by Sándor Márai
I addressed the girl. I can’t remember what I said now, but I can see the whole scene as clearly as if someone had filmed it all on 16mm for a family movie, the kind of record that sentimental people make of a honeymoon, or the first steps of a toddler …
This is what I see: Judit slowly gets to her feet, draws a handkerchief from the pocket of her apron, and wipes her hands clear of ashes and wood dust. I see this with pinpoint clarity. Then we immediately start talking, in low voices, quickly, as if afraid that someone might step into the room. We are conspirators, thief and accomplice.
There’s something I have to say to you now. I’d like to tell it, honestly, exactly as it was, and as I am sure you will understand, this won’t be easy. Because what I am about tell you is not a dirty story, old man, not the story of a seduction—oh, no. My story is somewhat darker than that, and is only mine insofar as I am the chief actor in it. The fact is, there were greater powers exerting pressure on us, greater powers pressing through us.
As I was saying, our voices were low. That’s quite natural when you think about it: I was the master, she the servant, and our conversation was confidential in a house where she was part of the staff. What we were talking about was private and of great importance, and someone really could have walked in at any moment—my mother, or perhaps the servant who wanted Judit for himself. Both the situation and my natural tact dictated that we should talk in low voices. She too felt this, of course, and knew she had to whisper.
But I felt something else too. I felt it from the moment we started talking. I felt there was something else going on here. This wasn’t just a case of a man talking to a woman he finds attractive, someone from whom he wants something, someone he wants to possess for his pleasure. It wasn’t even that I was in love with this firm-bodied, beautiful young woman, or that I was crazy for her, dripping with lust; that the blood had so rushed to my head that I would have tried anything, including force, to get her, to possess her, to make her mine. All this is pretty tedious, I know. It happens in every man’s life, and not just once. Sexual hunger can, as you know, be as agonizing and as relentless as the hunger for food. No, there was another reason for all this whispering. I had never before felt the need to be so on my guard, you know. Because I wasn’t speaking only about my own affairs; it was a direct encounter with another person, as a person. It was why I had to keep my voice down. It was serious stuff, more serious than a romantic tale about a young gentleman and some pretty young domestic. Because when the woman stood up and, without the least sign of having been flustered, started wiping her hands down and looking me in the eye with deep attention, with those big round eyes of hers—she was already in her evening uniform, in a black dress with white apron and white cap, and looked just like the housemaid in an operetta, laughably so—I felt that the relationship I was offering was based, not only on desire, but, first and foremost, on a kind of conspiracy against somebody or something. And she too felt it. We immediately started speaking about what concerned us. There was no preamble, no beating about the bush. We spoke, almost exactly, as you might expect two conspirators to speak in a palace or some important office where valuable documents and secret papers are stored. One is an employee of the office, the other a visitor, and now, at last, they have finally found a couple of minutes to discuss their joint venture. They talk in whispers, as though they were talking about something else. They are both very excited, but one still behaves as though she were simply going about her work while the other behaves as though he just happened to be passing through the room and had hesitated for a word. They don’t have much time. At any moment the boss or some nosy official might enter, and if seen together, both might immediately arouse curiosity and their plot be discovered. That’s why we went straight to the point, and why Judit Áldozó stole the occasional glance at the fire, because the larger bits of wood were damp and did not immediately catch light. So she knelt before the fire again and I knelt down by her side and helped her adjust the yellow copper andirons and made sure the fire was properly lit. But all the time I was talking.
What did I say to her? Wait a moment, I need a cigarette. No, I won’t bother. I don’t tend to count my cigarettes this time of day. In any case a lot of this is not particularly important.
