Kornel Esti

VI

In which he comes into a huge inheritance

and learns that it’s hard to get rid of money

when a person wants to do only that.

AS DAWN APPROACHED WE WERE SITTING IN A NIGHTCLUB. The Negro band was taking a break. We were yawning.

Kornél Esti whispered in my ear:

“Quick, let me have a fiver.”

He paid, then said:

“Strange.”

“What is?”

“That expression ‘money trouble.’ You’d think it means that money causes trouble. Whereas it’s not money that causes trouble but the opposite, lack of money, impecuniosity. Tell me,” he turned toward me with keen interest, “you’re a bit of a linguist in your spare time: is there any expression that denotes that money can be a burden?”

“Yes, it’s French. Embarras de richesse.”

“Isn’t there a Hungarian one?”

“No.”

“Typical,” he muttered.*

On the way home he continued to ponder in the street.

“No doubt about it, money trouble’s a nasty business. But the other’s just as nasty. When it really is money that causes the trouble. When there’s far too much of it. I know all about that.”

“You do?”

“Uh huh. At one time I had a huge amount of money. Once upon a time,” he said dreamily, “heretofore, in days of yore.”

“In Singapore?”

“No, here in Budapest. When I came into money.”

“Who left you money?”

“An obscure aunt on my mother’s side. Teresa Maria Anselm. Lived in Hamburg. Wife of some German baron.”

“That’s interesting. You’ve never mentioned her.”

“No. I must have been thirty-five. One morning I got an official letter telling me that my aunt had left everything to me. The news wasn’t completely unexpected. But it did come as a surprise. That is, I’d heard that my aunt had another nephew and that she was dividing the inheritance between us. In the meantime he’d died. Somewhere in Brazil. Haven’t got a cigarette, have you?”

“Help yourself.”

“So off I went to Germany. To tell the truth, I scarcely remembered my dear departed aunt. I’d been taken to see her a few times when I was little. She lived in a luxurious mansion on her estate, on her model farm. She was stinking rich and as dull as ditchwater. There were white and black swans on the fishpond. That was all I knew about her. Apart from the fact that she had a lot of land, several big houses in Berlin and Dresden, and a huge amount in Swiss banks. Considering that I hadn’t answered her letters for ten years, I’d no idea what she was worth. When the inventory was compiled it turned out to be more than I’d thought. By the time I’d sold everything, realized it all — and after paying taxes, fees, lawyer’s expenses — a Hamburg bank paid me out almost two million marks.”

“Two million marks? You’re pulling my leg.”

“I’m not. Let’s talk about something more serious, then. How’s your blood pressure?”

“I beg your pardon. Go on, then.”

“That’s all there was to it, I changed the money into Hungarian currency, stufffed it into my suitcase, and came home. Here I went on living as before, scribbling poetry. I was careful not to say a word about the business, because I knew that it would be the end of me.”

“Why?”

“Look here — a poet that’s wealthy, in Hungary? That’s a total absurdity. In Budapest people think that anybody who’s got a bit of money’s an idiot. If he’s got money, why should he have a brain, feelings, imagination? That’s how they punish him. This town’s far too clever. It doesn’t want to understand that nature’s a savage, doesn’t share out its favors in a predictable fashion or on any kind of compassionate basis. Nobody here would have recognized that Byron — a lord and a multimillionaire — had the slightest ability. Here the rank of genius is doled out as compensation — as charity — to those who’ve got nothing else, who are starving, sick, persecuted, more dead than alive. Or actually dead. Mainly the latter. I’ve never been disposed to stand up to people’s titanic stupidity. I’ve bowed humbly before it as a mighty natural phenomenon. On that occasion too I didn’t break with the compulsory Bohemian tradition. Kept going to dirty little restaurants. Owed for my coffee. Inked my collars every morning. Made holes in my shoes with a fretsaw. Wasn’t going to damage my reputation as a poet, was I? Anyway, things were more comfortable and more interesting that way. If I’d let my good fortune be known, people would’ve been round at once, pestering me all day long, stopping me from getting on with my work.”

“So what did you do with all that money?”

