Journey by Moonlight

XVIII

NIGHT WAS FALLING. Slowly, with a slight dragging of the feet, Mihály trudged over the Tiber.

For some time now he had been living on the Gianicolo Hill, in a shabby little room Waldheim had discovered, where a scruffy crone cooked most of his meals, simple pasta asciutta, which Mihály supplemented with a bit of cheese and sometimes an orange. Despite its creaking antiquity it was much more the real thing than any hotel room. The furniture was ancient — real furniture, large and nobly proportioned, not the pseudo-furniture one finds in large hotels. Mihály would have been very fond of his room had its state of cleanliness and hygiene not constantly provoked the painful sense of having come down in the world. He even complained to Waldheim, who simply laughed and delivered lengthy and not very appetising lectures on his experiences in Greece and Albania.

Thus he came face to face with poverty. Now he really did have to ponder every centesimo before parting with it. He gave up drinking black coffee, and smoked cigarettes so foul he could take only a few at a time. His throat was permanently inflamed. And the thought was seldom from his mind that what money he had would soon run out. Waldheim was always assuring him that he would find a job. There were so many stupid old American women running about in Rome that one of them was sure to hire him as a secretary or tutor for her grand-children, or perhaps as a caretaker, a really cosy position that. But at present these American women existed entirely in Waldheim’s imagination, and besides, Mihály had a dread of any occupation he might equally find in Budapest.

Anyway, he already had two occupations, and between them they were quite enough for him. The first was, on Waldheim’s instructions, to ‘read up’ on everything Etruscan, to frequent libraries and museums, and listen every evening to the conversation of Waldheim and his current academic friends. Mihály did not for a moment feel anything of Waldheim’s immense, genuine enthusiasm for the subject, but he clung desperately to the routine of study for the slight relief it gave from the suffocating middle-class guilt which he still felt, so pointlessly, about his life of idleness. Mihály had never really liked work, but in his bourgeois years had applied himself obsessively because he loved the feeling at night of having done a good day’s worth. Moreover, study momentarily diverted his attention away from his second and more important occupation: waiting for a meeting with Éva.

He simply could not accept the possibility that he would never see her again. The day after that memorable night he had wandered round the city in a stupor, with no idea of what he wanted, though he later saw clearly that there was only one thing he could want, so far as the word ‘want’ had any meaning in the case. The academics had taught him that there are degrees of Being, and that only the Perfect was wholly, truly alive. The time he spent in quest of Éva had been more alive, far more truly caught up in reality, than all the months and years without her. However good or bad, however bound up with hideous anxiety and trouble, he knew that this was the life, and that without Éva there was no reality other than in thinking of her and waiting for her.

He was tired, oppressed with the sense of his own mortality, and he dragged his feet as if lame. Reaching the river bank he became aware of a feeling that he was being followed. But he dismissed it, persuading himself that it was just his nervous imagination.

However as he trudged through the alleyways of the Trastevere quarter the feeling became ever more insistent. A strong wind began to blow. There were far fewer people than usual about in the streets. “If someone is following me,” he thought, “I must get a glimpse of him,” and he turned round periodically to look. But people kept coming. “Perhaps someone is following me, and perhaps not.”

As he made his way up the narrow streets the feeling gradually became so insistent again that he decided not to turn left, up towards the hill, but to continue on through the Trastevere alleyways with the idea of waiting for the pursuer in some suitable place. He stopped outside a little tavern.

“If he wants to attack me,” he thought (in the Trastevere district this was not difficult to imagine) “here at least I can count on help. Someone’s bound to come out of the bar if I shout. But in any case I’ll wait and see.”

He stood outside the little inn and waited. More people came along, having followed him out of the alleys, but none took the slightest notice of him. They simply continued on their way. He was just about to move on when a man approached in the semidarkness, and Mihály instantly knew that this was he. With beating heart he realised that the man was making straight for him.

As the shape loomed closer he recognised János Szepetneki. In the whole episode the strangest thing, perhaps the only strange thing, was that he was not particularly surprised.

“Hello,” he said quietly.

“Hello, Mihály,” said Szepetneki, loudly and jovially. “I’m glad you decided to wait for me. This is just the place I wanted to take you. Well, come on in.”

They entered the little tavern, whose strongest feature, apart from the smell, was the darkness. The smell Mihály could tolerate. For some reason the smells of Italy did not bother his normally sensitive nostrils. In this particular smell there was something romantic, a hint of fatality. But the darkness he did not like. Szepetneki immediately shouted for a lamp. It was brought by a ravishing, distinctly slovenly Italian girl, shockingly thin, with flashing eyes and huge earrings. It appeared Szepetneki was an old acquaintance. He slapped her on the back, at which she smiled with her great white teeth and launched into a story in the Trastevere dialect, of which Mihály understood not a single word, though János, who, like all con-men, had a flair for languages, interjected skilfully. The girl brought wine, sat down at the table, and talked. János listened with delight, ignoring Mihály completely, or, at most, offering the occasional comment in Hungarian, such as:

“Fantastic girl, hey? They know a thing or two, these Italians!” or:

“How’s that for a pair of eyes, eh! You don’t see them like that in Pest” or:

“She says, all the men who were going to marry her got locked up, and I’m sure to be the next … what a wit, eh?”

Mihály nervously downed one glass of wine after another. He knew János Szepetneki, knew that he would take ages to get round to what he really wanted to say. For everything he had to establish an appropriately romantic context. So Mihály would have to wait for this little farce with the Italian girl to run its course. Perhaps Szepetneki ran a gang of burglars in the Trastevere and this girl and this tavern were part of it, at least as a setting. But he also knew that Szepetneki hadn’t come to sort out his gang but because he wanted something from him; and he was profoundly troubled about what it might be.

“Just leave the girl alone and tell me why you followed me, and what you want from me. I haven’t got the time or inclination to witness this little comedy.”

“But why?” asked Szepetneki with a face of innocence. “Perhaps you don’t fancy the lady? Or the hostelry? I just thought we could have a bit of fun. It’s such a long time since we were together … ”

And he resumed his chat with the woman.

Mihály stood up and made to leave.

“No, Mihály, for God’s sake, don’t go yet. The only reason I came to Rome was to talk to you. Just stick around for one minute.” And with that he turned to the girl: “Just be quiet a moment.”

“How did you know I was in Rome?” asked Mihály.

“Oh, I always know everything about you, my Mihály. Have done for years. But until now none of it’s been worth knowing. Now you begin to be interesting. That’s why we’ll be meeting more often.”

“Fine. And now be so kind as to tell me what you want from me.”

“I’ve something to discuss with you.”

“You’ve got something else to discuss? And what’s that about?”

“You’re going to laugh. Business matters.”

Mihály’s face darkened.

“Have you been talking to my father? Or my brother?”

“No. Not at present. For the time being I’ve no business with them, only you. But tell me truly, isn’t this girl fantastic? See what a fine hand she’s got. Pity it’s so dirty.”

And once again he turned to the girl and began to rattle away in Italian.

Mihály leapt to his feet and rushed out. He struggled up towards the hill. Szepetneki ran after him and soon caught up with him. Mihály did not turn round, but simply left Szepetneki to address him from behind his back, over his left shoulder, like a familiar.

János spoke quickly and low, panting slightly from the uphill walk.

“Mihály, listen here. I happened to meet a man, a man by the name of Zoltán Pataki, who, it turns out, was your wife’s first husband. But that’s nothing. It also turns out, that this Pataki, believe it or not, still loves her ladyship to death. He wants to take her back. He hopes that now you’ve chucked her over, she’ll perhaps come to her senses, and go back to him. Which would undoubtedly be, for all three of you, the best solution. Well, have you nothing to say? Great. You still don’t understand where the business lies in this, and what business it is of mine. But you know me, I gave up tact a long time ago. In my profession … So, listen to this. Your lady wife not only doesn’t want to divorce you, she still secretly believes that one day you’ll make a happy and contented couple, and perhaps heaven will bless the marriage with children. She knows that you’re not like other people, though she really has no idea what that actually means. She thinks about you a very great deal, to the point of nuisance, and at times when she really shouldn’t. But you needn’t feel bad about her. She’s getting along very nicely, though I don’t want to spread gossip. She’s doing very nicely without you.”

“What do you want?” shouted Mihály, stopping in his tracks.

“Nothing at all. It’s a question of a little business arrangement. Mr Pataki believes that, if you were to take a decisive step, your wife would see that she can no longer expect anything from you, and that it’s all over.”

“What kind of decisive step are you talking about?”

“Well, for example, you might sue for divorce.”

“How the devil would I do that? Since I was the one that left her. And besides, even if she had left me I wouldn’t do it. That’s the woman’s part.”

“Well, yes, naturally. But if the woman doesn’t want to do it, then it’s up to you. At least, that’s Mr Pataki’s point of view.”

“Pataki’s point of view is none of my business, and the whole affair is none of my business. You talk to Erzsi. I’ll fall in with whatever she wants.”

“Look Mihály, this is precisely what our business is about. Use your common sense. Mr Pataki isn’t asking you to give this divorce for nothing. He’s prepared to make substantial material sacrifices. He’s horribly rich, and he can’t live without Erzsi. So he’s authorised me to make you the immediate down payment of a small sum, quite a tidy little sum.”

“Rubbish. On what grounds could I sue for divorce? Against Erzsi? When I was the one who left her? If the court decides that we have to live together again and she comes back to me, what would I do then?”

“But, Mihály, have no fear of that. You sue for the divorce, we’ll see to the rest.”

“On what grounds?”

“Adultery.”

“You’re crazy!”

“Not in the least. Just trust me. I’ll guarantee a wonderful adultery, pure as the driven snow. I’m an expert in these things.”

By this time they had reached Mihály’s door. He could hardly wait to get inside.

“God preserve you, János Szepetneki. This time I don’t offer you my hand. What you have said is a lot of disgraceful drivel. I hope I don’t see you for a very long time.”

And he rushed up to his room.

XIX

“I DON’T KNOW what all this is about but I’m quite sure your anxieties are ridiculous,” said Waldheim with great energy. “You’re still the pious son of your respected grey-haired father, still a petty-bourgeois. If someone wants to give you money, whatever the source, you should take it. Every religious-historical authority agrees about that. But you still haven’t learnt that money … quite simply, is unimportant. Where essential things are concerned it doesn’t count. Money is always there of necessity, and it’s there even when you don’t bother about it. How much and for how long and where it came from, that’s completely immaterial. Because everything that depends on money is immaterial. You can acquire nothing of importance with money. What you can buy might happen to be life’s necessities, but really isn’t important.

“The things really worth living for can never be had for money. Scholarship, the fact that your mind can take in the thousand-fold splendour of things, doesn’t cost a penny. The fact that you are in Italy, that the Italian sky stretches above you, that you can walk down Italian streets and sit in the shade of Italian trees, and in the evening the sun sets in the Italian manner, none of this is a question of money. If a woman likes you and gives herself to you, it doesn’t cost a penny. Feeling happy from time to time, that doesn’t cost you a penny. The only things that do cost money are peripheral, the external trimmings of happiness, the stupid and boring accessories. Being in Italy costs nothing, but what does cost money is travelling here, and having got here, sleeping with a roof over your head. Having a woman who loves you doesn’t cost money, only that meanwhile she has to eat and drink, and dress herself up so that she can then get undressed. But the petty-bourgeoisie have lived so long by supplying one another with unimportant things with a cash value they’ve forgotten the things that aren’t to be had for money, and they attach importance only to things that are expensive. That is the greatest madness. No, Mihály, you should pay no attention to money. You should take it in like the air you breathe and not ask where it came from, unless it actually smells.