But then, it seemed to me, everything was distinctly important, everything I said, and everything that might result from it. I had no time to court her or woo her. It was all beside the point, anyway. I simply said I would like to live with her. My declaration did not surprise her. She calmly heard me out, then looked directly at me with a solemn look on her face, without any sense of astonishment. Afterwards I felt she was weighing me up, as if wanting to calculate my strength, the way a peasant girl will size up a local lad showing off in front of her, telling her he can lift this or that heavy object, a full sack of wheat, that sort of thing. It was not my muscles she was weighing up, but my soul. As I say, now, in retrospect, I feel there may have been something mocking in her examination of me, a silent, gentle mocking, as if she were saying: “You’re not all that strong. You’ll need greater strength if you want to live with me. I’d break your back.” That’s what I read in her look. I felt it, so I spoke a little faster and still more quietly. I told her that it would be very difficult, because the situation was impossible, my father would never agree to the marriage, and there were likely to be all sorts of other problems too. For example, I said, it was likely that such a marriage would lead to serious tensions between myself and my family as well as the world beyond, and that, if we were being honest, we could not entirely ignore the world of which we were a part, the world that had made us what we were. And it was likely that such tensions, starting, as it were, from such a point of weakness, would sooner or later have a bad effect on the relationship between us, too. I told her I had seen this kind of thing before. I had known people of my own social rank who had married below them, and that these marriages always turned out for the worse. I spouted rubbish like that. Of course I meant it seriously, speaking not out of fear, just wanting to be straight with her. And, understanding that I was being honest, she looked at me earnestly and made a gesture to let me know she thought as I did. It was as if she were encouraging me to look for more reasons that would immediately make it clear how impossible, how hopeless the idea was: she wanted me to go on arguing as convincingly as possible that it was quite insane. And I, for my part, carried on finding such reasons. She did not say a word, not a single word, or, to be precise, she only spoke once I had finished, and even then very briefly. She let me speak. I myself don’t understand how, but I spoke for an hour and a half, there by the fireplace, while all the time she remained in that kneeling position, me sitting beside her in the low armchair, the English leather one. I stared into the fire while talking: no one came in, no one disturbed us. There is a kind of hidden order in life, the way a situation arises in a man’s life just at the point when something has to be decided or done, so circumstance conspires to bring it about: places, objects, the people closest to hand, all unconsciously combine to produce the moment. No one disturbed us. It was already evening. My father had arrived home, and they would certainly have been looking for Judit to arrange the dishes and cutlery in preparation for supper. We were all used to dressing for the evening meal, but no one disturbed us. Later I understood that this was not as extraordinary as you might think. Life arranges everything to perfection when it wants to put on a show.
In that hour and a half, for the first time in my life, I felt as though I were speaking frankly and directly to someone. I told her I wanted to live with her; that I suspected, but did not know for sure, that I couldn’t marry her. The vital thing, I said, was to live together. I asked her if she remembered meeting me the first time she entered our house. She said nothing, only nodded to indicate that she did. She looked extraordinarily beautiful in the low-lit room as she knelt by the fire in the flickering red light, her hair sparkling, her head bent slightly to one side on that slender neck as she list
ened to me, poker in hand. She was very beautiful, very much part of my life. I told her she should leave the house, resign, give some excuse, then go home and wait for me somewhere, and that in a few days I’d settle what business I had in hand, then we could go off to Italy together, and stay there, maybe for years. I asked her if she wanted to see Italy … She didn’t say anything, but silently indicated that she did not. Quite likely she didn’t understand the question: it was as if I had asked her whether she wanted to see Henry IV. She didn’t understand. But she did listen very closely. She kept her eyes on the fire, kneeling straight-backed, like a penitent, so close to me I had only to stretch out my hand to touch her. I did in fact take her hand, but she withdrew it, not in a flirtatious manner, not as though she were offended, just as a perfectly natural, simple form of rejection, with the slightest movement, as if wishing to correct something I had said. I saw for the first time then that she was, in her own way, an aristocrat through and through, that her natural nobility was part of the fabric. It surprised me, but at the same time I immediately accepted it. By that time I knew it was not rank, not the privilege of birth that divided people, but character and intelligence. She knelt in front of the fireplace in the pale red light, like a princess, willowy, at ease, not haughty but not humble either, without betraying a trace of confusion, without the merest tremor of her eyelids, as though this conversation were the most natural thing in the world. And there above her rose the Christmas tree. Well, you know, when I thought about this later I couldn’t help laughing, though it was a rather dry laugh, I can tell you … Judit beneath the Christmas tree, like some strange, incomprehensible gift.
And because she said nothing all this time, I myself eventually fell silent. She hadn’t answered me when I asked her if she wanted to live with me, nor when I asked if she wanted to come to Italy with me and stay, perhaps for years. And because I couldn’t think of anything else to say, and because, when it came down to it, having spoken to her and tried everything, like a buyer putting an offer to a stubborn vendor, making a low offer first, then, on seeing the other is resolute and seeing the deal stalling, offering the entire asking price, I asked her if she would be my wife.
She did answer this.
Not immediately, true. Her first response was unexpected. She looked at me angrily, almost with hatred. I could see some great emotion passing through her entire body like a terrible cramp. She began to shake: she was kneeling in front of me, shaking. She hung the poker back on its hook next to the bellows. She crossed her arms across her chest. She looked like a young novice ordered to kneel by some severe teacher. She stared into the fire with a fierce solemnity, her expression clearly tortured. Then she stood up, smoothed her front, and said simply:
“No.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because you are a coward,” she said, and gave me a long look, examining me head to foot. Then she left the room.
Your very good health!
So that’s how it began. Then I went out. The shops were already closing, people were hurrying home with Christmas parcels under their arms. I stopped at a little jeweler’s selling cheap little trinkets. I bought a gold locket—you know, one of these cheap bits of tat in which women keep the pictures of their dead or current lovers. I found an identity card with a photo in my wallet, a season ticket of some sort that had just expired, tore off the photo, put it in the locket, and asked the man to wrap it up exactly like a normal present. When I got home, Judit opened the door. I pressed the parcel into her hand. Soon after that I went away, not returning home for years, and it was only much later I found out she had been wearing the locket round her neck on a piece of lilac ribbon ever since then, never removing it, only when washing or when she needed a new ribbon.
