by Antal Szerb
In her half-trance she became aware that, under the table, the Persian was holding her hand in his and stroking it.
He did not betray himself by the slightest movement as he conversed politely with the hosts. Yet Erzsi still felt that everyone was posing, so outrageously that she almost expected them to stick out their tongues at her. And the Persian was just waiting, perhaps without any particular plan in his head, at that late hour of night …
“Does he think I am some unapproachable Persian woman? My God, we ought to go out for a stroll … but it’s raining.”
Suddenly there was a knock at the door. The peasant-woman brought in a thoroughly sodden youth, who was obviously known to the host couple. From what the lad had to say it transpired that János had reached the neighbouring village but had not found a suitable fan belt there. However he had sprained his leg, and thought it best to spend the night with the local doctor, who was a most kindly man. He asked if they would come and collect him, should they somehow manage to repair the car.
This news was received with dismay. Then they decided that if that was the way things stood, it would be better to go to bed, as it was already long past midnight. The lady of the house conducted them upstairs. When it had been tactfully established that Erzsi and the Persian were not together, each was assigned a separate room, and the hostess took her leave. Erzsi took her leave of the Persian and went into her room, where the old peasant-woman made up her bed, and bade her goodnight.
It was as if everything had been prepared in advance. Of this Erzsi no longer had any doubt. The little play being enacted in her honour was no doubt the brainchild of János: the problem with the car, the little château by the roadside, his accident, and now the final scene with the happy ending.
She looked round her room. She carefully locked the door, and then had to smile. There was another door in the room, and this had no key. She cautiously opened this second door. It revealed an unlit room. But in the far wall of the darkened room was another door, under which a strip of light appeared. She tip-toed over to it. Someone was walking about in the next room. She thought back to the arrangement of the rooms as they had gone along the corridor, and decided that the one behind the door was the Persian’s. He was certainly not going to lock his door. Through it he would make his way comfortably to her room. And this was quite natural, after the intimate way they had sat together down below, under the lamp. She returned to her room.
Her mirror showed her how deeply she was blushing. János had sold her to the Persian and the Persian had bought her, as he might a calf. He had made her a down payment in the form of the tabatière (which Sári had established was a great deal more valuable than you might think at first glance)—and János had certainly had his ‘pocket money’. She was filled with deep humiliation and anger. How she could have loved the Persian … but that he should treat her like a commodity! Oh how stupid men were! By this he had spoilt everything.
“Why do they all try to sell me? Mihály sold me to Zoltán—even his letter made it clear that there had been a deal—and now János sells me to the Persian, and, God knows, in time the Persian will sell me to some Greek or Armenian; and after that I’ll be sold again and again by men who don’t even view me as their own property.” She racked her brains to discover what there might be in her that made men do this. Or perhaps the fault lay not in her, but in the men she fell in with, Mihály and János, and the fact that both of them had loved Éva, a woman who was for sale, and were therefore unable to see her as any different?
A few minutes more and the Persian would come, and, in the most natural way in the world, would wish to complete the transaction. What nonsense! She must do something. Go to the lady of the house, and make a great scene, call for her protection? It would be ridiculous, since the people of the house were the Persian’s hired lackeys (Who could they be? They had played their parts very well. Perhaps they were actors, since he was now a film entrepreneur.) She walked up and down, at her wits’ end.
“Perhaps you’re quite mistaken. Perhaps the thought never entered his brain.”
It struck her that if the Persian didn’t come, that would be every bit as insulting as if he did.
If he came … Perhaps it wouldn’t be so insulting and humiliating. He knew perfectly well that Erzsi admired him. She herself had issued the invitation to come. He was not coming as to a slave-girl in his harem, but to a woman who loved him, and whom he loved, after carefully removing every obstacle in the way. Had she been sold? Indeed, she had. But properly speaking, the fact that men laid out vast sums for her need not really be so humiliating. On the contrary, it was very flattering, for people spend money only on the things they value … She began suddenly to undress.
She stood in front of the mirror, and for a few moments studied her shoulders and arms with satisfaction, as a sample of the whole item “for which men laid out vast sums of money”. The thought was now decidedly pleasurable. Well, was she worth it? If she was worth it to them …
Before this, under the lamp downstairs, she had longed for the Persian’s embraces. Not perhaps with the most single-minded passion: there was more curiosity in it, a yearning for the exotic. For she had not thought at the time that it might become reality. But now, such a short while later, she was going to feel, with her whole body, the volcanic glow she sensed in the Persian. How strange and fearful was the preparation and the waiting!
She was filled with trembling excitement. This would be the supreme night of her life. The goal, the great fulfilment, towards which her road had always led. Now, now at last she was putting behind her every petty-bourgeois convention, everything that was still Budapest in her, and somewhere in the depths of France, that night, in an ancient château, she would give herself to a man who had purchased her, would give herself to an exotic wild animal and lose forever her genteel character, like some Eastern whore in the Bible or the Thousand and One Nights. Always this same wish-image had lurked at the base of her fantasies, not least when she was deceiving Zoltán with Mihály … And her instinct had chosen correctly, for the road taken with Mihály had really led all along to this.
