by Sándor Márai
There I was, smoldering, as though someone had set fire to my quiet family home with a careless match. Because whatever lay there behind the façade of our lives, whatever might have happened, it was still a solid and substantial thing, a genuinely mutual form of life, complete with roof and foundation … It was the roof that single burning match had landed on.
He didn’t come home for lunch. We had a dinner invitation. I dressed to kill that night, straining every sinew to be beautiful. I wore a white dress, the one I kept for grand occasions. It was made of silk, like a wedding dress. It was ceremonial and dignified. I spent a whole two hours at the hairdresser in the afternoon. And even then I did not sit on my laurels but went into town to buy a rosette made of lilac ribbon, a ribbon in the shape of a violet, a sweet, idiotic little trifle of the kind quite fashionable that year. You could get it in various shapes and sizes. I pinned the ribbon, the color of which was precisely the same shade as the ribbon my husband carried around in his wallet, to the white dress, just where it opened. I took such care dressing for the evening I might have been an actress at a premiere. By the time my husband arrived home I was in my fur stole. He changed quickly, because he was late. Just this once it was I waiting patiently for him.
We sat in the car without speaking. I could see he was tired, his mind elsewhere. My heart was beating fast but at the same time I felt a terrifying, solemn calm. All I knew was that that evening would decide the course of my life. I sat beside him graciously, my hair beautifully arranged, in my blue-fox fur and white silk dress, scented and deathly serious, the bunch of lilac ribbon right above my heart. It was a grand house we were visiting, with the Swiss guard at the gate and footmen down the hall. Having taken off his coat and handed it to the valet, he glanced at the mirror, saw me there, and smiled.
I was so beautiful that evening that even he noticed.
He threw off his undercoat and adjusted his tie in the mirror with a distracted, slightly nervous movement, as though he were disturbed by the solemn-looking valet’s presence. Men who dress quickly and don’t particularly care about clothes tend to fiddle with their bow ties, because they are forever slipping to one side or another. He gave me a smile in the mirror, a very sweet, courteous smile, as if to say, “Yes, I know you are very beautiful. Maybe the loveliest of all women. The trouble is that that doesn’t help. The problem lies elsewhere.”
But he didn’t say anything. I, for my part, was wondering whether I was more beautiful than that other woman, the one whose ribbon he so carefully looked after. Then we entered the grand hall, where a whole host of guests were already assembled: famous men, politicians, the leading figures of the country as well as well-known beautiful women, all chatting to each other as though they were relatives, as though whoever they were talking to already knew everything, everything that had been hinted at and suspected, all of them fully initiated. Initiated into what? Into the delicate, decadent, exciting, stuffy, superior, hopeless, cold conspiracy that constitutes an entire world, the world of society. It was a vast hall with columns of red marble. Between the guests scuttled servants, their legs clad in britches and white stockings, bearing crystal trays loaded with cocktails and highly colored, bitter-as-poison liqueurs. I merely sipped at one of those bitter drinks, because I can’t take alcohol: it immediately makes me feel dizzy. In any case I had no need of intoxicants that evening. I felt an irrational, ridiculous, quite childish sort of tension, as if fate had marked me out for a difficult personal task, as if everyone were watching me, particularly me, all these beautiful, interesting women and those clever, powerful men … I was continually giggling. I was very charming to everyone, behaving as if I were an eighteenth-century princess in a powdered wig. And you know what? People really were talking about me that evening … It’s impossible to resist life radiating from someone in my position. Suddenly I saw myself standing among the red marble columns in the middle of the hall with men and women standing around me, myself as the focal point, people bowing to me, my every remark a triumph. I was radiant with a terrifying confidence that night. Oh yes, I was a real success … But what is success? Success is willpower, or so it seems: an enormous willpower, which burns everything and everyone that comes into contact with it. And all this simply because I had to know whether there was anyone anywhere who had once worn a lilac ribbon on her dress or her hat, someone who might matter more to my husband than I did …
I had never touched cocktails before and I left them alone that night too. Later, at supper, I drank half a glass of acrid French Champagne. I was behaving as though I were a little tipsy … but in a strangely sober fashion; it was a clearheaded kind of intoxication.