“And now, go to hell. I’ve still got to write my Oxford lecture. Have I shown you the letter, the one inviting me to Oxford? Just wait, it won’t take a second … Isn’t it wonderful what he says about me? Of course if you read it as it stands it doesn’t say very much, but if you take into account that the English love to understate their real meaning, then you can see what it means when they describe my work as meritorious … ”

Mihály left, deep in thought. He set off south alongside the Tiber, walking away from the city centre towards the great dead Maremma. On the city boundary there is a strange hill, the Monte Testaccio, and this he climbed. Its name, ‘shard hill’, reflects the fact that it is made up entirely of pieces of broken pottery. In Roman times the wine-market stood here. Here the wines of Spain were brought in sealed amphoras which were then broken and the wine decanted into goatskins. The shards were then swept up into a heap, which eventually formed the present hill.

Mihály dreamily picked up a few reddish bits of pottery and put them in his pocket.

“Relics,” he thought. “Real shards, from the age of the Caesars. And no doubt of their genuineness, which can’t be said of every souvenir.”

On the hill young Roman boys, late descendants of the quirites, were playing at soldiers, hurling shards at one another, fragments of pottery two thousand years old, without a trace of emotion.

“That’s Italy,” thought Mihály. “They pelt one another with history. Two thousand years are as natural to them as the smell of manure in a village.”

Night was already falling when he reached the little tavern in the Trastevere quarter where he had met János Szepetneki the evening before. Following the local custom, he pressed his shabby old hat down on his head and stepped into the smoky interior. His eyes could distinguish nothing, but Szepetneki’s voice was immediately audible. As before, Szepetneki was busy with the girl.

“I hope I’m not disturbing you?” Mihály asked with a laugh.

“Disturbing us, what the hell. Sit yourself down. I’ve been waiting for you with mounting impatience.”

Indignation rose in Mihály, then he was overcome with embarrassment.

“Sorry … I just dropped in for a glass of wine. I was passing by and I had the feeling you might be here.”

“My dear Mihály, don’t say anything. Let’s consider the matter settled. I’m very glad you’re here, speaking for myself and for all the interested parties. And now, listen here. This little witch Vannina is wonderful at reading palms. She told me who I am, what I am. Not over-flattering, but she painted a very accurate picture of me. This is the first woman who hasn’t been taken in by me, and she doesn’t believe I’m a crook. All the same she predicts a bad end for me: a long and difficult old age … Now, let her do you. I’m curious what she’ll say about you.”

A lamp was brought and the girl immersed herself in the examination of Mihály’s palm.

“Oh, the signore is a lucky man,” she said. “He will find money in an unexpected quarter.”

“What are you saying?”

“Somewhere abroad a woman thinks often about the signore. A bald man also thinks often about the signore, but this is not altogether good. This line signifies much conflict. The signore can go with women without worrying, because there will be no children.”

“How do you mean?”

“It’s not as if you cannot make children, but all the same there will be none. The line of fatherhood is missing. In summer you should not eat oysters. Soon you will take part in a christening. An older man will arrive from beyond the mountains. The dead visit you often … ”

Mihály abruptly pulled his hand away, and asked for wine. He looked more closely at the girl. Her large-breasted thinness he now found much more beautiful than he had the night before. And she was much more frightening, much more like a witch. Her eyes had an Italian glitter, and the whites seem to enlarge as he looked into them. That northern idea again flitted through his head: the whole race was mad, that was their greatness.

The girl seized his hand and continued to prophesy, now in real earnest.

“Soon you will receive very bad news. Beware of women. All your trouble is because of women. Oh … the signore has a very good soul, but not one for this world. Oh, dio mio, poor signore … ”

With that she pulled Mihály to her and kissed him fiercely, with tears in her eyes. János laughed out loud and cried “Bravo!” Mihály was overcome with embarrassment.

“You must come here again, signore,” said Vannina. “Yes, come again, and often. You’ll be happy here. You will come again, won’t you? You will come?”

“Yes, of course. Since you ask so kindly … ”

“You really will come? Do you know what? My cousin is having a baby soon. She’s always longed for a foreign godfather for the infant. It’s such a fine thing to have. Wouldn’t you like to be godfather to the little bambino?”

“But of course, with great pleasure.”

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

János was a tactful villain. Through all this he had not once mentioned ‘business matters’. Only when it was late, and Mihály was slowly preparing to leave, did he send the girl away and say:

“Please, Mihály. It is Mr Pataki’s wish that you should write to him about this matter, in your own handwriting, in detail, making it absolutely clear that you authorise him to file a divorce in your name against your wife, and that you acknowledge that he will pay you the twenty thousand dollars in two instalments. You see, Pataki somehow doesn’t trust me one hundred percent, and I’m not surprised. He wants to negotiate with you directly. Meanwhile I am to hand over to you, now, five thousand lire as a down payment.”

He counted the money out on to the table and Mihály crammed it, with some embarrassment, into his pocket. “There,” he thought, “that’s how the die is cast. That’s how you cross the Rubicon. So easily no-one would even notice.”

“Would you please write to Pataki as follows,” said Szepetneki: “you have received, from me, the money he sent. But you must not specify the exact sum. After all, it shouldn’t really be like a receipt or a business letter. That would be rather indelicate, as I’m sure you’ll understand.”

Mihály understood. In his head he instantly calculated how much Szepetneki had pocketed of the money sent to him. Perhaps fifty percent, certainly not more. Never mind, let him have it.

“Well then, God be with you,” said János. “I’ve done my part in this, and tomorrow I’m leaving. But the rest of the evening I’ll spend with Vannina. A splendid girl, I can tell you. Call on her often when I’m not here.”

XX

IT BECAME STEADILY HOTTER. Mihály lay naked on his bed, but could not sleep. Since he had accepted Pataki’s money and written that letter, he had not been able to settle.

He got up, washed, and set off for a stroll in the summer night. Soon he reached the Acqua Paola and stood delighting in the classical waterfall as, with timeless calm and proud dignity, it exercised its mystery in the moonlight. He remembered the little Hungarian sculptor in the Collegium Hungaricum whom he had got to know through Waldheim. The sculptor had walked from Dresden to Rome along the Via Flaminia, which, as Mihály knew from school, was the route always taken by victorious invaders from the north. Then on his first evening he had come up here, on to the Gianicolo. He had waited for them to clear everyone from the park and lock the gate, then he climbed over the wall and lay down in a bush, high above Rome, with the city at his feet. When morning came he rose, undressed and bathed in the pool of the Acqua Paolo, the classical waterfall.

That was how a conqueror marches into Rome. Perhaps nothing would ever come of the little sculptor. Perhaps his fate would be permanent hunger and who knows what else. Nonetheless a conqueror he was, needing only an army and “simple luck, nothing more”. The road of his life led upwards, even if he perished in the ascent. Mihály’s road led downwards, even if he survived, survived everything and came to tranquil, tedious old age. We carry within ourselves the direction our lives will take. Within ourselves burn the timeless, fateful stars.

He wandered for hours on the Gianicolo, along the bank of the Tiber and down the alleyways of the Trastevere. The night was late, but this was an Italian summer night, with people therefore awake on every side, hammering away or singing without embarrassment. This nation is quite innocent of northern notions of sleep as a time of consecrated stupor. At any moment you might stumble without rhyme or reason upon small children playing marbles in the street between three and four in the morning, or a barber will suddenly open his shop at three-thirty to shave a few merry bridegrooms.

On the Tiber tow-boats glided downstream with a calm, classical dignity: not tow-boats, but pictures from a school Latin book illustrating the word Navis, navis. On one a man played a guitar, a woman washed her stockings, a little dog barked. And behind it sailed another ship, the spectre-vessel, the Isola Tiberina, which even in ancient times had been built boat-shaped by men who doubted its fixedness, convinced that it slipped away on occasional night expeditions to the sea, carrying the hospital and all its death agonies on its back.

Across the water the moon rode at anchor over the huge oppressive ruins of the Teatro Marcello. From the nearby synagogue, Mihály seemed to remember, a crowd of long-bearded old Jews, with veils of the dead on their necks, would process to the Tiber bank and scatter their sins on the water with a murmuring lamentation. In the sky three aeroplanes circled, their headlights occasionally stroking one another’s sides. Then they flew off towards the Castelli Romani, like large birds winging to rest on the craggy peaks.

Then with a tremendous rumbling a huge lorry drove up. “Daybreak,” thought Mihály. Shapes clad in dark grey leapt from the lorry with alarming speed and poured through an archway door which opened before them. Then a bell tinkled, and a herd-boy appeared, singing out commands to a miraculous Vergilian heifer.

Now the door of a tavern opened and two workmen came up to him. They asked him to order some red wine for them and to tell them his life history. Mihály ordered the wine, indeed helped them finish the bottle, and even sent for some cheese to accompany it, though his difficulties with the language prevented the telling of his tale. Yet he felt an immense friendliness towards these people, who really seemed to sense his abandonment and grappled him to their hearts, and said such kind things it was a pity he could not understand what they were. But then, quite suddenly, he became afraid of them, paid, and made his escape.

He was in the Trastevere quarter. In the narrow alleyways with their myriad places of ambush, his mind filled again with images of violent death, as it had so often in his adolescence when he ‘played games’ at the Ulpius house. What absurd rashness to get into conversation with those workmen! They could have murdered him and thrown him in the Danube, the Tiber, for his thirty forints. And to be wandering around in the satanic Trastevere at such an hour, where under any of the gaping archways he might be struck dead three times over before he could open his mouth. What madness … and what madness to harbour in his mind the very thing that lured him on, tempting him towards sin and death.

Then he found himself standing outside the house where Vannina lived. The house was dark, a small Italian house with a flat, tiled roof and window-arches faced with brick. Who might be living there? What deeds might lurk in the darkness of such a house? What horrors might befall him if he went in? Would Vannina … yes, Vannina had surely had a purpose in inviting him there so often and so insistently in recent days. She could well have known he had had a lot of money from János. All her prospective husbands had been locked up … yes, Vannina would be quite capable … And when he knew that for certain, he would go in.

He stood for a long time outside the house, plunged in sick imaginings. Then suddenly a leaden weariness seized him, and again he felt the nostalgia that had haunted him at every stage of his journey through Italy. But his weariness told him that now he was near the last resting place of all.

XXI

THE NEXT DAY he received a letter. The handwriting was familiar, very familiar, though he found, with some sense of shame, that he couldn’t quite place it. It was from Erzsi. She informed him that she had come to Rome because she wished absolutely to talk to him, on a matter of great importance, great importance concerning him. He would be able to appreciate that this was not a question of some womanly caprice. Her self-respect would not permit her to seek a connection with him if she did not wish to defend his interests with respect to an extremely painful matter; but she considered she owed him that much. Therefore she strongly desired him to call on her, at her hotel, that afternoon.

Mihály was at a loss what to do. The thought of a meeting with Erzsi filled him with dread. His sense of guilt was particularly bad at that moment, and besides he could not imagine what she might want from him. But this soon gave way to the feeling that he had hurt Erzsi so much in the past he could not hurt her yet again by not meeting with her. He took his new hat, bought out of the money received from Pataki, and hurried off to the hotel where she was staying.

Word was sent up to her, and she soon came down to greet Mihály unsmilingly. His first impression was that he could expect little good from this meeting. Her brows were knitted into the frown she wore when she was angry, and she did not relax it. She was beautiful, tall, in every matter of taste elegant, but an angel with a flaming sword … After a few terse inquiries about the journey and one another’s health, they walked together in silence.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“It’s all the same to me. It’s so hot. Let’s sit in a pâtisserie.”

