by Sándor Márai
My heart ached when I listened to them. What do they know about it? I thought. I understood how they felt, the people who didn’t live here, who weren’t with us, who didn’t know how a million others felt when they saw their lovely bridges blown into the air above the Danube, bridges that had been a hundred years in the building. And I knew what we felt on the day we could cross the river on foot again: breathless, like the Kuruc or the Labanc or the Turkish invaders so many centuries ago. Nobody can understand us if they’ve never lived with us! Why should I care how long the bridges are in America? Our bridge was made of rotting wood and scrap iron and I crossed it before most people did. To be precise, I was among the first, pulled along by the long queue of which I was one part, shuffling along with the rest, when I saw my husband on the other side, crossing from Pest toward the Buda bank.
I sprang from the queue and rushed over to him. I embraced his neck with both my arms. Everyone was shouting at me and eventually a policeman dragged me away because I was obstructing the human conveyor belt.
Wait, let me blow my nose. How sweet you are! You’re not laughing at me: you are really listening. You are listening as intently as a child waiting for the end of a fairy tale.
But this was no fairy tale, my pet: there was neither true beginning nor true end. Life billowed around and within us then, those of us who lived in Budapest. Our lives had no firm boundary, no proper frame. It was as if something had washed away the boundaries. Everything just happened, unframed, without edges. Now, much later, I still don’t know where I am, where things started or ended in my life.
It’s enough to say that that is exactly how I felt when I ran from one side of the bridge to the other. It wasn’t a calculated, conscious dash, since just a few moments before I had no idea whether the man with whom I had—but it was so long ago, it was before time began, in that period we call history—if the man who had been my husband was still alive. That time seemed an eternity away. People don’t measure their lives with clocks or calendars, not personal time, the time that is genuinely theirs. No one knew whether other people had survived: their lovers, the people they had shared a house with. Mothers didn’t know whether their children were alive or dead. Couples met by accident in the street. We seemed to be living in a time without history; in prehistoric time, before there were land registries, house numbers, directories. Everyone lived and lodged wherever they could find, wherever it occurred to them to live. And there was about this chaos—this Gypsy life—a peculiar domesticity. It might have been how people lived in the dim, distant past, when no one had a home and there were only wandering hordes and tribes, Gypsies with carts and unwashed children, journeying without destination. It wasn’t a bad life. It was familiar somehow. Under all our accumulated garbage we seem to carry some memory of a different, less fixed time.
But that’s not why I rushed over to him, not why I hugged him in front of thousands and thousands of people.
At that moment—please don’t laugh—something broke in me. Believe me, I had been carrying on as normal. I put on my bra and survived the siege and what preceded it, with dignity: the Nazi monstrosities, the bombing, the terrors. Mind you, I wasn’t entirely alone at that time. When the war turned deadly, desperately serious, I spent months with my artistic friend. I don’t mean I lived with him; please don’t misunderstand me. He might have been impotent for all I know. We never spoke about such things, but whenever a man and woman live together in the same apartment there is always some air of romance hanging about the place. There was no such air in those empty rooms. Nevertheless, it wouldn’t have surprised me if he had rushed into my room one night and strangled me with his bare hands. I slept at his place sometimes because there were air-raid warnings every night and I couldn’t always get home past the anti-aircraft posts. And now, much later, now that the man is no longer alive, I almost feel that I have slept with him, or with someone like him, someone who had decided to wean himself off the world, to give up everything people thought most important. It was like being on aversion therapy for him: he wanted to give up an exciting yet repellent obsession, one as addictive as drink, drugs, vanity … everything. My role in his life was to be his nurse—his dry nurse.
It’s quite true that it was me who first sneaked into his apartment and then into his life. Just as there are cat burglars, you know, people who sneak into property, there are cat women who sneak into a man’s life at an unguarded moment and, once there, make off with anything they find: memories, impressions, the lot. Later they grow bored of these things and sell them—sell everything they managed to stow away. Not that I ever sold anything I got from him, and I am only telling you this much because I want you to know everything about me before you leave me—or I leave you. He simply tolerated me being near him at any time, morning, afternoon, or night … The one rule was I was not to disturb him. I was forbidden to talk to him when he was reading. Often he just sat with a book and said nothing. Otherwise I could come and go as I pleased in the apartment, to do whatever I felt like. Bombs were falling all the time, and everyone lived for the moment, making no plans from one minute to the next.
It must have been a terrible time, you say? Wait, let me think about that. I think it was a time of discovery. Questions we never really consider, that we wave away with a gesture, became all too real. What kinds of things? Well, the fact that life is without meaning or purpose, for example—but much else too. We quickly got used to the fear: you can sweat fear out the way you do a fever. It was just that everything changed. The family was no longer the family; a job no longer counted for anything. Lovers made love in a hurry, like children gobbling their food, keen to grab as many sweets as they can, stuffing their cheeks with them when the adults aren’t looking … then the children skip off to go play in the street, out in the chaos. Everything broke down: apartments, relationships. There were moments we could still believe our homes, our jobs, people at large had something to do with us, if only in a psychological way, but come the first bombing raid we suddenly discovered we had nothing at all to do with whatever was important before.
