by Sándor Márai
“Life has taught me to prize truth, the truth above all,” said Ábel, his voice low and severe.
“Button your trousers,” replied Ernõ.
They had dressed somewhat carelessly in their hurry. Ábel drew the red robe close around him. Béla, a half-naked Spanish sailor with a headscarf and locks flirtatiously plastered next to his ears, sat on the windowsill, hands on hips. The one-armed one was lost in the folds of his toga. He sat on the table, dangling his bare sandaled feet, a band round his head. He stared straight ahead, with a haughty, wounded look, and the pride of Mucius Scaevola who had sacrificed one arm for the state but had his own independent opinion on everything.
“To me, Rome is…,” he was saying.
They paced restlessly up and down in their narrow cage. They were puzzling out their as yet unknown roles and trying hard not to notice Tibor.
Colonel Prockauer’s son was leaning into the mirror, as charmed by what he saw there as Narcissus had once been. Two long blond bunches of hair hung in front of his shoulders, the high-waisted silk dress tight around him as he raised the long loose train skirt with one hand and crossed his silk-stockinged legs with their lacquer-shod feet. Under the deep décolletage his well-formed breasts, created by the actor out of two towels, heaved and rose with each breath he took. His arms, his neck, and chest were sticky with thick white powder. The actor’s fingers had magically elongated his eyelashes, and his adolescent spots were masked by a pink blusher the actor had gently brushed and puffed across his cheeks.
You couldn’t really tell, not at a glance anyway, whether he was woman or girl. Ernõ circled him warily, raising his top hat and muttering incomprehensible compliments to him. Tibor responded with a smile, then immediately turned back to re-enter the spell of the mirror. He tried a few steps, holding his skirt high. The wig was hot and smelled foul.
“I’m sweating like a pig,” he declared in a deep voice that was not his own.
Ernõ offered his arm. The one-armed one cut in.
“I have only one arm, sweet damsel,” he said, “but it is strong and you can cling to it.”
Ábel opened the window. Hot air poured in along with the heavy milky scent of earth. They stood silently, the open window reminding them of reality, of the houses in the square, and of people who might be spying on them from afar. They looked at each other and couldn’t bring themselves to laugh. They were overwhelmed by the consciousness of their utter complicity, the tremulous joy of belonging, the delight of pulling a huge ridiculous face at the sleeping world, behind its unsuspecting back, perhaps for the last time. For the last time perhaps the actor held together the ropes that bound them. Their shared memories, the spirit of rebellion, everything that united them: their common hatred of a world as incomprehensible and unlikely as their own, as ignorant of itself and as false, all flashed before their eyes. And the ties of friendship too: its anxieties and longings, the sad effects of such anxiety still evident in their eyes. Tibor raised his skirt and spun round, astonished at himself.
“You know,” he said in genuine surprise, “a skirt is not really as uncomfortable as you’d think.”
A sailor entered the room, a fat man whose stomach bulged beneath his striped sleeveless vest, over his wide blue canvas trousers, his shoes of Muscovy leather, and blocked the doorway with his girth. A pipe dangled from his lips and his waxed hair, brushed forward under his loose-fitting cap, was plastered greasily across his forehead. He was squinting. He stood there awkwardly, took the pipe out of his mouth, and waved to them to follow him, then turned off the light.
HE CLUNKED ABOUT ON THE ECHOING BOARDS in his noisy shoes and turned on the spots. Light exploded in their eyes, both from below and from the side, and behind the light a deep dense darkness bulged towards them, the impenetrable cavernous darkness of the auditorium accompanied by the funereal mothball smell of canvas sheeting. The actor went here and there, entirely at home, an engineer attending to business, barely noticing them, operating handles, checking resistors, subtly, fascinatingly, modifying the light until eventually it was all concentrated in one area of the stage, merging in a pool of heat and color, a gentle glow at the edges of which ends of ropes, canvases, lighting boards, and stage flats faded into the murk. He tugged one rope and a clutch of other ropes collapsed towards him, of which he grabbed one. Enormous colored sails turned slowly with lazy flaps while the sailor, pipe in mouth again, set about the ropes and colored sails in preparation for the coming storm. A wide terrace complete with palms and steps leading up to it descended before them, blocking their view, and some faded rose bowers followed, swirling with dust. Wait for the storm, the sailor muttered indifferently, then hurried off into the wings, setting a distant wind to screech and whinny through the bowers. A few harsh claps of thunder rang out over the howling storm. The actor solemnly stepped out from behind a dusty cactus, rubbed his hands, lit his pipe, and looked about him shaking his head.
