Kornel Esti (18 page)

“Even a love match, however, can have its other side. He that that brings love to a marriage is not much wiser than he that establishes a lovely, graceful leopard in his home to see to its tranquility. It’s quite unsuitable.

“They were always arguing. Pista was possessive toward his wife, and she toward him. She was even possessive toward his thoughts. They were both very young, little more than children. After the storms came the rainbows, and they would make up in tears. So they argued and kissed, like doves.

“After one reconciliation a couple of months went by, and they fell out again over some trifle. It was a morning in spring. Pista slammed the door behind him and rushed to the office. When he came home at midday the place was empty. The kitchen fire wasn’t burning. Nor had young Zsuzsa made lunch. He looked everywhere for her, even under the bed. He waited for her until three in the afternoon. Then he went to see his father-in-law.

“The old man, whom he’d met only once since the wedding—and even then they’d visited him—received him coldly. On this occasion too he didn’t shake hands, and he addressed him as
maga
.
^*
What he heard didn’t surprise him. He merely shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, hemmed and hawed; his daughter hadn’t been there, goodness knows where she might be, he really didn’t know. Anyway, he wasn’t particularly interested.

“In the yard Pista looked into the well and then rushed home. He was hoping that by the time he arrived he’d find Zsuzsa there. But she wasn’t. Now he began to worry. Where could she be, where could she have got to? Zsuzsa had no close friends. She was still too shy to go into a restaurant alone. Pista searched the town, looking down every street and alley. As evening approached he—in despair—reported her disappearance to the police. The officer advised him to take another look at her father’s house.

“There was nothing else that he could do. First, however, he approached the house from behind, up the other street. There he saw a light in the window. Never in all his life had the old man lit the lamp—he begrudged the expense. So Zsuzsa must be hiding there. Pista tapped on the window. At that the lamp inside was blown out. It was she, it was she.

“He did not dare resort to force. He knew her. She was as obstinate as her father. She met force with greater force. He rang at the gate.
^*
After a lengthy interval the old man opened it. Pista informed him that his wife was hiding there. The old man didn’t deny it, but neither did he confirm it. Pista resorted to pleas, begged him to soften his daughter’s heart, reconcile her to him, he would be grateful, promised him all sorts of things. The old man pondered. Then he spat out that it would cost him a cool five hundred koronas.

“Pista thought that it was all a joke—even laughed—but it was no joke. Next day too his father-in-law would not let him in, merely spoke briefly through the window, and when he saw that Pista had come empty-handed he shut it. Pista couldn’t get near Zsuzsa, nor did she accept his letters. So Pista didn’t get his wife back until he withdrew from the bank the five hundred korona and counted every one of them out into the old man’s hand.

“Thus he blackmailed Pista the first time. Then it happened twice more. The second time it was more expensive—fifteen thousand korona were extorted from him. The most serious, however, was the third occasion, which happened one Whitsun, in the second year of their marriage.

“This time there was a lot at stake. They had come home from a masked ball—the first to which her husband had taken Zsuzsa—and had argued so badly in the street that when they reached home Pista gave his wife two quick slaps in the face in the hall. Zsuzsa turned on her heel, and in her thin patent leather shoes and her Tündér Ilona costume, ran out into the street and went weeping through the freezing winter night to her father’s. Pista, who was by that time tired of all the arguments and reconciliations, and also of the ransoms which were more exorbitant every time, decided on a new tactic: he would ignore the whole thing, his wife would simply relent, get tired of sulking, and come back of her own accord. Days went by, weeks too. Three long weeks passed without any sign of life from his wife. He didn’t even know whether she had in fact gone home on that bitter night, or even whether she was alive or dead. One evening he took a walk past his father-in-law’s. The house was shut up, dark and gloomy as a castle.

“Pista drank until dawn. At dawn he returned with the gypsy band, to assault the fortress with violins. Until morning came he made them play his wife’s song—
Hány csillagból áll a szemed, Zsuzsikám?
^*
—under her window. Until morning came he sang it at the top of his voice toward the window, toward the snow clouds in the sky, toward the stars, as if expecting from somewhere an objective reply to that rhetorical question, that excusable poetic exaggeration. Nobody replied. Only the two
kuvasz
howled in opposition.

