Sandor Marai - The Rebels

“But you just continue humming and hawing. And when he claps you on the shoulder the second time you stop. ‘The reason I am here, sir, is because I have doubts.’ ‘Out with them, Ruzsák.’ ‘The course on Tacitus,’ you say. ‘What about the course on Tacitus?’ Gurka glances at the door, at the window. He clearly doesn’t understand. ‘That part, that bit about…,’ you say and produce a book from your bag. Gurka puts his glasses on, glances this way and that, not quite knowing what to do. What does the student want? But you, by then, are relaxed and modest. At your ease now you explain the matter. ‘It’s this sentence here, sir, if you’ll pardon me,’ and you open the book and point to the passage. ‘I suspect I haven’t understood it properly, sir. I had all kinds of doubt about it afterwards. I do agonize about it as I would not like to have missed the meaning of the detail.’”

Béla leaned forward, his entire face split by a vast grin.

“It’s that plusquam-perfectum, sir. I just can’t see it,” he said, beaming and rubbing his hands.

“Yes. That’s why you have returned. You tell him you don’t want to bother him at all but that you wouldn’t want to leave with this doubt gnawing at you. You wouldn’t want to find yourself on the battlefield without first having cleared up this passage of Tacitus.”

“There are these two verbal prefixes I don’t understand,” said Béla. “Just these two little ones.”

“Gurka sits you down,” continued Ernõ. “He removes his glasses and looks you over for a while. ‘You, Ruzsák?’ he says. ‘Now, when the exams are over? What am I to make of this, Ruzsák?’ ‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ you answer firmly but respectfully. ‘It’s just that I have doubts. Having studied under your tutelage, sir, for eight years…for eight years, sir…I have recognized the importance of such matters. There is Horace for example. And Cicero. If sir would be so kind…just one or two obscure passages…’”

The prompter stuck his head through the curtains.

“The place is yours,” he said. Only his bald head and brow and his puffy red nose protruded between the drapes, his body remained invisible. He had learned from watching actors at work. He turned his head right and left as if a machine were swiveling it and suddenly vanished. It was like a vision.

Music was playing. The air was thick with the sweet, exciting din of conversation, plates clattering, and a clumsy waltz rhythm. The actor started making preparations to leave. He checked his wig in a pocket mirror, licked his thumb and forefinger, and smoothed his eyebrows. He drew on his gloves slowly, with great care. The actor always put on his gloves as though they were brand new and he was trying them on for the first time: he started with the four fingers, waited a moment, then hastily, with a certain modesty, thrust his thumb into the waiting hole as if it were following its four senior brothers.

“I shall go ahead,” said the actor. “You should follow me after a little while, in ones and twos. Lajos, you bring up the rear. I will be waiting for you at the stage door.”

He put his index finger to his lips and winked.

“Be quiet. Be tactful,” he whispered.

He almost slammed the curtain behind him. They heard his high, singsong voice greeting other customers.

“You must ask Moravecz to explain the real reasons for Joseph II’s unpopularity,” Ernõ continued. “‘This fat horse here is the clergy, your majesty, this one is the aristocracy, and this starved blind nag is the people…,’ you say. This curious image of history, you feel, has not received the recognition due to it. Here, since you are not in a hurry, is the ideal opportunity for him to expound its virtues…‘In Louis the Great’s reign, sir, the stars of North, East, and South are in three different seas…Why exactly was that?’”

“I don’t understand it either,” said Tibor solemnly, slightly troubled.

“You have to be very careful about the tone of the questions,” said Ernõ. “That’s the hardest part of it. You must be respectful but firm. After all you are not demanding anything…it’s nothing more than going back into a shop where you bought something and asking one last time about the worth and quality of the goods you have purchased. Or if you were asking for operating instructions. They are obliged to give you that much. The main thing is that you are simply unable to sleep because your conscience is so troubled by that passage in Tacitus. That’s what you have to emphasize. We can rehearse tomorrow.”

“There may be other matters we can bring up,” said Béla. “Jurák could apologize to the music teacher for his out-of-tune singing. He could even ask for extra lessons, now as a late compensation. We could raise the money.”

“What I want to know is what Amadé is up to,” said Ábel.

No one knew what Amadé was cooking up, not even Lajos. Béla discreetly part-closed the drapes and they peered through the remaining gap. There they were all sitting: the actress with the director on her right, now arrived and chewing a piece of wurst, the drugstore owner on her left. The editor sat at the end of the table, waiting with bated breath for a crumb of gossip to be tossed his way. Two young officers in dress uniform were sipping champagne. The manager of the café was leaning against the buffet bar. He had a heart problem: his face looked strained, his jaundiced-looking sickly hands hanging by his sides. Why should anyone be here if they were not obliged to be? It was hard to hear themselves talk over the racket. Ábel reflected that even the childhood evenings spent in his father’s study with those three gentle buffoons were more fun.

He slowly relaxed and the acute tension to which he had been subject melted away. The shame, the confusion, the sense of shock he had felt after the gang had dispersed at noon gave way to a numb indifference. He was sitting close to Tibor and that was all that mattered. Yesterday he still knew that once he had woken up he would see him in half an hour or an hour and that he would invent some story or an item of unexpected gossip that Tibor would receive with his usual polite, drawling “Really?” but that it wouldn’t matter as he would be standing there beside him, listening to him, no one else. But as of noon today, this feeling of assurance, that he would see Tibor at the arranged times and talk to him without anything getting in the way, had vanished forever. He stared at the dirty ceiling, the crumbling walls, and was amazed. He had to bow his head for fear the others would see him crying. He felt the unsettling pain of loss, an apprehension that danger could not be avoided, the kind of thing no one could bear for long. They sat exhausted, gazing at the grimy superior world of adults, this desolate paradise.

“Intra muros,” Ábel remarked sourly.

They looked at him, puzzled. Tibor was particularly pale this evening. He sat formal and silent, his head in his hands as if at a funeral. Ábel didn’t dare ask him what the matter was. You could never be certain of anything with Tibor for he often surprised you with what he said, things so idiotic sometimes they made you blush. He might perhaps have answered, as he did last Sunday, that it was all the Vasas soccer team’s fault: they should have scored with a free kick at the end. Whenever Tibor looked thoughtful it was likely that his mind had wandered into uncharted territory. Ábel was always afraid that he’d eventually say something that lowered his stock in Ernõ’s eyes. It was only Ernõ he feared: Béla and Lajos never criticized Tibor with such severity. He was afraid Tibor would commit some faux pas or say something stupid, and that he would have to be ashamed on his friend’s behalf.