by Sándor Márai
This was a Ruthenian peasant, his father explains, preoccupied. One day he slaughtered his entire family. His parents, his wife, and his two children. It is my most beautiful slide.
He bends over the dried-up blue substance. His father’s face clears: it is no longer full of painful tense curiosity, it empties, loses expression, the bony hand pushes away the slide and two pairs of eyes look blankly in front of them.
In the evening his father played the violin. He played the violin every night and no one was allowed into the room while he was playing. After supper he would retreat into his room and spend an hour wrestling with the obstinate, rebellious instrument, conjuring a set of tortured sounds from it. His father had never been taught the violin and some kind of shyness and embarrassment prevented him from taking lessons now. His playing was riddled with errors, and entailed, or so the boy felt, a kind of bad faith. He himself knew his efforts were a hopeless, obstinate experiment, and he couldn’t bear it if anyone made a pointed remark about it in his presence. Nevertheless the tortured sounds of his violin filled the house. The awareness of his father’s increasing embitterment as night after night, alone in his room, he struggled with the instrument, made him feel as if his father were engaged in some ugly, shameful habit in the solitude of his room while being overheard by the other gleefully malevolent dwellers in the house. At such times he too would lock himself in his room, sitting in the dark, his hands over his ears, biting his lips, staring and waiting. It was as if his father were doing something low and treacherous. Now the violin lay on top of the cupboard.
When he imagined his father’s death it was like an avalanche. Nothing unusual had happened to him so far, except for the fact that he was more silent than usual when he came back on leave.
Automatically bowing in the direction of the writing desk, he clapped his hat on his head and left the room.
HE MET HIS AUNT IN THE STAIRWELL. SHE WAS dressed in her Sunday best, and groaned as she stopped. They kissed each other. She encouraged him to put a coat on and not be back too late. For a second he entertained the possibility of sinking to his knees and telling her everything.
The stairwell curved in a half circle with wide steps, and with its engravings of the town’s old public buildings gave an impression of grandeur. The stair carpet was of a multicolored folk design. The verandah had once served as his father’s waiting room and was soaked through with the smell of other people, the sickening, pungent iodine-and-ether smell of his father’s medicine cupboard only faintly detectable through it. Ernõ’s father smelled of flour paste and raw leather. Béla’s walked around in a haze of eastern spices, herring, and leftover fresh fruit. Tibor’s house was discreetly scented with lavender, the smell of genteel poverty and sickness, combined with the rather more combative smell of cured leather. Smells characteristic of their fathers’ occupations filled their homes. Ábel always thought of his own house in terms of the sobering light trance of ether, a mixture of acid and narcotic.
And so each nook and cranny of the house lived on in him, sorted according to smell, and providing he followed the magnetic needle of scent he could imagine each room with its own life. His aunt kept her arcanum of a hundred domestic substances—turpentine, benzine, chlorine, petroleum, a large quantity of each since they were rare items in the shops—in the dark corridor between kitchen and dining room. She was just returning from one of her secretive household expeditions. She was carrying her booty of two kilos of starch, rice, and freshly roasted coffee in her crocheted shopping bag. Her black hat, with its short veil in permanent mourning for some unknown deceased acquaintance, was perched on the topknot of her hair. Her sharp yellow nose felt cold against the boy’s face. Etelka entered the house like a guest or a distant relative who was only making a brief visit—and, after his mother’s death, had somehow remained there like a servant, a mother substitute, unpaid, always steadfast and ready to leave at the drop of a hat. Ábel loved her. She was “the other world” as he called her, and he loved her because she spoke softly and attached herself to them, to both of them, to father and son, with all the inexhaustible and ruthless love of the barren and constructed her life around them. She was the sort of old maid who kept people instead of dogs and cats for pets. Ábel knew that Etelka would happily give her life for him. It was a long time since they had been able to bring themselves to talk to each other. With each day that passed that low, oppressive, one-story dwelling was becoming ever more like a hothouse. There was something steamed up, close, and damp about it. Its yellow walls sank under the weight of its double roof. Red guttering framed the yellow façade and the gate, from both sides of which hung cast-iron lamps, lacquered green. Even the garden, that tiny old urban patch of grass, with its minimal cramped proportions, felt like a terrarium. Tall fire walls surrounded it on three sides. In the summer it was densely overgrown with lush weeds. The three of them, Etelka, Father, and Ábel, had lived there, in that house and in that garden, in utter seclusion since the death of his mother, with an occasional, rare change of servants. Later Ábel wondered if Etelka nursed some feelings for his father, if there had been a time when there was more than she let on in her heightened devotion to him. But no one ever spoke of that. He too only recalled it the way one remembers something that has failed to happen, like some mood before a potential shower in childhood, when the room darkens for a moment but no downpour follows the vexed dark that is immediately dispelled by the sun. Only the sensation of waiting remains embedded in the nerves.
