Kornel Esti

IV

In which he makes an excursion in the “honest town” with his old friend

“SO YOU’LL COME WITH ME?” ASKED KORNÉL ESTI.

“With pleasure,” I exclaimed. “I’m sick and tired of all this dishonesty.”

I jumped into the aircraft. We roared, we circled.

We swung around with such whirling rapidity that golden eagles became giddy alongside us and swallows felt blood rushing to their heads.

Soon we landed.

“This is it,” said Esti.

“This? It’s just like where we came from.”

“Only on the outside. It’s different inside.”

We strolled into the town on foot to take a close look at everything.

The first thing that struck me was that the passersby scarcely spoke to one another.

“Here people only greet each other,” explained Esti, “if they really like and respect the other person.”

A beggar in dark glasses was crouching on the sidewalk. On his lap a tin plate. On his chest a card: I am not blind. I only wear dark glasses in summer.

“Now, why is the beggar wearing that?”

“So as not to mislead people that give alms.”

On the avenue were shops as bright as could be. In a gleaming window I read:

Crippling shoes. Corns and abscesses guaranteed. Several customers’ feet amputated.

A colorful, eye-catching picture was displayed of two surgeons with big steel saws cutting off the feet of a screaming victim, his blood running down in red streaks.

“Is this a joke?”

“Not a bit.”

“Aha. Does some legal requirement force traders to brand themselves like this?”

“Not at all,” Esti made a gesture of denial. “It’s the truth. Just understand that: it’s the truth. Here nobody hides the truth under a bushel. Self-criticism has reached such a high level in this city that there’s no longer need of anything like that.”

As we went on, one thing after another astounded me.

At the clothes shop this sign shrieked:

Expensive poor-quality clothes. Kindly bargain, because we will swindle you.

At the restaurant:

Inedible food, undrinkable drinks. Worse than at home.

At the patisserie:

Stale cakes. Made with margarine and egg substitute.

“Have these people gone mad?” I stammered. “Or are they suicidal? Or saints?”

“They’re wise,” replied Esti firmly. “They never lie.”

“And doesn’t this wisdom ruin them?”

“Look in the shops. They’re all crowded. All flourishing.”

“How is that possible?”

“Look. Everybody here knows that they themselves, and their fellow men, are honest, sincere and modest, and they’d rather put themselves down than boast, rather reduce a price than raise it. And so people here don’t quite take at face value what they hear and read, any more than you do at home. The difference amounts to this — at home you always have to subtract something from what people tell you, in fact a great deal, while here you always have to add something to it, a little. Your goods and people aren’t as excellent as they say. Here goods and people aren’t as inferior as they say. Actually, the two come to the same thing. In my view, though, the latter way is more honest, more sincere, more modest.”

In the window of a bookshop the proprietors drew attention to a book, framed in colored paper ribbon:

Unreadable rubbish … latest work of an old writer who has gone senile, not a single copy sold up to now … Ervin Hörgő’s most nauseating, most pretentious verse.

“Incredible,” I was amazed. “And will people buy it?”

“Why on earth not?”

“And read it?”

“Don’t they read things like that back at home?”

“You’re right. But there, at least they find out about them differently.“

“I repeat: this is the city of conscience. If somebody knows perfectly well that he has bad taste, and likes thunderous phrases — the sort of thing that’s cheap, inane and overdone — then he’ll buy Ervin Hörgő’s verse, and he won’t be disappointed in it, in fact, it’ll meet his requirements. The whole thing’s just a matter of tactics.”

Reeling, I looked for a café where I could restore myself.

Esti took me to a tasteless, gilded café which a sign described as the favorite haunt of con-men and spongers, and enticed customers in with unafordable prices, rude waiters.

At first I didn’t want to go in. My friend pushed me.

“Good morning,” I said.

“Why are you lying?” asked Esti. “You don’t want a good morning here, but you’d like a nice coffee, but you can’t get that because here they lace the coffee with chicory, and it tastes like second-rate shoe-polish. I just want to show you the papers.”

There were a lot of newspapers there. Now I can only recall the Lie, the Self-Interest, the Cowardly Bandit, and the Stooge.

In place of a masthead, on the front page the Stooge carried in large type the message:

Every single letter in this paper is corrupt. It depends on all governments in the same way, and never prints their views except when the desire for filthy lucre calls for it. For that reason we advise our readers, each and all of whom we deeply disdain and despise, not to take our articles seriously and to execrate and look down on us too as much as we deserve, if that is humanly possible.

“Wonderful,” I enthused. “See that, I really like it.”