“That was no trouble. Of course, I didn’t put it in a bank. That would have given the game away at once. I locked it in my desk drawer with my manuscripts. It’s surprising how little room two million koronas takes, two thousand thousand-korona notes. It was a pile only so big. It’s just bits, just leaves, like any other paper. When I looked at it in the evening I had mixed feelings. I’d be telling a lie if I said that I wasn’t happy about it. I’ve got a lot of respect for money. It means calm, respectability, power, all sorts of things. But so much money was a burden to me, not a relief. By that time I was too sensible to start a new life, buy a car, move into a nice three-room apartment with a sitting room, get out of the old ruts, take on new responsibilities and anxieties. I’ve never wanted to swill champagne. I’ve despised luxury, you know. All my life I’ve had bread and butter for dinner, and water to go with it. I’ve just been keen on rotten cigarettes and rotten women. So I started to think hard, logically. What was my purpose, my calling, my passion? Writing. By that time my pen was earning me five hundred koronas a month, easily. I added another thousand to that, so as to guarantee my independence for good. How long could I live? My parents and grandparents died before they were fifty. We aren’t a long-lived family. I gave myself sixty years. That generous allowance only came to 360,000 koronas in thirty years, my entire life expectancy, ignoring interest. The rest, I felt, was superfluous. So I decided to pass it round.”

“To whom?”

“Ay, there’s the rub! I’ve got no brothers or sisters. I’ve only got one relative, a wealthy manufacturer. I always see him in my dreams as a beggar in rags, and my greatest desire is that one night, when wolves are howling and I’m warming myself at the fireside after a good dinner, he’ll be outside gnawing at my doorstep, asking me for a crust, and I’ll be able to call to him that I’m not at home. Was I going to give him my money, or his well-educated, repulsive brats, whom I disliked even more than him? No, no.”

“Didn’t you think of your friends?”

“Didn’t have any at the time. I hadn’t met you then.”

“Thank you.”

“I really didn’t have a single acquaintance — close or distant — whom, from a certain elevated standpoint, I’d have considered more congenial than the complete stranger in the street that I’d never seen before. I didn’t collect people. I just looked on them with a kind of sad resignation, I was conscious of the futility of life and the uncertain nature of everything. That was why I didn’t want to leave any money for the authorities to deal with, either. I knew — knew from my own example — how ungrateful people are that receive bequests. Tell me, what would you have done in my position?”

“What anyone would do in such a situation. I’d have of ered it to some noble cause, some charitable institution.”

“Quite. I too turned that over in my mind. First I thought of orphanages, homes for the aged, the blind, the deaf-mute, abandoned girls, hospitals, and so on. But at once there rose before my eyes a fat swindler buying diamonds for his wife and mistress with the money left for orphans, old people, deaf-mutes, abandoned girls, and the sick. I dropped the idea. My dear boy, I wasn’t born to save that branch of humanity that, when not affl icted by fire, flood, and pestilence, organizes wars and artificially causes fire, flood, and pestilence. I finished with so-called society a long time ago. I’ve nothing to do with it. My kith and kin is nature — mindless, unbridled, and alive. Then I thought about a literary prize, a large-scale foundation. I confess, that attracted me for a while. But I soon saw clearly how, as the years went by, the various committees would misrepresent my original intentions: they’d reward fools and half-wits who ought to be put firmly in their places, use my money to encourage intellectual pygmies, noxious freaks, rather than people who might amount to something. And then I could hear the winning entries as well, talking about ‘the varieties of drama’ or ‘the influence of French literature,’ and I despaired at the idea that this stupidity would run on from generation to generation, to the end of time, like some perpetual curse. I gave up that as well.”

“What did you decide to do in the end?”

“Throw the money away a bit at a time, to individuals, just as unexpectedly as I’d come into it. I suddenly thought of that crazy old Roman emperor, the one who rode about pressing handfuls of gold coins on the fortunate and unfortunate alike, without distinction, so that it should be everybody’s and nobody’s.”

“You mean, you gave some to everybody you met?”

