Kornel Esti

I

In which the writer introduces and unveils Kornél Esti, the sole hero of this book

I HAD PASSED THE MIDPOINT OF MY LIFE, WHEN ONE WINDY day in spring, I remembered Kornél Esti. I decided to call on him and to revive our former friendship.

By then we’d had no contact for ten years. What had come between us? I don’t know. We hadn’t fallen out. At least, not like other people do.

Once I’d passed the age of thirty, however, he began to irritate me. His frivolity was offensive. I became tired of his old-fashioned wing collars, his narrow yellow ties, and especially his atrocious puns. His determined eccentricity wore me out. He was forever getting mixed up in escapades of one sort or another.

For instance, one day as we were walking along the esplanade together, he, without a word of explanation, took from the inside pocket of his coat a kitchen knife, and to the amazement of the passers by started to sharpen it on the stones that lined the path. Or, another time, he most politely accosted a poor blind man to remove from his eye a speck of dust that had just gone into it. On one occasion, when I was expecting some very distinguished guests for dinner, men on whom my fate and career depended, editors-in-chief, politicians — gentlemen of rank and distinction — and Esti was also a guest in my home, he craftily made my servants heat the bathroom, took my guests aside one by one as they arrived, and informed them that there was in my house an ancient, mysterious, family tradition or superstition — unfortunately, no details could be given — that required all guests without exception to take a bath before dinner, and he carried off this ridiculous prank with such devilish tact, cunning, and honeyed words that the credulous victims, who favored us with their presence for the first and last time, without my knowledge all took baths, as did their wives, and then, without batting an eyelid at the awful practical joke, sat down to dinner as if nothing had happened.

That kind of practical joke had amused me in the past, but now, at the beginning of my adult life, it rather annoyed me. I was afraid that sort of thing might easily jeopardize my good name. I didn’t say a word to him. Nevertheless — I confess — he embarrassed me more than once.

He too may well have felt the same about me. In the depths of his heart he probably looked down on me for not according his ideas the respect that they deserved — perhaps he even despised me. He took me for a philistine because I used to buy an engagement diary, wrote in it every day, and did all the right things. On one occasion he accused me of forgetting what it was like to be young. And there may have been some truth in that. But that’s the way life goes. Everyone forgets.

Slowly, imperceptibly, we drifted apart, but despite all that I understood him and he understood me. It was just that we kept passing judgment on one another secretly. The thought that we understood one another, yet didn’t, set us both on edge. We went our separate ways. He went left — I went right.

For ten long years we had lived like that, without giving one another a sign of our existence. Naturally, however, I’d thought of him. Scarcely a day went by when I didn’t wonder what he would do or say in this or that situation. And I must suppose that he too thought of me. After all, our past was pervaded by so vigorous and pulsating a network of veins of memory that it couldn’t have been so soon forgotten.

It would be difficult to give a full account of who and what he had been to me. I wouldn’t even care to try. My memory doesn’t go back as far as our friendship. Its beginnings are lost in the primeval mists of my infancy. He had been close to me ever since I’d been aware of myself, always in front of me or behind, always with me or against me. I’d worshipped Esti or loathed him, but I’d never been indifferent to him.

One winter evening, after supper, I was building a tower of colored building bricks. Mother wanted me put to bed. She sent Nanny for me, because at that time I was still in skirts, and I started to go with her. Then a voice came from behind me, his unforgettable voice:

“Don’t go.”

I turned round and, in delight and alarm, looked at him. It was the first time that I’d seen him. He gave me an encouraging grin. I took his arm for him to help me, but Nanny pulled me away and, rage though I might, put me to bed.

From then on we met every day.

In the morning he would spring forward by the washstand.

“Don’t wash up, stay dirty, hooray for dirt!”

If at lunch, despite my convictions to the contrary, I began at my parents’ repeated request to spoon up the “nourishing and wholesome” lentil soup, he would whisper in my ear:

“Spit it out, throw up onto your plate, wait for the roast or the dessert.”

Sometimes he was at home with me, at table or in bed, but he went into the street with me as well.

Once Uncle Loizi was coming toward us, an old friend of my father’s, whom I had always liked and respected, a three-hundred-pound magistrate. Kornél shouted at me:

“Stick your tongue out.” And he stuck out his own till it reached the point of his chin.

