by Antal Szerb
“Oh,” said Mihály, “I am delighted,” and began one of his longer stammerings, since he utterly failed to grasp the situation but had insufficient Italian to cover his embarrassment.
“Well then, are you coming, signore?” Vannina enquired.
“Me? Where to?”
“To the christening, of course.”
“What christening?”
“Why, the christening of my cousin’s baby. Perhaps you didn’t get my letter?”
“I didn’t get it. Did you write to me? How did you know my name and my address?”
“Your friend told me. Here it is, written down.”
She took out a crumpled note. He recognised Szepetneki’s writing. It read: “The Rotund Cabbage,” followed by Mihály’s address.
“Did you write to this name?” he asked.
“Yes. Funny name. You didn’t get my letter?”
“No, absolutely not, I can’t think why. But do come in.”
They went into the room. Vannina looked round, and asked:
“Is the signora not at home?”
“No, there is no signora.”
“Really? It would be so nice to sit here a while … But we still have to christen the bambino. Come along, come quickly. People are already starting to arrive, and we can’t keep the priest waiting.”
“But my dear … and … I never did get your letter. I’m so sorry about that, but really I wasn’t prepared, today … ”
“Maybe, but it doesn’t matter. You aren’t doing anything. Foreigners never have anything to do. Get your hat and come. Avanti.”
“But just at the moment I’ve a lot to do … An awful lot, and very important.”
And he became quite serious. It all came home to him, and he saw the familiar ghastliness of the situation. In the middle of composing his suicide note they were pestering him to go to a christening. They burst in on him with their precious stupid business, the way people always burst in on him with their precious stupid business when life was sublime and terrible. And sublime and terrible things always happened to him when life was stupid and precious. Life was not an art-form, or rather, it was an extremely mixed genre.
Vannina got up, came over to him and put her hand on his shoulder.
“What is this important business?”
“Er, well … I have letters to write. Very important letters.”
She gazed into his face, and he turned away in embarrassment.
“It would be better for you if you came now,” she said. “After the christening there’s a big celebration dinner at our place. Have some wine, and after that you can write those letters, if you still want to.”
Mihály looked at her in amazement. He remembered her gift of prophecy. He had the distinct feeling that the girl could see into him and had understood the situation. He suddenly felt ashamed, like a schoolboy caught red-handed. Now he saw nothing sublime in his wish to die. The elevated gave way to the mundane, as always happened. One really couldn’t keep the priest waiting … He put some money in his wallet, took his hat, and they set off.
But as he let the two women go on ahead down the darkened stairwell, and stood there alone, it suddenly struck him what unqualified stupidity it was, going off to a christening with these Italian proles he didn’t know from Adam. That sort of thing could happen only to him. He was on the point of running back and locking the door behind him, but the girl, as if sensing this, locked her arm in his and pulled him into the street. She hauled him along towards the Trastevere like a calf. Mihály felt that wonderful feeling of old, from the adolescent games, when he had been the sacrifice.
The relatives and friends, some fifteen or twenty strong, were already gathered in the tavern. They talked a very great deal, to him as well, but he understood nothing as they spoke in the Trastevere dialect, and besides he was not really paying attention.
Only when the young mother appeared with the bambino in her arms did he feel the full horror. The skinny, sickly ugliness of the mother and the yellowness of the baby terrified him. He had never liked children, whether new-born or in their later stages. He detested and feared them, and had always felt uncomfortable with their mothers. But this mother and this new-born babe were loathsome in a quite special way. In the ugly mother’s tenderness and the ugly babe’s defencelessness he sensed some kind of satanic parody of the Madonna, some malicious uglification of European man’s greatest symbol. It was such an apocalyptic kind of thing … as if the last mother had given birth to the last child, and none of those present had any idea that they were the last people alive, the excremental deposit of history, the dying Time-god’s final and absolute gesture of self-mockery.
From then on he lived through everything that happened from the grotesque, melancholy perspective of the last day and night on earth. Remembering how they had crowded through the narrow Trastevere streets, shouting out here and there to their teeming friends as they swarmed along to the little church, their every movement so strangely nimble and busily diminutive, he saw with ever greater clarity: “They’re rats. These people are rats, living here among the ruins. That’s why they’re so nimble and ugly, and why they breed so fast.”
Meanwhile he mechanically performed his function as godfather, with Vannina standing at his side directing him. At the conclusion of the service he gave the mother two hundred lire, and with enormous effort managed to kiss his godson, who now bore the name Michele.
(“Saint Michael Archangel, defend us in our struggles; be our shield against the wickedness of Satan and his snares. As God commands you, so we humbly beseech you; and you who command the Heavenly Armies, with the strength of the Lord deliver unto eternal damnation Satan and all the evil spirits who lead us into danger.”)
The service dragged on for ages. After it they all went back to the little tavern. Dinner had already been laid out in the courtyard. As usual, Mihály was hungry. He knew he had now done his duty sufficiently, and ought to be going home to write those letters. But it was no use. He was seduced by his deep culinary curiosity about the celebratory meal, what it would consist of, what interesting traditional dishes would be served. Would anyone else at such a point in his life, he wondered, feel so hungry and so curious about his pasta?
