by Sándor Márai
He wanted to share in their anxieties and sometimes he too smoked in secret. He was happy to walk down narrow side streets at night in their company and, heart racing, would steal into desolate bars at the edge of town with them. He, to whom everything that one’s parents had forbidden was allowed, who was free of that complex hierarchy of superiors in which parents’ friends played as threatening a role as did teachers or military patrols, now humbly volunteered once more to share with them a fate that no longer bound him.
Some sense of incompleteness emanated from the one-armed one ever since he had returned from the front. He never talked about the front in detail or directly. Ernõ told the gang that the one-armed one was paying frequent visits to the cobbler. They would apparently talk in low voices for hours at a time. When confronted with this Lajos stuttered and tried to avoid answering by going off somewhere. The gang kept a dubious eye on these examples of backsliding whereby Lajos kept seeking out the company of adults. Lajos oscillated anxiously between the world of the gang and that of the adults. It was as if he were seeking something, an answer, some missing item he had utterly lost track of.
Béla suggested he was looking for his other arm. They waved away this ridiculous idea so Béla felt ashamed and fell silent. Surely he can’t be looking for his missing arm because he knows where that is: first it was stored in a bucket, then thrown into the lime pit. People don’t search so feverishly for trifles, Ernõ declared in a superior manner. Ábel proposed that Lajos was looking for his place in society. He couldn’t bring himself to believe that the things he so much desired—freedom and the rights and privileges of being an adult—were worth less than the gang’s form of comradeship. He was seeking something he might have missed before, something adults could not give back to him.
They spoke of adults in general rather than in particular. The word “they” was self-explanatory: it was obvious who “they” signified. They spied on them, described each other’s experiences of them, discussed possible developments. When Mr. Zádor, the bishop’s secretary, who never went anywhere without his top hat, tripped and fell into a puddle in the street it was as much a victory for them as when Judge Kikinday had a toothache and couldn’t sleep for nights on end. They made no distinctions and forgave nothing. They agreed on the principle that in a state of war any means might be employed to destroy the enemy. They never doubted, not for an instant, that the war they were fighting was quite distinct from the ones in which the adults were engaged.
Lajos was their spy. He could work behind enemy lines and render a reliable account. There were very few opportunities for a more effective assault: the enemy was armed, suspicious, and ruthless. His enormous claws were already extended towards them and would pretty soon drag them away.
THE ACTOR WAS FROM THE ENEMY CAMP BUT HE did enter theirs through the window. He was an adult: he had a belly, his shaven face had a bluish tinge, he wore a watch on a chain, strange clothes, and a wig. Lajos brought him along after long negotiations and they received him in the same suspicious manner as they would an enemy.
Immediately, within the first hour, he suggested they employ the familiar tutoyer mode of address. This put them on their guard. The actor sat, walked, chattered, and held forth. He seemed to have a vast amount to say. He smoked their cigarettes, talked of other towns, and told smutty jokes. He discoursed on the life of the theater, and on the doings of the female members of the company, supplying names and specific details. One had to take proper note of these details as they offered insights into what the enemy might have up its sleeve.
The actor was an object of suspicion in every respect. He used terms like sea, Barcelona, steerage, Berlin, underground train, three hundred francs. The actor would say, “Then the captain came down and the blacks all leapt overboard.” All this was highly suspect. He sounded just like the sea captain they knew whom they tended to meet most afternoons in front of the theater. The actor said, “By that time I hadn’t slept for three nights and my baggage had been left in Jeumont so I was overcome by drowsiness. Suddenly the train stops, I look up, and it says, Cologne! Well, I think, Cologne. We shall have to think of something really clever now.” You could listen to stuff like this for hours. But all the time the suspicion grew that reality lay elsewhere, that this was merely the actor’s reality. It ran counter to their practice to place their pooled trust in anyone. They had learned to sense it in their pulses: when others attempted to communicate with them it was either to punish or to plead, but whatever the case it was always with an ulterior motive. It was also difficult to believe that the actor, who could after all have been sitting in the window of the coffeehouse or strolling up and down the high street with his top hat and long-stemmed pipe, possibly enjoying the attentions of chorus girls and divas, should have chosen to spend time with them arguing for hours on end without some particular aim in view.
They never mentioned The Peculiar in front of the actor. He had had to climb through the window as they could not have met openly in public. They couldn’t stroll down the street with him in public either. To have been seen walking with the actor would immediately have brought the wrath of teachers and relatives down on them. The actor was aware of this and sensitively adapted himself to the demands of the situation, lurking with them in a befitting manner.
He was equally nice to them all. He delivered his humorous anecdotes with a serious expression and furrowed brows. Listening to the actor you could come away with the impression that life consisted of a series of extraordinary events that began tragically but inevitably ended up as comedy. “The little blackies,” the actor would say. Once he talked of how “the little tower thingamabob at Pisa” didn’t in fact lean as much as people said it did. Everything was addressed in baby talk: in his mouth, which was forever chewing on a dumpling, the mighty universe itself became “our little cosmikins.” You just had to get used to it.
