The Diary of Geza Csath (6 page)

Her cousin, the well turned-out, shapely, petite, Olgafaced, muscular 17-year-old Grete Loeff, had a similarly cautious temperament, though without the blue eyes. A few times, the course of events were such that I gained her confidence, but I could achieve nothing more than kissing her face and neck by force. The girl showered me with insults afterwards, but from her blush, I could tell that in addition to the humiliation she felt some sexual pleasure as well.

These two girls convinced me that real success and warm kisses were to be had only among refined and mature women. And this view of mine is not altered by the favourable experiences I had that summer with younger girls like Bozsi B., Kitty S., Margit (the little chambermaid), Paula L. (the midwife’s daughter), and Annie Laplace.

Among these belongs the little fairy tale with Edith G.. She was an enormous 17-year-old, slightly fat, but quite shapely, a brunette with a pink face and brown doe eyes. Her mother, the 135-kilogram widow of an appeals court judge, brought Edith to my office. I removed a grain of soot from the lass’s eye. Then with a little
adrenaline
, I returned her expanded veins to order, liberating her from hours of suffering in a minute. On one occasion, I began to speak to the girl in the hallway on the second floor. After giving her a few compliments, I took her hand and pulled her close. She laid her head on my shoulder and returned my kiss ardently. I attributed this success purely to my reputation, and I was therefore far from overestimating it. It appears that women and girls suffer equally from the frailty of not being able to resist curiosity if someone’s legend gets into their heads by way of gossip. We kissed a few times more in the hallways during similar accidental meetings. The girl’s quick leading question (‘But you don’t even love me!’), though put with fitting modesty, took away my inclination to court her. Apart from her prettiness and her enormous, blooming, youthful body, only her great sensuality spoke in her favour. But the effect was completely ruined by the provinciality of her manners and intellect, and her unpleasant affectations of gentility. Her reproachful look and rapid weight loss over the next two weeks were clear to see, appropriate punishment for me for the prodigality with which I disturbed the poor child.

On the same page would be my affair with the landlord’s daughter, the small, shapeless Hilda. She came to my office a couple of times for galvanofaradization. The thickness of her neck and her heart complaints made me suspect early Basedow. She accepted a few kisses from me with pleasure, but when her prettier cousins arrived at the spa, I forgot about her completely. She didn’t mind, because she was still an immature little dolt, incapable of inner emotion. She lacked charm.

The temperament of the ageing
Directrice
was all the more fiery. She was a 35-40-year-old divorcée, but allegedly played the coquette in Budapest during the winter. Her manner did not reinforce those rumours, but her facial features did. She had a slightly stubby, thick nose, blue eyes, blonde hair, and a quite beautiful body. One night, when she had an attack of migraine in her room, I examined her. I was enchanted by the youthfulness and beauty of her breasts. She had superb, thick white arms and wonderfully hot, muscular pink lips. On that very night same night she gave me proof that she embraced and kissed masterfully. I renewed the attacks later as opportunity arose, but we never went further. She talked of being faithful; also there was a pharmacist who loved her very much and was courting her for all he was worth. I didn’t want to knock him out of the saddle. (He was a scrawny bespectacled boy, whom Lea tortured like a dog.) Actually, even today I regret that I didn’t knock on her door one night. I’m quite certain I would have partaken of exceptional pleasures. We parted good friends …

There were a number of girls and women in whom I recognized willingness, but with whom I did absolutely nothing to exploit the possibilities. Dora J. was the daughter of an undersecretary; her mother was a charming writer with a great past. She interested me very much and was quite friendly to me from the beginning. She came to see me alone during my office hours, had herself examined, had her throat treated along with her alleged toothache … (
nota bene,
the naughty lass’s parents must not have known a thing about her visits, because I received no fee). Her behaviour was aggressive. She squeezed my hand as if she were holding a phallus, and fixed her hysterical blue eyes on me. Her affected, unprovoked laughter when we were alone also revealed what was happening within her. She had an exquisite figure: thin ankles, huge calves and thighs, a pale sensual face, hysterical, nervous movements. She was so sexually charged that she constantly kissed her little French companion, and as I found out from the French girl, Dora continued and escalated these embraces in bed at night. At these times, Dora and her companion took it in turn to play the male role.

