by Sándor Márai
“I shouldn’t have sold the emerald ring, though,” he reflected as an afterthought. His fatherly friend had chosen the emerald ring for him from among his family treasures, lending it to him for one night only as he was setting out to some glittering occasion, on one of those dangerous but enchanting Venetian Carnival nights, dressed as an Eastern potentate. The emerald ring was a memento, an item favored by the late wife of his generous friend. “It was a mistake to pawn it that night while the banker was dealing. It couldn’t be redeemed later. . . . I even passed the ticket on. Well, people make mistakes,” he thought, generously excusing himself. And when he was offered it for redemption by a man introduced to the noble gentleman after Giacomo himself had been incarcerated in the Leads, he redeemed it! Redeeming such slips of paper might have had an alienating effect on his father and friend, but he never mentioned it. “He paid the price and redeemed it,” he thought, and shrugged his shoulders. He paid up without any song and dance, his one and only Signor Bragadin, he who sent him parcels at Christmas and for New Year’s while he was imprisoned, his old heart full of impotent rage, for it was plain that he could not live without loving somebody, even in his old age, even if the object of love was unworthy of such noble feelings, even if that object had gambled away his most highly prized emerald ring and managed, with passable ingenuity, to forge his signature on documents commonly circulated in commercial transactions. None of this counted for much with him. There were times he almost envied Signor Bragadin this selfless impulse, whose true meaning he could comprehend only through the intellect, not through his emotions. For a while he suspected that the noble gentleman’s love for him was of a perverted kind that he might not be able to admit, even to himself. But the old man’s life was an open book, for never once, in all the time since he was born, had he left his birthplace: he had lived his life in the morass that was Venice, surviving it the way a pure and healthy plant continues to thrive in the fumes of a marsh. All the same, he could not bring himself to believe that a person could love somebody without an ulterior motive or a sensual impulse: the concept simply did not fit into his intellectual framework. For a long time he thought that there must be something wrong with him. There were too many secret ties of affection and attraction, and he had encountered them all in the Venetian docks, where desires of East and West mingled. You could tell what was going on by the way people looked at each other. He hated this other, perverted love: for though he was happy to plumb the depths of depravity himself, those depths always yawned between the opposing shores of men and women; this was how it was, how it had always been, and how it would be in the future. Venice provided a market stall where castrati, Orientals, and other slaves to lust could be bought and sold like meat at a butcher’s shop; and it was precisely here, in Venice, that he, of all people, never once strayed from the beaten path of desire. He trawled the sexual bazaar with a wrinkled nose and a contemptuous smile that spoke of mockery and disgust in equal proportions, observing the sick unfortunates who sought the favors of Eros on shores beyond the world of women. “Ah women,” he reflected with a calm, dark rapture, as if pronouncing the words “Ah, life!”
But because he lived in Venice he regarded even Signor Bragadin with suspicion for a while. The Venetian market offered too much variety, too much clatter, too great a range of color. Yet not even the foul mouths of Venetian pimps could find a single aspersion to cast at the good name of Signor Bragadin. No one in St. Mark’s Square could boast of having sold favors for cash or privilege to the honorable senator. The senator was as much a child of Venice as he was, but he was not a product of the filthy and narrow alleys of the theater: he was the scion of a prominent, aristocratic marriage bed, had always lived in Venice, was married and widowed here, and even in great old age continued to mourn the early death of his beloved. He lived a lonely life, without relatives, with only a few wise, sophisticated friends and his old servants for company. His house, which was among the most private, most respected in the republic, would open its doors only to a handful of choice spirits, on the occasions when he organized supper for friends: to be invited to one of them was a mark of distinction that few could boast. And this fastidious, private nobleman, this pure fine being, had raised him from the shadows of his murky existence, fished him out of the muddy swirls of the lagoon, him of all people, at the very moment that every star in his firmament had more or less gone out. And why? Not because of secret lusts or passions but out of sheer compassion and a decency that never once tired.