You slept for a long time, his aunt was telling him. I wanted to wait until you woke up. I noticed you had been drinking spirits, sweetheart. Beware of hard drink, it can be harmful at your age. I’m just an old woman, Ábel, and can only beg you to look after yourself. You are launched on life now, my child. Do be careful what you do at night. Boys are so impulsive at this age. When is the party to be? It doesn’t matter how late you come home: look in on me. The cost of starch is up again. Eggs too. Should your father come home he should bring some provisions with him. We’ll write him a letter tomorrow and tell him you have passed your exams. Give me a kiss.
She tipped her head towards the boy’s face and squeezed it. They remained like that a moment. People live together but there are long periods when they know nothing of each other’s lives. Then one has the sensation that the other has vanished off the map. This was one corner of the world: his aunt’s furniture inherited from his mother, the garden, his father, the fiddle playing, Jules Verne, and the walk in the cemetery with his aunt on All Souls’ Day. This world had such power that nothing external could destroy it, not even the war. Just once each year some unforeseen thing broke through a chink in it, another world. Everything changed. That which had hitherto been sweet was now bitter, that which had been sour was now like gall. The hothouse became a primeval forest. And his aunt like a corpse, or less than that.
He slammed the glazed door, the bell swung and rang, the sound swam through the air and penetrated the silent house. He looked back from the gate: his aunt stood at the glazed door, her hands linked, and stared at him.
THE WINDOWS OF THE THEATER WERE LIT. A CAR was waiting by the side door that led to the upstairs boxes. He cut across the high street and decided to call on Ernõ’s father.
The cobbler had returned home some eighteen months ago with a serious wound in his lungs and had been spitting blood ever since. He lived in a high apartment block down a narrow alleyway among fishmongers, in a cellar that was five shallow steps down from the street and served as both his workplace and his accommodation. The entrance was surrounded by painted signs that he himself had made, signs involving mysterious pictures studded with captions in a hodgepodge of biblical language, exhorting any passerby to live modestly and to come to Christ. “Young man, hold high your Shield of Faith,” proclaimed one sign. “God takes no pleasure in your great knowledge, your rank, your strength, or your declarations of religion, but if you give your heart to Jesus He will put a veil between you and your past and pre
pare you for the glory of the Lord,” said another. “Raise our hearts, almighty Savior, like the serpent of brass, so that those who are disappointed in life might be cured by embracing You,” said a third. And one in particularly large letters declared: “Neither will death always begin with dying. There are many among us living yet coffined. Dedicate yourself to death; lay your life in the hands of Jesus and you will no longer fear death.”
People stopped, read the texts, shook their heads, and walked on in astonishment.
The workshop was densely shrouded in the half-light and a simmering bowl full of paste filled the room with its ripe, sour, acid smell. The cobbler was sitting hunched by an oxyacetylene lamp next to a low table, like a huge shaggy insect hypnotized by the circle of light. Once he noticed the boy he carefully arranged everything he had been working with on the table, including the large uncured leather sole that had been lying on his lap, the shoe knife, the thread, and a scrawny yellow half shoe, and only then stood up and bowed deeply.
“Blessed be the name of the Lord. He who confirms us in our faith and leads us to victory over our foes.”
What Ábel liked about him was that he issued his grandly ceremonial greetings in such an indifferent, commonplace manner he might have simply been mouthing “your servant.” The cobbler was a short, shriveled man entirely consumed by his disease. The weight of his leather apron seemed to drag him down. One leg was shorter than another, a condition he contracted before the bullet found his lung. A long mustache dripped from his wasted, bony face, adhering to his tousled beard and uncut hair that would not lie flat, but covered his skull like a wire wig, a shrub full of thistles. His great black eyes shone and turned with a confused light deep beneath his brow, the whites as large as a Negro’s.
“The young gentleman is looking for my son, Ernõ,” said the cobbler, his peculiarly small white sickly hand gesturing him to take a seat. There was considerable natural grace in his movements. He himself did not sit down, but leaned on a short crooked stick to address his guest. “My son Ernõ is not at home. We must be reasonable about such things. We cannot ask him to spend all his time with his parents. The young gentlemen have taken their exams today and have therefore moved up a step in the eyes of God and man.”
He spoke in a flat voice, with as little emotion or expression as ever, as if he were praying or reciting the liturgy.
“My unworthy son, Ernõ, has today been allotted his place among the gentlemen sons of gentlemen fathers,” he continued. “Judging by the available evidence it seems it was not the Lord’s will that my son Ernõ should be a prop to his parents in their old age. He wants my son to live among gentlemen, and to become my enemy. It would be foolish and absurd of me to rail against God’s will. Today my son has entered the superior rank of gentlefolk, and he must needs be the enemy of his lowly parents, his relations, and everyone who knew him.”
He made a gesture in the air with his hand as if bestowing a blessing. “He who recognizes the hand of God in mortal affairs rejoices in sickness, misfortune, and enmity between his kinfolk. My son Ernõ is a quiet boy who rejects the forthrightness the great source of Light has bestowed on me, his father, so that I may fulfill my obligations. The way has opened unto him: mountains have collapsed. It is utterly certain that the hour has come when the ruling social order must demand bloody sacrifices. Millions are lying dead in the ditches of the world and, insignificant as I am, I have been allowed to survive while the ruling classes offer involuntary sacrifices unto the earth and its waters.”