“Ah no, my dear fellow. It wasn’t that simple. Then I’d have been recognized and it would all have come out. Of course, that way people would have smirked at me, been grateful to me, come around flattering me, the papers could have made a fuss about a ‘noble-hearted giver.’ I simply can’t stand that sort of thing. I had to remain incognito.”

“And did you manage to?”

“Wait a bit, please. I worked out on paper that apart from the 360,000 koronas for myself, I had another 1,640,000 koronas to give away over the rest of my life — foreseeably thirty years at the most. I had to dispose of roughly 54,000 a year to individuals, about 4,500 a month, 150 a day. How did I begin? At first it went smoothly. In the evening, when I’d finished work, I’d write out a money order — on the typewriter, of course — without the sender’s name and send 150 koronas by post, always to a stranger whose name and address I copied out at random from the electoral roll, without inquiring whether the person was rich or poor. I just acted on the spur of the moment. Once I sent money to one of our biggest banks. Blessings showered all over the place. I could feel this wretched city fizzing, effervescing around me. People who received my money orders were certainly amazed in the first moment. Who could it be from? But then everybody could think of somebody, a relative, a generous friend, somebody that owed them money and was finally paying up. Obviously, they’d think, ‘How nice of him,’ ‘Well, well, so he’s honest after all. …’ The way I did it, it was as if some blind force, some mischievous fairy, was all over the place, shaking blessings from an invisible horn of plenty. But after a year — unfortunately — I was caught.”

“Through the post office?”

“I was too careful for that. I worked with errand boys, messengers, servants in various parts of the city, often from the provinces, even from abroad, through my agents. But I was stupid enough on one occasion — on the spur of the moment — to send the usual sum to a newspaper reporter, the crime correspondent of a big Budapest daily. This fellow had heard a vague rumor about mysterious gifts — you know, out of 365 people at least 300 will be chatterboxes, even if it’s against their own interest and that of their pocket — and the next day he put his information together and printed in his paper the accounts of various eyewitnesses and those who’d heard something, he even published my typewritten money order, concocted some stupid, lurid tale, wrote an account of some Indian maharajah in exile here under the headline Rain of Gold. Yes, I was discovered but not unmasked. In any case, I took fright. I had to stop sending money orders at once. Which was bad enough. I had to think out a new, more devious scheme.”

“I don’t understand. Why didn’t you stake it all on a single card?”

“Because in that way I would have revealed myself.”

“Then why didn’t you give it to the women you loved?”

“Because that would have meant lowering myself. As long as possible I shall cherish the delusion that women love me for myself. It looks as if you don’t understand. The decision had stuck in my head to share out this money, not on a basis of human justice or careful thought, but randomly, that is, according to the greatest, most mysterious truth of nature. I don’t consider life to be rational. But all the same that irrationality was painful to me, and it upset me that such an enormous fortune should simply rot in my desk drawer, and that not only should I be unable to make use of it but that others too should get nothing from it. If I failed to dispose of the prescribed daily amount my conscience pricked me. My task became harder, more complicated. It happened that several days’ amounts would sometimes pile up. Now and then I even committed acts of reckless stupidity. I risked being discovered and caught. One night, as I was walking over the bridge — quite without thinking — I tossed six hundred koronas into the lap of a beggar who was squatting there, and then ran for it. But I didn’t do that sort of thing often.”

“Anyway, how did you manage to give it all away?”

“One way and another. For example, when I was traveling I’d get off at the bigger stations, have a virsli, an apple, and get into conversation with the wine vendor, who would have his goods on a tray held on a strap round his neck. I’d delay paying till the last moment, then as the engine whistled I’d toss him a hundred koronas, jump into my compartment, duck down, and let him look for me and wave the change at my carriage window. I’d leave a fifty korona coin under the tablecloth in a coffeehouse, then avoid the entire area. I’d join a lending library and put bank notes between the pages of the books. I’d go for walks and keep dropping various amounts.

At such times I’d hurry along holding my breath, like somebody up to no good. The trick often worked. But a couple of times people ran after me — once a schoolboy, once a lady in mourning — and brought my money back. I blushed, stammered something, and crammed the note into my pocket. They, poor things, took it amiss that I didn’t even thank them for their kindness or give them a reward for being honest.”

