Journey by Moonlight

XIII

MIHÁLY had now been in Rome for several days, and still nothing had happened to him. No romantic leaflet had fallen out of the sky to direct him, as he had secretly expected after what Ervin had said. All that had happened was Rome itself, so to speak.

Compared with Rome, every other Italian city was simply dwarfed. Venice, where he had been with Erzsi, officially, and Siena, where he went unofficially with Millicent, paled in comparison. For here he was, in Rome alone, and, as he felt, on higher instructions. Everything he saw in Rome seemed to symbolise fatality. The feeling that, in the course of a morning stroll, or late one special summer afternoon, everything would suddenly be filled with a rare and inexpressible significance, was one that he had known before. Now it never left him. He had known streets and houses to stir in him far-reaching presentiments but never with the force of these Roman streets, palaces, ruins, gardens. Wandering among the vast walls of the Teatro Marcello, gazing into the Forum with wonder at the way little baroque churches had sprung up between the ancient columns, looking down from some hill at the star-shape of the Regina Coeli prison, loitering in the alleyways of the ghetto, passing through the different courtyards from Santa Maria sopra Minerva to the Pantheon, with its great millwheel of a roof open to the dark blue summer sky: these filled his days. And in the evening weary, weary to death, he would fall into bed in the ugly little stone-floored hotel room near the station, where he had scuttled in terror on the first evening, and then lacked the energy to change it for something more suitable.

From this general trance he was awakened by a letter from Tivadar, which Ellesley had forwarded from Foligno.

Dear Misi,

We were all very concerned to read that you’ve been ill. With your usual vagueness you forgot to mention what precisely is wrong with you, and you can imagine how anxious we are to know. Please remedy this in due course. Are you now fully recovered? Your mother is extremely worried. Don’t take it amiss that I’ve not sent you any money before this, but you well know the difficulties with foreign exchange. I hope the delay hasn’t caused you any problems. Now, you wrote, send a lot of money. This was a bit vague—‘a lot of money’ is always relative. You may find what I have sent rather little, since it’s not much more than the amount you say you owe. But for us it is a lot of money, considering the state the business is in just now, about which the less said the better, and the major investments we made recently, which will take years to amortise. But at least it will be enough for you to pay off your hotel bills and come home. Luckily you had a return ticket. Because it hardly needs saying, you really have no alternative. You can understand that in the current circumstances the firm really won’t stand the strain of continuing to finance one of its partners residing expensively abroad, quite without rhyme or reason.

Even less so, since, as you would expect, as a result of the situation she finds herself in, your wife has herself approached us with certain demands, quite properly in our view, and these demands we naturally must satisfy as a highest priority. Your wife is at present in Paris, and for the time being has stipulated that we should meet her living expenses there. The final settlement can only be drawn up when she comes home. I really can’t overstate what an exceptionally difficult position that final settlement could put us in. As you well know, all the ready money she brought into the firm was invested in machinery, the prestige building, and other current developments, so that liquidating all these sums will not only cause us difficulties, but will practically shake the firm to its foundations. I really do think anybody else would have taken all this into account before abandoning his wife on their honeymoon. I need hardly add that, quite apart from all the financial considerations, your conduct was in itself absolutely and utterly ungentlemanly, particularly towards such a correct and blameless lady as your wife.

Well, that’s the situation. Your father was not entirely persuaded that I should write to you at all. You can imagine how nervous and distressed these events have made him, and how alarming he finds the prospect that sooner or later we shall have to pay everything back to your wife. He’s taken it all so much to heart that we want to send him on a holiday for a break (we’re thinking mainly of Gastein), but he won’t hear of it because of the extra expense of travelling during the summer holiday season.

So, dear Misi, on receipt of this letter be so good as to pack up and come straight home, the sooner the better.

Love from everyone,

Tivadar

Tivadar had certainly enjoyed writing that letter, revelling in the fact that he, the feckless playboy of the family, was now in a position to preach morality to the sober and serious Mihály. This in itself, and the superior tone of voice from a totally unsympathetic younger brother, made him very angry. Now, returning home could be seen as nothing more than an imposition, a horrid and hateful command.

But, it seemed, there really was no alternative. If he paid back the loan from Millicent there would be nothing left for him to live on in Rome. What also disturbed him deeply was what Tivadar had said about his father. He knew that Tivadar was not exaggerating. His father had a tendency to depression, and the whole disaster, in which material, social and emotional problems were linked together in such a complicated way, was just the sort of thing to destroy his peace of mind. If the other elements failed to achieve this, it was enough in itself that his favourite son had behaved so impossibly. He really would have to go home, if only to make amends for this, to explain to his father that he simply could not have done other than he did, not even for Erzsi’s good. He needed to show that he was not a runaway, that he took full responsibility for his action, as a gentleman should.

And once home he would have to knuckle down to work. Now everything would be work. Work was the promised reward for a young man setting out, for completing his studies, and work was the penitential act and punishment for those who met with failure. If he went home and worked steadily, sooner or later his father would forgive him.

But when he thought in detail about this ‘work’—his desk, the people he had to deal with, and above all the things that filled his time after work, the bridge parties, the Danube outings, the well-to-do ladies, he felt exasperated to the point of tears.

“What did the shade of Achilles say?” he pondered. “‘I would rather be a cotter in my father’s house than a prince among the dead.’ For me it’s the reverse. I’d rather be a cotter here, among the dead, than a prince at home, in my father’s house. Only, I’d need to know what exactly a cotter is … ”

Here, among the dead … for at that moment he was walking in the little Protestant cemetery behind the pyramid of Cestius, beside the city wall. Here lay his fellows, dead men from the North, drawn here by nameless nostalgias, and here overtaken by death. This fine cemetery, with its shady wall, had always lured souls from the North with the illusion that here oblivion would be sweeter. At the end of one of Goethe’s Roman elegies there stands, as a memento: Die Pyramide vorbei, leise zum Orcus hinab. “From the tomb of Cestius, the way leads gently down to Hell.” Shelley, in a wonderful letter, wrote that he would like to lie here in death, and so he does, or at least his heart is there, beneath the inscription: Cor cordium.

Mihály was on the point of leaving when he noticed a small cluster of tombs standing apart in one corner of the cemetery. He went over and perused the inscriptions on the plain Empire-stones. One of them read simply, in English: “Here lies one whose name is writ in water”. On the second a longer text declared that there lay Severn, the painter, the best friend and faithful nurse on his death-bed of John Keats, the great English poet, who had insisted that his name should not be inscribed on the neighbouring stone, under which he lay.

Mihály’s eyes filled with tears. So here lay Keats, the greatest poet since the world began … though such emotion was somewhat irrational, given that the body had been lying there for a very long time, and the spirit was preserved by his verses more faithfully than by any grave-pit. But so wonderful, so truly English, was the manner of this gentle compromise, this innocent sophistry, that perfectly respected his last wishes but nonetheless announced without ambiguity that it was indeed Keats who lay beneath the stone.

When he raised his eyes some rather unusual people were standing beside him. They were an enchantingly beautiful and undoubtedly English woman, a second woman dressed as a nurse, and two lovely English children, a little boy and girl. They simply stood motionless, looking rather awkwardly at the grave, at each other, and at Mihály. He stood and waited for them to say something, but they did not speak. After a while an elegant gentleman arrived, with the same expressionless face as the others. He bore a strong resemblance to his wife: they might have been twins, or at least brother and sister. He stood before the grave, and the wife pointed out the inscription. The Englishman nodded, and with great solemnity and some embarrassment gazed in turn at the grave, at his family, and at Mihály. And he too said nothing. Mihály moved a step further away, thinking that perhaps they were discomposed by his presence, but they simply remained standing, nodding from time to time, and looking self-consciously at one another. The two children’s faces were every bit as embarrassed and blankly beautiful as the adults’.

As he was turning away, Mihály suddenly stared at them with undisguised astonishment. He felt that they were not human but ghostly dolls, mindless automata standing here over the poet’s grave: inexplicable beings. Had they not been so very beautiful perhaps they would have been less astonishing, but they had the inhuman beauty of people in advertisements, and he was filled with an unspeakable horror.

Then the English family moved away, slowly and still nodding, and Mihály recovered himself. In sober consciousness he reviewed the past few minutes, and became truly anxious.

