by Antal Szerb
“Then, practically from one day to the next, he changed completely. He shut himself off from his classmates. I was the only one he communicated with. But as for his poetry, to my mind, I just didn’t understand it, and I didn’t like the fact that he started writing long lines without any rhyme. He became a recluse, read books, played the piano—we knew very little about him. Then one day in Chapel we noticed him going up to the altar, with the other boys, for the sacrament. That was how we knew he had converted.
“Why did he become a Catholic? Ostensibly, because he was drawn to the strange beauty of the religion. He was also attracted by the dogma and the harshness of its moral code. I do believe there was something in him that craved austerity the way other people crave pleasure. In a word, all the usual reasons why outsiders convert … And he became a model Catholic. But there was another side to it too, which I didn’t see so clearly at the time. Ervin, like everyone else in the Ulpius house except me, was a role-player by nature. When I think back now, even as a younger pupil he was always playing at being something. He played the intellectual and the revolutionary. He was never relaxed and natural, the way a boy should be, not by a long way. Every word and gesture was studied. He used archaic words, he was always aloof, always wanting the biggest role for himself. But his acting wasn’t like Tamás’s and Éva’s. They would just walk away from their part the moment it was over and look for something new. He wanted a role to fill with his whole being, and in the Catholic religion he finally found the hugely demanding role he could respect. After that he never altered his posture again. The part just grew deeper and deeper.
“He was a really devout Catholic, as Jewish converts often are. Their centuries of tradition haven’t been eroded the way they have for us. He wasn’t like his pious and impoverished schoolmates who worshipped every day, went to mass, and trained for a career in the church. Their Catholicism was a matter of conformity, his a form of rebellion, a challenge to the whole unbelieving and uncaring world. He took the Catholic line on everything—books, the war, his classmates, the mid-morning buttered roll. He was much more inflexible and dogmatic than even the most severe of our religious teachers. ‘No man, having put his hand to the plough, should look behind him’. That text was his motto. He cut out of his life everything that was not purely Catholic. He guarded his soul’s salvation with a revolver.
“The only vice he retained from his former life was smoking. I cannot recall ever seeing him without a cigarette.
“But he still had his share of life’s temptations. Ervin had adored women. With his comical single-mindedness he’d been the great lover of the class, the way János Szepetneki had been its great liar. The whole form knew about his loves, because he would walk his sweetheart for the whole afternoon on Gellért Hill, and write verses to her. The boys respected Ervin’s attachments because they felt the intensity and the poetic quality. But when he became a Catholic he naturally renounced love. At that time the lads were beginning to visit brothels. Ervin turned away from them in horror. They, I am quite sure, went to those women for a lark, or out of bravado. Ervin was the only one who really knew the meaning of physical desire.
“Then he met Éva. Of course Éva set her cap at him. Because Ervin was beautiful, with his ivory face, his high forehead, his blazing eyes. And he radiated differentness, stubbornness, rebellion. And with it he was gentle and refined. I only came to appreciate him after he and János turned up at the Ulpius house.
“That first afternoon was horrible. Tamás was aloof and aristocratic, contributing only the occasional totally irrelevant remark, pour épater les bourgeois. But Ervin and János were not épatés because they weren’t bourgeois. János talked the entire afternoon about his whale-hunting experiences and the plans of some big company to harvest coconuts. Ervin listened, smoked, and gazed at Éva. Éva was quite unlike her usual self. She simpered, she put on airs, she was womanish. I was utterly miserable. I felt like a dog discovering that two other dogs have come to share his privileged place under the family table. I growled, but really I wanted to howl with misery.
“I began to visit less often. I arranged to call when Ervin and János weren’t there. Besides, we were approaching our school-leaving exams. I had to take them seriously. What’s more, I made a huge effort to drill the essential information into Tamás. Somehow we got by, Tamás on the strength of my cramming him—mostly he didn’t even want to get out of bed. And after that there began a whole new phase of life at the Ulpius house.