The meal was good. The unusual green pasta they served, pleasantly aromatic with vegetables, was a real speciality and well repaid his curiosity. The hosts were no less proud of the meat, a rare dish in the Trastevere, but Mihály was not so taken with it, viewing the cheese with much greater favour. It was a type he had never encountered before and a real experience, as is any new cheese. Meanwhile he drank a great deal, all the more because Vannina beside him kept generously topping him up, and since he could follow nothing of what was being said, he hoped by that means at least to participate in the general conviviality.
But the wine did not make him any merrier, merely more uncertain, incalculably less certain. It was now evening, Éva would be arriving soon at his lodgings … He really should get up and go back. There was now nothing to prevent it, only that the Italian girl would not let him. But by this time it was all extremely distant, Éva and his resolution and the desire itself, it was all very far away, drifting, an island drifting down the Tiber by night, and Mihály felt as impersonal and vegetable as the mulberry tree in the courtyard, and he too dandled his branches in this last night, no longer merely his own last night but the last night of all humanity.
It was now quite dark, and Italian stars loitered above the courtyard. He stood up, and felt utterly drunk. He had no idea how it had happened, because he did not remember—or perhaps he had simply not noticed—what a huge amount he was drinking, and he had at no time felt the crescendo of desire which usually overtakes drunkenness. From one minute to the next he was completely intoxicated.
He took a few steps in the courtyard, then staggered and fell. And that was very pleasant. He stroked the ground, and was happy. “Oh how lovely,” he thought, “this is where I’ll stay. Now I can’t fall down.”
He became aware that the Italians were lifting him up, and, with a tremendous chattering, were taking him into the house, while he modestly and apologetically protested he really had no wish to be a burden to anybody: the wonderful celebration that was so full of promise should just carry on, should just carry on …
Then he was lying on a bed, and instantly fell asleep.
When he woke it was pitch-black. His head ached, but otherwise he felt sober enough, only his heart was palpitating violently and he was very restless. Why had he got so drunk? It must surely have had a lot to do with the state of mind he had been in when he had sat down to drink: his resistance was so much reduced. Really, there hadn’t been any resistance in him: the Italian girl had done what she wanted with him. Why would she want him to get so very drunk?
His restlessness became intense. He thought of that night when he had wandered the streets of Rome until dawn and then found himself outside this same little house, when his imagination conjured up all the mysterious and criminal things that went on behind its silent walls. This was the house where the murders took place. And here he was, inside the house. The walls were alarmingly silent. Here he lay delivered over to the darkness, as he had wanted.
He remained prostrate for a while, in steadily increasing restlessness, then tried to get up. But his movements ran into difficulty, and the blood throbbed painfully in his head. Better to stay lying down. He listened intently. His eyes became used to the darkness and his ears to the silence. A thousand little noises, strange, nearby, distinctly Italian sounds, could be heard all around. The house was more or less awake. A dim light came in from under the door.
If these people were planning something … What madness it was to have brought money with him! And where had he put his money? But of course, he had lain down fully dressed. It must be in his wallet. He groped for the wallet. It was not in its place. It was not in any of his pockets.
Well, that much was certain: they had stolen his money. Perhaps two hundred lire. Never mind that … what else might they want? Would they allow him to leave and report them? That would be madness. No, these people were going to kill him, without question.
Then the door opened and Vannina came in, carrying some sort of night-light. She looked furtively towards the bed and, when she saw that Mihály was awake, put on the face of someone surprised and came up to the bed. She even said something he did not understand, but which did not sound very pleasant.
Then she put the night-light down and sat on the edge of the bed. She stroked his hair and face, murmuring encouragements in Italian to sleep peacefully.
“Of course, she’s waiting for me to fall sleep, and then … I shan’t sleep!”
Then he remembered with horror what force of suggestion there was in this girl, and realised that he certainly would sleep if she willed it. And indeed, closing his eyes as the girl smoothed down his eyelashes, he fell instantly into a babbling half-dream.
In this half-dream he seemed to hear them talking in the next room. There was a man’s voice that seemed to growl roughly, the rapid speech of another man from time to time, and the constant staccato whispering of the girl. Without doubt they were now discussing whether to kill him. The girl was perhaps protecting him, perhaps the opposite. Now, now, he really ought to wake. How often had he had this dream, that some terrible danger was approaching and he couldn’t wake however hard he tried: and now it was coming true. Then he dreamed that something was flashing before his eyes, and, with a rattle in his throat, he awoke.
There was light in the room. The night-light was burning on the table. He sat up and looked fearfully around, but saw no-one there. The murmur of speech still came through from the next room, but it was now much quieter, and he could not distinguish between the speakers.
The terror of death ran through and through him. He was afraid in his whole body. He could feel them closing in on him, with knives, the rat-people. He wrung his hands in despair. Something was holding him down. He could not get out of the bed.