“What’s wrong with me? What sort of mental state have I fallen into again? It was like a dark, shameful reminder of my adolescence. These people were quite clearly nothing other than self-conscious, thoroughly stupid English, confronted by the fact that this was Keats’s grave and not knowing where to begin, perhaps because they had no idea who Keats was. Or perhaps they knew, but couldn’t think how to behave appropriately at the grave of Keats the famous Englishman, and because of this they were embarrassed in front of each other and of me. A more insignificant or banal scene you really couldn’t imagine, and yet I immediately thought of the most unspeakable horror in the world. Yes. Horror isn’t at its most intense in things of night and fear. It’s when you are staring in full sunlight at some mundane thing, a shop window, an unknown face, between the branches of a tree … ”

He thrust his hands in his pockets and quickly made his way back.

He decided that he would travel home the next day. It was too late to leave that day, because Tivadar’s letter had not arrived much before noon. He would have to wait until morning to change the cheque he had been sent, and to despatch the money he owed to Millicent. He was spending his last night in Rome. He wandered around the streets with an even greater sense of surrender than before, and found everything even more charged with significance.

He was bidding farewell to Rome. It was not particular buildings that had found their way into his heart. The overwhelming experience was of the life of the city itself. He wandered aimless and uncertain, with the feeling that tucked away in the city were still thousands upon thousands of districts he would now never see. And again he had the feeling that the really important things were happening elsewhere, where he was not; that he had missed the secret signal. His road led absolutely nowhere and his nostalgia now would gnaw him eternally, remain eternally unquenched, until he too departed, Die Pyramide vorbei, leise zum Orcus hinab …

The light was fading and Mihály walked with lowered head, hardly noticing even the streets, until, in a dark alleyway, he bumped into someone, who muttered, “sorry”. Hearing the English word, he looked up and saw before him the young Englishman who had so struck him at Keats’s grave. There must have been something in Mihály’s face as he looked at the Englishman, for he raised his hat, murmured something, and hurried off. Mihály turned and stared after him.

But only for a moment. Then, with determined footsteps, he hurried after him, without thinking why he did. As a boy, under the influence of detective novels, one of his favourite pastimes had been to fall in suddenly behind some unknown person and to track him, taking great care not to be noticed, sometimes for long hours. He would not follow just anyone. The chosen person had to have been revealed to him by some means, some cabalistic sign, as had this young Englishman. It could not have been by empty chance that in all this vast city he had met him twice on the same day, and that day such a significant one, and that in both of them the meeting had produced such unprovoked astonishment. Some secret lay hidden in this, and he would have to follow it to its end.

With the excitement of a detective he tracked the Englishman through the narrow streets to the Corso Umberto. He had not lost his boyhood skill. He could still follow unobserved, like a shadow. His quarry walked up and down the Corso for a while, then took a chair on a café terrace. Mihály also sat down, drank a vermouth, and watched him in a fever of anticipation. He knew that something must happen. He had the impression that the Englishman was no longer as calm and expressionless as he had been at the graveside. Under the regular lines of his face and the alarming clarity of his skin some strange life seemed to be throbbing. Of course the restlessness showed on his impeccable English surface no more than the wing of a bird brushing the surface of a lake. But restless he certainly was. Mihály knew that the man was waiting for someone, and he too was infected with the apprehension of waiting, which was amplified in him like a voice through a megaphone.

The Englishman began to glance repeatedly at his watch, and Mihály could hardly bear to remain in his seat. He fidgeted, ordered yet another vermouth, then a maraschino. This was no time for economising. Anyway, he was going home the next day.

At last an elegant limousine drew up outside the café, the door opened and a woman glanced out. Instantly the Englishman sprang up and disappeared into the car, which moved off smoothly and silently.

It took but an instant. The woman had appeared in the open car door for no more than a moment, but Mihály had recognised her, as much by intuition as by sight. It was Éva Ulpius. He too had leapt to his feet, had seen her glance fall on him for just a moment, and caught the very faint smile that appeared on her face. But it was over in a flash, and Éva had disappeared inside the car and vanished into the night.

He paid for his drinks and staggered out of the café. The omens had not lied. It was for this that he had been summoned to Rome: because Éva was here. Now he understood that she was the source and object of his nostalgia. Éva, Éva …

And he knew he would not be travelling home. If he had to wear a donkey jacket and wait for fifty years, then he would wait. At last there was a place in the world where he had reason to be, a place that had meaning. For days, without realising it, he had sensed this meaning everywhere, in the streets, houses, ruins and temples of Rome. It could not be said of the feeling that it was ‘filled with pleasurable expectation’. Rome and its millennia were not by nature associated with happiness, and what Mihály anticipated from the future was not what is usually conjured up by ‘pleasurable expectation’. He was awaiting his fate, the logical, appropriately Roman, ending.

He wrote at once to Tivadar to say that his state of health would not permit an extended journey. He did not send the money to Millicent. Millicent was so rich she could manage without it. If she had waited all this time she could wait a bit longer. The delay was Tivadar’s fault for not sending more money.

That evening, in his elation, his nervous excitement after the feverish waiting, he got drunk on his own, and when he woke later in the night with a violently palpitating heart he again knew the terrible feeling of mortality which in his younger days had been the strongest symptom of his passion for Éva. He well knew, now even more clearly than he had the day before, that for a thousand and one reasons he really had to go home; and that if despite that knowledge he remained in Rome because of Éva — and how uncertain it was that he actually had seen her — he was putting everything at risk, perhaps doing irreparable offence against his family and his own status as a bourgeois, and that very uncertain days lay ahead. But not for one minute did it occur to him that there was anything else he could do. All this, the great gamble and the death-haunted feeling, was so much part of those adolescent games. Not tomorrow, and not the day after, but one day he and Éva would meet, and, until then, he would live. His life would begin anew, not as it had been during all the wasted years. Incipit vita nova.

XIV

EVERY DAY he read the newspapers, but with rather mixed feelings. He enjoyed the paradox that they were written in Italian, that potent and voluminous language, but (in their case) with the effect of a mighty river driving a sewing-machine. But the contents deeply depressed him. The Italian papers were always ecstatically happy, as if they were written not by humans but by saints in triumph, just stepped down from a Fra Angelico in order to celebrate the perfect social system. There was always some cause for happiness: some institution was eleven years old, a road had just turned twelve. So someone would make a monumental speech, and the people would enthusiastically applaud, at least according to accounts in the press.

Like all foreigners, Mihály was exercised by the question of whether the people did actually welcome everything as fervently, and were as steadily, indefatigably, tirelessly happy, as the papers insisted. Naturally he was aware that it was difficult for a foreigner to take an exact measure of Italian contentment and sincerity, especially when he never spoke to anyone, and had no real connection with any aspect of Italian life. But as far as he could judge, from such a distance, and given his general detachment, it seemed to him that the Italian people were indeed indefatigably enthusiastic and happy, ever since these had come into fashion. But he also knew what trifling and stupid things could suffice to make man happy, whether individually or in the mass.

However he did not occupy himself at great length with this question. His instincts told him that in Italy it was all very much the same whoever happened to be in power and whatever the ideas in whose name they ruled. Politics touched only the surface. The people, the vegetative sea of the Italian masses, bore the changing times on their back with astonishing passivity, and lived quite unconnected with their own remarkable history. He suspected that even Republican and Imperial Rome, with its huge gestures, its heroics and bestial stupidities, had been nothing more than a virile drama on the surface, the whole Roman Empire the mere private affair of a few brilliant actors, while down below the Italians placidly ate their pasta, sang songs of love, and begat their countless offspring.

One day a familiar name met his eye in the Popolo d’Italia: ‘The Waldheim Lecture’. He studied the article, from which it emerged that Rodolfo Waldheim, the world-famous Hungarian classical philologist and religious historian, had given a lecture at the Accademia Reale, entitled Aspetti della morte nelle religioni antiche. The fiery Italian journalist fêted the lecture as shedding entirely new light not just on death-practices in ancient religions but on the nature of death in general. The text was moreover an important document of Hungaro-Italian friendship. The audience had enthusiastically received the famous professor, whose very youthfulness had surprised and delighted them.