As you also had to get used to the idea that he wanted to spend his time chatting to them in the first place when it was impossible to work out his game or to discover what made him tick. He’d sit on a chair in the center of the room in his checkered suit, his chin shaved to a brilliant high gloss, his wig stuck to his scalp as though fixed there by resin, his lilac handkerchief billowing from his cigar pocket, his legs crossed with lacquered shoes glimmering on his feet and his bright, slightly myopic eyes running all over them like some tiny insect while he discoursed on the affairs of the world in a thin frail voice. Clearly, it was only distant affairs that interested him.
One day Ábel said: “Watch him. Whenever he says something particularly good he stares straight ahead with a sad look on his face.”
At such times every feature of the pale-blue shaven face relaxed and drooped; his nose seemed to lengthen in melancholy fashion, his thick fleshy lips pouted, and his eyes disappeared under half-closed lids. His nimble, plump white fingers flopped exhausted into his lap. He’d sit there, alone, always precisely at the center of the room. If there happened to be a table there he pushed it aside, drew up a chair, and settled on it, deliberately, exactly in the middle.
You also had to get used to his various fragrances. You had to get used to his constantly chewing licorice. Sometimes, on particularly melancholy days, his scent was quite nauseating. Normally he used a cinnamon essence, but when he felt very low he would splash the stuff on wildly, mixing musk, lilac, chypre, and rosewater, and walk round as if in a trance with clouds of perfume billowing about him, every so often raising his specially perfumed necktie to his nose to take a deep sniff.
There was a curious inner suppleness about his large, ponderous, and melancholy body. When he stood up he would give a little spin as though performing a pirouette. When he gave a bow he stood on tiptoe, one hand to his lips, his arm carving a wide arc before being allowed grandly to drop. As soon as he’d done so he would add: “This is how the strolling players would do it.” And his eyes would be sad as if this were a fact that simply could not be helped.
He explained ea
ch and every movement he made. He could talk for hours about why he did this or that or what he did not like. “I loathe it,” he’d shudder. And “I adore it!” He was not much given to the middle way. But when he found himself making too frequent use of the two expressions, he would hesitate and exclaim: “How crude this all is! Quite hysterical, don’t you think? I loathe! I adore! Only women and comedy actors talk like this.”
He had a particularly low opinion of women and comedy actors. He would employ the same disparaging collective tone for them both. Every time he mentioned his fellow professionals his face twisted with fury and pain. He would weep and complain when talking about the rehearsals that took up his mornings. But in the midst of his griping, suddenly it was as if he had given himself a slap: he’d stand up, shrug, and declare: “So what? When it comes down to it I am just a strolling player.”
But his manner suggested that it was only when it came down to it really, in the very last analysis, that he was a mere strolling player.
A couple of weeks after he had made their acquaintance he invited them to his apartment.
The actor lived in a sublet, on the second floor of a tenement block in a wide side street, his windows opening onto a big, dirty courtyard. All the furniture in his room was pressed up against the wall thereby increasing the illusion of spaciousness. A broad carpet covered the floor in the middle and the entrance hall between the two windows offered the visitor his own reflection in a tall standing mirror.
A widow rented the room out, a young military widow who was struggling to bring up her child in the demanding conditions of the time. When the mother went out the actor would give her little rickets-stricken girl ballet lessons, teaching her the elements.
“There are people,” he said, “who look to buy freak children, children whose bodies, like those of animals, are partly covered in fur. Children with two heads. I knew someone like that. He had heard of a little girl who was half covered in fur whose mother was unwilling to sell her, and of a boy with three hands. He kept a record of them. Occasionally he would get on a train and visit them, observe their development, and correspond with the parents. Then he’d sell them on to a freak show. He made a fortune.”
The gang felt an undeniable excitement when they called to see him. They wouldn’t have been surprised to find a colony of seals ranged round his bed when they entered. He received them in a black suit with a flower in his buttonhole. He greeted them with the utmost courtesy and showed them to their seats with a worldly grandeur, offering one the bed, one the chair by the basin, one the windowsill. He was an aristocrat arranging a soirée. He himself, as was his wont, drew a chair into the middle of the room and flashed smiles at them from there, making flattering inquiries about each of them.
They had to admit the actor knew how to entertain.
He offered them nothing else, but from the first to the last moment of their visit he was capable of infusing the occasion with the air of a formal reception. He chattered of distant events, dismissing all objections with a forbearing smile. He praised Tibor’s deportment, Ábel’s observant eyes, and Ernõ’s expertise. In what particular field of endeavor Ernõ was supposed to be expert he did not specify. He presented Béla with a perfumed necktie.
The one-armed one was enraptured by this and walked around the room with a complacent smile. The actor, whom he had introduced to them, was a roaring success that afternoon. The gang relaxed. By the time the visit had ended they had established an atmosphere almost as free of tension as if they had been by themselves.
They had to wait till dusk so that they could slip away without being noticed. They took their leave one by one, Ábel being the last to go. The actor escorted his guests to the front door and bowed deeply. Having been left alone with Ábel he went over to the window and paid no attention to him. Ábel could see him only in profile. Line by line the mask dropped from the actor’s face. First the smile, then the tense attention, the nearsighted helpless look, and the droop of the lips. He stood in silence watching the increasingly dark street, his fingers drumming on the glass.