“Now everything changed for the better. Tamás and Éva emerged as the stronger personalities. They completely assimilated Ervin and János into their way of life. Ervin relaxed his morbid severity. He adopted a terribly kind, if somewhat affected, manner, speaking always as if in quotation marks to dissociate himself in some way from what he was saying or doing. János was more quiet and sentimental.
“In time we got back to the play-acting, but the plays were now much more crafted, enriched by János’s escapades and Ervin’s poetical fantasy. János naturally proved a great actor. His declamation and sobbing were always over the top (because what he really wanted to play was unrequited passion). We had to stop in mid-scene for him to calm down. Ervin’s favourite role was a wild animal. He did a wonderful bison, slain by Ursus (me), and an extremely accomplished unicorn. With his single mighty horn he shredded every obstacle—curtains, sheets, and the rest of us put together.
“During that period our horizons gradually opened out. We began to go for long walks among the Buda hills. We even went bathing. And then we took up drinking. The idea came from János. For years he’d told us stories about his exploits in bars. Apart from him, the best drinker among us was Éva—it was so hard to tell whether she was drunk or just her normal self. Ervin took to drinking with the same passion as with his smoking. I don’t like to confirm a prejudice, but you know how strange it is when a Jew hits the bottle. Ervin’s drinking was every bit as odd as his Catholicism. A sort of embittered plunging headlong into it, as if he wasn’t simply getting drunk on Hungarian wine but on some vicious substance like hashish or cocaine. And with it, it was always as if he was saying goodbye, as if he was about to drink for the very last time, and generally doing everything as if for the last time in this world. I soon got used to the wine. I came to depend on the feeling of dissolution and the shedding of inhibition it produced in me. But at home the next day I would feel horribly ashamed of my hangovers, and always swore I’d never drink again. And then when I did drink again, the knowledge of my own weakness grew, as did the sense of death, which was my overwhelming feeling during these years of the second phase at the Ulpius house. I felt I was ‘rushing headlong towards ruin’, especially at those times when I was drinking. I felt I was irretrievably falling outside the regular life of respectable people, and everything my father expected of me. This feeling, despite the horrible agonies of remorse, I really enjoyed. By this stage I was virtually in hiding from my father.
“Tamás drank very little, and grew steadily more taciturn.
“Then Ervin’s religiosity began to affect us. We had by now started to look at the world, at the reality we’d always shied away from, and it terrified us. We believed that man was degraded by his material needs, and we listened reverently to Ervin who told us we must never follow that path. We too began to pass judgement on the whole modern world with the same severity and dogmatism as Ervin himself, and for a while he became the dominant influence in the group. We deferred to him in everything. János and I strove to outdo each other in pious deeds. Every day we searched out new poor unfortunates in need of assistance, and even newer immortally great Catholic authors requiring to be rescued by us from undeserved obscurity. St Thomas and Jacques Maritain, Chesterton and St Anselm of Canterbury buzzed in our conversation like flies. We went to mass, and János of course had visions. Once St Dominic appeared at the window before dawn, with the gesture of the raised finger, and pronounced: ‘We watch over you individually and completely.’ I guess János an
d I in this pose must have been irresistibly comic. Tamás and Éva took little part in this Catholicism of ours.
“This period lasted for perhaps a year. Then things began to disintegrate. I couldn’t say exactly what began the process, but somehow common reality began to flow back. And with it, it brought decay. The Ulpius grandfather died. He suffered for weeks. He struggled for air, his throat rattled. Éva nursed him with surprising patience, staying up whole nights at his bedside. I remarked to her later how good it was of her. She smiled absent-mindedly and said how interesting it was to watch someone die.
