The Diary of Geza Csath (10 page)

After saying goodbye, I was given cause for unpleasant forebodings: the horse of the only carriage waiting at the station was white. I did not take it. The coachman had already slammed the meter down. ‘I won’t get on,’ I said, ‘white horses bring bad luck.’ The coachman said nothing. He didn’t cajole and didn’t swear. He stayed mute as fate, as if he were saying, ‘Even if I’m not the one who takes you home, you won’t escape your destiny.’ Crossing the bridge on the way home, I met only white horses, practically speaking, all the way to Kalvin ter. I breathed a sigh of relief when I finally encountered a brown horse pulling a coach displaying a favourable number. The sum of the numbers was 16. In gratitude, I gave the coachman a sizable tip, and he wished me a Happy New Year.

I went around the ward and was the first everywhere to write my name in the duty roster. Everything was quiet. The nurse was asleep. I didn’t have the heart to wake her. Only Count Kreith walked up and down in his drawers, with genial indifference. I wished him a Happy New Year and came upstairs. After a short defecation I gave myself .00 P [sic] then .01 M, which even together did not bring euphoria. Still, my colour is good enough. The reason for this is the daily vial of arsenic and the .0002-.0004 g. of strychnine. I have come to recognize the latter as a marvellous substance. After this let us see the
balance sheet for the year.
²⁹

It seems it was futile to reject the coach with the grey horse on New Year’s Eve – for me, misfortune, failure, and bad luck were waiting at the gate of the New Year. Within a few days I was forced to suffer a whole series of complex wounds. I can’t easily get over them.

1. In view of Winter’s imminent departure, I could have anticipated being named teacher’s assistant. Justifiably, because I have been at the clinic for two years longer than anyone else. And yet Moravcsik promised the job to Vertes, that talentless, colourless fellow.

In vain, then
, was all the work, patience, the 600 crowns I sacrificed on the printing of my book, all the waking up early, all the galvanofaradization, boring rounds of visits trailing after the old man, trying to gain his favour, underhanded and despicable toadying, being friendly with his family, night house calls, writing case reports of a length no one at the clinic had ever equalled. In vain was the measurement of Olga Stern’s temperature for a year, devising of menus, electric bathing, the slave-like suffering of the trip to Cologne, duets with Tibor Moravcsik, all the hypnesia, the long and conscientious treatment of the Misses Klein, the psychogalvanic examinations, the histological efforts with Goldberger, which I carried out grinding my teeth, all the feeding, writing extracts of books for the Mental Health (department), all of it down the drain, useless.

I didn’t want the teacher’s assistant post, since I couldn’t have made a living from it, but Moravcsik passing me over without a word, with no excuse, is still unparalleled injustice, a vile, shifty, miserable thing, commensurate with his cruel, servile, sanctimonious character, his vengeful, oversensitive, unobjective, ignoble character. In all this, the only thing that consoles me is that some of the reasons for my being passed over are ones of which I can be proud.

1. Moravcsik is privately angry at me, and cannot forgive me for having had no desire to discover, see, or occupy myself with his cousin Erika, whom he
secretly thought
he would betroth to me.

2. He is envious of me, for despite my young age, I make a lot of money, have a large circle of acquaintances, and do not require his patronage.

3. He is envious of me because I live well and am successful with women, copulate a lot, and enjoy life, while at a similar age he was a miserable and
wretchedly tormented
servant of Laufenauer, going about in frayed trousers and unable even to dream of owning Persian rugs.

4.
He doesn’t want
anyone to obtain such a desirable post
comme ça,
effortlessly, without great perspiration and exertion.

5. He is vexed that I do not feel or demonstrate any dependence on him, I sometimes get up late for weeks, I do not parade myself before him or hang onto his coat-tails with the others. He is hurt that I have not reciprocated his sympathy and interest in me in an appropriate way.
If I think all this through, the thing doesn’t hurt at all. I am only vexed and embittered that there is no way to thwart this injustice. It cannot be done!

