Journey by Moonlight (27 page)

He remained prostrate for a while, in steadily increasing
restlessness
, then tried to get up. But his movements ran into difficulty, and the blood throbbed painfully in his head. Better to stay lying down. He listened intently. His eyes became used to the darkness and his ears to the silence. A thousand little noises, strange, nearby, distinctly Italian sounds, could be heard all around. The house was more or less awake. A dim light came in from under the door.

If these people were planning something … What madness it was to have brought money with him! And where had he put his money? But of course, he had lain down fully dressed. It must be in his wallet. He groped for the wallet. It was not in its place. It was not in any of his pockets.

Well, that much was certain: they had stolen his money. Perhaps two hundred lire. Never mind that … what else might they want? Would they allow him to leave and report them? That would be madness. No, these people were going to kill him, without
question
.

Then the door opened and Vannina came in, carrying some sort of night-light. She looked furtively towards the bed and,
when she saw that Mihály was awake, put on the face of someone surprised and came up to the bed. She even said something he did not understand, but which did not sound very pleasant.

Then she put the night-light down and sat on the edge of the bed. She stroked his hair and face, murmuring encouragements in Italian to sleep peacefully.

“Of course, she’s waiting for me to fall sleep, and then … I shan’t sleep!”

Then he remembered with horror what force of suggestion there was in this girl, and realised that he certainly would sleep if she willed it. And indeed, closing his eyes as the girl smoothed down his eyelashes, he fell instantly into a babbling half-dream.

In this half-dream he seemed to hear them talking in the next room. There was a man’s voice that seemed to growl roughly, the rapid speech of another man from time to time, and the constant staccato whispering of the girl. Without doubt they were now discussing whether to kill him. The girl was perhaps protecting him, perhaps the opposite. Now, now, he really ought to wake. How often had he had this dream, that some terrible danger was approaching and he couldn’t wake however hard he tried: and now it was coming true. Then he dreamed that something was flashing before his eyes, and, with a rattle in his throat, he awoke.

There was light in the room. The night-light was burning on the table. He sat up and looked fearfully around, but saw no-one there. The murmur of speech still came through from the next room, but it was now much quieter, and he could not distinguish between the speakers.

The terror of death ran through and through him. He was afraid in his whole body. He could feel them closing in on him, with knives, the rat-people. He wrung his hands in despair. Something was
holding
him down. He could not get out of the bed.

The only thing that calmed him slightly was the night-light, which flared and cast the sort of shadows on the walls he
remembered
in his room as a child. The night-light led him to think of Vannina’s finely-shaped hand: earlier, when it held the lamp, he had stared at it for some time without really paying attention.

“Why am I afraid?” he suddenly started. For this, this thing that was about to happen right now, was what he had wanted,
what he had planned. Yes, he was going to die—but he wanted to die—and there beside him, in the flesh, perhaps even taking part, would be a beautiful girl bearing a special secret, in the role of death-demon, as on the Etruscan tombs.

Now he really longed for it. His teeth chattered and his arms were numb with terror, but he wanted it to happen. They would open the door and the girl would come in to him, come to the bed and kiss and embrace him, while the murder weapon went about its work … Let her come and embrace him … only let her come … only let them open the door …

But the door did not open. Already outside the early
morning
cocks were crowing, the next room was completely silent, the night-light itself was flickering low, and he fell into a deep sleep.

Then it was morning, like any other morning. He woke in a bright room, a bright friendly room, to Vannina coming in and asking how he had slept. It was morning, a normal, friendly Italian summer morning. Soon it would be horribly hot, but now it was still pleasant. Only the aftertaste of last night’s drunkenness troubled him, nothing else.

The girl was saying something, about how drunk he had been the night before, but this had endeared him and made him very popular with all the party, and they had kept him there overnight because they were afraid he wouldn’t be able to make it home.

Talk of going home reminded him of Éva, who surely must have called on him the evening before to be with him when … What would she think of him? That he had run away: had run away from her?

Then it occurred to him that in the course of the whole
alarming
and visionary night he had not once thought of Éva. The love-pause. The longest pause of his life. Strange thing, to die for a woman and never think of her the entire night—and what a night!

He got his clothes more or less in order and took his leave of a few people sitting outside in the bar area who greeted him like their dear old friend. How the sun shone in through the little
window
! Really there was nothing rat-like about these people. They were the good honest Italian proletariat.