He was a cheeky boy, but interesting, never dull.

He put a lighted candle in my hand.

“Set fire to the curtains!” he urged me. “Set fire to the house. Set the world on fire.”

He put a knife in my hand too.

“Stick it in your heart!” he exclaimed. “Blood’s red. Blood’s warm. Blood’s pretty.”

I didn’t dare follow his suggestions, but I was pleased that he dared to put into words what I thought. I said nothing, gave a chilly smile. I was afraid of him and attracted to him.

After a summer shower I found a sparrow chick, drenched, under the broom bush. As I had been taught in Scripture lessons, I put it on my palm, and performing an act of bodily and spiritual kindness, took it into the kitchen to dry it by the fire. I sprinkled crumbs in front of it. Tucked it up in some rags. Sat it on my arm and stroked it.

“Tear its wings of,” whispered Kornél. “Poke its eyes out, throw it in the fire, kill it!”

“You’re crazy!” I shouted.

“You’re a coward!” shouted he.

White-faced, we glared at one another. We were shaking, I with rage and empathy, he from curiosity and bloodlust. I thrust the chick at him: he could do what he wanted with it. Kornél looked at me and took pity on the little thing. He began to tremble. I pouted scornfully. While we were thus at odds the sparrow chick slipped out into the garden and disappeared.

So he didn’t dare do everything. He liked to talk big and make things up.

I remember how one autumn evening, about six o’clock, he called me out to the gate and there informed me, mysteriously and importantly, that he could actually work magic. He showed me a shiny metal object in his hand. He said that it was a magic whistle, and he only had to blow it for any house to rise up into the air, all the way to the moon. He said that at ten o’clock that evening he was going to levitate our house. He told me not to be afraid, just to watch closely what happened.

At the time I was quite a big boy. I believed him, and yet I didn’t. I rushed back into the apartment in agitation. I watched constantly as the hands of the clock moved on. Just in case, I went over the events of my past life, repented of my sins, knelt in front of the picture of the Blessed Virgin, and prayed. At about ten I heard music and a rustling in the air. Our house rose slowly, smoothly upwards, came to a stop at a height, then rocked and just as slowly and smoothly as it had risen, sank back to earth. A glass on the table rattled and the hanging lamp shook. The whole affair had lasted a couple of minutes. The others hadn’t even noticed. Only my mother turned pale when she looked at me.

“You’re having a giddy turn,” she said, and sent me to bed.

My friendship with Kornél really deepened when the first pimples appeared on our foreheads, the purple springtime buds of adolescence. We were inseparable. We read and argued. I defied him, refuted his wicked ideas. One thing is certain, he was the one who introduced me to all sorts of bad habits. He enlightened me about how children were born; he once told me that adults were yellow, tobacco-smelling, bloated villains and deserved no respect because they were uglier than us and would die sooner; he encouraged me not to study, to lie in bed as long as possible in the morning even if I was late for school; he suggested that I should break into my father’s drawers and open his letters; he brought me dirty books and postcards which you had to hold up to the candle; he taught me to sing, lie, and write poetry; he encouraged me to say dirty words, one after another, to watch girls getting changed through cracks in cubicles in the summer, and to pester them at dancing class with my improper desires; he made me smoke my first cigarette and drink my first glass of pálinka; he gave me a taste for the pleasures of the flesh, gluttony and fornication; he revealed to me that even in my pain there was a secret delight; he tore the scabs off my itching wounds; he proved that everything was relative and that a toad could have a soul just as much as a managing director; he gave me a liking for mute animals and silent solitude; he once consoled me when I was choking in tears at a funeral by tickling my side, at which I suddenly burst out laughing at the stupid incomprehensibility of death; he smuggled mockery into my feelings, rebelliousness into my despair; he advised me to side with those whom the majority spit on, imprison, and hang; he announced that death is eternal; and he wanted me to believe the wicked lie, which I opposed with all my might, that there was no God. My innocent, healthy nature never accepted those opinions at all. I felt, nevertheless, that it would be good to be free of his influence and finally to have done with him, only I lacked the strength: it seems that he still interested me. And then, I was greatly in his debt. He’d been my teacher and now I owed him my life, as does one that has sold his soul to the devil.