My vengeance will catch up with him, however. It will be noble revenge but he will suffer like a dog. I will dedicate a short novel to his Napoleonically conceived life, to the description of his character and the proper representation of the dirty work done at the clinic. This novel must awaken nationwide interest.

The other great complex injury to have affected me is that my play
The Horvaths
has now been rejected by a second forum, the Vigszinhaz.
³⁰
‘It doesn’t meet our standards,’ said Miklos Faludi insolently. I knew the Vigszinhaz wouldn’t be wild about the piece. My having given it to them was based on the 3 in 100 (no more) chance that now, when they have few pieces and the press is hostile to them, they might do something sympathetic, something seemingly unselfish and literary. I was disappointed in this calculation, but that wasn’t what hurt. It was the director’s tone of voice. I sensed he didn’t consider me the kind of writer who could ever produce a piece that was right for them.

The third: my
Puccini
did
not
win the Greggus Prize. The fourth and most significant injury: the dashing of my hopes for a position at the Hercules spa. The job would have provided 10-12,000 crowns income by summer’s end. Only yesterday, Gajari promised to intervene on my behalf: he said he and the wife of the undersecretary of agriculture were childhood friends, so I could consider the appointment a certainty. Today at noon I was informed the position had already been filled.

Thus did I receive several slaps in the face from fate. Only Olga consoles me in my troubles and vicissitudes – that is, she would console me if I didn’t always feel guilty in her presence on account of the poison, and didn’t worry about her future faithfulness. Often, I am seized by the ominous presentiment that my marriage to the woman will not be happy, that she will be a nasty disappointment to me, while today I find her kind, patient, and sweet.

For the second time, I console myself that these are just natural jitters before exams, unavoidable thoughts of the worst that can happen, failure.

Last night I had a horrible dream. I had to take part in a skating race, but on a bicycle course (that was the track, as it were), and I couldn’t, the skate (
penia
) was short; a terrible feeling, the ice melted and I stumbled through the mud, fell onto my stomach, while Aunt Lujza (who perhaps thought the most of my talent from the beginning!) cheered me on anxiously. A little girl also took part in the race (it was her skate I had to strap on), but she had an easy time because she was pulled along by a rope attached to her waist.

It doesn’t matter!
I mustn’t hang my head. I trust in my talent, and with perseverance I will achieve results. I have no intention today of compromising or abandoning my hopes (of the possibility of a comfortable, beautiful, and wealthy life). I will begin again ten times and one hundred times and – if I must – a thousand times. I must not lose sight of the goal. I must look toward it. I still see it before me: worldwide literary success, an easy and remunerative position as a doctor at a spa, in a beautiful hotel with a terrace, white tennis shoes, a good cigar, a fine bedroom, an incredibly elegant office, books, refined literary work – without excessive diligence – but making continuous progress, music, around 35 my first opera or pantomime with full symphonic apparatus, Munich, Paris, travels, German premieres for my plays, later children, one or two – all the happiness which at this moment, when I am slightly nauseous in consequence of today’s high dosage (3.2 cgm M+ 3.8 cm Pantop.) seems unreachable.
You must not be impatient, young man. Last year at this time, how much worse was your situation? Two years ago, what a miserable state you were in sexually. Three years ago, how much more problematic was the health complex! Today – the health complex has healed, the evil infectious granuloma no longer threatens. The psychological impotence has dissolved. You’ve shown that you are still capable of a grand career. You are able to earn money. Your financial affairs have become ordered enough. Why do you want everything right away? Why do you want to obtain
every complex happiness for yourself simultaneously?
Wait your turn patiently, industriously, and enjoy the struggle itself, which is beautiful and – this is not a kind of compromise – represents the essence of life itself.

I promised Dezso, Sandor, Gyula and myself that I would say goodbye to unproductive, indulgent living, that I would cut out using the narcotic poisons, namely M and P, and be a respectable working person again. I truly feel the time has come: this is the last hour I can
still
escape unscathed, without consequences. Therefore, I will not revoke my decision. The withdrawal plan is simple. For tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, 0.02 g. P at night, and after that, nothing. Come what will. A hellish 2 x 24 hours await, but after that, a new life and everything that is beautiful and grand, rebirth, joy!

