“You are not strong enough to do it. Or the ideal moment passes and you can no longer do it. There is such a thing as the perfect moment—time brings things of its own accord, we do not merely insert acts and phenomena into time. A single moment, a particular point in time may offer a possibility—and then it’s gone and there’s nothing more you can do. You let the hand holding the gun drop. And next day you leave for the tropics.”
He inspects his fingernails with care.
“But we stay here,” he says, still looking at his fingernails, as if this were the important thing, “we, Krisztina and I, stay here. We are here, and everything comes to light in the secret but orderly way that messages travel between people, in waves, even when nobody mentions the secret or betrays it. Everything comes to light because you have gone away and we have stayed here, alive, I because you missed your moment or your moment missed you—it comes to the same thing—and Krisztina because, first of all, there is nothing else she can do, she has to wait, if only to find out whether we have kept silent, you and I, the two men to whom she is bound and who are avoiding her: she waits to find out the meaning of this silence, and to understand. And then she dies. But I remain here, and I know everything, and yet there is one thing I do not know. And now, the time has come for me to have a response. Answer, please.
“Did Krisztina know, that morning on the hunt, that you wanted to kill me?”
The question is framed matter-of-factly, but there is a pitch of tightly wound curiosity in his voice, like that of children begging the grown-ups to tell them the secrets of the stars and other worlds.
18
The guest does not move. His elbows are on the chair arms, and he’s holding his head in his hands. Finally, he takes a deep breath, bends forward, and rubs a hand over his brow. He is preparing to speak, but the General cuts him off.
“Forgive me,” he says. “You see, now I’ve said it.” He rushes on, as if to excuse himself. “I needed to say it, and now that I’ve done so I feel that I’m not asking the right question and that I’m making things painfully awkward for you, because you want to tell me the truth but I have phrased the question incorrectly. It sounds like an accusation. And I am obliged to admit that, as the decades passed, I could not shake the suspicion that the moment in the forest at dawn was neither the result of sheer chance nor an opportunistic impulse nor a consequence of urgings from the other world.
“No, what torments me is the suspicion that other moments preceded this one, and that they were moments of absolutely sober calculation in the clear light of day.
“Because when Krisztina learned that you had fled, what she said was, ‘Coward.’ That was all, and it was the last word I ever heard her utter; it is also her final judgment on you. And I am left with this word. Coward. Why? . . . I rack my brains, later, much later. A coward about what? About life? About our life as a trio or about your separate life together? Too much of a coward to die? Too much of a coward to live with Krisztina and too much of a coward to die with her? Not enough will power? . . . My mind goes around and around. Or too much of a coward about something else? Not life or death or flight or betrayal or stealing Krisztina from me or renouncing her—no, simply too much of a coward to commit a straightforward act worked out in discussions between my wife and my best friend but likely to be uncovered by the police? And did the plan fail because you were too much of a coward? . . . That is the question to which I would like an answer before I die. But I did not ask it correctly just now, forgive me; it’s why I did not allow you to speak when I saw that you wanted to answer me. From the standpoint of humanity and the universe it’s insignificant, but to me it is of capital importance. I am one solitary human being, the person who accused you of cowardice is now mere ashes and dust, and I would like to know, once and for all, what it was that you were too much of a coward to do. Your answer will draw a line under my questions and allow me to know the truth, and if I do not know the absolute truth about this one detail, then I know nothing at all.
“For forty-one years my life has been suspended between an everything and a nothing, and the only person who can help me is you. I do not wish to die like this. And it would have been better, and more worthy, if forty-one years ago you had not been a coward, as Krisztina made clear; it would have been more worthy if a bullet had extinguished what time could not, namely the suspicion that the two of you colluded in a plan to murder me but that you were too much of a coward to carry it out. This is what I would like to know. Everything else is mere words, deceptive shapes: ‘lies,’ ‘love,’ ‘misdeeds,’ ‘friendship,’ all of them pale under the intense light of this question, bleached of life like the bodies of the dead or pictures subject to the ravages of time. None of it interests me anymore, I have no desire to know the truth about your relationship, any of the details, the ‘hows’ and the ‘whys.’ I do not care. Between any two people, a woman and a man, the ‘hows’ and the ‘whys’ are always so lamentably the same . . . the entire constellation is despicably straightforward. ‘Because’ and ‘like that’—something could happen, something did—that is what makes the truth. Finally, there is no sense in investigating the details. But one has an obligation to seek out the essentials, the truth of things, because otherwise, why has one lived at all? Why has one endured these forty-one years? Why, otherwise, would I have waited for you—not in your guise of a faithless brother or a runaway friend but in mine of both judge and victim, expecting the return of the accused? And now the accused is sitting here, and I pose my question, and he wishes to answer. But, have I posed it correctly, have I said everything he needs to know, as both perpetrator and accused, if he is to speak the truth? Because, you know, Krisztina gave her own answer, and I don’t mean the act of dying.
