by Sándor Márai
She fell silent. It was as if she were suddenly frightened, regretting opening her mouth. But I wouldn’t let her drop the subject now. I sat up in bed, threw off the covers, and demanded she continue.
“For example?”
“Well, yes,” she said, and sighed. She picked up her knitting again. “I’m sorry we should have to talk about these things. But if it is any comfort to you, I confess my own marriage was worse, because, frankly, I did not love my husband.”
She said this calmly, almost indifferently, the way old people sometimes speak when they are near death, people who know the true meaning of words, are afraid of nothing, and care more for truth than for keeping the peace. I went pale.
“That’s impossible,” I muttered like an idiot. “You had such a good life together.”
“It wasn’t a bad life,” she replied in a dry voice, knitting away furiously. “I got him the factory, you know. He, in his turn, brought me love: one party always gives more love than the other. But it’s easier for those who do the loving. You love your husband, so it’s easier for you, even though you suffer for it. I had to pretend to a feeling that had nothing to do with what I really felt. That’s much harder. I put up with it all my life, and you see, here I am. That’s always the case with life. Romantic, passionate people expect more, of course. I was never passionate. But, believe me, your situation is better. I almost envy you.”
She tipped her head to one side and looked hard at me.
“But don’t you go thinking I had a hard life. My life was no different from anyone else’s. I only tell you this because you asked, and because you are muddled with fever. Well, so now you know. You were asking if your marriage was as bad as it could be. I don’t think it is. It’s a marriage,” she declared, as if pronouncing judgment.
“Would Mama advise us to stay together?” I asked in fear.
“Of course,” she answered. “What are you thinking of? What do you think marriage is? A mood? A bright idea? It’s a sacrament, one of the laws of life. One shouldn’t even think about it,” she admonished me, apparently insulted.
We said nothing for a long time. I gazed at her bony hands, her clever, nimble fingers, and the knitting pattern; I looked at her pale, calm face with its smooth features, ringed by white hair. There was no sign of suffering there. Even if she had suffered, I thought, she has succeeded in achieving the greatest of human triumphs: she had passed the test of life with distinction. She has not been broken by it. What more can anyone do? Everything else—desire, dissatisfaction—is nothing compared to this. That’s what I told myself. But deep inside me I felt I couldn’t simply accept the situation. So I told her:
“I can’t deal with his unhappiness. If he can’t be happy with me, let him go and seek happiness elsewhere, with someone else. With her.”
“Who?” my mother-in-law asked me, closely examining the stitches in her knitting, as if there could be nothing more important.
“With his true wife,” I answered harshly. “You know. The real one. The one intended for him.”
“What do you know about her?” my mother-in-law asked, her voice quiet, still not looking at me.
It was I who was embarrassed again. Whenever I argued with these people, with mother and son, I always felt like a child, someone who had not been granted admittance to the serious adult rooms of life.
“About who?” I asked greedily. “Who is there I should know about?”
“Her,” my mother-in-law cautiously responded. “The real wife you were talking about … the intended one.”
“Why? Is there an intended? Does she exist somewhere?” I asked, very loudly now.
My mother-in-law bent over her knitting. Her voice was quiet.
“There is always an intended one somewhere.”
Then she fell silent. And I never heard her talk of this again. She was like her son: there was something final about her.
But then, a few days after this conversation, I had gotten myself into such a condition of terror, I got better. I hadn’t understood my mother-in-law’s words straightaway. It was hard to feel seriously jealous at first, since she had spoken in general terms, in a kind of symbolic fashion. Well, of course, the intended always must live somewhere. But what about me, me, what was my role? I asked as I recovered. Who is his real wife, his intended wife, if not me? Where does she live? What is she like? Is she younger? Is she blond? How much does she know? I was utterly terrified.
I panicked. I quickly recovered, went home, had dresses made, hurried to the hairdresser, played tennis, went swimming. I found everything in order at home … so much so I thought someone had moved out of the house. Or it was something else: you know … the realization that my life had, in the last few years, been relatively happy—that despite the suffering, the restlessness, and all I had thought intolerable, now that it was gone, all was well, better than it had even been? It was an odd feeling. Everything in the house was in its place, but the rooms felt empty, as if the executor had been through them, as if the most important items of furniture had—carefully, sensitively—all been removed somewhere. It’s not furniture that furnishes a house, of course, but the feeling that fills people’s hearts.
My husband’s life was so detached from mine at this time he might as well have been living abroad. I wouldn’t have been surprised to have received a letter from him one day, delivered from the next room.
Before all this he would talk to me about the factory, about his plans, hesitantly as though conducting an experiment. Then he would wait with bowed head and listen to my answer as though he himself were being examined. There was no discussing plans now: it seemed he had no special plans for anything anymore. He didn’t invite Lázár, either. A whole year passed and we didn’t see him, only read his books and articles.
