Journey by Moonlight

by Antal Szerb

  “I always thought of him as such a soft, slimy creature.”

  “Me too. And, I have to confess, now that he’s assumed such Shylockian proportions, he impresses me much more favourably. A decent chap, after all … ”

  There was another long silence.

  “Tell me,” began Mihály, “presumably you’ve some plan, something I, or we, must do, that brought you to Rome.”

  “In the first place, I want to warn you. Zoltán believes that you’ll walk as unsuspecting into his other traps as you have into this. For example, he wants to offer you a wonderful job, so that you’ll go back to Pest. So that you’ll be right on the spot when the scandal breaks. But you mustn’t go back, at any price. And then I want to warn you about a … friend of yours. You know who.”

  “János Szepetneki?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you meet him in Paris?”

  “In company.”

  “Were you with him often?”

  “Yes, often enough. Zoltán also got to know him through me.”

  “And how did you find János? He’s really unusual, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, really unusual.”

  But she said this with so much apparent deliberation that suspicion flashed through Mihály’s mind. Was it really? … How strange it would be … But his considerable discretion instantly rebelled and he suppressed his curiosity. If it were at all like that, then he should say nothing more about János Szepetneki.

  “Thank you, Erzsi, for the warning. You’re very good to me, and I know how little I deserve it. And I can’t believe that in time you too will come to hate me as bitterly as Zoltán Pataki does.”

  “I would think not,” said Erzsi, very solemnly. “I don’t feel any desire for revenge against you. There’s no reason why I should, really.”

  “I see there’s still something you want to say. Is there something else I should do?”

  “There is something else I must warn you about, but it’s rather painful because you might perhaps misunderstand my reason for saying it. Would you still think I’m speaking out of jealousy?”

  “Jealousy? I’m not so conceited. I know I’ve thrown away every legal claim on your jealousy.”

  Deep down, he was well aware that Erzsi was not disinterested. Otherwise she would not have come to Rome. But he felt, and chivalry dictated, that he ought to ignore the fact (which his male ego would normally have insisted on) that she might still be attracted to him.

  “Perhaps we should leave this—this question of my feelings,” Erzsi said with some exasperation. “They really have nothing to do with it. So … as I say … look, Mihály, I know perfectly well on whose account you’re in Rome. János told me. The person concerned wrote to him that you’d seen each other.”

  Mihály lowered his head. He sensed how very much it hurt Erzsi that he loved Éva. But what could he say to alter what was true and unchangeable?

  “Yes, Erzsi. If you know about it, good. You know the background to all this. In Ravenna I told you everything there was to know about me. Everything is as it had to be. Only it shouldn’t have to be so hard on you … ”

  “Please, drop it. I haven’t said a thing about it being hard on me. That really isn’t the point. But tell me … do you know what this woman is? What sort of life she leads nowadays?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never enquired about it.”

  “Mihály, I’ve always marvelled at your coolness, but you begin to surpass yourself. I never heard of such a thing, someone in love with a woman who has no interest in who or what sort of … ”

  “Because all that interests me is what she was then, in the Ulpius house.”

  “Perhaps you aren’t aware that she won’t be here much longer? She’s managed to hook a young Englishman who’s taking her with him to India. They leave in the next few days.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Oh, but it is. Take a look at this.”

  She drew another letter from her reticule. The handwriting was Éva’s. It was addressed to János. It gave a brief account of her impending trip to India, and the fact that she did not propose returning to Europe.

  “You didn’t know?” asked Erzsi.

  “You win,” said Mihály. He got up, paid, and went out, leaving his hat behind.

  Outside he staggered for a while in a blind daze, his hand pressed against his heart. Only after some time did he notice that Erzsi was walking beside him, and had brought him his hat.

  Erzsi was now quite changed: meek, timid, her eyes all tears. It was almost moving, the tall dignified woman in this posture of a small girl, as she walked beside him, in silence, with his hat in her hand. Mihály smiled, and took his hat.