True, not even Signor Bragadin could save him from a cell in the Leads; not from the cell, nor from exile, either, not even in his office as senator when it came to the powers of the Inquisition. The charge the Merciful Ones had brought against Giacomo was laughable. He knew that it had nothing to do with practicing the black arts, nor with orgies, nor debauchery, nor even so much with the diligence of the passion with which he turned the heads of Venetian ladies and maidens. “Not much turning required,” he recalled. “People never understand this. It was never I who made the first move.” Not that this was something he could discuss with the first secretary. People were apt to lie about such matters as they were about everything that really counted in life. So he was referred to as the notorious “seducer,” the officially branded “faithless” lover, the model of inconstancy, the skirt lifter: he was a clear and present danger and labeled as such by the authorities . . . if only they knew! He was not in a position to tell them that it was not he that picked his victims but they that picked him; there was no way of putting into writing the fact that women’s views on virtue and the way they actually went about things did not entirely accord with what was proclaimed in public offices or promoted from the pulpits of churches. There was no one he could tell: indeed, there were only rare moments of solitude when he himself could face the fact that when it came to the high combat of love it was he who was the exploited party, the abandoned one, the victim. . . . But this was not the point. The redeeming of pawn tickets, the episode with the emerald ring, the orgies, the days and nights of gambling, the broken promises, the strutting posture, the obstinate bearing: none of these were genuine charges. This was simply what life was like in Venice. . . . What they couldn’t forgive, the reason they threw him into jail where even the mighty Signor Bragadin could not save him, was that the danger and corruption he represented for them referred to something else, something other than any crime or indiscretion he might have committed: it referred to his entire manner of being, his soul, the face he presented to the world. “That is what they couldn’t forgive,” he realized, and shrugged. For what the world demands is hierarchy and obedience, the painful act of self-surrender, the unconditional acceptance of mortal and divine order. Deep inside him burned the threatening flame of resistance to such things, and that was unforgivable.
There was nothing anyone could do about this: even Signor Bragadin was helpless to change it. At Christmas he had sent a fur-lined coat, a purse full of gold, and something to read in prison. That was all he could practically do. There is no saving a man from the world; one day it will break in on him and force him to his knees. But that day, his personal day of judgment, had not yet arrived. He had escaped from prison, escaped from them, and now he had to fight like a soldier, to choose his weapons and prepare for combat. So he wrote the letter, got dressed, and set out to seek appropriate ammunition in Bolzano.
He thought he would make a quick, anonymous survey of the town, so he turned up the collar of his coat and walked as fast as he could. Night was already drawing in, flakes of snow drifted across the street. No one recognized him. He fairly swept along, examining things intensely as he went, surveying the terrain. There was nothing particularly attractive to tempt him. It was as if the place were living not only in the shadow of the mountains but of its own prejudices: the houses were pretty enough but there was a suspicious look in people’s eyes. He found this uncomfortable. Like all the great artist-raconteurs, he was only truly relaxed in the company of receptive
kindred spirits. “Not much of a place,” he thought with fierce antipathy, crossing the grand central square and entering the back streets. Everything was precisely halfway between high and low: it was a mode of being out of his normal range. The town existed precisely in the no-man’s-land between all he loved and all he avoided in life. It was sober and well ordered, which is to say it frightened him. He hurried along the street with his handkerchief to his mouth because he feared the strange air might give him a sore throat and he pulled his hat down over his brow because he feared the gaze of the local people, though his own half-closed eyes flickered into life every time he crossed glances with a passing man or woman. He kept casting anxious looks at doorways and peering through lit windows trying to guess which of these gabled houses might be the residence of the duke of Parma. “It’s a nice town,” he thought bitterly when he had done his tour. “A clean town. A foreign place, too foreign.” Foreign to him, was what he meant: there was no tempting familiar complicity in its air, no joie de vivre, no passion, no pomp, none of the mysterious radiance that emanates from the desire for pleasure, a radiance he could detect as readily in cities as in people. It was a solemn, virtuous town, he thought, and felt the goose pimples rising on his flesh.
