by Sándor Márai
I think I listened pretty closely. I solved him like a crossword puzzle. Not with my brain, but with my lower body, the way we women feel and learn. I eventually came to the conclusion that nothing that was of importance to everyone else was of any importance to him. All he needed was bread, bacon, apples, and wine. Some dictionaries.
And, ultimately, a few tasty, luscious Hungarian words that melt in the mouth. He would leave everything that was important to others without a moment’s hesitation.
All he loved by then was the sun, wine, and words, words without associations, just words in themselves. It was fall, the town was being bombed, civilians and soldiers both huddled in cellars—funny to think the soldiers were more afraid of the bombs than civilians were!—while he was sitting in the autumnal sunlight, having pushed an armchair over to the window. He had bags under his eyes. He was smiling, his mouth half-open, hungrily drinking in the late-fall sunlight in the deathly silence of war.
It seemed he was happy at last, but I knew he wouldn’t live much longer, that this was a form of dying.
Because, however he rejected everything culture considered important, however he wrapped himself in his faded old raincoat, he still belonged to the world that was crumbling and vanishing around him. What was this world? The world of the rich and celebrated? My husband’s world? No, the rich were just the dregs of something that would once have been regarded as culture. See—even as I pronounce the word I am blushing as though I had said something improper. It’s as if he or his spirit were here, listening to what I’m saying, sitting on the edge of the bed in the hotel in Rome, and when I pronounce the word “culture” he suddenly looked at me with that awful gaze of his, looking right into my guts, and asked, “What was that, madam? Culture? That’s a big word! Do you know, madam”—and I can see him raising his forefinger as he looks at me seriously like a conscientious teacher—“do you have any idea what culture is? You paint your toenails red, I believe … And you like reading a decent book in the morning or before going to sleep … and you sometimes drift off pleasantly to music, am I right?” Because he liked talking like that, in a slightly mocking, old-fashioned way, like some character out of a nineteenth-century novel. “No, madam,” I can hear him now. “That’s not culture. Culture, madam, yes, culture, is a reflex!”
I can see him now as clear as if he were sitting here. Don’t disturb me. I can practically hear his voice. The things he said.
So many people are talking about class war, saying that now we’ve got rid of the old rulers, we will run things our way—everything will be ours because we are the people. I’m not sure what that means, but I have a bad feeling that’s not quite how it will work out. There’ll be something the old lot will have kept that they won’t be passing on. And it won’t be anything you can take by force, either … Nor can you steal it by getting a grant and lazing about at a university … As I said, it isn’t something I understand. But I feel there is something the bourgeois have hidden away from us. What is it? Just thinking of it fills my mouth with saliva. My whole body cramps and I curl up inside. The bald man said it was a reflex. What’s a reflex, for God’s sake?
Let go of my hand. It’s just nerves: that’s why I’m trembling. I’m fine now.
I never understood him straightaway when he said something, not that first moment, and yet I understood him, understood him as a person, so to speak. Some time later I asked a doctor what a reflex was. He told me reflex was when you tap someone’s knee with a little rubber hammer and the knee kicks … that’s reflex. But he meant a different kind of kicking, another sort of reaction.
Once he had vanished and I was looking for him in vain up and down the city, I felt that he himself was a sort of reflex, just as he was, raincoat and all. The man as whole, do you see? Not his writing. The thing you scratch out with your pen, that can’t be so important; after all, there are so many books in the world, in shops and in libraries … Sometimes it seems there are so many books that all thought must have been squeezed out of them, all those words have left no room for thought, just words endlessly crowding and pressing on the page. No, whatever he wrote was certainly not that important. And he no longer thought about having written books—if anything, he was a little ashamed of it. When the subject came up in conversation, he’d give an embarrassed smile, as I remember once when, carefully but clumsily, I started talking about his books. It was as if I had reminded him of some youthful folly. I felt sorry for him then. There must have been some vast fury, desire, passion, or sadness raging in him. Mentioning his books was like sprinkling salt on a frog in the spirit of scientific inquiry, just to see how the electricity worked—you could practically see him jerking. His mouth twisted this way and that, and he wouldn’t know where to look. It was dropping salt on a naked mind.