My father didn’t like him.

“Where’s that cheeky brat?” he burst into my room one evening. “Where’ve you hidden him? Where’s he hiding?”

I held out my arms, showing him that I was alone.

“He’s always here!” he thundered. “He’s always hanging about. Always pestering you. You eat off the same plate, drink from the same glass. You’re Castor and Pollux. Good friends,” he sneered.

He looked behind the door, behind the stove, in the cupboard. He even looked under the bed to see if Kornél might be there.

“Now you listen to me!” he trumpeted as his rage reached its peak. “If he ever again, just once, sets foot in this house, I’ll knock his block off, I’ll kick him out like a dog, and you as well, and you go where you like, I’ll disown you! So, don’t let him into my house again. Understand?”

He paced to and fro, hands behind his back, controlling his temper. His shoes squeaked.

“He’s a lazybones. He’s a mischief-maker. Can’t you make any other friends? He fills your head with nonsense. He’s driving you mad. Do you want to be a rotten character like him? He’s nobody and nothing, you know. He’ll never amount to anything.”

Kornél wasn’t allowed to show himself. He even avoided our street.

We used to meet in secret, out of town — at the cattle market, where the circus used to pitch their marquee every summer, or in the cemetery among the graves.

We strolled, arms round one another’s necks. On one such passionate walk we stumbled on the fact that both of us had been born in the same year, on the same day,and at the very same hour and minute: March 29, 1885, Palm Sunday, at six in the morning. This mysterious revelation affected us deeply. We vowed that as we had first seen the world on the same day and at the same hour, we would both likewise die at the same hour of the same day, neither outliving the other by a single second, and in the raptures of youth we were convinced we would perform our vow with ready joy, painlessly and without sacrifice for either of us.

“You aren’t feeling sorry about him, are you?” my mother questioned as I dozed in front of the oil lamp, thinking of Kornél. “It’s better this way, son. He’s not good for you. Make friends with other boys, honest, decent young gentlemen like young Merey, Endre Horváth, Ilosvay. They’re fond of you. He’s never cared about you. Just got you down, worried you, got on your nerves. How often did you suddenly wake up screaming in November? He isn’t fit for you. He’s got nothing going for him. He’s useless, has no heart. You, son, aren’t like that. You’re a good boy, good-hearted, you feel things deeply,” she said, and gave me a kiss. “You’re not like him at all, son.”

And so it was. There were no two people on the planet more different than Kornél and myself.

I found what happened a few days after that conversation all the more peculiar.

I was hurrying home from school in the midday sunshine with my books done up in their strap when someone called after me:

“Kornél!”

A gentleman in a green coat was smiling at me.

“Look here, young Kornél,” he began, and asked me to take a parcel round to the neighbors when I got home.

“I beg your pardon,” I stammered.

“What’s the matter, son?” he asked. “It looks as if you haven’t understood.”

“Yes I have,” I replied. “But you’ve made a mistake. I’m not Kornél Esti.”

“What?” the man in the green coat was puzzled. “Don’t play games, son. You live in Gombkötő utca, don’t you?”

“No, sir. We live in Damjanich utca.”

“Are you related to Kornél?”

“No, I’m sorry. I go to school with him. We’re in the same class, and he sits by me in the second row. But last term Kornél failed two subjects, his work was untidy, and his behavior was bad, but I’m top of the class, good marks in everything, my work’s tidy, my behavior’s good, and I’m also learning French and the piano privately.”

“I could have sworn …,” the man in the green coat muttered into space. “It’s strange,” he said, and he raised his eyebrows.

It also happened on several occasions that when we were out walking by the railway embankment on the other side of the woods passersby, strangers, spoke to us and asked whether we were twins.

“Look at those two,” they nudged each other, “just look at them,” and they laughed with pleasure.

They made us stand side by side, then back to back with our heads touching, and measured our height, putting their hands on top of our heads.

“A hairsbreadth isn’t much,” they assured us, shaking their heads. “But there isn’t even that much difference. Isn’t that remarkable, Bódi? Isn’t it just?”

