Kornel Esti

XVI

In which Elinger pulls him out of the water, but he pushes Elinger in.

THE BATHERS SWAM OUT TO THE MIDDLE OF THE DANUBE, into the wake of the Vienna boat, squealing as they were rocked and tossed by the huge waves. Esti sprawled on the shore every morning in his swimsuit and envied the lively company. He could swim better than anyone there, but his imagination also functioned better than theirs. Therefore he was a coward.

One day he made up his mind that, come what may, he was going to swim to the other bank.

His muscular arms flailed the water. He had reached the middle of the Danube before he realized it. There he stopped for a moment. He took stock of himself. He wasn’t out of breath, his heartbeat was normal. He could have gone on for a long time. It crossed his mind, however, that he wasn’t afraid, and that thought, that he wasn’t afraid, frightened him so much that he immediately became afraid.

He turned round. The bank from which he had set out, however, looked farther away than the other. And so he struck out for the far side. In this direction the water seemed unfamiliar, deep and cold. He got a cramp in his left leg. When he kicked out his right leg, its muscles knotted too. As was his custom, he tried to turn onto his back, but only wallowed, rolled, went under, drank a couple of gulps, vanished for a moment or two, and then sank downward, enveloped in the dark veils of the water. His hands beat in desperation.

This was seen on the bank. The shout went up that someone was drowning in mid-river.

A young man in blue trousers, who had been leaning on the rail by the changing rooms, flung himself into the waves and swam powerfully toward the drowning man.

He arrived in the nick of time.

Esti’s head had just emerged above the water. The lifesaver took a grip on his long hair and dragged him ashore.

There he quickly regained consciousness.

When he opened his eyes he looked at the sky, then the sand, then the people who were standing there in the golden sunlight, their unclothed bodies gleaming silver. Another gentleman, similarly unclothed and wearing dark glasses, was kneeling beside him and taking his pulse. Evidently a doctor.

The group that had formed around him was looking with keen interest at the young man in blue trousers, the one who — as he discovered — had recently snatched him from the jaws of death amid frenzied public curiosity.

He came up, extended his hand and said:

“Elinger.”

“Esti,” Esti introduced himself.

“Oh, maestro,” the young man was deferential, “ who wouldn’t know the maestro?”

Esti tried to conduct himself like a person that “everyone knew.”

He was in some perplexity.

In the past he’d been given all sorts of things. As a boy a splendid stamp album, a gold ring as a present from his godparents, later a number of appreciative reviews, even an academic prize, but more than this he had never before received at one time. Only once, from his father and mother.

This new acquaintance had given him back his life. If he hadn’t happened to come bathing that afternoon, or if at the crucial moment he’d been lighting a cigarette instead of immediately diving in headfirst, Esti would by now have been down among the fish on the riverbed … in some unknown place … goodness knows where … Yes, he was reborn. He had now been born a second time, at the age of thirty-two.^*

He got up and gripped the young man’s hand.

He mumbled:

“Thank you.”

“Oh, don’t mention it.”

“Thank you,” he said, as if by way of acknowledging receipt of a light from someone in the street, and because he sensed the inadequacy of words he gave emphasis to his feeling by stress, and repeated warmly “Thank you.”

“Think nothing of it.”

‘My life?’ thought Esti, then said aloud: “What you did, sir, was magnificent. It was heroic. It was human.”

“Only too pleased.”

“But I can’t express … can’t express,” Esti stammered, and at that took the young man’s other hand too and shook both vigorously.

“Oh, not at all,” stammered the young man.

“After all this, we ought to get to know one another. I don’t know if you’d be free?”

“Any time, maestro.”

“Today? No, not today. Come round for a coffee tomorrow. Wait a minute, let’s say the evening. You know, the roof terrace of the Glasgow. Nine o’clock.”

“You do me a very great honor.”

“So you’ll come?”

“Certainly.”

“Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

The young man bowed. Esti embraced his soaking form and left. As he made for the changing room, he looked back at him more than once and waved several times.

At nine precisely he appeared on the roof terrace of the Glasgow. He looked for his man. At first he couldn’t find him anywhere. At the tables, grass widows were cooling themselves in front of electric fans, drinking Buck’s Fizz with other women.

At half past nine Esti began to feel anxious. He had a spiritual need for this meeting. It would have grieved him if they were to miss each other, if he were never again to see his greatest benefactor as the result of a misunderstanding. One after another he called the waiters and asked about Elinger.

It then turned out that he couldn’t even describe him. All that he could remember was that he wore blue trousers and had a gold front tooth.

Finally, right by the elevator, where the waiters went in and out by the potted plants, he caught sight of someone sitting with his back to the public and waiting modestly. He went over to him.

“Excuse me, Mr. Elinger?”

“That’s right.”

“So here you are then? How long have you been here?”

“Since half past eight.”

“Didn’t you see me?”

“Of course.”

“Why didn’t you come over?”

“I was afraid of disturbing the maestro.”

“What an idea! We don’t know each other, do we. That’s very interesting. My dear fellow, come along. Over here, over here. Leave that. The waiter will bring your things over.”