This Waldheim, Mihály decided, could be no other than Rudi Waldheim, and he was filled with a kind of pleasure, for this man had at one time been a good friend. They had been at university together. Although neither was very congenial by nature — Mihály because he rather looked down upon anyone who was not of the Ulpius set, Waldheim because he felt that compared with himself everyone else was ignorant, dull and cheap — nonetheless a kind of friendship had grown between them out of their interest in religious history. The relationship had not been a very lasting one. Waldheim’s knowledge was already formidable: he had read everything that mattered, in every language, and he willingly and brilliantly expounded to Mihály, whom he found an eager listener, until he realised that his interest in the subject was not very deep. He decided his friend was a dilettante and withdrew into suspicion. Mihály for his part was astonished and dismayed by the vastness of his friend’s knowledge. If a mere beginner knew so much, he wondered, how much more would a bearded practitioner know, and he entirely lost heart, particularly as not long afterwards he abandoned his university studies. Waldheim however went on to Germany to perfect himself at the feet of the great masters and the two lost touch completely. Years later Mihály would read in the newspapers of another step in Waldheim’s rapid rise up the academic ladder, and when he became a lecturer at the university Mihály had been on the point of writing to congratulate him, but then hadn’t. They had never again met in person.

Now, reading his name, he remembered Waldheim’s peculiar charm, which he had quite forgotten in the intervening years: the fox-terrier liveliness of his bright, round, shaven head; his miraculous loquacity (for Waldheim held forth unstoppably, at full volume, in long perfectly constructed sentences almost always full of interest, even in his sleep it was generally supposed); his indomitable vitality; his perpetual appetite for women (which keeps this type of man always busily active around his more attractive female colleagues); above all his distinctive quality, which, following Goethe, though with modest reluctance, he himself termed ‘charisma’; and the fact that the study of the concept of Spirit, in all its detailed workings as well as the abstract whole, held him in a white heat of passion. He was never indifferent, always feverishly busy with something, in raptures over some great and possibly ancient manifestation of the Spirit, or detesting some ‘dull’ or ‘cheap’ or ‘second-rate’ piece of stupidity, and invariably sent into a trance by the very word ‘Spirit’, which for him actually seemed to mean something.

Thoughts of Waldheim’s vitality had an unexpectedly invigorating effect on Mihály. Ambushed by a sudden urge to see him again, even if briefly, he suddenly realised how utterly lonely his life had been in recent weeks. Loneliness was an inescapable part of awaiting one’s fate, which was his sole occupation in Rome and impossible to share with anyone. It was now brought home to him for the first time how deep he had sunk into this passive, dreamy waiting, this immersion in the sense of mortality. It was like a tangle of seaweed sucking him down towards the wonders of the deep: then suddenly his head had burst out of the water, and he breathed again.

He must meet Waldheim. One possible way of effecting this now seemed to offer itself. In the article reporting the lecture, mention was made of a reception to be given in the Palazzo Falconieri, the headquarters of the Collegium Hungaricum. He remembered that there was a branch of that organisation in Rome, a hostel for young aspiring artists and scholars. Here they would at least be able to give him Waldheim’s address, if he were not actually living there.

The address of the Palazzo Falconieri was not hard to find. It stood in the Via Giulia, not far from the Teatro Marcello, in the district where Mihály most loved to loiter. Now he cut through the alleyways of the ghetto and soon arrived at the fine old Palazzo.

The porter received Mihály’s inquiry sympathetically, and told him that the professor was indeed in the College, but it was his sleeping time. Mihály looked in amazement at his watch. It was ten thirty.

“Yes,” said the porter. “The professor always sleeps until twelve, and must not be roused. Not that it’s easy to wake him. He sleeps very deeply.”

“Then perhaps I can call back after lunch?”

“Sorry, after lunch the professor goes back to sleep, and cannot be disturbed then either.”

“And when is he awake?”

“The whole night,” said the porter, with a hint of awe in his voice.

“Then it would be better if I left my card and address, and the professor can let me know if he would like to see me.”

When he arrived home late that afternoon a telegram was waiting for him. Waldheim had invited him to dinner. Mihály immediately boarded a tram and set off for the Palazzo Falconieri. He loved the ‘C’ line, that wonderful route which would take him there from the main railway station skirting half the city, passing through various areas of woodland, stopping at the Coliseum, brushing past the Palatine ruins and racing alongside the Tiber, the cavalcade of the millennia passing in procession on either side of the rails, and the whole journey taking just a quarter-of-an-hour.

“Come,” shouted Waldheim in answer to Mihály’s knocking. But when he tried the door it appeared to be stuck.

“Hang on, I’m coming … ” came the shout from within. After some time the door opened.

“It’s a bit choked up,” said Waldheim, gesturing towards the books and papers piled on the floor. “Don’t worry, just come in.”

Negotiating entry was not a simple matter, for the entire floor was strewn with objects of every description: not just books and papers, but Waldheim’s underwear, some extremely loud summer gear, a surprising quantity of shoes, swimming and other sportswear, newspapers, tins of food, chocolate boxes, letters, art reproductions, and pictures of women.

Mihály looked around him in embarrassment.

“You see, I don’t like having the cleaners in while I’m here,” his host explained. “They leave everything in such a mess I can never find anything. Please, take a seat. Hang on, just a second … ”

He swept a few books from the top of a tall pile, now revealed as a chair, and Mihály sat down nervously. Chaos always disconcerted him, and in addition this particular chaos somehow exuded an aura that demanded respect for the sanctity of learning.

Waldheim also sat down, and immediately began to hold forth. He was explaining the state of disorder. His untidiness was essentially abstract, a manifestation of the spirit, but heredity also played a part in it.

“My father (I must have told you about him) was a painter. Perhaps you’ve heard of him? He would never allow anyone to lay a finger on the things piled up in his studio. After a while he was the only one who could go in. He was the only person who knew where there were these islands you could safely step on without falling into something. But then even the islands became buried under the flood of litter. So my father would close up that studio, take another, and begin a new life. When he died we discovered that he had five, every one filled to overflowing.

Then he described what had happened to himself since he had last seen Mihály, his academic career and his world fame as a philologist, about which he boasted with the naïve charm of a little boy. He “just happened to have with him” newspaper clippings, in a variety of languages, which deferentially reported his various lectures, among them the one Mihály had seen in the Popolo d’Italia. Then he turned up some letters from a string of eminent foreign scholars and writers, all very friendly, and an invitation card to Doorn, to the annual summer convention of the Former Emperor’s Society of Post-Imperial German Archaeologists. From somewhere or other he produced a silver goblet inscribed with the ex-Emperor’s monogram.

“See this. He presented it to me after the whole society had drunk to my honour in good Hungarian Tokay.”

Next he proudly displayed his photographs, flicking through a great pile at high speed. In some he appeared with highly academic-looking gentlemen, in others with various ladies of less scholarly aspect.

“My distinguished self in pyjamas,” he expounded. “My distinguished self in the buff … the lady is covering her face in embarrassment … ”

Then, as a final inclusion, Waldheim was pictured with an extremely plain woman and a small boy.

“Who are these? This hideous woman with her brat?” Mihály asked, tactfully.

“Oh dear, that’s my family,” he replied, and roared with laughter. “My wife and my son.”

“You have a family?” Mihály asked in amazement. “Where do you keep them?”

For Waldheim’s room, his manners, his whole being were so much that of the perpetual and incurable university student, with the stamp of the ‘I never want to grow up’ stud. phil. so clearly upon him, that Mihály simply couldn’t imagine him with a wife and child.

“Oh, I’ve been married for centuries,” he said. “It’s a very old photo. Since then my son has got a lot bigger, and my wife even uglier. She fell for me at Heidelberg, when I was in my third year. Her name was Katzchen, (isn’t that wonderful?) and she was forty-six. But we don’t trouble each other very much. She lives in Germany, with my dear father-in-law and his family, and they look down their noses at me. More recently this is not just because of my morals, but because I’m not German.”

“But surely you are German, at least by descent?”

“Yes, yes, but an Auslanddeutsche, from Bratislava, my God, such an outpost in the Danube basin! That doesn’t count as real German. At least that’s what my son says, and he’s intensely ashamed of me in front of his friends. But what can I do? Nothing. But please, eat up. Oh dear, haven’t I had you to dine here before? Just hang on a second … the tea’s already brewed. But you don’t have to drink tea. There’s also red wine.”

