by Sándor Márai
Now that the man had finally touched her—the stranger was holding her hand with two fingers as if requesting the pleasure of a dance, while resting his head on his other hand—Teresa’s intuition told her that she was the stronger. The feeling surprised her. The stranger, to all appearances, was powerful and elegant despite having arrived in rags; what was more, he was older, much older than Teresa, and to cap it all he was famous, and every woman desperately wanted to see him. Teresa should have had every reason to be afraid of him. He had also promised to take her to Venice, and Teresa was afraid of promises, because people who made promises were known to lie: the only people really to have given her something were those who had not said anything about it beforehand. She didn’t even know what exactly the man wanted from her. For there had been those who had pinched her or patted her buttocks or wanted to kiss her or whispered lascivious words into her ear, many of which were coarse and crude, or begged her for favors or made loathsome offers, inviting her into their rooms after midnight, when everyone else had gone to bed. No, Teresa knew men, all right. But this one did not pinch her, extended no invitation, and said nothing crude. He simply gazed with an expression of close concentration on his slightly careworn face, like someone who was thinking furiously about something he had forgotten: a name, some memory, some important, life-enhancing idea.
“You’re not afraid,” the man muttered under his breath. With the gentlest, most courteous, almost solicitous, yet completely unambiguous gesture, he sat the girl on his knee. Teresa allowed herself to be seated. She sat in the stranger’s lap quite decorously, as if visiting another person’s house, prepared at any moment to run should someone ring a bell or call her. They were both solemn. They looked into each other’s eyes attentively, the man slightly squinting so as to see her better, as, with two fingers, he turned Teresa’s face to the light. The girl tolerated these movements exactly as if she were visiting the doctor: it was reasonable to grant reasonable requests. “It is sixteen months,” said the stranger calmly, “since I looked into a woman’s eyes. Yours have a nice color, Teresa, like the sky over Venice. I sometimes saw that sky from a window when they took me for exercise down the prison corridor. It was a blue sky, bluish gray to be precise, a slightly cold blue, as if somehow it were reflecting the sea. You have the color of eternity in your eyes,” he told her politely. “But you don’t understand this. Not that it matters whether you do or not. There is a sort of misunderstanding between us, an eternal misunderstanding as between all men and women, and I am always ashamed of myself when I am with a woman and babble on too long. Kiss me,” he said in a friendly and natural fashion.
And when the girl made no move but continued staring at him with that gray-blue, glassy gaze of hers, her head held stiff and straight, he repeated, “Kiss me. Don’t you understand?” in a slightly puzzled voice, but still friendly. Later Teresa recalled that it was the sort of voice in which he might have asked her for a glass of water, or told her to send in Balbi because he was bored. There was simplicity and ease in his request: “Kiss me.” But Teresa had never kissed a man like this, so she continued staring, her eyes still glassy, more empty than intelligent. The man took her waist with, it seemed, half a hand, and this too he succeeded in doing in an almost incidental fashion as if reaching for a book or comb, then, amiably, in a mildly inquiring manner, asked her what she felt.
“Nothing,” replied the girl.
“You don’t understand,” he said, a little annoyed. “You don’t understand my question. I am not asking you what you feel in general about life, about men or about love. Listen here, child. What I am asking is what you feel when I touch you, when I encompass that piece of your arm above your elbow with two fingers, what you feel when I touch your heart—like this—what you are feeling now, this very moment?”
“Excuse me, sir,” said the girl decorously, as she stood up, bobbed to the stranger, and with two hands, as she had sometimes seen others do in the restaurant, slightly raised the edge of her skirt. “But I feel nothing.”
Now the man, too, stood up. Legs apart, arms crossed, his head bowed, his voice dark and troubled.
“That’s impossible,” he exclaimed, spluttering in his confusion. “It is impossible that you should feel nothing, while I . . . Wait, hang on a minute!” With a swift movement he embraced the girl, bent his head over her fresh young face, and stared deeply into the pale blue of her placid, maidenly, gently shimmering eyes.
“Not even now? Now that I have my arms around you? Can’t you feel my hot breath? The pressure of my hands on your ribs? . . . Can’t you feel how close I am to you? That in this mere moment we already know each other and that I am bringing you a miraculous gift, the gift of life and love? . . . You are seized by a peculiar trembling, are you not? A trembling that runs through you from your brow to the tip of your toes, a trembling you have never felt before, as if you had realized for the first time that you are alive, that this is the reason you have lived so far, the reason you came into the world?” And when he got no answer, he asked, “So what happens now?” Utterly lost, he let the girl go, allowed his hand to float to his brow, and looked about bewildered.