He began counting the days. According to his calculations, it would be five days before he could expect an answer from Signor Bragadin. Nevertheless he entered the vaulted shops and set about shopping. He needed a great many things, indeed he did, if he meant to establish himself and stand on his own two feet again. “I must rise from my ashes like the phoenix,” he thought, mockingly adopting a literary turn of phrase, and “What do phoenixes need?” he asked himself in the next breath. He stopped on a street corner below an oil lamp whose low, flickering flame was being snuffed out by the north wind. Throwing his coat over one shoulder, half-hiding his face with it, he gazed at passersby, his eyes flickering and sputtering with light, like the windblown flame of the oil lamp. More than anything he needed some lace-embroidered shirts, say a dozen, some white Parisian stockings, lace cuffs, two frock coats, one green with gold edging and one lilac with gray epaulettes; he needed some lacquered shoes with silver buckles, crocheted gloves for evening wear, and a thin pair of kid gloves for the day; one heavy winter coat with fur collar, a white silk Venetian mask, lorgnettes—without which he felt defenseless—a three-cornered hat, and a silver-handled cane. He totted them up silently. He had to have all this by the next night. Without the right clothes, without appropriate outfits and accessories, he felt naked, positively abject. It was imperative that he be dressed as only he knew how. Seeing a lottery shop opposite he quickly stepped inside and invested in three numbers that corresponded to his birthdate, the day of his imprisonment, and the day of his escape. He also bought two sets of playing cards.
Carefully concealing the cards in his pockets, he sought out Signor Mensch. He found him behind the church, in a single-story house, in a dark room that overlooked the courtyard, surrounded with caskets and balances. At first glance it seemed that despite the literal meaning of his name, there was little that was human about him. A short, scrawny creature, he was sitting in a dressing gown at a long narrow table, the fingernails of his delicate, yellow hands grown sharp and curling, so that he appeared to grasp things the way a bird of prey seizes its quarry, his lank gray locks hanging over his brow, and his small, bright, intelligent eyes, eyes that glowed from beneath deep, wrinkled lids, staring with burning curiosity at the stranger. He greeted Giacomo in his dirty kaftan, lisping and bowing stiffly without rising from his chair, mixing French, Italian, and German words in his speech but mumbling all the while, as if not quite taking him seriously but thinking of something else, not really listening to his guest. “Ah!” he said, once the visitor had given his name, and raised his eyebrows until they met the dirty locks above them. He blinked rapidly, like a monkey hunting for fleas. “Have these old ears heard correctly? Is an invalid to trust these poor ears of his?” He spoke of himself in the third person, with a kind of tender intimacy, as if he were his own nephew. “Mensch is a very old man,” he lisped ingratiatingly. “No one visits him nowadays, old and poor as he is,” he mumbled. “But here is a stranger come to call,” he concluded and fell silent.
“As a matter of fact you are the first person I have called on,” the stranger replied courteously.
They spoke quietly about money, the way lovers speak of their feelings. There was no preamble: they got straight to the point, passionate, full of curiosity, like two professionals meeting each other at a party, like guests who isolate themselves in some alcove so they may discuss the marvelous secrets of their common trade while the hostess is busy playing the piano or someone is reciting verses, to argue a point about masonry or the physiology of the emu. Money was the subject they talked about, their speech plain but littered with technical terms, and there was no need for a glossary since both were entirely at home in the matter. “Security,” said Mensch, and the word fizzed in his mouth like an oath. “Credit,” declared the other with some heat, convincing and natural, certain that nothing could be simpler, as if the sound of the word and its firm enunciation were sure to touch the old man’s heart. They discussed the two concepts readily and at some length. If anyone had been watching them from a distance he might have thought he was witnessing an abstruse argument between two scholars. Both of them were articulating deeply held beliefs, beliefs that corresponded to the essential inner truths and realities of their beings, beliefs so fervently adhered to they would have staked their lives on them. Because what “security” represented for the one represented “credit” for the other, and not just at this precise moment, at the specific dusk of this one evening, but at other times, too, in every circumstance of life. That which one could conceive of only in terms of security and guarantee, the other demanded in terms of credit from the world, his demand consistent and passionate beyond the material business of the present, itself an item of faith. One could experience the world only insofar as he could accept it as security, the other wanted all life on credit: happiness, beauty, youth, but above all, money, possession of which was the essential condition of life. It was ideas, not amounts, that they were discussing.