We were waiting for supper to be set and had formed groups in the hall, as on a stage. My husband was standing in the doorway to the library talking to a concert pianist. Now and then I felt him glance at me, and I knew these were anxious looks he was casting, not understanding my popularity, the sudden, complete, irrational social success I was enjoying, pleased with it but worried at the same time. He looked puzzled, and I was proud sensing his confusion. I was certain of my task now, and I knew the evening would be mine.
These are the most remarkable moments of life. Suddenly, a world opens up and everyone’s eyes are on you. I would not have been surprised to have people propose to me that night. I should tell you that that world, the other world of high society and the international set, is hopelessly alien to my nature. It was my husband who introduced me to it, and I always felt stagestruck. I tiptoed through it with great care, the way you might in an amusement park, in the haunted house with the moving floors … I was frightened in case I should slip and fall. Whole years went by with me being overpolite and overrestrained in company, or, conversely, overnatural … In other words, I was scared, cold, over-friendly, in fact everything except what I really am. It was as though I were in the grip of some terrible cramp before, but that evening released me. I was no longer cramped. I saw everything through a faint mist—the light, the people’s faces. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find people bursting into applause for me.
Then I felt someone was staring at me. I turned round slowly and looked for the person whose gaze seemed so physical, so electric. It was Lázár. He was standing by a pillar talking to our hostess, but his eyes were on me. We hadn’t seen each other for a year.
The footmen opened the mirror-covered double doors and people started filtering into the dimly lit, candle-illuminated dining hall, everyone moving as though they were part of a theatrical procession.
Lázár came over to me.
“What’s the matter with you?” he asked, his voice choked back, almost formally.
“Why?” I asked, my voice a little hoarse, still dizzy with success.
“Something is different with you,” he said. “I just wanted to say I am sorry now for the cheap trick we once played on you. Do you still remember it? …”
“I remember,” I said. “Please don’t give it a thought. Geniuses love to play.”
“Are you in love with someone?” he asked, perfectly calm, perfectly serious, looking me straight in the eye.
“Yes,” I replied just as calmly, just as solemnly. “With my husband.”
We were standing in the doorway of the dining hall. He looked me over from head to foot. Very softly and with enormous sympathy, he whispered:
“Poor soul.”
Then he gave me his arm and led me to the table.
He was one of my neighbors at supper. The other was an aged count who had no idea who I was and kept paying me overblown compliments. Next to Lázár, on his left, was seated the wife of a famous diplomat, who spoke only French. The food too was French. Between courses and pieces of French conversation Lázár turned to me and said in a very low voice, naturally, without any prevarication, as though we were simply continuing a discussion begun much earlier:
“And what have you decided to do?”
I was slowly working my way through the poultry and the sauce. I lea
ned over the plate with knife and fork in hand, smiled at him, and answered as lightly as if it were the merest chitchat.
“I have decided to take possession of him. I mean to take him back.”
“That’s impossible,” he said. “He has never left you. That’s precisely why it’s impossible. You can take back those who have been unfaithful. You can take back those who have gone away. But those who have never really, properly arrived, that’s impossible. It can’t be done.”
“Then why did he marry me?” I asked.
“Because he would have been lost if he hadn’t.”
“Lost in what way?”
“Emotionally. He felt something that was much stronger than he was and he felt unworthy of it.”
“Emotionally?” I asked quietly in a level voice while still leaning over the table but so that no one else could hear me. “The emotion that bound him to the woman with the lilac ribbon?”
“What do you know about that?” he asked and sat up straight.
“Only as much as I need to know,” I said truthfully.
“Who mentioned this to you? Peter?”
“No,” I replied. “Don’t you think we know everything about those we love?”
