Kornel Esti

V

In which he is concerned with the animated and edifying description

of a weekday, September 10, 1909,

and the time is evoked when Franz Josef was still on the throne

and modern poets who favored various trends and schools

took their ease in the coffeehouses of Budapest

AT ELEVEN IN THE MORNING ESTI WAS STILL FAST ASLEEP ON the couch which those who gave him accommodation let him use as a bed.

Someone came to call. Esti opened his eyes.

The first thing that he noticed of the world which he had lost in his sleep was the grave figure sitting on the edge of the couch.

“Have I woken you?”

“Not at all.”

“I've written a poem,” said Sárkány, like an excited emissary from another planet. “Will you listen to it?”

Without waiting for an answer, he straightaway read out, rapidly:

The moon, that pale lady of the sky,

Kisses the wild, sable night.

He has drunk champagne …

“Lovely,” murmured Esti.

The remark disturbed Sárkány. He acted like one interrupted in mid-kiss. He gave him a cross look. Once he realized, however, what Esti had said, a smile of gratitude spread across his face.

Esti asked his friend:

“Start again.”

Sárkány started again:

The moon, that pale lady of the sky,

Kisses the wild, sable night.

He has drunk champagne and his somber, tousled hair

Enfolds her …

He was holding in his left hand a page of squared paper torn from a notebook and pressed his right hand to his face as if a tooth were aching slightly. Thus he read.

This boy looked like an unhappy first violinist in a Gypsy band, dark and passionate. His pale face was crowned by a shock of jet-black hair. His mouth was red, almost as red as blood. A brass ring shone on his hairy index finger. He wore a narrow tie. A cutaway, purple waistcoat. A worn but pressed black suit. Brand new patent-leather shoes. He used an orchid perfume. The whole room was permeated with it.

Esti listened to the poem all through, eyes closed.

The day before they had been for a walk together and had admired the moon above the tenements and railway warehouses of Ferencváros.^* Now that moon reappeared behind Esti's closed eyelids, in his darkened eyeballs, as in the sky the previous night. There floated the moon, the moon in the poem, somewhat crudely painted, as was the fashion of the 1930s, a little flirtatious and overdressed, but much more beautiful than the real thing.

“Magnificent!” exclaimed Esti when the poem came to an end. He jumped up from the couch.

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Better than Crazy Swing?”

“No comparison.”

“Swear?”

“I swear.”

Sárkány was still throbbing to the pulse of his poem. He felt that a tremendously important event had occurred.

Esti too felt that. He rummaged round in the disorder of his rented room. As he searched the floor for his socks he asked:

“When did you write it?”

“In the night. As I was going home.”

They were silent for a while.

Sárkány turned to him:

“Didn't you write anything?”

“No,” said Esti gloomily. “Not yesterday. Where are you going to send it?”

“To Független Magyarország.”^*

He sat down at Esti's desk to make a clean copy in ink.

Meanwhile Esti slowly dressed. As he pulled on his trousers he read the literary section and poetry in the morning paper. He moistened his face slightly. That passed for a wash with him. He was so attached to his individuality that he was loath to wash off the layers that accumulated on him in the daytime. He considered people who bowed to the fetish of excessive cleanliness devoid of talent.

He used neither brush nor comb. He ran his fingers through his hair so that it should be disheveled in a way different from that of the night — feathers from the pillow were sticking to it — and arranged his curls in front of the mirror until he could see in it the head which he imagined as himself and was happiest to consider his own.

Sárkány, busy at his copying, was humming a popular song.

“Hush,” said Esti, nodding toward the door, which was obstructed by a cupboard.

Behind it lived the people of the house, two elderly ladies, the principal tenants — enemies of subtenants and of literature.

They both became solemn. They looked at the cupboard and in it saw reality, which always made them feel helpless.

“What shall we do?” they asked in a whisper.

Before them was a day, a new day, with its boundless freedom and opportunity.

For a start, they went downstairs and sat in the nearby restaurant, the dining room of a hotel.

There they were still themselves.

The dining room gleamed white. The mauve light of arc lamps rustled on the freshly laundered linen tablecloths, the untouched, undefiled altars at which no sacrifice had yet been made. Waiters bustled about, shirtfronts gleaming, fresh before work, like escorts at a ball. An elevator rattled between the walls of the hotel. The half-open door gave a glimpse of the foyer, leather armchairs, palms. A chambermaid yawning with the divine promise of a chance love affair. They reveled in the morning still life. They imagined that when there was no one there but them, all that was theirs, and as they imagined it, in fact it was all theirs.