“At that point their father decided that things really couldn’t carry on as they were. Something would have to be done about his children. He wanted to marry Éva off as a matter of urgency. He bundled her off to a rich old aunt in the country, who took a large house where she could go to county balls and Lord knows what else. Éva of course returned after a week, with some marvellous stories, and submitted phlegmatically to her father’s chastisement. Tamás did not share his sister’s easy nature. His father put him in an office. It’s horrible to think … even now it brings tears to my eyes when I think how he suffered in that office. He worked in the city hall, with conventional petty-bourgeois types who regarded him as mentally unsound. They gave him the most stupid, most dully routine work possible, because they reckoned he wouldn’t be able to cope with anything requiring a little thought or initiative. And perhaps they were right. The worst of the many humiliations he received at their hands amounted to this: not that they insulted him, but that they pitied and cosseted him. Tamás never complained to us, just occasionally to Éva. That’s how I know. He just went pale and became very withdrawn whenever the office was mentioned.
“Then came his second suicide attempt.”
“The second?”
“The second. I should have mentioned the first one earlier. That was actually much more serious and horrific. It happened when we were sixteen, just at the start of our friendship. I called there one day as usual and found Éva alone, doing some drawing with rather unusual concentration. She said Tamás had gone up to the attic, and I should wait, he would soon be down. Around that time he often went up to the attic to explore. He turned up countless treasures in the old trunks, which fed his antiquarian fantasies and were used in our plays. In an old house like that the attic is a specially romantic sort of place, so I wasn’t really surprised, and I waited patiently. Éva, as I said, was unusually quiet.
“Suddenly she turned pale, leapt to her feet, and screamed at me that we should go up to the attic to see what was wrong with Tamás. I had no idea what this was all about, but her fear ran through me. In the attic it was as black as could be. I tell you, it was a vast ancient place, full of nooks and crannies, with the doors of mysterious bureaux open everywhere, and trunks and desks blocking the main passage at intervals. I bumped my head on low-hanging beams. There were unexpected steps to go up and down. But Éva ran through the darkness without hesitation, as if she already knew where he might be. At the far end of the corridor there was a low and very long niche, and at the end of that the light of a small round window could be seen. Éva came to a sudden stop, and with a scream grabbed hold of me. My teeth were also chattering, but even at that age I was the sort of person who finds unexpected courage in moments of greatest fear. I went into the darkness of the niche, dragging Éva along, still clinging to me.
“Tamás was dangling beside the little round window, about a metre off the floor. He had hanged himself. Éva shrieked, ‘He’s still alive, he’s still alive,’ and pressed a knife into my hand. It seems she had known perfectly well what he intended. There was a trunk next to him. He’d obviously stood on it to attach the noose to the strength of the joist. I jumped up on the trunk, cut the cord, supported Tamás with the other hand and slowly lowered him down to Éva, who untied the noose from his neck.
“Tamás quickly regained consciousness. He must have been hanging only a minute or two, and no damage was done.
“‘Why did you give me away?’ he asked Éva. She was covered in shame and didn’t reply.
“In due course I asked, rather guardedly, why he had done it.
“‘I just wanted to see …’ he replied, with indifference.
“‘And what was it like?’ asked Éva, wide-eyed with curiosity.
“‘It was wonderful.’
“‘Are you sorry I cut you down?’ I asked. Now I too felt a little guilty.
“‘Not really. I’ve plenty of time. Some other time will do.’
“Tamás wasn’t able at the time to explain what it was really all about. But he didn’t have to. I knew all the same. I knew from our games. In the tragedies we played we were always killing and dying. That’s all they were ever about. Tamás was always preoccupied with dying. But try to understand, if it’s at all possible: not death, annihilation, oblivion, but the act of dying. There are people who commit murder again and again from an ‘irresistible urge’, to savour the heady excitement of killing. The same irresistible urge drew Tamás towards the supreme ecstasy of his own final passing away. Probably I can’t ever explain this to you, Erzsi. Things like this just can’t be explained, just as you can’t describe music to someone who is tone-deaf. I understood him completely. For years we never said another word about what happened. We just knew that each understood the other.