For the girl standing opposite him, only one step away from him, this little, slightly slatternly, raggedy, barefooted slip of a girl, the common plaything of every innkeeper, the kind of girl he knew so well—and, if he wanted to be honest with himself, the only kind of person he ever really knew—truly did feel nothing, as he could see perfectly well. He was so confused he began groaning. The fresh young body had not shuddered pleasantly at his expert touch: not even when he had held her waist had those clear, rather glassy eyes clouded up like a mountain lake when the storm gathers above it; nor had her heart, whose pulse he had felt through her canvas blouse as he touched her warm, maidenly skin, suddenly begun to race, not even when he pressed his hot hand against her breast more firmly. The girl continued breathing evenly and stood in front of him at arm’s length. He raised his arm but it stopped in midmovement, in midair. The resistance he occasionally met with in women had always encouraged him. Was there a more beautiful game, a more exciting struggle, than the duel with a woman who resisted, who slipped from his hands, who protested, and, haughtily or in panic, fended off her amorous opponent? It was at these times that he felt the full power of his humanity, when words tumbled from his mouth with the greatest ease: only at these times could he be at once bold yet submissive, demanding yet worshipping, daunted yet daring. For resistance was already a form of contact, a game half-won; resistance was a form of surrender: she who resisted knew why she resisted and already desired that from which she was escaping. . . . But this girl here, in the guest room of a hostelry in a strange town, this slim, not particularly well nourished servant girl, the first woman to whom he had opened his arms after sixteen months of prison, loneliness, misery, and obscurity—this girl wasn’t even defending herself. She was not resisting. Here she stood, perfectly calmly, as if he weren’t standing right opposite her, a sweet little rag doll facing a man who had not so long ago rented a palazzo in Murano for the most beautiful nun in all Venice and who, quite recently, had been taught how to pen amorous verses by a countess in Rome, at the home of a cardinal and patron. . . . Here she stood and there was nothing he could do with her because she was neither defending herself nor yielding to orders and demands; she stood like light before a shadow and no female instinct was telling her to flee. He took a deep breath and wiped his brow, covered in cold sweat.
What had happened? That which had never before happened. He looked wildly around the room as if searching for something and his eye fell on the dagger he had left on the mantelpiece the previous night. With a fluid movement he seized the dagger with both hands and began carelessly to flex the blade. He was no longer concerned with the girl but walked up and down the room with the dagger in his hand, talking quietly to himself: “Well then,” he mumbled. Then: “It’s impossible!” He felt truly awful. He felt like a great actor who had not appeared in
public for years and who, when the time came for him to sing again, was confronted by an icy auditorium and silence in the stalls. He was not hissed off the stage, he hadn’t failed, but this icy silence, this unechoing indifference was more terrifying than failure. He felt like a singer who notices with horror that something has happened to his voice, and that however much he bawls or attempts those well-practiced florid musical phrases, the warm resonance of his voice, the individual attractive timbre that once made his listeners shiver with delight so that women’s eyes veiled and misted over and men stared solemnly at the ground in front of them, all paying close attention, as if the perfect moment for regret and judgment had finally arrived—was gone. . . . It was as if he had forgotten something, a voice, a pose, some secret faculty that had been his alone, which had been the secret of his success, of his very being, and he simply couldn’t understand why people no longer applauded the performance when only yesterday they were cheering it to the rafters, and he knew that despite his talent, despite his practice and experience, something had gone wrong: his effect on the audience was not what it used to be! . . . What could he do? Faced as he was by the icy indifference of the auditorium, he realized that he no longer possessed his old power of attraction. He found himself groaning and raising his hands to his throat in panic, wanting to emit some sound—an aaah! or aaiigh!—but failed to make any sound whatsoever. He stood there, dagger in hand, staring at the girl.
“Impossible!” he said once more, louder this time. “You feel nothing, nothing at all? No fear? No trembling? No desire to run away? . . .” He was almost begging her to say something. He was aware what a pitiful figure he must cut, with a dagger in his hand and this imploring note in his voice. “Why don’t you look me in the eye?” he asked more quietly, slightly hoarsely, the voice quite melancholy now. Noticing his tone, the girl looked up and slowly turned to face the stranger, allowing her own eyes to be explored by the solemn, piercing pair of the man before her. “Ah, you see,” the man sighed with relief, shifting position as if ready to fence or to leap. “My voice has touched you,” he rejoiced, the voice quieter and more tender now. “I want you to feel that I am talking to you personally. Because I know you, I would know you now among a thousand women, even at a masked ball. See, you are responding, your eyes answer mine. I knew it. How could it be otherwise?” He gave a low whistle in his joy, then resumed in the warm, deep, sad voice he seemed to deploy like a conjuror his apparatus. “For that is the only secret, my dear, that is all: there is no trick, no catch, it’s always this simple. It’s like touching a person. You touched me when you stepped into the room, and sometimes I think that is the most mysterious form of contact. Sometimes I think it is the cause, the very meaning, of life. Is your heart beating a little faster? . . . Are you blushing? . . . You know perfectly well that you can’t go now. Come closer, return to where you were before.”
And when the girl drew closer he addressed her in his calmest, most straightforward manner:
“Don’t you remember? I asked you to kiss me.”
Slowly, with a sure and leisurely movement, he held out his arms, gently took the girl by the shoulder, and watched tenderly as she leaned her head against his arm.