I will never, never return to these accursed substances. Mainly because it is impossible to enjoy them just once, for one day. To inject M or P once a week is impossible.

1. A person doesn’t enjoy the first dose.
2. The side effects appear immediately and accelerate rapidly (headache), making one fall head over heels into the whirlpool.

Since their prudent and moderated enjoyment is impossible, I must renounce their use forever, reserving them only in the event that great and irreparable misfortune strikes me, and for the joyless days of old age.

On 9 April 1910, university professor Dezso Kuthy tapped my diaphragm and spoke thus: ‘A little apicitis on the right side.’ In the dimly lit office smelling of carbolic, I was suddenly assailed by the smell of the crypt. Icy cold ran through me. ‘So, what I was most terrified of has caught up to me after all.’ I pulled myself together. I wanted to hope, and I gathered all my energy. I was a tough young man then. I showed no distress in front of my friends either. But that night I couldn’t sleep at all. Memories of the past welled up in my head, one after another; the beauty of happy times tortured me along with my sins, every wrong I had committed, self-accusations, petty villainies committed against women. Kato, Lyca, Irenke! I took the first dose of bromine at midnight, the second at two, the third at five; and at 5.30 in the morning, in the gorgeous rays of the spring sun, using the needle on my table, I injected the first dose of a solution which was also lying there: .02 M. (In the women’s ward at the time, we were treating a lady tabes
³³
sufferer addicted to morphine.) I did not feel any unusual effect, I didn’t even get sleepy; all that happened was that the inner agonies abated quickly, surprisingly quickly. I calmed down. A few minutes later Winter came into my room. I asked him for veronal, and told him I had been thinking about injecting

morphine. To this he shouted, ‘I’ll give you what for!’ and took the bottle along with the needle. From then on, I did not use the poison. I travelled to Ujtatrafured, collected all my strength and kept only the hypnobromide, with which I struggled at nights against insomnia and disturbances to my general well-being. I did not want to think about my problem, the terrible notions conjured up by the specific illness
³⁴
drove me to find a means of escape.

At Ujtatrafured, towards the end of May, I was tortured by strong intestinal pains and stomach ache. I took 25 drops of opium toward morning. It helped. This was my second encounter with the toxin.

At the beginning of June my boss, Szontagh, went away for 14 days. During this time I felt quite ill. Too much work, the assorted haemoptysis of the many difficult patients, and having to act the strong, experienced, healthy doctor exhausted me. The exhaustion was spiritual, because I thought every day, every hour I spent working was causing irreparable damage. During this time, on a beautiful afternoon before office hours, I injected a
centigram
from the phials lying there already prepared. I vomited immediately, then euphoria flooded me. I felt a sweet warmth in my abdomen, spreading through the sympathetic nervous system like a warm tide. I conducted my visits with pleasure. I was not restless and sat with my patient, Mrs Heinrich, for a long time, talking with her. In the meantime I looked at the landscape, the sky. Everything made an exceptionally harmonious, favourable impression on me. That day I slept wonderfully without hypnobromide. The next day I didn’t give a thought to

the whole affair. Repetition of the pleasure didn’t even occur to me. I quickly put on weight, became stronger, my appetite increased admirably. By the end of June I had gone from 75 (April) to 80 kg.