Neither of them was hungry, but they decided to have lunch just to be done with it. On the strength of his new poem, which he could take to the office at three that afternoon, but without fail between six and seven, Sárkány asked for a loan of two koronas on his word of honor. They had rolled fillets of anchovy, mopping up the oil with bread, haunch of roe with cranberries, and vanilla creams. They drank spritzers and each smoked a green-speckled, light Média.

Noon was striking by the time they reached the Ring Road. Budapest, the youthful city, was glittering. The early September sun enveloped the facades of the houses in sheets of gold. Their heads baked in the hot sun. The sky was blue, a pristine blue, like the ceilings of newly painted flats, still tacky and smelling of paint. Everything around them was so new. This was the time when the new school term was starting. Primary school pupils were going around with satchels on their backs, clutching transfers they had been given at stationery shops.

Suddenly Esti and Sárkány stopped.

A young man was approaching them, his back to them, going backwards, crabwise, but with great skill, at a very swift pace.

On top of his head danced a cheap straw hat. He wore white trousers and a gray coat of thick material with flesh-colored rubber bands at the cuffs. He twirled an iron-tipped stick.

A moment later they too had turned round and were making for him in the same fashion, at a smart pace.

When they drew level with him they burst out laughing.

“Hello, you idiot!” they called to him, and embraced one another.

At last they were all three together, Kanicky, Sárkány and Esti, no one was missing, the circle was closed, the world was complete; the club was in session, the Balkan club, the prime objects of which included the free, courageous, and open practice of such eccentiricites.

The passersby looked ill-humoredly, with a certain contempt but also an undisguised interest, at these three cheerful young men, these three frivolous, immature boys. They didn't understand them, so they hated them.

Kanicky spat on the asphalt. His saliva was black. As black as ink.

He was chewing liquorice.

The liquorice was in his left pocket, and in the right was a medlar, in a paper bag.

They made for their favorite resort, the New York coffeehouse.

On the way Sárkány read his new poem to Kanicky. There was a bedroom in the window of a furniture shop, two wide poplar wood beds, made up, silk eiderdowns, pillows and night tables. In their thoughts they got into the beds wearing their shoes. They imagined at their sides putative spouses, as big as titanic china dolls, with bouffant hairstyles and eyebrows drawn in India ink. All that was so farfetched and improbable that they were ashamed of the fantastic idea and dismissed it as a subject for a poem. They went into a pet shop. They bargained for a monkey and inquired how much a lion would cost. The shopkeeper saw what kind of customers he had to deal with and showed them out.

“What about greeting people?” Kanicky proposed.

At that they greeted everyone who came along. The three hats swung low in unison as if by magic. Their eyes looked frankly into the eyes of the persons they saluted. These were sometimes pleased to be publicly acknowledged in that way, but sometimes were surprised, realized that it was a silly trick, looked them up and down, and went on their way. Out of fifteen, eleven returned the salute.

That too they gave up.

On the corner of Rákóczi út,^* Esti bought two balloons. He fastened the strings in his buttonhole and hurried after his friends.

Not far from the coffeehouse a crowd had formed. It was said that two gentlemen were fighting, the one had bumped into the other and they had immediately begun to box each other's ears.

A heated exchange could be heard.

“Do you mind!”

“Impudent devil!”

“You're the impudent devil!”

Kanicky and Sárkány, pale of face, glared at each other. Kanicky raised his fist. A level-headed gentleman came between them.

“Really, gentlemen, for goodness' sake!”

Kanicky looked at the level-headed gentleman, and as usual on such occasions asked Sárkány:

“I say, who's this?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, come on, then.”

He linked arms with Sárkány as if nothing had happened, and to the astonishment of the onlookers went off with him. Esti joined them.

“Did anyone fall for it?” he asked.

“Yes,” they said with a grin.

They let one of the balloons go.

And so they came to the coffeehouse.

The coffeehouse — at lunchtime — was quiet, deserted. Cleaning ladies were going about with brooms and buckets, wiping the marble tabletops. Morning coffee drinkers who had lingered were paying. A slender acrobat passed through the ladies' room.

