by Sándor Márai
“Your Excellency seriously wishes this?” his host asked.
“Do I wish it? . . . No,” his guest answered with grave calm. “I command it, my boy.”
“I have said,” he continued more quietly, more confidentially, “that my contract is intended to appeal both to your feelings and your reason. Listen then. Lean closer. Are we alone? . . . I trust that we are. I have contracted you for one night, Giacomo. I made that decision without deluding myself, without ambition, fear, or confusion. I made the decision because my life is almost over, and that which remains of it I want to freight with the only possible cargo. That cargo is my wife, Francesca. I want to keep this woman for the time that remains, which is not long now, but is not entirely negligible, either: in fact it is precisely as long as fate has ordained for me. I want to keep her: I want not only her physical presence, but her feelings and desires, too, feelings and desires that are currently confused by the fierce intensity of the love she feels for you. I regard this love as a kind of rebellion. It may be a justified rebellion but it runs counter to my interests and I will put it down as I have put down all others. I am not a delicate, oversensitive person. I respect tradition and I respect order, which is far more substantial, far more logical, than the average ninny believes. I believe in order as a source of virtue, though not necessarily the kind of virtue mentioned in the catechism. When the bakers of Parma raised the price of bread I hanged them in their own shop doorways though the law gave me no such right, because I had power and reason enough, and because it kept the order in a manner of speaking, though not in the manner understood by nervous lawyers and august judges. I broke my top general on a wheel outside the gates of Verona because he was insolent and vile to a common soldier, and many found fault with me for this, but real soldiers and real officers understood, because real soldiers and real officers know that to command is to be responsible, and only those who are ruthless in their logic while remaining courteous and responsive are capable of keeping order. I have put down rebellions because I believe in order. There is no happiness, no true feeling, without order, and that is why, throughout my life, I have made use of the sword and the rope to eliminate every kind of sentimental rebellion, whose importunate aim it is to destroy the inner order of things, for without true order there can be no harmony, no growth, nor true revolution, either. This love between you and the duchess, Giacomo, is a form of rebellion, and because I can’t break it on the wheel, hang it by the legs at the entrance of the city, or pursue it naked and barefoot at night through the snow, I am buying it instead. I have named the price. It is a good price. Few people have the means to pay such a high price for you. I am buying you as I would a well-known singer, conjuror, or strongman, the way we pay a visiting entertainer who is passing through the city, appears on stage for the lords of the place, and amuses them as best he can for one night. I want you to perform for me in the same way, Giacomo, to make a guest appearance in Bolzano for one night only. I am hiring you to show the customers what you know, and we shall see whether you are applauded or jeered off the stage at the end. Are you still quiet? Do you think it is not enough? Or maybe it’s too much? Are you undergoing some significant inner struggle? Enjoy yourself, my boy! Have a good laugh! Let us both laugh, since we are alone, shut away from the world, face-to-face with the facts: let us laugh, for we are intimates after all, parties to a mutual agreement. Is your self-respect troubling you, Giacomo? Ah, Giacomo! I see now I shall have to improve my offer. There must be something else I can offer you, the gallant and gambler, who wants everything and nothing . . . are you shaking your head? Do you mean you have grown up and are no longer an adolescent? So now you know that ‘everything’ and ‘nothing’ don’t exist in real life: that there are always only gray areas of ‘something’ between the extremes of ‘nothing’ and ‘everything,’ for ‘nothing’ and ‘everything’ usually turn out to be rather a lot? Why are you hesitating? Tell me your price, there’s nobody else here. Name the sum. Money is of no value to me anymore, so go ahead, you can be as crude as you like, bellow the price that fits with your conscience or whisper it into my ear, tell me how much it will take to persuade you to spend the night with the duchess of Parma. How expensive or how cheap do you estimate your art to be? . . . Speak, my boy,” he said and cleared his grating throat. “Speak, because my time is up.”
His host stood before him with folded arms. They couldn’t see each other’s faces in the half light.