“One day, years after her death, I found the diary bound in yellow velvet that I had searched for that night—the night after the hunt that was the turning point in your life—in the drawer of her desk. The book had vanished, you left the next day, and I never exchanged a word with Krisztina again. Then she died. You were living in some far-off place, and I was living here in this house, because after her death I moved back so that I could live and die in the rooms where I had been born and where my ancestors had lived and died before me. That is how it will be, for things have a rhythm and order of their own, regardless of our wishes. And even the book in its yellow velvet binding, Krisztina’s strange ‘book of honor’ with its alarming evidence of her inner self and her love and her doubts, went on living in its mysterious way, right out there in the open. It lived on, and I found it one day, much later, among her things, in a box in which she had put the ivory miniature of her mother, her father’s signet ring, a dried orchid that I had given her, and this little book tied in a blue ribbon and sealed with her father’s ring.
“Here it is,” he says, pulling it out of his jacket and holding it out to his friend. “This is what remains of Krisztina. I have never cut the ribbon, because she left no written authorization for me to do so, and so I had no means to know whether her confession from the other side of the grave was addressed to me or to you. It is to be assumed that the book contains the truth, because Krisztina never lied.” His voice is severe, and respectful.
But his friend does not reach for the book.
Head in hands, he sits motionless, staring at the thin, yellow-velvet-bound book with the blue ribbon and the blue-wax seal. His body is absolutely still; not even an eyelid flickers.
“Would you like us to read Krisztina’s message together?” asks the General.
“No,” says Konrad.
“Would you not like to, or would you not dare to?” the General says with the cold arrogance of a superior officer addressing his junior.
Their eyes meet over the book and stay locked. The General keeps holding it out to Konrad, and there is no tremor in his hand.
“I decline to answer this question,” says the guest.
“I understand,” says the General, and in his voice there is a strange hin
t of satisfaction.
With an almost lazy gesture, he throws the little book into the embers of the fire, which begins to glow darkly as it receives its sacrifice, then slowly absorbs it in a welling haze of smoke as tiny flames lick up out of the ashes. They sit and watch, still as statues, as the fire comes to life, flares as if in pleasure at the unexpected booty, then begins to pant and gnaw at it until suddenly the flames burst upwards, the wax seal is melted, the yellow velvet burns in an acrid cloud, and the pages, aged to the color of ancient parchment, are riffled by an unseen hand; there, suddenly, in the blaze is Krisztina’s handwriting, the spiky letters once set on paper by fingers now long since dead, and then letters, paper, book, all turn to ashes like the hand that once inscribed them. All that is left in the embers is ash, black ash, with the sheen of a mourning veil of watered silk.
They watch, wordless, the play of light on the blackness of the ash.
“And now,” says the General, “you may answer my question. There are no witnesses anymore who could testify against you. Did Krisztina know that you wanted to kill me that day in the forest? Will you give me an answer?”
“No, I shall no longer answer that question either,” said Konrad.
“Good,” says the General dully, almost with indifference.
19
The room is now cold. It is not yet daybreak, but the half-open window admits a breath of dawn air, fresh, carrying a faint hint of thyme. The General shivers as he rubs his hands.
It is the hour before sunrise, and both men look suddenly ancient, as yellowed and bony as the rattling inhabitants of a charnel house.
With a mechanical gesture, the guest abruptly raises his hand and looks in exhaustion at his wristwatch.
“I think,” he says softly, “that we have talked about everything that needed to be talked about. It’s time I went.”
“If you would like to go,” says the General politely, “the carriage is outside.”
Both men get to their feet and move spontaneously toward the fireplace to warm their thin hands at the embers of the dying fire. Only now do they become aware of how cold they are: the night has been unexpectedly chilly and the storm that extinguished all the lights in the nearby power station passed very close to the castle.
“So you are going back to London,” says the General, almost to himself.
“Yes,” says the guest.
“You are going to live there?”
“Until I die.”
“Yes,” says the General. “Of course. Would you not care to stay until tomorrow? Have a look at things? Meet someone? You haven’t seen the grave. Or Nini, indeed,” he adds politely.
He speaks haltingly, as if seeking the right words for his farewell but failing to find them. But his guest remains calm and cordial.
“No,” he says politely. “There is nothing, and no one, that I wish to see. Please give my regards to Nini.”
“Thank you,” says the General, and they go to the door.
The General reaches for the handle, and they stand facing each other as social politeness demands, a little stooped, ready to say their farewells. Both take a last glance around the room, as if knowing that neither of them will ever set foot in it again. The General blinks, and seems to be looking for something.
“The candles,” he murmurs distractedly as his glance falls on the smoking stubs in their holders on the mantel. “Look at that, the candles are burned right down.”
“Two questions,” says Konrad abruptly, his voice flat. “You mentioned two questions. What is the other one?”