The only thing that calmed him slightly was the night-light, which flared and cast the sort of shadows on the walls he remembered in his room as a child. The night-light led him to think of Vannina’s finely-shaped hand: earlier, when it held the lamp, he had stared at it for some time without really paying attention.
“Why am I afraid?” he suddenly started. For this, this thing that was about to happen right now, was what he had wanted, what he had planned. Yes, he was going to die—but he wanted to die—and there beside him, in the flesh, perhaps even taking part, would be a beautiful girl bearing a special secret, in the role of death-demon, as on the Etruscan tombs.
Now he really longed for it. His teeth chattered and his arms were numb with terror, but he wanted it to happen. They would open the door and the girl would come in to him, come to the bed and kiss and embrace him, while the murder weapon went about its work … Let her come and embrace him … only let her come … only let them open the door …
But the door did not open. Already outside the early morning cocks were crowing, the next room was completely silent, the night-light itself was flickering low, and he fell into a deep sleep.
Then it was morning, like any other morning. He woke in a bright room, a bright friendly room, to Vannina coming in and asking how he had slept. It was morning, a normal, friendly Italian summer morning. Soon it would be horribly hot, but now it was still pleasant. Only the aftertaste of last night’s drunkenness troubled him, nothing else.
The girl was saying something, about how drunk he had been the night before, but this had endeared him and made him very popular with all the party, and they had kept him there overnight because they were afraid he wouldn’t be able to make it home.
Talk of going home reminded him of Éva, who surely must have called on him the evening before to be with him when … What would she think of him? That he had run away: had run away from her?
Then it occurred to him that in the course of the whole alarming and visionary night he had not once thought of Éva. The love-pause. The longest pause of his life. Strange thing, to die for a woman and never think of her the entire night—and what a night!
He got his clothes more or less in order and took his leave of a few people sitting outside in the bar area who greeted him like their dear old friend. How the sun shone in through the little window! Really there was nothing rat-like about these people. They were the good honest Italian proletariat.
“And these people wanted to kill me?” he wondered. “True, it’s not really certain that they did intend to kill me. But it’s strange that they didn’t after all, in fact they must have really longed to while they were stealing my wallet. No, these Italians are really quite different.”
His hand unconsciously groped for his wallet. The wallet was there in its place, next to his heart, where the Middle-European, not entirely without a touch of symbolism, keeps his money. He stopped in surprise, and took the wallet out. The two hundred lire and the small change, a few ten-lire coins, were unmistakably there.
Perhaps they had put the wallet back while he slept—but there would have been no sense in that. More probably they had never taken it. It had been there in his pocket all the time he had believed it gone. Mihály calmed down. This was not the first time in his life that he had seen black as white, and his impressions and suppositions made themselves entirely independent of objective reality.
Vannina accompanied him out the door, then came with him a short way towards the Gianicolo.
“Do come again. And you must visit the bambino. A godfather has his duties. You mustn’t neglect them. Come again. Often. Always … ”
Mihály presented the girl with the two hundred lire, then suddenly kissed her on the mouth and hurried off.
XXV
HE ARRIVED BACK in his room. “I’ll rest for a bit, and think carefully about what I actually want, and whether I really want it; and only then will I write to Éva. Because my position with her is rather ridiculou
s, and if I were to tell her why I didn’t come home last night, perhaps she wouldn’t believe me, it’s all so stupid.”
He automatically undressed and began to wash. Was there any point in still washing? But he hesitated only for a moment, then washed, brewed himself some tea, took out a book, lay down and fell asleep.
He woke to the sound of the doorbell. He hurried out, feeling fresh and rested. It had been raining, and the air was cooler now than in recent days.
He opened the door and let in an elderly gentleman. His father.
“Hello, son,” said his father. “I’ve just arrived on the midday train. I’m so glad to find you at home. And I’m hungry. I’d like you to come out to lunch with me.”
Mihály was immensely surprised at his father’s unexpected appearance, but surprise was not in fact his predominant feeling. Nor indeed was it the embarrassment and shame when his father looked around the room, struggling painfully to stop his face betraying his horror at the shabby milieu. A quite different feeling filled him, a feeling he had known of old, in lesser degree, in the days when he often went abroad. The same feeling had always affected him when he came home from his longer absences: the terror that his father had in the meantime grown older. But never, never, had his father aged so much. When he had last seen him he was still the self-confident man of the commanding gestures he had known all his life. Or at least that was how Mihály had still thought of him, because he had then been at home for some years, and if any change had occurred in his father during that time he had not noticed its gradual workings. He now registered it all the more sharply because he had not seen his father for a few months. Time had punished his face and his figure. There were just a few, but quite undeniable, signs of anxiety: his mouth had lost its old severity, his eyes were tired and sunken (true, he had been travelling all night, who knows, perhaps third class, he was such a parsimonious man), his hair was even whiter, his speech seemed rather less precise, with a strange, and at first quite alarming hint of a lisp. It was impossible to say exactly what it was, but there was the fact, in all its dreadful reality. His father had grown old.