One day—I remember it perfectly, it was an April morning, the fourteenth, a Sunday—I was sitting out on the terrace, reading a book, the garden, cautiously planted for spring with yellow euphorbia, in front of me, when I felt something happen inside me. Please don’t laugh. I have no wish to play Joan of Arc with you. I heard no heavenly voices. But there was a voice, a voice so strong it was like the most passionate feeling you could ever feel. The voice told me that I really couldn’t go on living like this, that there was no sense in anything, that my situation was demeaning, ruthless, inhuman. I had to change. I had to perform a miracle. There are dizzying moments in life when we see everything clearly, when we are aware of our power and our potential, when we see what it is we have been too timid or cowardly to do. These are life’s decisive moments. They come to us unannounced, like death or conversion. This was one of them.
I shuddered. My whole body tingled: it was like goose pimples. I started to feel cold.
I looked at the garden and my eyes filled with tears.
What was it I was feeling? I felt that I was responsible for my own fate. That my life depended on me. There was no point in waiting for some angelic visitation either in my personal life or in any relationship. My husband and I had a problem of some sort. I don’t understand my husband. He doesn’t belong to me, doesn’t want to belong entirely to me. I knew there was no other woman in his life … I was pretty, young, and I loved him. Lázár was not the only powerful figure in his life, the only one with powers. I had powers of my own. I should use them.
I felt such absolute power surge through me, I could have killed someone or built a whole new world with it. Maybe it is only men who truly feel such power and are conscious of it at the decisive moments of their lives. We women are generally terrified and paralyzed at such times.
But I had no intention of backing down. That day, on Sunday, the fourteenth of April, a few months after the child’s death, I made the one and only fully conscious choice in my life. You needn’t look at me with those big frightened eyes of yours. Listen carefully. I’ll tell you what happened.
I decided to take possession of my husband.
Why aren’t you laughing? You mean it’s nothi
ng to laugh at? I didn’t feel like laughing, either. The prospect of the task daunted me. I was so frightened, I was quite out of breath at the thought. Carrying out this task was the meaning of my life, I thought. I couldn’t hold back any longer. There was no way of leaving it for time or chance to sort out; I simply couldn’t wait for something to happen, couldn’t just accept the alternative of going on as I was until it did. I knew right then that it wasn’t I who had decided on a course of action: the action had decided me. My husband and I were engaged in a life-or-death struggle, but we couldn’t be separated until something of devastating power came between us. Either this man was going to come back to me, body and soul, without reserve or shame, or I would leave him. He had a secret I knew nothing about and I would get it out of him even if I had to dig it out, tooth and nail; even if it was buried deep beneath the ground like a long-buried bone the dog digs up, or like a body some mad lover wants to disinter. It was either this or I move on. Things could not go on the way they were. It was exactly as I said: I decided to take possession of my husband.
Put it like that and it sounds simple enough. But you’re a woman too, so you know it is one of the hardest tasks you can undertake. Sometimes I think it’s the hardest of all.
You know how it is when a man decides to do something and overcomes every obstacle, anything that might prevent him carrying out his plan and imposing his will … well, yes, this was that kind of situation, that state of mind. Those we love are the world. When Napoleon—about whom I know little more than that he was master of the world for a while and had the duc d’Enghien killed, and that doing that was more than a sin; it was a blunder—have I mentioned that before? What I mean to say is that when Napoleon decided to conquer Europe, his decision was no more momentous than mine was then. It was what I vowed to do that breezy Sunday in April.
An explorer might feel something of the sort when he decides to go to Africa or to the North Pole, caring little about what wild animals or climate he might encounter there, if in so doing he might discover something, find something previously undiscovered or unknown, something no explorer had ever come across before … Yes, the project of a woman setting out to discover a man’s secret is as enormous as that. But she will get that secret even if she has to go through hell for it. That was what I had decided to do.
Or it could be that it was my decision that decided me … you never really know how these things happen. People do whatever circumstances allow them to do. It’s like being a sleepwalker, a water diviner, the local witch doctor, someone the tribe avoids out of a superstitious awe. And not just the tribe, either, but the authorities too, because there is something frightening in their eyes, something not to be trifled with. It’s as if there were a kind of sign on their brow to show that they are about a uniquely dangerous business and will not rest until it has been completed … That was how I felt when, having realized the situation and made a conscious decision, I waited for him to come home that day. That was my state of mind at noon when he returned from his Sunday stroll.
He had been down the valley, walking that dog he was so fond of, the tan-colored Vizsla he took wherever he went. He opened the garden gate and came in. I watched him, arms folded, from the top step of the veranda. It was spring, the light was strong, and the breeze that was tossing the boughs was ruffling my hair. I will never forget that moment, the cold light on the distant landscape, on the garden, and in me too. I felt possessed.
Master and dog came to a wary, involuntary stop, the way people instinctively do when confronted by anything strange, somewhat on the defensive. “Come on, then,” I thought calmly. “Come on, all of you—other women, friends, childhood memories, family, the whole hostile human world—come on. I am going to take this man from you.” So we sat down to eat.
After lunch I had a slight headache. I went to my room, drew the curtains, and lay down, remaining there till the evening.
I am not a writer, like Lázár, so I can’t describe my condition that afternoon, what I was thinking, what thoughts ran through my head … All I could see was the task ahead; all I knew was that I could not afford to be weak, that I had to do what I had decided to do. At the same time I knew that no one could help me, that I had no idea how to go about it or where to begin … You understand? There were moments I thought I was being ridiculous letting myself in for such an impossible task.