The ice-cream and aranciata brought momentary relief. But they soon got to the point.

“Mihály,” she said with suppressed anger, “I always knew you were pretty useless, and had no idea about anything going on around you, but I had thought there was a limit to your stupidity.”

“That’s a good start,” said Mihály. But he was secretly rather pleased that she considered him a fool and not a villain.

She was surely right.

“How could you have written this?” she asked, and placed on the table the letter he had written to Pataki at Szepetneki’s behest.

Mihály reddened, and in his shame felt such weariness he could not speak.

“Say something!” shouted Erzsi, the angel with the flaming sword.

“What should I say, Erzsi?” he said in a desultory tone. “You’re an intelligent person, you know why I wrote it. I needed the money. I don’t want to go back to Pest, for a thousand reasons. … And this was the only way I could raise money.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Maybe. But that doesn’t explain such incredible immorality. What an incredible pimp I am. Anyway, I know it. If the only reason you came to Rome, in this heat, was to tell me that … ”

“The devil you’re a pimp,” she said in extreme exasperation. “If only you were! But you’re just an idiot.”

She fell silent. “Really,” she thought, “I shouldn’t take that tone with him, seeing I’m no longer his wife … ”

After a while he asked: “Tell me, Erzsi, how did that letter come your way?”

“What do you mean? So, you still haven’t worked the whole thing out? They conned you, János Szepetneki and that disgusting Zoltán. All he wanted was to show me your total lack of principle, in writing. He sent the letter on to me immediately, but first he made a photo-copy, duly notarised, which he kept.”

“Zoltán? Zoltán does that sort of thing? Duly notarised? Such incredibly dark doings as that, something that would never even enter my mind, such fantastic shabbiness? … I don’t understand it.”

“Well of course you don’t understand,” she said, more gently. “You’re not a pimp, just a fool. And Zoltán, unfortunately, is well aware of the fact.”

“But he wrote me such a kind letter … ”

“Oh yes, Zoltán is kind, but he’s clever. You’re not kind, but you are a fool.”

“But then why is he doing all this?”

“Why? Because he wants me to go back to him. He wants to show me just what sort of lad you are. He doesn’t take into account that I know it anyway, have known it a lot longer than he has, and that I also know what baseness lies behind his goodness and his gentle devotedness. Now if it were simply a question of getting me back, then the whole business has had the opposite result to what he wanted, and that wouldn’t have been so clever. But it’s not just about that.”

“Go on.”

“Listen to this.” Erzsi’s facial expression changed from exasperation to horror. “Zoltán wants to destroy you, Mihály. He wants to wipe you off the face of the earth.”

“Really. But he isn’t big enough for that yet. How do you think he’d try?”

“Look Mihály, I don’t know exactly, because I’m not as cunning as Zoltán. I’m only guessing. First of all, I’d do everything I could to make your position in your family impossible. Which, at least for the time being, won’t be difficult, because you can imagine what sort of face your father will make, or has already made, seeing this letter.”

“My father? But you don’t think he’d show it to him?”

“I’m quite sure of it.”

Now he was horrified. A shivering, adolescent dread filled him, dread of his father, the old, old terror of losing his father’s goodwill. He put down the glass of aranciata and buried his head in his hands. Erzsi understood his motives, he knew that. But he could never explain them to his father. He had lost credit with his father, once and for all.

“And after that he’ll get to work in Pest,” Erzsi continued. “He’ll make up such a story about you, you won’t be able to walk down the street. Because, my God, I know that the crime you wanted to commit is not so very unusual. There are hordes of people running around Pest who in one way or another have sold their wives and continue to enjoy general respect, especially if they’re in the money and God’s blessing goes with their businesses — but Zoltán will make quite sure that the weekly press, and other leaders of public opinion, will see it in a way that will mean you won’t be able to walk down the street. You’ll have to live abroad, which won’t worry you very much, except that your family will barely be able to support you, or in fact not at all, since Zoltán will certainly do his utmost to destroy your father’s business.”

“Erzsi!”

“Oh yes. For example he’ll find a way of forcing me to take my money out of the firm. When news of that gets out — and I will have to do it, your father himself will insist — that in itself will be a terrible blow to your people.”

For a long time they sat in silence.

“I’d just like to know,” Mihály said at last, “why he hates me so much. Because he used to be so understanding and forgiving it really wasn’t natural.”

“That’s exactly why he hates you so much now. You really can’t imagine how much resentment was stored up behind his goodness even then, what frantic loathing there was precisely in that forgivingness. No doubt he himself believed he had forgiven you, until the opportunity for revenge presented itself. And then like some wild animal reared on milk, suddenly given its first taste of meat … ”

“I always thought of him as such a soft, slimy creature.”

“Me too. And, I have to confess, now that he’s assumed such Shylockian proportions, he impresses me much more favourably. A decent chap, after all … ”

There was another long silence.

“Tell me,” began Mihály, “presumably you’ve some plan, something I, or we, must do, that brought you to Rome.”

“In the first place, I want to warn you. Zoltán believes that you’ll walk as unsuspecting into his other traps as you have into this. For example, he wants to offer you a wonderful job, so that you’ll go back to Pest. So that you’ll be right on the spot when the scandal breaks. But you mustn’t go back, at any price. And then I want to warn you about a … friend of yours. You know who.”

“János Szepetneki?”

“Yes.”

“How did you meet him in Paris?”

“In company.”

“Were you with him often?”

“Yes, often enough. Zoltán also got to know him through me.”

“And how did you find János? He’s really unusual, don’t you think?”

“Yes, really unusual.”

But she said this with so much apparent deliberation that suspicion flashed through Mihály’s mind. Was it really? … How strange it would be … But his considerable discretion instantly rebelled and he suppressed his curiosity. If it were at all like that, then he should say nothing more about János Szepetneki.

“Thank you, Erzsi, for the warning. You’re very good to me, and I know how little I deserve it. And I can’t believe that in time you too will come to hate me as bitterly as Zoltán Pataki does.”

“I would think not,” said Erzsi, very solemnly. “I don’t feel any desire for revenge against you. There’s no reason why I should, really.”

“I see there’s still something you want to say. Is there something else I should do?”

“There is something else I must warn you about, but it’s rather painful because you might perhaps misunderstand my reason for saying it. Would you still think I’m speaking out of jealousy?”

“Jealousy? I’m not so conceited. I know I’ve thrown away every legal claim on your jealousy.”

Deep down, he was well aware that Erzsi was not disinterested. Otherwise she would not have come to Rome. But he felt, and chivalry dictated, that he ought to ignore the fact (which his male ego would normally have insisted on) that she might still be attracted to him.

“Perhaps we should leave this — this question of my feelings,” Erzsi said with some exasperation. “They really have nothing to do with it. So … as I say … look, Mihály, I know perfectly well on whose account you’re in Rome. János told me. The person concerned wrote to him that you’d seen each other.”

Mihály lowered his head. He sensed how very much it hurt Erzsi that he loved Éva. But what could he say to alter what was true and unchangeable?

“Yes, Erzsi. If you know about it, good. You know the background to all this. In Ravenna I told you everything there was to know about me. Everything is as it had to be. Only it shouldn’t have to be so hard on you … ”

“Please, drop it. I haven’t said a thing about it being hard on me. That really isn’t the point. But tell me … do you know what this woman is? What sort of life she leads nowadays?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never enquired about it.”

“Mihály, I’ve always marvelled at your coolness, but you begin to surpass yourself. I never heard of such a thing, someone in love with a woman who has no interest in who or what sort of … ”

“Because all that interests me is what she was then, in the Ulpius house.”

“Perhaps you aren’t aware that she won’t be here much longer? She’s managed to hook a young Englishman who’s taking her with him to India. They leave in the next few days.”

“That’s not true.”

“Oh, but it is. Take a look at this.”

She drew another letter from her reticule. The handwriting was Éva’s. It was addressed to János. It gave a brief account of her impending trip to India, and the fact that she did not propose returning to Europe.

“You didn’t know?” asked Erzsi.

“You win,” said Mihály. He got up, paid, and went out, leaving his hat behind.

Outside he staggered for a while in a blind daze, his hand pressed against his heart. Only after some time did he notice that Erzsi was walking beside him, and had brought him his hat.

Erzsi was now quite changed: meek, timid, her eyes all tears. It was almost moving, the tall dignified woman in this posture of a small girl, as she walked beside him, in silence, with his hat in her hand. Mihály smiled, and took his hat.

“Thank you,” he said, and kissed Erzsi’s hand. Timidly, she stroked his face.

“Well, if you’ve no more letters in your reticule, then perhaps we can go and dine,” he said with a sigh.

During the meal they exchanged few words, but those were full of intimacy and tender feeling. Erzsi was filled with a loving desire to console, Mihály with his own suffering, and the great quantity of wine he got through in his unhappiness made him gentle. He saw how much Erzsi still loved him, even now. What happiness, if he in turn could love her, and thus free himself of the past and the dead. But he knew it was impossible.

“Erzsi, in the depths of my heart I wasn’t to blame for what happened between us,” he said. “True, that is easily said. But you see, for so many years I had done everything to make myself conform, and I only married you, as a kind of reward, when I really thought that at last everything was all right, that I had at last made my peace with the world. And then all the demons turned on me — my entire youth and all that nostalgia and rebellion. There’s no cure for nostalgia. Perhaps I should never have come to Italy. This country was created out of nostalgia, by kings and poets. Italy is the earthly paradise, but only as Dante saw it: the earthly paradise on the peak of Mount Purgatory, a mere stopping place on a journey, a supernatural aerodrome where spirits take off for the distant circles of heaven, when Beatrice lifts her veil, and the soul ‘feels the great power of the old yearning … ’”

“Oh, Mihály, the world won’t tolerate a man giving himself up to nostalgia.”

“It doesn’t tolerate it. It doesn’t tolerate any deviation from the norm. Any desertion or defiance, and sooner or later it turns the Zoltáns on you.”

“And what do you want to do?”

“That I don’t know. What are your plans, Erzsi?”

“I’ll go back to Paris. We’ve talked about everything now — I think it’s time I went to my room. I’m leaving early tomorrow morning.”

Mihály paid, and escorted her back.

“I would love to know that you will be all right,” he said as they walked. “Say something to reassure me.”

“It’s not as bad for me as you think,” said Erzsi, and her smile was now genuinely proud and satisfied. “My life is very full now, and who knows what wonderful things lie in store for me? In Paris I’ve found myself to some extent, and what I want in life. My only regret is that you’re not part of it.”

They were standing outside Erzsi’s hotel. Taking his leave of her, Mihály looked again at Erzsi. Yes, she had changed a great deal. For better or worse, who could say? She was no longer the fine presence she had been: there was something broken in her, some inner coarsening of texture that showed in the way she dressed and spoke, and overpainted her face in the Parisian fashion. Erzsi had become somehow more common, was somehow surrounded by the ambience of some stranger, some mysterious and enviable stranger. Or perhaps of János, his arch-rival … This element of newness in the woman he had so long known was inexpressibly seductive and disturbing.

“What will you do now, Mihály?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to go home, for a thousand and one reasons, and I really don’t want to be alone.”

For an instant their eyes met, in the conspiratorial glance developed by the year they had spent together, then, without another word, they hurried up to Erzsi’s room.

