Kornel Esti (9 page)

IV

In which he makes an excursion in the “honest town” with his old friend

“
SO YOU’LL COME WITH ME?” ASKED KORNÉL ESTI.

“With pleasure,” I exclaimed. “I’m sick and tired of all this dishonesty.”

I jumped into the aircraft. We roared, we circled.

We swung around with such whirling rapidity that golden eagles became giddy alongside us and swallows felt blood rushing to their heads.

Soon we landed.

“This is it,” said Esti.

“This? It’s just like where we came from.”

“Only on the outside. It’s different inside.”

We strolled into the town on foot to take a close look at everything.

The first thing that struck me was that the passersby scarcely spoke to one another.

“Here people only greet each other,” explained Esti, “if they really like and respect the other person.”

A beggar in dark glasses was crouching on the sidewalk. On his lap a tin plate. On his chest a card:
I am not blind. I only wear dark glasses in summer.

“Now, why is the beggar wearing that?”

“So as not to mislead people that give alms.”

On the avenue were shops as bright as could be. In a gleaming window I read:

Crippling shoes. Corns and abscesses guaranteed. Several customers’ feet amputated.

A colorful, eye-catching picture was displayed of two surgeons with big steel saws cutting off the feet of a screaming victim, his blood running down in red streaks.

“Is this a joke?”

“Not a bit.”

“Aha. Does some legal requirement force traders to brand themselves like this?”

“Not at all,” Esti made a gesture of denial. “It’s the truth. Just understand that: it’s the truth. Here nobody hides the truth under a bushel. Self-criticism has reached such a high level in this city that there’s no longer need of anything like that.”

As we went on, one thing after another astounded me.

At the clothes shop this sign shrieked:

Expensive poor-quality clothes. Kindly bargain, because we will swindle you.

At the restaurant:

Inedible food, undrinkable drinks. Worse than at home.

At the patisserie:

Stale cakes. Made with margarine and egg substitute.

“Have these people gone mad?” I stammered. “Or are they suicidal? Or saints?”

“They’re wise,” replied Esti firmly. “They never lie.”

“And doesn’t this wisdom ruin them?”

“Look in the shops. They’re all crowded. All flourishing.”

“How is that possible?”

“Look. Everybody here knows that they themselves, and their fellow men, are honest, sincere and modest, and they’d rather put themselves down than boast, rather reduce a price than raise it. And so people here don’t quite take at face value what they hear and read, any more than you do at home. The difference amounts to this—at home you always have to subtract something from what people tell you, in fact a great deal, while here you always have to add something to it, a little. Your goods and people aren’t as excellent as they say. Here goods and people aren’t as inferior as they say. Actually, the two come to the same thing. In my view, though, the latter way is more honest, more sincere, more modest.”

In the window of a bookshop the proprietors drew attention to a book, framed in colored paper ribbon:

Unreadable rubbish … latest work of an old writer who has gone senile, not a single copy sold up to now … Ervin Hörgő’s most nauseating, most pretentious verse.

“Incredible,” I was amazed. “And will people buy it?”

“Why on earth not?”

“And read it?”

“Don’t they read things like that back at home?”

“You’re right. But there, at least they find out about them differently.“

“I repeat: this is the city of conscience. If somebody knows perfectly well that he has bad taste, and likes thunderous phrases—the sort of thing that’s cheap, inane and overdone—then he’ll buy Ervin Hörgő’s verse, and he won’t be disappointed in it, in fact, it’ll meet his requirements. The whole thing’s just a matter of tactics.”

Reeling, I looked for a café where I could restore myself.

Esti took me to a tasteless, gilded café which a sign described as
the favorite haunt of con-men and spongers
, and enticed customers in with
unafordable prices, rude waiters
.

At first I didn’t want to go in. My friend pushed me.

“Good morning,” I said.

“Why are you lying?” asked Esti. “You don’t want a good morning here, but you’d like a nice coffee, but you can’t get that because here they lace the coffee with chicory, and it tastes like second-rate shoe-polish. I just want to show you the papers.”

