Kornel Esti

VII

In which Küçük appears, the Turkish girl, whom he compares to a honey cake.

“IT WAS THE HEIGHT OF SUMMER, AND I WAS RACING HOME ward,” said Kornél, “on the electrified line from the East.

“In the curtained first-class compartment where I was sitting, there were also three Turkish women, three thoroughly modern Turkish women without veils or prejudices: a grandmother, a mother, and a fifteen-year-old girl whom they called Küçük, that is, Little One, Tiny.

“I admired this delightful family for a long time. Grandmother, mother, and daughter formed a unity, were as close to one another as Winter, Summer, and Spring on certain mountains in the Alps.

“The grandmother, a gaunt matron in her eighties, dressed in black and with enormous black pearls round her neck, was sleeping on the seat. She spoke in Turkish in her sleep. From time to time she raised her hand, her wrinkled, blue-veined hand, to her face to cover it, because for the greater part of her life she had worn a veil, and even in her sleep she must have felt that her face was improperly exposed.

“The mother was more modern. She almost flaunted her progressiveness. She had dyed her hair straw yellow — it must have been raven black at one time. Her manner was free and easy. She smoked one cigarette after another. When the guard came in, she — democratically — shook his hand. Furthermore, she was reading Paul Valéry’s latest novel.

“Küçük was like a pink and white honey cake. She wore a pink silk dress, and her little face was as white as whipped cream. Her hair too was dyed straw yellow. In every respect she looked the disciple of her mother. She was almost ashamed of being Turkish. All that gave her away were the red leather slippers that she wore on the train and the huge bunch of roses that she had brought with her, all those fiery red, blood-red Constantinople roses, and then her Angora cat, for which she spread a Turkish mat to sit on, the blue-eyed, deaf Angora cat over whose slumber she tenderly watched.

“Mohammed came to my mind, their stirring, kindly prophet, who on one occasion when his cat had gone to sleep on his cloak, preferred to cut off its corner rather than wake his favorite kitty.

“They were making for Vienna, and from there for Berlin, Paris, and London. They were astoundingly cultured. The girl talked about vitamins B and C, and her mother about Jung and Adler and the latest heretical schools of psychoanalysis.

“They spoke all languages perfectly. They began in French, the purest literary language, then slipped into argot, followed shortly by German — alternating between the speech of Berlin and Lerchenfeld patois — passing meanwhile through English and Italian. This was not at all showing off. They were just content, like children making themselves understood in adult western European society, comfortable, finding themselves a niche everywhere. It seemed that their ambition was to be taken seriously and regarded as western Europeans.

“I felt inclined to tell them that they were possibly overesteeming western Europe a trifle, and that I was by no means as entranced by its culture. But I decided against doing so. Why spoil their fun?

“Instead I showed them my eight fountain pens, which I always keep in my pocket, my two gold fillings, which I likewise always have in my mouth, and I boasted that I had high blood pressure, a five-valve radio, and an incipient kidney stone, and that several of my relatives had had appendectomies. I tell everyone what they need to know.

“This had an extraordinary effect.

“Küçük smiled and stared at me with her dark, bewitching eyes with such honest, frank sincerity that she quite perturbed me. I didn’t know what she wanted of me. At first I thought that she was making fun of me. Then, however, she took both my hands and pressed them to her heart. A dove can thus attack a sparrowhawk.

“In all this there was no coquetry or immorality. She just thought that was how cultured, advanced, western European girls behaved toward men whom they met for the first time on trains. Therefore I too tried to behave as cultured, advanced, western European men do in such circumstances.

“Her mother saw this, but paid us little attention. She — as I’ve said — was immersed in Paul Valéry.

“We went out into the corridor. There we walked about, laughing, holding hands. Then we leaned out the window. And so I courted her.

“ ‘You’re the first Turkish girl,’ I told her — we were on te terms by then—‘the first Turkish girl I’ve met, Küçük, Little One, and I love you. Years ago, in school, I learned about the battle of Mohács. I know that your ancestors spilled the blood of mine and kept us in shameful slavery for a century and a half. But I’d be your slave for another hundred and fifty years, serve you, pay you tribute, my dear little enemy, my dear oriental relative. Do you know what? Let’s make peace. I’ve never been angry with your people — they have given us our most lovely words, words without which I’d be unhappy. I’m a poet, a lover of words, crazy about them. You gave us words like gyöngy, tükör, and koporsó. You’re a pearl, you’ll shine in the mirror of my soul until they close my coffin. Do you understand when I say gűrű, gyűszű, búza, bor? Of course you do, they’re your words as well, and betû, the letters by which I make my living. You’re my ring, my thimble, the wheat that feeds me, the wine that intoxicates me. I have your people to thank for our three hundred and thirty finest words.^* I’ve been looking for ages for someone, a Turk, to whom I could express my unfailing gratitude for them and pay back at least in part that loan of words, discharge that linguistic debt which has accumulated so very, very much interest for me.’

“I was burning thus in rapture when suddenly the train ran into a dark tunnel. Küçük sank warmly into my arms. And I, quickly and passionately, began to kiss her lips.

“If I remember correctly, I gave her exactly three hundred and thirty kisses.”

* There are indeed quite a lot of Turkic loanwords in Hungarian, but most of them, including all eight that Kornél lists here, are of ancient origin, and far fewer date from the years of the Ottoman occupation (1526–1699).