Sandor Marai - The Rebels

They never mentioned The Peculiar in front of the actor. He had had to climb through the window as they could not have met openly in public. They couldn’t stroll down the street with him in public either. To have been seen walking with the actor would immediately have brought the wrath of teachers and relatives down on them. The actor was aware of this and sensitively adapted himself to the demands of the situation, lurking with them in a befitting manner.

He was equally nice to them all. He delivered his humorous anecdotes with a serious expression and furrowed brows. Listening to the actor you could come away with the impression that life consisted of a series of extraordinary events that began tragically but inevitably ended up as comedy. “The little blackies,” the actor would say. Once he talked of how “the little tower thingamabob at Pisa” didn’t in fact lean as much as people said it did. Everything was addressed in baby talk: in his mouth, which was forever chewing on a dumpling, the mighty universe itself became “our little cosmikins.” You just had to get used to it.

As you also had to get used to the idea that he wanted to spend his time chatting to them in the first place when it was impossible to work out his game or to discover what made him tick. He’d sit on a chair in the center of the room in his checkered suit, his chin shaved to a brilliant high gloss, his wig stuck to his scalp as though fixed there by resin, his lilac handkerchief billowing from his cigar pocket, his legs crossed with lacquered shoes glimmering on his feet and his bright, slightly myopic eyes running all over them like some tiny insect while he discoursed on the affairs of the world in a thin frail voice. Clearly, it was only distant affairs that interested him.

One day Ábel said: “Watch him. Whenever he says something particularly good he stares straight ahead with a sad look on his face.”

At such times every feature of the pale-blue shaven face relaxed and drooped; his nose seemed to lengthen in melancholy fashion, his thick fleshy lips pouted, and his eyes disappeared under half-closed lids. His nimble, plump white fingers flopped exhausted into his lap. He’d sit there, alone, always precisely at the center of the room. If there happened to be a table there he pushed it aside, drew up a chair, and settled on it, deliberately, exactly in the middle.

You also had to get used to his various fragrances. You had to get used to his constantly chewing licorice. Sometimes, on particularly melancholy days, his scent was quite nauseating. Normally he used a cinnamon essence, but when he felt very low he would splash the stuff on wildly, mixing musk, lilac, chypre, and rosewater, and walk round as if in a trance with clouds of perfume billowing about him, every so often raising his specially perfumed necktie to his nose to take a deep sniff.

There was a curious inner suppleness about his large, ponderous, and melancholy body. When he stood up he would give a little spin as though performing a pirouette. When he gave a bow he stood on tiptoe, one hand to his lips, his arm carving a wide arc before being allowed grandly to drop. As soon as he’d done so he would add: “This is how the strolling players would do it.” And his eyes would be sad as if this were a fact that simply could not be helped.

He explained each and every movement he made. He could talk for hours about why he did this or that or what he did not like. “I loathe it,” he’d shudder. And “I adore it!” He was not much given to the middle way. But when he found himself making too frequent use of the two expressions, he would hesitate and exclaim: “How crude this all is! Quite hysterical, don’t you think? I loathe! I adore! Only women and comedy actors talk like this.”

He had a particularly low opinion of women and comedy actors. He would employ the same disparaging collective tone for them both. Every time he mentioned his fellow professionals his face twisted with fury and pain. He would weep and complain when talking about the rehearsals that took up his mornings. But in the midst of his griping, suddenly it was as if he had given himself a slap: he’d stand up, shrug, and declare: “So what? When it comes down to it I am just a strolling player.”

But his manner suggested that it was only when it came down to it really, in the very last analysis, that he was a mere strolling player.

A couple of weeks after he had made their acquaintance he invited them to his apartment.

The actor lived in a sublet, on the second floor of a tenement block in a wide side street, his windows opening onto a big, dirty courtyard. All the furniture in his room was pressed up against the wall thereby increasing the illusion of spaciousness. A broad carpet covered the floor in the middle and the entrance hall between the two windows offered the visitor his own reflection in a tall standing mirror.

A widow rented the room out, a young military widow who was struggling to bring up her child in the demanding conditions of the time. When the mother went out the actor would give her little rickets-stricken girl ballet lessons, teaching her the elements.

“There are people,” he said, “who look to buy freak children, children whose bodies, like those of animals, are partly covered in fur. Children with two heads. I knew someone like that. He had heard of a little girl who was half covered in fur whose mother was unwilling to sell her, and of a boy with three hands. He kept a record of them. Occasionally he would get on a train and visit them, observe their development, and correspond with the parents. Then he’d sell them on to a freak show. He made a fortune.”

The gang felt an undeniable excitement when they called to see him. They wouldn’t have been surprised to find a colony of seals ranged round his bed when they entered. He received them in a black suit with a flower in his buttonhole. He greeted them with the utmost courtesy and showed them to their seats with a worldly grandeur, offering one the bed, one the chair by the basin, one the windowsill. He was an aristocrat arranging a soirée. He himself, as was his wont, drew a chair into the middle of the room and flashed smiles at them from there, making flattering inquiries about each of them.

They had to admit the actor knew how to entertain.

He offered them nothing else, but from the first to the last moment of their visit he was capable of infusing the occasion with the air of a formal reception. He chattered of distant events, dismissing all objections with a forbearing smile. He praised Tibor’s deportment, Ábel’s observant eyes, and Ernõ’s expertise. In what particular field of endeavor Ernõ was supposed to be expert he did not specify. He presented Béla with a perfumed necktie.

The one-armed one was enraptured by this and walked around the room with a complacent smile. The actor, whom he had introduced to them, was a roaring success that afternoon. The gang relaxed. By the time the visit had ended they had established an atmosphere almost as free of tension as if they had been by themselves.

They had to wait till dusk so that they could slip away without being noticed. They took their leave one by one, Ábel being the last to go. The actor escorted his guests to the front door and bowed deeply. Having been left alone with Ábel he went over to the window and paid no attention to him. Ábel could see him only in profile. Line by line the mask dropped from the actor’s face. First the smile, then the tense attention, the nearsighted helpless look, and the droop of the lips. He stood in silence watching the increasingly dark street, his fingers drumming on the glass.

Ábel didn’t move. He was mesmerized by the change in the actor. He waited for him to speak. It was as if he was utterly exhausted. It was some time before he sluggishly turned his head and addressed him in a tired voice.