From somewhere among the arcana of the floor he produced a large package, removed several objects and papers from the desk and placed them under it, put the package down and opened it. A mass of raw Italian ham, salami and bread spilt out into view.

“You see I eat only cold meat, nothing else,” said Waldheim. “But to make it less boring for you I’ve arranged for a bit of variety. Just wait a moment … ”

After a long search he produced a banana. The smile with which he presented it to Mihály seemed to say, “Did you ever see such thoughtful housekeeping?”

This student-like casualness and incompetence Mihály found enchanting.

“Here’s a man who’s achieved the impossible,” he thought with a touch of envy, as Waldheim stuffed the raw ham into his mouth and continued to hold forth. “There’s a man who’s managed to stay fixed at the age that suits him. Everyone has one age that’s just right for him, that’s certain. There are people who remain children all their lives, and there are others who never cease to be awkward and absurd, who never find their place until suddenly they become splendidly wise old men and women: they have come to their real age. The amazing thing about Waldheim is that he’s managed to remain a university student at heart without having to give up the world, or success, or the life of the mind. He’s gone down a path where his emotional immaturity doesn’t seem to be noticed, or is even an advantage, and he pays only as much heed to reality as is consistent with the limitations of his own being. That’s wonderful. Now if only I could manage something like that … ”

The meal was barely over when Waldheim looked at his watch and muttered excitedly:

“Holy heavens, I’ve got some really urgent business with a woman, just nearby. Please, if you’ve nothing better to do, it would be very kind if you would come along and wait for me. It really won’t take long. Then we can find a little hostelry and continue our really interesting dialogue … ” (“He obviously hasn’t noticed that I’ve not said a single word yet,” thought Mihály.)

“I’d be delighted to go with you,” he said.

“I’m extremely fond of women,” Waldheim announced as they walked along. “Perhaps excessively. You know, when I was young I didn’t get my share of women as I wanted to, and as I should have, partly because when you’re young you’re so stupid, and partly because my strict upbringing forbade it. I was brought up by my mother, who was the daughter of a pfarrer, a real Imperial German parish priest. As a child I was once with them and for some reason I asked the old man who Mozart was. ‘Der war ein Scheunepurzler,’ he said, which means, more or less, someone who does somersaults in a barn to amuse the yokels. For the old man all artists fell into that category. So nowadays I feel that I can never do enough to make up for what I missed in the way of women when I was twenty-five. But here we are. Hang on a moment, won’t you. I shan’t be long.”

He disappeared through a dark doorway. Mihály walked up and down, thoughtfully but in good spirits. After a while he heard an odd, amused coughing. He looked up. Waldheim had thrust his bright round head out of a window.

“Ahem. I’m on my way.”

“A very nice lady,” he said as he emerged. “Breasts hang down a bit, but it’s not a problem. You have to get used to that here. I met her in the Forum and made a conquest of her by telling her that the Black Stone was probably a phallic symbol. You really can’t imagine how useful religious history can be for getting around women. They eat it out of my hand. Mind you, I fear you could probably do the same with differential calculus or double-entry book-keeping, so long as you talked about it with the proper intensity. They never listen to what you actually say. Or if they do listen, they never understand. All the same they can sometimes have you on. Sometimes they really are almost human. Never mind. I love them. And they love me, that’s the main thing. So, let’s go in here.”

Mihály made an involuntary grimace when he saw the place Waldheim proposed entering.

“I’m not saying it’s pretty, but it’s very cheap. But I see, you’re still the fussy little boy you were as a student. Never mind. For once we’ll go somewhere better, for your sake.”

Again came the smile that spoke consciousness of great generosity, as he added that, also as a favour to Mihály, he would be quite happy to pay for his own drinks in the more expensive place.

They went into an establishment that was possibly a shade or two better. Waldheim again held forth for a while, then seemed to become rather tired. For a few moments he seemed lost in thought, then turned with alarming suddenness towards Mihály:

“But what have you been doing all these years?”

Mihály smiled.

“I learnt the trade, and worked in my father’s firm.”

“You worked? In the past tense? And now?”

“At the moment, nothing. I ran away from home. I loaf around here and try to think about what I should be doing with myself.”

“What you should be doing? How can there be a question? Take up religious history. Believe me, it’s the most topical subject today.”

“But why do you think I should become a student? What have I to do with the academic life?”

“Because anyone who isn’t actually stupid ought to study, in the interests of his soul’s salvation. It’s the only thing worth doing. I don’t know, perhaps also art and music … but to spend your time doing anything else, like working in a commercial company, for a man who isn’t totally stupid … I’ll tell you what that is: affectation.”

“Affectation? How do you mean?”

“Look. I remember you started off as a pretty decent religious historian. I’m not saying … well, you were a bit slow on the uptake but hard work can make up for a lot of things and people with far less talent than you have gone on to become excellent scholars, in fact … And then, I don’t know the facts but I can imagine what went on in your middle-class soul. You found that the academic path doesn’t guarantee a living, that you didn’t want the boring routine of school-teaching, and this and that, so really you had to go for something practical, considering all the supposed necessities of a wealthy person. This is what I call affectation. Because even you realise that these supposed necessities aren’t real. The practical career is a myth, a humbug, invented to cheer themselves up by people who aren’t capable of doing anything intellectual. But you’ve got too much sense to be taken in by them. With you it’s just an affectation. And it’s high time you gave up this pose, and got back where you belong, in the academic life.”

“And what do I live on?”

“My God, it’s not a problem. You see, even I manage.”

“Yes, on your salary as a university teacher.”

“True. But I could equally live without it. People shouldn’t throw money about. I’ll teach you how to live on tea and salami. Very healthy. You people don’t know how to economise, that’s the trouble.”

“But Rudi, there’s another problem. I’m not very sure that a life of scholarship would be as satisfying for me as it is for you … I don’t have the enthusiasm … I can’t really believe in the importance of these things … ”

“What sort of things are you talking about?”

“Well, for example, the factual basis of religious history. What I’m saying … sometimes I think … does it really matter exactly why the wolf reared Romulus and Remus? … ”

“How the hell could it not matter? You’re utterly crazy. No, it’s just affectation. But that’s enough talk for now. It’s time to go back and work.”

“Now? But it’s past midnight!”

“Yes, that’s when I’m able to work: no interruptions, and for some reason I don’t even think about women then. I’ll work now until four, and then run for an hour.”

“You’ll do what?”

“Run. Otherwise I can’t sleep. I go to the river bank and run up and down beside the Tiber. The police know me and they leave me alone. It’s just like at home. Come. On the way I’ll tell you what I’m working on at present. It’s really sensational. You remember that Sophron fragment that came to light a little while ago … ”

By the time he had finished his exposition they were standing outside the Falconieri building.

“But going back to the question of what you should do,” he said unexpectedly. “The only difficulty is starting. You know what? Tomorrow I’ll get up a bit earlier for your sake. Come for me, let’s say, at eleven-thirty. No, twelve. I’ll take you to the Villa Giulia. I bet you haven’t been to the Etruscan Museum, right? Well, if that doesn’t give you the urge to take up the old threads, then you really are a lost man. Then you better had go back to your father’s factory. So, God be with you.”

And he hurried into the darkened building.

XV

THE NEXT DAY they did indeed visit the Villa Giulia. They looked at the graves and the sarcophagi, with their lids supporting terracotta statues of the old Etruscan dead enjoying their lives — eating, drinking, embracing their spouses, and proclaiming the Etruscan philosophy. This, being wise enough not to have developed literature in the evolution of their cultural life, they never committed to writing, though of course it can be read unmistakably on the faces of their statues: only the present matters, and moments of beauty are eternal.

Waldheim pointed out some broad drinking bowls. These were for wine, as the inscription proclaimed: Foied vinom pipafo, cra carefo.

“Enjoy the wine today, tomorrow there will be none,” Waldheim translated. “Tell me, could it be expressed more succinctly or truly? That statement, in its archaic splendour, is as definitive and unshakeable as any polygonic city-walls or cyclopean buildings. Foied vinom pipafo, cra carefo.”

Whole sets of figurines were displayed in a glass case: dreamy-eyed men, being led onwards by women, and dreamy-eyed women led, or clutched at, by satyrs.

