by Antal Szerb
“But going to the theatre requires cash, and their father, I am sure, never gave them pocket money. One small source of income was their cook, the slovenly old family housekeeper, who set aside a few pennies for the two youngsters from her housekeeping money. And the grandfather, who from a secret cornucopia donated a few crowns now and again. I think he must have earned them on the side. But of course none of this was enough to satisfy their passion for the theatre.
“It was Éva’s job to think about money. The word was not to be uttered in front of Tamás. Éva took charge. In such matters she was highly inventive. She could find a good price for anything they possessed which might sell. From time to time she would sell off some priceless museum-piece from the house, but this was very risky because of their father, and also Tamás took it badly if some familiar antique went missing. Sometimes she made really surprising loans—from the greengrocer, in the confectionery, in the pharmacy, even from the man collecting the electricity money. And if none of this worked, then she stole. She stole from the cook, she stole with death-defying courage from her father, taking advantage of his drunkenness. This was the surest and in some respects the least reprehensible source of income. But on one occasion she managed to lift ten crowns from the confectioner’s till. She was very proud of that. And no doubt there were other episodes she didn’t mention. She even stole from me. Then, when I found out, and bitterly remonstrated with her, instead of stealing she imposed a regular levy on me. I had to pay a certain sum into the family kitty every week. Tamás was of course never allowed to know of this.”
Erzsi butted in: “Moral insanity.”
“Yes, of course,” continued Mihály. “It’s very comforting to use expressions like that. And to a certain extent it absolves one. ‘Not a thief, but mentally ill’. But Éva was not mentally ill, and not a thief. Only, she lacked moral awareness when it came to money. The pair of them were so cut off from the real world, from the economic and social order, they simply had no idea what were the permitted and what the forbidden ways to raise money. Money for them did not exist. All they knew was the certainty that without those pretty bits of paper and bronze crowns they couldn’t go to the theatre. Money has its own great abstract mythology, the basis of modern man’s religious and moral sensibility. The religious rites of the money-god, honest toil, thrift, profitability and suchlike, were quite unknown to them. Ideas like these everyone is born with but they weren’t; or we learn them at home, as I did. But all they ever learnt at home was what their grandfather taught them about the history of the neighbourhood houses.
“You can’t begin to imagine how out of touch they were, how they shrank from every practical reality. They never held a newspaper in their hands, they had no idea what was happening in the world. There was a world war going on at the time—it didn’t interest them. At school it became obvious once during questions that Tamás had never heard of István Tisza. When Przemysl fell, he thought it was something to do with a Russian general, and politely expressed his pleasure. They nearly thrashed him. Later, when the more intelligent boys discovered Ady and Babits, he thought they were talking about generals, and he actually believed for ages that Ady was a general. The clever boys thought Tamás was stupid, as did his teachers. His real genius, his knowledge of history, went totally unnoticed in the school, which he for his part didn’t mind in the least.
“In every other sense too, they stood outside the common order of life. It would occur to Éva at two in the morning that the week before she had left her French exercise book on Sváb Hill, so they would both get up, get dressed, go to Sváb Hill and wander there till morning. The next day Tamás, with lordly indifference, would absent himself from school. Éva would forge an absence note for him over the signature of the older Ulpius. Éva cut school regularly, and had absolutely nothing to do, but she was as happy as a cat on her own.
“One could call on them at any time. Visitors never bothered them. They just carried on with their own lives as if no-one else was present. Even at night you were made welcome. But while I was still at school I couldn’t visit them at night because of family rules: at the very most, after the theatre and then very briefly, and I dreamed constantly about how wonderful it would be to sleep at their house. Once I’d left school, I often spent the night there.
“Later I read in a famous English essay that the chief characteristic of the Celts was rebellion against the tyranny of facts. Well, in this respect the two of them were true Celts. In fact, as I recall, both Tamás and I were crazy about the Celts, the world of Parsifal and the Holy Grail. Probably the reason why I felt so at home with them was that they were so much like Celts. With them I found my real self. I remember why I always felt so ashamed of myself, so much an outsider, in my parents’ house. Because there, facts were supreme. At the Ulpius house, I was at home. I went there every day, and spent all my free time with them.
“The moment I came into the atmosphere of the Ulpius house my chronic sense of shame vanished, as did my nervous symptoms. When Tamás pulled me from the whirlpool, that was the last time it afflicted me. Nobody peered over my shoulder again, or stared at me in the darkness of night. I slept peacefully, and life granted what I expected of it. Physically I knitted together, and my face became unlined. This was the happiest time of my life, and if some smell or effect of the light stirs up the memory of it, I still experience the same rapturous, deceptive, elusive happiness, the first happiness I ever knew.
“This happiness was not of course without a price. In order to belong to the Ulpius house I had to renounce the objective world. Or rather, it became impossible to lead a double life. I gave up reading newspapers, broke off with my more intelligent friends. Gradually they came to think I was as stupid as Tamás. This really hurt, because I was proud, and I knew I was clever. But it couldn’t be helped. I severed all links with the family at home. To my parents and siblings I spoke with the measured formality I had learnt from Tamás. The rift that this brought between us I have never been able to repair, however hard I try, and ever since I’ve felt guilty towards my family. Later on I laboured to remove this sense of estrangement by being extremely compliant, but that’s another story.