The passion that had driven them so painfully together when Erzsi was still Zoltán’s wife now rose again in both of them. During those months they had both tried to fend off their desire, but the desire had been stronger and opposition only made it more savage. Now again they met in the teeth of a major obstacle. All that had happened between them, the seemingly irreparable grievances driving them so violently apart, served only to intensify the passion that threw them into one another’s arms. With the miraculous joy of recognition Mihály discovered it all again: Erzsi’s body which, physically, he desired more than the body of any other woman, Erzsi’s gentleness, Erzsi’s wildness, Erzsi’s whole night-time being which was utterly unlike the Erzsi who was revealed in the words and deeds of daylight, the passionate, loving Erzsi, so wise in the ways of love. And Erzsi revelled in her capacity to strip Mihály of the lethargic indifference in which he spent so much of his days.

Later, all conflict resolved, they gazed delightedly at one another, exhausted and fulfilled, with eyes of wonder. Only now did it occur to them what had happened. Erzsi began to laugh.

“Well, would you have believed this, this morning?”

“Not me. Would you?”

“Me neither. Or, I don’t know. I did come to do you a favour.”

“Erzsi! You’re the most wonderful woman in the whole world.”

He really thought that. He had been stunned by the womanly warmth in which she bathed him, and was gratefully, childishly happy.

“Yes, Mihály, I must always be good to you. That’s what I feel. No-one should ever hurt you.”

“Tell me … shouldn’t we give our marriage one more try?”

Erzsi grew serious. She had of course expected this question, if only because her sexual vanity required it … but could it be a realistic proposition? … For a long time she gazed at Mihály, hesitant and questioning.

“We should have another try,” he said. “Our bodies understand each other so well. And they are usually right. Nature’s voice, don’t you think? … What we mess up with our minds our bodies can still put right. We must have another go at living together.”

“Why did you leave me there if … if that’s the case?”

“Nostalgia, Erzsi. But now it’s as if I’ve been released from a kind of spell. True, I was a most willing slave and victim. But now I feel healthy and strong. I must stay with you, it’s quite clear. But of course I’m being selfish. The question is, what would be best for you?”

“I don’t know, Mihály. I love you so much more than you love me, and it frightens me how much suffering you cause me. And … I don’t know where you stand with the other woman.”

“With Éva? But did you think I had spoken to her? I just yearned after her. A spiritual illness. I’m going to be cured of it.”

“First get yourself cured, then we can discuss it.”

“Fine. You’ll see, we’ll talk about it soon enough. Sleep well, my dear, dear one.”

But during the night he woke, and reached out for Éva. Grasping the hand that lay on the blanket he remembered it was Erzsi’s and, overcome with guilt, released it. Then he thought, wryly, sadly, wearily, how very different Éva was after all. From time to time he might feel an intense desire for Erzsi, but even this desire played itself out, and after it nothing remained but the sober and boring acknowledgement of facts. Erzsi was desirable and good and clever and everything, but she lacked mystery.

Consummatum est. Erzsi was the last connection with the world of humanity. Now there was only the one who wasn’t: Éva, Éva … And when Éva went, only death would remain.

And towards dawn Erzsi woke and thought:

“Mihály hasn’t changed, but I have. Once he stood for the great adventure, rebellion, the stranger, the man of mystery. I now know he just passively lets outside forces carry him along. He’s no tiger. Or at least, there are people far more remarkable than he is. János Szepetneki. And the ones I haven’t yet met. Mihály returns my love at the moment simply because he’s looking to me for bourgeois order and security, and everything I actually ran to him to escape from. No, it doesn’t make sense. I’m cured of him.”

She rose, washed, and began to dress. Mihály also woke. Somehow he immediately took in the situation and also got dressed, and they breakfasted with barely a word. He escorted Erzsi to the train and waved her goodbye. Both knew it was now finally over between them.

XXII

THE DAYS that followed Erzsi’s departure were dreadful. Shortly afterwards Waldheim left too, for Oxford, and Mihály was completely on his own. He had no interest in anything. He did not move out of the house, but lay all day long on his bed, fully dressed.

The reality-content of Erzsi’s news had run through his whole system like a poison. He thought endlessly, and with ever-increasing anxiety, about his father, whom his own behaviour and the impending financial crisis had surely reduced to a dreadful state of mind. He could see the old man before him: presiding disconsolately over the family dinner, twirling his moustache or rubbing his knee in his distress, struggling to act as if nothing was wrong, his forced jollity making the others even more depressed, and everyone ignoring his sallies, becoming gradually more silent, eating at double speed to get away as fast as possible from the miseries of the family gathering.

And if Mihály did occasionally manage to forget his father, his thoughts turned to Éva. That Éva would leave for an impossibly distant country, perhaps for ever, was worse than anything. Because, dreadful as it was that she had no desire to know about him, life was nonetheless bearable so long as one knew she was living in the same city, and that they might chance to meet, or at least she might be glimpsed from afar … But if she went away to India, there was nothing left for him. Nothing.

One afternoon a letter arrived from Foligno, from Ellesley.

Dear Mike,

I have some very sad news for you. Father Severinus, the Gubbio monk, recently fell seriously ill. More precisely, he had a long-standing tubercular condition which got to the stage where he could no longer remain in the monastery and they brought him to the hospital here. During those hours when neither his illness nor his devotions claimed him, I had the opportunity to talk with him, and gained some small insight into his remarkable state of mind. I have no doubt that in earlier centuries this man would have been venerated as a saint. He spoke of you often and in terms of the greatest affection, and I learnt from him — how mysterious are the ways of Providence — that in your youth you and he had been close friends and always very attached to one another. He asked me to let you know when the inevitable happened. This request I now fulfil, for Father Severinus died in the night, towards dawn this morning. He was alert to the last, praying with his fellow Franciscans seated by his bed, when the moment of departure came.

Dear Mike, if you had the absolute faith in eternal life that I have you would take some comfort in this news, because you would trust that your friend was now where his fragmentary mortal existence received its deserved complement, the Life Eternal.

Don’t forget me completely. Write sometimes to your devoted

Ellesley

P S Millicent Ingram duly received the money. She finds your apologies absurd between friends, sends you many greetings and thinks of you with affection. I can now also mention that she is my fiancée.

The day was appallingly hot. In the afternoon Mihály walked in a daze round the Borghese gardens, went to bed early, fell asleep in his exhaustion, and later woke again.

In a half-dream he saw before him a wild, precipitous landscape. The prospect seemed somehow familiar and, still in his dream, he wondered where he could possibly have known that narrow valley, those storm-tossed trees, those seemingly stylised ruins. Perhaps he had seen them from the train, in that wonderful stretch of country between Bologna and Florence, perhaps in his wanderings above Spoleto, or in a painting by Salvator Rosa in some museum. The mood of the landscape was ominous and heavy with mortality. Mortality hung over the tiny figure, the traveller, who, leaning on his stick, made his way across the landscape under a brilliant moon. He knew that the traveller had been journeying through that increasingly abandoned landscape, between tumultuous trees and stylised ruins, terrified by tempests and wolves, for an immense period of time, and that he, and no-one else in all the world, would roam abroad on such a night, so utterly alone.

The bell rang. Mihály switched on the light and looked at his watch. It was past midnight. Who could it be? Surely no-one could have rung. He turned on his other side.

The bell sounded again. Troubled, he got up, put something on, and went out. At the door stood Éva.

In his embarrassment he forgot even to greet her.

That’s how it is. You yearn for someone, maniacally, mortally, to the verges of hell and death. You look for them everywhere, pursue them, to no avail, and your life wastes away in nostalgia. Since coming to Rome Mihály had never stopped waiting for this moment, had prepared for it, and had only just come to believe that never again would he speak with Éva. And then suddenly she appears, just at the moment when you’ve pulled on a pair of cheap pyjamas, are ashamed to be so unkempt and unshaven, ashamed to death of your lodgings, and you’d actually rather this person, for whom you’ve yearned so inexpressibly, were simply not there.

But Éva paid no attention to any of that. Without greeting or invitation she stepped quickly into his room, sat down in an armchair, and stared stiffly in front of her.

Mihály shuffled in after her.

She had not changed in the slightest. Love preserves one moment for ever, the moment of its birth. The beloved never ages. In love’s eye she is always seventeen, her dishevelled hair and light summer frock tousled for the rest of time by the same friendly breeze that blew in the first fatal moment.

Mihály was so discomposed all he could ask was:

“How did you find my address?”

Éva motioned restlessly with her hand.

“I telephoned your brother, in Pest. Mihály, Ervin’s dead.”

“I know,” he said.

“How did you know?”

“Ellesley, the doctor, wrote to me. I know you also met him once, in Gubbio, in the house where the door of the dead was open.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“He nursed Ervin in his last hours, in the Foligno hospital. Here’s his letter.”

Éva read the letter and fell into a reverie.

“Do you remember his enormous grey coat,” she said, after a while, “and how he always turned the collar up as he walked along, with his head bowed? … ”

“And somehow his head always went in front of him, and he came after it, like those big snakes that throw their head forward and their bodies slither along behind … And how much he smoked! No matter how many cigarettes I put in front of him, they all went.”

“And how sweet he was, when he was in good humour, or tipsy … ”

Father Severinus vanished. In the dead man of Foligno only Ervin had died, the remarkable boy and dear friend and the finest memory of their youth.

“I knew he was very ill,” said Mihály. “I tried to persuade him to get himself seen to. Do you think I should perhaps have tried a bit harder? Perhaps I should have stayed in Gubbio and not left until something was done about getting him well?”

“I think our concern, our tenderness, our anxiety would never have got through to him — to Father Severinus. For him the illness wasn’t as it would be for other people — not a misfortune but rather a gift. What do we know about that? And how easy it would have been for him to die.”

“He was so used to the ways of death. In the last few years I think he dealt with nothing else.”

“All the same, it might well have been horrible for him to die. There are very few people who die their own, proper death, like … like Tamás.”

The warm orange glow from the lampshade fell on Éva’s face and it became much more like the face she had shown in those years in the Ulpius house when … when they played their games and Tamás and Mihály died for her, or at her hands. What kind of fantasy, or memory, might now be stirring in her? He clutched his hand to his aching, pounding heart, and a thousand things flitted through his head: memories of the sick pleasure of the old games, the Etruscan statues in the Villa Giulia, Waldheims’s explanations, the Other Wish and the death-hetaira.

“Éva, you killed Tamás,” he said.

Éva gave a start, her facial expression changed totally, and she clapped her hand to her forehead.

“It’s not true! Not true! How could you think it?”

“Éva, you killed Tamás.”

“No, Mihály, I swear I didn’t. It wasn’t me that killed him … you can’t see it like that. Tamás committed suicide. I told Ervin, and Ervin gave me absolution, as a priest.”

“Then tell me too.”

“Yes, I’ll tell you. Listen. I’ll tell you how Tamás died.”

Éva’s hand in Mihály’s was cold as ice. He too felt shivers of horror running through him, and his heart grew unspeakably heavy. Relentlessly they descended into the mines, the passageways, the pits, through brackish underground lakes until they reached the cave where, amid the blackness at the very centre of things, lurked the secret, and the spectre.

“You remember, don’t you, how it was. That suitor of mine, and how violent my father was, and how I asked him if I could travel with Tamás for a few days before I got married.”

“I remember.”

