Sandor Marai - The Rebels

“You know,” he said in genuine surprise, “a skirt is not really as uncomfortable as you’d think.”

A sailor entered the room, a fat man whose stomach bulged beneath his striped sleeveless vest, over his wide blue canvas trousers, his shoes of Muscovy leather, and blocked the doorway with his girth. A pipe dangled from his lips and his waxed hair, brushed forward under his loose-fitting cap, was plastered greasily across his forehead. He was squinting. He stood there awkwardly, took the pipe out of his mouth, and waved to them to follow him, then turned off the light.

HE CLUNKED ABOUT ON THE ECHOING BOARDSin his noisy shoes and turned on the spots. Light exploded in their eyes, both from below and from the side, and behind the light a deep dense darkness bulged towards them, the impenetrable cavernous darkness of the auditorium accompanied by the funereal mothball smell of canvas sheeting. The actor went here and there, entirely at home, an engineer attending to business, barely noticing them, operating handles, checking resistors, subtly, fascinatingly, modifying the light until eventually it was all concentrated in one area of the stage, merging in a pool of heat and color, a gentle glow at the edges of which ends of ropes, canvases, lighting boards, and stage flats faded into the murk. He tugged one rope and a clutch of other ropes collapsed towards him, of which he grabbed one. Enormous colored sails turned slowly with lazy flaps while the sailor, pipe in mouth again, set about the ropes and colored sails in preparation for the coming storm. A wide terrace complete with palms and steps leading up to it descended before them, blocking their view, and some faded rose bowers followed, swirling with dust. Wait for the storm, the sailor muttered indifferently, then hurried off into the wings, setting a distant wind to screech and whinny through the bowers. A few harsh claps of thunder rang out over the howling storm. The actor solemnly stepped out from behind a dusty cactus, rubbed his hands, lit his pipe, and looked about him shaking his head.

“I don’t think this is quite right either,” he said, and waved away the Riviera scene. “Stand center stage, would you?”

The scenery swam aloft, disappearing in the heights, and the rose bowers jealously followed the sunlit landscape. Plain white walls appeared as if from nowhere. The conjurer threw his rope up towards the ceiling and the stage miraculously narrowed. Suddenly they found themselves prisoners in the cabin of a ship. Behind portholes the wind was still buzzing, but was now joined by the slap of waves. Two low lights appeared in the wall and a narrow door opened beside one of the portholes. A lamp with a faded shade dropped like a stone from above. The sailor dragged at a knot of ropes with both hands and a rhomboid ceiling lowered over the cabin. The shaded lamp came on. Then they were all working, the only sounds being the actor’s brief words of command and the wailing of the wind that Ábel now controlled. It did not take as much skill to whip up a storm as people tended to think. A single movement was enough to induct Ábel into the secret.

“Drive them on, Aeolus!” he said as he pushed a claw-footed table center stage. “You are master of the four great planetary winds.”

It was a surprisingly easy task mastering the four great planetary winds. The one-armed one rolled a barrel up against the wall. They carried sea chests, most probably containing ship biscuits and water. Aeolus whipped his servants on, their painful howling extending over the ocean.

“All hands on deck!” the actor bellowed. “Ladies first! The sea chests go round the table. Secure the portholes!”

He stopped.

“One time the Negroes leapt into the sea…,” he began. “No, I’ve already told you that.”

He kicked a rosebush left over from the previous scene through the cabin door. Loud thunder shook the air, the boards trembled under their feet. Ábel was laying the storm on mercilessly.

“That was a close one,” the actor pronounced after the latest bolt, and spat. “Take a breather, Aeolus. Relax a moment.”

There was a strange silence. The lights, the walls, the furniture, everything was in its place, unlikely yet unmistakable, so that Ábel’s entrance was a little unsteady, his steps uncertain, counterbalancing the swell of the sea. With the minimum fuss they took control of their new realm. Ernõ made a formal gesture of taking Tibor by the hand and ceremoniously leading him over to the table. The one-armed one stood on the barrel, absorbed in watching the storm with its roof-high waves through a porthole. Ábel clapped an arm round his shoulder.

“A sublime scene,” he said with awe. “One cannot help but feel one’s insignificance.”

A trapdoor opened in the floor and a tray laden with glasses rose through it, the naked arm of the actor supporting it and rising with it until his head appeared. He made a formal show of climbing through, then let the trapdoor clap shut behind him. He raised the tray high in the air and, leaning forward at a sharp angle, moved around with all the weathered skill of a ship’s waiter in a storm, his body seeming to collapse after the tray with its glasses that he eventually deposited unbroken on the table.

“The two most important things,” he gasped, “alcohol and a cool head. There are people who panic in a storm: some lose their heads, others the contents of their stomachs. We are making eight knots full speed, the temperature is falling. One good draught of brandy, gentlemen, a mouthful of ship biscuit, a bit of refrigerated meat, and we feel readier to face the following hours with equanimity. The captain is at his post and the passengers are inclined to trust him.”

The tray was piled high with ship biscuits covered with meat and flasks of water-colored brandy. The actor gave a modest smile. He sat down, tapped his pipe against the tabletop, adjusted his belt, and stuffed a great hunk of meat into his mouth.

“Creation is hungry work,” he said. He wiped the rim of the bottle with his hand and took a long draught.

“Burns your mouth!” He turned to Tibor. “A snifter for you, my lovely incognito?”

THE LOVELY INCOGNITO ADMITTED THAT AFTERthe first glass she felt like throwing up. The actor knew a cure for seasickness that you should take an hour before the storm set in. They laid the lady out across the chest, fanned her, and tried to entertain her. The cabin darkened somewhat. The cabin boy left them every five minutes to increase the roar of the four winds and to provide a weather report.

Danger draws people together. No longer sturdy and Spartan, the actor fell ravenously to eating and drinking. He was the first to wilt. They had never seen him so drunk. Ernõ, who drank cautiously, taking little sips, kept an eye on him as he wasn’t convinced the actor was genuinely drunk. The actor meanwhile pulled a barrel up to the porthole, sat down on it, and stretching his arms wide pretended to play an accordion while singing in a harsh nasal tone.

“The Negroes sang this one,” he remarked. “That was before they leapt into the water.”

The monotonous melancholy air swirled and faded in the high auditorium. The actor rose to his feet and tirelessly continuing to play on the imaginary accordion walked up and down, undergoing a curious series of meta-morphoses. He sang and played, but a few minutes later seemed to have vanished to be replaced by a fat drunk sailor sitting on the edge of the table, this time with a real accordion, his song full of the sadness of docks, harbors, and stagnant water, his face quite transformed, his eyes asquint, awkward in body, good-tempered, with a brandy-sodden joviality, somehow ponderous. He hadn’t actually done anything, merely transformed himself. They couldn’t understand what he was saying as he mixed words from English, Spanish, and other languages unknown to them, in a kind of incomprehensible macaronic, then he gave a croak and fell to praising distant skies and climes while radiating regret for years of pointless roaming.