“What can I do?” I kept asking myself over and over again. I mean, I couldn’t write to the newspapers asking for advice and encouragement, signing myself “Cheated Wife.” I know those kinds of letters and the answers they receive from editors, encouraging the cheated woman not to give up, saying her husband is probably laden down with work, that she should look after the house, use this or that ointment and powder at night because that will keep her looking fresh, and her husband will fall in love with her all over again. Well, that sort of thing would not help me. I knew ointments and powders would not do the trick. And anyway, I had always done a first-rate job of housekeeping, everything in the house being absolutely where it ought to be. And I was beautiful then too, more beautiful that year than ever, perhaps. You goose, you silly goose, I thought, even to think of this. This was something altogether different.
There were no soothsayers or sages I could consult on the matter, I could not write to famous writers for advice, nor was it something I could openly discuss with women friends or members of the family—not this apparently unimportant issue that was nonetheless of ultimate importance to me, which was: how to take possession of a man … My mild headache had become the usual raging migraine by the evening. But I took two doses and said nothing to my husband, going out to the theater, followed by supper.
The next day, Monday the fifteenth of April—you see how precisely I remember these days; it’s a matter of life or death remembering such things!—I woke at dawn and went down to that little church in the Tabán district I had last visited some ten years before. My usual church was the one in the Krisztina where we also got married. It was where Count István Széchenyi vowed to be true to Crescence Seilern. If you didn’t already know that, I am telling you now. The marriage, they say, was not a great success. Not that I believe in such tittle-tattle, but people must always be gossiping.
The church in the Tabán was completely empty that morning. I told the sacristan I wanted to make a confession. I waited for a while in one of the pews of the dimly lit church. Eventually an old, unfamiliar, solemn-looking, white-haired priest appeared, entered the confessional box, and gestured for me to enter and kneel. It was to this unknown priest whom I had never seen before, nor have seen since, that I revealed everything.
It was a confession the like of which you make only once in your life. I spoke of myself, the child, my husband. I confessed I wanted to regain my husband’s heart and that I didn’t know what to do, that I was calling on God to help me. I told him I had led a moral life, that I never even dreamed of any lover but my husband. I told him I didn’t know where the fault lay, in me or in him … In other words, I told him everything. Not as I am telling you now. I couldn’t talk about everything now, I would even be wary of doing so … But in that dim church, that morning, before that unfamiliar old priest, I stripped my soul bare.
The confession took a long time. The priest listened.
Have you visited Florence? Do you know Michelangelo’s statue—you know, that wonderful sculptural group with four figures in the Duomo … wait a minute, what is it called? Yes, the Pietà. The main figure is a self-portrait, the elder Michelangelo. I was there once with my husband; it was he who showed me the statue. He said that the face there was a human face without desire, without anger, a face purged by fire, one that knew everything and wanted nothing, not even revenge, not even to forgive—nothing, absolutely nothing. Standing before the statue, my husband told me that was what we should be like. That this was ultimate human perfection, this sacred indifference, this absolute solitude and deafness to both joy and sorrow … That’s what he said. As I w
as confessing, I stole the odd glance at the priest’s face and with tears in my eyes I saw how terrifyingly similar his face was to the marble one in the Pietà.
He was sitting with half-closed eyes, his arms folded across his chest. He hid his hands in the folds of his habit. He wasn’t looking at me. His head was slightly tipped to one side, listening almost like a blind man, keeping strangely silent, as if he weren’t listening at all. It was as if he had heard all this many times before; as if he knew that everything I said was superfluous and hopeless. That was how he listened. He listened hard, gave me his complete attention, his entire strange, squat being. And his face, yes … his face was that of someone who knew it all anyway, who knew everything, having heard all kinds of people talk about their suffering and misery, and he still knew something more that could not be said. When I finally stopped, he remained silent for a while.
“You have to believe, child,” he said eventually.
“I do believe, Most Reverend Father,” I mechanically replied.
“No,” he said, and that calm, almost dead-looking face began to come alive, his watery old eyes briefly flashing. “You have to believe differently. Don’t spend your time concocting schemes. Just believe. That’s all you have to do. Believe,” he muttered.
He must have been very old by then, and my long speech must have exhausted him.
I thought he didn’t want to, or could not, find anything else to say, so I waited for my penance and absolution. I felt we had nothing more to say to each other. But after a long silence, just as he seemed to be nodding off, he opened his eyes wide and began to talk animatedly.
I listened to him and was filled with amazement. No one had talked like that to me before, certainly not at confession. He spoke in simple words in a natural conversational tone, as if he were not in a confessional box but holding forth in company somewhere. He spoke in simple words, without unctuousness, sighing occasionally as though lamenting, like a kindly, very old man. He spoke as naturally as if the whole world were God’s church and all things human belonged to God, so one didn’t have to put on special airs for God, turn eyes to heaven or to beat one’s breast, only to tell the truth, but the whole truth, the full truth … That’s how he talked.
