One afternoon, as the street lamps were being lit but the autumn sky was still pleasantly bright, Szilárd Druma was returning from the Vár, descending the Zerge Steps, with two friends of his. They ambled slowly homeward down the gentle slope of Tábor utca.
Near the bottom they were passing by a green fence when they glanced through the wrought-iron gate. They saw a glazed verandah in the garden, with a table set for tea. The small illuminated glass cage with its air of cloistered silence awoke their curiosity. All three stopped. Disguising their curiosity but with genuine envy they gazed at it, thinking, as all outsiders do when they look in, that all happiness and contentment must live within those walls.
A small blond boy in a school uniform sat at the table. It was after tea and he was busily setting up his lead soldiers on the cloth covered with crumbs. He had begun to hum a military march, beating the table with his hand. His mother sat sewing beside him, her serious and intelligent face bent over her work. A shadow lay over her absorbed features and her head was topped with a knot of thick hair. From time to time she would say something to the boy. He kept asking for advice, how the Hungarian troops encamped around the milkpan and teacups could beat the larger force of Frenchmen with their tanks and poison gas.
A tall, untidy man in a working jacket stepped out of the flat into the verandah. He was smoking. He poured black coffee into a glass. As he raised it to his mouth his gaze met those of the three men, who, embarrassed by their eavesdropping, set off along the fence.
‘That’s Kosztolányi,’ Druma said, after a while. ‘Dezső Kosztolányi.’
‘The journalist?’ asked one of his friends.
‘Him.’
‘I remember something he wrote,’ said the second friend. ‘Some poem or other about the death of a sick child. Or was it an orphan? I don’t know. My daughter mentioned it.’
‘He was a big Communist,’ said Druma.
‘Him?’ marvelled the first friend. ‘He is a devout Christian now.’
‘Yes,’ enlarged the second friend. ‘I read it in a Viennese paper that he supports the White Terror.’
‘He was a fervent Bolshevik,’ repeated Druma. ‘He worked with the Committee for Paganism. There’s a photograph of them all together on the Vérmező.’
‘And what was he doing with them,’ enquired the first friend.
‘Observing them,’ answered Druma, conspiratorially.
‘Then I don’t understand?’ the first friend shook his head. ‘What does he want in any case. Which side is he on?’
‘That’s simple,’ Druma resolved the debate. ‘He’s for everybody and nobody. He minds which way the wind blows. First he was in the pay of the Jews and took their side, and now he is hired by the Christians. He’s a wise man,’ he winked. ‘He knows which side his bread is buttered.’
The three friends concurred in this. They stopped again at the end of the fence. It was obvious they still didn’t fully understand. One could see that they were indeed used to thinking one thing at a time; one could see that two thoughts were beyond them.
They shrugged shoulders and proceeded down the slope. Druma made one more comment at which they laughed light-heartedly. Unfortunately it was impossible to hear the comment.
Swan, the white sheepdog, heard their voices and, aware of his responsibilities as keeper of the domestic peace, ran to the corner of the garden and set up a fierce din, so that their words were entirely lost in the sound of barking.
NEW ADDITIONS TO THE REVIVED MODERN CLASSICS
Sherwood Anderson
Poor White. “No novel of the American small town in the Middle West evokes in the minds of its readers so much of the cultural heritage of its milieu as does Poor White.”—Horace Gregory. NDP763.
Dezső Kosztolányi
Anna Édes. A classic work of twentieth-century Hungarian fiction. Anna is the hard-working and long-suffering heroine, the unhappy maid destroyed by her pitiless employers. “. . . a powerful novel.” (Times Literary Supplement) NDP772.
Muriel Spark
The Public Image. Set in Rome, Spark’s novel is about movie star Annabel Christopher, who has made the fatal mistake in believing in her public image: “orchestrated by the harsh polyphony, the technical adventurousness and formal elegance [of] . . . Muriel Spark.” (The New York Times Book Review) NDP767.
Copyright © 1991 by Corvina
Copyright © 1991 by George Szirtes
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, or television review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
First published by Quartet Books Limited, London, in 1991 and as New Directions Paperbook 772 in 1993. Published simultaneously in Canada by Penguin Books Canada Limited
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
eISBN: 9780811216623
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