Later on, when we had grown up and both of us were writing, there were from time to time many things that I myself failed to understand.

I would suddenly get letters from people I didn’t know, asking me to return the small amounts that they had placed at my disposal in Kassa, Vienna, or Kolozsvár, at the station, before the train left, because I’d told them that I’d lost my purse and given my word of honor to pay them back within twenty-four hours. Impolite telephone calls would accuse me of writing anonymous letters. My closest friends would see me with their own eyes wandering about for hours on end in the pouring winter rain through curving alleyways and disreputable streets, or lying blind drunk and snoring on the red tablecloth of a bar in some run-down area. The headwaiter of the Vitriol — a low dive — presented me with a bill, to avoid paying which I’d allegedly run out through a side door. Several reliable witnesses heard me in company make the rudest remarks about people of high standing, respected writers of national repute. Seconds in duels with jaunty monocles called on me, porters came with my visiting card, girls with the flower of their innocence broken unfolded before me my vows and offers of marriage. A stout, middle-aged lady from the provinces also arrived, called me te, and threatened me in her local dialect with a paternity suit.

Flabbergasted, I stared at these nightmare figures, who had certainly — either in my imagination or in real life — at one time lived and breathed, but were now black and dead and cold, like glowing embers after they’ve cooled, died down, and crumbled to ash. I didn’t know them. They, however, knew me and recognized me. Some I told to go and see Kornél. At that they smiled. Asked for a personal description of him. And at that they derisively pointed at me. They asked for his address. There I couldn’t really help them. My friend was most of the time traveling abroad, sleeping on aircraft, stopping here and there for a day or two, and to the best of my knowledge had never yet registered with the police. Kornél Esti certainly existed, but he was not a legal entity. So however innocent I knew myself to be of all these terrible crimes, the case against me didn’t look good. For Kornél’s sake I didn’t expose myself to the unpleasantness of confrontation. I had to take upon myself all his debts, his tricks, his dishonesty, as if I were responsible for them all.

I paid. Paid a lot. Not only money. I paid with my reputation too. People everywhere looked at me askance. They didn’t know where they were with me, whether I was right or left off center, whether I was a patriotic citizen or a dangerous rabble-rouser, a respectable family man or a depraved voluptuary, and altogether whether I was a real person or just a dream figure — a drunken, double-dealing, lunatic scarecrow who still flapped his ragged, cast-off gentleman’s coat whichever way the wind blew. I paid dearly for our friendship.

All that, however, I instantly forgot and forgave on that windy spring day when I decided to call on him.

That was a mad day. Not the first of April, but not far off. A mad, excited day. In the morning there was a frost, with mirrors of ice crackling on the iron gratings round the trees and the sky a bright blue. Then a thaw set in. Water dripped from the eaves. Mist spread over the hills. A lukewarm drizzle fell. The earth steamed like an overdriven, sweating horse. We had to throw off our winter coats. A rainbow hung its gaudy arc above the Danube. In the afternoon hail fell. It frosted the trees and squashed into slush beneath our feet. The wind whistled. Whistled keenly. Whistled up on high, round the chimneys, on the roofs of houses, in the telephone wires — everything was in motion. Houses groaned, attics creaked, beams sighed, wanting to put out buds, because they too had been trees. In that starting, that revolution, in came spring.

I listened to the whistling of the wind and remembered Kornél. I felt an irresistible desire to see him as soon as I could.

I telephoned here and there, to coffeehouses, nightclubs. By late evening all that I had been able to discover was that he was in Hungary. I tracked him on foot and in the car. At two in the morning I learned that he was staying at the Denevér Hotel. By the time I reached it a Russian blizzard was raging around me, and the collar of my raincoat was filled with its frothy flakes.

The porter at the Denevér directed me to room 7 on the fifth floor. I climbed a narrow spiral staircase, as there was no elevator. The door of room 7 was ajar. Inside the light was on. I went in.

I saw an empty bed, the blankets thrown back in a heap, and a feeble electric light on the nightstand. I thought that he’d popped out somewhere. I sat down on the sofa to wait for him.

But then I noticed that he was there, opposite me, sitting in front of the mirror. I jumped up. He did too.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello,” said he immediately, as if he wanted to pick up just where we had left off.