The afternoon coffee beans were being roasted. The aroma tickled their nostrils. Upstairs the balcony, with its twisting, gilded columns, like a Buddhist temple, seemed to be expecting something.

Here they settled down at their tribal table. First they tried to organize their material affairs. Kaniczky had sixteen fillér, Sárkány thirty. Esti had one korona and four fillér.^* Not much on which to fight the battles of the day.

Sárkány, who had the best prospects that day since he had written a poem, beckoned to the morning headwaiter, got him to count out twenty Princeszász, ordered coffee, then showed him the manuscript which he would be able to sell to the Fületlen^† at three that afternoon, but at the latest between six and seven, and asked him for a loan of ten koronas. The waiter resignedly advanced the sum. Esti ordered a double espresso. Kanicky called for bicarbonate of soda, water, and a “dog's tongue.”^‡

The bicarbonate came. Slowly, absentmindedly, Kanicky sipped the three glasses of water that stood before him, even though Estitapped the ash from his cigarette into one of them. He began to write a sketch, so as to have some money. Suddenly he jumped up, clutched his head: he had to make an urgent telephone call. Nervous anxieties swarmed around his glistening brow. He asked his friends to go with him down to the telephone. He didn't like to be alone.

On the way to the ground floor they pushed, joked, met friends, and forgot what they actually wanted. Loathsome figures were hanging like leeches on the telephones, speaking German, old fellows, forty or fifty, who couldn't really last much longer. It took Kanicky half an hour to get through. He emerged from the booth triumphant. She was coming at three that afternoon. He borrowed five koronas from Sárkány on his word of honor, and then Esti got one of the two that he had lent him.

After organizing their material affairs, they lightheartedly went back to their places at the table. Kanicky wrote a couple of lines of his sketch. Again he left off writing. He called a messenger and sent a letter to the girl whom he had telephoned. They smoked and sighed, laughed and were sad in quick succession, and waved through the plateglass window to women passing in the street. When the waiter placed some fruit before them they gave each one a name: the apple was Károly, the grapes were Ilona, the plum had to be Ödön, the pear, because of its softness and voluptuousness, Jolán, etc. A sort of restlessness stirred in them. They played party games with letters, colors, voices, mixing up, exaggerating, and patching together everything. They asked the oddest questions: what would happen if something were not as it was? No, they were not satisfied with Creation.

At three o'clock Sárkány hurried off for the money order. The coffeehouse was buzzing, the noise on the balcony was becoming louder and louder. In that raucous din they felt the pulse of their lives, felt that they were getting somewhere, making progress. Every table, every booth was occupied. Storm clouds of smoke towered in the air. It was good to relax in that vapor, in that warm pond, to think about nothing, to watch it seethe and bubble, and to know that those who were splashing in it were being slowly softened by it, steamed, cooked through, reduced into one single simmering ko-rhelyleves.^* They could see the usual crowd strewn about at various tables, on velvet settees and chairs. Every single one had arrived.

There was Bogár the young novelist, Pataki, and Dániel Ürögi. There was Arácsy the painter, who had had himself photographed dressed as a Florentine knight, rapier at his side, as he played the piano. There was Beleznay the famous art collector, personal acquaintance of Wilde and Rodin. There was Szilvás the “marquis,” with his bone-handled walking stick, the incomparable conversationalist, who mischievously and masterfully blended the very latest Hungarian slang with the esoteric expressions of up-to-date dictionaries, antiquarians, and academic lectures. There was Elián the psychiatrist, Gólya the industrial artist, Sóti the scholar, who had studied in Berlin, and Kopunovits the youthful tragic actor. There was Dayka, blond son of a big landowner, who read the Neo-Kantians avidly and talked about epistemology. There was Kovács, who never spoke, collected stamps, and smiled sardonically. There was Mokosay, who had been to Paris and quoted Verlaine and Baudelaire in the original French with great enthusiasm and a terrible accent. There was Belényes the “chartered chemist,” who had lost his job on account of some irregularity and now hung about newspaper offices, obtaining information for investigative articles. There was Kotra the playwright, who demanded pure literature on the stage, and wanted to put on the as yet unfinished drama Waiting for Death by his friend Géza, Géza who was sitting beside him, in which no people performed, only objects, and the key held a long and profound metaphysical discussion with the keyhole. There was Rex the art dealer, who flouted public opinion, praised Rippl-Rónai and criticized Benczúr. There were Ikrin-szky the astronomer, Christian the conference organizer, Magass the composer. There was Pirnik the international social democrat. There was Scartabelli the aesthetic polyhistorian, explaining in his warm bass now Wundt and his experimental psychology, now the back streets of Buda, very sentimentally, while insisting that he wasn't sentimental. There was Exner, who everyone knew had syphilis. There was Bolta, who didn't regard Petôfi as a poet, because Jenô Komjáthy was the poet. There was Spitzer, who maintained that Max Nordau was the greatest brain in the world. There was Wesselényi, a highbrow chemist's assistant. There was Sebes, two of whose stories had appeared in the dailies and one had been accepted for publication. There was Moldvai the lyric poet. There was Czakó, another. There was Erdôdy-Erlauer, a third. There was Valér V. Vándor the literary translator, who translated from every language but didn't know any, including his native one. There was Specht, the son of wealthy parents, a modest, laconic young man, who hadn't written anything but had been treated for two years in a mental institution and always had in his pocket the certificate, signed and sealed by three doctors, to the effect that he was compos mentis. Absolutely everyone was there.

