Journey by Moonlight (22 page)

“I
DON’T KNOW
what all this is about but I’m quite sure your anxieties are ridiculous,” said Waldheim with great energy. “You’re still the pious son of your respected grey-haired father, still a petty-bourgeois. If someone wants to give you money, whatever the source, you should take it. Every religious-historical authority agrees about that. But you still haven’t learnt that money … quite
simply
, is unimportant. Where essential things are concerned it doesn’t count. Money is always there of necessity, and it’s there even when you don’t bother about it. How much and for how long and where it came from, that’s completely immaterial. Because everything that depends on money is immaterial. You can acquire nothing of importance with money. What you can buy might happen to be life’s necessities, but really isn’t important.

“The things really worth living for can never be had for money. Scholarship, the fact that your mind can take in the
thousand-fold
splendour of things, doesn’t cost a penny. The fact that you are in Italy, that the Italian sky stretches above you, that you can walk down Italian streets and sit in the shade of Italian trees, and in the evening the sun sets in the Italian manner, none of this is a question of money. If a woman likes you and gives herself to you, it doesn’t cost a penny. Feeling happy from time to time, that doesn’t cost you a penny. The only things that do cost money are peripheral, the external trimmings of happiness, the stupid and boring accessories. Being in Italy costs nothing, but what does cost money is travelling here, and having got here, sleeping with a roof over your head. Having a woman who loves you doesn’t cost money, only that meanwhile she has to eat and drink, and dress herself up so that she can then get undressed. But the
petty-bourgeoisie
have lived so long by supplying one another with unimportant things with a cash value they’ve forgotten the things that aren’t to be had for money, and they attach importance only to things that are expensive. That is the greatest madness. No, Mihály, you should pay no attention to money. You should take it in like the air you breathe and not ask where it came from, unless it actually smells.

“And now, go to hell. I’ve still got to write my Oxford lecture. Have I shown you the letter, the one inviting me to Oxford? Just wait, it won’t take a second … Isn’t it wonderful what he says about me? Of course if you read it as it stands it doesn’t say very much, but if you take into account that the English love to
understate
their real meaning, then you can see what it means when they describe my work as
meritorious
… ”

Mihály left, deep in thought. He set off south alongside the Tiber, walking away from the city centre towards the great dead Maremma. On the city boundary there is a strange hill, the Monte Testaccio, and this he climbed. Its name, ‘shard hill’, reflects the fact that it is made up entirely of pieces of broken pottery. In Roman times the wine-market stood here. Here the wines of Spain were brought in sealed amphoras which were then broken and the wine decanted into goatskins. The shards were then swept up into a heap, which eventually formed the present hill.

Mihály dreamily picked up a few reddish bits of pottery and put them in his pocket.

“Relics,” he thought. “Real shards, from the age of the Caesars. And no doubt of their genuineness, which can’t be said of every souvenir.”

On the hill young Roman boys, late descendants of the
quirites
, were playing at soldiers, hurling shards at one another, fragments of pottery two thousand years old, without a trace of emotion.

“That’s Italy,” thought Mihály. “They pelt one another with
history
. Two thousand years are as natural to them as the smell of manure in a village.”

Night was already falling when he reached the little tavern in the Trastevere quarter where he had met János Szepetneki the evening before. Following the local custom, he pressed his shabby old hat down on his head and stepped into the smoky interior. His eyes could distinguish nothing, but Szepetneki’s voice was immediately audible. As before, Szepetneki was busy with the girl.

“I hope I’m not disturbing you?” Mihály asked with a laugh.

“Disturbing us, what the hell. Sit yourself down. I’ve been
waiting
for you with mounting impatience.”

Indignation rose in Mihály, then he was overcome with
embarrassment
.

“Sorry … I just dropped in for a glass of wine. I was passing by and I had the feeling you might be here.”

“My dear Mihály, don’t say anything. Let’s consider the
matter
settled. I’m very glad you’re here, speaking for myself and for all the interested parties. And now, listen here. This little witch Vannina is wonderful at reading palms. She told me who I am, what I am. Not over-flattering, but she painted a very accurate picture of me. This is the first woman who hasn’t been taken in by me, and she doesn’t believe I’m a crook. All the same she predicts a bad end for me: a long and difficult old age … Now, let her do you. I’m curious what she’ll say about you.”

