The Rebels

by Sándor Márai

  The prima donna took her place among the usual crowd at the bohemian table. The actor fixed his curious eye on the door. The director hadn’t yet arrived and the seat on the prima donna’s right was unoccupied. The director was like the captain of a sinking ship: he was the last to leave the theater, the night’s takings in his pocket. He wouldn’t go until the cleaners had swept the auditorium clean.

  Let’s wait until my assistant reports back, said the actor cautiously, his hand before his mouth. It would be wiser to wait till then.

  He had plans that he had been mysteriously hinting at all evening. They weren’t feeling too good. They leaned on the table in desultory fashion, drank their beer, and gazed at the stream of new arrivals. It was the first time in their lives they could sit in the café legally, without anxiety, without fear of being spotted. They had occupied this booth before but for only a half an hour at a time, shivering slightly with the curtains drawn. Tonight was the first occasion on which they could take their place without sneaking in, without embarrassment.

  They couldn’t help but notice in the first half hour they spent in the adult camp as equals that it was not all gaiety here. Or if gaiety there was, there was less of it than they had imagined the day before. The edgy excitement of the entertainment had quite vanished. A few weeks ago, when such excursions were still counted as a dangerous enterprise, they hadn’t noticed the insultingly patronizing manner of the waiter or the servile to-ing and fro-ing of the café manager who had condescended to conceal and shelter them. This confidentiality seemed humiliating to them now and lent a certain tension to the evening. They sat in low spirits, noticing for the first time the dinginess of the décor, breathing in the stale and bitter air.

  “What is it?” asked Tibor.

  Ábel gave a wry laugh.

  “Do you remember how we used to look through the window whenever we came by here?”

  Boredom gave way to anxious lassitude. What if everything they had only known from the outside turned out like this? If everything that had been alien and other were now becoming familiar, so that they could relax and take command of the world along with all those secrets that adults fought tooth and nail over—money, freedom, women—and they discovered that it was all quite different and much duller than they had thought?

  “I’m bored,” said Béla, wrinkling his nose.

  He raised his monocle to his eye and glared about him. Other tables smiled back at them. At about eleven their history master appeared in the café. Ernõ spoke a quiet word of command and the gang immediately leapt to their feet, made deep bows, and in singsong unison greeted the teacher.

  “Your humble servant, sir!”

  The chorus rang like music in the room. The elderly man in the pince-nez returned the school greeting, gave a clumsy bow, and muttered in confusion: “Your humble servant.” The master hurried away to escape the embarrassing scene. Ábel was of the opinion that he had blushed. Slowly they began to recover their confidence.

  “That’s the way it has to be,” said Ernõ. “One has to be careful. Even tomorrow we shall have to hide our cigarettes when anyone approaches us. And we will have to bow deep in greeting, much deeper than we have ever done before. The waiter will have to draw the curtains, and the manager will have to watch that we’re not spotted.”

  They hatched a plan for the following week to confront all their teachers in the afternoon, singly and together, before the staff disappeared on vacation, and ask them to fill in the blanks in their knowledge regarding certain as yet unclear details. They should enter with the utmost humility, stuttering, twisting their hats in their hands, and put their question red-faced, humming and hawing, exactly as they used to do.

  Ernõ stood up.

  “For instance, you go into Gurka and say: ‘Your humble servant, sir, I beg your pardon, I do not mean to be a nuisance, forgive me for disturbing you, sir.’ He is sitting at his desk, he pushes his glasses up to his forehead, gives a croak, and screws up his eyes. ‘Who is that?’ he asks in that nasal voice of his. ‘A student? What does the student want?’ You move closer, you twist your hat in your hands, you can hardly speak for respect, you are so deeply honored. Gurka slowly rises. ‘Really,’ he says. ‘Do my eyes not deceive me? Can it really be Ruzsák? It really is you, Ruzsák.’ Then he comes up to you and extends his hand in the greatest embarrassment because he is the master who could have failed you, twice, and has only permitted you to pass now because the army needs you and the commissioner insisted on it. And he is the one who has beaten you time and again right up until fourth grade. He is the one who stood guard on every street corner where girls were to be found and frequently caught the flu because he had been lurking in gateways for hours on end, keeping a sneaky watch on us. He was the one who had his suits made so that the collar covered half his face up to the earlobes, only so that he could creep up on groups of students unnoticed. Gurka. That’s your man. He is frowning suspiciously. He doesn’t know whether to sit you down or not, so you just stand there, listening, staring at him. He is already regretting offering his hand for you to shake. What can the student be wanting? Whatever it is he can’t be up to any good. Perhaps he has brass knuckles in his pocket, or a dagger. ‘Now, now, Ruzsák,’ he says, gasping for air. ‘What brings you here?’ You, in the meantime, just stand there, trembling, flushed.”