There were a lot of newspapers there. Now I can only recall the
Lie
, the
Self-Interest
, the
Cowardly Bandit
, and the
Stooge
.

In place of a masthead, on the front page the
Stooge
carried in large type the message:

Every single letter in this paper is corrupt. It depends on all governments in the same way, and never prints their views except when the desire for filthy
lucre calls for it. For that reason we advise our readers, each and all of whom we deeply disdain and despise, not to take our articles seriously and to execrate and look down on us too as much as we deserve, if that is humanly possible.

“Wonderful,” I enthused. “See that, I really like it.”

“Here speaking the truth is so general,” my friend went on, “that everybody does it. Listen to the small ads, for example,” and he started to read from various papers.
Cashier seeks employment, criminal record, several convictions, former prisoner … Mentally ill nursemaid will look after children … Language teacher speaks French with Göcsej
^*
accent and wishes to acquire local accents from pupils, has a few vacancies
.

“And these people will find jobs?” I asked numbly.

“Naturally,” replied Esti.

“Why?”

“Because,” he drawled, “life’s like that.”

He pointed to a fat booklet with something printed in dark gray letters on a dark gray cover.

“This here’s the leading literary periodical. Lots of people read it.”

“I can’t even make out the title.”

“
Boredom
,” said Esti. “That’s the title.”

“What’s interesting in it?”

“That the title is
Boredom
.”

“And is it really boring?”

“I don’t want to influence you. Look it over.”

I read a few items.

“Well,” I said, pursing my lips, “it’s not all that dull.”

“You’re a stern critic,” Esti raised a warning finger. “It’s no good, no expectation can ever be fully satisfied. The title’s lowered your expectations too much. I can assure you, if you read it at home you’d find it quite boring enough. It all depends on the angle from which you look at things.”

Someone was making a speech to a crowd of several thousand in the square outside the Parliament building:

“One look at my low forehead and my face, deformed by bestial cupidity, is enough—you can see at once whom you are dealing with. I have no trade, no skill, there’s nothing on earth that I’m fit for, least of all to explain to you the meaning of life, so let me lead you toward the goal. What that goal is I will reveal. In brief, I want to be rich, to extort money, so that I shall have as much as possible and you as little as possible. And so I shall have to go on making fools of you. Or do you think, perhaps, that you’re fools enough already?”

“No, no,” the crowd roared indignantly.

“So act in accordance with your conscience. You all know my opponent. He’s a noble, selfless man, a great brain, a brilliant mind. Is there anyone in this town to compare with him?”

“No!” shouted the crowd in unison. “Nobody at all!” and clenched fists rose into the air.

Darkness fell.

I went out for a walk and suddenly the black sky was lit up as if day had broken, several days, the whole calendar.

Letters of flame sparkled:

We steal, we swindle, we rob.

“What’s that?” I asked Esti.

“An advertisement for a bank,” he said nonchalantly.

Late at night we returned to Esti’s house. The extraordinary experiences had evidently worn me out. I was running a temperature. I was sneezing and coughing. I called a doctor.

“Doctor,” I complained, “I’ve got a bit of a chill, caught a cold.”

“A cold?” the doctor was taken aback and retreated to the far corner of the room, covering his mouth with his handkerchief. “In that case be so good as to turn your head aside, because even here, five yards away, I can catch it. I’ve got children.”

“Aren’t you going to examine me?”

“ Waste of time. There’s no cure for a cold. It’s incurable, like cancer.”

“Should I sweat?”

“You can. But it won’t do any good. Broadly speaking, our scientific experience is that if we treat a cold it can last a month. If we don’t treat it, it can be gone the next day.”

“What if I develop pneumonia?”

“Then you’ll die,” he informed me.

He thought for a moment, then said:

“Frederick the Great was once walking on the field after a battle. A dying soldier, moaning in pain, stretched out his arm to him. The emperor flicked his riding crop at the soldier and shouted at him ‘You swine, d’you want to live forever?’ I always quote this little story to my patients. There’s profound wisdom in it.”

“Indeed,” I replied. “But I’ve got a headache. A splitting headache.”