  “Thank you,” he said, and kissed Erzsi’s hand. Timidly, she stroked his face.

  “Well, if you’ve no more letters in your reticule, then perhaps we can go and dine,” he said with a sigh.

  During the meal they exchanged few words, but those were full of intimacy and tender feeling. Erzsi was filled with a loving desire to console, Mihály with his own suffering, and the great quantity of wine he got through in his unhappiness made him gentle. He saw how much Erzsi still loved him, even now. What happiness, if he in turn could love her, and thus free himself of the past and the dead. But he knew it was impossible.

  “Erzsi, in the depths of my heart I wasn’t to blame for what happened between us,” he said. “True, that is easily said. But you see, for so many years I had done everything to make myself conform, and I only married you, as a kind of reward, when I really thought that at last everything was all right, that I had at last made my peace with the world. And then all the demons turned on me—my entire youth and all that nostalgia and rebellion. There’s no cure for nostalgia. Perhaps I should never have come to Italy. This country was created out of nostalgia, by kings and poets. Italy is the earthly paradise, but only as Dante saw it: the earthly paradise on the peak of Mount Purgatory, a mere stopping place on a journey, a supernatural aerodrome where spirits take off for the distant circles of heaven, when Beatrice lifts her veil, and the soul ‘feels the great power of the old yearning … ’”

  “Oh, Mihály, the world won’t tolerate a man giving himself up to nostalgia.”

  “It doesn’t tolerate it. It doesn’t tolerate any deviation from the norm. Any desertion or defiance, and sooner or later it turns the Zoltáns on you.”

  “And what do you want to do?”

  “That I don’t know. What are your plans, Erzsi?”

  “I’ll go back to Paris. We’ve talked about everything now—I think it’s time I went to my room. I’m leaving early tomorrow morning.”

  Mihály paid, and escorted her back.

  “I would love to know that you will be all right,” he said as they walked. “Say something to reassure me.”

  “It’s not as bad for me as you think,” said Erzsi, and her smile was now genuinely proud and satisfied. “My life is very full now, and who knows what wonderful things lie in store for me? In Paris I’ve found myself to some extent, and what I want in life. My only regret is that you’re not part of it.”

  They were standing outside Erzsi’s hotel. Taking his leave of her, Mihály looked again at Erzsi. Yes, she had changed a great deal. For better or worse, who could say? She was no longer the fine presence she had been: there was something broken in her, some inner coarsening of texture that showed in the way she dressed and spoke, and overpainted her face in the Parisian fashion. Erzsi had become somehow more common, was somehow surrounded by the ambience of some stranger, some mysterious and enviable stranger. Or perhaps of János, his arch-rival … This element of newness in the woman he had so long known was inexpressibly seductive and disturbing.

  “What will you do now, Mihály?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to go home, for a thousand and one reasons, and I really don’t want to be alone.”

  For an instant their eyes met, in the conspiratorial glance developed by the
year they had spent together, then, without another word, they hurried up to Erzsi’s room.

  The passion that had driven them so painfully together when Erzsi was still Zoltán’s wife now rose again in both of them. During those months they had both tried to fend off their desire, but the desire had been stronger and opposition only made it more savage. Now again they met in the teeth of a major obstacle. All that had happened between them, the seemingly irreparable grievances driving them so violently apart, served only to intensify the passion that threw them into one another’s arms. With the miraculous joy of recognition Mihály discovered it all again: Erzsi’s body which, physically, he desired more than the body of any other woman, Erzsi’s gentleness, Erzsi’s wildness, Erzsi’s whole night-time being which was utterly unlike the Erzsi who was revealed in the words and deeds of daylight, the passionate, loving Erzsi, so wise in the ways of love. And Erzsi revelled in her capacity to strip Mihály of the lethargic indifference in which he spent so much of his days.