  They drew closer together. This they understood. The waiter drew the curtains, concealing them.

  “You drop your hat, you cough,” said Ábel.

  “Maybe. And then you say, ‘I have made so bold, sir…with your kind permission…I make so bold as to disturb you,’ shifting from one foot to the other. Gurka relaxes. He puts his hand on your shoulder. ‘Speak up, Ruzsák, no need to get in a state about it. I know, my boy. The Creator has not distributed his intellectual gifts equally. In your case, Ruzsák, I have often had to spur you on to greater efforts, indeed, Ruzsák, I may have called you an ass or a numbskull. Don’t take it to heart. What’s done is done. There are professions, my boy, that make no great intellectual demands, require no sharpness of mind, such as is required by, say, a teacher. Why don’t you become a grocer, Ruzsák? There are many professions in the world. The important thing is to carry out whatever duties life imposes on you with honor.’

  “But you just continue humming and hawing. And when he claps you on the shoulder the second time you stop. ‘The reason I am here, sir, is because I have doubts.’ ‘Out with them, Ruzsák.’ ‘The course on Tacitus,’ you say. ‘What about the course on Tacitus?’ Gurka glances at the door, at the window. He clearly doesn’t understand. ‘That part, that bit about…,’ you say and produce a book from your bag. Gurka puts his glasses on, glances this way and that, not quite knowing what to do. What does the student want? But you, by then, are relaxed and modest. At your ease now you explain the matter. ‘It’s this sentence here, sir, if you’ll pardon me,’ and you open the book and point to the passage. ‘I suspect I haven’t understood it properly, sir. I had all kinds of doubt about it afterwards. I do agonize about it as I would not like to have missed the meaning of the detail.’”

  Béla leaned forward, his entire face split by a vast grin.

  “It’s that plusquam-perfectum, sir. I just can’t see it,” he said, beaming and rubbing his hands.

  “Yes. That’s why you have returned. You tell him you don’t want to bother him at all but that you wouldn’t want to leave with this doubt gnawing at you. You wouldn’t want to find yourself on the battlefield without first having cleared up this passage of Tacitus.”

  “There are these two verbal prefixes I don’t understand,” said Béla. “Just these two little ones.”

  “Gurka sits you down,” continued Ernõ. “He removes his glasses and looks you over for a while. ‘You, Ruzsák?’ he says. ‘Now, when the exams are over? What am I to make of this, Ruzsák?’ ‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ you answer firmly but respectfully. ‘It’s just that I have doubts. Having studied under your tutelage, sir, for eight yea
rs…for eight years, sir…I have recognized the importance of such matters. There is Horace for example. And Cicero. If sir would be so kind…just one or two obscure passages…’”

  The prompter stuck his head through the curtains.

  “The place is yours,” he said. Only his bald head and brow and his puffy red nose protruded between the drapes, his body remained invisible. He had learned from watching actors at work. He turned his head right and left as if a machine were swiveling it and suddenly vanished. It was like a vision.

  Music was playing. The air was thick with the sweet, exciting din of conversation, plates clattering, and a clumsy waltz rhythm. The actor started making preparations to leave. He checked his wig in a pocket mirror, licked his thumb and forefinger, and smoothed his eyebrows. He drew on his gloves slowly, with great care. The actor always put on his gloves as though they were brand new and he was trying them on for the first time: he started with the four fingers, waited a moment, then hastily, with a certain modesty, thrust his thumb into the waiting hole as if it were following its four senior brothers.