“And these people wanted to kill me?” he wondered. “True, it’s
not really certain that they did intend to kill me. But it’s strange that they didn’t after all, in fact they must have really longed to while they were stealing my wallet. No, these Italians are really quite different.”

His hand unconsciously groped for his wallet. The wallet was there in its place, next to his heart, where the Middle-European, not entirely without a touch of symbolism, keeps his money. He stopped in surprise, and took the wallet out. The two hundred lire and the small change, a few ten-lire coins, were unmistakably there.

Perhaps they had put the wallet back while he slept—but there would have been no sense in that. More probably they had never taken it. It had been there in his pocket all the time he had believed it gone. Mihály calmed down. This was not the first time in his life that he had seen black as white, and his impressions and
suppositions
made themselves entirely independent of objective reality.

Vannina accompanied him out the door, then came with him a short way towards the Gianicolo.

“Do come again. And you must visit the
bambino
. A godfather has his duties. You mustn’t neglect them. Come again. Often. Always … ”

Mihály presented the girl with the two hundred lire, then
suddenly
kissed her on the mouth and hurried off.

H
E ARRIVED BACK
in his room. “I’ll rest for a bit, and think carefully about what I actually want, and whether I really want it; and only then will I write to Éva. Because my position with her is rather ridiculous, and if I were to tell her why I didn’t come home last night, perhaps she wouldn’t believe me, it’s all so stupid.”

He automatically undressed and began to wash. Was there any point in still washing? But he hesitated only for a moment, then washed, brewed himself some tea, took out a book, lay down and fell asleep.

He woke to the sound of the doorbell. He hurried out, feeling fresh and rested. It had been raining, and the air was cooler now than in recent days.

He opened the door and let in an elderly gentleman. His father.

“Hello, son,” said his father. “I’ve just arrived on the midday train. I’m so glad to find you at home. And I’m hungry. I’d like you to come out to lunch with me.”

Mihály was immensely surprised at his father’s unexpected appearance, but surprise was not in fact his predominant
feeling
. Nor indeed was it the embarrassment and shame when his father looked around the room, struggling painfully to stop his face betraying his horror at the shabby milieu. A quite different feeling filled him, a feeling he had known of old, in lesser degree, in the days when he often went abroad. The same feeling had always affected him when he came home from his longer absences: the terror that his father had in the meantime grown older. But never, never, had his father aged so much. When he had last seen him he was still the self-confident man of the commanding gestures he had known all his life. Or at least that was how Mihály had still thought of him, because he had then been at home for some years, and if any change had occurred in his father during that time he had not noticed its gradual workings. He now registered it all the more sharply because he had not seen his father for a few months. Time had punished his face and his figure. There were just a few, but quite
undeniable, signs of anxiety: his mouth had lost its old severity, his eyes were tired and sunken (true, he had been travelling all night, who knows, perhaps third class, he was such a parsimonious man), his hair was even whiter, his speech seemed rather less precise, with a strange, and at first quite alarming hint of a lisp. It was impossible to say exactly what it was, but there was the fact, in all its dreadful reality. His father had grown old.

And compared with this everything else was as nothing—Éva, the planned suicide, even Italy itself.

“Just don’t let me burst out crying, not just now. Father would deeply despise that, and he might also guess my tears were for him.”

Mihály pulled himself together and put on his most
expressionless
face, the face he habitually adopted for anything to do with his family.

“It was very kind of you to come, Father. You must have had important reasons for making this long journey, in summer … ”

“Yes of course, son, my reasons were important. But nothing unpleasant. There isn’t anything wrong. Although you haven’t asked, your mother and the family are well. And I see there’s
nothing
particularly wrong with you. Well then, let’s go and have lunch. Take me somewhere where they don’t cook in oil.”

“Erzsi and Zoltán Pataki were with me the day before
yesterday
,” his father said during the meal.

“What’s that? Erzsi’s in Pest? And they were together?”

“Oh yes. Pataki went to Paris, they made up, and he brought Erzsi home.”

“But why, and how?”

“My son, I truly do not know, and you can imagine, I didn’t enquire. We talked only about business matters. You know that your … how can I put this? … your odd, but I have to say not entirely surprising, behaviour placed me in an absurd situation with regard to Erzsi. An absurd financial situation. For Erzsi to liquidate her investment, in today’s climate … but you know all this, I think. Tivadar told you all about it in his letter.”