And now here was the man who would perhaps prove final. The real tiger. The exotic one. The man of passion. A few minutes, and she would know. A shiver went through her. Of cold? No, a shiver of fear.
Quickly she pulled her blouse back on. She stood at the door that opened on to the corridor, and pressed her hand against her heart, with the naïve, artless gesture she had so often seen in the cinema.
In her imagination she was confronting the great secret: formless, headless, terrifying, the secret of the East, the secret of men, the secret of love. With what appalling, tormenting, lacerating movements and actions would he approach her, this stranger, this man with the tiger-strangeness. And might he not annihilate her, as the gods once annihilated mortal women in their arms? What unspoken, mysterious horrors? …
Suddenly it all enfolded her once again: her good upbringing, her character as genteel lady, as model pupil, her thrift, everything she had once fled. No, no, she did not dare … Fear lent her strength and cunning. Within seconds she had piled up every bit of furniture against the unlocked door. She even seized hold of the massive bed and, sobbing, gulping down her tears, dragged that too up to the door. Then she collapsed on to it, exhausted.
Just in time. From the neighbouring room she could hear the soft steps of the Persian. He was standing outside the door. He listened, then turned the handle.
The door, with every piece of furniture in the room leaning against it, stood firm. The Persian did not try to force it.
“Elizabeth,” he said quietly.
She did not answer. Again he tried to open the door, this time, it seemed, with the weight of his shoulder. The pile of furniture gave a little.
“Don’t come in!” Erzsi cried.
The Persian stopped, and for a short while there was complete silence.
“Elizabeth, open the door,” he said more loudly.
She did not reply.
He hissed something, and applied his full strength to the door.
“Don’t come in!” she screamed.
The Persian released the door.
“Elizabeth,” he said again, but his voice seemed distant, and dying away.
Then, after another pause, he said “Good night,” and went back to his room.
She lay on the bed, fully dressed, her teeth chattering. She was sobbing, and horribly tired. This was the moment of truth, when a person sees the whole pattern of their life. She did not prettify the incident to herself. She knew that she had denied the Persian not because she was bothered by the humiliating circumstances, not even because she was a respectable woman, but because she was a coward. She had come up against the mystery she had sought again and again, and she had fled before it. All her life she had been a petty-bourgeoise, and that was what she would remain.
Oh, if only the Persian were to return, now she would let him in … Of course she wouldn’t die, nothing truly horrible could happen. Oh how stupid had been her childish fear! If the Persian came back this terrible exhaustion would fall away from her, as would everything else, everything …
But the Persian did not return. Erzsi undressed, lay down and slept.
She managed to sleep for an hour or two. When she woke it was already becoming light outside. It was half past three. She leapt out of bed, washed her face and hands, dressed, and stole out into the corridor. Without even thinking about it she knew she must get away. She knew she could never see the Persian again. She was ashamed, and rejoiced to have escaped with her skin intact. Her spirits were high, and when she finally managed to prise open the main door of the house, which was bolted but not locked, and made it through the garden to the main road without being observed, she was filled with adolescent bravado and felt that, despite all her cowardice, she was the victor, the one who had triumphed.
She ran blithely down the main road, and soon reached a small village. As luck would have it, there was even a railway station nearby, and indeed a dawn market train leaving for Paris. It was still early morning when she reached the capital.
Back in her hotel room, she lay down and slept deeply, and perhaps contentedly, until the afternoon. When she woke she felt as if she had truly awakened after some enduring, beautiful and terrifying dream. She hurried off to Sári in a taxi, though she could have done it quite comfortably by bus or Métro. Now that she was truly awake her economising days were over.
She told Sári the whole story, with the cynical candour women use when talking amongst themselves about their love lives. Sári spiced the narrative with little exclamations and truisms.
“And what will you do now?” she finally asked, in a gentle, consoling tone.
“What will I do? But don’t you see? I’ll go back to Zoltán. That’s why I came here.”
“You’ll go back to Zoltán? So, is that why you walked out on him? And you think it’ll be any better now? Because it can’t be said you’ve any great love for him. I don’t understand you … But you’re quite right. You’re absolutely right. I would do the same in your position. After all, certainty is certainty, and you weren’t born to live like a student in Paris for the rest of your life, and keep changing your lovers as if you lived off them.”
“And I certainly wasn’t born for that! And just because … Excuse me, but I’ve just realised what was the basis of my fear yesterday. I started thinking where all this would lead. After the Persian there would be a Venezuelan, then a Japanese, and perhaps a Negro … I reckoned that once a girl starts off down that road there’s no going back: what the devil is there to stop you? And that’s not all. It could be that I really am like that, yes? That’s what I was frightened of—myself, and everything I might be capable of, and everything that could still happen to me. But no, it’s not that either. There has to be something to hold a woman back. And in that case, better Zoltán.”