He wasn’t at all surprised at my bursting in so late. He wasn’t surprised at anything. He didn’t even ask what I wanted.

“How are you?” he asked.

“Very well, thank you. And you?”

“Likewise,” he replied.

He stared at me and laughed.

He was wearing a raincoat. There was snow on his collar too.

“Just got in?”

“Yes,” he nodded.

I looked round the room. It was a dingy hole. A narrow, dilapidated sofa, two chairs, a cupboard, a five-day-old newspaper on the table, a bunch of wilting violets. A mask, too, goodness knows what for. Cigarette butts on the floor, yellow spectacles and quince jelly in the violin case, open suitcases. A few books, mostly timetables. No pen or paper to be seen. Where he worked was a mystery.

My father had been right. He hadn’t amounted to anything. Here there was nothing but the poverty of a hermit, the liberty and independence of a beggar. I had wanted that sort of thing at one time. My eyes filled with tears.

“What’s new?” he inquired.

Outside the wind was howling. The cutting spring wind whistled shrilly. A siren too was wailing.

“Ambulance,” he said.

We went to the window. The blizzard had stopped. The sky shone crystal clear, as did the frosty roadway. The ambulance siren shrieked in competition with the spring wind.

Scarcely had it passed when a fire engine roared past to somewhere, its light flashing.

“Accidents,” I said. “All day long bricks have been falling, shop-signs crashing down on the heads of passersby. People have been slipping and falling on the icy sidewalks, hurting their hands, spraining their ankles, bleeding. Houses and factories have been catching fire. All sorts of things have been happening today. Frost, heat, mist, sunshine, rain, rainbow, snow, blood, and fire. It’s spring.”

We sat down and lit cigarettes.

“Kornél,” I broke the silence, “aren’t you angry?”

“Me?” and he shrugged. “Idiot! I can never be angry with you.”

“But you’d have good reason. Look, I was angry with you. I was embarrassed by you in front of people that mattered, I’ve had to get on, I’ve denied you. Haven’t even looked in your direction for ten years. But this afternoon, when the wind whistled, I thought of you and felt remorse. I’m not young any more. I turned forty last week. When you’re not young, you mellow and you can forgive everything. Even youth. Let’s make up.”

I stretched out a hand.

“Oh, you haven’t changed,” he scoffed. “Always so sentimental.”

“But you have, Kornél. When we were children you were the grownup, you were the leader, you opened my eyes. Now you’re the child.”

“Aren’t they both the same?”

“That’s what I like about you. That’s why I’ve come back, and now I’m going to put up with you forever.”

“What’s the matter with you today, that you’re saying such nice things about me?”

“Well, who else am I to say nice things about, Kornél? Who is there but you that I could love and not feel jealous of? Whom can I admire in this round world if not you, my brother and my opposite? Identical in everything and different in everything. I’ve gathered, you’ve thrown away, I’ve gotten married, you’ve stayed a bachelor, I worship my people, my language, I can only live and breathe here in Hungary, but you travel the world, fly above nations, in freedom, shrieking ever lasting revolt. I need you. I’m empty and bored without you. Help me, otherwise I’ll die.”

“I could do with somebody as well,” he said, “a pillar, a handrail, because look, I’m going to pieces,” and he gestured at the room.

“Let’s stick together,” I suggested. “Let’s make a deal.”

“To do what?”

“Let’s write something, together.”

He opened his eyes wide. Spat his cigarette onto the floor.

“I can’t write anymore,” he said.

“But it’s all I can do,” I said.

“Oh really,” he replied, and gave me a hard look.

