Embers

Chapter 19

The room is now cold. It is not yet daybreak, but the half-open window admits a breath of dawn air, fresh, carrying a faint hint of thyme. The General shivers as he rubs his hands. It is the hour before sunrise, and both men look suddenly ancient, as yellowed and bony as the rattling inhabitants of a charnel house.

With a mechanical gesture, the guest abruptly raises his hand and looks in exhaustion at his wristwatch.

“I think,” he says softly, “that we have talked about everything that needed to be talked about. It’s time I went.”

“If you would like to go,” says the General politely, “the carriage is outside.”

Both men get to their feet and move spontaneously toward the fireplace to warm their thin hands at the embers of the dying fire. Only now do they become aware of how cold they are: the night has been unexpectedly chilly and the storm that extinguished all the lights in the nearby power station passed very close to the castle.

“So you are going back to London,” says the General, almost to himself.

“Yes,” says the guest. “You are going to live there?”

“Until I die.”

“Yes,” says the General. “Of course. Would you not care to stay until tomorrow? Have a look at things? Meet someone? You haven’t seen the grave. Or Nini, indeed,” he adds politely. He speaks haltingly, as if seeking the right words for his farewell but failing to find them. But his guest remains calm and cordial.

“No,” he says politely. “There is nothing, and no one, that I wish to see. Please give my regards to Nini.” “Thank you,” says the General, and they go to the door.

The General reaches for the handle, and they stand facing each other as social politeness demands, a little stooped, ready to say their farewells. Both take a last glance around the room, as if knowing that neither of them will ever set foot in it again. The General blinks, and seems to be looking for something.

“The candles,” he murmurs distractedly as his glance falls on the smoking stubs in their holders on the mantel. “Look at that, the candles are burned right down.” “Two questions,” says Konrad abruptly, his voice flat. “You mentioned two questions. What is the other one?”

“The other one?” They are leaning toward each other like two accomplices afraid of the night shadows and hidden listeners in the dark. “The second question?” the General repeats in a whisper. “But you haven’t answered the first one yet … Look, Krisztina’s father’s reproach was that I had survived. What he meant is that things always survive. One doesn’t answer only with one’s death, although that is a perfect answer.

One also answers with one’s life. Both of us survived her. You, by leaving; I, by staying. Out of cowardice or obliviousness, calculation or grievance, we survived. Do you think we were justified? Don’t you think we have a responsibility to her beyond the grave, because she in her humanity amounted to more than the two of us put together? More, because she died, thereby answering to us, whereas we lived on, and there’s no way to prettify that.

“These are the facts. Whoever survives someone is a traitor. We had the feeling that we had to survive, and there’s no prettifying that, for she died because of it. She died because you went away and because I stayed but never once went to her, and because we-the two men to whom she belonged-were more despicable and proud and cowardly and arrogant and silent than a woman can bear; we ran away from her and betrayed her by our survival. That is the truth, and that is what you have to know in London, in the last hours of your lonely life. And here in this house I have to know it too: I know it already. Surviving someone whom one loved enough to consider killing for, who was life and death to one, may not be defined as a capital offense, but it is, nonetheless, a criminal act.

It is not recognized as such in the law, but we recognize it,” he says dryly, “and we know that all our offended, cowardly, haughty masculine intelligence has won us nothing at all, because she is dead and we are alive, and the three of us always belonged together, in life or in death. It is a very hard thing to understand, and once one does, one is overcome by the strangest sense of unease. What did you hope to achieve by surviving her, what victory did you win? … Did you spare yourself some horrible awkwardness, some painful situation? What awkwardness or painful situation could matter, when what is at issue is the very truth of your existence, because somewhere on earth there is a woman who matters to you, and this woman is the wife of the man who also matters to you … Does public opinion carry any weight in something like this?

No,” he says simply.

“Finally, the world is irrelevant. All that counts is what remains in our hearts.” “In our hearts?” asks the guest.

“The second question,” says the General, his hand still holding the door. “Namely, what did we win with all our intelligence and our pride and our presumption? Has the true meaning of our lives not been the agony of longing for a woman who is dead? It’s a hard question, I know.

I cannot answer it. I have done everything, seen everything, and yet this I cannot answer. I have seen peace, I have seen war, I have seen the glitter of empire and utter human misery, I have seen your cowardice and my own arrogance, I have seen combat and surrender. Yet I think that, at bottom, perhaps the significance of everything we did was in the ties that bound us to one particular person-ties, passion, call it what you will. Is that the question? Yes. I want you to tell me.” His voice drops as if to foil some hidden listener behind him.

“What do you think? Do you also believe that what gives our lives their meaning is the passion that suddenly invades us heart, soul, and body, and burns in us forever, no matter what else happens in our lives? And that if we have experienced this much, then perhaps we haven’t lived in vain? Is passion so deep and terrible and magnificent and inhuman? Is it indeed about desiring any one person, or is it about desiring desire itself? That is the question. Or perhaps, is it indeed about desiring a particular person, a single, mysterious other, once and for always, no matter whether that person is good or bad, and the intensity of our feelings bears no relation to that individual’s qualities or behavior? I would like an answer, if you can,” he says, his voice louder and more imperious.

“Why do you ask me?” says the guest quietly, “when you know that the answer is yes.” Their eyes measure each other, steadily, unblinking. The General takes a deep breath and pushes down the handle of the door. The great stairwell is filled with surging shadows and the flicker of lights. They walk down in silence. Servants hurry to meet them with candles and the guest’s coat and hat. Outside the big double doors, wheels grind and crunch on the white gravel. The men take leave of each other with a handshake, a deep bow, wordlessly.