They were all talking at once. About whether man had free will, what was the shape of the plague bacterium, how much wages were in England, how far away Sirius was, what Nietzsche had meant by “eternal reversion,” whether homosexuality was lawful, and whether Anatole France was Jewish. Everyone wanted to have their say, quickly and profoundly, because although they were all very young, scarcely more than twenty, they felt that they had little time left.

Esti knew this company vaguely. He wasn't always certain who was who, but that didn't really matter, they themselves weren't sure who they were because their individuality, their characters, were taking shape right there and right then. On one occasion he confused a photographer with a poet, and was mistaken for a photographer himself. This caused no mutual embarrassment. They talked about their lives, their memories, their previous loves, their plans, and then, if it seemed right, they introduced themselves for the sake of politeness and sometimes made a note of one another's names.

He sat there among them, listened to the buzz of their conversation. He was captivated by them. In that racket every voice touched a key in his soul. He didn't understand life. He had no conception of why he had been born into the world. As he saw it, anyone to whose lot fell this adventure, the purpose of which was unknown but the end of which was annihilation, that person was absolved from all responsibility and had the right to do as he pleased — for example, to lie full length in the street and begin to moan without any reason — without deserving the slightest censure. But precisely because he considered his life as a whole an incomprehensible thing, he understood its little details individually — every person without exception, every elevated and lowly point of view, every concept — and those he assimilated at once. If anyone spoke to him sensibly for five minutes about converting to the Muslim faith, he would convert, on condition that he would be spared the bother of action, would be taken at his word, and would not be given time later, nevertheless, to retract.

In his opinion, living like that, in great folly among lesser degrees of folly, was not so foolish, but was indeed perhaps the most correct, most natural way of life. Furthermore, he needed that wild disorder, that piquant sauce! He wanted to write. He was waiting for the moment when he would reach such a pitch of despair and loathing that he would have to lash out, and then everything important and essential would pour out of him, not just the superfluous and incidental. That moment, however, hadn't yet arrived. He didn't yet feel badly enough about things to be able to write. He sucked in the nicotine and ordered another double espresso to flog his heart, further to torture his ever inquisitive, clownish, and playful mind, and he feverishly felt the internal throbbing within him; he took his pulse, which was a hundred and thirty, and took it happily, as a usurer does his money.

Women surrounded him. The “woman from Csongrád,” ^* who every fortnight took a trip away from her husband and spent her free time among writers, literary girls, semi-demons, a pale lady acrobat who must have been ill, and a yellow-faced, bloated woman, as large and terrible as Clytamnestra. They would sit there in white, blue, and black, blossoming in the hot swamp like water lilies at Hévíz.^† He longed for every one of them. His eye hesitantly, uneasily, darted from one to another. He enjoyed his sudden ambushes and deathly caprices, which at any moment could change his life or become his doom. He noted the Csongrád woman's hands, the nails at the ends of the soft fingers, which she polished pink and trimmed to points, he imagined that perhaps that woman could be his fate, but was repelled by her alien talons, which scratched gently like rose-thorns, and dismissed the thought in alarm. The Csongrád woman asked him what he was thinking at that moment. Esti gave a superior smile and told some lie so that she could make what she liked of what he was thinking.