“Neither expensive nor cheap, Your Excellency,” he courteously replied. “This night has no price. There’s only one way you can buy this night.”
“Name the price.”
“I will do it for nothing.”
The guest stared into the fire again. He did not move, didn’t even raise his head, but his bloodless, narrow lips hissed in irritation.
“That is more than I can pay. I fear you have misunderstood me, Giacomo. I cannot pay that much.” Giacomo maintained an obstinate silence. “What I mean,” continued the duke, “is that the contract is meaningless at that price. It is an impossible sum for me to pay for a service, an art that you foolishly overvalue. You are singing a high tenor, Giacomo, if I may say so. It is not an aria I wanted to hear but the voice of clear calm reason ready to make a good bargain. I thought I was talking to a man, not a singing clown.”
“And I thought I was answering a man,” replied the other, unruffled, “not Maecenas, the patron of the arts.”
“Maecenas is good,” replied the duke, shrugging. “A fine answer. Eloquent words. It is an eloquent answer with a precise and respectable literary allusion: but it has nothing to do with reality. It is true that you need eloquence to bargain—a few fine words and some beating of the breast may be necessary—it may in fact be the only way for us to bargain. But we have done with eloquence. Let us descend from the empyrean. I fear you have failed to understand me. You believe this bargain is immoral. By the cowardly standards and timid morals of the world, it may be so. But my time is short and I cannot afford to wait on the morals and judgments of the world. The woman I love loves you, but you cannot truly love a woman, because you are doomed never to be satisfied: you are the sort of man who may drink as much as he likes from a fine crystal goblet or a stone trough but can never quench his thirst and is therefore beyond redemption. Love is a form of addiction for you. It took me a long time to understand that, and I have been trying to understand it from the moment I saw you yawning in the theater at Bologna, to the moment here in Bolzano, when I gave you the duchess’s letter. And now that I know your nature, and who you are, I cannot say to Francesca: ‘Go! Go with the man you love!’ . . . I might be able to say it, Giacomo, if you were not who you are, if I did not wish to protect Francesca from the sad fire that burns within you. And if I pity you for anything, it is for the incapacity, the deafness, that your character and fate have bestowed on you; I pity you because you don’t know love, have never heard the voice of love, because you are deaf. Perhaps you, too, if only out of sheer boredom, occasionally give up a woman, or let one go her own way into the flames of her own choosing, because you like the gesture, are playing a game, or because you want to be gallant or generous. But what you cannot know is that love can make a man immoral; you cannot know that a man who loves can let a woman go for one night, indeed for eternity if it comes to that—not for selfish reasons, but because he feels obliged to serve her by sacrificing himself. Because to love is, and always has been, simply to serve. Now, for the first time in my life, I, too, wish to serve. Even the mighty and the privileged must bow to fate. If you were not who I believe you are, I might even let Francesca with all her youth and her inexperience go with you. But I cannot allow it because all you can give her is a few days and nights while she is with you, a few moments of almost impersonal tenderness, a flame that burns but cannot warm. What can you give her? . . . Only the thrill of seduction. That is your own peculiar art form. It is a high art with a long tradition, and you are certainly a master in your field. But it is
the nature of a thrill to be of short duration: that is the kind of art it is and those are its rules and proportions. Now go, and perform miracles, Giacomo!” he said, his voice a little hoarse now, and turned to him, his eyes wide open. They stared at each other a while. “Make this thrill exquisite for her. I insulted you before by offering you cash, freedom, and worldly pleasure in exchange for your art, and you got on your high horse and made a grand speech, with words like ‘nothing’ and ‘Maecenas.’ These are only words. The art of which you are a master, the art you understand as truly as a goldsmith understands rings and brooches, the field in which you are a true creative spirit, is that of seduction. So go and create your seductive masterpiece. I know who I am talking to, you see, and I trust you to do a good job. What are the requirements of a seduction? Everything you might need is at your disposal: night, secrecy, a mask, a vow, fine words, sighs, a billet-doux, a covert message, a tryst in the snowdrifts, a tender abduction, the great moment when your captive lies panting in your arms, when she gives herself and cries out, and then the slow descent and conclusion, vows like ‘you alone’ and ‘forever’ though by that time you will be keeping half an eye on dawn as it begins to blush through the window, awaiting the moment you may leave in a manner appropriate to your vocation, having completed your work satisfactorily, in private, an artist contemplating his next appearance in some other place. You will not be bought, you said. A laudable sentiment. But I don’t believe you because I know that there is nothing in this world that cannot be bought. Perhaps even the fire of love may be purchased. I am striving now to buy what may remain of Francesca’s love, the tenderness that is left to comfort my remaining days, because I am weak and must die soon, and I want my last few months and days to be suffused with the wonderful light that radiates from this one body, this one soul. I realize it is a sign of weakness. I want her to get over you as she might get over an illness. It isn’t some salacious fantasy that has driven me to this point, now when the musicians are already tuning up in my own palazzo and the ass’s head is ready and waiting; no, these are not the pleadings of an ancient lover who can no longer yield his darling amusement and delight. No, Giacomo, you are an illness, the yellow fever, the plague, and the pox combined and we have to get over you. If there is nothing else we can do let us at least survive. That is why I come to you, asking you to spend the night with my wife—an odd enough request on first hearing, but when we take everything into consideration, if we examine our emotions in their true context and use our brains, a most natural one. I see the dangers of the pox, the plague, and the yellow fever and realize that it is vital that we pull through. That is why I need you to work a miracle! There is nothing else you can give her, the poor invalid, but the thrill of seduction—so let us concoct this adventure for her, in the best and most proper manner, with dignity and skill, with the mutual understanding of true accomplices, conjoined in the melancholy complicity that is the unavoidable lot of all men who are in attendance on the same woman. Consult your art and devise one brilliant act of seduction, for it is my wish that in the morning Francesca should return to the palazzo, like a patient recovered from an illness, her heart free, her head held high, not sneaking home down shady alleys, but as proud as I would have her be, for she too has a rank and I am unwilling to see her lose anything of her dignity. This is the way I have contrived in order to keep her with me for the short time that remains to me, now that I understand so much more than I did before, now that my life is almost over. That is why I am addressing my offer not to the man, the ordinary mortal in you, who takes it as an insult, but to the immortal artist and craftsman. All I want is for you to remain true to your art and to create a masterpiece. Ah, now you are looking at me! I think we are beginning to understand each other. . . . Look into my eyes. Good, my boy. We should face each other in the cold light of day, as accomplices. How wonderful it is to have awakened the interest of an artist. The Pope must have felt like this when he persuaded the mighty Michelangelo to raise and complete his dome. Very well, let us construct our dome, in our own fashion, and finish the business properly,” he said and gave a sad, twisted smile. “You value your art highly and I am prepared to pay a high price for it, so there’s no point in us bandying words, for by dawn tomorrow you will have need of ten thousand golden pieces and of my rare, invaluable letter. Let us not waste any more breath on the subject, nothing could be more natural. I merely mention the details in passing. What is more important is that I finally see the light of understanding in your eyes. Only a few moments have passed but now I know I have touched the artist in you: I can see the idea interests and excites you. You have a preoccupied look and are probably turning the campaign over in your mind even now, anticipating the problems of execution, wondering how to build momentum at the beginning . . . am I right? I suspect I am. You see, I have calculated carefully, Giacomo: I know that an artist cannot escape the siren call of his art. I am quite confident that you won’t disappoint me and that you will do something wonderful, if only because there is no alternative: you stand or fall by your success. The kind of masterpiece I want you to produce is what they call a miniature: a concentrated form of the art in which that which normally takes a month or a year happens in a few hours. I want the beginning and end to be miraculously apposite and to follow close on each other’s heels, and who in all Europe is in a better position to accomplish that than you, you above all people, and precisely at this moment when you are fresh from the prison where time and enforced meditation will have matured your talent and skill? . . . I know your performance will be perfect, Giacomo! It has to be: that is why I am reasonably, justifiably, paying a high price