But it wasn’t just the bombing raids. Everyone felt that beyond the air-raid sirens, the yellow cars rushing to and fro, the dispossessed, the armored patrol vehicles packed with booty, the soldiers making their way home from the front, the fugitives in covered peasant wagons, beyond the multitudes drifting around like Gypsies in caravans, something else was happening. There was no distinct war zone anymore: the war was happening in whatever remained of civilian life, in our kitchens, in our bedrooms, in our selves. A bomb had gone off in us, and everything that had previously held society together—even if it was no more than indifference or laziness—was blown away. Something blew up in me, too, when I saw my husband on that new humpbacked bridge over the Danube. It blew up like a bloody great bomb left at the side of the road by a Russkie or a Nazi.
It blew up the entire movie-style affair between us—a movie as dumb and trashy as those Hollywood productions where the managing director marries the stenographer. What I understood in that moment was that it was not each other we had been seeking in life, that the affair for him was about something else: the terrible guilt he felt under the skin, a guilt that had eaten its way into his flesh. He wanted to transfer to me the thing he couldn’t lay to rest. What was it? Wealth? The fact that he wanted to know why there were rich and poor in the world? Everything the writers, the politicians, and the demagogues say on this subject is worse than useless. Forget the bald professors with their horn-rimmed glasses, forget the sweet-talking preachers and the hairy, bellowing revolutionaries. The truth is more terrifying than anything they tell you. The truth is that there is no justice on earth. Maybe that is what that man, my husband, was after: justice. Is that why he married me? If it was only my skin or flesh he wanted, he didn’t have to marry me—he could have had that cheaper. Maybe he wanted to rebel against the world he grew up in, the way the sons of the rich rebel and become refined, faintly scented revolutionaries. Who k
nows why? Because they can’t bear being who they are; because they are too lucky; because sport and perversity is not enough for them, and they must go and play on the barricades. Well, he could have gone for another form of rebellion, not the backbreaking torture of living with me. You and I, people who have risen from the depths, from the wetlands, or from Zala, don’t understand such things, my dear. The one sure thing is that he was a gentleman. Not the way most of the titled nobility were. He was not like Sir This or Baron That, people who elbowed their way to a coat of arms. He was a decent sort of man, made of finer stuff than most bastards of his class.
He was the sort of man whose ancestors took land by conquest. They marched with axes across their shoulders, entered primeval forests in unknown territory, bellowed out anthems, and chopped down trees as well as the locals, while still singing. One of his ancestors was among the Protestants who migrated to America shortly after the initial voyage. He took nothing with him on the journey, just his prayer book and his axe. My husband was prouder of him than of anything else the family later achieved, such as the factory, the money, and a sackful of distinctions.
He was reliable because he was in command of his body and his nerves. He could even control money, which is harder. But the one thing he could never control was his sense of guilt. And what the guilty want is revenge. He was a Christian, but not in the way people tend to think of it now—it wasn’t a business opportunity for him, not a certificate to flash at the Nazis so that he could get a rake-off, make a deal, and grab some of the spoils. He felt bad for being a Christian then. And yet, somewhere deep in his guts he was a Christian the way some people are doomed to be artists or alcoholics: he couldn’t help it.
But he knew that thirst for revenge was a sin. All revenge is a sin, and there is no such thing as justified revenge. The only right a man has is to justice and to act justly. No one has the right to revenge. And because he was rich and Christian, and because he couldn’t give up being either of these things, he was sinking under the weight of guilt. Why are you looking at me as if I were crazy?
It’s him I’m talking about, my husband. The man who suddenly appeared on the newly constructed bridge walking toward me. And then, in front of thousands and thousands of people, I embraced him.
He stepped out of the queue but didn’t move. He didn’t try to push me away. Don’t worry, he didn’t bow to kiss my hand in front of that ragged, shivering crowd of beggars. He was too well brought up for that. He just stood and waited for the painful scene to be over. He was calm, his eyes closed, and I could see his face through my tears, the way women see the baby’s face when the child is still inside them. You don’t need eyes to see what is yours.
But then, as I was clinging to him for all I was worth, something happened. I smelled him. I smelled my husband and the smell struck me … Now listen carefully.
The moment I smelled him I started to tremble. My knees shook, I felt my stomach cramp, as if I were tortured by some peculiar illness. The point was that the man walking toward me on the bridge did not smell the way others did. I know that won’t make any sense to you, but it meant something important then. What I mean is that he didn’t have the corpse smell on him. Because even if, by some miracle, there happened to be a bar of soap or perfume in the cellar, the overpowering closeness, the lack of air, the stench of body functions, the blend of different foods and all those people with their chattering teeth and with the fear of death on them—all this had soaked into our very skin. Those who had never stunk before now stank in a different way from those who had. They covered themselves in cologne and patchouli: a different, artificial patchouli that smells far worse than the natural kind. It was positively sickening.
Not that my husband smelled of patchouli. I could smell him through my tears, with my eyes closed, and suddenly I started trembling.