“We went to Hallstatt. The place was Tamás’s idea. The moment I arrived there I understood. I really can’t describe it … an ancient, black town, beside a dead, black lake. You see these hill towns in Italy too, but this was much darker, much more chilling, the sort of place where all you can do is die. Tamás had already told me on the way there that he was going to die soon. You remember, don’t you, the office … and how he couldn’t bear being torn away from me … and in particular, you remember, how he always longed for death, and you know, too, how he didn’t want to die in some random way, but prepared for, carefully …

“I know that anyone else would have reasoned with him, or sent off telegrams right and left, called for help from his friends and the police and the emergency services and whatever else one does. That was my first feeling too, that I ought to do something, I ought to call for help. I didn’t, and I watched his preparations with despair. But then suddenly it dawned on me that Tamás was right. How I knew this I can’t say … but you remember how close we always were, how I always knew what was going on inside him — and now I knew that he was beyond help. If it didn’t happen now, then some other time, soon; and if I wasn’t there then he would die alone, and that would be terrible, for both of us.

“Tamás realised I had become resigned to the idea and he told me the day when it would happen. That day we went boating on the dead lake, but in the afternoon the rain came down and we went into our room. There was never such an autumn since the world began, Mihály.

“Tamás wrote a farewell note, in meaningless phrases, giving no reasons. Then he asked me to prepare the poison, and to give it to him …

“Why did I have to do it? … and why did I do it? … you see, this is something perhaps only you can understand, Mihály. You played and acted with us, in those years.

“I’ve never felt any pangs of remorse. Tamás wanted to die, and there was no way I could have prevented it. And I didn’t even want to, because I knew it was better for him this way. I carried out his last wishes. I did the right thing. I’ve never regretted it. Perhaps if I hadn’t been there, if I hadn’t given him the poison, he wouldn’t have had the strength of mind, he would have struggled with himself for hours and then taken it after all, and gone to his death ashamed of his lack of courage, shamefaced. But this way he killed himself bravely, without hesitation, because it was play-acting, he played at being killed by me, he was performing a scene we had rehearsed so many times at home.

“Afterwards he lay down calmly and I sat on the edge of the bed. When the drowsiness of death drew near, I pulled him to me and kissed him. And I carried on kissing him until his arm fell away from me. Those weren’t the kisses of a brother and sister, Mihály, it’s true. We were no longer brother and sister but someone who would live on and someone who was dying … then at last he was free, as I believe.”

For a long time they sat in silence.

“Éva, why did you send me that message not to look for you?” Mihály finally asked. “Why don’t you want to see me?”

“Oh, but don’t you see, Mihály, don’t you see, it’s impossible? … When we’re together it’s not just the two of us … At any moment Tamás might appear. And now Ervin too … I can’t be with you, Mihály, I can’t.”

She rose.

“Just sit down for one more minute,” he said, as softly as a man speaking in extreme anger. “Is it true you’re going to India?” he asked. “For a very long time?”

Éva nodded.

He wrung his hands.

“You really are going, and I shan’t see you any more?”

“That’s true. What will become of you?”

“There’s only one thing for me: to die my own, proper death. Like … like Tamás.”

They were silent.

“Do you seriously think so?” Éva asked eventually.

“Absolutely seriously. There’s no point in my staying in Rome. And there’s even less point in my going home. There’s no point in my doing anything.”

“Could I possibly be of help?” she asked, without enthusiasm.

“No. Or rather, there is a way, after all. Could you do something for me, Éva?”

“Well?”

“I’m afraid to ask, it’s so difficult.”

“Ask away.”

“Éva … be at my side, when I die … like you were with Tamás, Éva.”

Éva considered.

“Would you do it? Would you do it? Éva, this is all I ask of you, and after it, nothing ever again, till the end of the world.”

“All right.”

“Do you promise?”

“I promise.”

XXIII

ERZSI ARRIVED BACK in Paris. She telephoned János, who came for her in the evening to take her out to dinner. But she found him rather distracted, and not especially pleased to see her. This suspicion grew stronger when he announced:

“Tonight we’re dining with the Persian.”

“Why? On our first night!”

“True, but I can’t do anything about it. He insisted on it, and you know how I have to butter him up.”

During the dinner János was mostly silent, and the conversation flowed between Erzsi and the Persian.

The Persian was talking about his homeland. There, love was a difficult and romantic business. Even today it was still the case that the young man in love had to climb a ten-foot wall and hide in the garden of his beloved’s father, to watch for the moment when the lady might walk by with her companion and they might exchange a few words in secret. But the young man was playing with his life.

“And this is a good thing?” asked Erzsi.

“Yes, a very good thing,” he replied. “Very good. People tend to value things much more highly when they have had to wait for them, to struggle and suffer. I often think Europeans don’t know what passion is. And really they don’t, technically speaking.”

His eyes glowed, his gestures were exaggerated but noble — untamed, genuine gestures.

“I am delighted you have returned, Madame,” he suddenly announced. “I was just beginning to be afraid you would stay in Italy. But that would have been a shame … I should have been very sorry.”

Erzsi, in a gesture of thanks, placed her hand for a moment on the Persian’s. Beneath it he closed his, making it like a claw. She was alarmed, and withdrew hers.

“I would very much like to ask you something,” continued the Persian. “Would you accept a small gift from me? On the happy occasion of your return.”

He produced a beautifully wrought gold tabatière.

“Strictly speaking it’s for opium,” he said. “But you can also use it for cigarettes.”

“I’m not sure on what basis I can accept this,” Erzsi said, in some confusion.

“On no basis whatever. On the basis that I am happy to be alive. On the basis that I am not a European, but come from a country where people make gifts lightly and with the best of intentions, and are grateful when they are accepted. Accept it because I am Suratgar Lutphali, and who knows when you will ever meet such a bird again.”

Erzsi looked inquiringly at János. She greatly admired the tabatière, and would have loved to accept it. János gave her a look of approval.

“Then I accept,” she said, “and thank you very much. I would accept it from no-one else, only you. Because who knows when I shall ever meet such a bird again in my life.”

The Persian met the bill for all three of them. Erzsi was a little irritated by this. It was almost as if János had found her for the Persian, as if, not to put too fine a point on it, he were his impresario, now withdrawing modestly into the background … but she dismissed this thought. Most likely János was again out of funds and that was why he allowed the Persian to pay. Or the Persian, with his oriental magnificence, had insisted on it. Besides, in Paris one person always paid.

That night János fell asleep early, and Erzsi had time to reflect:

“It’s coming to an end with János, that’s for certain, and I’m not sorry. What is interesting in him I already know by heart. I was always so afraid of him — that he might stab me, or steal my money. But it seems this fear was misplaced, and I’m a bit disappointed in him. What comes next? Perhaps the Persian? It rather seems he fancies me.”

She thought for a long time about what the Persian would be like at close quarters. Oh yes, he certainly was the real Tiger, Tiger, burning bright/In the forests of the night. How his eye glowed … It could be quite terrifying. Yes, quite terrifying. She really should give him a try. Love has so many unexplored landscapes, so many secret, wonderful, paradisal places …

Two days later the Persian invited them on an outing by car to Paris-Plage. They bathed in the sea, had dinner, and set out for home in the dark.

The journey was a long one and the Persian, who was driving, began to be more and more uncertain.

“Tell me, did we see that lake when we came?” he asked János.

János looked thoughtfully into the dark.

“Perhaps you did. I didn’t.”

They stopped and studied the map.

“The devil knows where we might be. I don’t see any kind of lake here.”

“I said at the time the driver shouldn’t drink so much,” said János in exasperation.

They drove further on, in some uncertainty. No-one, not a vehicle, in the whole countryside.

“This car’s not right,” said János. “Have you noticed it spluttering from time to time?”

“Yes, it certainly is.”

As they drove on the spluttering became quite pronounced.

Do you understand this contraption?” asked the Persian. “Because I don’t know the first thing about it. For me, the mechanics of a car are still the work of the devil.”

“Pull over. I’ll see what the trouble is.”

János got out, lifted up the bonnet, and started to investigate.

“The fan belt is completely ruined. How on earth could you drive around with a fan belt like that? You really should look at your car occasionally.”

Suddenly he swore, copiously and brutally.

“ … the belt’s torn! Now we’ve done it!”

“Now you’ve done it.”

“I’ve certainly done it. We can’t go on until we find another belt. You might as well get out.”

They got out. Meanwhile it had started to rain. Erzsi fastened up her waterproof coat.

The Persian was angry and impatient.

“Hell and damnation, what do we do now? Here we are in the middle of the main road, and, I’ve a strong suspicion, this isn’t the main road any more.”

“I can see some sort of house over there,” said János. “Let’s try our luck there.”

“What, at this time of night? By now the whole French countryside is asleep, and anyone who is up won’t be talking to suspicious-looking foreigners.”

“But there’s a light on,” said Erzsi, pointing to the house.

“Let’s try it,” said János.

They locked the car, and made off towards the house. A wall enclosed the hill on which it stood, but the gate was open. They went up to the house.

It was a very grand-looking building. In the darkness it seemed like a miniature château, bristling with marquesses and the noble families of France.

They knocked. An old peasant-woman thrust her head out of a small opening in the door. János explained what had brought them there.

“I’ll just have a word with their lordship and ladyship.”

Soon a middle-aged Frenchman in country attire stood before them. He looked them up and down while János repeated his account of what had happened. His face slowly brightened, and he became immensely friendly.

“God has brought you amongst us, Madame and Gentlemen. Come in and tell us all about it.”

He led them into an old-fashioned room, reminiscent of a hunting lodge, where a lady sat at a table over her embroidery, evidently his wife. The man briefly explained the situation and made his visitors sit down.

“Your misfortune is our good luck,” said the lady. “You can’t imagine how dull these evenings are in the country. But of course one can’t leave one’s estates at this time of year, can one?”

Erzsi felt somehow ill at ease. The whole mansion seemed unreal, or indeed too real, like the set of a naturalistic play. And either these two people had sat there forever under the lamp, wordlessly waiting, or they had sprung into being at the precise moment of their arrival. Deep down she had the feeling that something was not quite right.

It emerged that the nearest village where they might find a garage was three kilometres off, but the hospitable couple had no-one they could send, as that night the male staff were sleeping out at the farmhouse.

“Do spend the night here,” suggested the wife. “There’s sleeping-room for all three of you.”

But János and the Persian were insistent that they still had to be in Paris that night.

“I am expected,” said the Persian, his discreet smile implying it was a question of a lady.

“There’s nothing else for it,” said János. “One of us will have to walk to the village. Three kilometres really isn’t much. Naturally I shall go, since I broke the fanbelt.”

“Not at all,” said the Persian. “I’ll go. Since you are my guests, I must see to it.”

“Well, let’s draw lots,” suggested János.

The draw determined that János should go.

“I’ll be straight back,” he said, and hurried off.

The host brought wine, his own vintage. They sat around the table, drinking and talking quietly, listening occasionally to the patter of rain on the window-pane.

Erzsi’s sense of unreality grew and grew. She no longer knew what the host and his lady were talking about. Probably they were explaining the tedious round of their country life, in tones as unvaried and soporific as the rain. Or perhaps it was the patter of rain that was so soothing; or the fact that she no longer belonged to anyone, anywhere. Here she sat at the end of the world, in a French château whose name she did not even know, and where she had arrived quite without rhyme or reason, for one might equally sit thus at the other end of the world, in another château, with no more cause or explanation.

Then she sensed that this was not what was soothing and lulling her, but the glance with which the Persian caressed her from time to time. It was a tender, warm, emotional glance, quite different from the cold blue gaze of a European eye. In the Persian’s glance there was animal warmth and reassurance. Soothing and lulling. Yes, this man loved women … but not merely as … he loved them not because he was a man, but because they were women, dear creatures, needing love. That was it: he loved them the way a true dog-fancier loves dogs. And perhaps that is the best love a woman can have.

In her half-trance she became aware that, under the table, the Persian was holding her hand in his and stroking it.