Ábel didn’t move. He was mesmerized by the change in the actor. He waited for him to speak. It was as if he was utterly exhausted. It was some time before he sluggishly turned his head and addressed him in a tired voice.
Still here? he asked sadly and solemnly. What’s keeping you, boy?
He stood stock still, his broad back covering the window. Ábel waited a moment, then anxiously made for the door and quickly closed it behind him. He stopped in the stairwell and looked back. He wasn’t being followed.
The voice of the actor stayed with him that night and made its way into his dreams.
THEY HAD TO DISCOVER WHAT THE ACTOR WAS doing in their midst. Their delicate ears could tell that the actor’s voice was sincere. He, who going by all outward signs must have belonged in the enemy camp, had played it perfectly, never once striking a false chord. He hadn’t been patronizing, nor too careful to be impartial, nor indeed too intimate. As far as they could tell it did not tire him to make this infinitely long journey from the shores of his world to theirs; he would undertake it in order to meet them on their own ground. Their sharp ears detected not a single false note. Too much sincerity, confidentiality, and amiability would have seemed as suspicious to them as false intimacy. Had the actor not been sincere, he would have had to juggle halftones and quartertones in their company, and observing such fine distinctions for such a time would have been too exhausting for him. They knew that adults were neither sincere nor trusting with each other. The actor spent his days among adults at rehearsals or at cafés with various local gentlemen of leisure. His regular companions included the short but extremely elegantly dressed editor of the local newspaper who greeted everyone in the most formal manner, the stage prompter of the company whom he had, as he casually declared, “first met abroad,” and the man who was his secretary, mailman, and financial consultant, fat Havas, the pawnbroker.
“Havas has money,” he indicated with a nervous movement when Ábel asked him something. “Not just money, but articles, possessions. You might not be aware of it yet but it is always advisable to keep on good terms with pawnbrokers. Whenever I arrive at a new town I make it my first business to befriend the editor and the pawnbroker. The two between them can help me achieve that which, alone, I would be incapable of achieving: immortality and sustenance. For a man to attain immortality it is necessary that he first survive.”
It was difficult to disagree with him. He had to walk some way to join them, or alternatively, they called over to his place on the afternoons they stayed in town. They kept the secrets of The Peculiar from him until the last possible moment. They weighed every slight shift of his voice on the most delicate of apothecary’s balances.
But the actor knew something the others didn’t. Was this his true nature or just some instinctive capacity for simulating? He could talk to them as no adult had ever done. Adults made the mistake of trying to talk to them as though they were adults. The actor committed no such crude faux pas. He tried to build no artificial bridges, and neither did he try to pretend he was one of them.
He talked like someone who had come home after a long day, put on his dressing gown, and felt comfortable in his own skin. He used the words they used, feeling no particular need to learn their own thieves’ argot. He sat down among them with a nervous dreamy look, his eyes flicking now up, now down, and said:
“How much younger you all are. Strange but you are younger than I thought you were. I was much older than you when I was eighteen. The years dropped off me later.”
He was not a giant who squatted down in order to look smaller so the dwarves should not be scared of playing with him; he was an outsize dwarf with a giant’s body and a wig whom adults hired for amusement and who, tired and disappointed after a day’s work, would go to join his dwarf companions.
Occasionally he smuggled them into the second-tier actors’ box at the theater. They sat anxiously at the back of the box
while Amadé played to them. He made gestures only they would understand, conveying, with a glance here and phrase there, a complicity whose closeness only they would recognize. The actor performed with pretty much the same imperative as they did, distorting truth by means of a persona, adopting the painful rictus of a mask. To play was as obligatory for him as it was for them. It might be that the actor only ever truly comprehended the shape of his own life when he was acting, much as they sensed the reality of life behind every apparent reality.
IT WAS TIBOR’S COMPANY THAT MATTERED MOST to Ábel now. Tibor, master of the revels, accepted such intimacy with a mild, tolerant indifference, a decent forbearance. He found Ábel tiring but could see no way of avoiding contact.
Ábel would wait for him in front of his house, give the familiar whistle, and they would walk to school together along the river. Tibor had to dine once a week at Ábel’s. Ábel’s aunt was all in favor of the friendship. The companionship of this gentle, secretive boy seemed to her appropriate to what she imagined and hoped Ábel would be.
Of all Ábel’s friends Tibor was the only one of whom she was not jealous. She received the rest of the gang with a certain coolness, catering to them nervously, keeping a close eye on them, trying to translate their incomprehensible conversations into a language she could understand. She followed Ábel around helplessly as if somebody had stolen him from her, no longer daring to enter his room at night to kiss the sleeping boy as she had been used to doing just a year ago. She crept on tiptoe to his door, listening for his breathing as he slept, and her eyes filled with tears. Someone had stolen the contents of her life from her but she didn’t know the thief and had no idea just when the crime had taken place, so she slipped back into her room and spent the night sleepless, her heart beating, her thoughts anxious and confused.