After that, everything went on as though nothing had happened that fateful Christmas afternoon, as if we had never had such a conversation. Judit served us at table that evening, together with the servant, as usual. Naturally I knew by then that I had been in a delirious state that afternoon. I knew it in exactly the same way madmen know when they are in a fury, beating their heads against the wall, wrestling with their nurses, or removing their own teeth at night with a rusted nail: they know as they are doing these things that even as they are frothing at the mouth and doing them, they are engaged in shameful acts deeply unworthy of themselves and of society. They know this not only after the event, when the fury has left them, but in the very act of doing those crazy, hurtful things. I too knew it even as I was sitting by the fire that afternoon, knew that what I was saying and planning was sheer madness for a man in my position. Later I always thought of it as a kind of fit, losing control and willpower, my nerves and all the organs of sense, working autonomously. The critical and moderating faculties go numb at moments like that. I am absolutely sure that what I experienced that Christmas Day afternoon under the Christmas tree was a nervous breakdown, the only serious nervous breakdown of my entire life. Judit knew it too; that was why she listened so intently, as if she were one member of the family noticing the signs of breakdown in another. Of course she knew something else too: she knew and understood the cause of the breakdown. If any member of the family had been listening to me that afternoon—it needn’t have been a member of the family, a stranger would have done—they would immediately have sent for the doctor.
All this came as a surprise to me, because I normally gave everything proper consideration. Maybe a little too much consideration. Maybe that is what had been missing in my way of life: the ability to make sudden decisions, or spontaneity, as they call it. I never did anything just because an idea had occurred to me; never acted on the spur of the moment simply because of a rush of feeling, because an opportunity presented itself or because someone demanded it of me. In the factory and the office I was known as a man of considered judgment, someone who’d think things over slowly and carefully before making an important decision. So I was more surprised than anyone else that I was having this breakdown, because I knew, even as I was talking, that I was talking nonsense, and that nothing would be as I planned it, that I should have done it all differently, been subtler, more careful, or more forceful. You know, till that moment, I had pursued love according to the law of cash-and-carry, like the Americans in wartime: you pay, you take away … That was how I thought it was supposed to go. It wasn’t the most high-minded kind of thinking, but it was, if nothing else, healthily selfish. This time, though, I had neither paid for nor taken away the thing I desired, but had allowed myself to plead and prevaricate, in a quite hopeless fashion, in a situation that was undoubtedly humiliating for me.
There’s no explaining delirium. Everyone is seized by it at least once in life … and it may be that life is much poorer if it never once grips us and batters us like a storm, if our foundations are never once shaken by it, so the earth does not shake and the roof tiles all stay on, if its howling fury never once blows away everything that reason and character had kept in order. That’s what happened to me … You ask me if I regret it? No, I answer, I don’t regret it. But I wouldn’t exactly say it gave meaning to my life. It was just something that happened, like a bout of sickness, and once someone gets over a heavy bout of it, it is best to send him abroad to recover. That’s exactly what I did. Such traveling is, of course, a form of escape. But before I went away I wanted to be sure of something, so I asked my friend Lázár, the writer, to invite her over just once, so that he could see her and talk with her, and prevailed on Judit to accept the invitation. I know now that she was right, that I was a coward, and that that is why I did what I did. It was like sending her to the doctor, you see, so that he might examine her and declare her healthy … After all, she was in some ways like someone I might pick up in the street and include in my field of operations, as they have it in the military. She heard me out, disapprovingly, but did as I asked, without protest. She was sullen and certainly insulted. It was as if she had said: “Fine, I’ll go to the doctor if you insist and subject myself to an examinati
on.” But go she did.
Yes, Lázár. It was a strange relationship between us.
We were contemporaries, school friends. He was already thirty-five by the time fame caught up with him: before that he was practically unknown. He used to write odd little articles for hopeless magazines in a tone that made me think he was laughing at his readers, that he had an endless contempt for the whole enterprise, for writing, for publication, for the reader, and for criticism. You could never work out what he really thought about anything. What did he write about? About the sea, about some old book, about some character, everything brief, no more than two or three pages in some magazine that appeared in an edition of no more than a few hundred, a thousand at most. These pieces were so personal you might have thought they were written in the private language of some strange tribe observing the world or what lay behind the world. This tribe—or so I felt when I first read his writing—was one of those vanishing tribes of which only a few members remained to speak the language, the mother tongue of Lázár’s articles. Apart from that he spoke and wrote a calm, passionless, beautiful Hungarian, pure and regular. He used to say to me that he read the works of the great nineteenth-century poet János Arany first thing at morning and last thing at night, the way a man might brush his teeth. But what he wrote was a kind of news from his other country.
