by Sándor Márai
My brother and his strange friend were not vulgar, dissolute young men in the ordinary sense of the word. After a year everyone noticed that Laci had become as dependent on Lajos as we all had, my mother, Vilma, and, later, myself. I could claim now to have been the only sensible one, the sole figure immune to this wicked illusion, but why should I console myself with such a poor distinction? Yes, I did “see through” Lajos straightaway, but did I not rush blindly and eagerly to serve him? He was so solemn and so sensitive. We were quickly forced to acknowledge that he and Laci had abandoned their academic studies. One day at dusk he was standing by the table with a lock of hair flopping over his forehead when he said—and I remember his words exactly, words he pronounced resignedly, as if performing an act of self-sacrifice—“I must exchange the quiet and lonely existence of the study for the noisy, dangerous battlefield of life.” He always spoke as if reading from a book. This declaration shook me and upset me. I felt that Lajos was abandoning his vocation for some great, somewhat obscure project in order to enter a struggle on behalf of somebody or for a whole lot of somebodies, in which he should be armed not with the weapons of knowledge but with those of guile and pragmatism. The sacrifice made me uneasy, because in our family we preferred boys to complete their education before entering “the battlefield of life.” But I believed Lajos when he said his way was different, his weapons not the usual kind. Naturally enough, Laci immediately followed him on his chosen path; they did not bother with the third year of their university course. I was still quite a young girl then. Laci returned to the “world of the mind” some time later; using the last remaining part of our family’s credit he opened a bookshop in town and after all the enthusiasm of the planning stage filled his life with the selling of textbooks and stationery. Lajos was severely critical of this turn in his career, but later, when politics became our passion, he kept his peace.
I never got to know Lajos’s political views. Tibor, whom I often consulted on this kind of issue, shrugged and said Lajos had no political convictions at all, that he sailed with the prevailing wind and simply wanted to be involved wherever power was being distributed. It might have been fair criticism, and yet it wasn’t quite accurate enough. I suspected Lajos was just as liable to make sacrifices for humankind or human ideals—especially the latter, since he always preferred ideas to reality, probably because the field of ideas was likely to prove less dangerous and it was easier compromising with them—and when he sought “involvement” in politics he was willing to put himself on the line, not so much for the prizes available, but for the sheer excitement of being involved, the pathos of involvement being something he fully felt and suffered. My experience of Lajos is that he is the kind of man who begins with lies but then in the middle of his lying grows passionate and weeps, going on to lie more, this time with tears in his eyes, until eventually, to everyone’s utter surprise, he tells the truth as eloquently as he had been telling the opposite…This talent of his naturally did not prevent him from presenting himself for a whole decade as a vanguard proponent of extreme and conflicting views, and he was soon shown the door by all parties. Fortunately Laci did not follow him on this path. He remained in “the intellectual realm,” selling drawing material and dog-eared secondhand textbooks, part of that faintly musty atmosphere. But Lajos went in search of danger, “dangers” he could never quite pin down, leaving us to contemplate him at a distance, a lone figure surviving among storms and tempests, never too far from where lightning was liable to strike.
When Vilma died and the family broke up, Lajos vanished from our horizon. That was when I returned here, to this humble place of last refuge. Nothing awaited me here, it was only somewhere to lay my head and a few dry crumbs. But for anyone who has been through a storm, any shelter is welcome.