“The fourth week passed too. Now a whole month had gone by. Pista’s patience was exhausted. He engaged a lawyer to go and hold talks on his behalf. Zsuzsa told him that she absolutely wanted a divorce and asked her husband to agree to it peacefully. The lawyer continued talks for a further week. Then he brought the old man’s reply, that peace would cost a round twenty thousand koronas.

“Why drag the story out? Pista hurried to the bank, withdrew what remained of his dowry, nineteen thousand, seven hundred and sixty koronas—the rest he had to scrape together from his friends—and paid up. Then, after almost six weeks of absence, he brought his wife out in his arms, placed her triumphantly in the gig and drove home with her.

“I heard this from people who swear that, word for word, that’s exactly what happened. And I believe them. There’s just one thing that I don’t understand. Was she in league with the old miser, who had recouped his daughter’s dowry to the last krajcár? Possibly so. But it’s also possible that she was a mere tool in his hands, and that she only wanted her husband back but wanted to sell her love dear. That too is possible.

“Something else that’s odd—after that they never quarreled again. That’s strange. That I could not begin to explain. Perhaps you can.

“Yes, yes. As soon as they had nothing they were happy and content. But they were often hard up. True, they knew that they had mighty expectations when the old man closed his eyes. That could have happened any day. But he wouldn’t die. His financial success really galvanized him, he took a new lease on life. Once more he sat on the bench saying nothing.

“He lived for years, hale and hearty. Why is it that misers are all long-lived? Some say that meanness itself is an indication of an indomitable joie de vivre, and like every true passion, doesn’t kill but keeps one alive. Some say that this long-term, constant greed is what’s missing in puny individuals who die young. Some say that misers are steeled, filled with obstinacy, by the antipathy that surrounds them, it’s the burning hatred of their dependents that keeps them alive, just as the enthusiastic adoration of their children sustains the good. Finally, there are those who say that the earth keeps them here, won’t let them go, clasps them to its dirty, muddy bosom, because misers are dirty and muddy like their relative, the earth. These are theories, and nothing can be settled by theories. Everything, however, is settled by a severe brain hemorrhage in the night. That killed even the old man. Pista and his wife then inherited more than they had hoped for, almost half a million prewar gold koronas.

“Believe me, I would love to end this newfangled folk tale happily, to show in glowing colors how Zsuzsa and Pista finally obtained their reward and lived happily ever after. Unfortunately, I can’t. The old man died on the second of June 1914, and on the twenty-eighth—as I’m sure you’ve heard—war broke out. As a lieutenant in the reserve, Pista was called up into the First Honvéd Hussars. Before joining them he decided to invest all his money in war bonds. Zsuzsa, a peasant girl of limited outlook who clung to the soil, at first would not approve of this. She proposed that with part of it at least they should buy gold and land. She changed her mind only when her husband, who being a man had a better understanding of politics, explained that when the war was over they would get their money back with interest from the great syndicate which would have become a grateful posterity. Pista was never able to learn that this didn’t quite work out. The fault, it must be said, wasn’t his own. That is to say, in the first cavalry charge a shell so hit him that not so much as a kneecap or a brass button was left—even his horse vanished without a trace. It was as if the earth had swallowed the two of them up, or as if they had galloped up fully armed to the Milky Way, that golden roadway in the sky, and from there rushed into some wonderful and splendid military heaven. Young Zsuzsa waited for him for a while. She slowly used up what money she had. Then she languished on her war widow’s pension and eventually left town. The last time I went down there I heard that she’d found employment as a maid on a farm and had become a complete peasant, setting hens and fattening geese.

“So life has its ups and downs, doesn’t it? No, we really can’t complain. But let’s add that not only has it ups and downs, it also has deep meaning. Quite. Now, aren’t we ever going to have another drink?”

*
Kosztolányi’s native area, a region of the Alföld southwest of Szeged, mostly now in Serbia.

*
Badacsony and Csopak are celebrated white-wine regions on the north shore of Lake Balaton, as is (Balaton) Arács too. This latter is now joined to Balatonfüred and the monastery is no more.