A lamp was brought and the girl immersed herself in the
examination
of Mihály’s palm.

“Oh, the
signore
is a lucky man,” she said. “He will find money in an unexpected quarter.”

“What are you saying?”

“Somewhere abroad a woman thinks often about the
signore
. A bald man also thinks often about the
signore
, but this is not
altogether
good. This line signifies much conflict. The
signore
can go with women without worrying, because there will be no children.”

“How do you mean?”

“It’s not as if you cannot make children, but all the same there will be none. The line of fatherhood is missing. In summer you should not eat oysters. Soon you will take part in a christening. An older man will arrive from beyond the mountains. The dead visit you often … ”

Mihály abruptly pulled his hand away, and asked for wine. He looked more closely at the girl. Her large-breasted thinness he now found much more beautiful than he had the night before. And she was much more frightening, much more like a witch. Her eyes had an Italian glitter, and the whites seem to enlarge as he looked into them. That northern idea again flitted through his head: the whole race was mad, that was their greatness.

The girl seized his hand and continued to prophesy, now in real earnest.

“Soon you will receive very bad news. Beware of women. All your trouble is because of women. Oh … the
signore
has a very good soul, but not one for this world. Oh,
dio mio
, poor
signore
… ”

With that she pulled Mihály to her and kissed him fiercely, with tears in her eyes. János laughed out loud and cried “
Bravo
!” Mihály was overcome with embarrassment.

“You must come here again,
signore
,” said Vannina. “Yes, come again, and often. You’ll be happy here. You will come again, won’t you? You will come?”

“Yes, of course. Since you ask so kindly … ”

“You really will come? Do you know what? My cousin is having a baby soon. She’s always longed for a foreign godfather for the infant. It’s such a fine thing to have. Wouldn’t you like to be
godfather
to the little
bambino
?”

“But of course, with great pleasure.”

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

János was a tactful villain. Through all this he had not once mentioned ‘business matters’. Only when it was late, and Mihály was slowly preparing to leave, did he send the girl away and say:

“Please, Mihály. It is Mr Pataki’s wish that you should write to him about this matter, in your own handwriting, in detail,
making
it absolutely clear that you authorise him to file a divorce in your name against your wife, and that you acknowledge that he will pay you the twenty thousand dollars in two instalments. You see, Pataki somehow doesn’t trust me one hundred percent, and I’m not surprised. He wants to negotiate with you directly.
Meanwhile
I am to hand over to you, now, five thousand lire as a down payment.”

He counted the money out on to the table and Mihály crammed it, with some embarrassment, into his pocket. “There,” he thought, “that’s how the die is cast. That’s how you cross the Rubicon. So easily no-one would even notice.”

“Would you please write to Pataki as follows,” said Szepetneki: “you have received, from me, the money he sent. But you must not specify the exact sum. After all, it shouldn’t really be like a receipt or a business letter. That would be rather indelicate, as I’m sure you’ll understand.”

Mihály understood. In his head he instantly calculated how much Szepetneki had pocketed of the money sent to him. Perhaps fifty percent, certainly not more. Never mind, let him have it.

“Well then, God be with you,” said János. “I’ve done my part in this, and tomorrow I’m leaving. But the rest of the evening I’ll spend with Vannina. A splendid girl, I can tell you. Call on her often when I’m not here.”

I
T BECAME STEADILY HOTTER
. Mihály lay naked on his bed, but could not sleep. Since he had accepted Pataki’s money and written that letter, he had not been able to settle.

He got up, washed, and set off for a stroll in the summer night. Soon he reached the Acqua Paola and stood delighting in the classical waterfall as, with timeless calm and proud dignity, it exercised its mystery in the moonlight. He remembered the little Hungarian sculptor in the Collegium Hungaricum whom he had got to know through Waldheim. The sculptor had walked from Dresden to Rome along the Via Flaminia, which, as Mihály knew from school, was the route always taken by victorious invaders from the north. Then on his first evening he had come up here, on to the Gianicolo. He had waited for them to clear everyone from the park and lock the gate, then he climbed over the wall and lay down in a bush, high above Rome, with the city at his feet. When morning came he rose, undressed and bathed in the pool of the Acqua Paolo, the classical waterfall.