“That’s your afair,” said the doctor. “That doesn’t matter. You know what does? What does matter is that I haven’t got a headache. Even more important is that I charge double for visits at night. Let me have my fee quickly, I’m in a hurry.”

He was right. Next day I was better. Fresh and cheerful, I hurried to the Town Hall to obtain the documents necessary for taking up residence in that honest town.

“Delighted,” I muttered when I appeared before the mayor.

“Well, I can’t say as much,” said the mayor coldly.

“I don’t understand,” I stammered. “I’ve called in to swear to be a loyal citizen.”

“The fact that you don’t understand shows that you’re a stupid blockhead. I’ll explain why I’m not delighted. In the first place, you’re disturbing me, and I don’t even know who or what you are. Secondly, you’re involving me in public affairs, whereas I only deal with my personal rackets. Thirdly, you’re lying about being delighted, from which I deduce that you’re a hypocritical scoundrel and not fit to join us. I’m having you deported at once.”

Within the hour I was deported by express aircraft to the town from which I had escaped.

Since then I’ve lived here. Lots of things were more to my taste there. I have to admit, though, that all the same it’s better here. Because even if people here are more or less the same as there, there’s a lot to be said for the people here. Inter alia, that at least they sometimes tell each other imaginative, amusing lies.

*
A region of Hungary to the south of Lake Balaton, noted for its local dialect.

V

In which he is concerned with the animated and edifying description
of a weekday, September 10, 1909,
and the time is evoked when Franz Josef was still on the throne
and modern poets who favored various trends and schools
took their ease in the coffeehouses of Budapest

AT ELEVEN IN THE MORNING ESTI WAS STILL FAST ASLEEP ON
the couch which those who gave him accommodation let him use as a bed.

Someone came to call. Esti opened his eyes.

The first thing that he noticed of the world which he had lost in his sleep was the grave figure sitting on the edge of the couch.

“Have I woken you?”

“Not at all.”

“I've written a poem,” said Sárkány, like an excited emissary from another planet. “Will you listen to it?”

Without waiting for an answer, he straightaway read out, rapidly:

“Lovely,” murmured Esti.

The remark disturbed Sárkány. He acted like one interrupted in mid-kiss. He gave him a cross look. Once he realized, however, what Esti had said, a smile of gratitude spread across his face.

Esti asked his friend:

“Start again.”

Sárkány started again:

He was holding in his left hand a page of squared paper torn from a notebook and pressed his right hand to his face as if a tooth were aching slightly. Thus he read.

This boy looked like an unhappy first violinist in a Gypsy band, dark and passionate. His pale face was crowned by a shock of jet-black hair. His mouth was red, almost as red as blood. A brass ring shone on his hairy index finger. He wore a narrow tie. A cutaway, purple waistcoat. A worn but pressed black suit. Brand new patent-leather shoes. He used an orchid perfume. The whole room was permeated with it.

Esti listened to the poem all through, eyes closed.

The day before they had been for a walk together and had admired the moon above the tenements and railway warehouses of Ferencváros.
^*
Now that moon reappeared behind Esti's closed eyelids, in his darkened eyeballs, as in the sky the previous night. There floated the moon, the moon in the poem, somewhat crudely painted, as was the fashion of the 1930s, a little flirtatious and overdressed, but much more beautiful than the real thing.

“Magnificent!” exclaimed Esti when the poem came to an end. He jumped up from the couch.

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Better than
Crazy Swing
?”

“No comparison.”

“Swear?”

“I swear.”

Sárkány was still throbbing to the pulse of his poem. He felt that a tremendously important event had occurred.

Esti too felt that. He rummaged round in the disorder of his rented room. As he searched the floor for his socks he asked:

“When did you write it?”

“In the night. As I was going home.”

They were silent for a while.

Sárkány turned to him:

“Didn't you write anything?”

“No,” said Esti gloomily. “Not yesterday. Where are you going to send it?”

“To
Független Magyarország
.”
^*

He sat down at Esti's desk to make a clean copy in ink.