“The other one?” They are leaning toward each other like two accomplices afraid of the night shadows and hidden listeners in the dark. “The second question?” the General repeats in a whisper. “But you haven’t answered the first one yet. . . . Look, Krisztina’s father’s reproach was that I had survived. What he meant is that things always survive. One doesn’t answer only with one’s death, although that is a perfect answer. One also answers with one’s life. Both of us survived her. You, by leaving; I, by staying. Out of cowardice or obliviousness, calculation or grievance, we survived. Do you think we were justified? Don’t you think we have a responsibility to her beyond the grave, because she in her humanity amounted to more than the twoof us put together? More, because she died, thereby answering to us, whereas we lived on, and there’s no way to prettify that.
“These are the facts. Whoever survives someone is a traitor. We had the feeling that we had to survive, and there’s no prettifying that, for she died because of it. She died because you went away and because I stayed but never once went to her, and because we—the two men to whom she belonged—were more despicable and proud and cowardly and arrogant and silent than a woman can bear; we ran away from her and betrayed her by our survival. That is the truth, and that is what you have to know in London, in the last hours of your lonely life. And here in this house I have to know it too: I know it already. Surviving someone whom one loved enough to consider killing for, who was life and death to one, may not be defined as a capital offense, but it is, nonetheless, a criminal act. It is not recognized as such in the law, but we recognize it,” he says dryly, “and we know that all our offended, cowardly, haughty masculine intelligence has won us nothing at all, because she is dead and we are alive, and the three of us always belonged together, in life or in death. It is a very hard thing to understand, and once one does, one is overcome by the strangest sense of unease. What did you hope to achieve by surviving her, what victory did you win? . . . Did you spare yourself some horrible awkwardness, some painful situation? What awkwardness or painful situation could matter, when what is at issue is the very truth of your existence, because somewhere on earth there is a woman who matters to you, and this woman is the wife of the man who also matters to you. . . . Does public opinion carry any weight in something like this? No,” he says simply.
“Finally, the world is irrelevant. All that counts is what remains in our hearts.”
“In our hearts?” asks the guest.
“The second question,” says the General, his hand still holding the door. “Namely, what did we win with all our intelligence and our pride and our presumption? Has the true meaning of our lives not been the agony of longing for a woman who is dead? It’s a hard question, I know. I cannot answer it. I have done everything, seen everything, and yet this I cannot answer. I have seen peace, I have seen war, I have seen the glitter of empire and utter human misery, I have seen your cowardice and my own arrogance, I have seen combat and surrender. Yet I think that, at bottom, perhaps the significance of everything we did was in the ties that bound us to one particular person—ties, passion, call it what you will. Is that the question? Yes. I want you to tell me.” His voice drops as if to foil some hidden listener behind him.
“What do you think? Do you also believe that what gives our lives their meaning is the passion that suddenly invades us heart, soul, and body, and burns in us forever, no matter what else happens in our lives? And that if we have experienced this much, then perhaps we haven’t lived in vain? Is passion so deep and terrible and magnificent and inhuman? Is it indeed about desiring any one person, or is it about desiring desire itself? That is the question. Or perhaps, is it indeed about desiring a particular person, a single, mysterious other, once and for always, no matter whether that person is good or bad, and the intensity of our feelings bears no relation to that individual’s qualities or behavior? I would like an answer, if you can,” he says, his voice louder and more imperious.
“Why do you ask me?” says the guest quietly, “when you know that the answer is yes.”
Their eyes measure each other, steadily, unblinking.
The General takes a deep breath and pushes down the handle of the door. The great stairwell is filled with surging shadows and the flicker of lights. They walk down in silence. Servants hurry to meet them with candles and the guest’s coat and hat. Outside the big double doors, wheels grind and crunch on the white gravel. The men take l
eave of each other with a handshake, a deep bow, wordlessly.
20
The General walks toward his bedroom. At the far end of the corridor, Nini is waiting.
“Are you feeling calmer now?” she asks.
“Yes,” says the General.
They walk side by side, the nurse with quick little steps, as if she had just got up and was hurrying to her first morning tasks, the General slowly, leaning on his stick. They move through the picture gallery. When they come to the bare space on the wall where Krisztina’s portrait once hung, the General stops.
“Now you may hang it up again.”
“Yes,” says the nurse.
“It’s of no importance anymore.”
“I know.”
“Good night, Nini.”
“Good night.”
The nurse stands up on tiptoe, lifts her little hand with the yellowed skin lying in creases over the bones, and traces the sign of the cross on the old man’s forehead. They give each other a kiss. It’s an awkward, brief, odd kiss, and if anyone were there to see it, it would provoke a smile. But like every kiss, this one is an answer, a clumsy but tender answer to a question that eludes the power of language.
INTERNATIONAL ACCLAIM FOR SANDOR MARAI’S
Embers
“Tantalizing. . . . Brilliant. . . . [Márai’s] words resonate.” —The Wall Street Journal
B000FBJF64 EBOK Page 14