Kanicky was resting his head on his friend's chest. He was not waiting for just any woman, only the one who, through some misunderstanding, had not appeared, though it was well past three o'clock. The messenger whom he had sent at noon with the important message had not returned. He charged another with looking for the first. He had looked across into the coffeehouse opposite and the small restaurant named Rabló. Returning to the telephone, he had spent a whole hour calling various places, without result. He ordered a kis-irodalmi,^* which he dispatched with a hearty appetite, then had another bicarbonate of soda.

Toward seven Sárkány arrived, having been off somewhere since three. He was radiant with pleasure. He told them that a new period in his life had begun. He had met that supposed kindergarten teacher, about whom he had said so much to his friends that they perhaps knew her better than he did, he had made it up with her, and now everything was at long last coming together, once and for all. Esti and Kanicky heard every day that a new period was beginning in Sárkány's life, and that he had met the woman. They were more interested in the money order. Sárkány's face fell. Firstly, he informed them that he'd spent all his money. As for the money order, what had happened was that he'd called on the publisher at three, as was correct, but he'd been in a bad mood and had called over his shoulder at him to come back between six and seven. So he'd done that, modestly and quietly handed over his poem, and requested payment, at which the publisher, that wretched and sour-tempered villain who rather resembled Herod, took it with unspeakable vulgarities, spat on the manuscript, stamped on it, and in the full sense of the word, kicked him out. His friends couldn't really imagine, on the basis of his personal description, quite how this scene had transpired, but they were indignant at the publisher's lack of delicacy.

So there they were, the three of them, penniless, with all those espressos, cigarettes, and messengers to pay for, not to mention the kis-irodalmi, and ahead of them the empty night with no prospects. Something had to be done. Things were not going well. Scartabelli talked to them about the Bhagavad Gita and Nirvana without getting their full attention. Valér V. Vándory was translating a French novel. In that connection he inquired of those present the meaning of derechef. Mokosay took exception to his pronunciation. Asked him for the book. It was his opinion that it was the name of a flower that didn't grow in Hungary. Others suspected an obscenity. Most advised him to leave it out, at which Valér V. Vándory cut the whole paragraph and worked on. Then up came Hannibal, the night hawker, with his poker face, a frozen grin on his lips, offering dirty picture postcards and immediately after that contraceptives, as if the mere sight of those postcards would damage their health.

Esti got up and went to speak to the night headwaiter. He got ten koronas out of him. One gold coin. He should have shared it with his friends, to whom he had been indebted for some time, and after complex calculations thought that the deal was more or less good, hoping that he would at least soon get back the korona which Sárkány had still not given back from that morning. But he decided differently. He simply ran away. Ran and ran down the street. He planned to go to the Writers' Circle, win at least sixty koronas, and share them out three ways in brotherly fashion, twenty koronas each. At the baccarat table Homona, the famous gambler, a noted journalist who lived by blackmailing the banks, was sitting at the shoe. That he took for a bad sign. Nevertheless he tossed the round, alluring gold coin onto the green baize, all in one. His stake was swept up without a flicker of emotion.

That he could register at once. He stood rigid for about ten minutes, however, as if expecting world revolution to change the incontestable decision of fate and the banker to give back his gold coin.

In the coffeehouse they were waiting for him as a savior. Two messengers, who had come back and wanted their money, were dunning Kanicky. He tried for a while to explain by rational arguments that they weren't entitled to any, then took an aspirin, dashed of his sketch under the watchful eye of the messengers, and sold it, also under the watchful eye of the messengers. He even brought money back and tossed some to his friends.

They went off to Sárkány's, in Mária utca, as he was expecting a letter from the kindergarten teacher. They went to the Kanickys', where they drank tea. The family lived in one enormous room. One of Kanicky's sisters was painting, the second was playing the piano, while the third, all the time the visitors were there, sat facing the wall, goodness knows why. The father, a likable, kindly old man, was sitting writing in the middle of the room with the sobriety of age, dipping his pen in the inkwell, carefully tapping of the excess ink, and taking no notice of the roaring din about him. They went downstairs after the gate was shut. Kanicky was reciting loudly from The Tragedy of Man.^* In a dark square, a peasant who was a coachman or something, whip in hand, came straight up to him, put a hand on his shoulder and said:

“Tell you what? I'll give you back your fifty fillérs, but give me the halter.”

“No!” replied Kanicky. “I need the halter.”