  Later, all conflict resolved, they gazed delightedly at one another, exhausted and fulfilled, with eyes of wonder. Only now did it occur to them what had happened. Erzsi began to laugh.

  “Well, would you have believed this, this morning?”

  “Not me. Would you?”

  “Me neither. Or, I don’t know. I did come to do you a favour.”

  “Erzsi! You’re the most wonderful woman in the whole world.”

  He really thought that. He had been stunned by the womanly warmth in which she bathed him, and was gratefully, childishly happy.

  “Yes, Mihály, I must always be good to you. That’s what I feel. No-one should ever hurt you.”

  “Tell me … shouldn’t we give our marriage one more try?”

  Erzsi grew serious. She had of course expected this question, if only because her sexual vanity required it … but could it be a realistic proposition? … For a long time she gazed at Mihály, hesitant and questioning.

  “We should have another try,” he said. “Our bodies understand each other so well. And they are usually right. Nature’s voice, don’t you think? … What we mess up with our minds our bodies can still put right. We must have another go at living together.”

  “Why did you leave me there if … if that’s the case?”

  “Nostalgia, Erzsi. But now it’s as if I’ve been released from a kind of spell. True, I was a most willing slave and victim. But now I feel healthy and strong. I must stay with you, it’s quite clear. But of course I’m being selfish. The question is, what would be best for you?”

  “I don’t know, Mihály. I love you so much more than you love me, and it frightens me how much suffering you cause me. And … I don’t know where you stand with the other woman.”

  “With Éva? But did you think I had spoken to her? I just yearned after her. A spiritual illness. I’m going to be cured of it.”

  “First get yourself cured, then we can discuss it.”

  “Fine. You’ll see, we’ll talk about it soon enough. Sleep well, my dear, dear one.”

  But during the night he woke, and reached out for Éva. Grasping the hand that lay on the blanket he remembered it was Erzsi’s and, overcome with guilt, released it. Then he thought, wryly, sadly, wearily, how very different Éva was after all. From time to time he might feel an intense desire for Erzsi, but even this desire played itself out, and after it nothing remained but the sober and boring acknowledgement of facts. Erzsi was desirable and good and clever and everything, but she lacked mystery.

  Consummatum est. Erzsi was the last connection with the world of humanity. Now there was only the one who wasn’t: Éva, Éva … And when Éva went, only death would remain.

  And towards dawn Erzsi woke and thought:

  “Mihály hasn’t changed, but I have. Once he stood for the great adventure, rebellion, the stranger, the man of mystery. I now know he just passively lets outside forces carry him along. He’s no tiger. Or at least, there are people far more remarkable than he is. János Szepetneki. And the ones I haven’t yet met. Mihály returns my love at the moment simply because he’s looking to me for bourgeois order and security, and everything I actually ran to him to escape from. No, it doesn’t make sense. I’m cured of him.”

  She rose, washed, and began to dress. Mihály also woke. Somehow he immediately took in the situation and also got dressed, and they breakfasted with barely a word. He escorted Erzsi to the train and waved her goodbye. Both knew it was now finally over between them.

  XXII

  THE DAYS that followed Erzsi’s departure were dreadful. Shortly afterwards Waldheim left too, for Oxford, and Mihály was completely on his own. He had no interest in anything. He did not move out of the house, but lay all day long on his bed, fully dressed.

  The reality-content of Erzsi’s news had run through his whole system like a poison. He thought endlessly, and with ever-increasing anxiety, about his father, whom his own behaviour and the impending financial crisis had surely reduced to a dreadful state of mind. He could see the old man before him: presiding disconsolately over the family dinner, twirling his moustache or rubbing his knee in his distress, struggling to act as if nothing was wrong, his forced jollity making the others even more depressed, and everyone ignoring his sallies, becoming gradually more silent, eating at double speed to get away as fast as possible from the miseries of the family gathering.