7
This shelter—or that’s what it seemed to be at the beginning—was more than a little shaky. When Father died, the executors, Tibor and Endre, made a thorough examination of the estate. Endre, the public notary, was constrained to do so by virtue of his office. Our financial position seemed impossible at first. The little that remained after the latest upheavals—my father’s resentful neglect and ill-tempered dealings, Mama’s illness, Vilma’s dispossession and death, the capital required by Laci to establish his business—all drained away to Lajos by way of narrow, invisible channels. Once he could no longer lay hands on money he started removing objects from the old house, as “mementos,” he said, combining the curiosity of a child with the avidity of a collector. Later I would sometimes defend him against Endre and Tibor’s criticism. “He’s only playing,” I said when they charged him with rapacity. “There is something childish in his makeup. He likes to play.” Endre sharply disagreed. Children played with model boats or colored marbles, he indignantly argued; Lajos was the kind of “eternal child” who preferred to play with bank bills. He did not say, though you could pick up the hint, that these bills, Lajos’s bills, were not to be regarded as entirely pure and harmless playthings. And indeed, after Father’s death some bills turned up that Father appeared to have signed over to Lajos, though I myself never questioned their validity. Then these too leaked away, as did everything else, in the general collapse.
When I noticed that I had no one left in the world—except Nunu, with whom I lived in a certain interdependent relationship, as mistletoe to tree, though neither of us knew which was the tree and which the parasite—Endre and Tibor endeavored to save something for me out of the wreckage. This was the time when Tibor wanted me to marry him. I hemmed and hawed but couldn’t give him the real reason for my rejection. I couldn’t tell him that in my heart of hearts I was still waiting for Lajos, expecting news of some kind, a message, possibly some miracle. Anything to do with Lajos was charged with an air of miracle, so I did not think it in the least impossible that he should appear one day, somewhat theatrically perhaps, like Lohengrin, singing an exalted aria. But then, after our separation, he disappeared as miraculously as if he had wrapped himself in a cloak of invisibility. I heard nothing from him for years.
There was just the house and the garden now. There was also the question of some minor debt. I have always believed myself to be an inexhaustible, obstinate, practical being. But the moment I was left alone I was obliged to notice that I had been living in Cloud Cuckoo Land before—clouds heavy with thunder, I should add—and had hardly any idea of what was real and reliable and what was not. Nunu told me the garden and the house would be enough for the two of us. Even today I don’t understand how it could be “enough.” Certainly the garden is large and full of fruit trees and Nunu had banished those lush, decorative flowerbeds, the winding paths sprinkled with red clay, the romantic waterfall with its moss-covered rocks, intensely cultivating every inch of ground like one of those southern mountain dwellers who exploit their fields and gardens to the fullest, squaring off each square meter of plot with stone walls to protect them from storms and unwelcome visitors. The garden was all that was left. Endre and Tibor suggested we should let out some of the rooms and take in lodgers. The idea foundered primarily because of Nunu’s opposition. She didn’t say why she was against it, she offered no explanation, you could just tell from the tone of her voice and even more from her silences that she was not happy with having strangers in the house. Nunu always arranges things and “solves problems” in ways that you would not expect of her. Two lonely women with nothing to do might, or so the world thinks, set up as seamstresses or cooks, or advertise fancy embroidery, but Nunu did not consider any of these. It took some time before she allowed me to take on some of the neighbors’ children for piano lessons.
We survived somehow…I know now it was the house that kept us going, that and the garden, all that our poor risk-taking father had left us. This was all that remained, all that sustained us. The house offered us shelter; even as it was, deprived of the old furniture, it provided a home. The garden provided food, just enough and no more than a castaway requires. Somehow it grew around us because
we gave it all we had, feeding it with our labor and our hopes, so that sometimes it seemed like a proper estate where anyone who chose to tie himself to it could live without a thought. One day Nunu decided to take the end of the garden, the sandy part, a whole two acres, and plant it with almond trees. These almond trees were like mysterious hands that reached over us to shelter us, casting their almonds before the starving. Every year they brought good produce that Nunu managed, in her own secretive way, quite ceremonially, to put a price on, and it was from that sale that we managed to live, and, indeed, clear our debts, sometimes even to the extent of being able to help Laci. For a long time I did not understand how this was done. Nunu only smiled and kept her counsel. Sometimes I stopped in front of our small forest of almonds and stared at them as if superstitious. It was like a miracle there in the sand, in our lives. Someone is looking after us, I felt.