That was how a conqueror marches into Rome. Perhaps
nothing
would ever come of the little sculptor. Perhaps his fate would be permanent hunger and who knows what else. Nonetheless a conqueror he was, needing only an army and “simple luck,
nothing
more”. The road of his life led upwards, even if he perished in the ascent. Mihály’s road led downwards, even if he survived, survived everything and came to tranquil, tedious old age. We carry within ourselves the direction our lives will take. Within ourselves burn the timeless, fateful stars.

He wandered for hours on the Gianicolo, along the bank of the Tiber and down the alleyways of the Trastevere. The night was late, but this was an Italian summer night, with people therefore awake on every side, hammering away or singing without embarrassment. This nation is quite innocent of northern notions of sleep as a time of consecrated stupor. At any moment you might stumble without rhyme or reason upon small children playing marbles in the street between three and four in the morning, or a barber will suddenly open his shop at three-thirty to shave a few merry bridegrooms.

On the Tiber tow-boats glided downstream with a calm,
classical
dignity: not tow-boats, but pictures from a school Latin book illustrating the word
Navis, navis
. On one a man played a guitar, a woman washed her stockings, a little dog barked. And behind it sailed another ship, the spectre-vessel, the Isola Tiberina, which even in ancient times had been built boat-shaped by men who doubted its fixedness, convinced that it slipped away on
occasional
night expeditions to the sea, carrying the hospital and all its death agonies on its back.

Across the water the moon rode at anchor over the huge
oppressive
ruins of the Teatro Marcello. From the nearby synagogue, Mihály seemed to remember, a crowd of long-bearded old Jews, with veils of the dead on their necks, would process to the Tiber bank and scatter their sins on the water with a murmuring
lamentation
. In the sky three aeroplanes circled, their headlights
occasionally
stroking one another’s sides. Then they flew off towards the Castelli Romani, like large birds winging to rest on the craggy peaks.

Then with a tremendous rumbling a huge lorry drove up. “Daybreak,” thought Mihály. Shapes clad in dark grey leapt from the lorry with alarming speed and poured through an archway door which opened before them. Then a bell tinkled, and a
herd-boy
appeared, singing out commands to a miraculous Vergilian heifer.

Now the door of a tavern opened and two workmen came up to him. They asked him to order some red wine for them and to tell them his life history. Mihály ordered the wine, indeed helped them finish the bottle, and even sent for some cheese to accompany it, though his difficulties with the language prevented the telling of his tale. Yet he felt an immense friendliness towards these people, who really seemed to sense his abandonment and grappled him to their hearts, and said such kind things it was a pity he could not understand what they were. But then, quite suddenly, he became afraid of them, paid, and made his escape.

He was in the Trastevere quarter. In the narrow alleyways with their myriad places of ambush, his mind filled again with images of violent death, as it had so often in his adolescence when he ‘played games’ at the Ulpius house. What absurd rashness to get
into conversation with those workmen! They could have
murdered
him and thrown him in the Danube, the Tiber, for his thirty forints. And to be wandering around in the satanic Trastevere at such an hour, where under any of the gaping archways he might be struck dead three times over before he could open his mouth. What madness … and what madness to harbour in his mind the very thing that lured him on, tempting him towards sin and death.

Then he found himself standing outside the house where Vannina lived. The house was dark, a small Italian house with a flat, tiled roof and window-arches faced with brick. Who might be living there? What deeds might lurk in the darkness of such a house? What horrors might befall him if he went in? Would Vannina … yes, Vannina had surely had a purpose in inviting him there so often and so insistently in recent days. She could well have known he had had a lot of money from János. All her
prospective
husbands had been locked up … yes, Vannina would be quite capable … And when he knew that for certain, he would go in.

He stood for a long time outside the house, plunged in sick imaginings. Then suddenly a leaden weariness seized him, and again he felt the nostalgia that had haunted him at every stage of his journey through Italy. But his weariness told him that now he was near the last resting place of all.