Meanwhile Esti slowly dressed. As he pulled on his trousers he read the literary section and poetry in the morning paper. He moistened his face slightly. That passed for a wash with him. He was so attached to his individuality that he was loath to wash off the layers that accumulated on him in the daytime. He considered people who bowed to the fetish of excessive cleanliness devoid of talent.

He used neither brush nor comb. He ran his fingers through his hair so that it should be disheveled in a way different from that of the night—feathers from the pillow were sticking to it—and arranged his curls in front of the mirror until he could see in it the head which he imagined as himself and was happiest to consider his own.

Sárkány, busy at his copying, was humming a popular song.

“Hush,” said Esti, nodding toward the door, which was obstructed by a cupboard.

Behind it lived the people of the house, two elderly ladies, the principal tenants—enemies of subtenants and of literature.

They both became solemn. They looked at the cupboard and in it saw reality, which always made them feel helpless.

“What shall we do?” they asked in a whisper.

Before them was a day, a new day, with its boundless freedom and opportunity.

For a start, they went downstairs and sat in the nearby restaurant, the dining room of a hotel.

There they were still themselves.

The dining room gleamed white. The mauve light of arc lamps rustled on the freshly laundered linen tablecloths, the untouched, undefiled altars at which no sacrifice had yet been made. Waiters bustled about, shirtfronts gleaming, fresh before work, like escorts at a ball. An elevator rattled between the walls of the hotel. The half-open door gave a glimpse of the foyer, leather armchairs, palms. A chambermaid yawning with the divine promise of a chance love affair. They reveled in the morning still life. They imagined that when there was no one there but them, all that was theirs, and as they imagined it, in fact it was all theirs.

Neither of them was hungry, but they decided to have lunch just to be done with it. On the strength of his new poem, which he could take to the office at three that afternoon, but without fail between six and seven, Sárkány asked for a loan of two koronas on his word of honor. They had rolled fillets of anchovy, mopping up the oil with bread, haunch of roe with cranberries, and vanilla creams. They drank spritzers and each smoked a green-speckled, light Média.

Noon was striking by the time they reached the Ring Road. Budapest, the youthful city, was glittering. The early September sun enveloped the facades of the houses in sheets of gold. Their heads baked in the hot sun. The sky was blue, a pristine blue, like the ceilings of newly painted flats, still tacky and smelling of paint. Everything around them was so new. This was the time when the new school term was starting. Primary school pupils were going around with satchels on their backs, clutching transfers they had been given at stationery shops.

Suddenly Esti and Sárkány stopped.

A young man was approaching them, his back to them, going backwards, crabwise, but with great skill, at a very swift pace.

On top of his head danced a cheap straw hat. He wore white trousers and a gray coat of thick material with flesh-colored rubber bands at the cuffs. He twirled an iron-tipped stick.

A moment later they too had turned round and were making for him in the same fashion, at a smart pace.

When they drew level with him they burst out laughing.

“Hello, you idiot!” they called to him, and embraced one another.

At last they were all three together, Kanicky, Sárkány and Esti, no one was missing, the circle was closed, the world was complete; the club was in session, the Balkan club, the prime objects of which included the free, courageous, and open practice of such eccentiricites.

The passersby looked ill-humoredly, with a certain contempt but also an undisguised interest, at these three cheerful young men, these three frivolous, immature boys. They didn't understand them, so they hated them.

Kanicky spat on the asphalt. His saliva was black. As black as ink.

He was chewing liquorice.

The liquorice was in his left pocket, and in the right was a medlar, in a paper bag.

They made for their favorite resort, the New York coffeehouse.

On the way Sárkány read his new poem to Kanicky. There was a bedroom in the window of a furniture shop, two wide poplar wood beds, made up, silk eiderdowns, pillows and night tables. In their thoughts they got into the beds wearing their shoes. They imagined at their sides putative spouses, as big as titanic china dolls, with bouffant hairstyles and eyebrows drawn in India ink. All that was so farfetched and improbable that they were ashamed of the fantastic idea and dismissed it as a subject for a poem. They went into a pet shop. They bargained for a monkey and inquired how much a lion would cost. The shopkeeper saw what kind of customers he had to deal with and showed them out.