“That’s true,” he solemnly agreed.
“And you?” I asked him, astonished at my steady voice. “Do you know the woman with the lilac ribbon?”
“I …?” he muttered and bowed his bald head. He looked at the plate, clearly discomposed. “Yes, I know her.”
“Do you see her sometimes?”
“Rarely. Practically never.” He gazed into the air above him. “It is a very long time since I last saw her.”
He began drumming nervously on the table with his long, bony fingers. The diplomat’s wife was asking something in French and I responded to something the old count had said; he—who knows why?—had tried to amuse me with a few Chinese mottoes. But I found it hard just then attending to his Chinese mottoes. Champagne arrived, and fruit. Once I had taken a first sip of the pale pink Champagne and the count had managed to extricate himself with some difficulty from the conversation about Chinese mottoes, Lázár turned to me again.
“Why are you wearing that lilac favor this evening?”
“You noticed it?” I asked, and picked a grape from the bunch.
“Immediately—as soon as you entered the room.”
“Do you suppose Peter has noticed it too?”
“Be careful,” he warned me. “That is a very dangerous game you are playing.”
Like fellow conspirators we both glanced over to Peter. There was something haunting in the great hall, in the flickering candlelight, in the hushed tones of our conversation, in the words we used and even more in the mood they conjured. I sat up straight, unmoving, looking fixedly ahead, and smiled as if my neighbors at table had been amusing me with wonderful jokes and fascinating stories. Needless to say, I was interested in what was being said. Never before or since have I heard anything that interested me more than what Lázár was saying that evening.
When we rose from the table Peter came over.
“You were laughing a great deal during supper,” he said. “You look pale. Would you like to come out into the garden?”
“No,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with me. It’s just the light.”
“Come with me to the conservatory,” said Lázár. “We can get some black coffee there.”
“Take me along,” said Peter, nervously smiling. “I could do with a laugh myself.”
“No,” I said. Lázár agreed.
“No. The rules of this game are different from the last. It’s the two of us playing this time, and we’re not letting you join in. Go and talk to your countesses.”
It was at that moment my husband noticed the lilac ribbon. He blinked at it shortsightedly as was his custom and involuntarily leaned toward me as though he were examining something. Then Lázár took my arm and led me away.
I looked back from the entrance to the conservatory. My husband was still standing in the dining-hall doorway while the table was being cleared behind him, myopically staring at us. There was so much sadness, helplessness, and, yes, despair, in his face that I had to stop and look back. I thought my heart would break in the looking. Maybe I never loved him so much as at that moment.
So we sat in the conservatory, Lázár and I … I hope this story isn’t boring you? Do say if it is. But I won’t bore you much longer. That evening flashed by like a dream, you know.
The conservatory was full of scents, muggy, hot, exhausting, like a jungle. We sat under a palm and through the open door could see the brilliantly lit halls inside … Somewhere far off, in a corner of the third room, there was music: quiet, delicate music. Guests were dancing. There was a game of cards going on in another room. It was a grand occasion, splendid and soulless, like everything in that house.
Lázár was smoking a cigarette, listening, watching the dancers. I hadn’t seen him for a year and now he seemed like a complete stranger … He radiated such extraordinary loneliness, he might as well have been living at the North Pole. Loneliness and calm. A sad calm. I suddenly understood that he had stopped wanting things: he didn’t want happiness, he didn’t want success, maybe he no longer wanted even to write. All he wanted was to know the world, to understand it, to get to the truth of it … He was bald and always looked as though he were politely bored. At the same time there was something of the Buddhist monk about him, his slightly slanted eyes inscrutably watching the world so you couldn’t tell what he thought of anything.
Once we had drunk our black coffee he spoke.
“May I be honest with you?”
“I’m not afraid of anything,” I answered.