He did not betray himself by the slightest movement as he conversed politely with the hosts. Yet Erzsi still felt that everyone was posing, so outrageously that she almost expected them to stick out their tongues at her. And the Persian was just waiting, perhaps without any particular plan in his head, at that late hour of night …

“Does he think I am some unapproachable Persian woman? My God, we ought to go out for a stroll … but it’s raining.”

Suddenly there was a knock at the door. The peasant-woman brought in a thoroughly sodden youth, who was obviously known to the host couple. From what the lad had to say it transpired that János had reached the neighbouring village but had not found a suitable fan belt there. However he had sprained his leg, and thought it best to spend the night with the local doctor, who was a most kindly man. He asked if they would come and collect him, should they somehow manage to repair the car.

This news was received with dismay. Then they decided that if that was the way things stood, it would be better to go to bed, as it was already long past midnight. The lady of the house conducted them upstairs. When it had been tactfully established that Erzsi and the Persian were not together, each was assigned a separate room, and the hostess took her leave. Erzsi took her leave of the Persian and went into her room, where the old peasant-woman made up her bed, and bade her goodnight.

It was as if everything had been prepared in advance. Of this Erzsi no longer had any doubt. The little play being enacted in her honour was no doubt the brainchild of János: the problem with the car, the little château by the roadside, his accident, and now the final scene with the happy ending.

She looked round her room. She carefully locked the door, and then had to smile. There was another door in the room, and this had no key. She cautiously opened this second door. It revealed an unlit room. But in the far wall of the darkened room was another door, under which a strip of light appeared. She tip-toed over to it. Someone was walking about in the next room. She thought back to the arrangement of the rooms as they had gone along the corridor, and decided that the one behind the door was the Persian’s. He was certainly not going to lock his door. Through it he would make his way comfortably to her room. And this was quite natural, after the intimate way they had sat together down below, under the lamp. She returned to her room.

Her mirror showed her how deeply she was blushing. János had sold her to the Persian and the Persian had bought her, as he might a calf. He had made her a down payment in the form of the tabatière (which Sári had established was a great deal more valuable than you might think at first glance) — and János had certainly had his ‘pocket money’. She was filled with deep humiliation and anger. How she could have loved the Persian … but that he should treat her like a commodity! Oh how stupid men were! By this he had spoilt everything.

“Why do they all try to sell me? Mihály sold me to Zoltán — even his letter made it clear that there had been a deal — and now János sells me to the Persian, and, God knows, in time the Persian will sell me to some Greek or Armenian; and after that I’ll be sold again and again by men who don’t even view me as their own property.” She racked her brains to discover what there might be in her that made men do this. Or perhaps the fault lay not in her, but in the men she fell in with, Mihály and János, and the fact that both of them had loved Éva, a woman who was for sale, and were therefore unable to see her as any different?

A few minutes more and the Persian would come, and, in the most natural way in the world, would wish to complete the transaction. What nonsense! She must do something. Go to the lady of the house, and make a great scene, call for her protection? It would be ridiculous, since the people of the house were the Persian’s hired lackeys (Who could they be? They had played their parts very well. Perhaps they were actors, since he was now a film entrepreneur.) She walked up and down, at her wits’ end.

“Perhaps you’re quite mistaken. Perhaps the thought never entered his brain.”

It struck her that if the Persian didn’t come, that would be every bit as insulting as if he did.

If he came … Perhaps it wouldn’t be so insulting and humiliating. He knew perfectly well that Erzsi admired him. She herself had issued the invitation to come. He was not coming as to a slave-girl in his harem, but to a woman who loved him, and whom he loved, after carefully removing every obstacle in the way. Had she been sold? Indeed, she had. But properly speaking, the fact that men laid out vast sums for her need not really be so humiliating. On the contrary, it was very flattering, for people spend money only on the things they value … She began suddenly to undress.

She stood in front of the mirror, and for a few moments studied her shoulders and arms with satisfaction, as a sample of the whole item “for which men laid out vast sums of money”. The thought was now decidedly pleasurable. Well, was she worth it? If she was worth it to them …

Before this, under the lamp downstairs, she had longed for the Persian’s embraces. Not perhaps with the most single-minded passion: there was more curiosity in it, a yearning for the exotic. For she had not thought at the time that it might become reality. But now, such a short while later, she was going to feel, with her whole body, the volcanic glow she sensed in the Persian. How strange and fearful was the preparation and the waiting!

She was filled with trembling excitement. This would be the supreme night of her life. The goal, the great fulfilment, towards which her road had always led. Now, now at last she was putting behind her every petty-bourgeois convention, everything that was still Budapest in her, and somewhere in the depths of France, that night, in an ancient château, she would give herself to a man who had purchased her, would give herself to an exotic wild animal and lose forever her genteel character, like some Eastern whore in the Bible or the Thousand and One Nights. Always this same wish-image had lurked at the base of her fantasies, not least when she was deceiving Zoltán with Mihály … And her instinct had chosen correctly, for the road taken with Mihály had really led all along to this.

And now here was the man who would perhaps prove final. The real tiger. The exotic one. The man of passion. A few minutes, and she would know. A shiver went through her. Of cold? No, a shiver of fear.

Quickly she pulled her blouse back on. She stood at the door that opened on to the corridor, and pressed her hand against her heart, with the naïve, artless gesture she had so often seen in the cinema.

In her imagination she was confronting the great secret: formless, headless, terrifying, the secret of the East, the secret of men, the secret of love. With what appalling, tormenting, lacerating movements and actions would he approach her, this stranger, this man with the tiger-strangeness. And might he not annihilate her, as the gods once annihilated mortal women in their arms? What unspoken, mysterious horrors? …

Suddenly it all enfolded her once again: her good upbringing, her character as genteel lady, as model pupil, her thrift, everything she had once fled. No, no, she did not dare … Fear lent her strength and cunning. Within seconds she had piled up every bit of furniture against the unlocked door. She even seized hold of the massive bed and, sobbing, gulping down her tears, dragged that too up to the door. Then she collapsed on to it, exhausted.

Just in time. From the neighbouring room she could hear the soft steps of the Persian. He was standing outside the door. He listened, then turned the handle.

The door, with every piece of furniture in the room leaning against it, stood firm. The Persian did not try to force it.

“Elizabeth,” he said quietly.

She did not answer. Again he tried to open the door, this time, it seemed, with the weight of his shoulder. The pile of furniture gave a little.

“Don’t come in!” Erzsi cried.

The Persian stopped, and for a short while there was complete silence.

“Elizabeth, open the door,” he said more loudly.

She did not reply.

He hissed something, and applied his full strength to the door.

“Don’t come in!” she screamed.

The Persian released the door.

“Elizabeth,” he said again, but his voice seemed distant, and dying away.

Then, after another pause, he said “Good night,” and went back to his room.

She lay on the bed, fully dressed, her teeth chattering. She was sobbing, and horribly tired. This was the moment of truth, when a person sees the whole pattern of their life. She did not prettify the incident to herself. She knew that she had denied the Persian not because she was bothered by the humiliating circumstances, not even because she was a respectable woman, but because she was a coward. She had come up against the mystery she had sought again and again, and she had fled before it. All her life she had been a petty-bourgeoise, and that was what she would remain.

Oh, if only the Persian were to return, now she would let him in … Of course she wouldn’t die, nothing truly horrible could happen. Oh how stupid had been her childish fear! If the Persian came back this terrible exhaustion would fall away from her, as would everything else, everything …

But the Persian did not return. Erzsi undressed, lay down and slept.

She managed to sleep for an hour or two. When she woke it was already becoming light outside. It was half past three. She leapt out of bed, washed her face and hands, dressed, and stole out into the corridor. Without even thinking about it she knew she must get away. She knew she could never see the Persian again. She was ashamed, and rejoiced to have escaped with her skin intact. Her spirits were high, and when she finally managed to prise open the main door of the house, which was bolted but not locked, and made it through the garden to the main road without being observed, she was filled with adolescent bravado and felt that, despite all her cowardice, she was the victor, the one who had triumphed.

She ran blithely down the main road, and soon reached a small village. As luck would have it, there was even a railway station nearby, and indeed a dawn market train leaving for Paris. It was still early morning when she reached the capital.

Back in her hotel room, she lay down and slept deeply, and perhaps contentedly, until the afternoon. When she woke she felt as if she had truly awakened after some enduring, beautiful and terrifying dream. She hurried off to Sári in a taxi, though she could have done it quite comfortably by bus or Métro. Now that she was truly awake her economising days were over.

She told Sári the whole story, with the cynical candour women use when talking amongst themselves about their love lives. Sári spiced the narrative with little exclamations and truisms.

“And what will you do now?” she finally asked, in a gentle, consoling tone.

“What will I do? But don’t you see? I’ll go back to Zoltán. That’s why I came here.”

“You’ll go back to Zoltán? So, is that why you walked out on him? And you think it’ll be any better now? Because it can’t be said you’ve any great love for him. I don’t understand you … But you’re quite right. You’re absolutely right. I would do the same in your position. After all, certainty is certainty, and you weren’t born to live like a student in Paris for the rest of your life, and keep changing your lovers as if you lived off them.”

“And I certainly wasn’t born for that! And just because … Excuse me, but I’ve just realised what was the basis of my fear yesterday. I started thinking where all this would lead. After the Persian there would be a Venezuelan, then a Japanese, and perhaps a Negro … I reckoned that once a girl starts off down that road there’s no going back: what the devil is there to stop you? And that’s not all. It could be that I really am like that, yes? That’s what I was frightened of — myself, and everything I might be capable of, and everything that could still happen to me. But no, it’s not that either. There has to be something to hold a woman back. And in that case, better Zoltán.”

“What’s this ‘better’? He’s wonderful. A rich man, a good man, he worships you, I can’t understand how you ever left him. Now, this minute, write to him, pack up your things, and go. My Erzsi … How nice for you. And how I shall miss you.”

“No, I shan’t write to him. You shall.”

“Are you afraid he won’t want you after all?”

“No, my dear, truly I’m not afraid of that. But I don’t want to write to him, because he must never know that I’m going to him as a refugee. He mustn’t know that he’s the only answer. Let him think I felt sorry for him. Otherwise, he’d be so full of himself!”

“How right you are!”

“Write and tell him that you’ve tried hard to reason with me to go back to him, and you think I would be willing, only my pride won’t let me admit it; that it would be better if he came to Paris and tried to talk with me. You’ll prepare the way. Write a good letter, my Sárika. You can be sure Zoltán will be very gallant towards you.”

“Splendid. I’ll write straight away, here, right here, right now. Now, Erzsi, when you’re in Pest, and Zoltán’s wife again, you can send me a really nice pair of shoes. You know, they’re so much cheaper and better in Pest, and they last so much longer.”

XXIV

FOIED VINOM PIPAFO, CRA CAREFO. Enjoy the wine today, tomorrow there’ll be none. The wine had run out: the mysterious inner spring that wakes a man day after day and sustains him with the illusion that life is worth getting up for, had run dry. And as the spring, like the wine, ran dry, it had been replaced from below by waters rising from the dark sea, the inner lake, connected through its depths to the great ocean, the Other Wish, antagonistic to life and more powerful than it.

The legacy of Tamás that had lain within him like a seed had now grown to reality. This growth — his own, special death — had burgeoned inside him, had fed itself on his sap, had thought with his thoughts and reasoned with his reasons, drunk in all the fine sights for its own purposes, until it reached wholeness, and now the time had come for it to move out into the world as a reality.

He wrote to Éva with the exact time: Saturday night. She replied: “I’ll be there”.