“I don’t think this is quite right either,” he said, and waved away the Riviera scene. “Stand center stage, would you?”
The scenery swam aloft, disappearing in the heights, and the rose bowers jealously followed the sunlit landscape. Plain white walls appeared as if from nowhere. The conjurer threw his rope up towards the ceiling and the stage miraculously narrowed. Suddenly they found themselves prisoners in the cabin of a ship. Behind portholes the wind was still buzzing, but was now joined by the slap of waves. Two low lights appeared in the wall and a narrow door opened beside one of the portholes. A lamp with a faded shade dropped like a stone from above. The sailor dragged at a knot of ropes with both hands and a rhomboid ceiling lowered over the cabin. The shaded lamp came on. Then they were all working, the only sounds being the actor’s brief words of command and the wailing of the wind that Ábel now controlled. It did not take as much skill to whip up a storm as people tended to think. A single movement was enough to induct Ábel into the secret.
“Drive them on, Aeolus!” he said as he pushed a claw-footed table center stage. “You are master of the four great planetary winds.”
It was a surprisingly easy task mastering the four great planetary winds. The one-armed one rolled a barrel up against the wall. They carried sea chests, most probably containing ship biscuits and water. Aeolus whipped his servants on, their painful howling extending over the ocean.
“All hands on deck!” the actor bellowed. “Ladies first! The sea chests go round the table. Secure the portholes!”
He stopped.
“One time the Negroes leapt into the sea…,” he began. “No, I’ve already told you that.”
He kicked a rosebush left over from the previous scene through the cabin door. Loud thunder shook the air, the boards trembled under their feet. Ábel was laying the storm on mercilessly.
“That was a close one,” the actor pronounced after the latest bolt, and spat. “Take a breather, Aeolus. Relax a moment.”
There was a strange silence. The lights, the walls, the furniture, everything was in its place, unlikely yet unmistakable, so that Ábel’s entrance was a little unsteady, his steps uncertain, counterbalancing the swell of the sea. With the minimum fuss they took control of their new realm. Ernõ made a formal gesture of taking Tibor by the hand and ceremoniously leading him over to the table. The one-armed one stood on the barrel, absorbed in watching the storm with its roof-high waves through a porthole. Ábel clapped an arm round his shoulder.
“A sublime scene,” he said with awe. “One cannot help but feel one’s insignificance.”
A trapdoor opened in the floor and a tray laden with glasses rose through it, the naked arm of the actor supporting it and rising with it until his head appeared. He made a formal show of climbing through, then let the trapdoor clap shut behind him. He raised the tray high in the air and, leaning forward at a sharp angle, moved around with all the weathered skill of a ship’s waiter in a storm, his body seeming to collapse after the tray with its glasses that he eventually deposited unbroken on the table.
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“The two most important things,” he gasped, “alcohol and a cool head. There are people who panic in a storm: some lose their heads, others the contents of their stomachs. We are making eight knots full speed, the temperature is falling. One good draught of brandy, gentlemen, a mouthful of ship biscuit, a bit of refrigerated meat, and we feel readier to face the following hours with equanimity. The captain is at his post and the passengers are inclined to trust him.”
The tray was piled high with ship biscuits covered with meat and flasks of water-colored brandy. The actor gave a modest smile. He sat down, tapped his pipe against the tabletop, adjusted his belt, and stuffed a great hunk of meat into his mouth.
“Creation is hungry work,” he said. He wiped the rim of the bottle with his hand and took a long draught.
“Burns your mouth!” He turned to Tibor. “A snifter for you, my lovely incognito?”
