The Diary of Geza Csath (12 page)

BOOK: The Diary of Geza Csath
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My heroism had its reward. In the afternoon, Olga and I experienced unforgettable joy. Coitus equinus gave such burning and sacred rapture, the likes of which I can hardly remember. Within half an hour another + in Cleopatra and Antony position. This too was regal pleasure. The .03 P (3%) taken after the ++ satisfied nothing; indeed, it increased the hunger. Because of this, on my way home after taking the little mother home, I purchased phials of 3% M and gave myself the gift of a .02 dose of M. Now I think I have got it right, my night will be good, and so will waking. Tomorrow’s plan: .02 P at 6 in the
afternoon
, and .01 M on going to bed.

The previous days’ account:
4 February: .10 M
5 February: .02 M+.08 P=.10
6 February: .07 P+.02 M = .9
Tomorrow therefore: 0.05
Saturday: 0.03
Sunday: 0.02 P
And by Monday:
freedom.

7 F E B R U A R Y 1 9 1 3

Today took matters forward successfully. After vomiting, bathing, and defecating, I took .02 M. Then toward evening another .015. That’s how I achieved today’s .035 after yesterday’s .09. Naturally I kept my promise with regard to the AyAyAy
39
at night. There was no +, but that will make it so much the better tomorrow.

39. author’s private code
1 2 M A R C H 1 9 1 3

Shameful failures. I was unable to carry through my plan. And now, when Sandor (who was nearly driven to suicide over his pleuritis, due to my ugly lack of concern) and Gyula beseech me, crying and swearing and in despair, when Olga sighs, and quietly, anxiously, supplicating, sobs in my ear: ‘My boy, you love it more than me!’ – I now face harder work then ever. Because in the last week my dose jumped up from .22 to .36. This is a terrible amount, several times greater than the largest doses up to now. Nevertheless, more than ever, I must begin a final and irreversible withdrawal, because if there is no result by the 20th, if there isn’t complete success, then retreat to a
closed institution
is the only path left for me. That would mean the complete cessation of my professional clinical work.

Tomorrow, therefore, the final attempt, for life or death.

1
1. I just have to think about how smoothly the withdrawal of December 1911 went, even though I had strong doubts about success then too, while now I know that
I am not attempting the impossible
.

1
2. Think, Jozsef,
40
of poor Olga’s despair, and her terrified, beseeching gaze.
1
3. Think of what grand, joyful days will follow, just like then [December 1911-12].

40. Csath’s real name was Jozsef Brenner.

1
4. Think of how nice it will be to return to life, to work, to be happy about everything, to live,
real life
.
1
5. Think that you must live sixty-eight years, like ‘uncle’ Pista, who has + even now.
1
6. Think of what tremendous spiritual progress can be anticipated in terms of the Mansfeld plan.
1
7. Think of the lively, beautiful Casanova mornings and the colossal ham suppers.
1
8. Think of your future, which you can raze completely, or build into something grand and beautiful.

N O T E S T O D .
4 1

1. I stress that I was always a sadistic man, and never jealous. I started the same way with O. I ruled over her, but M and jealousy weakened me, giving her the courage to turn the tables.

1
2. The first M injection should be written up at length with many details, along with
the fear that accompanied it
. Then later, the conscious, reckless and successful use of M in small doses.

1
3. Degenerate birth should also be stressed. Illusions about the deceased mother. The boy is
devoted
to his father: however, certain matters lead to perpetual misunderstandings.

1
4. Ambition that is too great, then suddenly broken, should also be stressed.
1
5. The fact that there is no more glorious, beautiful thing than to be a young intern at a spa.
1
6. Detailed descriptions should be written of the trip to the spa, packing, hopes, arrival, mood changes.

Andor’s tragedy is self-contained. Here, however, many things are united:

 

1
a) the father abandoned the boy.
1
b) the … .[unfinished]
41. Dezso Kosztolanyi. Csath wanted Kosztolanyi to write his story.