“Yes, I do know. Perhaps you won’t believe this, but I’ve been terribly worried about what might happen. Erzsi said that Zoltán … but do go on.”

“Thank God, there’s no harm done. That’s precisely why they came to see me, to discuss the terms under which I could pay them back the money. But I have to say they were so reasonable I was really very surprised. We agreed on all the details. They really are not too oppressive, and I hope we can resolve the whole matter without further difficulty. All the more so, because your uncle Péter managed to find a wonderful new lawyer.”

“But tell me: Zoltán, I mean Pataki, has behaved really decently? I don’t understand.”

“He has conducted himself like an absolute gentleman. Just between us, I think it’s because he’s so glad Erzsi went back to him. And he’s certainly carrying out her intentions. Erzsi is a really wonderful woman. It’s bad enough … but I have made up my mind not to reproach you. You always were a strange boy, and you know what you have done.”

“And Zoltán didn’t abuse me? He didn’t say that … ”

“He said nothing. Not a word about you, which was only
natural
, given the circumstances. On the other hand, Erzsi did
mention
you.”

“Erzsi?”

“Yes. She said you had met in Rome. She gave absolutely no details, and naturally I didn’t enquire, but she hinted that you were in a very critical situation, and thought that your family had turned against you. No, don’t say anything. As a family we’ve always respected each other’s privacy, and we’ll keep it that way. I’m not interested in the details. But Erzsi did advise that, if it were at all possible, I should come to Rome myself and talk to you about your going back to Pest. Her actual words were, that I should ‘bring you home’.”

Bring him home? Yes, Erzsi knew what she was saying, and how well she knew Mihály! She saw clearly that his father could lead him home like a truanting schoolboy. She well knew it was his nature to submit, as indeed he was submitting, like a child caught running away: but of course always with the mental reservation that, when the next opportunity presented itself, he would run away again.

Erzsi was so right. There was no other course but to go home. There might have been another solution, but … the external
circumstances he had wanted to escape through suicide seemed to have vanished. Zoltán had made his peace; his family were waiting for him with open arms; nobody was after him.

“So, here I am,” continued his father, “and I would like you to wind up all your business here immediately and come home. On tonight’s train, in fact. You know I haven’t much time.”

“Please, this is all a bit sudden,” said Mihály, emerging from his day-dream. “This morning I was thinking of anything but going home to Pest.”

“I’m sure, but what objection is there to your coming home?”

“Nothing. Just let me catch my breath. Look, it would do you no harm to lie down here for a while and take a siesta. While you’re resting I’ll get my thoughts in order.”

“Of course, as you think best.”

Mihály placed his father in the comfort of the bed. He himself sat in a large armchair, with the firm resolution of doing some thinking. His meditation took the form of recalling certain
feelings
in turn, and scrutinising their intensities. That was how he usually decided what he wanted, and whether he really did want what he thought he wanted.

Did he really want to die? Did he still hanker after a death like Tamás’s? He focused his mind on that longing and looked for the sweetness associated with it. But now he could discover no
sweetness
, but, on the contrary, nausea and fatigue, such as a man feels after love-making.

Then he realised why he felt this nausea. The desire had already been satisfied. Last night, in the Italian house, in his terror and vision he had already realised the wish that had haunted him since
adolescence
. He had fulfilled it, if not in external reality, at least in the reality of the mind. And with that the desire had been, if not permanently, at least for the time being, assuaged. He was freed from it, freed from the ghost of Tamás.

And Éva?

He noticed a letter on his desk. It had been put there while he had been out to lunch. It must have arrived the day before, but the lady next door had forgotten to give it to him. He got up, and read Éva’s parting words.

By evening they were in fact already on the train. They were discussing business matters, his father describing what had been happening in the firm while he had been away, what the prospects were, and what new responsibilities he had in mind for him.

Mihály listened in silence. He was going home. He would attempt once more what he had failed to do for fifteen years: to conform. Perhaps this time he would succeed. That was his fate. He was
giving
in. The facts were stronger than he was. There was no
escaping
. They were all too strong: the fathers, the Zoltáns, the business world, people.

His father fell asleep, and Mihály stared out of the window, trying to make out the contours of the Tuscan landscape by the light of the moon. He would have to remain with the living. He too would live: like the rats among the ruins, but nonetheless alive. And while there is life there is always the chance that something might happen …