“Listen,” he said harshly. “No one has a right to interfere in somebody else’s life. I’m not an exception. But Peter is my friend … not just in the cheap, casual sense of the word. I have very few friends. This man, your husband, has kept the magical memories of our youth, along with its secrets. What I want to say may sound a little dramatic.”
I sat there serene, white as a statue, like the benevolent ruler of a tiny nation. I was carved in stone.
“Carry on,” I encouraged him.
“Well, then, let me put it in the crudest possible way. Forget it!”
“That is indeed crude,” I said. “But I don’t understand. Forget what?”
“Peter, the lilac ribbon, and the person with the lilac ribbon. Do you understand? I’m putting it crudely, the way they do in the movies. Forget it … You don’t know what you’re doing. You are poking your fingers in a wound that had begun to heal. It no longer bleeds. The blood has started to clot. It has a very delicate crust. I’ve been observing your lives for five years now, watching this situation develop. You want to probe the wound now. But I warn you, if you probe it, if you scratch it with your nails, there will be blood everywhere … Something—indeed someone—in him might bleed to death.”
“As dangerous as that?” I asked, watching the dancers.
“I believe so,” he said, carefully thinking it over. “As dangerous as that.”
“Then I simply have to do it,” I said.
There was something in my voice, a certain hoarse ringing or tremulousness … He took my hand.
“Be patient. Bear with it,” he pleaded. He was quite agitated now.
“No,” I said. “I will not bear with it. I have been cheated for five years. It’s worse for me than for women whose husbands are faithless, besotted, skirt-chasing fools. For five years I have been struggling with somebody to whom I could not put a face, someone who lives with us, in the house, like an apparition. Well, I’ve had enough of it. I can’t help my feelings. Let my enemy be flesh and blood, not a phantom … You once said that the truth was always simpler than it appears.”
“It is simpler,” he tried to soothe me, “and infinitely more dangerous.”
“Then let it be dangerous,” I said. “What could be worse than living with someone who
is not mine? … Who is harboring some memory and seeks to free himself from what he feels and remembers through me, simply because he deems the memory and feeling, that desire, to be unbefitting to him? … Didn’t you yourself tell me that? Well, let him own up to the unbefitting desire. Let him go to her and give up his rank, his dignity.”
“That’s impossible,” he said, his voice cracking from excitement. “He’ll perish in the process.”
“Either way we perish,” I calmly replied. “The child died of it. I am practically a sleepwalker now. I know I’m moving toward the edge, to the border between life and death. Please don’t meddle, please don’t raise your voice, or I will fall. Help if you can. I joined my life to his because I loved him. I thought he loved me … For five years I have lived with a man who has never given me his whole heart. I’ve done all I can to make him mine. I struggled to understand him. I consoled myself with impossible explanations. He’s a man, I said. He’s proud. He’s a man of his class, a lonely man. But this was all lies. Then I tried to bind him to me with the strongest possible human tie, the child. I failed. Why? Can you tell me why? … Is it just fate? … Or is it something else? … You’re the writer, the clever man, the accomplice, the witness to Peter’s life … why are you quiet now? Sometimes I think you had a hand in all this, in all that has happened. You have power over Peter’s soul.”
“I had once,” he said, “but I had to share it with someone else. You should be prepared to share it too. That way everyone might survive,” he said, but he was uncertain and confused.
I had never seen this apparently confident but lonely man so uncertain. The Buddhist monk was now just an ordinary man who would happily have run away rather than answer such painful, dangerous questions. But I wouldn’t let him go.
“You know better than I do that there is no sharing in love,” I said.
“That’s a cliché,” he retorted in bad temper, and lit a cigarette. “You can share anything. Especially in love.”
“What remains of my life if I share?” I asked so passionately that I frightened myself. “A house? A social position? Somebody I dine with, at whose hands I receive the occasional gift of tenderness the way you give an invalid a spoonful of medicine? … Do you suppose there is anything more humiliating, more inhumane, than sharing this kind of half-life with somebody? When I want someone, I want all of him,” I said, almost loudly.