 

Csath at Stubnyafurdo in 1912
‘…there is no move glorious thing than to be a young intern at a spa.’

G E N E R A L R E M A R K S

I do not
condemn
my wife because she cheated on me many times, and finally bore a child by another (
she could have
freed herself of the embryo, as she had before – approximately eight times). I am a scientist and a philosopher, therefore capable of understanding desire and the rights of the flesh. I understand human nature: no matter how well and happy we are, we wish for ever more pleasure.

On the other hand, the following are
unforgivable
:

1
1.
Before the wedding
she told others that I would marry her or she would kill me. A slut has no right to say this, only a woman in love, who lives or dies
for one man.

1
2. She ruined the first weeks of the marriage with her constant abuse,
only to divert attention,
because she was already pregnant by someone else.

1
3. She knew that she was unfaithful by nature, and she saw at the sanatorium how much I suffered from the presentiment of that,
and still she did not agree
to divorce.

1
4. She stopped me from settling in Szabadka (where my best professional prospects lay) – because she wanted to go to Pest. (She did not want to be under my family’s supervision.)

1
5. She caused my estrangement from my brother.
1
6. When she recognized my bodily and spiritual degeneration, she did not take me to a doctor,
she did not do everything she could
to help me, but instead left me to my fate. I didn’t see myself, I could not observe myself
– it was she who had to see. It would have been her duty (and her family’s), but they all pretended they saw nothing the matter with me. (And at the time I believed it too.)
1
7. She humiliated me, because later she gave herself to everyone and
hardly bothered to conceal
her sluttishness.
1
8. At Regoce,
42
she drove me, chased me, compelled me to do the hardest, most exhausting work; though she already knew what my problem was (the medical orders called for a moderate lifestyle), she made me believe I was a hypochondriac, and I worked until I dropped. (During my Spanish illness, she forced me to get up and go to the farm.)
1
9. She allowed us to get settled, she allowed me to live in fantasies of the future, when she already knew the horrible catastrophe she was preparing for me. Knowing me, it would have been essential for her to divorce – using any possible means – before giving birth. She would have known the way to accomplish that with me, because at that time it still would have been possible.
10. She allowed me
to investigate
the matter of the child, to go here and there, to make myself ridiculous (as an honourable person, I looked for
certain facts,
not wanting to throw a woman out on the basis of mere suspicion). She dragged me all over the place, drove me crazy with all kinds of terrible machinations, made me travel to Szabadka, Baja, etc., She destroyed my desire

42. Ridjica

to work, my joy in living, my reputation. Until then, no one had suspected I was a morphine addict. By the end the whole region was talking of my having
gone insane.
And she did actually get me sent to the madhouse.

11. When I escaped back home she was quite embarrassed, and received me reluctantly.
That same night, there were two quiet knocks on the bedroom window.
I think the deaf pharmacist was her newest boyfriend, whom she seduced because he was engaged. That excited her.

12. On the very next day, she did everything she could to vex me. She constantly called the little child ‘my little lover’. She combed her hair the way the suspected father wears his. She insulted my family, suggested that they had stolen her money (my earnings), which I had given to my father for safekeeping.

13. The most abominable was the following: I asked the maid to tell me when she first noticed that my gait had become poor. The girl answered:
‘Only recently.’
Whereupon she [Olga] rails at me – Why am I trying to get information from the maid? I saw that she felt guilty and didn’t want me to keep on putting two and two together.
What kind of vile, ignoble woman recognizes her husband’s tabes and says nothing, but continues to torment him: to abuse him so that the problem will get more serious.

Postcard to Desiré

T O D E S I R É :

I was pained also by the woman’s ingratitude to me as a doctor. I cured her of tuberculosis. For years, she ran a fever in the afternoons. I cared for her, taught her. I treated her with IP, and when she became well, when her hitherto constantly hot body became nice and cool, soft, when her shoulders (which the apicitis had pulled down) straightened out, then – she looked elsewhere.