“What are these?” Mihály asked in amazement.

“That’s death,” said Waldheim, and his voice took on an edge, as it always did when some serious academic issue arose. “That’s death. Or rather, dying. They’re not the same thing. Those women luring the men on, and those satyrs clutching at the women, are death-demons. Are you with me? The male demons take the women, and the female demons the men. Those Etruscans were perfectly aware that dying is an erotic act.”

A strange frisson shot through Mihály. Could it be that others had known this, and not just himself and Tamás Ulpius? Was it possible that this most basic element in his own sense of life was once something that, for the Etruscans, could be expressed in art, a self-evident spiritual truth, and that Waldheim’s brilliant scholarly intuition had been able to understand that truth, just as he had so many of the mysteries and horrors of ancient belief?

The question so troubled him that he said not a word, neither in the museum nor on the tram going back afterwards. But that evening, when he again called on Waldheim, and had been lent courage by the red wine, he managed to ask, taking care not to let his voice tremble: “But tell me, how did you mean ‘dying is an erotic act’?”

“I meant it just as I stated it. I’m not a symbolist poet. Dying is an erotic process, or if you like, a form of sexual pleasure. At least in the perception of ancient cultures like the Etruscans, the Homeric Greeks, the Celts.”

“I don’t understand,” said Mihály disingenuously. “I always thought that the Greeks had a horror of death. Surely the afterlife had no consolations for the Homeric Greeks, if I remember my Rodhe correctly. And the Etruscans, who lived for the fleeting moment, would have feared it even more.”

“That’s all true. These peoples probably feared death even more than we do. Our civilisation presents us with a marvellous mental machinery designed to help us forget, for most of our lives, that one day we too will die. In time we manage to push death out of our consciousness, just as we have done with the existence of God. That’s what civilisation does. But for these archaic peoples nothing was more immediately apparent than death and the dead, I mean actual dead people, whose mysterious para-existence, fate, and vengeful fury constantly preoccupied them. They had a tremendous horror of death and the dead. But then of course in their minds everything was more ambiguous than it is for us. Opposites sat much closer. The fear of death and the desire for death were intimately juxtaposed in their minds, and the fear was often a form of desire, the desire a form of fear.”

“My God, the death-wish isn’t some archaic thing, but eternally human,” said Mihály, fending off his real innermost thoughts. “There always were and always will be people worn out and weary of life, who long for the release of death.”

“Don’t talk rubbish, and don’t pretend you don’t understand me. I’m not talking about the death-wish of the weary and the sick, or potential suicides, but about people in the fullness of their life, people who in fact because their lives are so fulfilled yearn for death as for the greatest ecstasy, as in the common phrase, mortal passion. Either you understand this or you don’t. I can’t explain it. But for those ancient people it was self-evident. That’s why I say that dying is an erotic act. Because they yearned after it, and in the final analysis every desire is sexual at base, or rather what we call erotic, in which the god Eros, that is to say, yearning or desire, exists. A man always yearns after woman, according to our friends the Etruscans, so death, dying, must be a woman. For a man it was a woman, but for a woman an importunate male satyr. That’s what those figures tell us, the ones we saw this afternoon. But I could show you other things too: portraits of the death-hetaira on various ancient reliefs. Death is a harlot tempting young men, and she is depicted with a hideously vast vagina. And this vagina probably means something more again. We come from it and we return to it, that’s what they are telling us. We are born as the result of an erotic act and through a woman, and we have to die through an erotic act involving a woman, the death-hetaira, the great inseparable and contrary aspect of the Earth Mother … So when we die we are born again … do you follow? Actually this is what I was saying the other day, in my lecture at the Accademia Reale entitled Aspetti della morte. It was a great success with the Italian newspapers. It just so happens I have a copy with me. Hang on a moment … ”

Mihály looked around with a shiver at the cheerful chaos of Waldheims’s room. It reminded him subtly of that other room, in the Ulpius house. He was looking for a sign, something specific to focus … perhaps the near-presence of Tamás, Tamás whose inner thoughts Waldheim, with his brilliant scholarly objectivity and clarity, had expressed here, this summer night. Waldheim’s voice was again edged with that sharp, inspired quality it always took on when he talked about the ‘divine essence’. Mihály rapidly downed a glass of wine and went over to the window for a breath of air. Something oppressed him deeply.

“The death-yearning was one of the strongest sources of myth,” Waldheim continued, talking now rather to himself than to Mihály in his excitement. “If we read The Odyssey aright, it speaks of nothing else. There are the death-hetaira, Circe, Calypso, who from their caves lured men on to the journey towards the happy islands and never let them go; the whole empire of death, the Lotus-Eaters, the land of the Phaia. And who knows, perhaps the land of the dead was Ithaca itself? Far to the west … the dead are always sailing by day into the west … and Ulysses’s nostalgia for and his journey back to Ithaca perhaps represents the nostalgia for non-being, signifying rebirth … Perhaps the name Penelope actually carries its latent meaning of ‘duck’, and originally was the spirit-bird, but for the time being I can’t be sure of that. You see this is the sort of idea that really should be looked into without delay. And you … You could do the groundwork for a section, so that you can get into the professional way of doing things. For example, it would be really interesting if you wrote something about Penelope as the spirit-duck.”

Mihály politely declined this commission. For the moment it did not much interest him.

“But why was it only the ancient Greeks who were so aware of this death symbolism?” he asked.

“Because the nature of civilisation everywhere was such that, even with the Greeks, it diverted people’s minds away from the reality of death, and compensated for the yearning for death just when the basic appetite for life was declining. It was Christian civilisation that did this. But perhaps those peoples Christianity had to subdue brought with them an even greater death-cult than existed among the Greeks. The Greeks were not in fact a particularly death-centred race. It was just that they were able to express everything so much better than other people. The real death-cultists were the races of the north, the Germans, woodsmen of the long nights, and the Celts. Especially the Celts. The Celtic legends are full of the islands of the dead. These islands later Christian observers, in their usual fashion, transformed to islands of the blessed, or happy isles, and simple-minded folklore-collectors generally followed them in this error. But tell me, was that an island of the ‘blessed’ that sent its fairy envoy to Prince Bran with such overwhelming constraint? Or was it, I ask, from ‘happiness’ that a man was turned to dust and ashes the moment he left the island? And why do you think they laughed, those people on the island, the ‘other island’? Because they were happy? Like hell they were. They were laughing because they were dead, and their grins were nothing more than the hideous leer of a corpse, like those you see on the faces of Indian masks and Peruvian mummies. Sadly it isn’t my field, the Celts. But you should take them up. You would have to learn, quickly and without fail, Irish and Welsh, there’s no other way. And you would have to go to Dublin.”

“Fine,” said Mihály. “But say a bit more, if you would. You’ve no idea how much this interests me. Why did it come to an end, this human yearning for the islands of the dead? Or perhaps the feeling is still with us? In a word, where does the story end?”

“I can only answer with a bit of home-made Spenglerism. When the people of the north came into the community of Christendom, in other words European civilisation, one of the first consequences was, if you remember, that for two hundred years everything revolved around death. I’m referring to the tenth and eleventh centuries, the centuries of the monastic reforms begun at Cluny. In early Roman times Christianity lived under constant physical threat, so that it became the darkest of death-cults, rather like the religion of the Mexican Indians. Later of course it took on its truly Mediterranean and humane character. What happened? The Mediterraneans succeeded in sublimating and rationalising the yearning for death, or, in plain language, they watered down the desire for death into desire for the next world, they translated the terrifying sex-appeal of the death-sirens into the heavenly choirs and rows of angels singing praises. Nowadays you can yearn comfortably after the glorious death that awaits the believer: not the dying pagan’s yearning for erotic pleasure, but the civilised and respectable longing for heaven. The raw, ancestral pagan death-desire has gone into exile, into the dark under-strata of religion. Superstition, witchcraft, Satanism, are among its manifestations. The stronger civilisation becomes, the more our yearning for death thrives in the subconscious.