“What about greeting people?” Kanicky proposed.

At that they greeted everyone who came along. The three hats swung low in unison as if by magic. Their eyes looked frankly into the eyes of the persons they saluted. These were sometimes pleased to be publicly acknowledged in that way, but sometimes were surprised, realized that it was a silly trick, looked them up and down, and went on their way. Out of fifteen, eleven returned the salute.

That too they gave up.

On the corner of Rákóczi út,
^*
Esti bought two balloons. He fastened the strings in his buttonhole and hurried after his friends.

Not far from the coffeehouse a crowd had formed. It was said that two gentlemen were fighting, the one had bumped into the other and they had immediately begun to box each other's ears.

A heated exchange could be heard.

“Do you mind!”

“Impudent devil!”

“You're the impudent devil!”

Kanicky and Sárkány, pale of face, glared at each other. Kanicky raised his fist. A level-headed gentleman came between them.

“Really, gentlemen, for goodness' sake!”

Kanicky looked at the level-headed gentleman, and as usual on such occasions asked Sárkány:

“I say, who's this?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, come on, then.”

He linked arms with Sárkány as if nothing had happened, and to the astonishment of the onlookers went off with him. Esti joined them.

“Did anyone fall for it?” he asked.

“Yes,” they said with a grin.

They let one of the balloons go.

And so they came to the coffeehouse.

The coffeehouse—at lunchtime—was quiet, deserted. Cleaning ladies were going about with brooms and buckets, wiping the marble tabletops. Morning coffee drinkers who had lingered were paying. A slender acrobat passed through the ladies' room.

The afternoon coffee beans were being roasted. The aroma tickled their nostrils. Upstairs the balcony, with its twisting, gilded columns, like a Buddhist temple, seemed to be expecting something.

Here they settled down at their tribal table. First they tried to organize their material affairs. Kaniczky had sixteen fillér, Sárkány thirty. Esti had one korona and four fillér.
^*
Not much on which to fight the battles of the day.

Sárkány, who had the best prospects that day since he had written a poem, beckoned to the morning headwaiter, got him to count out twenty Princeszász, ordered coffee, then showed him the manuscript which he would be able to sell to the
Fületlen
^†
at three that afternoon, but at the latest between six and seven, and asked him for a loan of ten koronas. The waiter resignedly advanced the sum. Esti ordered a double espresso. Kanicky called for bicarbonate of soda, water, and a “dog's tongue.”
^‡

The bicarbonate came. Slowly, absentmindedly, Kanicky sipped the three glasses of water that stood before him, even though Estitapped the ash from his cigarette into one of them. He began to write a sketch, so as to have some money. Suddenly he jumped up, clutched his head: he had to make an urgent telephone call. Nervous anxieties swarmed around his glistening brow. He asked his friends to go with him down to the telephone. He didn't like to be alone.

On the way to the ground floor they pushed, joked, met friends, and forgot what they actually wanted. Loathsome figures were hanging like leeches on the telephones, speaking German, old fellows, forty or fifty, who couldn't really last much longer. It took Kanicky half an hour to get through. He emerged from the booth triumphant. She was coming at three that afternoon. He borrowed five koronas from Sárkány on his word of honor, and then Esti got one of the two that he had lent him.

After organizing their material affairs, they lightheartedly went back to their places at the table. Kanicky wrote a couple of lines of his sketch. Again he left off writing. He called a messenger and sent a letter to the girl whom he had telephoned. They smoked and sighed, laughed and were sad in quick succession, and waved through the plateglass window to women passing in the street. When the waiter placed some fruit before them they gave each one a name: the apple was Károly, the grapes were Ilona, the plum had to be Ödön, the pear, because of its softness and voluptuousness, Jolán, etc. A sort of restlessness stirred in them. They played party games with letters, colors, voices, mixing up, exaggerating, and patching together everything. They asked the oddest questions: what would happen if something were not as it was? No, they were not satisfied with Creation.