“My parents were deeply dismayed by my transformation. The family sat in anxious council, with all my uncles, and they decided that I needed a girl. My uncle put this to me, much embarrassed, and with many symbolic expressions. I listened with polite interest, but showed little inclination to agree, the less so because at that time Tamás, Ervin, János Szepetneki and I had undertaken never to touch any woman since we were the new Knights of the Grail. However with time the girl idea faded, and my parents came to accept that I was as I was. My mother, I am sure, to this day carefully warns our domestics and new acquaintances when they come to the house, to be on their guard, because I am not a normal sort of person. And yet, for how many years now, there hasn’t been the slightest thing about me to suggest that I am other than perfectly normal.
“I really couldn’t say what caused this change which my parents noted with such alarm. It’s true that Tamás and Éva demanded absolutely that one should fit in with them, and I heartily, even happily, went along with this. I ceased to be a good student. I revised my opinions and came to despise a whole lot of things which up till then I had liked—soldiers and military glory, my classmates, native Hungarian cooking—everything that would have been described in school terms as ‘cool’ and ‘good fun’. I gave up football, which until then I had followed passionately. Fencing was the only permissible sport, and the three of us trained for it with all the more intensity. I read voraciously to keep up with Tamás, although this wasn’t difficult for me. My interest in religious history dates from this time. Later, I gave it up, like so many other things, when I became more serious.
“Despite all this, I still felt guilty towards Tamás and Éva. I felt like a fraud. Because what for them was natural freedom was for me a difficult, dogged sort of rebellion. I was just too petty-bourgeois. At home t
hey had brought me up too much that way, as you know. I had to take a deep breath and reach a major decision before dropping my cigarette ash on the floor. Tamás and Éva couldn’t imagine doing anything else. When I summoned up the courage every so often to cut school with Tamás, I’d have stomach cramps for a whole day. My nature was such that I would wake early in the morning and be sleepy at night, I’d be hungriest at midday and dinner-time, I’d prefer to eat from a dish and not begin with the sweet. I like order, and am mortally afraid of policemen. These sides to my nature, my whole order-loving, dutiful bourgeois soul, I had to conceal when I was with them. But they knew. They took exactly the same view, and they were very good about it. They said nothing. If my love of order or thrift somehow betrayed itself, they magnanimously looked the other way.
“The hardest thing was that I had to take part in their plays. I don’t have the slightest instinct for acting. I am incurably self-conscious, and at first I thought I would die when they gave me their grandfather’s red waistcoat so that I could become Pope Alexander the Sixth in a long-running Borgia serial. In time I did get the hang of it. But I never managed to improvise the rich baroque tapestries they did. On the other hand, I made an excellent sacrificial victim. I was perhaps best at being poisoned and boiled in oil. Often I was just the mob butchered in the atrocities of Ivan the Terrible, and had to rattle my throat and expire twenty-five times in a row, in varying styles. My throat-rattling technique was particularly admired.
“And this I have to tell you, though it’s difficult for me to talk about it, even after so much wine, but my wife must know everything: I really enjoyed being the sacrificial victim. It was the first thing I thought of when I woke up, and I looked forward to it the whole day long, yes … ”
“Why did you enjoy being the victim?” asked Erzsi.
“Hmmm … well, for erotic reasons, if you follow me. I think … yes. After a while, I would dig up these stories myself, so I could be the victim according to my taste. For example: Éva would be an Apache girl (the cinema had already begun to channel her fantasy—there were films about them at the time) and would lure me into her camp. She would get me drunk, then they would rob me and murder me. Or, the same thing done historically, say, Judith and Holofernes. That story I really adored. Or I would be a Russian general, Éva a spy. She puts me to sleep and steals the plan of campaign. Tamás is the heroic assistant. He chases after Éva, recovers the secret plans. But Éva frequently neutralises him, and the Russians suffer horrific losses. That sort of story would take shape as the game developed. It’s interesting that Tamás and Éva really enjoyed these games. It’s only me that’s still embarrassed by them, and even now I speak of them with some shame. They never did. Éva loved to be the woman who cheats, betrays and murders men, Tamás and I loved to be the man she cheats, betrays, murders, or utterly humiliates … ”
Mihály stopped talking and sipped his wine. After a while Erzsi asked:
“Tell me, were you in love with Éva Ulpius?”
“No, I don’t think so. If you really must know if I was in love with anyone, then it was more like Tamás. Tamás was my ideal. Éva was just a bonus, and the erotic catalyst in these games. But I wouldn’t really agree that I was in love with him, because the phrase is misleading, and you would continue to think there was some unhealthy homo-erotic bond between us, which simply wasn’t the case. He was my best friend, using the word in a very adolescent sense, and what was unhealthy in the affair was, as I said before, something quite different and of a deeper nature.”