It’s as if the great statues, the famous paintings, and the clever books were not things in themselves; as if he were a tiny living atom of everything that was being destroyed. He was being destroyed with the whole of which he was a part. Now it seems the statues and books will be around for a long time yet, even while the thing they call culture vanishes.
God only knows how this works.
I watched him and, as the bombs were falling, thought how stupid I’d been in my childhood—in the ditch, and later in the maid’s room in that highly refined household, and then in London when the Greek taught me all kinds of airs and graces—when I thought the rich were cultured. Now I know that the rich just peck at culture, indulge in it a little, dipping in this or that dish of it, and chatter about it. That’s something one learns very slowly and at great cost. Learns what? That culture is what happens when a person or a people overflow with some great joy! They say the Greeks were cultured because the whole nation rejoiced. Even the tinkers who made cheap little statuettes, and the traders in oil, and the military, the populace at large, and all the wise men who stood in the agora arguing about beauty or wisdom. Try to imagine a people that can experience joy. That joy is culture. But that generation vanished, and in their place came people who still spoke Greek, but couldn’t feel or think as they did.
Do you fancy reading a book about the Greeks? Apparently there is a library here, where the pope lives … Don’t look so insulted! The saxophonist told me he goes there in secret, to read. Of course, darling, he is just boasting when he says that. The truth is he really only reads detective stories. All the same, it is not impossible that there should be libraries here in Rome where they look after books and where we could find out how Greece came to an end. I mean, the thing people call culture. Because now, you see, there are only experts. But experts can’t reproduce the joy that culture did. Is this boring you? Fine, I won’t go on about it. I only want you to be cheerful and satisfied. I won’t bother you with such foolish thoughts again.
You’re looking askance at me. I can tell by your nose you don’t believe me. You are thinking it is not Greek culture that interests me, and I simply want to know why this man died.
How sharp you are! Yes, I confess, I’d like to read a book that explained culture: what it is and how it can begin to fall apart one day. How it can come to pieces in the figure of a single man: the way his nervous system withers away, the nerves that contained so much life, that carried all the stuff people thought a long time ago, and which other people recall with longing, so that, for a moment or two, they feel they are better than the common run of animals. It seems to me that a man like that does not die alone—a great many things die with him. You don’t believe me? I don’t really know, myself, but I’d like to read such a book.
They say Rome was once a cultured city. Even those who couldn’t read or write—the people in market stalls—even they were cultured. They might have been dirty, but they went to the public baths and, once there, argued there about what was wrong or right. Do you think the fool came here for that reason? Because he wanted to die here? Because he believed that everything that people once called culture, that gave them joy, was gone? That he came here, w
here everything was turning into one vast heap of rubbish but there were still a few monuments of culture remaining—that remained the way that you could still see feet sticking out from beneath the soil in Buda, in the Vérmező, after the siege: the yellow feet of the dead buried under twelve inches of soil? Is that why he came here? To this town, to this hotel? Because he wanted the smell of culture round him when he died?
Yes, he died in this room. I asked the desk clerk. Are you happy now, knowing that? There, I’ve given you this too. I don’t have anything left. You’ve put the jewels in a safe place, haven’t you? You are my guardian angel, darling.
Listen—believe me, when he died, it was in this bed, so the desk clerk told me. Yes, the very bed you are lying in, gorgeous. And I am sure he was thinking: “Now, at last!” And he will have smiled. These madmen, these peculiar people, always smile at the end.
Wait, let me cover you.
Are you asleep, darling?