That was all. Éva’s curt, matter-of-fact reply filled him with dismay. Was that all he got? Such a routine attitude towards death! It was terrifying.

He felt a kind of chill beginning to spread through him, a strange sickly chill, like a limb going progressively numb under local anaesthetic, when your own body becomes alien and frightening. And so whatever it was inside him that stood for Éva slowly died. Mihály was well acquainted with love’s pauses, its blank intermissions, when, between the more ardent periods of passion, we become suddenly quite indifferent to the beloved, and look into the beautiful unfamiliar face wondering whether this actually is the woman … this was one of those pauses, but more pronounced than any he had known before. Éva had gone cold.

But then what would become of the Tamás-like sweetness of his final moments?

An odd, untimely humour put strength into him, and he acknowledged that the great act had got off to a decidedly poor start.

This was Saturday afternoon. He submitted himself, in these his last remaining hours, to some searching questions. What does a man do when nothing has meaning any longer? “The last hours of a suicide”: the phrase, so applicable to his situation, dismayed him even more than his earlier decision that he was “mad with love” or that “he could live no longer without her”. How distressing that the most sublime moments and stages of our lives can be approached only with the most banal expressions; and that, probably, these are indeed our most banal moments. At such times we are no different from anyone else. Mihály was now “preparing himself for death” just as any other man would do who knew he would soon have to die.

Yes, there was nothing else for it. He could not escape the law by which, even in his last moments, he was compelled to conform. He too would write a farewell note, as convention required. It would not be right to leave his father and mother without a farewell. He would write them a letter.

That was the first real moment of pain, when this idea struck him. Until then he had felt nothing more than a weary, dull depression, a fog, through which filtered the mysterious green glitter of the awaited climax of his last moments, and his thoughts of Tamás. But as he began to consider his parents he felt a sharp pang, a sharp, bright pang: the fog cleared, and he began to pity them, and to pity himself, stupidly, sentimentally, absurdly. Feeling ashamed, he took out his pen. With exemplary discipline and detachment, but therefore in words warm with feeling, he would announce his deed, calmly, masterfully, as one experienced in death.

As he sat there with the pen in his hand, waiting for the words of exemplary discipline to enter his head, there was a sudden knocking at the door. Mihály started violently. A week could go by and no-one called on him. Who could this be, just now? For a moment nameless suspicions flitted through his head. The lady of the house was not at home. No, he wouldn’t open the door. There was truly no reason now why he should. He had no business with anyone now.

But the knocking became increasingly vigorous and impatient. Mihály shrugged his shoulders, as if to say: “What are they doing, making all this commotion?” and he went out. As he did so he experienced a subtle sense of relief.

At the door he found, to his immense surprise, Vannina and another Italian girl. They were dressed very festively, with black silk scarves on their heads, and had apparently washed with more than usual thoroughness.

“Oh,” said Mihály, “I am delighted,” and began one of his longer stammerings, since he utterly failed to grasp the situation but had insufficient Italian to cover his embarrassment.

“Well then, are you coming, signore?” Vannina enquired.

“Me? Where to?”

“To the christening, of course.”

“What christening?”

“Why, the christening of my cousin’s baby. Perhaps you didn’t get my letter?”

“I didn’t get it. Did you write to me? How did you know my name and my address?”

“Your friend told me. Here it is, written down.”

She took out a crumpled note. He recognised Szepetneki’s writing. It read: “The Rotund Cabbage,” followed by Mihály’s address.

“Did you write to this name?” he asked.

“Yes. Funny name. You didn’t get my letter?”

“No, absolutely not, I can’t think why. But do come in.”

They went into the room. Vannina looked round, and asked:

“Is the signora not at home?”

“No, there is no signora.”

“Really? It would be so nice to sit here a while … But we still have to christen the bambino. Come along, come quickly. People are already starting to arrive, and we can’t keep the priest waiting.”

“But my dear … and … I never did get your letter. I’m so sorry about that, but really I wasn’t prepared, today … ”

“Maybe, but it doesn’t matter. You aren’t doing anything. Foreigners never have anything to do. Get your hat and come. Avanti.”

“But just at the moment I’ve a lot to do … An awful lot, and very important.”

And he became quite serious. It all came home to him, and he saw the familiar ghastliness of the situation. In the middle of composing his suicide note they were pestering him to go to a christening. They burst in on him with their precious stupid business, the way people always burst in on him with their precious stupid business when life was sublime and terrible. And sublime and terrible things always happened to him when life was stupid and precious. Life was not an art-form, or rather, it was an extremely mixed genre.

Vannina got up, came over to him and put her hand on his shoulder.

“What is this important business?”

“Er, well … I have letters to write. Very important letters.”

She gazed into his face, and he turned away in embarrassment.

“It would be better for you if you came now,” she said. “After the christening there’s a big celebration dinner at our place. Have some wine, and after that you can write those letters, if you still want to.”

Mihály looked at her in amazement. He remembered her gift of prophecy. He had the distinct feeling that the girl could see into him and had understood the situation. He suddenly felt ashamed, like a schoolboy caught red-handed. Now he saw nothing sublime in his wish to die. The elevated gave way to the mundane, as always happened. One really couldn’t keep the priest waiting … He put some money in his wallet, took his hat, and they set off.

But as he let the two women go on ahead down the darkened stairwell, and stood there alone, it suddenly struck him what unqualified stupidity it was, going off to a christening with these Italian proles he didn’t know from Adam. That sort of thing could happen only to him. He was on the point of running back and locking the door behind him, but the girl, as if sensing this, locked her arm in his and pulled him into the street. She hauled him along towards the Trastevere like a calf. Mihály felt that wonderful feeling of old, from the adolescent games, when he had been the sacrifice.

The relatives and friends, some fifteen or twenty strong, were already gathered in the tavern. They talked a very great deal, to him as well, but he understood nothing as they spoke in the Trastevere dialect, and besides he was not really paying attention.

Only when the young mother appeared with the bambino in her arms did he feel the full horror. The skinny, sickly ugliness of the mother and the yellowness of the baby terrified him. He had never liked children, whether new-born or in their later stages. He detested and feared them, and had always felt uncomfortable with their mothers. But this mother and this new-born babe were loathsome in a quite special way. In the ugly mother’s tenderness and the ugly babe’s defencelessness he sensed some kind of satanic parody of the Madonna, some malicious uglification of European man’s greatest symbol. It was such an apocalyptic kind of thing … as if the last mother had given birth to the last child, and none of those present had any idea that they were the last people alive, the excremental deposit of history, the dying Time-god’s final and absolute gesture of self-mockery.

From then on he lived through everything that happened from the grotesque, melancholy perspective of the last day and night on earth. Remembering how they had crowded through the narrow Trastevere streets, shouting out here and there to their teeming friends as they swarmed along to the little church, their every movement so strangely nimble and busily diminutive, he saw with ever greater clarity: “They’re rats. These people are rats, living here among the ruins. That’s why they’re so nimble and ugly, and why they breed so fast.”

Meanwhile he mechanically performed his function as godfather, with Vannina standing at his side directing him. At the conclusion of the service he gave the mother two hundred lire, and with enormous effort managed to kiss his godson, who now bore the name Michele.

(“Saint Michael Archangel, defend us in our struggles; be our shield against the wickedness of Satan and his snares. As God commands you, so we humbly beseech you; and you who command the Heavenly Armies, with the strength of the Lord deliver unto eternal damnation Satan and all the evil spirits who lead us into danger.”)

The service dragged on for ages. After it they all went back to the little tavern. Dinner had already been laid out in the courtyard. As usual, Mihály was hungry. He knew he had now done his duty sufficiently, and ought to be going home to write those letters. But it was no use. He was seduced by his deep culinary curiosity about the celebratory meal, what it would consist of, what interesting traditional dishes would be served. Would anyone else at such a point in his life, he wondered, feel so hungry and so curious about his pasta?

The meal was good. The unusual green pasta they served, pleasantly aromatic with vegetables, was a real speciality and well repaid his curiosity. The hosts were no less proud of the meat, a rare dish in the Trastevere, but Mihály was not so taken with it, viewing the cheese with much greater favour. It was a type he had never encountered before and a real experience, as is any new cheese. Meanwhile he drank a great deal, all the more because Vannina beside him kept generously topping him up, and since he could follow nothing of what was being said, he hoped by that means at least to participate in the general conviviality.

But the wine did not make him any merrier, merely more uncertain, incalculably less certain. It was now evening, Éva would be arriving soon at his lodgings … He really should get up and go back. There was now nothing to prevent it, only that the Italian girl would not let him. But by this time it was all extremely distant, Éva and his resolution and the desire itself, it was all very far away, drifting, an island drifting down the Tiber by night, and Mihály felt as impersonal and vegetable as the mulberry tree in the courtyard, and he too dandled his branches in this last night, no longer merely his own last night but the last night of all humanity.

It was now quite dark, and Italian stars loitered above the courtyard. He stood up, and felt utterly drunk. He had no idea how it had happened, because he did not remember — or perhaps he had simply not noticed — what a huge amount he was drinking, and he had at no time felt the crescendo of desire which usually overtakes drunkenness. From one minute to the next he was completely intoxicated.

He took a few steps in the courtyard, then staggered and fell. And that was very pleasant. He stroked the ground, and was happy. “Oh how lovely,” he thought, “this is where I’ll stay. Now I can’t fall down.”

He became aware that the Italians were lifting him up, and, with a tremendous chattering, were taking him into the house, while he modestly and apologetically protested he really had no wish to be a burden to anybody: the wonderful celebration that was so full of promise should just carry on, should just carry on …

Then he was lying on a bed, and instantly fell asleep.

When he woke it was pitch-black. His head ached, but otherwise he felt sober enough, only his heart was palpitating violently and he was very restless. Why had he got so drunk? It must surely have had a lot to do with the state of mind he had been in when he had sat down to drink: his resistance was so much reduced. Really, there hadn’t been any resistance in him: the Italian girl had done what she wanted with him. Why would she want him to get so very drunk?

His restlessness became intense. He thought of that night when he had wandered the streets of Rome until dawn and then found himself outside this same little house, when his imagination conjured up all the mysterious and criminal things that went on behind its silent walls. This was the house where the murders took place. And here he was, inside the house. The walls were alarmingly silent. Here he lay delivered over to the darkness, as he had wanted.

He remained prostrate for a while, in steadily increasing restlessness, then tried to get up. But his movements ran into difficulty, and the blood throbbed painfully in his head. Better to stay lying down. He listened intently. His eyes became used to the darkness and his ears to the silence. A thousand little noises, strange, nearby, distinctly Italian sounds, could be heard all around. The house was more or less awake. A dim light came in from under the door.

If these people were planning something … What madness it was to have brought money with him! And where had he put his money? But of course, he had lain down fully dressed. It must be in his wallet. He groped for the wallet. It was not in its place. It was not in any of his pockets.

Well, that much was certain: they had stolen his money. Perhaps two hundred lire. Never mind that … what else might they want? Would they allow him to leave and report them? That would be madness. No, these people were going to kill him, without question.

Then the door opened and Vannina came in, carrying some sort of night-light. She looked furtively towards the bed and, when she saw that Mihály was awake, put on the face of someone surprised and came up to the bed. She even said something he did not understand, but which did not sound very pleasant.

Then she put the night-light down and sat on the edge of the bed. She stroked his hair and face, murmuring encouragements in Italian to sleep peacefully.

“Of course, she’s waiting for me to fall sleep, and then … I shan’t sleep!”

Then he remembered with horror what force of suggestion there was in this girl, and realised that he certainly would sleep if she willed it. And indeed, closing his eyes as the girl smoothed down his eyelashes, he fell instantly into a babbling half-dream.