“Think about it. In civilised society death is the most absolute of all taboo-subjects. It isn’t done to mention it. We use circumlocutions to name it in writing, as if it were some sort of ridiculous solecism, so that the dead person, the corpse, becomes the ‘deceased’, the ‘dear departed’, the ‘late’, in the same way as we euphemise the acts of digestion. And what you don’t talk about, it isn’t done to think about either. This is civilisation’s defence against the potential danger of a contrary instinct working in man against the instinct for life, an instinct which is really cunning, calling man towards annihilation with a sweet and strong enticement. To the civilised mind this instinct is all the more dangerous because in civilised man the raw appetite for life is so much weaker. Which is why it has to suppress the other instinct with every weapon available. But this suppression isn’t always successful. The counter-instinct breaks surface in times of decadence, and manages to overrun the territory of the mind to a surprising degree. Sometimes whole classes of society almost consciously dig their own graves, like the French aristocracy before the Revolution. And, I’m afraid, the most current example today are the Hungarians of Transdanubia …

“I don’t know if you’re still following me? People usually get me spectacularly wrong whenever I talk on this subject. But I can do a little test. Do you recognise this feeling? A man is walking on a wet pavement and slips. His one leg collapses under him, and he starts to fall backwards. At the precise moment when I lose my balance, I am filled with a sudden ecstasy. Of course it lasts only a second, then I automatically jerk back my leg, recover my balance, and rejoice in the fact that I didn’t fall. But that one moment! For just one moment I was suddenly released from the oppressive laws of equilibrium. I was free. I began to fly off into annihilating freedom … Do you recognise this feeling?”

“I know rather more about this whole business than you think,” Mihály said quietly.

Waldheim suddenly looked at him in surprise.

“Eh, you say that in a strange voice, old chap! And you’ve gone so pale! What’s wrong with you? Come out on to the balcony.”

Out on the balcony Mihály recovered himself in an instant.

“What is this, damn you?” said Waldheim. “Are you hot? Or hysterical? You should consider that if you were to commit suicide under the influence of what I’ve said I shall deny that I ever knew you. What I am saying is of a completely theoretical significance. I really detest those people who like to draw practical conclusions from scholarly truths, who ‘apply learning to real life’, like engineers who turn the propositions of chemistry into insecticides for bedbugs. It translates, in Goethe’s words, as: ‘life is grey, but the golden tree of theory is always green’. Especially when the theory itself is still as green as this is. Now I hope I’ve restored your equilibrium. Here’s a general rule … don’t try to live the life of the soul. I think that’s your problem. An intelligent person doesn’t have a spiritual life. And tomorrow you must come with me to the garden party at the American Institute of Archaeology. You’ll have a bit of fun. Now go to hell, I’ve still got work to do.”

XVI

THE AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE occupied a resplendent building set in a large garden on the Gianicolo hill. Its annual garden party was a major event in the social calendar of Rome’s Anglo-Saxon community. Its organisers were not just the American Archaeologists, but more importantly the American painters and sculptors living in Rome, and the guests all those closely or loosely connected with them. It was always a particularly varied and particularly interesting group of people who assembled on the night.

But Mihály experienced little of the variety and interest of the company. He was again in that state of mind in which everything seemed to reach him through a veil of fog — the scented enchantment of the summer night, blending with the dance-music, the drinks and the women he chatted to, he had no idea about what. His Pierrot costume and his domino mask and cape completely distanced him. It wasn’t himself there, but someone else, a dream-locked domino mask.

The hours passed in a pleasant daze. The night was now much advanced, and he stood once more on top of the grassy hillock under the umbrella pine, listening to those strange inexplicable voices which had troubled him again and again in the course of the evening.

The voices came from behind a wall, a truly massive wall, which as the night went on seemed to grow steadily higher, soaring into the sky. The voices swelled out from behind the wall, sometimes stronger, sometimes fainter, sometimes with ear-splitting intensity, and sometimes no louder than the far-off lamentation of mourners on the distant shore of some lake or sea, under an ashen sky … then they fell silent, were totally silent for long stretches of time. Mihály would start to forget about them and feel again like a man at a garden-party, and allowed Waldheim, brilliantly in his element, to introduce him to one woman after another, until once again the distant voices rose.

They did so just at a time when the general mood had begun to develop agreeably, as everyone slipped towards the subtler, deeper stages of drunkenness, the effect of the night rather than the alcohol. They had passed beyond the threshold of dreams, the habitual hour of sleep. Now distinctions were becoming blurred, rational morality was in retreat as they surrendered themselves to the night. Waldheim was singing extracts from The Fair Helen, Mihály was busy with a Polish lady and everything was quite delightful, when he again heard the voices. He excused himself, went back to the top of the mound, and stood there alone, his heart palpitating in the tenseness of his concentration, as if everything depended on resolving this enigma.

Now he could hear quite distinctly that the voices beyond the wall were singing, and there were several of them, probably men, intoning a dirge unlike anything ever heard, in which certain distinct but unintelligible words rhythmically recurred. There was a profound, tragic desolation in the song, something not quite human, from a different order of experience, something reminiscent of the howling of animals on long dark nights, some ancient grief from the great age of trees, from the era of the umbrella pines. Mihály sat back under the pine and closed his eyes. No, the singers beyond the wall were not men but women, and he could already see them in his mind’s eye, a strange company, something out of Naconxipan, the mad Gulácsy painting of the denizens of wonderland in their oppressive lilac-coloured attire, and he thought that this was how one would mourn for the death of a god, Attis, Adonis, Tamás … Tamás, who had died unmourned at the beginning of time, and now lay in state out there beyond the wall, with the sunrise of tomorrow dawning on his face.

When he opened his eyes a woman stood before him, leaning with her shoulder against the umbrella pine, in classical costume, exactly as Goethe imagined the Greeks, and masked. Mihály politely straightened his posture, and asked her in English: “You don’t know who those men or women are, singing through the wall?”

“But of course,” she replied. “There’s a Syrian monastery next door. The monks chant their psalms every second hour. Spooky, isn’t it?”

“It certainly is,” said Mihály.

They were silent for a while. At last she spoke:

“I’ve a message for you. From a very old acquaintance.”

Mihály promptly stood up.

“Éva Ulpius?”

“Yes, a message from Éva Ulpius. That you are not to look for her. You won’t find her anyway. It’s too late. You should have, she says, in that house in London, when she was hiding behind the curtain. But you shouted out Tamás’s name, she says. And now it’s too late.”

“Even to speak to her?”

“Much too late.”

The cry of pain swelling up through the wall as if in grief for the rising dawn, in lamentation for the passing of night, now lost its strength, became a faltering, broken wail, tearing at itself, murderously. The woman shuddered.

“Look,” she said. “The dome of St Peter’s.”

Above the grey city the cupola hovered, white and very cold, like unconquerable eternity itself. The woman ran off down the hill.

Mihály felt an immeasurable fatigue. It was as if he had all the while been anxiously clutching his life in his hands, and had just let it slip away.

Then he suddenly pulled himself together and rushed after the woman, who had now vanished.

Down below there was a tight crush of people. Most were taking their leave, but Waldheim was still reading aloud from the Symposium and holding forth. Mihály scurried here and there in the seething crowd, then raced to the main gate hoping to find the girl in the press of people boarding coaches.

He arrived just in time. She was climbing into a splendidly old-world open carriage, where the shape of a second woman was already seated, and the coach moved off briskly. The other woman he recognised instantly. It was Éva.

XVII

THE BANKERS’ DISCUSSION was becoming interminable. The matter could in fact have been resolved quite simply if all those round the table had been equally intelligent. But in this life that is rarely given. The lawyers dazzled one another with their skill in sliding down the very steepest sentences without falling off, while the powerful financiers said little, listening suspiciously, their silence saying more eloquently than any words: “Count me out.”

“No deal will come of this,” thought Zoltán Pataki, Erzsi’s first husband, with resignation.

He grew steadily more restless and impatient. He had noted several times of late that his mind would wander during discussions, and ever since he had noticed that fact he had become even more restless and impatient.

The protracted blast of a car-horn sounded beneath the window. Previously, Erzsi would often wait in the car down below if the discussion went on at length.

“Erzsi … try not to think of her. It’s still painful, but time will cure that. Just keep going. Just keep going. Emptily, like an abandoned car. But just keep going.”

His hand made a gesture of resignation, he pursed his lips oddly, and he felt very very tired. In recent days these four connected acts kept recurring in automatic sequence, like a sort of nervous tic. Thirty times a day he thought of Erzsi, made the resigned gesture, pulled the wry face, and felt a wave of exhaustion. “Perhaps I should see the doctor about this tiredness after all? Oh, come off it. We’re getting on, old chap, getting on in years.”