Signor Bragadin’s name clearly impressed the moneylender. “A most honorable gentleman,” he said, blinking even more rapidly than before. “A sound name. Worth its weight in gold!” There was a certain suspicion in his voice, for he was sure that the stranger was wanting to cheat him, to sell him something of dubious value, something that didn’t exist, or even that, ultimately, he wanted to sell Signor Bragadin’s own person. “A ring, perhaps!” he ventured, and raised his little finger with its long, black fingernail, crooking it to indicate that almost anything was better, more valuable, more apt for commercial purposes than a human being. “A little ring,” he wheedled in a singing, pleading voice, like a child asking for marzipan. “A little ring, with a precious stone,” he added grinning, and winked, rubbing the thumb and forefinger of his right hand together to demonstrate what a pretty, fascinating object a little ring could be, especially one with a precious stone, a ring on which one could offer some security. His myopic eyes filled with tiny teardrops thinking of it, but he kept a careful watch on his visitor, busily blinking all the time, anxious, yet striving to give an impression of cheerfulness, like a duelist who, however unwillingly, recognizes that the man he has taken on is a genuine adversary, worthy of his attentions. He would like to have been over the contest but his fingers and toes were tingling with excitement: the feeling was hot and arousing, it resembled desire. It was the excitement of knowing that the moment had arrived, that rare moment when he found himself pitched against a real opponent, a fit adversary who knew the secret ceremonies and strategies of conduct, who was, in effect, part of the meaning of his own life, the kind of opponent for whom he had always most earnestly yearned. He drew the sleeves of his kaftan further up his skeletal arms as if to say: “So now it is the two of us! Let battle commence!” They eyed
each other in admiration.
Mensch knew that he would eventually give the man money because there was no alternative, and the visitor knew he would eventually receive money even in the unlikely event that Signor Bragadin failed to send him the gold he had pleaded for in such convincing literary manner. “Mensch will give me money,” he had thought even in the Leads when he was planning the details of his escape, when the name itself had been enough to rouse his imagination, so that he could almost see him, as in a vision; and now that he stood face to face with the usurer he noted with satisfaction that the vision was pretty close to the truth, that reality did not disappoint him. It was this same mysterious instinct that had whispered to him that Mensch, whose name he had heard but once from a Dutch trader in raw cloth, would be a proper adversary and an appropriate business partner, that their fates were linked, and that, one day, he would have to appear before him, and that however Mensch might snigger and squeal, he would do him no real harm. Here’s his address, people said, there you are, take it down; but what value did an address have? What did it mean? . . . A great deal, as he well knew: an address was practically a person, an event, an action, you only had to breathe on it, warm it, bring it to life with the breath of imagination and desire, and the address would tentatively assume independent existence, become a reality, and finally take a form that, however it ground its teeth, would eventually hand over the money. He knew of such addresses in Lyon, in Paris, in Vienna, and in Manchester, too. Such addresses were passed on by oral tradition, like the legends that animate a nation’s life: in Naples, for instance, there lived a moneylender to whom all you had to say was, “May Charon come knocking for you!” and he’d immediately begin to weep and agree to the deal. So he regarded Mensch calmly, marveling only that reality and fantasy could so completely agree: he was so calm that the calm was verging on tenderness. And Mensch looked at him in the same way, blinking and blinking in the frightening yet exciting con- sciousness that fate had brought this man to him.