THE LOVELY INCOGNITO ADMITTED THAT AFTER the first glass she felt like throwing up. The actor knew a cure for seasickness that you should take an hour before the storm set in. They laid the lady out across the chest, fanned her, and tried to entertain her. The cabin darkened somewhat. The cabin boy left them every five minutes to increase the roar of the four winds and to provide a weather report.
Danger draws people together. No longer sturdy and Spartan, the actor fell ravenously to eating and drinking. He was the first to wilt. They had never seen him so drunk. Ernõ, who drank cautiously, taking little sips, kept an eye on him as he wasn’t convinced the actor was genuinely drunk. The actor meanwhile pulled a barrel up to the porthole, sat down on it, and stretching his arms wide pretended to play an accordion while singing in a harsh nasal tone.
“The Negroes sang this one,” he remarked. “That was before they leapt into the water.”
The monotonous melancholy air swirled and faded in the high auditorium. The actor rose to his feet and tirelessly continuing to play on the imaginary accordion walked up and down, undergoing a curious series of meta-morphoses. He sang and played, but a few minutes later seemed to have vanished to be replaced by a fat drunk sailor sitting on the edge of the table, this time with a real accordion, his song full of the sadness of docks, harbors, and stagnant water, his face quite transformed, his eyes asquint, awkward in body, good-tempered, with a brandy-sodden joviality, somehow ponderous. He hadn’t actually done anything, merely transformed himself. They couldn’t understand what he was saying as he mixed words from English, Spanish, and other languages unknown to them, in a kind of incomprehensible macaronic, then he gave a croak and fell to praising distant skies and climes while radiating regret for years of pointless roaming.
The actor certainly knew his trade. It was a fat, drunk sailor that sat at the edge of the stage singing into the dark auditorium. The rest of them wandered up and down behind him, humming along with the hypnotic rhythm while the storm continued unabated outside and the vessel with all its passengers lurched towards an unknown harbor. The heady smell of brandy floated through the cabin as the sense of danger and a mood of mutual reliance took hold of them. In any case, there was going to be no escaping each other’s company until the ship was safely docked. Tibor was feeling better and fell to eating with an appetite that belied his seeming sex. Béla was sitting at the actor’s feet, his chin propped on his palms, observing him. They waltzed round each other, the actor setting the rhythm for the dance, his voice overflowing with melancholy.
It was the first time any of them had set foot on stage. The strange thing was that they felt perfectly at home there. They took possession of this world composed of three walls and a few boards as if nature had intended them for it. Ábel stood by the footlights and quietly recited something for the benefit of the invisible audience. As for the actor, he was absorbed in his acting and was growing ever more remote, ever less like the figure they had known, already recalling Le Havre, relating tales of amorous nights in various harbors, gazing around him as if they were all strangers. His vast half-naked body shook with every gesture. He was no longer sucking in his stomach and his flesh bulged through his vest, and as he passed before the spotlights Ábel spotted tattoos that served as tickets, some on his arms, some on his chest.
“Beware! A man with a tattoo! Take care, I say!” the one-armed one cried out.
Ernõ was wearing his top hat. His hump weighed heavily on his back, pressing down his upper body.
“My intentions are honorable,” he said frostily. The one-armed one threw himself on Ernõ and Tibor leapt between the combatants, giving a faint shriek. Ábel had the impression that there were too many of them, too many strangers and newcomers, and miscounted their numbers. The actor was dancing in a corner, stubbornly, insistently alone, his accordion constantly moving, not to be forgotten for a second, while his heel stamped out a stiff, nervous rhythm. The gang sat down around the table and Ábel took out his pack of cards.
“I refuse to play with cheats,” the one-armed one mumbled, clearly drunk.
But the sight of the pack enticed the actor over too. He examined each card carefully, slowly appraising it, drinking, rattling his change, then getting into arguments, using strange offensive-sounding phrases. They smacked their cards down, propped themselves on their elbows, pulled a lamp closer, Béla once again offering himself to be searched. There was silence for a while. The ship was clearly in calmer waters now, the wind abated. While they were dealing the cards again the actor left the cabin to return with a fresh bottle of brandy and declared with satisfaction:
“It’s a starry night. Wind southeasterly. By morning we shall be in Piraeus.”