“What’s this ‘better’? He’s wonderful. A rich man, a good man, he worships you, I can’t understand how you ever left him. Now, this minute, write to him, pack up your things, and go. My Erzsi … How nice for you. And how I shall miss you.”
“No, I shan’t write to him. You shall.”
“Are you afraid he won’t want you after all?”
“No, my dear, truly I’m not afraid of that. But I don’t want to write to him, because he must never know that I’m going to him as a refugee. He mustn’t know that he’s the only answer. Let him think I felt sorry for him. Otherwise, he’d be so full of himself!”
“How right you are!”
“Write and tell him that you’ve tried hard to reason with me to go back to him, and you think I would be willing, only my pride won’t let me admit it; that it would be better if he came to Paris and tried to talk with me. You’ll prepare the way. Write a good letter, my Sárika. You can be sure Zoltán will be very gallant towards you.”
“Splendid. I’ll write straight away, here, right here, right now. Now, Erzsi, when you’re in Pest, and Zoltán’s wife again, you can send me a really nice pair of shoes. You know, they’re so much cheaper and better in Pest, and they last so much longer.”
XXIV
FOIED VINOM PIPAFO, CRA CAREFO. Enjoy the wine today, tomorrow there’ll be none. The wine had run out: the mysterious inner spring that wakes a man day after day and sustains him with the illusion that life is worth getting up for, had run dry. And as the spring, like the wine, ran dry, it had been replaced from below by waters rising from the dark sea, the inner lake, connected through its depths to the great ocean, the Other Wish, antagonistic to life and more powerful than it.
The legacy of Tamás that had lain within him like a seed had now grown to reality. This growth—his own, special death—had burgeoned inside him, had fed itself on his sap, had thought with his thoughts and reasoned with his reasons, drunk in all the fine sights for its own purposes, until it reached wholeness, and now the time had come for it to move out into the world as a reality.
He wrote to Éva with the exact time: Saturday night. She replied: “I’ll be there”.
That was all. Éva’s curt, matter-of-fact reply filled him with dismay. Was that all he got? Such a routine attitude towards death! It was terrifying.
He felt a kind of chill beginning to spread through him, a strange sickly chill, like a limb going progressively numb under local anaesthetic, when your own body becomes alien and frightening. And so whatever it was inside him that stood for Éva slowly died. Mihály was well acquainted with love’s pauses, its blank intermissions, when, between the more ardent periods of passion, we become suddenly quite indifferent to the beloved, and look into the beautiful unfamiliar face wondering whether this actually is the woman … this was one of those pauses, but more pronounced than any he had known before. Éva had gone cold.
But then what would become of the Tamás-like sweetness of his final moments?
An odd, untimely humour put strength into him, and he acknowledged that the great act had got off to a decidedly poor start.
This was Saturday afternoon. He submitted himself, in these his last remaining hours, to some searching questions. What does a man do when nothing has meaning any longer? “The last hours of a suicide”: the phrase, so applicable to his situation, dismayed him even more than his earlier decision that he was “mad with love” or that “he could live no longer without her”. How distressing that the most sublime moments and stages of our lives can be approached only with the most banal expressions; and that, probably, these are indeed our most banal moments. At such times we are no different from anyone else. Mihály was now “preparing himself for death” just as any other man would do who knew he would soon have to die.
Yes, there was nothing else for it. He could not escape the law by which, even in his last moments, he was compelled to conform. He too would write a farewell note, as convention required. It would not be right to leave his father and mother without a farewell. He would write the
m a letter.
That was the first real moment of pain, when this idea struck him. Until then he had felt nothing more than a weary, dull depression, a fog, through which filtered the mysterious green glitter of the awaited climax of his last moments, and his thoughts of Tamás. But as he began to consider his parents he felt a sharp pang, a sharp, bright pang: the fog cleared, and he began to pity them, and to pity himself, stupidly, sentimentally, absurdly. Feeling ashamed, he took out his pen. With exemplary discipline and detachment, but therefore in words warm with feeling, he would announce his deed, calmly, masterfully, as one experienced in death.
As he sat there with the pen in his hand, waiting for the words of exemplary discipline to enter his head, there was a sudden knocking at the door. Mihály started violently. A week could go by and no-one called on him. Who could this be, just now? For a moment nameless suspicions flitted through his head. The lady of the house was not at home. No, he wouldn’t open the door. There was truly no reason now why he should. He had no business with anyone now.
But the knocking became increasingly vigorous and impatient. Mihály shrugged his shoulders, as if to say: “What are they doing, making all this commotion?” and he went out. As he did so he experienced a subtle sense of relief.
At the door he found, to his immense surprise, Vannina and another Italian girl. They were dressed very festively, with black silk scarves on their heads, and had apparently washed with more than usual thoroughness.