Sandor Marai - The Rebels

“We graduated yesterday, Mr. Havas,” Tibor exclaimed. “Please understand. We are no longer schoolboys. That which was, is in the past. Please think it over…We will recover the money in no time…Amadé was your friend too.”

“Actors are such peculiar people,” said Havas pleasantly, considering the matter. “They come, they go. People like me are like rocks, we sit firm. That man seemed to have been born with wings. No ties bind him. But he really should have taken his leave of the gentlemen…”

The gale shook the window.

“It’s starting,” he said calmly. “Don’t the young gentlemen understand? Amazing. A detective was asking after him in the morning.”

He made a movement with his hand.

“He was advised, in strictest confidence, to leave the town immediately. Or be kicked out.”

He leaned on the table.

“Someone had made a complaint against him. It’s an ugly business, gentlemen. The complaint was that his behavior regarding a certain circle was drawing attention to him. He suspected his fellow actors. But the point was that a complaint had been lodged. That’s a very unpleasant business, gentlemen.”

Ábel held on to the table. The question he asked was so quiet they could hardly hear him.

“What was the complaint?”

“Allegedly, the corruption of certain young people. There are such folk. It’s a bad business. Bad for the young people’s future too. It’s a small town.”

“But it isn’t true,” said Tibor in a cracked voice.

The pawnbroker nodded.

“I know, I know. Allegedly there are witnesses. It’s a small town and a whisper quickly spreads, gentlemen. People in small towns have time for such things. Scandals blow up quickly. It is hard to imagine what might happen if witnesses actually appeared.”

“Witnesses to what, Mr. Havas?” asked Ábel. “What did they witness?”

“The corruption. Be so good as to think it over. The actor, they say, was himself corrupt to the core. I take a different view. The charge is that he corrupted young boys. They say he organized orgies. The complaint has it that he dragged a lot of boys off to the theater, boys from good families, and set up an orgy there.”

“That’s not true,” screamed Tibor.

“That’s what the complaint alleges,” the pawnbroker went on unrelentingly. “The young gentlemen would no doubt know better. There must be something in it, though, or he wouldn’t have left in such a hurry. He shot off as if pursued by the four winds, gentlemen. There is only ever destruction in the wake of such a man. According to the complaint one witness saw, strange to say, the actor kissing the son of a prominent family.”

Ábel stepped up to him.

“It was you in the box, Havas. You…you were watching us. You arranged it all. You put the actor up to it…O God!” He swayed. His lips were white. “What do you want?…Tibor, ask him!…What’s going on here?…Let’s go!”

“Unfortunately the rain has started,” said Havas. “Perhaps the young gentlemen may care to sit the storm out here.”

HE WATCHED THE STORM. THUNDER SHOOK THEwindow and the rain swept in waves over the pavement. He gently wagged his head.

“The young gentlemen know nothing about life,” he said in a quiet, even voice. “We are very slow to learn anything. I myself was ignorant for a long time. Please be so good as to hear me out. It’s pouring out there and you have nothing better to do. I come from a humble family with no pretensions, but perhaps I may help to enlighten the young gentlemen. Things are not so simple as people imagine. I was forty before I learned anything. It is impossible to say one man is like this, another like that. Be so good as to consider that. I once had a family, a wife, and a daughter: I know life. Nobody can know what awaits him the next morning.”

He was breathing heavily, asthmatically.

“I eat heartily and I drink heartily, gentlemen, but I have a heart and no one can say I haven’t one. I understand the delicate situation in which the young gentlemen find themselves very well. I will do what I can to help. Given certain conditions, if the young gentlemen can produce the appropriate amount by, say, tomorrow night, the original loan and the interest owing, I am prepared to return the items previously pawned. No one can force me to do that of course, but Havas says to himself: these are young gentlemen of good breeding, or rather, excuse me, children. Extraordinary children. Help them if you can. Havas is listening to his foolish heart again. Deep down he has qualities of which the world knows nothing.”