for you, in words, in gold, in the letter and in blood-curdling threats, all of which you deserve, all of which are in keeping with your person, with my person, and with the person of the woman for whose sake all this is being arranged! I want you to compress and concentrate your art. I realize it is the most difficult thing to do, but I want you for a few hours to suspend the laws of time and to produce a conjuring trick, like the Eastern magi who, in a mere few seconds, can make a bud blossom into a flower that is perfect in scent, color, and form, but dies immediately. The death of the flower is a more melancholy event, but just as spellbinding and mysterious as its blossoming. The miracle of decay, completion, and destruction and the miracle of birth are equally remarkable. How wonderful, how terrifying the relationship between awakening, climax, and conclusion. But I want this to be more than just a conjuring trick, all gold leaf and hollow words: you must give her everything, the true thrill of seduction, a whirlwind affair complete with night, fog, flight, true vows, and real passion, otherwise it is all for nothing. And everything must happen quickly, very quickly, Giacomo, because time presses. I cannot wait long, I don’t have weeks to spare for you, not a day or night more than this present one. That is why I have hired you, only you, the one giant among a crowd of fashionable fops who might perform the same service. Because I appreciate and almost—how that word keeps coming back to haunt me!—almost admire your artistry. I know the task requires an impossible blend of intelligence, craft, finesse, and ice-cold strategy on the one hand and fury, passion, tears, ecstasy, madness, the feverish beating of the heart, and even a degree of suicidal torpor on the other, and that what you will do in miniature and in accelerated form in one night would take the average bourgeois lover a long time, perhaps even an entire lifetime to achieve. That is what makes you as much an artist as the man who can engrave an entire battle scene on a tiny piece of stone or paint a crowded city full of people, dogs, and spires on a slip of ivory. Because an artist, and only an artist, can shatter the laws of space and time! And you must shatter them tonight! Tonight you will visit us because Francesca feels that she must see you! You will come in costume, wearing a mask like everyone else. Once you have recognized her, you must call her away, bring her here, and perform the miracle! I can see by the expression in your eyes that you are willing, and I, in my turn am willing to pay the price. What I want, Giacomo
, what I demand, is that the duchess be back in the palazzo by dawn. In the meantime I promise you that not a word will ever again pass between us about the events of this night, however it turns out, whatever life brings us in the future. Tonight the duchess will see you, as in her sickness she desires to do, and she will know you, in the precise biblical sense of the word, for love, that contagious fever, is nothing if not a matter of getting to know. Your business as an artist, as a healer, is to ensure that by the time dawn comes round she is free of infection. I am not interested in the secrets of your craft. I want her to recover from you but in such a way that at dawn she returns to me, not surreptitiously but without her mask, as befits a woman of rank, a rank bestowed by me on her, the woman I love. In other words she will not be reliant on the silent, conspiratorial mercies of paid lackeys and procurers but will go about with her head held high. Life is an accident. I don’t want the duchess of Parma to break her neck as a result of that accident. I still have need of her. Let her return to me, to her home, at dawn, not creeping but striding, with head held high in the full light of morning, even if all Bolzano happens to be looking on. Do you fully understand me now? I want her to come home completely cured. She is yours to know, Giacomo, but you must make her realize that there is no other life for her but the one I designed for her; let her know that you are an adventure, a fling; that there is no prospect of life with you, not for her; that you are night, the storm, the plague, something that rumbles over the landscape but disappears when the sun rises in the morning and people go about their domestic chores, smoking, plastering, and scouring. That is why I am ordering you to perform a miracle. Within a few hours I want you to reveal your true self to the duchess, and by morning I want that secret self to have become a painless unintrusive memory. Be good to her, but be ruthless and malicious too, as is your way: be tender with her and hurt her, as you always do, as you would if you had a longer time to do it; squeeze everything that can happen between two people into a single night; finish all that can be finished by two people and let it be over by daybreak. Then send her back to me, because I love her and because you have nothing more to do with her.”
