Kornel Esti

XIV

In which are disclosed the mysterious doings of Gallus, the cultured translator who came to no good.

WE WERE TALKING ABOUT POETS AND WRITERS, OLD FRIENDS of ours, who had once set out with us but then had fallen away and vanished without a trace. From time to time we would toss a name into the air. Who could still remember him? We would nod, and faint smiles would flicker on our lips. The image of a face that we thought forgotten was mirrored in our eyes, a missing career and life. Who knew anything about him? Silence answered the question, a silence in which the desiccated wreath of his fame rustled like leaves in a cemetery. We said nothing.

We had been sitting in silence like that for some minutes when somebody mentioned Gallus.

“Poor chap,” said Kornél. “I still used to see him a few years ago — it must be eight or nine years now — in very sorry circumstances. Something happened to him then — something to do with a thriller, and something of a thriller itself, the most exciting and most painful thing I’ve ever been through.

“Well, you all knew him, after a fashion anyway. He was a capable man, lively, spontaneous, and conscientious and cultured as well. Spoke several languages. Spoke English so well that it was said that even the Prince of Wales took lessons from him. Lived over there for four years, in Cambridge.

“He had, however, one fatal shortcoming. No, he didn’t drink. But everything that came within reach he picked up. He thieved like a magpie. It didn’t matter to him whether it was a pocket watch, a pair of slippers, or a great big stovepipe. He never bothered about the value of the things he stole or how big they were. He often hadn’t any use for them. His enjoyment consisted simply in doing as he pleased — stealing. We, his closest friends, tried to make him see sense. We appealed to his better nature, pleasantly. We gave him a hard time and threatened him. He used to agree that we were right, he’d promise to struggle against his nature. But his mind struggled to no purpose, his nature was the stronger. He lapsed time and time again.

“Other people embarrassed and shamed him countless times, in public, caught him in the act, and at such times we had to make incredible efforts somehow to smooth over the consequences of what he’d done. On one occasion, however, on the Vienna express, he stole the wallet of a Moravian businessman who collared him then and there and handed him over to the police at the next station. He was brought back to Budapest in handcuffs.

“Once more we tried to save him. You, who are writers, know that everything turns on words, whether it’s a poem or a man’s fate. We gave evidence that he was a kleptomaniac, not a thief. The man we know is a kleptomaniac; the man we don’t know is a thief. The court didn’t know him, and so classified him as a thief and sentenced him to two years in jail.

“When he came out, one dark morning in December just before Christmas, he came straight round to me, hungry and in rags. He went down on his knees to me. Pleaded with me not to desert him, to help him, find him work. For the time being there could be no question of his writing under his own name. On the other hand, all he could do was write. So I called on a decent, kindly publisher and recommended him, and next day the publisher gave him an English thriller to translate — the sort of rubbish we wouldn’t soil our hands with. We wouldn’t read it. The most we’d do is translate it, and even then we’d wear gloves. The title was — to this day I can remember —

The Mysterious Mansion of Count Vicislav. But what did that matter? I was pleased to be able to do something, he was pleased to earn some money, and he cheerfully set to work. He worked so hard that he beat the deadline and delivered the translation in three weeks.

“I was infinitely amazed when a couple of days later the publisher phoned and told me that my protégé’s translation was completely unusable, and so he wasn’t prepared to pay him a thing for it. I couldn’t make it out. I got into a taxi and went round to the publishing house.

“The publisher said not a word but put the typescript in my hand. Our friend had typed it out beautifully, numbered the pages, and tied them together with ribbon in the national colors. That was typical of him, because — as I think I’ve said — in literary terms he was reliable, scrupulously precise. I began to read it. I cried out in delight. Well-formed sentences, apt turns of phrase, clever linguistic devices came one after another — more, perhaps, than that drivel deserved. I was amazed and asked the publisher what he found unacceptable. He now gave me the English original, still without comment, and asked me to compare the two. I spent half an hour dipping into the book and the translation in turn. Finally I stood up in astonishment. I declared that the publisher was perfectly right.