The French Miss, A. Laplace, a bird-bodied, big-eyed Parisian girl with a prematurely aged look, came to me for facial treatment. With vibrational massage, I succeeded in smoothing out a few wrinkles. From the beginning, her behaviour was imbecilic and unambiguous. She frequently asked me, in Hungarian and French, why I didn’t love her, insulting and disparaging the girls and women she had seen with me. Margit N., the old maid of 32-34, awakened her disgust especially; she regaled me with gossip about Margit N.’s great love for me, her clumsy and exaggerated yearning. Dora J. and A. Laplace amused me with these things; I had some good laughs at the outright malice with which they attempted to belittle that poor ugly girl in my eyes. They imitated her glances, her gestures, her embarrassment and her behaviour when they affronted and vexed her with innuendoes.

That poor, stalwart and well-educated girl was the daughter of a former minister, and the cousin of Frigyes Koranyi. Completely alone in the world, she had been coming to the baths for years, chiefly to enjoy the friendship of the Erdelyis, who took her in and supported her. Having heard that she could play the piano well, I recommended her to Pardy, the director of the college, who wanted to organize a concert. The invitation was extended. I played Wagner’s Emperor March with her four-handed and she accompanied my violin playing. During the rehearsals, I noticed the girl’s behaviour was unpleasant, nervous, and that she had become shy. I began to avoid her because I was horrified of the thought of causing this unfortunate orphaned creature suffering. It was no good. It was even worse than that. She sought out my company, invited me to play the piano or go walking, and I frequently could find no way to escape having dinner with her.

This led to the problem of her wanting dinners together to be the rule. She watched me from her window to see when I went to the dining hall, and my tactic of eating supper very late – just so that I could be alone and in peace – this too was a failure. The affair became increasingly miserable. The whole group – the Erdelyis, Jozsef Szabo – made fun of her, which must have been double torture for such an intelligent and reticent old maid. During one evening walk, she shepherded the conversation towards the subject of love, and I felt a cold shiver at the thought that she was about to make some kind of confession. It did not happen, but I was careful afterwards not to join the group at night if she was with them. One day she appeared at my office in an excited state. It should be noted that she had made insinuations several times about wanting to have herself examined. I hadn’t said a word or invited her to my office. Now she came anyway. I wanted to cry over the cruel whims of fate which produced such impossible situations. She complained that for several nights she had slept
not even
an hour. I examined her – oh, how pitiful her fine ribboned shirt was! – I ordered half-baths
¹⁴
and tranquillizers. After a week, she signalled that she was better. I suspected early Basedow, however, and ordered precise measurement of the neck weekly. During her last check-up, she invited me to visit her. She sent me several postcards during my stay at the baths. The whole company went to see her off and I had to go too, for they had made a point of asking me. I did not, however, want to take part

in ridiculing her, and so did not take the advice of the vivacious but malevolent general’s widow, Mrs Zsoldos, who suggested that presenting Margit N. with a bouquet of flowers would be quite the thing for me to do.

An unusual case occurred on the last day of August. Mrs B, the vacationing aunt of a doctor from Teschen, came to see me for a check-up. She was a rotund, hunchbacked woman with pretty buttocks, pink skin on her face, fine features, grey hair and tiny ivory-white hands. Her entire being was flirtatious, assured, kind, and sexual. Despite her 52 years she was attractive and arousing, a widow with seven grown children, spiritually still fresh, with a lively appetite for life, and without self-pity on account of her bodily defect. This was natural, as she was loved, and thoroughly at that (seven!), and she could not see her hunched back unless she used a double mirror. (How can we explain the lively wits, will to live, and good nerves of hunchbacks? I believe it is the excellent circulation of blood to the spine and brain.) After just a few minutes, under the effect of the woman’s provocative smile, a faint excitement began to take hold of my nerves. We spoke. She mentioned her grown-up son, a first lieutenant in the chiefs of staff. Then I examined her. I made her lie down on the couch. She smiled. Between her full, pretty, blood-red lips, her beautiful porcelain-white teeth sparkled. I took her hand and suddenly started kissing it. Smiling calmly, she watched. In a state of strong excitement, I continued the kissing until I reached the finely shaped arc of her elbow. Then I suddenly bent down and kissed her lips. I glued myself onto them for a long time. She blushed. I covered her cheeks, her forehead, and her shapely jawline with insatiable kisses. She suddenly started laughing. She laughed at me. She pushed me away.