Why? What was it he smelled of? He smelled of damp straw, if you want to know. Just as he had years ago, before we separated. As he did that first night when I lay in his bed and that sour, privileged, masculine smell made me retch. He was exactly as he had been—flesh, clothes, smell—exactly as before.
I let go of his neck and wiped my tears with the back of my hand. I felt dizzy. I took a compact from my bag, opened the little mirror, and applied some lipstick. Neither of us said a word. He stood and waited until I repaired my tearful, smeary makeup. I only dared look up at him once I had checked in the mirror that my face was fit to be seen.
I could hardly believe my eyes that he should be standing in front of me, on that improvised bridge, among queues that stretched into the far distance—some ten or twenty thousand people in the smoky, sooty town where there were few houses left unmarked by shell or bullet holes. There was hardly an unbroken window anywhere. There was no traffic, no policeman, no law, nothing: it was a place where people dressed like beggars even when there was no need to, deliberately looking wretched, ancient, and penniless, growing wild beards, stumbling about in rags to avoid trouble or to rouse others to pity. Even grand ladies carried sacks. Everyone had a backpack. We were like village brats, or travelers. And there was my husband, standing right in front me. It was the same man I hurt seven years ago. Nothing had changed. He was the man who when he understood that I was not his lover, not even his wife, but his enemy, came to me one afternoon, smiled, and quietly said:
“I think it might be best for us to separate.”
He always started sentences that way when he wanted to say something very important: “I think” or “I imagine.” He never spoke his mind directly, never hit you in the eye with it. When my father could take no more, he would exclaim: “Goddammit!” And then he would hit me. But my husband, whenever he couldn’t bear something, courteously opened a little door each time, as if what he was saying were merely something to consider, a by-the-way thought, in the course of which the meaning, the damage in what he said, could slip by you. He learned this in England, in the school where he studied. Another favorite phrase of his was “I’m afraid.” One evening, for example, he turned to me and said, “I’m afraid my mother is dying.” She did in fact die, the old woman, at seven o’clock the same evening. She had turned quite blue by that time, and the doctor told my husband there was no hope. “I’m afraid” was a phrase that neutralized extremes of feeling and provided a kind of analgesic for the pain. Other people say, “My mother is dying.” But he was always careful to speak politely, to say sad or unpleasant things without offense. That’s the kind of people they are, and that’s all there is to it.
He was being careful even now. Seven years after the war between us had finished, after the siege in the real war was over, there he was, at the bridgehead. He looked at me and said:
“I’m afraid we’re in the way.”
He said it quietly and gave me a smile. He didn’t ask how I was, how I had survived the siege, or whether I needed anything. He just advised me that we might possibly be in the way. He pointed in the direction of a road near Mount Gellért where we might talk. Once we reached a place where there were no people, he stopped, looked round, and said:
“I think this might be the best place to sit.”
He was right: it was the “best” place to sit. There was an intact pilot’s seat in the wrecked Rata plane nearby, so there was just enough room for two people in the useless machine. I didn’t say anything but obediently took my seat in the pilot’s seat. He sat down beside me. But first he swept away the dirt with his hand. Then he took out a handkerchief and wiped his hands with it. We sat silently next to each other for a while, neither of us speaking. I remember the sun was shining. The place was very quiet, just wrecked planes, cars, and artillery.
Any ordinary person would imagine that a man and a woman might exchange a few words on meeting by the Danube, among the ruins of Budapest, after the siege. They might, for example, start by establishing the fact that both are still alive, don’t you think? “I’m afraid” or “I think”—one could imagine that. But my husband’s mind was elsewhere, so
we just sat in front of the cave opposite the mineral springs and stared at each other.
I stared pretty hard, as you can imagine. I started trembling again. It was like being in a dream: dream and reality at once.
You know I’m not any kind of fool, darling. Nor am I a sentimental little tramp who turns on the tears whenever she feels on edge or when she has to say good-bye. The reason I was trembling was because the man sitting beside me, opposite the vast tomb that the whole city had become, was not a human being, but a ghost.
Some people only persist in dreams. Only dreams, dreams more effective than formaldehyde, can preserve apparitions like my husband as he seemed to me at that moment. Just imagine—his clothes were not ragged! I can’t remember precisely what he was wearing, but I think it was the same charcoal-gray double-breasted suit I last saw him in, the one he wore when he said, “I think it might be best for us to separate.” I couldn’t be absolutely sure about the suit, because he had many others like it—two or three, single-breasted, double-breasted—but in any case the same cut, the same material, and by the very same tailor who made his father’s suits.
Even on a morning like this he was wearing a clean shirt, a pale-cream lawn shirt, and a dark gray tie. His shoes were black and double-soled. They looked brand-new, though I have no idea how he could have crossed that dusty bridge without a speck of dust sticking to his shoes. I was, of course, perfectly aware that the shoes were not new and that they only looked that way because they’d hardly been worn—after all, he had a dozen like them in his shoe cupboard. I had seen enough of his shoes on the hall seat when it was my job to clean those fine leather objects. Now there he was, wearing them.