Ábel wanted to know how long they had been here. Even experienced sailors tend to lose track of time. But what does it matter, he thought with dizzy delight. It’s a fine ship and we’re making good progress somewhere between sky and water. We will have arrived somewhere by morning. He clambered down into the prompter’s box and watched the proceedings from there. Béla had one arm round the actor’s neck, his legs crossed, the smoldering remains of a cigarette in his mouth, his body slightly bowed as he stood, slender and boyish, with a gentle, somewhat decadent smile on his yellow face, an unconscious picture of lecherous, bovine self-satisfaction. Tibor threw off his long wig with its bunches, and Ábel was pained and surprised to note that he remained as effeminate, as girlish, and as much the ingénue without it as he had been with, his beauty spot still fixed above his upper lip, his arms still white, and his bosom still in place. He was sitting between Ernõ and the one-armed one, chin propped on two fingers, holding his cards with a feminine, grande-dame-ish, almost woman-of-the-world air. Ernõ cut him a fan from a cardboard box and Tibor employed it, fanning himself slowly and easily.
Ábel leaned on his elbows in the prompter’s box. It was more interesting watching than taking part, he thought. He felt dizzy. Only the actor seemed to behave as naturally as you might expect of someone who had spent his whole life on this very ship, wearing a striped vest, with a pipe in his mouth, never stepping out of his role, not one voice, not one glance out of place. He was scanning the company, looking for something, and when he discovered Ábel in the prompter’s box he began to protest.
“You cheat!” he bellowed in a tremendous voice. “You scoundrel! Have you no manners? You spend your time on shore observing where the tide is sweeping us! Fancy spying on others, eh? Get back to your place among the rest. Push his head under the water!”
They rushed Ábel, grabbed his arms, and dragged him from his nook. Ábel put up no resistance. He lay flat on the boards, his arms spread wide. The actor took a contemptuous tour of him, as if he regarded him as no more than a corpse. He poked at him with his toes, then turned away.
“There are people who are utterly corrupt,” he declared with plain disgust. “People addicted to the most depraved passions. But the worst of them are the voyeurs who derive their satisfaction from observing other people indulge their passions. I have always loathed them. There was a time in Rio when I smashed in the teeth of one. These
are the kind of people who drill holes in walls. They are pimps, purveyors of pomade. Beware of such. People in the act itself are inevitably innocent. Sin begins the moment you leave the circle and watch from outside.”
He circled the cabin and put a bottle down next to Ábel.
“Drink!” he ordered, then slumped down at Ábel’s side as if exhausted. “Over here, Madonna!” He laid Tibor’s head in his lap with gentle paternal solicitude. The boy lay down compliantly beside him. He filled his pipe and puffed at it in the manner of an old salt or an ancient gold-miner about to tell far-fetched yarns.
“You must be very careful on board ship,” he said, nodding. “Nowhere else do people live in conditions of such ruthless servitude. And I know what I’m talking about when I say that. There was a time…what I mean to say is that you need strict discipline on board. Just imagine: year after year, locked up together like prisoners in one small cell. A sailor quickly loses his sense of all that is fine and lovely in the natural world. He is constantly under surveillance, never alone. It’s the most terrible thing that can happen to a man. Mutinies, when they occur on a ship, burst on you with a sudden fury: the men go about their ordinary jobs for years without a word of complaint, without a voice raised in anger. Should one of them express a contrary opinion he is simply booted off at the next port of call, and you can’t expect the ship’s judge and jury to see the joke. Then something happens, something utterly insignificant, and a line is crossed. This sort of thing happens with exceptional suddenness and later you can’t determine what really caused it, because it seems so very stupid: a row over a cake of soap or a drop of grog, it’s all beyond understanding.”
Béla stood at the edge of the stage laughing.
“That was the box we used to reserve!” he cried. He stretched his arms out towards the dark auditorium. “Box three on the left!” he shouted with boundless delight. “That’s where we had to sit every Sunday afternoon, our hair neatly combed, forbidden to lean on the balustrade. We wouldn’t get any sweets either because Father said people would laugh if they saw the grocer’s children sucking sweets.” He leaned forward and bellowed into the auditorium.