“Tomorrow night?” queried Tibor. “It’ll be there, Mr. Havas. One way or the other you’ll have the money by tomorrow night. But for heaven’s sake, what are you talking about here? What do you mean Amadé corrupted us? What do you mean that we were observed? It was only a game, Mr. Havas. There was nothing I could do about it. There was nothing I could do about anything.”

He began to tremble.

“For God’s sake, Mr. Havas. What kind of complaint? What are they saying? What has happened?”

“I beg the young gentleman not to ask me questions I cannot answer. Please be kind enough to agree that I should give you explanations for such matters as I deem right. What I consider right is that I inform the young gentlemen of the situation in which they find themselves. What the actor did? Are the young gentlemen to blame? I cannot answer questions like that. And even if all happened as the complaint has it, it is still an open question for me whether they were actually guilty or not.”

They could no longer see his face. Only his voice emerged out of the murk, grave, stumbling with a dull resonance, sometimes like the warning growl of some animal.

“You never know how the devil gets into a man. Allow me to furnish you with an example. The young gentlemen will keep quiet. They will have every reason for keeping quiet. And I am glad to offer them this example because it is important that they should understand something of life. As I said before, it is not so simple. Take a man. Let us say he is married, with a daughter. He goes about his work. He has a thriving pawnbroker’s business in some town, but the devil gets into him, he eats a lot, drinks a lot, and chases every skirt he sees. He needs money and it is as if the devil himself were guiding his hand, for everything succeeds, whatever he touches turns to gold, so much so that he grows overconfident. He travels to Lemberg, ready to supply the regiment with soap, when, there in Lemberg, he makes a mistake. It is all too possible, alas, to make mistakes in the course of business. The devil gets into him. Four months. He sleeps on the prison mattress for four months, his diet reduced to that fit only for an invalid. Two rolls and two pints of milk a day. This for a man who needs meat, who must have his meat. He is a number, number 137. He sits, he sleeps in a cell for four months, debating with the devil. He doesn’t understand. Kindly consider that the bucket that is put aside for such purposes as are necessary is there in the cell with him. However much milk he drinks he longs for a little slice of bacon. So he lies there and dreams and doesn’t understand why he should have to be number 137 in Lemberg, and the thought tortures him, as he is a big man with big appetites. He is a widower. His daughter is running the business and he writes to her: My dear daughter, pressing business has unexpectedly delayed me here, look after yourself, Mein gutes Kind, write to me care of Poste Restante, Lemberg, Central Post Office, 137. Four months. Such things happen.”

He was struggling for breath. He relit his cigar.

“As I understand it the young gentlemen are not yet acquainted with the lives of adult men. So a little bird tells me. Never mind. I must stress that the man we are talking about is a big man with big appetites. Give him a decent meal and a nip of brandy and he can’t pass a skirt without chasing after it. He spends four months practically in cramp. I once saw a hunting dog out in the yard. It was in a crate that had been misdirected so the dog had arrived a day late, but it never once messed the crate where it slept, if I may so put it, it would rather suffer cramps, and that was how it arrived. The doctor had to lift it from the box and give it a dose of salts. Now imagine a human being. At long last he goes out into the street, it’s the end of October, afternoon, he is a little unsteady on his feet, he waves a carriage down and says, take me to the best brothel, the nearest brothel, and be quick about it. The rain is falling. He takes his hat off and sits like that in the open carriage, his face up to the rain, wishing for more rain, heavier rain, let it pour, he thinks, his tongue licking at the rain, never having realized before just how good rain tasted. The carriage rolls along the cobbles, a woman has stopped at the side of the road, she holds an umbrella, she wears brown shoes and black stockings, in four months hers is the first female face he has looked on, the woman laughs and shouts out: Hey, meshugener. Do the young gentlemen find this difficult to understand? He is taken to a high-quality house. There are palms in the salon. Yes, madame, he says, one, two, whatever you have available; the ladies only arrive in the evening, will a brunette do? The woman is indeed brunette, she has gold teeth and a mole at the side of her nose, but she’s quite pretty. He doesn’t even see her. He takes his coat off and sees that prison leaves a man with a certain smell on his skin. On the mirror is written Happy New Year, in gold.