“Why? Don’t try to guess. You’ll be wrong. He hadn’t plagiarized something else. It really was a translation of The Mysterious Mansion of Count Vicislav—fluent, artistic, in places poetic in spirit. Once again, you’d be wrong. There wasn’t a single mistranslation to be found in it. After all, his knowledge of English was perfect, as was his Hungarian. Stop guessing. It’s something the like of which you’ve never heard. The problem was something different. Completely different.

“I myself came to it only slowly, bit by bit. Look here. The first sentence of the English original went like this: All thirty-six windows in the ancient, weather-beaten mansion were gleaming. Up in the ballroom on the second floor, four crystal chandeliers shed a brilliant light. In the Hungarian it said: All twelve windows in the ancient, weather-beaten mansion were gleaming. Up in the ballroom on the second floor, t wo crystal chandeliers shed a brilliant light. Eyes wide, I read on. On the third page the English author had written: With a scornful smile Count Vicislav took out his bulging wallet and flung down the sum required, five thousand pounds. This the Hungarian translator had made into: With a scornful smile Count Vicislav took out his bulging wallet and flung down the sum required, a hundred and fifty pounds. I was now filled with an ominous suspicion which in the following minutes — alas — was confirmed into lamentable cer tainty. Farther down, at the bottom of the third page of the English edition, I read: Countess Eleonora was sitting in a corner of the ballroom in evening dress and wearing the old family jewels: on her head was the diamond tiara which she had inherited from her great-grandmother, wife of the German Elector, on her white bosom was the opalescent gleam of a necklace of real pearls, and her fingers were almost stiff with rings set with diamonds, sapphires, and emeralds. The Hungarian, to my no small surprise, rendered this glowing description: Countess Eleonora was sitting in a corner of the ballroom in evening dress. That was all. Gone were the diamond tiara, the pearl necklace, the diamond, sapphire, and emerald rings.

“Do you see what he’d done, our unfortunate fellow-writer who deserved a better fate? He’d simply pilfered Countess Eleonora’s family jewels, and with similar inexcusable frivolity robbed Count Vicislav too, who was such a nice man, leaving him only a hundred and fifty out of his five thousand pounds, and at the same time he’d made off with two of the four crystal chandeliers in the ballroom and disposed of twenty-four of the windows in the ancient, weather-beaten mansion. My world was going topsy-turvy, and my dismay reached its peak when I established beyond all doubt that this continued with deadly persistence throughout the book. Wherever the translator’s pen went it always plundered the characters, whom he had only just met, and spared property neither personal nor real, violating the scarcely debatable sanctity of private ownership. He worked in a variety of ways. Most often items simply disappeared entirely. In the Hungarian text I found looted wholesale the carpets, safes, and silverware which are called upon to raise the tone in English literature. At other times he had filched a part of them, half or two-thirds. If a character told his servant to put five suitcases into his railway compartment, there was mention of only two and a dishonest silence about the other three. For me, at least, the most damaging detail — because it definitely spoke of bad faith and unmanliness — was that he frequently substituted worthless and inferior materials for noble metals and precious stones, replacing platinum with tinplate, gold with brass, and diamonds with quartz crystals or glass.

“I took my leave of the publisher with hanging head. Out of curiosity I asked for the typescript and the English original. As the real mystery of this thriller intrigued me, I continued my detective work at home and prepared a complete inventory of the stolen goods. I worked without a break from one in the afternoon until half past six. In the end I calculated that in the course of the translation our misguided colleague had, illegally and improperly, appropriated from the English text £1,579,251, together with 177 gold rings, 947 pearl necklaces, 181 pocket watches, 309 earrings, and 435 suitcases, not to mention land — field and forest alike — ducal and baronial mansions, and sundry other items, e.g. handkerchiefs, pocket pistols, and pendants, the listing of which would have been tedious and perhaps futile.

“Where did he put these chattels and real estate, which, after all, existed only on paper, in the realm of the imagination, and what was his purpose in stealing them? The investigation of that would lead us far afield, and I won’t dwell on it. It all convinced me, however, that he was still a slave to his sinful passion or sickness, that there was no hope of a cure, and that he didn’t even deserve the support of decent society. In my moral indignation I washed my hands of him, I abandoned him to his fate. Since then I’ve heard nothing of him.”