Yes, Mr. Zakarka, said Ábel. May I speak to Ernõ?
“Indeed,” he continued undisturbed. “Be so gracious as to consider the scale of the matter. We have been used to seeing how the ruling class, with its remarkable refinement, its extraordinary achievements in each and every field, remained immune to all natural disasters such as earthquakes, flood, fire, and war, providing God’s finger had not picked them out specifically. We have been used to there being two classes in the world, one living in close proximity to the other, but having less to do with it than do locusts with bears. Please be so gracious as to remember that the last days are here. The sons of the ruling class are lying in the same lime pits as the sons of the low. The prophets have risen and their words are becoming audible; the Lord has marked even my humble words out for hearing and for following.”
The cobbler threw a long shadow in the hissing light of the oxyacetylene lamp. He gave an occasional cough adding “Beg your pardon” each time as he trundled off into a corner of the workshop where he spent some time hawking and spitting.
Ábel sat there, leaning forward. He knew he had to wait until the cobbler had had his say. The Bible lay on a shelf on the wall among a few old mugs and pots, with a child-sized meter-high crucifix on the wall beside it. The cobbler swayed as he walked, very much dependent on his stick. After he had finished coughing he continued in a cracked voice.
“As concerns my son, Ernõ,” he began, tucking his hands under his leather apron, “the young gentlemen were kind enough to accept him into their company, for which he will owe them an eternal debt of gratitude, a debt that will linger long after the young gentlemen have gone. By any human estimation my son Ernõ, with his stunted body and inherited diseases, is likely to outlive the young gentlemen who treated him with such kindness, and who have proved more amenable than my unfortunate son to following the examples of their heroic gentlemen fathers. It goes to show that there’s a point even to illness and deformation. The young gentlemen are going where all are equal in the eyes of death, but Ernõ is staying here. He will become a gentleman since the hour of trial will pass from the face of the earth, and those who remain will be the recipients of God’s special favor. It is my intention to remain alive long enough to see that hour.”
Having announced this he gave an easy courteous bow, an almost apologetic bow as if there was nothing he could do about any of this. Ábel looked at the crucifix. The cobbler followed his gaze with a stern expression.
“The young gentlemen were kind to my son. Especially the son of the much respected Mr. Prockauer. I must not forget this. Young Master Prockauer, though not personally respectable, enjoys such an elevated position in the world owing to the very high respect in which his honorable father is held, that his friendship is an honor of which my son will be forever sensible. Ernõ is aware how much he owes to the gentleman. It may be because of his natural taciturnity that he has not spoken of his gratefulness to me, though, naturally, my poor understanding cannot gauge the deeper meaning of what gentlemen say. But what the waking will not say, the sleeping will occasionally utter. My son has often addressed young Master Prockauer by his first name when asleep.”
“Tibor?” asked Ábel. His throat was dry.
The cobbler stepped into a chamber of the cellar that was hidden by a curtain. “I slept here at his feet,” he said and waved in the direction of a box bed with drawers under it. “I took to the floor, which is harder, and gave up the bed to my son so he should get used to the gentlemen’s style of doing things. That’s where I heard, more than once, my son shout out the first name of young Master Prockauer. A person only calls to someone else in his sleep when he is suffering. I have no way of telling what caused my son to suffer in his sleep so that he should cry out the young gentleman’s name.”
He allowed the curtain to fall as if covering up some shameful sight. So this is where Ernõ lives, thought Ábel. He had never dared imagine where Ernõ slept, what he ate, or what they talked about at home. He had visited the workshop often enough recently, but always when Ernõ was away, and the cobbler had never shown him the room where he and his son lived. But this was where Ernõ slept with his father. His mother probably had her own bed in the place.
“Perhaps it was out of gratefulness that my son shouted out Master Prockauer’s first name,” said the cobbler. “The young gentleman had long honored my son with his company. Even in the lower years at school he allowed my son to take home books belonging to his father
, the colonel. And later, when the young gentleman was, with perfectly excusable carelessness, neglecting his studies, the colonel’s boy bestowed on my son the distinction of allowing him to be of help to him. The good graces of gentlemen are indeed inscrutable. It was thanks to the offices of the good colonel that I was permitted to take part in that great cleansing at the front.”
“In what?” Ábel leaned forward. The cobbler straightened. “The cleansing. It is not the proper time to speak of everything just yet. The only man capable of being cleansed is he who has undergone humiliations. The good colonel, whose son showered such favors on my son, made it possible for me to be cleansed, when he chose me in the absence of his official aide. I had three opportunities to be cleansed.”
He extended his hands before him.
“For one who gives life, all methods are equally suitable when employing an aide for the taking of life. Be so kind as to consider all we have to thank the noble gentlemen of the Prockauer family for. My son not only had the privilege of educating a high-ranking officer’s son, and, in due course, to appear in the company of gentlemen of which he would become one even while wearing his castoffs, but I, his father, am in the colonel’s debt for having been allowed to participate in the great cleansing appointed by the Lord, in a triple cleansing. With these two hands. Is the young gentleman unaware of this?”