He was half a head shorter than Esti, thinner, less muscular. His reddish-blond hair was parted in the middle. He was wearing a white summer shirt, a belt, and a silk tie.

Esti stared into his face. So this was he. This was what a hero was like, a real hero. He looked at him long and closely. His brow was firm, gleaming, evincing determination and decisiveness. Esti felt life around him, real life, which he had forsaken in favor of literature. The thought flashed through his mind of how many interesting spirits lived in obscurity, unknown to the world, and that he ought to get out and about more. It was principally Elinger’s simplicity that charmed him, that great simplicity that he had never had at his disposal, because evidently even in his cradle he had been laby rinthine and complex.

“Let’s have something to eat first of all,” he proposed lightly. “I’m ravenous. I hope you are as well.”

“No, I had tea not long ago.”

“That’s a shame,” replied Esti absently as he studied the menu. “A great shame. Well, you’ll have some dinner. Now then, what is there? Pike-perch as a starter, right. Green peas, just the thing, as well. Fried chicken, cucumber salad. Gateau. Strawberries and cream. Excellent. Beer, wine afterwards. Badacsonyi. Mineral water. Everything, please,” he added expansively.

Elinger sat in front of him, eyes closed, like someone who had done something wrong.

The roof garden with its electric lights blazed up into the sweltering sky. Down below, the city with its dusty houses and bridges panted in the black African darkness. Only the line of the Danube gleamed dully.

“Undo your collar,” Esti advised, “it’s still as hot as hell. I’ve been writing all day wearing nothing. All I had on was my fountain pen.”

Elinger said nothing.

Esti laid a hand on his and said with warm interest:

“Now tell me something about yourself. What do you do?”

“I work in an office.”

“Where?”

“First Hungarian Oil.”

“Well, fancy that,” said Esti, and didn’t know why himself, “fancy that. Married?”

“No.”

“Neither am I,” Esti laughed to the heavens, which on that elevated roof garden seemed somewhat closer to him.

“My life,” said Elinger mysteriously and significantly, “has been a real tragedy,” and he showed anemic gums above his gold tooth. “I lost my father very early, I wasn’t yet three. My poor widowed mother was left alone with five children, whom she raised by the work of her two hands.”

“All this is raw material,” thought Esti, “uninteresting and lacking in content. Only that which has form has interest and content.”

“Thank God,” Elinger went on, “since then we’ve all been successful. My sisters have married well. And I’ve got a bit of a job. I can’t complain.”

They both ate heartily. After telling the story of his life Elinger had nothing else to say. Esti tried now and then to revive the flagging conversation. He asked Elinger when and how he’d learned to swim so very well. He replied with laconic objectivity, then sank into uncomfortable silence.

After the strawberries the French champagne was brought in an ice bucket.

“Have some,” Esti urged. “Come along. How old are you?”

“Thirty-one.”

“Then I’m the elder. If you’ll permit …”^*

At the end of the meal Esti announced:

“I’ll be at your disposal at any time — understand that — at any time. Not like people that say ‘any time’—I mean now, this minute, tomorrow, in a year’s time, in twenty years’ time, as long as I live. Any way that I can. Heart and soul. What you did is something I’ll never forget. I’ll be eternally grateful.”

“You embarrass me.”

“No, no. If it hadn’t been for you I’d certainly not be dining here today. So feel free to call on me.”

When the time came to pay, Elinger reached for his wallet.

“Now put that away,” Esti stopped him.

Once again he expressed his good will.

“You absolutely must come and see me. Give me a call first. Make a note of my number.”

Elinger wrote down Esti’s number. He gave him the number of First Hungarian Oil. Esti wrote it down.

“Why did I do that?” he wondered as they parted. “Never mind. Next time there’s any lifesaving to be done I may be able to call him.”

The telephone number lay unused on his desk for a long time, then vanished. He didn’t call him. Nor did Elinger call. Months went by without any sign of life from him.

Esti, however, often thought of Elinger.

People that we’ve long been expecting mostly show up just when we’re having a shave, are cross at having broken a new gramophone record, or have been getting a splinter out of a finger and our hand is still bleeding. The petty circumstances of life never permit ceremonious, decorous meetings.

Before Christmas it was freezing hard. Esti’s mind was on anything but swimming and drowning. It was a Sunday, about half past eleven. He was getting ready for a lecture which began at one.

Then Elinger was shown in.

“Glad you’ve come at last!” Esti exclaimed. “What’s new, Elinger?”

“I would have come before,” said Elinger, “only my mother’s been ill. Seriously ill. Last week she was taken into hospital with a brain hemorrhage. I’d be grateful if you could …”

“How much do you need?”

“Two hundred pengős.” ^*

“Two hundred?” said Esti. “I haven’t got that much on me. Here’s a hundred and fifty. I’ll send fifty round in the morning.”

Esti sent the other fifty round that same day. He knew that this was a debt of honor which he had to discharge. After all, he had received his life from Elinger on credit, and he was entitled to that much interest.