Esti didn't know what the fifty fillérs and the halter were all about, didn't know whether this was actually something planned or something unexpected, and felt nervous. The black rags of night lay about him. He would rather have been back at home, lying by himself on his couch. He despised himself, despised his friends too, but couldn't bring himself to leave them. The sense of foreboding came over him which he had known in childhood when he'd felt that he was asking for something forbidden. Beneath the gas lamps, people, stupefied by the day's work, stared into his face as if paying attention to him, came after him with noisy footsteps as if following him. He was glad when they went into the Rabló.

The pianola was playing the overture to Tannhäuser. József Gách, his cousin, the medical student, put both his hands to Esti's nose and made him smell them. He'd done his first dissection that day. Faltay, the leather-sandaled Tolstoyan, was eating semolina pudding. Bisszám, the bearded young theosophist, with a face as red as an apple and teeth as white as porcelain, looked warmly into their eyes and urged them to love Nature and live in harmony with the Universe.

For that, they thought, they had plenty of time, and called into the coffeehouse again.

There the elevated, intellectual drinking was now becoming a carousal. The second team had taken its place on the gallery, youngsters of eighteen or nineteen. Over espressos with rum and Egyptian cigarettes, Putterl, little Hajnal, and young Wallig were setting up a polemic periodical, of the highest possible quality, against ossified traditions, the Academy, and the old guard. Next to them Ab-mentis was writing words to music and singing his first line: Oh, lágy madárkám. Instead of lágy he could have gone with a two-syllable, iambic word, and so tried the line Oh, kemény madárkám.^* That he couldn't use either. As he sang he tried to find a new adjective which would do both for the text and for the little bird. The older generation was represented by Erdôdy-Erlauer. He was sitting hunched in the first cubicle, staring at his writing paper, on which all that he'd written all afternoon was Such is my life … And then he'd been unable to go on. He didn't know what his life was like, couldn't find anything to compare it to, which wasn't surprising: Erdôdy-Erlauer's life wasn't like anything; that was exactly how his life was.

They left them there to their manuscripts, their grief-filled lives. They strolled along the Danube embankment, round the Keleti station. In all parts of the city they picked up would-be writers who were wandering in the dark as if performing an all-night service: Exner, Szilvás, Dayka the Neo-Kantian, Moldvai, Czakó, and a few more besides, who likewise had something to do with the arts and the intellectual sciences: Orbán the music teacher, Csiszér, and Val-entini too, who must have been a cabinetmaker or something. This storm-swept little group drifted around the houses of Ferencváros at about three in the morning.

On the corner stood a girl of the streets. Exner spoke to her and the rest surrounded her. They allowed no opportunity to pass of studying the depths of life and, in the meantime, of showing of their well-informed state. They addressed these women with a superior, amiable informality, though they were usually much older than themselves, at least of an age with their mothers' women friends, whose hands they would politely kiss at home with a deep bow. This disrespectful libertinism increased their self-esteem.

They talked about something. A dialogue took place between the men and the girl, interrupted every few moments by the laughter of the group. In the middle Exner flourished his jaunty walking stick. The girl replied quietly.

Esti stood apart from them. He didn't want to become involved in that game. He thought it both tasteless and immodest. But he knew that part of the world better than any of them. He knew those streets at all times of day and night because some kindred horror drove him there, often in such a way that at home he jumped out of bed and ran there. He had known that quarter early in the morning, when there was no one about, on Saturday evenings between nine and eleven, when activity was at its peak, and on sweltering days at the height of summer between one and two in the afternoon, when the girls in their finery gleamed from the clinging heat like cheap sugar cakes. He knew the houses one by one, the doors and windows in which lamps burned and were extinguished. He knew the men too, who hung about here abstractedly, as if looking for something else, and scuttled in looking at the ground so as at least not to see anything else, and then the unfeeling and stupid, who openly inspected the goods on sale, the fat, lonely old gentlemen who puffed at their cigars in holders as they speculatively eyed the prostitutes walking the other sidewalk, and then with sudden decisiveness, as if something were pulling them on a string, made for a chocolate-colored gate. He knew the special expressions of the region, which constantly met his ear, concerning the objective details of the profession. Above all he knew the women, personally or by sight, the pleasant ones and the brutish-dulled, the ladylike and the uncouth, the tall and the short, those that had pink scars or bites like caterpillars on their chins, or who had dogs on leashes, or wore glasses, or the nightmares that sometimes appeared toward dawn, double black veils covering their faces because they had no noses. He knew this girl too, whom his friends were now entertaining: he had often seen her going this way, had watched her, kept an eye on her.