  “I shall go ahead,” said the actor. “You should follow me after a little while, in ones and twos. Lajos, you bring up the rear. I will be waiting for you at the stage door.”

  He put his index finger to his lips and winked.

  “Be quiet. Be tactful,” he whispered.

  He almost slammed the curtain behind him. They heard his high, singsong voice greeting other customers.

  “You must ask Moravecz to explain the real reasons for Joseph II’s unpopularity,” Ernõ continued. “‘This fat horse here is the clergy, your majesty, this one is the aristocracy, and this starved blind nag is the people…,’ you say. This curious image of history, you feel, has not received the recognition due to it. Here, since you are not in a hurry, is the ideal opportunity for him to expound its virtues…‘In Louis the Great’s reign, sir, the stars of North, East, and South are in three different seas…Why exactly was that?’”

  “I don’t understand it either,” said Tibor solemnly, slightly troubled.

  “You have to be very careful about the tone of the questions,” said Ernõ. “That’s the hardest part of it. You must be respectful but firm. After all you are not demanding anything…it’s nothing more than going back into a shop where you bought something and asking one last time about the worth and quality of the goods you have purchased. Or if you were asking for operating instructions. They are obliged to give you that much. The main thing is that you are simply unable to sleep because your conscience is so troubled by that passage in Tacitus. That’s what you have to emphasize. We can rehearse tomorrow.”

  “There may be other matters we can bring up,” said Béla. “Jurák could apologize to the music teacher for his out-of-tune singing. He could even ask for extra lessons, now as a late compensation. We could raise the money.”

  “What I want to know is what Amadé is up to,” said Ábel.

  No one knew what Amadé was cooking up, not even Lajos. Béla discreetly part-closed the drapes and they peered through the remaining gap. There they were all sitting: the actress with the director on her right, now arrived and chewing a piece of wurst, the drugstore owner on her left. The editor sat at the end of the table, waiting with bated breath for a crumb of gossip to be tossed his way. Two young officers in dress uniform were sipping champagne. The manager of the café was leaning against the buffet bar. He had a heart problem: his face looked strained, his jaundiced-looking sickly hands hanging by his sides. Why should anyone be here if they were not obliged to be? It was hard to hear themselves talk over the racket. Ábel reflected that even the childhood evenings spent in his father’s study with those three gentle buffoons were more fun.

  He slowly relaxed and the acute tension to which he had been subject melted away. The shame, the confusion, the sense of shock he had felt after the gang had dispersed at noon gave way to a numb indifference. He was sitting close to Tibor and that was all that mattered. Yesterday he still knew that once he had woken up he would see him in half an hour or an hour and that he would invent some story or an item of unexpected gossip that Tibor would receive with his usual polite, drawling “Really?” but that it wouldn’t matter as he would be standing there beside him, listening to him, no one else. But as of noon today, this feeling of assurance, that he would see Tibor at the arranged times and talk to him without anything getting in the way, had vanished forever. He stared at the dirty ceiling, the crumbling walls, and was amazed. He had to bow his head for fear the others would see him crying. He felt the unsettling pain of loss, an apprehension that danger could not be avoided, the kind of thing no one could bear for long. They sat exhausted, gazing at the grimy superior world of adults, this desolate paradise.

  “Intra muros,” Ábel remarked sourly.

  They looked at him, puzzled. Tibor was particularly pale this evening. He sat formal and silent, his head in his hands as if at a funeral. Ábel didn’t dare ask him what the matter was. You could never be certain of anything with Tibor for he often surprised you with what he said, things so idiotic sometimes they made you blush. He might perhaps have answered, as he did last Sunday, that it was all the Vasas soccer team’s fault: they should have scored with a free kick at the end. Whenever Tibor looked thoughtful it was likely that his mind had wandered into uncharted territory. Ábel was always afraid that he’d eventually say something that lowered his stock in Ernõ’s eyes. It was only Ernõ he feared: Béla and Lajos never criticized Tibor with such severity. He was afraid Tibor would commit some faux pas or say something stupid, and that he would have to be ashamed on his friend’s behalf.