The almond orchard was Father’s idea originally, but he was too tired by the end to make it happen. Once, some ten years ago, he had said to Nunu that the sandy back of the garden would be good for almonds. Father didn’t much concern himself with what life had to offer; in the eyes of strangers it was he who had wasted the modest resources of our family. Even so, after his death we noticed that in his own silent, resentful way, he had left everything that was due to us in order; it was Mama who was the chief burden on the house; it was he who, by Lajos’s request, kept the garden for our use, who argued to the last against moving away. When Nunu and I remained alone we had no more to do than take our place among the gardens that Father had made for us. We had the house renovated, thanks to Endre, who arranged a cheap loan against the bequest. All this happened without being planned: it simply happened without any particular intention or aim. One day we noticed we had a shelter over our heads. Occasionally I could buy material with which to make clothes, Laci could borrow what books were necessary, and the state of solitude we entered with such trepidation after the collapse, like wounded animals entering a cave, slowly dissolved around us, so soon we had friends and the house rang on Sundays with hearty male conversation. People looked after us, giving Nunu and me a place in the world, allocating us a slot in the nook of their imaginations where we could quietly get on with our lives. Life was nowhere near as unbearable or hopeless as I had imagined it would be. Slowly our lives were given over to new activities: we had friends and even a few enemies, such as Tibor’s mother and Endre’s wife, who, ridiculously and entirely without cause, resented their menfolk visiting our house. There were times when life in the house and the garden was like real life that has a purpose, a project, some inner meaning. It was just that it had no meaning; we could have gone on for years on end just as we were, but if someone had ordered us to leave the very next day I would have put up no resistance. Life was simple and safe. Lajos was a disciple of Nietzsche, who demanded that one should live dangerously, but he was frightened of danger, and when he entered into some political “involvement” he did so as he embarked on any passion, with a loud mouth and equipped with some “secret weapon,” protecting himself with carefully calculated lies, with warm underwear, with some cosmetic items and the well-preserved, more scandalous letters of his adversaries in his pocket. But there was a time when I was close to him when my life was as “dangerous” as his. Now that this danger has passed I can see that nothing is as it was, and that such danger was in fact the one true meaning of life.
8
I went into the house, arranged the dahlias in vases, and sat down with my guests on the veranda. Every Sunday morning Laci escapes to us for breakfast. At that time we lay the table for him, especially on the veranda or, if the weather is bad, in the old nursery, which we now use as a parlor. We put out the old cups and the English cutlery, and he pours cream from the silver jug he received as a christening present fifty-two years ago from a do-gooding relative with modest tastes. My brother’s name is engraved in italics on it. They were sitting on the veranda, Tibor puffing at a cigar, looking at the garden with concern, Laci eating with his mouth full as he had done in his adolescence. He was loath to miss these Sunday breakfasts. They seemed to conjure the precise details of his childhood for him.
“He has written to Endre too,” said Laci, full-mouthed.
“What did he write?” I asked, and went pale.
“He wrote that he should be available, that he shouldn’t be traveling anywhere that day. That he needed him.”
“Needed Endre?” I asked, laughing out loud.
“Tibor, it’s true, isn’t it?” asked Laci, because he always had to have a reliable witness. Laci dared not trust his own pronouncements now.
“Yes, it’s true,” said Tibor impatiently. “He wants something. Perhaps,” and his face brightened here, as if he had found the one proper and honorable solution to a problem, “perhaps he wants to settle his debts.”