“But tell me, Mihály … this is rather difficult to believe … you were with her for years on end, and there was never any question of an innocent flirtation between you and Éva Ulpius?”
“No, none.”
“How was that?”
“How? … in fact … probably, that we were so intimate that it wasn’t possible to flirt or fall in love with one another. For love, there has to be a distance across which the lovers can approach one another. The approach is of course just an illusion, because love in fact separates people. Love is a polarity. Two lovers are the two oppositely charged poles of the universe.”
“This is all very deep, for so late at night. I don’t get the full picture. Perhaps the girl was ugly?”
“Ugly? She was the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. No, that isn’t quite right. She was the one beautiful woman against whom I have since measured all others. All my later loves were like her in some particular. With one, it would be the legs, with another, the way she lifted her head, with a third, her voice on the telephone.”
“Myself included?”
“You included … yes.”
“In what way am I like her?”
Mihály blushed and fell silent.
“Tell me. I insist.”
“How can I put it? … Stand up, would you, and come over here beside me.”
Erzsi stood beside his chair. He put his arm around her waist and looked up at her. She smiled.
“Now … that’s it,” said Mihály. “When you smile down at me like that. That’s how Éva smiled when I was the victim.”
Erzsi disengaged herself and sat down again.
“Very interesting,” she said, somewhat crestfallen. “You’re certainly holding something back. Never mind. I don’t consider it necessary that you should tell me everything. I don’t feel any pangs of conscience about the fact that I’ve not told you about my adolescence. I don’t think it very important. But tell me—you were in love with this girl. It’s just a matter of words. Where I come from it was what you would call love.”
“No. I tell you I wasn’t in love with her. Just the others.”
“What others?”
“I’m about to explain. For years there was no other visitor at the Ulpius house but me. When we were eighteen the situation changed. Then we were joined by Ervin and János Szepetneki. They came to see Éva, not Tamás, as I did. What happened was that around that time the school put on a drama festival, as it did every year, and as we were the final year group we did the main item of the whole event. Any chance to do a play was good news. The only trouble was that there was a large female role in it. To fill it, the boys brought along their fantasy-heroines from the skating rink and the dancing school, but the teacher producing the play, an extremely clever young priest who hated women, didn’t find any of them suitable. I somehow mentioned the fact in Éva’s hearing. From that moment she would not rest. She felt that this was her chance to begin her career as an actress. Tamás of course wouldn’t hear of it. He thought it grotesque and degrading that she should begin in the context of school, such an intimate, almost family setting. But Éva positively terrorised me until I took the matter up with the teacher in question. He was very fond of me, and told me to bring her along. This I did. She had barely opened her mouth before he declared, ‘You must have the part, you and no-one else.’ Éva plucked up the nerve to raise the subject with her puritanical, theatre-hating father and pleaded with him for half-an-hour until at last he consented.
“Of course I don’t want to talk about the performance itself just now. I’ll just observe in passing that Éva, generally speaking, was not a success. The assembled parents, my mother included, found her too forward, insufficiently feminine, a little common—in a word, somehow not quite the thing. Or rather, they sensed the rebellion latent in her, and even though there was nothing objectionable in her acting, her costume, or her general behaviour, they took exception to her morals. But this didn’t make her a success with the boys either, despite the fact that she was so much more beautiful than the heroines of the skating-rink and the dancing school. They conceded she was very attractive, ‘but somehow …’ they said, and shrugged their shoulders. These young bourgeois types already carried the germ of their parents’ attitude to the unconventional. Only Ervin and János recognised the enchanted princess in her. Because they too were rebels by this time.
“János Szepetneki you saw today. He’s always been like that
. He was the best verse-reader in the class. In particular he was a great hit in the literary and debating society as Cyrano. He carried a revolver about with him and every week shot burglars dead in the middle of the night, trying to steal secret documents from his widowed mother. While the other lads were still laboriously treading on their dancing partners’ toes, he was having wild adventures. Every summer he went off to the battlefront and took up the rank of second lieutenant. His new clothes would be torn within minutes—he always seemed to fall off something. His greatest ambition was to prove to me that he was my superior. I think it all started when we were thirteen. One of our teachers took up phrenology and decided from the bumps on my head that I was gifted, whereas János’s skull showed he wasn’t very bright. He never got over this. Years after we’d left school he was still going on about it. He had to be better than me at everything—football, study, intellectual things. When later on I gave up all three he was really at a loss and didn’t know where to turn. So then he fell in love with Éva, because he thought that Éva was in love with me. Yes, that was János Szepetneki.”
“And who is this Ervin?”
“Ervin was a Jewish boy who’d converted to Catholicism, perhaps under the influence of the priests who taught us, but more probably I think following his own inner promptings. Earlier, at sixteen, he’d been the brightest of all the clever and conceited boys: Jewish boys tend to mature early. Tamás really hated him for his cleverness, and became thoroughly anti-Semitic whenever he was mentioned.
“It was from Ervin that we first heard about Freud, Socialism, the March Circle. He was the first of us to be influenced by the strange world of what later became the Károlyi revolution. He wrote wonderful poetry. In the style of Ady.