As his mother’s illness continued, he gave Elinger in lesser and greater amounts a further two hundred pengős, and then, when she died, three hundred and fifty more after the funeral, which he himself raised on credit.

After that Elinger called several times. He got from him, on various pretexts, on his word of honor, small, trifling amounts. Sometimes twenty pengős, sometimes just five.

Esti paid out with a certain delight. Afterward his feeling was one of relief. He simply couldn’t stand his presence, those bloodless gums, his gold tooth, and his boring chatter.

“This fellow,” thought Esti, waking up to the truth, “is one of the biggest idiots in the world. It took somebody like him to save my life. If he were any brighter he’d surely have left me to drown.”

One day, when Esti came home in the small hours, there was Elinger sitting in his study.

He informed Esti cheerfully:

“Just imagine, I’ve been given the sack. Without notice or severance. And I’ve had nowhere to live since the first. I thought I’d come here for tonight and sleep here. If you’ll let me.”

“Naturally,” replied Esti, handing him a clean nightshirt. “You can sleep here on the couch.”

Next day, however, he inquired:

“Well, what’re you planning to do now?”

“I really don’t know. It wasn’t much of a job. Pen-pushing from eight in the morning till eight at night. For a miserable hundred and twenty pengős a month. It wasn’t really worth it.”

“You’ll have to look for something better,” Esti remarked.

Elinger spent several days going around and then announced despondently that there were no openings.

“You mustn’t let it get you down,” Esti consoled him. “You can live with me until you find something suitable. And I’ll give you some pocket money every first of the month.”

He was a quiet, unassuming young man. He went out with him to the artists’ circle for lunch and dinner, and sometimes to dress rehearsals too. In the apartment he sprawled full-length on his couch. He seemed to be out of luck. He had obviously used up the last of his strength in saving Esti’s life.

Only one thing was unpleasant.

When Esti was writing, in torment, screwing up his face, Elinger would sit opposite him and watch him curiously as he would an exotic animal in a cage.

“Elinger,” said Esti, putting his fountain pen down, “I’m very fond of you, but for God’s sake don’t stare at me. If you do, I can’t write. I write with my nerves. Take yourself into the other room.”

For several months they lived on without anything special happening. Elinger made himself quite at home. At Easter he spent his whole month’s pocket money on a new kind of cologne atomizer with a rubber tube, and sprayed all his friends.^* In his spare time he read theater magazines with extraordinary attention.

One day he put a theater magazine, on the cover of which was a film actress, under Esti’s nose. He said:

“I bet she knows all about it.”

“Knows about what?”

“Well, you know, carrying on.” And Elinger gave a sly wink.

Esti was furious. He stormed into his study and thought:

“Filth is filth. I know he saved my life. But the question is, for whom did he save it — for himself or for me? If things go on like this I won’t want my life, I’ll send it back to him postage-paid, like a sample, no value, and he can do what he likes with it. Anyway, by law the finder is only entitled to ten percent of lost property. I repaid that ten percent long ago, in money, time, and peace. I don’t owe him anything.”

He put his foot down at once.

“Elinger,” he said, “this cannot go on. You’ve got to pull yourself together. I’ll support you, but only you can help yourself. Work, Elinger. Courage!”

Elinger hung his head. In his eyes was reproach, great reproach.

After that he continued to sprawl on the couch, continued to read theater magazines, and continued going to dress rehearsals — the office had by then issued him with a personal ticket, as they did to the staff of the theater’s hairdressers, tailors, and gynecologists. And the months went by.

One night in December they were strolling homeward along the Buda embankment.

Elinger was asking about the private lives of actresses, how old they were, who was married to whom, who had how many children, and who was getting divorced. Such stuff drove Esti mad, and he found it degrading to answer.

“You know what?” said Elinger suddenly, “I’ve written a poem.”

“Never!”

“Shall I recite it?”

“Go on then.”

“My Life,” he began, and paused to give the italics their full effect. “That’s the title. What do you think of that?”

Slowly, with feeling, he recited it. The poem was bad and long.

Esti bowed his head. He was mulling over where all this was leading to, and what he had in common with this loathsome fellow. He looked at the Danube between the steep banks, with its murky waves and floating broken ice.

“What about pushing him in?” he thought.

But he didn’t just think. In he pushed him, then and there.

And ran.

* Perhaps an autobiographical allusion. Kosztolányi was thirty-two in March 1917; this story dates from 1929. In his untitled poem Most harminckét éves vagyok (published in 1924) he says, “Now I am thirty-two. It is summer. Perhaps this is what I have been waiting for. The sun beats with golden light upon my healthy, bronzed face …” The second stanza begins “ When I am dying I shall whisper ‘It was summer. Alas, happiness betook itself elsewhere. The sun beat with golden light upon my healthy, bronzed face …’”

* Up till now the conversation has used maga, the honorifi c form of address. Hungarian custom is that the elder of the pair may initiate the use of the familiar te, as Esti now proposes and does.

* Pengő, “tinkler,” was the unit of currency replacing the korona on January 1, 1927.

* A reference to the Hungarian custom of spraying (with water or eau de cologne) at Easter. The recipients are only women.