The Kiss
And now, on the third day after his escape from the notorious Leads where he had spent sixteen months, he finally kissed the maid in a room of The Stag, in Bolzano. What was it like? To begin with he simply kissed the girl’s cracked lips which met the male mouth, softly, helplessly, without responding before the two mouths parted. They stayed like that a long time. He watched her eyes, catching her glance, the startled clear look of another living being, then blinked as if blinded by the strong light. Both of them shut their eyes for a moment. This was a situation both recognized, in their different ways. It was as if it were the single most natural, most sensible position in human existence, and it was impossible to understand why they had ever bothered with anything else or with any other position, having prepared themselves a long time for precisely this moment, bending every effort and every desire, awake or asleep, to this end. The girl shifted in the strange man’s arms, her expression serious and relaxed. She was like someone who, after a long search and hours of puzzling, had finally sighed and declared, “Oh, I see! So this is what it was about!” Suddenly everything fell into place. She shifted her weight in the man’s arms, quite carefully, with delicate, small movements, shy yet certain, feeling that every adjustment of her body had a meaning; and so the great wordless dialogue started, one established a long time ago by man and woman, the dialogue that is continued by every pair of lovers the moment one embraces the other. It was the right position she sought. To be accurate, she was not even moving but simply allowed her body to settle on his knee into the position prepared for her by the median route between resistance and attraction. She leaned her head against his arm and her youthful body readily bent back, his strong, relaxed arms supporting her without effort, taking the alien weight, almost appearing to lift it slightly as if disobeying, if only for a few moments, the force of gravity. The girl’s precise position at that point might be described as collapsing in the stranger’s arms, on tiptoe, head bent back, slightly off balance, keeling over to one side. Had anybody been observing them through the keyhole, he or she might have thought that the girl had fainted or had just been dragged from some invisible stream and was languishing unconscious in the arms of the person who had saved her, soon to be deposited on the bed or the floor where she would have her arms raised and her heart massaged so she might be brought back to life. Because the girl’s posture suggested someone lost and unconscious yet rescued. It is, as a matter of fact, how the girl herself felt at that moment: she felt like a would-be suicide who had plunged into the river but who had been rescued and was just now being carried to shore. Essentially, she was adjusting herself to her new situation.
Being in the arms of a strange man was both a new and yet a painfully, joyously, and frighteningly familiar situation. It is, after all, a most desirable thing for a person to be embraced by another. Teresa vaguely recalled her mother—a woman as freckled as a turkey’s egg and as short and round as a Tuscany barrel—and how she once had held her in her arms like this. Yes, this new situation was familiar, as familiar as life to a newborn baby; there was nothing particularly difficult or clever to do, no need to argue: one had only to accept and to allow events to carry one along, to resign oneself, to let the two bodies discover their own equilibrium as they engaged under the pressure of his arms but according to attractions and powers beyond such pressure. And it was right, it was absolutely in order, that this man, unknown to Teresa until yesterday, who talked a great deal, waved his dagger about, and had emerged from bed that morning with down in his tousled hair, a man who slept with his legs spread and with a furious twisted expression on his face, should now have his arms locked about Teresa, and that she should only have to make a slight adjustment in the position of her head so that it rested more comfortably, to leave her mouth softly and gently open and to close her eyes, and otherwise do nothing at all, for her to feel that everything was as it should be, as was right and proper. So much she understood. And now that she knew and understood everything she smiled, her eyes still closed, and her breathing became lighter and faster.
They stood before the window in the fierce, cold light. The man had his back to the window and was watching the girl’s powerfully lit face: he watched the woman in his arms as he moved in a peculiarly encouraging and threatening manner that suggested both rescue and assault, the movements precise and appropriate to the moment. He too found the situation reassuringly familiar. He was no longer afraid that lonely, empty months of damp and solitude had led him to lose his voice. He was aware that every word, every movement of his, found favor with the audience. He looked at the girl contentedly, being in no hurry, having plenty of time to spare. The face, that heart-shaped face, whose every feature, every subtle shade of color, was amplified by the strong light, was simply the face
of a woman, that was all—which did not mean that he was lying when he said he would recognize it among a thousand women’s faces, even under a mask. One woman’s face was as a hundred women’s faces, faces he had bent over in similar situations with just such tender and solemn solicitude, as if each were a puzzle he had to solve, an arcane script, a word written in signs taken from the cabala or some other realm of magic, each a word that added some meaning to life. He watched the face patiently, solemnly. Because these signs on a woman’s face, the slightly upturned, delicately freckled nose, the mouth which was raw like the cut flesh of a plump fruit, the golden down above the upper lip, and the chin, that childish little chin set among curves, the brilliant fine-drawn line of the closed eyes, the ample blonde swell of the eyelashes, and, next to the nose and the mouth, the two harsh lines that life had left as its legacy of fear and suspicion and which now, touched by light and by a strange pair of arms, seemed to soften and melt; all this was the rune, the secret script whose meaning he had to decipher. The two faces—the serious male face, gazing, and the girl’s face with its closed eyes, its relaxation, its faint smile, and air of expectation—swam next to each other like two planets tied together by an unbreakable law of attraction.