“Here speaking the truth is so general,” my friend went on, “that everybody does it. Listen to the small ads, for example,” and he started to read from various papers. Cashier seeks employment, criminal record, several convictions, former prisoner … Mentally ill nursemaid will look after children … Language teacher speaks French with Göcsej^* accent and wishes to acquire local accents from pupils, has a few vacancies.

“And these people will find jobs?” I asked numbly.

“Naturally,” replied Esti.

“Why?”

“Because,” he drawled, “life’s like that.”

He pointed to a fat booklet with something printed in dark gray letters on a dark gray cover.

“This here’s the leading literary periodical. Lots of people read it.”

“I can’t even make out the title.”

“Boredom,” said Esti. “That’s the title.”

“What’s interesting in it?”

“That the title is Boredom.”

“And is it really boring?”

“I don’t want to influence you. Look it over.”

I read a few items.

“Well,” I said, pursing my lips, “it’s not all that dull.”

“You’re a stern critic,” Esti raised a warning finger. “It’s no good, no expectation can ever be fully satisfied. The title’s lowered your expectations too much. I can assure you, if you read it at home you’d find it quite boring enough. It all depends on the angle from which you look at things.”

Someone was making a speech to a crowd of several thousand in the square outside the Parliament building:

“One look at my low forehead and my face, deformed by bestial cupidity, is enough — you can see at once whom you are dealing with. I have no trade, no skill, there’s nothing on earth that I’m fit for, least of all to explain to you the meaning of life, so let me lead you toward the goal. What that goal is I will reveal. In brief, I want to be rich, to extort money, so that I shall have as much as possible and you as little as possible. And so I shall have to go on making fools of you. Or do you think, perhaps, that you’re fools enough already?”

“No, no,” the crowd roared indignantly.

“So act in accordance with your conscience. You all know my opponent. He’s a noble, selfless man, a great brain, a brilliant mind. Is there anyone in this town to compare with him?”

“No!” shouted the crowd in unison. “Nobody at all!” and clenched fists rose into the air.

Darkness fell.

I went out for a walk and suddenly the black sky was lit up as if day had broken, several days, the whole calendar.

Letters of flame sparkled:

We steal, we swindle, we rob.

“What’s that?” I asked Esti.

“An advertisement for a bank,” he said nonchalantly.

Late at night we returned to Esti’s house. The extraordinary experiences had evidently worn me out. I was running a temperature. I was sneezing and coughing. I called a doctor.

“Doctor,” I complained, “I’ve got a bit of a chill, caught a cold.”

“A cold?” the doctor was taken aback and retreated to the far corner of the room, covering his mouth with his handkerchief. “In that case be so good as to turn your head aside, because even here, five yards away, I can catch it. I’ve got children.”

“Aren’t you going to examine me?”

“ Waste of time. There’s no cure for a cold. It’s incurable, like cancer.”

“Should I sweat?”

“You can. But it won’t do any good. Broadly speaking, our scientific experience is that if we treat a cold it can last a month. If we don’t treat it, it can be gone the next day.”

“What if I develop pneumonia?”

“Then you’ll die,” he informed me.

He thought for a moment, then said:

“Frederick the Great was once walking on the field after a battle. A dying soldier, moaning in pain, stretched out his arm to him. The emperor flicked his riding crop at the soldier and shouted at him ‘You swine, d’you want to live forever?’ I always quote this little story to my patients. There’s profound wisdom in it.”

“Indeed,” I replied. “But I’ve got a headache. A splitting headache.”

“That’s your afair,” said the doctor. “That doesn’t matter. You know what does? What does matter is that I haven’t got a headache. Even more important is that I charge double for visits at night. Let me have my fee quickly, I’m in a hurry.”

He was right. Next day I was better. Fresh and cheerful, I hurried to the Town Hall to obtain the documents necessary for taking up residence in that honest town.

“Delighted,” I muttered when I appeared before the mayor.

“Well, I can’t say as much,” said the mayor coldly.

“I don’t understand,” I stammered. “I’ve called in to swear to be a loyal citizen.”

“The fact that you don’t understand shows that you’re a stupid blockhead. I’ll explain why I’m not delighted. In the first place, you’re disturbing me, and I don’t even know who or what you are. Secondly, you’re involving me in public affairs, whereas I only deal with my personal rackets. Thirdly, you’re lying about being delighted, from which I deduce that you’re a hypocritical scoundrel and not fit to join us. I’m having you deported at once.”

Within the hour I was deported by express aircraft to the town from which I had escaped.

Since then I’ve lived here. Lots of things were more to my taste there. I have to admit, though, that all the same it’s better here. Because even if people here are more or less the same as there, there’s a lot to be said for the people here. Inter alia, that at least they sometimes tell each other imaginative, amusing lies.

* A region of Hungary to the south of Lake Balaton, noted for its local dialect.