His concentration returned. They were saying that someone should go to Paris to negotiate with a certain finance group. Someone else was arguing that this was quite unnecessary, it could all be settled by letter.

“Erzsi’s in Paris now … Mihály in Italy … Erzsi doesn’t write a single line, but she must be horribly lonely. Does she have enough money? Perhaps the poor thing has to travel by Metro. If she leaves before nine and goes back after two she can get a return ticket. It’s so much cheaper — poor thing, that’s surely what she’s doing. But perhaps she isn’t alone. In Paris it’s difficult for a woman to remain on her own, and Erzsi is so attractive … ”

This time what followed was not the gesture of resignation, but a rush of blood to the head and: “Death, death, there’s nothing else for it … ”

Meanwhile the meeting was moving towards the consensus that they really would have to send someone. Pataki asked to speak. He threw all his energy behind the view that it was absolutely essential to pursue the matter with the French interest on a personal basis. When he began to speak he was not entirely clear what the issue was, but as he spoke it came back to him, and he produced unassailable arguments. He carried the meeting with him. Then the exhaustion once again overwhelmed him.

“Of course someone’s got to go to Paris. But I can’t go. I can’t leave the bank just now. And anyway, what would I be going for? Erzsi hasn’t invited me. For me to run after her, to run the risk of a highly probable rejection, that’s quite impossible … After all, a man has his pride.”

He brought his words to an abrupt close. Persuaded, the meeting agreed to send a young director, the son-in-law of one of the big financiers, who spoke exceptionally good French. “It’ll be an education for him,” the older men thought to themselves with fatherly benevolence.

After the meeting came the most difficult part of the day, the evening. Pataki had once read that the most important difference between a married man and a bachelor was that the married man always knew who he would dine with that evening. And indeed, since Erzsi had left him, this had been the greatest problem in Pataki’s life: who would he dine with? He had never got on with men, had never known the institution of male friendship. Women? This was the oddest thing. While he was married to Erzsi he had needed endless women, one after the other. Every one seemed to please him, one because she was so thin, another because so plump, a third because she was so exactly in between. All his free time, and much that was not free, was filled with women. There had been a maîtresse de titre obscurely connected with the theatre, who had cost him a great deal of money (though she had brought with her a degree of publicity for the bank), then various gentlemanly diversions, the wives of one or two colleagues, but chiefly the typists, with the occasional maid-servant for the sake of variety: an inglorious collection. Erzsi had a real grievance in law, and Pataki in his more optimistic moments reckoned that this was why she had left him. In his more pessimistic mode he had to acknowledge that there was another reason, certain needs which he had been unable to meet, and that consciousness was particularly humiliating. When Erzsi left he had discharged the maîtresse de titre with a handsome redundancy payment, that is to say, made her directly over to an older colleague who had long aspired to the honour, he had ‘reorganised’ his secretarial staff, surrounded himself with one of the ugliest workforces in the bank, and lived a life of self-denial.

“There should have been a child,” he thought, and was filled with the sudden sense of how much he would have loved his child had there been one, Erzsi’s child. With rapid decisiveness he telephoned a cousin who had two positively golden children, and went there to dinner. En route he purchased a horrifying quantity of sweets. The two golden children probably never knew what they had to thank for three days of stomach-ache.

After dinner he sat on in a coffee-house, read the newspapers, vacillated over the question of whether to go yet again and play cards for a bit in the club, could not finally make up his mind, and went home.

Without Erzsi, the flat was now unspeakably oppressive. He really would have to do something with her furniture. Her room couldn’t just stand there as if she might return at any moment, although … “I’ll have to get them to take it all up to the attic, or have it stored. I’ll have it fitted out like a club-room, with huge armchairs.”

Again the gesture of resignation, the grimace, the wave of exhaustion. Decidedly he couldn’t bear it in the flat. He would have to move. To live in a hotel, like an artist. And change the hotel constantly. Or perhaps move into a sanatorium. Pataki adored sanatoria, with their bleached tranquillity and doctorly reassurance. “Yes, I’ll move out to Svábhegy. My nerves could really do with it. Any more of this runaway-wife business and I’ll go mad.”

He lay down, then got up again because he felt he couldn’t possibly sleep. He dressed, but had absolutely no idea where to go. Instead, although he knew perfectly well it would be of no use, he took a Szevenal, and once again undressed.

As soon as he was in bed the alternative again stood before him in all its misery. Erzsi in Paris: either she was alone, horribly alone, perhaps not eating properly (who knows what ghastly little prix-fixe places she was going to); or indeed she was not alone. That thought was not to be borne. Mihály he had somehow got used to. For some odd reason he was unable to take Mihály seriously, even though he had actually run off with her. Mihály didn’t count. Mihály wasn’t human. Deep in his consciousness lurked the conviction that one day, somehow, it would transpire that no such person existed … his affair with Erzsi had been a chance thing, they had lived in a marriage but had never had a real relationship, man and woman. That was something he could not imagine of Mihály. But now, in Paris … the unknown man … the unknown man was a hundred times more disturbing than any familiar seducer. No, the thought could not be endured.

He must go to Paris. He must see for himself what Erzsi was doing. Perhaps she was hungry. But what of his pride? Erzsi didn’t care a hoot for him. He didn’t need Erzsi. Erzsi had no wish to see him …

“And then? Isn’t it enough that I want to see her? The rest will sort itself out.

“Pride! Since when did you have all this pride, Mr Pataki? If you’d always been so proud in your business life, where would you be now, pray? In a flourishing greengrocer’s in Szabadka, like your dear old dad’s. And why exactly all this pride with regard to Erzsi? A man’s pride should come out where there is some risk involved: in dealing with presidents, or, say, secretaries of state, with the Krychlovaces of this world. (Well, no, that’s going a bit far.) But proud towards women? That’s not chivalrous, not gentlemanly. Just daft.”

The next day he produced a storm of activity. He persuaded the bank and all others concerned that the son-in-law was not the ideal person: someone with more experience was needed after all, to negotiate with the French.

The interested parties came gradually to understand that this person of more experience would be Pataki himself.

“But, Mr Director, do you speak French?”

“Not a great deal, but for that very reason they won’t sell me anything. And in any case the people we’re dealing with will surely speak German, just like you or me. Did you ever meet a businessman who didn’t speak German? Deutsch ist eine Weltsprache.’”

The next morning he was already on his way.

The business side of his trip he dispatched in half-an-hour. His French counterpart, whose name was Loew, did in fact speak German, and also happened to be intelligent. The matter was soon settled because Pataki, in contrast to less skilled or experienced men, did not take business and financial matters too seriously. He regarded them the way a doctor regards his patients. He knew that here too it is just like anywhere else: the talentless often do much better than the able, the inexpert come good more often than the expert. A bunch of pseudo-financiers sit in the highest places directing the world economy, while the real ones meditate in the Schwartzer or the Markó. The quest is for a myth, a groundless fiction, just as it is in the world of learning, where men pursue a non-existent and seductive Truth. In business it is Wealth on a scale that defies comprehension, in pursuit of which they sacrifice the wealth that can be understood. And in the last analysis the whole rat-race is as frivolous as everything else in this world.

He was very proud of the fact that he knew this and that Mihály, for example, did not. Mihály was an intellectual, and for precisely that reason believed in money while at the same time calling everything else into doubt. He would say such things as, for instance: “Psychology in its present state is a thoroughly primitive, unscientific discipline … ” or, “Modern lyric poetry is utterly meaningless,” or “Humanism? there’s no point in making speeches against war: it comes upon us wordlessly … ” But, on the other hand: “The Váraljai Hemp and Flax Company, that’s real. You can’t say a word against that. That’s about money. Money’s no joking matter.” Pataki chuckled to himself. “Váraljai Hemp and Flax, my God … If Mihály and his friends only knew … Even lyric poetry is more serious.”

“And now we must proceed calmly to the second item on our little agenda.” Pataki had obtained Erzsi’s Paris address from Mihály’s family. For Pataki, as he did with everyone, had maintained good relations with them (after all they could hardly be held responsible) and he had even brought a present for Erzsi from Mihály’s married sister. He was very pleased to establish that she no longer lodged on the left bank, the dubious Parisian Buda, full of bohemians and immigrants, but on the respectable right bank, close to the Étoile.