“Don’t misunderstand me, Kornél. I’m not showing of, only complaining, like you. Make me whole again, like you used to. In those days, when I was asleep you were awake, when I cried you laughed. Help me now too — remember the things I forget, and forget what I remember. I’m worth something as well. Everything I know will be at your disposal. I’ve got a home, everything there helps my work, and it will help yours too. I work hard, I’m devout and loyal. So loyal that I can’t upset anyone with whom I’ve exchanged a single word, not even in my mind. I’m so loyal, Kornél, that because of my old dog I won’t even pet other dogs, or play with them, or even look at them. Even to inanimate objects — sometimes I ignore my fifteen excellent fountain pens and bring out a worn-out, scratchy pen which it’s torture to write with, and scratch away so as to cheer it up, poor thing, and prevent it from feeling unwanted. I’m loyalty incarnate. You’ll be disloyalty, instability, at my side. Let’s start a business partnership. What can a poet achieve without anyone? What can anyone achieve without a poet? Let’s be joint authors. One man isn’t enough to write and live at the same time. Those who’ve tried it have all broken down sooner or later. Only Goethe could do it, that calm, cheerful immortal; when I think of him a shiver runs down my spine, because there’s never been a cleverer and more fearsome man, that splendid, Olympian monster, beside whom even Mephistopheles is a worthless snob. Yes, he forgave and saved Margaret, whom the earthly judges had imprisoned, and took the mother who had killed her child to heaven among the archangels and learned men of the faith, and made hidden choirs sing his eternal defense of womanhood and motherhood. A few years later, though, when he sat as a magistrate in Weimar and had to pass judgment on a similar infanticide mother, Margaret’s former champion condemned the girl to death without batting an eyelid.”

“So he sent her to heaven too,” muttered Kornél. “He acted consistently.”

“Quite,” I retorted. “Only neither of us would be capable of such vicious and divine wisdom. But if we joined forces, Kornél, we might perhaps get somewhere near it. Like Night and Day, Reality and Imag ination, Ahriman and Ormuzd. What do you say?”

“The trouble is,” he complained, “I get bored, bored beyond words with letters and sentences. You scribble away and in the end you see that the same words keep repeating themselves. It’s all no, but, that, rather, therefore. It’s infuriating.”

“I’ll see to that. All you need to do is talk.”

“I’ll only be able to talk about myself. About what’s happened to me. And what has happened? Just a minute. Nothing really. Hardly anything happens to most people. But I’ve imagined a lot. That’s part of our lives too. The truth isn’t just that we’ve kissed a woman, but also that we’ve secretly lusted after her, wanted to kiss her. Often the actual woman’s the lie and the lust is the truth. A dream is also reality. If I dream that I’ve been to Egypt, I can write an account of the journey.”

“So will it be a travelogue?” I joked, “or a biography?”

“Neither.”

“A novel?”

“God forbid! All novels begin: ‘A young man was going along a dark street, with his collar turned up.’ Then it turns out that the man with the turned-up collar’s the hero of the novel. Working up interest. Dreadful.”

“What, then?”

“All three in one. A travelogue — I’ll say where I would have liked to go — and a biography in the form of a novel: I’ll give details of how often the hero died in my dream. But one thing I insist on — don’t glue it all together with an idiotic story. Everything must be exactly what you’d expect from a poet: fragments.”

We agreed to meet more often in future, in the Torpedo or the Vitriol. If the worst came to the worst, on the telephone.

He walked me to the door.

“Oh,” in the corridor he slapped his forehead. “Something I forgot. What about the style?”

“We’ll be writing together.”

“But our styles are poles apart. You’ve recently been favoring calm, simplicity, classical images. Not much decoration, not many words. My style, on the other hand, is still restless, untidy, congested, ornate, racy. I’m an incurable romantic. Lots of epithets, lots of images. I won’t let you cut that out.”

“Tell you what,” I reassured him. “Let’s meet in the middle. I’ll take down what you say in shorthand, then erase some of it.”

“In what proportion?”

“Five out of ten of your images will stay.”

“And fifty out of a hundred of my epithets,” added Kornél. “That’ll do.”

He slapped my hand. It was a deal. He leaned on his elbows over the banister as I went down the spiral stairs.

No sooner had I reached the bottom than I thought of something.

“Kornél!” I called up, “Who’s going to put his name to our book?”

“Doesn’t matter!” he called down. “Perhaps you’d better. You put your name to it. And my name can be the title. The title’s in bigger letters.”

He kept his word marvelously. For a year we met once or twice a month, and he always brought some new experience or novel-chapter from his life. In between, he’d just go away for a few days. I put his tales on paper partly from my shorthand notes, partly from memory, and put them in the order he wanted. That’s how this book came to be written.