‘Aber Herr Doktor, was machen Sie, einem solchen alten Weiss?’
‘Sie sund nicht alt, Gnädige, verzeichen Sie wegen meine Freiheit, aber ich bin entzückt von ihrer Schönheit und Reiz und von ihrer Jugend! Verdannen Sie mich nicht. Ich fühle nur eine unendliche Ehre gegen Sie!’
¹⁵
(It’s queer that my knowledge of German always triples in such situations.)
She sat up and allowed me to continue kissing her hands, but then she laughed again. Her laughter was not chiming, but distorted:
‘Hee-hee-hee, heeheehee.’
That cooled me down. I sat down. We talked of inconsequential matters for a few minutes more. But I did not accept money from her. Anyway, she wasn’t with me long. It wasn’t her touch of rheumatism that brought her to the baths, she was just on holiday. Her group left the next day. But the night before, on the Promenade, I won a kind and slightly ironic goodbye smile from her. I would have liked to convince her of my tender feelings for her, but cruel nature, which limits the possibility of sexual enjoyment for women to precise time periods, deprived me of this special pleasure.
In midsummer a blue-eyed woman in mourning came to my office (with her husband). I later found out Mrs B was born a H…szky girl. She was one of the most brazen hysterics at the baths. Her face and body could have been called decidedly attractive, but her voice, manner of speaking, and intellect spoiled the effect. I received daily visits from her. She behaved provocatively from the start, complimented me, spoke of her intimate affairs. Her husband, a nervous and stupid Slovakian merchant, was exceptionally possessive of her and frequently wrote her long, jealous letters. In one of them, he wrote his whole life story in hopes of swaying the lady. The letter was quite pitiful yet still interesting. What I learned from it is that love increases to an incredible degree the expressive powers of even a person of low intelligence. The woman translated the letter for me and had some good laughs as she did so; I was in no doubt about the effect she wanted to achieve. She wanted to inhibit me from honestly feeling sorry for her husband and giving up my attack on her. Little could she guess that all her wiles were in vain because my heart was completely taken.
She stayed at the baths almost six weeks. Zelma and she were on friendly terms, and while the former was at the baths, she didn’t try anything. Later, however, she frequently called, inviting me to her room during her hysterical fits, making even the chambermaids laugh at her. This woman had no fewer than five daughters, who frequently wrote her kind letters in spidery handwriting, called her ‘dear mamakins’, and were manifestly very attached to her. I didn’t understand the woman’s problem – she spoke of her lack of fulfilment and dissatisfaction in marriage as an excuse for her behaviour. But after all, siring five children is no small matter, and doesn’t exactly demonstrate impotence. No matter. I felt no inclination to relieve the woman’s unhappiness. Only rarely, when I examined her on the folding table and she was without corset and skirt, panting, with eyes covered in tears, looking at me almost pleadingly, it crossed my mind that I might take pity on her. But this was only a thought; no feeling accompanied it, because at these times my little Olga also came to mind. Now, far away in sweltering Budapest, in a curtained thirdfloor room, she was thinking of me, with sadness, sweetness, and loyalty. All alone she was moving about, coming and going, perhaps with a weak headache caused by longing and the heat. At these times I was further away than ever from violating the promise I made to her.Though I never appeared with Mrs B in public at the baths, quite a few people believed she was my lover. Perhaps the rumour originated with women like Mrs Ilancsy, who sat on the terrace of the restaurant, watch in hand, noting who visited my office and for how long. Mrs B often did stay a long time. She arranged things so that she would be my last appointment of the morning, so there would be no need to rush. She often sent delicacies from her husband’s store – cheeses, candied fruits, honey, gin – which I never consumed, however. I felt a kind of revulsion for her offerings, and gave everything to the doorman and the chambermaids. In contrast, with what divine enjoyment and gluttony did I consume the fine fruits my little Olga sent me.