Posillipo, 1949–Salerno, 1978
Epilogue
… Because I tell you, buddy, believe me I tell you how it really is. You just mind to keep a long way clear of people in the cement trade. What you staring at? Don’t you know what that is? Don’t you watch TV? You really are a novice. You have a lot to learn in our lovely big village, New York. I can see you’re pretty new here, an economic migrant, or an illegal. Be glad if they let you stay. And keep your mouth shut. Because all kinds of trash is holed up here. But we two, we’re from Zala, the pair of us, the old country, we Hungarians should stick together. Here’s your bludimari. Drink up, brother.
As I say, be really careful that you don’t go within a mile of the cement trade. Our street here, Forty-sixth, has enough safe rooms. But farther down, in Thirty-eighth, that’s where the Family get together … you know, the Family. Avoid the place after midnight. And if you meet one or two of them, be careful to be on your best behavior. Because that’s what they like, these padrones: full of good manners. How will you know a padrone? … Well, they dress smart to start with. They’re highly refined people, silver hair, sideburns, everything just so. Suits and shoes all the best material cut to the best length. And they wear hats. They tip big. They draw of a wad of greenbacks from the pocket of their pants. They do it so, left-handed. They don’t even look to see whether it’s Washington or Lincoln on the front, they just throw it down. It’s like Sunday in church, in the middle of mass, when the guy comes along with his green collection bag. You must have seen it in the movies—great film, right? But if a member of the Family calls you and invites you to attend an evening course, just be polite and say no thank you, not my line of work.
The padrones—they don’t deal with cement—that’s manual work. They do the brain work: they think. The manual work is left to the junior members of the Family, the ones still doing apprenticeships. It’s casual work. The sucker goes home at night, not a worry in the world, doesn’t suspect anything. Ten steps behind comes the casual worker, the apprentice. A car is waiting on the corner. The apprentice carries an iron crowbar under his coat. The bar has a hook on the end that’s no bigger than your bent index finger. Once on the corner, the trick is to sink the sharp end of the crowbar into the sucker’s skull … one quick move and it’s done. No waiting, no argument. The guy collapses, just like that, then you grab him round the waist. You drag him into the car, take him down to the river where there’s a box waiting. You tenderly deposit the happily departed in the box, fill up with liquid cement, nail the box down, and slide it into the water. The cops say there are dozens of them sitting at the bottom of the Hudson. It’s like—you remember the story from the old country?—Attila’s coffin. It’s teamwork and it needs proper apprentices. But you take great care! Whatever the padrone says, you just keep saying, “No thank you, not my line of work.” You stick to your job in the garage. You’re a garage hand. We Zala folk must look out for each other.
It’s not impossible, of course, that later you make it big yourself. Like, that’s something else. But you have to know your stuff. Avoid the bars on Thirty-eighth, they’re not for you. There’s always work available, but have nothing to do with them. For example they might want a persuader. You know, the kind of guy who goes to the sucker and persuades him to pay twenty-five percent a week for the loan. Avoid them too, but be polite about it. Just tell them you can’t take the djob because your accent is not up to full New York level. Accent is a big problem to them. These black guys wouldn’t accept me in the band on account of my accent … me, who back home drummed for Tito when he visited Budapest. That was before ’48, before the radio started howling on about Tito and his revisionist traitor dogs! The black guys said I drummed with an accent, my sticks were wrong. That’s what I mean by accent—it’s just jealousy and racism. That’s my biggest regret. What else could I do, I got this job as a bartender. So now you know. Sit down and enjoy yourself, I’ll pour you another.
Go on, stay, there is plenty of time. This hour of the day, after supper, there are few customers, at least till the theaters empty. We don’t get cement trade here, anyway. Our customers are writers of one sort or another. It’s not manual work like cement, but the pay’s pretty hot. What’s that? You’d like a go yourself? Go ahead, try. Who knows, you might strike it lucky, but it won’t be easy. My experience, here in Manhattan, is that books are big-time.