  And if Mihály did occasionally manage to forget his father, his thoughts turned to Éva. That Éva would leave for an impossibly distant country, perhaps for ever, was worse than anything. Because, dreadful as it was that she had no desire to know about him, life was nonetheless bearable so long as one knew she was living in the same city, and that they might chance to meet, or at least she might be glimpsed from afar … But if she went away to India, there was nothing left for him. Nothing.

  One afternoon a letter arrived from Foligno, from Ellesley.

  Dear Mike,

  I have some very sad news for you. Father Severinus, the Gubbio monk, recently fell seriously ill. More precisely, he had a long-standing tubercular condition which got to the stage where he could no longer remain in the monastery and they brought him to the hospital here. During those hours when neither his illness nor his devotions claimed him, I had the opportunity to talk with him, and gained some small insight into his remarkable state of mind. I have no doubt that in earlier centuries this man would have been venerated as a saint. He spoke of you often and in terms of the greatest affection, and I learnt from him—how mysterious are the ways of Providence—that in your youth you and he had been close friends and always very attached to one another. He asked me to let you know when the inevitable happened. This request I now fulfil, for Father Severinus died in the night, towards dawn this morning. He was alert to the last, praying with his fellow Franciscans seated by his bed, when the moment of departure came.

  Dear Mike, if you had the absolute faith in eternal life that I have you would take some comfort in this news, because you would trust that your friend was now where his fragmentary mortal existence received its deserved complement, the Life Eternal.

  Don’t forget me completely. Write sometimes to your devoted

  Ellesley

  P S Millicent Ingram duly received the money. She finds your apologies absurd between friends, sends you many greetings and thinks of you with affection. I can now also mention that she is my fiancée.

  The day was appallingly hot. In the afternoon Mihály walked in a daze round the Borghese gardens, went to bed early, fell asleep in his exhaustion, and later woke again.

  In a half-dream he saw before him a wild, precipitous landscape. The prospect seemed somehow familiar and, still in his dream, he wondered where he could possibly have known that narrow valley, those storm-tossed trees, those seemingly stylised ruins. Perhaps he had seen them from the train, in that wonderful stretch of country between Bologna and Florence, perhaps in his wanderings above Spoleto, or in a painting by Salvator Rosa in some museum. The mood
of the landscape was ominous and heavy with mortality. Mortality hung over the tiny figure, the traveller, who, leaning on his stick, made his way across the landscape under a brilliant moon. He knew that the traveller had been journeying through that increasingly abandoned landscape, between tumultuous trees and stylised ruins, terrified by tempests and wolves, for an immense period of time, and that he, and no-one else in all the world, would roam abroad on such a night, so utterly alone.

  The bell rang. Mihály switched on the light and looked at his watch. It was past midnight. Who could it be? Surely no-one could have rung. He turned on his other side.

  The bell sounded again. Troubled, he got up, put something on, and went out. At the door stood Éva.

  In his embarrassment he forgot even to greet her.

  That’s how it is. You yearn for someone, maniacally, mortally, to the verges of hell and death. You look for them everywhere, pursue them, to no avail, and your life wastes away in nostalgia. Since coming to Rome Mihály had never stopped waiting for this moment, had prepared for it, and had only just come to believe that never again would he speak with Éva. And then suddenly she appears, just at the moment when you’ve pulled on a pair of cheap pyjamas, are ashamed to be so unkempt and unshaven, ashamed to death of your lodgings, and you’d actually rather this person, for whom you’ve yearned so inexpressibly, were simply not there.

  But Éva paid no attention to any of that. Without greeting or invitation she stepped quickly into his room, sat down in an armchair, and stared stiffly in front of her.

  Mihály shuffled in after her.

  She had not changed in the slightest. Love preserves one moment for ever, the moment of its birth. The beloved never ages. In love’s eye she is always seventeen, her dishevelled hair and light summer frock tousled for the rest of time by the same friendly breeze that blew in the first fatal moment.