†
 
Kéknyelű,
“blue-stemmed,” is a traditional Hungarian grape variety grown mostly in Badacsony.

‡
The
guba
is a cloaklike garment, often of rough woollen cloth; the
pörge,
“upturned,” hat is that traditionally worn by Hungarian shepherds, low-crowned with an upturned brim, somewhat similar to a bowler.

§
Banyakemence
is a big, rick-shaped earthenware stove found in peasant houses.
Suba
is a sheepskin coat, worn with the fleece inside.

*
“Saracen doughnut,” a doughnut coated with chocolate.

†
“Perfumed Mass,” that attended by society ladies.

*
“Silence!” A Romany word.

†
  “Quietly, just quietly” and “Waves of Balaton” are well-known folk songs.

*
A style of frock coat popularized by Emperor Franz Josef.

*
The honorific form of address, implying a certain distance.

*
The gate, not the house door, because of the
kuvasz
. This is standard Hungarian practice.

*
How many stars are your eyes made of, my Zsuzsika?

XI

In which is an account of the most excellent hotel in the world.

“
ARE YOU AWARE OF THE RICH RANGE OF HOTELS?” KORNÉL
Esti turned to us. “I could find a lot to say about it.

“There are family hotels, in which we feel more comfortable than at home, free from domestic tensions in addition to being independent. There are pleasant, intimate, nice hotels. There are dismal hotels, especially in the country, which have something in common with out-of-tune pianos, inducing melancholia with their dull mirrors and damp quilt covers, and then there are hotels that drive one to despair, accursed, deadly hotels, where on a November evening one might easily commit suicide. There are cheerful hotels, where even the taps laugh out loud. There are stif, ceremonious, silent hotels, chatty hotels, boozy hotels, cheeky hotels, showy, loud, worthless hotels, reliable, calm, lordly hotels, noble with the rust of the past, frivolous hotels, ponderous hotels, healthy hotels, in which the sun shines even from the drains, and sick hotels in which the table limps and the chair wobbles, the chest of drawers is on crutches, the sofa is consumptive, and the pillows lie on the bed breathing their last. So there are very many kinds of hotels.

“The last time I went abroad I passed through a small country on my way home. There I came across a hotel which I have to remember specially.

“This hotel was excellent. It was so excellent that I’ve never seen the like anywhere. I have no qualms about saying that it was the most excellent hotel in the world.

“My car had been racing along in the dust of twilight among decrepit, single-story hovels when it came to a halt outside a thirteen-story skyscraper complete with plaster roses and a dome, which contrasted sharply with its lowly surroundings and was obviously intended for the accommodation of distinguished foreigners who strayed that way.

“I immediately realized that I had come upon no ordinary place.

“The horn of my car had scarcely sounded than staff emerged from the revolving door of the hotel. There must have been fifteen or twenty of them—a veritable small army.

“One member of staff opened the door of my car, a second helped me out, a third took of my English dust coat, a fourth took my American traveling trunk, a fifth my two suitcases, a sixth my crocodile leather briefcase, and a seventh my French newspaper, which I’d left on the passenger seat. All this happened in the twinkling of an eye, fast, smoothly.

“Those who had no part to play in this stood on the asphalt in a relaxed line, not in military fashion, but none the less in disciplined, silent readiness.

“All of them wore braided hats and curious, violet-colored uniforms that might have come from some operetta. When I walked past them as if inspecting a parade, the braided hats—at no audible word of command—were dofed to reveal well-brushed heads.

“This was how guests arriving from afar were greeted, with that assured, sincere, almost puerile respect which must always have been stored in the very depths of their hearts, where no change in fickle fortune could ever eradicate it, and the only reason that such respect hadn’t previously been shown to me must have been simply that until that day they just hadn’t known me.

“I looked for a long time at my tiny army. I gained the impression that should need arise they were even prepared to shed their blood for me. Tears came to my eyes. A king could not have been received with greater fealty.

“The army, all the more heroic for its small size, dispersed, without trumpet call or drumroll, at a sign from the clean-shaven, graying gentleman who, until then in the background, was directing them. This was the bell captain. He addressed me in English, and bore a striking resemblance to Edison.