“Amazing.”

“You can’t imagine how little use money is if you really want to squander it. Then you simply don’t need it. Nobody wants it. I struggled bitterly on for a year like that. I handled it so badly that — as they say—‘after going over the books,’ I had 1,574 koronas left which had no owners anywhere. At the start of the third year my luck turned. I came across a nice little dentist who’d set up in Buda. He polished the plaque off my teeth and gave me that lovely gold tooth which has been part of my poetic persona ever since. There were four or five coats hanging in the waiting room, and in a moment when no one was watching I stufffed a couple of notes in the pocket of each. Next day I did the same. On the third day as well. In a week I’d succeeded in getting through all my backlog of money. The patients sat in the waiting room, eyes shining. They’d creep out one by one into the anteroom and come back happy and electrified with the money in their pockets which they had taken from their coats and put in a safer place. They usually hid their faces with their handkerchiefs, as if they had a toothache, so as not to show their pleasure and so the others wouldn’t know they’d been looking for money. Some of them strolled out into the anteroom more than once in the hope that this inexplicable natural marvel would be repeated several times in an afternoon, or perhaps they were afraid that somebody else would collect the present. I lay low in the middle of them. I was enjoying the situation. But I soon dropped that too.”

“Perhaps the journalist discovered that as well?”

“No. But the word went round that there was no dentist in Budapest as clever and gentle as mine, and his practice flourished so much that they had to draw lots for appointments. I drew number 628, so I wasn’t going to get an appointment for the foreseeable future. The receptionist wouldn’t even let me in. So I went elsewhere. I operated where my fertilizing golden rain hadn’t fallen before. By that time there was hardly anywhere left. Especially as I had to be more and more careful all the time. That’s right, my dear boy. The noose was tightening round my neck.”

“Poor fellow.”

“At the start of the fourth year I had a brilliant idea. I have a very good friend who’s served five years for picking pockets. I got him to teach me. The lessons were really hard. First he lengthened my index finger, stretched it, loosened the knuckles, to make it the same length as my middle finger, because pickpockets only ‘dip’ with those two fingers. When I’d finished the training I could work quite confidently, even daringly at times. On one state occasion I succeeded in smuggling my daily 150 koronas into the court dress of an elderly, widely respected Hungarian nobleman of European distinction, and another fifty into the fur of his egret-plumed hat. In fact, while I was in the corridor of Parliament, chatting with the finance minister about the economic crisis, I slipped a hundred into his pocket. For the most part I hung about in the crowds at soccer matches and amusement parks, where people are jammed together, lining up to get on the rides. One Sunday — I mention this as a particular piece of luck—750 koronas were taken from my pocket at the Hüvösvölgy tram terminus.^* That day I had nothing to do. At the time I only risked placing smallish amounts. It seemed that the detectives were keeping their eyes open. Just imagine, I was putting koronas into my fellow men’s pockets and bags. Gradually I became careless. I used to sit on trams from morning to night to achieve my self-imposed task. One day in May — I remember it clearly — an old man with blue eyes and a neat silver beard sat down beside me and rested both hands absentmindedly on the crook of his walking stick. He was wearing a threadbare coat. He looked like a tax-office clerk or something. I’d just got a silver five-korona piece out of my pocket and was about to slip it into his coat pocket with my two long, agile fingers, when the old man trapped my hand under his arm and shouted ‘thief.’ The conductor immediately rang the bell, stopped the tram, and called a policeman. It was no good my protesting. I’d been caught in the act. That was the end of my career …”

Kornél Esti was silent. He said no more. He walked pensively down the street, now flooded by bright sunlight, and stopped outside the big, dark red house where he lives on the sixth floor, in the attic. He rang to be let in.

“You’re mad,” I said, and embraced him.

“So it’s not dull?” he asked. “Interesting enough? Absurd, improbable, incredible enough? Will it be annoying enough to people who look for psychological motivation, understanding, even moral lessons in literature? Good. Then I’ll write it up. If I get paid for it I’ll let you have your fiver back tomorrow. Well then, good-bye.”

* On the northwest edge of Budapest.