The girl took Exner's walking stick and set off slowly down the side street. The group followed her. Esti too trailed after them to see what else would happen. They rang at the gate. In they went, all eleven.

Inside, in the low, ground-floor room, the din was like that in a house on fire when the brigade arrives. They shrieked and cried out because of the strangeness of the situation. The woman was afraid that the police would charge her with disturbance of the peace and scandalous conduct. She hushed them, but to no effect. Five of them sat on the bed, so that it creaked and all but collapsed under their weight. The “marquis” spread out his arms and in rounded periodic sentences preached to the woman that she should flee from pollution, return to a better way, then blessed her as his daughter and called her “a violet.” Exner looked at her glue-backed photographs. Sárkány rummaged among her belongings. Czakó lifted the lid on the red glazed pot that stood on the iron stove, in which he found the remains of her dinner, cold beef stew with cold tarhonya,^* which was being kept for next day.

The woman stamped her foot demanding quiet. She kept an eye on the men in case they made of with anything. Her eyes flickered this way and that.

Kanicky whispered something to Sárkány. He passed it on, and the word went round, and as it reached all eleven eardrums a general, stormy guf aw broke out. Everyone looked at the woman.

In the lamplight one could see that in fact she was much older that they had thought outside in the street. She wore a round, black beauty spot above her chin and a heavy, red-blonde wig. According to Kanicky her head under the wig was as bald as a billiard ball, and she had not a single tooth. That was what they were laughing at.

The mood had turned sour. No one spoke. Now they regretted having come in and were considering how they could get out. The woman looked at them uncertainly. In her eyes flickered an anxiety that she dared not express.

Kanicky slunk to the door and sidled out without taking his leave. After him went Sárkány, then Szilvás, then Exner, then Moldvai, then Czakó, then Dayka, then Valentini, Csiszér, and Orbán.

The whole lot fled headlong.

“Are you going as well?” asked the woman in surprise, looking at Esti, who was the last to make for the door.

“Yes,” and he put his hand on the door handle. “Good night.”

“Good night.”

Esti opened the door, which his friends had slammed in his face as a joke. He listened.

In the stairwell the friends were conferring as they waited for the concierge. A dreadful shouting was heard, Sárkány's voice, then Kanicky's, bawling horrible things toward the room.

“What's that?” said the woman.

“Nothing,” said Esti, and shut the door so as not to hear it.

The woman looked at him.

“Have you changed your mind, then? Are you staying?”

“Yes,” Esti replied, “I might sit down for a minute,” and he continued to stand.

At that moment the gate banged shut as the concierge let them out. There was silence.

“They're mad,” said the woman in the sudden silence.

She shrugged, uncomprehendingly.

That movement made Esti feel sorry for her. His heart, his sick heart, filled with tears like a sponge.

A couple of moments later the din broke out again outside the window. The company were standing out there. Exner rattled his stick over the slats in the shutter, and familiar voices called good night to Esti, wishing him much good fortune and a good time.

He looked at the window like one who has fallen into a trap and would like to climb out.

They had abandoned him. He had been made the victim of a piece of fun, the ultimate ugly piece of fun. The noise had stopped. There was silence again, a decisive, great silence.

“They've gone,” said the woman, and locked the door.

Esti wanted to make amends for their bad manners. In his view, all “bad manners” were a fundamental flaw — there was no worse flaw than bad manners. He couldn't abide anyone being insulted to their face. Such a thing was so painful to him that he would stay with boring people for hours because he couldn't devise a decent way of tactfully shaking them off.

The woman pulled up a wicker chair toward him. She too sat down, facing him on the settee.

They'd been right: this girl was no longer young, she was worn out, and there was something idiotic in her smile. But she could be seen another way too. He began to work on his imagination, and then reality vanished. No, they hadn't been entirely right, they'd been exaggerating: her skin was faded, but it was white, lily white. And she did have teeth, nearly all of them. He liked her misty, green feline eyes, her round, hunger-pallid face, her narrow forehead.

“What's your name?”

“Paula,” answered the woman, in a soft, husky voice.

Words had an illogical effect on Esti. That name made him think of a wilting tea rose. He closed his eyes.