1
1. In the autumn of 1918 I suspected, but I knew nothing for certain. I believed her and waited for my child. (According to the textbook a morphine addict can father a child.)

1
2. When I looked at the child, I was happy as could be and I decided I would cure myself.
1
3. From 15 December, I began to suspect.
1
4. On 26 December, Olga herself told me a dream, with which she admitted her unfaithfulness. She knew what this dream meant though she always
pretended not to be interested
in Freudianism, declaring it to be foolishness. (I slowly lost the habit of observing her thoroughly; that is difficult enough for a husband anyway, and my self-respect protests against it.)
1
5. In January and February, I continued my investigation. She screamed her innocence, but only to drive me insane and encourage me to do more pointless research. The child is cross-eyed in the left eye – so I wanted to exclude the possibility of another father at all costs, and to calm myself.
1
6. It was impossible. When I calmed down, she let me know through the maid that ‘X.Y.
does not
resemble the child, he has hair as abundant
as a wig’.
1
7. Therefore I looked at X on other occasions too, and then I noticed that the head structure was the same. But I still didn’t realize O’s intention. (She wanted me to force X to
marry her
.)
1
8. For the time being she wanted to drive me crazy. She always behaved as if she were hiding something from me and wanted to poison me.
If I was at home
, she was constantly coming in and out of rooms and arranging things in her chests of drawers. When I entered the room, she would close the drawers. I would then rifle through them, only to find nothing. She knew that this searching made me
agitated, destroyed me
. When she served soup, she would fuss over my plate. Today I know she wanted me to believe she was poisoning me, and to be afraid of her and go mad. With the same end in view, she kept six or eight little empty bottles on the shelves in the kitchen.
So that I would find them
and be suspicious and upset.
1
9. The maid was trained to lower her eyes if I looked at her. Whereas even a guilty woman can calmly bear her husband’s regard
if she wants to
.
10. On the way home from relatives, she didn’t want to see X one more time. You go and take a look, said O. Be convinced once and for all that your accusation is baseless. I didn’t want to go, I wanted to keep my wits intact. Then she said that if I was going, I should get dressed properly, and she would get dressed too.
She took out the velvet dress
. With that she planted in my brain the thought that she wanted to be attractive for him, so I said:
we’ll go in
.
11. I still
doubted
, even after this, because she again cried that she was innocent. This was the most repellent,
most horrible
evil. That is how she drove me insane, by vilely exploiting my good nature, my desire to be a father, and my love.
12. She kept taking me to see my parents, knowing that my mother would convince my father to get me taken to the hospital. She clearly counted on that. At home, she pretended that withdrawal from M would not satisfy her; with that she made me irritable, sexually too; after that I became even more excitable; and after that came the insidious hiding of objects and other little tricks (with her slut of a maid). I believed
she wanted me to be cured
, and I went with her again and again to my father, like a fool.
13. I entered the hospital with the notion that I
would totally regain my health
and clear up the affair of the child afterwards. That’s when I slowly realized the following:
14. O never loved me.
15. She was an incomparably wicked, evil woman.
16. I read here that such is the typical fate of the morphine addict, becoming the husband of a slut.
17. She was pregnant by me once at most. At first she cleverly tried it out to see if I suspected. She announced that her period had not come, and I gave her quinine twice. Then she announced her period had arrived (though she knew she had not been pregnant).
18. She arranged everything for her own advantage and my ruin. That is why she never protested
substantively
about my morphine addiction.
19. In public, she was stupendous in the role of the fine aristocratic woman, one who was cheerful and temperamental than coquettish.
20. I realized everything there, during the thirty horrible sleepless nights, while my head burned like embers and I panted from constant shortness of breath.
It was horrible!
21. Then I realized I am fatally ill, and
there’s no help.

BOOK: The Diary of Geza Csath
11.38Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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