, I threw my letter to Lorsy after the pebbles into the sea.

  We alighted from the train at the station of Marrakesh in a very bad mood indeed. The night before, getting ready for the journey, we discovered that all our belongings filled no more than two rucksacks; Bandi and Valy were scared of the characteristically Arab town on the edge of the desert, and in addition, we were now poor. Ujvary, who had so generously provided for us in Casablanca, had given us no money for the journey; he probably thought that in this new place we should find someone else to look after us. At the station a disagreeable surprise awaited us: the colonial government had entrusted the Jewish community with the care of the refugees, although only a few of them were Jews. We were met by a squat young man of extreme enthusiasm and warm friendliness, a Jewish schoolmaster, Mr Bizbass. He told us that refugees who had no money of their own would be placed in Jewish families. The Jews here were generous but very religious people who regarded only a Jew as a human being. Therefore, he begged us to attend services in the Temple and to observe the Jewish religious laws and rites to our best ability. He regarded himself as a modern, enlightened man and was deeply sorry for this state of affairs, but his fellow-religionists were still living in the Middle Ages. Bandi and I looked at each other dumbfounded.

  ‘I haven’t got the faintest idea about Jewish rites,’ I said.

  The station-master, a fat, red-faced, freckled man wearing the uniform of the Foreign Legion, answered cheerfully, in Hungarian:

  ‘Never mind, you’ll soon learn!’

  Some thirty soot-black, obsolete coaches were waiting for us in front of the station building with brilliantly polished copper lamps, grey horses, and an Arab lad on the box of each coach. Mr Bizbass, who looked much more like a Danish civil servant than a Jewish schoolmaster in Africa, arranged the procession. In the first coaches he put the refugees who had good leather suitcases, in the subsequent ones those who had fibre luggage and in the last few coaches those who, like ourselves, possessed nothing but a rucksack. He himself mounted his bicycle and rode at the head of the procession along several miles of road through the French and Arab sectors, then along an endless dirt road following the town wall between granaries and warehouses, until we reached a little square in front of the Rabbinical Tribunal. Here we were met by tall Jews clad in black kaftans and black skull-caps, wearing beards like the prophets, who embraced us, sobbing, and felt our shoulders and arms as if to make sure that we were really all there. In the background gipsy-looking women in colourful silk dresses and kerchiefs, with painted faces and heavy gold jewellery, watched this biblical scene motionless but with tears running down their cheeks.

  A large table was laid in the middle of the square and we were served a heavy but excellent meal accompanied by sweet, sticky liqueurs, while from the more distant roofs Arab boys threw rotten eggs and horse-droppings into the dishes or at the speakers giving us a voluble welcome. They hit the mark every single time. Mr Bizbass hastened to reassure us that their relations with the Arabs were excellent though at times the Arabs were a little excitable. Not long ago the French soldiers from Marrakesh had returned from the war in Europe but there was no sign of the Arab soldiers. Besides, it was the twentieth day of the Ramadan and the long fast was beginning to tell. I asked Mr Bizbass to find us quarters in some public building – not a family – possibly in the school-house. Some fifteen refugees joined me in this request, the others had enough money to look after themselves.

  After discussing the matter with the Jewish prophets, the schoolmaster returned and informed us joyfully that we could make ourselves at home on the top floor of the Tribunal. We could cook our own food over a charcoal fire on the marble floor of the central hall, and were provided with straw mattresses and blankets. In the afternoon Mr Bizbass, who was at least as conservative morally as he was liberal religiously, brought us screens to be set up between the married couples and the others, and between men and women. Unfortunately, he brought us neither a table nor chairs. He made us promise that if we wanted to smoke on the Sabbath or eat pork we would hide in the lavatory of the Tribunal to do so.

  Every morning we were awakened by a dreadful row going on in the court-room below. Usually it was some woman arguing at the top of her voice, her arms akimbo, with the Rabbi. We assumed that the subject of the excitement was some family quarrel. The end of the matter was usually that the Rabbi had the woman thrown out by the court-room attendant, a huge Negro called Bentoto. By the time we were dressed the woman was throwing maledictions at the Rabbi from the square outside. The Rabbi was standing on the balcony, with his back to the street, listening to her absorbedly.

  Although our quarters were far from comfortable, and we had to undress in the dark, eat on the floor, and our clothes were turning into rags, I felt happy and unable to share Bandi’s despair. He considered Marrakesh the anteroom of Hell. There was indeed something frightening about this town. In the evenings, when we stood on the town wall looking out over the pink desert, from the multitude of rats gambolling at the foot of the wall like a black pattern on a pink carpet constantly changing its shape towards
the even, snow-topped range of the Atlas Mountains bordering the horizon, it was indeed as if Horror itself were sitting enthroned on top of that mountain in the face of an emaciated young man with pointed shoulders, gazing down malevolently at Marrakesh. But what Bandi called the cataclysm of destruction within the town, I called life: real, earthy life, which my friend could neither see nor fathom. When we sat in the little Café Universel on the corner of the Djema el-Fnaa Place, where little boys sneaked up to us under the table to show us crickets imprisoned in match-boxes, snatching the cigarette butts from our hands and playing to us on tiny musical instruments audible only to us, Bandi dreamed aloud about a society in which there would be no beggars. The permanent and monotonous sound of the snake-charmers’ flutes and the drums ceaselessly beaten in the square drove Bandi to distraction, while they relaxed the tension in my nerves until I sat as if enthralled and began to write a poem. And when one of the small boys ran out into the street to pull the tail of one of the donkeys loaded with bricks that were standing in the market-place to be ready should someone wish to build a house, Bandi delivered a long lecture in defence of the donkeys. When, one afternoon, two cyclists collided in front of the café and one, getting to his feet, stabbed the other in the belly, Bandi remarked that in a communist society such things would never occur.

  Sometimes I walked around for hours in the huge market-place, the Djema el-Fnaa, listening to the story-tellers, watching the goldsmiths at work, loitering beside large heaps of spices, inhaling their fragrance; or I entered filthy little Arab tea-rooms to converse with my neighbours about the caravan-roads, the weather, or eternal life. But I preferred the room-sized premises of the Café Universel where, at times, a hundred people were sitting around thirty tiny tables. The café was owned by a former Legionnaire, a huge German fellow, who stood behind the counter; order was maintained by the Arab waiter, Ahmed. When a fight broke out, he separated the fighters while the Legionnaire looked on from among his bottles as if he were sitting in the control-tower of an airfield.