  How long can it last? he wondered. And what then? The spell that held them together might be broken in a matter of minutes. One word and, like an overloaded fuse, the electricity would snap off and all would be darkness. They had long prepared for this evening. Ábel couldn’t say what precisely he was expecting, what form of liberation. The only thing that surprised him was how extraordinarily morose they all felt. It had never occurred to him that the moment of freedom would appear so unattractive.

  It was their low stature that made them nervous: they had suddenly fallen from the highest echelons of their own hierarchy to the rank of second-rate adults.

  “We have to start over again, right from the beginning,” he said.

  NOT ONE OF THEM WANTED TO SET OFF WITHOUT Tibor. Who’ll go first, asked Ernõ. When they remained silent, Tibor made no move: he too waited silently, expectantly, staring at the marble-topped table. He didn’t look up, knowing it was him they were waiting for, that they were watching him closely. He was determined to say nothing. The way they competed for his affection, the passionate loyalty they radiated from every side, even more powerfully, more jealously now than before, made him all the more obstinate. He sat like the wounded Paris, biting his lip.

  This jealousy radiating from each of them individually, a jealousy whose intensity he could not help but feel, shook and embittered him. He felt anxious, uncertain of himself. Friendship was a burden. It was nice to know that the bonds that had so far united them had now been broken. Thinking this he felt a sense of freedom and lightness. He no longer needed their friendship. It was too much, it weighed him down. Ábel’s enthusiasms, Ernõ’s jealousy, Béla’s leech-like clinging, the actor’s games and very being: it was all excessive, he could no longer bear it. He felt a great relief contemplating the possibility that, within a month perhaps, the barracks would be his home. No longer would there be Mother, Lajos, and Ábel constantly asking him to account for his every movement, no longer would he suffer the insufferably critical gaze of Ernõ, no longer would he have to endure the presence of Béla, that mincing shadow. He had had enough of them all. He thought fondly of the front of which he knew nothing, only that it would mean a final break with the life he had been leading, a life whose tensions he could no longer bear. His father’s face appeared before him out of the chaos, cast in bronze like some heroic statue. There was
something certain you could cling to there, though the enormous weight of it oppressed everyone around him. Tibor wanted to settle his bill with Havas. Tomorrow he would speak to his mother and maybe even confess everything, but the important thing was to pay Havas off, to recover the silver, then, with a light heart, to say farewell to Ábel and Ernõ, clap Béla on the shoulder, avoid the actor, and, free as a bird, to enter the barracks, maybe the war itself, that great community of adults where he would no longer be responsible for anything, where he would no longer be the idol of a small votary circle all the more burdensome because he was incapable of reciprocating their feelings. Everything would be fine, it would all be all right, a word might be enough and they would all be free of this aching, agonizing spell. He no longer knew who he was. The rules of the game had become confusing, incomprehensible. They were sitting around, waiting for something to happen. What had happened? Whose fault was it? He felt no sense of guilt. He had simply tolerated their loyalty to him. He had been fair: he tolerated them all equally. He felt he had assumed a great burden he could barely support. He had to shake it off with one great effort and move on. He was fed up with the game. He couldn’t stand it any longer: it agitated him so keenly that his whole nervous system rejected it.

  He thought of Ábel and cast a glance at him. The doctor’s son immediately returned his glance with such enthusiasm, such feverish anticipation and readiness to leap to his feet and carry out his orders, that he felt guilty and miserable as he averted his eyes. People were so hard to reject. We think we are free but when we try to tear ourselves away we find we cannot move a muscle. Someone smiles at us heedlessly and immediately we are entangled in that person’s friendship. He didn’t know what friendship was. He had imagined friendship differently, as taking a lighthearted, pleasant walk, a kind of fellow feeling that imposed no obligations. People spend time with each other, exchanging ideas…And for the first time it struck him that such a bond might weigh on one, that it might not be breakable without causing injury.