“The second attempt came when we were twenty. I actually took part in it. Don’t worry, you can see I’m still alive.
“At that time I was in utter despair, mainly because of my father. When I matriculated I enrolled as a philosophy student at the university. My father asked me several times what I wanted to be, and I told him a religious historian. ‘And how do you propose to earn your living?’ he would ask. I couldn’t answer that, and I didn’t want to think about it. I knew he wanted me to work in the firm. He had no real objection to my university studies because he thought it would simply give status to the firm if one of the partners had a doctorate. For my part, I looked on university, in the last analysis, as a few years’ delay. To gain a bit of time, before becoming an adult.
“Joie de vivre wasn’t my strong point during that time. The feeling of mortality, of transience, grew stronger in me, and by then my Catholicism was no longer a consolation. In fact it increased my sense of weakness. I wasn’t a role-player by nature, and by that stage I could clearly see that my life and being fell hopelessly short of the Catholic ideal.
“I was the first of us to abandon our shared Catholicism. One of my many acts of betrayal.
“But to be brief. One afternoon I called at the Ulpius house and invited Tamás to come for a walk. It was a fine afternoon in spring. We went as far as Old Buda and sat in an empty little bar under the statue of St Flórián. I had a lot to drink, and moaned about my father, my prospects, the whole horrible misery of youth.
“‘Why do you drink so much?’ he asked.
“‘Well, it’s fun.’
“‘You like the dizzy feeling?’
“‘Of course.’
“‘And the loss of consciousness?’
“‘Of course. It’s the one thing I really do like.’
“‘Well then, I really don’t understand you. Imagine how much better it would be to die properly.’
I conceded this. We think much more logically when we are drunk. The only problem was, I have a horror of any form of pain or violence. I had no wish to hang or stab myself or jump into the freezing Danube.
“‘No need,’ said Tamás. ‘I’ve got thirty centigrams of morphine here. I reckon it would do for the two of us, though it’s really just enough for one. The fact is, the time has come. I’m going to do it in the next few days. If you come with me then so much the better. Naturally I don’t want to influence you. It’s just as I say: only if you feel like it.’
“‘How did you get the morphine?’
“‘From Éva. She got it from the doctor—said she could not sleep.’
“For both of us it was fatally
significant that the poison came from Éva. This was all part of the world of our dramatics, those sick little plays which we had had to change so much after Ervin and János arrived. The thrill was always in the fact that we died for Éva, or because of her. The fact that she had provided the poison finally convinced me that I should take it. And that’s what happened.
“I can’t begin to describe how simple and natural it was just then to commit suicide. I was drunk, and at that age drink always produced the feeling in me that nothing mattered. And that afternoon it freed in me the chained demon that lures a man towards death, the demon that sleeps, I believe, in the depths of everyone’s consciousness. Just think, dying is so much more easy and natural than staying alive … ”
“Do get on with the story,” said Erzsi impatiently.
“We paid for our wine and went for a walk, in a blaze of happy emotion. We declared how much we loved each other, and how our friendship was the finest thing in the world. We sat for a while beside the Danube, somewhere in Old Buda, beside the tramlines. Dusk was falling on the river. And we waited for it to take effect. At first I felt absolutely nothing.
“Suddenly I experienced an overwhelming sense of grief that I was leaving Éva. Tamás at first didn’t want to hear about it, but then he too succumbed to his feelings for her. We took a tram, then ran up the little stairway to Castle Hill.
“I realise now that the moment I wanted to see Éva I had already betrayed Tamás and his suicide attempt. I had unconsciously calculated that if we went back among people they would somehow rescue us. Subconsciously I had no real wish to die. I was weary to death, as weary as only a twenty-year-old can be, and indeed I yearned for the secret of death, longed for the dark delirium. But when the feeling of mortality inspired by the wine began to wear off, I didn’t actually want to die.