You get to see a lot of life from behind a bar. After midnight, with the third martini down them, the one they put against expenses because it’s part of the job, about midnight or so, among themselves, they talk pretty freely, these writers. I listen to them and think what big business it is here. It’s not like over the Pond, in Rome, or in Budapest. My guardian angel, I called her “Sweetheart,” whose photo I keep on the shelf—you see, I even got her a silver frame from Woolworth’s—she told me she knew a writer back home who no longer wanted to write because he had grown sick of books. He really did feel sick and wanted to heave up each time he thought about it. The only things he still read were those crazy dictionaries. He must have been a weird creature, an oddment, like the Chinese deer at the Bronx Zoo.
The patrons here in New York are not that sort of writer. They don’t actually write anything, but immediately sell what they haven’t yet written. They earn a mint from books. They usually start arriving past eleven, when the nearby shows have finished. They soak up the drink, straight bourbons, every time. There’s a regular, a little fat guy, who must be a real big-shot writer, because he even has a secretary and a lot of hangers-on with him, who are all ears when he talks. Whenever he says something they’re all attention, like a congregation in church when the priest raises the host. I saw it with my own two eyes the time he thought of a title and the guy, his secretary, was straight on the line, selling it. He came back out of breath saying he had sold the title for two hundred thousand, a story his boss hadn’t yet written and had only just thought of, one he’d maybe write, if the inspiration came. Everyone drank to the good news and when they left they left me twenty on the tray. That’s because big-shot writers are always surrounded by pals. There’s some really cute women in the gang too. If you really fancy writing I could introduce you to one of them.
I don’t read books myself, that’s not my thing. I’m happy enough to leaf through a good thriller, or the comics—you know, where the chick lies naked on the couch without a clue that her sexy days are over and her problems are just beginning. And her pimp leans over her, a knife in his hand, and there’s a talk bubble that says, “There’s nothing wrong with her, it’s just a bit of blood on her neck.” I like that kind of thing. Thrillers are good because the writers don’t smuggle in clever stuff—the reader gets it straightaway, without the crap.
Go on, relax, have another—your bludimari is there, right by your hand. The boss? Don’t worry about him. He’s there behind that glass door, in the back room. Yes, the guy with the glasses … He’s doing the accounts, not looking this way. Solid guy: a Mormon. No liquor, only warm water from a heavy-bottomed glass. And
he won’t smoke—he’s above all that. He brought nothing from Utah, where his lot live, to New York, except his Bible and his Mormon ways, like having two wives. The second he picked up here, in Manhattan. Owns a chain of eight bars, two in Harlem. But our place here on the corner of Broadway is the smartest.
Because, you know, there are two theaters nearby. One where they sing and one where they just talk. Sometimes when they talk so much it gets to be a drag and the audience grow bored and walk out. I’ve not been in either so far, but one day I paid up a Franklin for the one that was all talk. Why shouldn’t I be an angel, I thought—you have to support art. Don’t know what angels are? People who finance a play. Investors. Drivers, hotel porters, headwaiters, they all want to be angels when there’s a play starting on Broadway. But this one was no good, I wasted a hundred. There was a lot of talking on stage—too much. It’s better when there’s some nice upbeat music, a high-kicking chorus and singers, that kind of thing. I’m not investing in writers or literature again. A man’s better off playing the numbers game. So you just wait and serve your turn in the garage.
You have to tighten your belt here, brother. It’s a wised-up world we have here. You have to pay close attention, learn the ropes. This is my fifth year behind the bar. I am a proper mister now, a senior bartender. And I’m still learning. In this place, being close to Broadway and the theaters, what we get are chiefly highbrows. What are those? People with egg-shaped heads, their heads like duck eggs, all high forehead—and spots. There are some with big bushy beards too. They’re all clever. You wouldn’t believe how important they are. I listen to them from behind the bar and they stay till morning. They arrive about midnight when the others have gone, I mean those who come here for the atmosphere, candles behind red shades. Those who stay are all in the profession. They talk freely among themselves. I listen pretty hard, as you may imagine.