At the beginning of July, however, my attraction to Jolan began to cause greater and greater fluctuations. While I trembled for her, the woman did not want to show that she loved me too. Besides that, in the afternoons the swings in my general well-being became much wider than before. Either the toxin sensitivity had grown, or (more likely) I had caught a new infection, or I was suffering from the increased and enormous flow of matter, those unparalleled pig-like meals! To combat the cold/warm feelings and paraestheses after lunch, every other day or every third day I used .006 M on average. Until the time that Jolan too confessed her love, especially on the horrible rainy days preceding it, I divided the .01 g dose into quarters. At 10.00, 3.00, and 6.00, I took .0025 g, always injected into the lower left arm. At that time, its effect was like that produced today by .01. After Jolan’s departure, I again stopped using the poison. Olga was next, in August. I began to live sweet days without being conscious of how happy I was. I always read the distant woman’s letters a hundred times, however, and employed all my wiles to make Mrs H, her friend who had stayed at the spa, speak of her with me. Sometimes the news concerning her was bad. At these times, I would take .01-.007 grams without delay.

I only acquired the habit of taking two or three doses a week in September and October. After lunch, I usually took some and went over to Olga’s to lie down. I used the excuse that I was better able to rest this way, and the damage I was doing amounted to less than the benefit. Sometimes however, instead of M, I would take 10-20 drops of opium, and its effect proved one to two times longer-lasting. Slowly this small dose gave me less and less pleasure, while I became prey to restlessness and headache along with a certain lassitude. Then on the afternoons without M, deep depression and taciturnity seized me; all of Olga’s kindness and skill couldn’t put me in a good mood. I did not stop using sleeping potions either. I combined codeine with paraldehyde and bromide, with a bined codeine with paraldehyde and bromide, with a .02 g codeine, intensified by .05 g veronal. If I woke between 3 and 5 a.m., which was quite often, I repeated the dose. Until the effect took hold, I read
Nyugat
– I was especially partial to Imre Halasz’s political reminiscences. The combination was unique and unforgettable. Night in the Tatra mountains. An open window, thick fog outside. Gurgling water all around. Under electric lamps, tucked in up to my neck, I read; on the wall, shadows of decay and doom swirled.

On returning to Budapest, I did not increase the dose, but stayed at .07-.08 g, taken regularly between 2 and 6 in the afternoon. My better nature protected me from increasing the dosage. Under the effect of the euphoria I was able to write and work well, then I would sleep one or two hours and dress only at 5 or 6 to go into town, or to walk with Olga, or to go to her place to hug and perform frottage, or to the
Vilag
, a concert, etc. In this manner, I arranged my life pleasantly and earned an average of 300-400 crowns. This money, however, Dezso and I spent in short order, because I had taken on the boy’s case personally; to my delight, we succeeded in achieving excellent results within a short period of time.

I did not go home for Christmas. On Christmas Eve I ambled back from the Valeria with .02 g under my skin, and with dignified, misanthropic insensitivity, I slipped into bed.

In the winter months I went to Hultl’s. My body was quite well on the whole, but in the mornings weak subfebrility caused a laziness close to collapse. I couldn’t abide the great heat in the operating room, the standing, the washing. I became very fatigued during anaesthesia.

Not having had intercourse for months was a big problem. Kuthy did not prohibit it, but the thought made me incapable of sexual enthusiasm with a
puella publica
. I worried about whether or not I would succeed, and thus the attempts were unsuccessful. Besides this, all sorts of complications arose. Jealousy interfered with my attraction to O. The M consoled me. In March, I abandoned it anyway. I eschewed it for an entire month. When I took it again, it caused great nausea: in the WC at Olga’s I disgorged my whole Sunday dinner. In May I realized for the first time how good the morning dose felt and how easy it made starting the day. At that time I took .015 g per morning, and in bed I read Siklos’s textbook on music arrangement. I felt a queer, unproductive enjoyment whose precise analysis would need more time. The Magyar Szinhaz
³⁵
was rehearsing my play
Janika.
During the tiring rehearsal period my daily dose became .04-.05, and even so it barely brought about euphoria. On the other hand, it caused perspiration, fatigue, and lack of

appetite. Still, by opening night I was back on form; if I remember well, that day I easily refrained until the evening, before leaving for the theatre, when I took .01 g.