“With inef able tact Edison escorted me through the foyer, which was decorated with exotic plants. He ushered me into a capacious room. He indicated a chesterfield and requested me ‘to be so good as to be seated.’ When I had obeyed he pressed a button.

“The capacious room, without a sound, began to rise. I then realized that it was the elevator.

“It was a wonderfully equipped elevator. Apple-green bulbs shed a muted green light so that the sensitive eyes of guests should not be upset. In addition to the chesterfield, other leather-upholstered armchairs stood on the silk Persian rugs, while here and there in corners could be seen little tables with cigarettes and lighters, illustrated magazines, and chessboards on which the pieces were set out so that guests might dispel the ennui of their sojourn there with a little profitable, refreshing entertainment. Unfortunately, I had no time for these delights, as a few seconds later the elevator stopped with a melodious chime at its appointed destination on the second floor.

“Here I was received by a second detachment of staff, dressed in coffee-colored uniforms. At the bell captain’s bidding they opened the double doors opposite the elevator.

“Passing through the foyer I entered a large room, which on account of its dimensions I could rather call a throne room. Artistically draped brocade curtains poured from the Empire windows, which gave a view onto a swiftly flowing stream of blue water. Of this room opened a reception room, with white, gilded chairs, a dining room, a bedroom, and a smaller sitting room, together with a bathroom with a sunken marble bath and Venetian mirrors, in front of which glittered a countless profusion of perfume sprays, nail files, and small scissors. In every room—even the bathroom—three telephones were at the guest’s disposal. The first connected to the hotel switchboard, the second to the outside world, and the third—which had a pink handset—to I know not what.

“I could hardly believe my eyes as I stood in that suite, and then I inquired of the bell captain approximately how much it cost per diem.

“The bell captain didn’t reply. It seemed that he was hard of hearing. In that too he resembled Edison. By this time I was absolutely convinced that he didn’t just resemble him but that he was actually Edison himself.

“I therefore repeated my question loudly, as one usually speaks to the deaf. The aged inventor did hear that. But it seemed that he was shocked and somewhat distressed. He closed his eyes.

“The staff, ranged before us in a position of relaxed attention, likewise closed their eyes, modestly. Their spirits, which surely moved in higher spheres—in realms of thought unaffected by sordid material considerations—had been cut to the quick by my worldliness. It was as if a poet, in the blazing fire of inspiration, had been asked the price of potatoes.

“They all remained silent.

“I was about to apologize, to of er the explanation that I was a poet who earned his bread by the bitter toil of writing, and that therefore I regarded money as important and had a deep respect for it, when the bell captain gave expression to his disappointment by coldly, dispassionately letting fall a number—in dollars—such as all but laid me flat on my back.

“I asked to see another room.

“Thomas Alva Edison nodded courteously. He took me to the third floor, where egg-yellow uniforms awaited us. As I didn’t find the price of rooms suitable there either, we went to the fourth floor, among lackeys in blue and white, then to the fifth and sixth, ever up and up.

“Finally we reached the eleventh floor. Here very handsome blond pageboys in red were on duty.

“The bell captain was becoming worn out, but led me with a still respectful guard of honor along an endless corridor. Here and there a colored light was burning above the lintel of a door. I inquired what those were for.

“He didn’t reply at once.

“A t first he seemed amazed at my unsophisticated curiosity, at the fact that there was still on the earth anyone unaware of the purpose of such lights, and then with dignified brevity informed me that those lights took the place of bells and were meant for various members of the staff, with whom guests could make contact without disturbing one another’s tranquility and the perfect silence of the hotel.

“At the back, in a secluded corner, I found a room which more or less answered my ‘requirements.’

“But it was so luxurious, so splendid, that I don’t dare describe it.

“All that I’ll tell you is that I found on a little malachite table a long-ish wooden box shaped like a spinet, on which eighty-five black-and-white buttons presented me with a keyboard of an unknown kind.

“As I’m a keen musician and play the piano whenever possible, I immediately sat down and began to play Beethoven, the
Pathétique
sonata. Scarcely had I reached the Allegretto when I heard a quiet knock on my door.