In this half-dream he seemed to hear them talking in the next room. There was a man’s voice that seemed to growl roughly, the rapid speech of another man from time to time, and the constant staccato whispering of the girl. Without doubt they were now discussing whether to kill him. The girl was perhaps protecting him, perhaps the opposite. Now, now, he really ought to wake. How often had he had this dream, that some terrible danger was approaching and he couldn’t wake however hard he tried: and now it was coming true. Then he dreamed that something was flashing before his eyes, and, with a rattle in his throat, he awoke.

There was light in the room. The night-light was burning on the table. He sat up and looked fearfully around, but saw no-one there. The murmur of speech still came through from the next room, but it was now much quieter, and he could not distinguish between the speakers.

The terror of death ran through and through him. He was afraid in his whole body. He could feel them closing in on him, with knives, the rat-people. He wrung his hands in despair. Something was holding him down. He could not get out of the bed.

The only thing that calmed him slightly was the night-light, which flared and cast the sort of shadows on the walls he remembered in his room as a child. The night-light led him to think of Vannina’s finely-shaped hand: earlier, when it held the lamp, he had stared at it for some time without really paying attention.

“Why am I afraid?” he suddenly started. For this, this thing that was about to happen right now, was what he had wanted, what he had planned. Yes, he was going to die — but he wanted to die — and there beside him, in the flesh, perhaps even taking part, would be a beautiful girl bearing a special secret, in the role of death-demon, as on the Etruscan tombs.

Now he really longed for it. His teeth chattered and his arms were numb with terror, but he wanted it to happen. They would open the door and the girl would come in to him, come to the bed and kiss and embrace him, while the murder weapon went about its work … Let her come and embrace him … only let her come … only let them open the door …

But the door did not open. Already outside the early morning cocks were crowing, the next room was completely silent, the night-light itself was flickering low, and he fell into a deep sleep.

Then it was morning, like any other morning. He woke in a bright room, a bright friendly room, to Vannina coming in and asking how he had slept. It was morning, a normal, friendly Italian summer morning. Soon it would be horribly hot, but now it was still pleasant. Only the aftertaste of last night’s drunkenness troubled him, nothing else.

The girl was saying something, about how drunk he had been the night before, but this had endeared him and made him very popular with all the party, and they had kept him there overnight because they were afraid he wouldn’t be able to make it home.

Talk of going home reminded him of Éva, who surely must have called on him the evening before to be with him when … What would she think of him? That he had run away: had run away from her?

Then it occurred to him that in the course of the whole alarming and visionary night he had not once thought of Éva. The love-pause. The longest pause of his life. Strange thing, to die for a woman and never think of her the entire night — and what a night!

He got his clothes more or less in order and took his leave of a few people sitting outside in the bar area who greeted him like their dear old friend. How the sun shone in through the little window! Really there was nothing rat-like about these people. They were the good honest Italian proletariat.

“And these people wanted to kill me?” he wondered. “True, it’s not really certain that they did intend to kill me. But it’s strange that they didn’t after all, in fact they must have really longed to while they were stealing my wallet. No, these Italians are really quite different.”

His hand unconsciously groped for his wallet. The wallet was there in its place, next to his heart, where the Middle-European, not entirely without a touch of symbolism, keeps his money. He stopped in surprise, and took the wallet out. The two hundred lire and the small change, a few ten-lire coins, were unmistakably there.

Perhaps they had put the wallet back while he slept — but there would have been no sense in that. More probably they had never taken it. It had been there in his pocket all the time he had believed it gone. Mihály calmed down. This was not the first time in his life that he had seen black as white, and his impressions and suppositions made themselves entirely independent of objective reality.

Vannina accompanied him out the door, then came with him a short way towards the Gianicolo.

“Do come again. And you must visit the bambino. A godfather has his duties. You mustn’t neglect them. Come again. Often. Always … ”

Mihály presented the girl with the two hundred lire, then suddenly kissed her on the mouth and hurried off.

XXV

HE ARRIVED BACK in his room. “I’ll rest for a bit, and think carefully about what I actually want, and whether I really want it; and only then will I write to Éva. Because my position with her is rather ridiculous, and if I were to tell her why I didn’t come home last night, perhaps she wouldn’t believe me, it’s all so stupid.”

He automatically undressed and began to wash. Was there any point in still washing? But he hesitated only for a moment, then washed, brewed himself some tea, took out a book, lay down and fell asleep.

He woke to the sound of the doorbell. He hurried out, feeling fresh and rested. It had been raining, and the air was cooler now than in recent days.

He opened the door and let in an elderly gentleman. His father.

“Hello, son,” said his father. “I’ve just arrived on the midday train. I’m so glad to find you at home. And I’m hungry. I’d like you to come out to lunch with me.”

Mihály was immensely surprised at his father’s unexpected appearance, but surprise was not in fact his predominant feeling. Nor indeed was it the embarrassment and shame when his father looked around the room, struggling painfully to stop his face betraying his horror at the shabby milieu. A quite different feeling filled him, a feeling he had known of old, in lesser degree, in the days when he often went abroad. The same feeling had always affected him when he came home from his longer absences: the terror that his father had in the meantime grown older. But never, never, had his father aged so much. When he had last seen him he was still the self-confident man of the commanding gestures he had known all his life. Or at least that was how Mihály had still thought of him, because he had then been at home for some years, and if any change had occurred in his father during that time he had not noticed its gradual workings. He now registered it all the more sharply because he had not seen his father for a few months. Time had punished his face and his figure. There were just a few, but quite undeniable, signs of anxiety: his mouth had lost its old severity, his eyes were tired and sunken (true, he had been travelling all night, who knows, perhaps third class, he was such a parsimonious man), his hair was even whiter, his speech seemed rather less precise, with a strange, and at first quite alarming hint of a lisp. It was impossible to say exactly what it was, but there was the fact, in all its dreadful reality. His father had grown old.

And compared with this everything else was as nothing—Éva, the planned suicide, even Italy itself.

“Just don’t let me burst out crying, not just now. Father would deeply despise that, and he might also guess my tears were for him.”

Mihály pulled himself together and put on his most expressionless face, the face he habitually adopted for anything to do with his family.

“It was very kind of you to come, Father. You must have had important reasons for making this long journey, in summer … ”

“Yes of course, son, my reasons were important. But nothing unpleasant. There isn’t anything wrong. Although you haven’t asked, your mother and the family are well. And I see there’s nothing particularly wrong with you. Well then, let’s go and have lunch. Take me somewhere where they don’t cook in oil.”

“Erzsi and Zoltán Pataki were with me the day before yesterday,” his father said during the meal.

“What’s that? Erzsi’s in Pest? And they were together?”

“Oh yes. Pataki went to Paris, they made up, and he brought Erzsi home.”

“But why, and how?”

“My son, I truly do not know, and you can imagine, I didn’t enquire. We talked only about business matters. You know that your … how can I put this? … your odd, but I have to say not entirely surprising, behaviour placed me in an absurd situation with regard to Erzsi. An absurd financial situation. For Erzsi to liquidate her investment, in today’s climate … but you know all this, I think. Tivadar told you all about it in his letter.”

“Yes, I do know. Perhaps you won’t believe this, but I’ve been terribly worried about what might happen. Erzsi said that Zoltán … but do go on.”

“Thank God, there’s no harm done. That’s precisely why they came to see me, to discuss the terms under which I could pay them back the money. But I have to say they were so reasonable I was really very surprised. We agreed on all the details. They really are not too oppressive, and I hope we can resolve the whole matter without further difficulty. All the more so, because your uncle Péter managed to find a wonderful new lawyer.”

“But tell me: Zoltán, I mean Pataki, has behaved really decently? I don’t understand.”

“He has conducted himself like an absolute gentleman. Just between us, I think it’s because he’s so glad Erzsi went back to him. And he’s certainly carrying out her intentions. Erzsi is a really wonderful woman. It’s bad enough … but I have made up my mind not to reproach you. You always were a strange boy, and you know what you have done.”

“And Zoltán didn’t abuse me? He didn’t say that … ”

“He said nothing. Not a word about you, which was only natural, given the circumstances. On the other hand, Erzsi did mention you.”

“Erzsi?”

“Yes. She said you had met in Rome. She gave absolutely no details, and naturally I didn’t enquire, but she hinted that you were in a very critical situation, and thought that your family had turned against you. No, don’t say anything. As a family we’ve always respected each other’s privacy, and we’ll keep it that way. I’m not interested in the details. But Erzsi did advise that, if it were at all possible, I should come to Rome myself and talk to you about your going back to Pest. Her actual words were, that I should ‘bring you home’.”

Bring him home? Yes, Erzsi knew what she was saying, and how well she knew Mihály! She saw clearly that his father could lead him home like a truanting schoolboy. She well knew it was his nature to submit, as indeed he was submitting, like a child caught running away: but of course always with the mental reservation that, when the next opportunity presented itself, he would run away again.

Erzsi was so right. There was no other course but to go home. There might have been another solution, but … the external circumstances he had wanted to escape through suicide seemed to have vanished. Zoltán had made his peace; his family were waiting for him with open arms; nobody was after him.

“So, here I am,” continued his father, “and I would like you to wind up all your business here immediately and come home. On tonight’s train, in fact. You know I haven’t much time.”

“Please, this is all a bit sudden,” said Mihály, emerging from his day-dream. “This morning I was thinking of anything but going home to Pest.”

“I’m sure, but what objection is there to your coming home?”

“Nothing. Just let me catch my breath. Look, it would do you no harm to lie down here for a while and take a siesta. While you’re resting I’ll get my thoughts in order.”

“Of course, as you think best.”

Mihály placed his father in the comfort of the bed. He himself sat in a large armchair, with the firm resolution of doing some thinking. His meditation took the form of recalling certain feelings in turn, and scrutinising their intensities. That was how he usually decided what he wanted, and whether he really did want what he thought he wanted.

Did he really want to die? Did he still hanker after a death like Tamás’s? He focused his mind on that longing and looked for the sweetness associated with it. But now he could discover no sweetness, but, on the contrary, nausea and fatigue, such as a man feels after love-making.

Then he realised why he felt this nausea. The desire had already been satisfied. Last night, in the Italian house, in his terror and vision he had already realised the wish that had haunted him since adolescence. He had fulfilled it, if not in external reality, at least in the reality of the mind. And with that the desire had been, if not permanently, at least for the time being, assuaged. He was freed from it, freed from the ghost of Tamás.

And Éva?

He noticed a letter on his desk. It had been put there while he had been out to lunch. It must have arrived the day before, but the lady next door had forgotten to give it to him. He got up, and read Éva’s parting words.

Mihály,

When you read this I will be already on my way to Bombay. I’m not coming to you. You aren’t going to die. You’re not Tamás. Tamás’s death was right for Tamás alone. Everyone has to find his own way to die.

God be with you,

Éva.

By evening they were in fact already on the train. They were discussing business matters, his father describing what had been happening in the firm while he had been away, what the prospects were, and what new responsibilities he had in mind for him.

Mihály listened in silence. He was going home. He would attempt once more what he had failed to do for fifteen years: to conform. Perhaps this time he would succeed. That was his fate. He was giving in. The facts were stronger than he was. There was no escaping. They were all too strong: the fathers, the Zoltáns, the business world, people.

His father fell asleep, and Mihály stared out of the window, trying to make out the contours of the Tuscan landscape by the light of the moon. He would have to remain with the living. He too would live: like the rats among the ruins, but nonetheless alive. And while there is life there is always the chance that something might happen …