We thought about that. I wanted to believe in Lajos, and now that Tibor had put forward this theory I myself did not feel it to be impossible. A flood of wild joy and sincere conviction rushed through me. Well, of course! After twenty years he wants to come home. He is coming here, where—and why should we pussyfoot around the issue?—he was indebted to everyone in some way, with money, with promises, with oaths! He is returning to a place where every meeting is bound to be fraught and painful for him; he is coming back to face the past, to keep his word at last! What strength, what hope, suffused my entire being at that moment! I was no longer afraid of meeting him again. People tend not to return, not after a decade of absence, to the places where they have failed. It must have taken him a long time to prepare himself for this difficult journey, I thought sympathetically. He will have prepared for a long time and who knows what false trails he had explored, what precipices he had avoided to arrive at this decision? It was as though I had suddenly awoken. This foolish hope that had chased away every sensible scruple, this clarity that was as brilliant as the rising of the sun, that now took hold of me in anticipation of Lajos’s arrival, completely vanquished all my doubts. Lajos was coming with the children, he was already on his way, he was quite close to me right then. And we who knew him, we who knew his weaknesses, must prepare for the great reckoning when Lajos would render everyone their due: he would fulfil his oaths, pay off his debts! Nunu, who had appeared silently at the door with hands linked under her knitted shawl, listened to our conversation and quietly intervened.
“Endre has sent to say he will be here in a moment. He says Lajos asked him to attend in an official capacity.”
The message only served to raise my hopes still higher. Lajos required a notary! We were talking wildly. Laci announced that the whole town had heard about Lajos’s impending arrival. Last night in the café a tailor had come up to Laci and started talking about Lajos’s old unsettled bills. A town councillor mentioned the concrete benches he had ordered some fifteen years ago on Lajos’s urging, benches on which a deposit had been paid but had never arrived. This gossip no longer troubled my memories. Lajos’s past was compounded of such easy-come, easy-go schemes and promises. Now they seemed merely acts of childish irresponsibility. We had been through some difficult times since then. Lajos had passed fifty and no longer told fibs. He would take responsibility for what he had done and was already on his way to us. I left the company to put on some decent clothes appropriate for such a ceremonial occasion. Laci was reminiscing.
“He was always asking for something. Do you remember, Tibor, the last time you saw him after that great argument when you told him to his face that he was a scoundrel, and you enumerated his faults, all the harm he had done his family and friends, and said he was the lowest of the low; how he cried and then embraced everyone and as a farewell gesture asked you for more money? A hundred or two hundred? Do you remember?…”
“I don’t remember,” said Tibor, ashamed and uncomfortable.
“But you must!” cried Laci. “And when you refused to give it to him, he rushed off, in a state, like someone about to meet his death. We were right here then, in
this very garden, just ten years younger, thinking about Lajos. But he stopped at the gate, returned and quite quietly and calmly asked you for twenty, ‘or at least some change’ as he put it—because he hadn’t enough money for the train! And then you did give him the money. Was there ever such a man!” Laci passionately declared, and carried on eating.
“Yes, I gave it to him,” Tibor admitted with embarrassment. “Why wouldn’t I have given it to him? I could never understand why people should not give money if they had it. And that wasn’t the main thing with Lajos,” he said pensively, gazing at the ceiling with nearsighted eyes.
“Money was not important to Lajos?” asked Laci, genuinely astonished. “That’s like saying blood is of no interest to wolves.”
“You don’t understand,” said Tibor, reddening. He always reddened when there was a conflict with his role as a magistrate, the role that calls for guardedness and judgment, where he had to give the right verdict knowing that this verdict did not accord with the general sense of justice in which most people believed, and which he had sworn to uphold. “You don’t understand,” he repeated obstinately. “I have thought a great deal about Lajos. It’s all a question of motive. Lajos’s motives were entirely honorable. I can think of one occasion…at some party when he asked for money, quite a lot of money, and the next morning I discovered that he had given the whole lot to one of my clerks who had gotten into trouble. Wait, I haven’t finished. It’s not a heroic act of self-sacrifice, of course, being a philanthropist with someone else’s money. But Lajos too had urgent need of cash, his bills had expired, what shall I say…they were unpleasant bills. And this amount that he borrowed, drunk as he was, and that he handed over the next morning, sober, to a stranger, would have helped him too. Do you understand?”