“A flunky in evening dress appeared. Behind him a darkling crowd of staff awaited my orders. I immediately counted them. There were exactly eighty-five. From that I deduced that the long-ish, spinet-shaped instrument was the keyboard for the system that called the staff, and that by my playing I had—quite unthinkingly—summoned them all. I apologized.

“The more important of them took advantage of the occasion to introduce themselves one by one.

“I was a little surprised. My daytime room waiter resembled Chopin, and the night man, on the other hand, was like Shakespeare himself. My surprise increased immediately because I discovered that there was a certain system in this. The first chambermaid was like Cléo de Mérode,
^*
the second like Marie Antoinette, and the cleaner was the image of Annie Besant,
^†
the well-known theosophist.

“My amazement reached its peak, however, when among the large cohort of lesser servants I saw one after the other Eckener, the heroic oceanic pilot,
^*
Rodin, Bismarck, and Murillo, and then a bearded, shy gentleman who reminded me of the late lamented Tsar of Russia much more than his actual portraits.

“That wasn’t all. The hotel secretary looked like Schopenhauer, the chefs in charge of cold and hot menus resembled respectively Torricelli
^†
and Einstein, the stockroom manager Caruso, and a pale, sickly errand boy resembled the unhappy Dauphin, the son of Louis XVI who mysteriously disappeared.

“A glittering historical portrait gallery of international notables had come back to life in those worthy members of staff.

“What part the hotel management had in this, and whether they had selected them by virtue of resemblance, as a feature, a delightful idea with which to attract guests, or whether those living wax figures had come together by chance, I had no time to decide.

“I swear, however, by all that is holy, that it was absolutely as I describe. Here everyone resembled someone, and everything resembled something.

“Schopenhauer asked how he might be of service. I asked him to have my dusty shoes cleaned, because I would like to go out into the town and bathe in that swift, blue-watered stream as I had so wished to do from the very first moment I saw it.

“The grim Frankfurt philosopher took my desire as quite natural and human, and assured me that it would be satisfied forthwith.

“As he left he pointed out to me that all the staff spoke several European languages, the least well educated among them at least five, but the night porter spoke fifteen, not to mention Latin and Classical Greek, and so, should I chance to return home in the early hours, I could talk with him about the enjoyable experiences that I had had in my nocturnal excursions.

“With that he left. After that someone knocked. In came Nicholas II. He bowed very low with Slavonic humility, looked into my face, and then subjected my shoes to his spectacles without touching them with his royal fingers.

“The examination continued much as when a general medical practitioner examines a patient and in the process can see that it is a case of a specific and complex disease of some organ which he could in fact treat on the basis of his general medical training, but which it would be much more correct to refer to a specialist who deals exclusively with that sort of thing.

“He did not reveal that train of thought by a single word. He bowed low again and withdrew.

“After a brief interval Bismarck came back with Murillo, Eckener, and Rodin. They also stared at my shoes. It seemed that all five were preparing a diagnosis and recommended treatment. The whole thing was like a conference of doctors at the bedside of a very sick patient.

“They summoned a chambermaid, a new one whom I had not previously met—Fanny Elssler, if I remember correctly.
^*
She announced in ringing tones that this did not “fall within my sphere of influence.”

“Once more everyone left me. Only the faithful Bismarck remained at my side.

“A few moments later, four of the very handsome blond pageboys in red assigned to service in that corridor came into my room and trundled in an ingenious, electrically driven contraption on wheels, which each of them was steering with just the tip of his little finger. Under Bismarck’s expert supervision, my shoes were placed on the contraption with the aid of a tiny crane and, to the accompaniment of deep bows, removed.

“Scarcely an hour and a half had elapsed when the ingenious machine was trundled back. My shoes were now brilliantly clean.

“Stimulated by this excellence, this unaccustomed attention, I went to bathe. I splashed in the stream until evening, returning only for dinner.

“There were a few remaining guests in the dining room. For me a very long table had been laid, such as one would find at a banquet. Naturally I sat in the middle, the place of honor, alone.