I spent the summer at Stosz. In June at the spa, I wrote
The Psychic Mechanism of Mental Illness
, working on the book continuously for four weeks. During this time I increased my dose right up to .2 g. In the morning, on waking I usually took .04 g. I breakfasted, lit a
King
or a
Shepheards
, then worked until 7.45. I washed and went to work from 8.30 to 11. An hour of writing followed. Lunch. Afterwards .03 g. I wrote until 3. From 3 to 4.30 galvanofaradization again. Work from 5 to 7. At 5, another .03. After supper, 0.03 to .05. In this manner, the work proceeded wonderfully. I wrote with patience and enjoyment. The only big problem was the emergence of strong heart pains and constipation. For the former I employed ether and caffeine, for the latter, enemas.

On the 11th of this month I visited Jolan at Ujfured. Seeing her again was a great disappointment. It was clear to me that the woman was incapable of the great Isoldelike devotion I had anticipated. She was constantly afraid that a professional seducer of women lurked within me, and the belief that she could become the victim of an enterprise undertaken out of bravado distorted her attraction. It was only at night, when she hugged me in a light open-necked silk blouse and I could feel that she was wearing neither drawers nor petticoats, only then did her desperate and ardent kiss make me realize she wanted to be mine. But I no longer needed her. I wanted to leave. I had neither inclination, desire, impulse, nor condom.

I worried that I would cause her irreparable harm, and she would no longer be able to remain with her family. Today I still feel I did the right thing in not coiting
³⁶
her.

At the beginning of June, Dezso arrived. I was deathly pale by then from the poison. We began withdrawal immediately. I also discovered that Pantopon was a terrific substitute for the original substance. In a few days the dose was .06, then .05, half P and half M. In a few weeks I was down to .04 P. Had it not occurred to me then to take a tuberculin cure, which significantly disturbed my general well-being, I might have withdrawn completely. But my obsessive jealousy and feelings of helplessness also prevented it. At the end of the summer I was still on .03 P.

Then here at home, in Budapest, I succeeded in resolving completely the question of impotence. I copulated with Szidi and Olga both, with success and complete pleasure. My joy knew no bounds. I was overcome by feelings of fortune and happiness. Even half a year later, I was seized by great joy when I thought back to that night, when with will, skill, persistence and ingenuity, I resolved the apparently irresolvable. In my great joy, I injected again. Truly, joy and pain are equally unbearable to a real morphinist.

In October and November my dosage was .05 g. I took .016 of a 2% solution of P and M in bed in the morning, the second dose followed lunch or coitus, and after coitus or between 5 and 6 in the evening came the third. Now and again I would inject a fourth .012 around 9 in the evening. During this time I never emerged from the toxified state, hardly enjoyed anything, and was obliged to

use heart stimulants to counterbalance my collaptoid condition. Finally, one night, 27 November, at the New York Café, I greatly worsened my already poor condition with a superfluous little dose, and felt
exceptionally
discouraged. I sensed disparagement in Osvath’s
³⁷
remarks. The young writers looked at me as if I were a person past his prime, since I had written nothing in months. On going home, I spat at myself in the mirror and, almost weeping, I abused myself mercilessly.

The next morning, for the first time
in a long time
, I went to work without poison. On that day, I injected only .02 g Pantopon at around 5.30 in the evening. It caused a wonderful euphoria and satisfied me for twentyfour hours. The next day and the third day I proceeded in the same way. The main principle was one dose per day. By the second night, I couldn’t sleep. Through the skilful combination of alcohol, bromide, aspirin, cold water and warm baths, and by maintaining a strong and unremitting resolve, I succeeded in withdrawing from the poison completely. On 5 December, I injected the
last
dose of that year. The nights were the hardest. If I awoke, terrible heart pains tortured me. I endured them. I bathed for hours, then did 50-100 cold heart-washes, and only after all this did I inject .01 P in 1% solution. By these means, my sleep soon returned to normal. I did not take much bromide in the evenings.

In January and February 1912, in March, April, right throught to 5 May, for five whole months I lived without poison. Only every two weeks on average, I took five or six drops of a 2% solution in Gyula’s room (it corre