Kornel Esti (10 page)

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.