“What did you do before?”

“Hairdresser.”

Now Esti grasped desperately at her hands and her skirt.

•

Reveille had sounded in the barracks. A column prepared to move out of a courtyard. At the head was the captain, on a high-stepping horse, sword drawn, rapping out German words of command,^* at which that fearsome machine of human flesh and steel moved, wheeling out into Üllôi út.^* Young subalterns, redolent of eau de cologne, were at their posts. The morning sun gleamed on their swords, their black and yellow sword knots. King and Emperor Franz Josef I ruled, up there on his high throne in Vienna.

Esti strolled home along Üllôiút. The gate was open now, he didn't have to pay gate money. He rushed up to the fourth floor, to his room, where Sárkány had woken him at eleven o'clock the day before.

On his desk he found a postcard from the country, from his parents. That pleased him greatly.

They had sent him news of his uncle's splendid birthday celebration, at which every year the three related families gathered, the Csendeses, the Estis, and the Gáches. There had been ludaskasa, cigán-ypecsenye, vanilla and almond kifli.^† Many, many greetings came from everyone, relations, friends, his sister's girlfriend too. His brother wrote that he had a strict schoolmaster, his sister, that she was going to dancing lessons, his mother, that she'd love to see him — he must come without fail at the end of the month for the grape harvest. His father just put his name in his severe, upright hand.

Esti read the messages several times one after the other, and was overcome. He was at home, in the vineyard, in the copse where the wild vines grew, among the green velvet chairs in the sitting room. He embraced his dear ones fondly, because after all he was still a good son and a loving brother. He thought, mother's got an amethyst bracelet just the color of her eyes. He thought, father's up there now, he's been working since four o'clock. He thought, I'm going to come to nothing, I'm wasting my time. He thought, I'm going to make good. He thought, I shall die next year, at the age of twenty-one. He thought, I'm never going to die. He thought of everything all at once.

The day which he had just lived through had been crowded and animated, but not much different from his other days. His agitation now froze into solid grief. He trembled and clutched the card to him for reassurance; he took refuge behind the peace of the countryside, where his roots were and his strength.

Remorse gnawed at him. He ran quickly over his Spanish irregular verbs. Then he undressed.

But he got up again. He wrote an answer to the card, so as to be able to post his letter as soon as he went down in the morning.

He wrote:

Dear parents, brother and sister, Thank you for your kind messages. I am always with you in my thoughts.

He also had to say something in reply to the invitation. Then he thought of Sárkány and Kanicky, whom he loved no less than his siblings. He went on:

I'm afraid I won't be able to get away just yet. New literature is in a ferment, I've got to stay here, watch for my opportunity.

He tried to think of a better excuse, but just added:

I'm working.

* A suburb of Pest.

* “Independent Hungary,” a fictitious paper.

* A principal Pest street.

* Strictly speaking, 1 korona = 100 krajcár. 100 fillér = 1 pengô´ or forint, but the terms were often interchanged in popular speech as the name of the unit of currency changed.

† “Having no ears,” but here a pun on Független, “independent.”

‡ The New York, in the Erzsébet Ring Road, was a principal haunt of writers and artists. Not only did it cater specially for the impecunious tastes of many, it also provided paper, pens and ink. A “dog's tongue” (kutyanyelv) was a slip of paper.

* Sometimes known as “Souse's Soup.” A cabbage soup served in the small hours to reinvigorate the jaded reveller. There are various recipes, according to George Lang's The Cuisine of Hungary, all slightly greasy and very piquant.

* A small town on the Alföld, southeast of Kecskemét.

† A spa at the west end of Lake Balaton in western Hungary.

* “Small-literary.” The irótál, “writer's plate,” was a speciality of the New York, an inexpensive plate of cold meats, salami, cheese, etc. served only to writers. The kis-iro-dalmi was a reduced version for the even less well off.

* The verse drama by Imre Madách — the most translated item in Hungarian literature.

* “Oh, my soft little bird” and “Oh, my hard little bird.”

* A kind of pasta.

* German was the language of the army.

* Presumably from the Ludovika barracks.

† Ludaskasa, “goose porridge,” is goose giblets boiled with millet, a Martinmas dish. Cigánypecsenye, “gipsy roast,” is pork cutlets, spit-roasted or fried, with fat bacon and red cabbage. Kifl i is a pastry, similar in shape to a croissant.