It was twelve o’clock. With a café waiter he telephoned Erzsi’s hotel, not sufficiently trusting his own command of French to negotiate the complexities of the Paris exchange. Madame was not in. Pataki went on reconnaissance.

He entered the little hotel and asked for a room. His French was so bad it was not difficult to play the stupid foreigner. He indicated through gestures that the room he had seen was too expensive, and left. He had however established that it was a regular, genteel sort of place, probably full of English, though a hint of seediness was just perceptible, especially in the faces of the room-girls. No doubt there were certain rooms which elderly Frenchmen would hire as a pied-à-terre, paying for a whole month but actually using for only a couple of hours a week. Why had Erzsi moved here from the other side of the river? Did she wish to live more elegantly, or had she found a more elegant lover?

At four that afternoon he telephoned again. This time Madame was in.

“Hello, Erzsi? Zoltán here.”

“Oh, Zoltán … ”

Pataki thought he could hear suppressed agitation in her voice. Was this a good sign?

“How are you, Erzsi? Is everything all right?”

“Yes, Zoltán.”

“I’m here in Paris. You know, the Váraljai Hemp and Flax contract was a real tangle, I had to come. Endless running around. I’ll be on my feet for three days. I’m getting really bored with this town … ”

“Yes, Zoltán.”

“And I thought, well, here I am, and today I’ve got a little spare time to catch a breath or two, I might enquire how you are.”

“Yes … Very kind of you.”

“Are you well?”

“Very well.”

“Tell me … Hello … Could I possibly see you?”

“What for?” asked Erzsi, from an immense distance. Pataki experienced a brief dizziness, and leant against the wall. To conceal this he continued jovially:

“What’s this ‘what for’? Of course I should see you, since I’m here in Paris, don’t you think?”

“True.”

“Can I come over?”

“All right, Zoltán. No, don’t come here. We’ll meet somewhere.”

“Splendid. I know a very nice teashop. Do you know where Smith’s is, the English bookshop in the rue de Rivoli?”

“I think so.”

“Well I never! On the first floor there’s an English teashop. You go up from inside the bookshop. Do come. I’ll wait for you there.”

“Fine.”

He had in fact selected this venue because, where Erzsi was concerned, he had a morbid suspicion of everything French. In his imagination Paris and the French symbolised for Erzsi everything lacking in him, everything he could not give her. In the French cafés (which he particularly loathed, because the waiters were insufficiently respectful, and never brought water with his coffee) the entire French nation would aid Erzsi in her resistance to him, and she would have the advantage. In the interests of fair play he had chosen the cool, neutral extra-territoriality of the English teashop.

Erzsi appeared. They ordered, and Pataki strove to behave as if nothing had happened between them: no marriage, no divorce. Two clever Budapesti, a man and a woman, happening to meet in Paris. He treated her to the latest gossip from home, full and fully spiced, concerning their close acquaintances. Erzsi listened attentively.

Meanwhile he was thinking:

“Here’s Erzsi. Essentially she hasn’t changed, not even after all that’s happened and all the time that’s passed since she was my wife. She’s wearing one or two bits and pieces of Paris clothing, chic enough, but, I fear, not of the best quality. She’s a bit down. In her voice there’s a certain, very slight, veiled quality that breaks my heart. Poor little thing! That bastard Mihály! What did she need him for? It seems she hasn’t yet got over him … or perhaps she’s suffered new disappointments in Paris? The unknown man … Oh my God, my God, here am I chattering on about Péter Bodrogi when I’d rather die.

“Here is Erzsi. As large as life. Here is the one woman I cannot live without. Why, why, why? Why should she be the only woman I find desirable, at a time when my general desire for women is nonexistent? So many of the others were so much ‘better women’, Gizi for example, not to mention Maria … Just to look at them made my blood well up. And above all, they were so much younger. Erzsi’s no longer exactly … Why, despite all this, here and now, in sober mind and free from the heat of passion, would I give up half my fortune to lie with her?”

Erzsi rarely looked at Zoltán, but listened to his gossip with a smile, and thought:

“How much he knows about everyone! People are so much at home with him. (Mihály never knew anything about anyone. He was incapable of noticing who was whose brother-in-law or girlfriend.) I don’t understand what I was afraid of, why I got so anxious. That old cliché of the ‘deserted husband’, how much truth is there in it? I really might have known that Zoltán could never get into the way of being the tiniest bit tragic. He finds a smile in everything. He abhors everything that’s on a grand scale. If his fate led him to a martyr’s death he’d no doubt make a joke and a bit of gossip even at the stake, to take the edge off the tragic situation. And yet he surely has suffered a lot. He’s older than he was. But at the same time he’s played down the suffering. And occasionally he’s felt wonderful. You can’t feel too sorry for him.”

“Well, what’s the matter?” Zoltán asked suddenly.

“With me? What should there be? I’m sure you know all about why I came to Paris … ”

“Yes, I’m aware of the broad outline, but I don’t know why everything turned out as it did. You wouldn’t care to tell me?”

“No, Zoltán. Don’t be offended. I really can’t think why I should discuss with you what happened between me and Mihály. I never talked to him about you. It’s only natural.”

“That’s Erzsi,” thought Zoltán. “A fine lady, real breeding. Nothing, however catastrophic, could make her indiscreet. Self-control on two legs. And how she looks at me, with such cool, withering politeness! She’s still got the knack — she’s only to look at me to make me feel like a grocer’s assistant. But I can’t let myself be so easily intimidated.”

“All the same, you can perhaps at least tell me what your plans are,” he said.

“For the time being I really don’t have any. I’m staying on in Paris.”

“Are you happy here?”

“Happy enough.”

“Have you filed for divorce yet?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Zoltán, you ask so many questions! I haven’t, because it isn’t yet time for that.”

“But do you really think he’ll still … do excuse me … that he’ll still come back to you?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps. I don’t know whether I would want him if he did. Perhaps I’d have nothing to say to him. We aren’t really suited. But … Mihály isn’t like other people. First I would have to know what his intentions were. For all I know he could wake up one fine morning and look around for me. And remember in a panic that he left me on the train. And look for me high and low all over Italy.”

“Do you really think so?”

Erzsi lowered her head.

“You’re right. I don’t really think so.”

“Why was I so frank?” The question gnawed at her. “Why did I give myself away, as I have to no-one else? It seems there’s still something between me and Zoltán. Some sort of intimacy, that can’t be wished away. You can’t undo four years of marriage. There’s no other person in the world I would have discussed Mihály with.”

“My time hasn’t yet come,” thought Zoltán. “She’s still in love with that oaf. With a bit of luck Mihály will mess it up in the fullness of time.”

“What news have you had of him?” he asked.

“Nothing. I only guess he’s in Italy. One of his friends is here, someone I also know, by the name of János Szepetneki. He tells me he’s tracking him closely and will soon know where he is, and what he’s doing.”

“How will he find out?”

“I don’t know. Szepetneki is a very unusual man.”

“Truly?” Zoltán raised his head and gazed at her steadily. Erzsi withstood the gaze defiantly.

“Truly. A very unusual man. The most unusual man I ever met. And then there’s a Persian here too … ”

Pataki dropped his head, and took a large mouthful of tea. “Which of the two was it? Or was it both? My God, my God, better to be dead … ”

The tête-à-tête did not last very much longer. Erzsi had some business, she didn’t say what.

“Where are you staying?” she asked absent-mindedly.

“At the Edward VII.”

“Well, goodbye, Zoltán. Really, it was very nice seeing you again. And … don’t worry, and don’t think about me,” she said quietly, with a sad smile.

That night Pataki took a little Parisienne back to the hotel. “After all, when you’re in Paris,” he thought, and was filled with unspeakable revulsion against the smelly little stranger snoring in the bed beside him.

In the morning, after she had gone and Pataki was up and beginning to shave, there was a knock at the door.

“Entrez!”

A tall, too-elegantly dressed, sharp-featured man made his entrance.

“I’m looking for Mr Pataki, the Director. It’s important. A matter of great importance to him.”

“That’s me. With whom do I have the pleasure?”

“My name is János Szepetneki.”