Sandor Marai - The Rebels

“As concerns my son, Ernõ,” he began, tucking his hands under his leather apron, “the young gentlemen were kind enough to accept him into their company, for which he will owe them an eternal debt of gratitude, a debt that will linger long after the young gentlemen have gone. By any human estimation my son Ernõ, with his stunted body and inherited diseases, is likely to outlive the young gentlemen who treated him with such kindness, and who have proved more amenable than my unfortunate son to following the examples of their heroic gentlemen fathers. It goes to show that there’s a point even to illness and deformation. The young gentlemen are going where all are equal in the eyes of death, but Ernõ is staying here. He will become a gentleman since the hour of trial will pass from the face of the earth, and those who remain will be the recipients of God’s special favor. It is my intention to remain alive long enough to see that hour.”

Having announced this he gave an easy courteous bow, an almost apologetic bow as if there was nothing he could do about any of this. Ábel looked at the crucifix. The cobbler followed his gaze with a stern expression.

“The young gentlemen were kind to my son. Especially the son of the much respected Mr. Prockauer. I must not forget this. Young Master Prockauer, though not personally respectable, enjoys such an elevated position in the world owing to the very high respect in which his honorable father is held, that his friendship is an honor of which my son will be forever sensible. Ernõ is aware how much he owes to the gentleman. It may be because of his natural taciturnity that he has not spoken of his gratefulness to me, though, naturally, my poor understanding cannot gauge the deeper meaning of what gentlemen say. But what the waking will not say, the sleeping will occasionally utter. My son has often addressed young Master Prockauer by his first name when asleep.”

“Tibor?” asked Ábel. His throat was dry.

The cobbler stepped into a chamber of the cellar that was hidden by a curtain. “I slept here at his feet,” he said and waved in the direction of a box bed with drawers under it. “I took to the floor, which is harder, and gave up the bed to my son so he should get used to the gentlemen’s style of doing things. That’s where I heard, more than once, my son shout out the first name of young Master Prockauer. A person only calls to someone else in his sleep when he is suffering. I have no way of telling what caused my son to suffer in his sleep so that he should cry out the young gentleman’s name.”

He allowed the curtain to fall as if covering up some shameful sight. So this is where Ernõ lives, thought Ábel. He had never dared imagine where Ernõ slept, what he ate, or what they talked about at home. He had visited the workshop often enough recently, but always when Ernõ was away, and the cobbler had never shown him the room where he and his son lived. But this was where Ernõ slept with his father. His mother probably had her own bed in the place.

“Perhaps it was out of gratefulness that my son shouted out Master Prockauer’s first name,” said the cobbler. “The young gentleman had long honored my son with his company. Even in the lower years at school he allowed my son to take home books belonging to his father, the colonel. And later, when the young gentleman was, with perfectly excusable carelessness, neglecting his studies, the colonel’s boy bestowed on my son the distinction of allowing him to be of help to him. The good graces of gentlemen are indeed inscrutable. It was thanks to the offices of the good colonel that I was permitted to take part in that great cleansing at the front.”

“In what?” Ábel leaned forward. The cobbler straightened. “The cleansing. It is not the proper time to speak of everything just yet. The only man capable of being cleansed is he who has undergone humiliations. The good colonel, whose son showered such favors on my son, made it possible for me to be cleansed, when he chose me in the absence of his official aide. I had three opportunities to be cleansed.”

He extended his hands before him.

“For one who gives life, all methods are equally suitable when employing an aide for the taking of life. Be so kind as to consider all we have to thank the noble gentlemen of the Prockauer family for. My son not only had the privilege of educating a high-ranking officer’s son, and, in due course, to appear in the company of gentlemen of which he would become one even while wearing his castoffs, but I, his father, am in the colonel’s debt for having been allowed to participate in the great cleansing appointed by the Lord, in a triple cleansing. With these two hands. Is the young gentleman unaware of this?”

“You, Mr. Zakarka?” asked Ábel and stood up. He wasn’t shocked but he was filled with wonder.

“I had three opportunities. Didn’t my son Ernõ mention these to the young gentlemen? Perhaps he didn’t want to brag about his father’s cleansing, and if so, he did right, because it is proper that the lowly should retain his modesty, even when, out of their goodness, gentlemen permit him to join them. I had three opportunities of being cleansed. Be so gracious as to be informed that the war which the Lord in his goodness allowed to happen so that we might see our sins, offers us mortals few opportunities for cleansing. Aiming a gun and, at a certain distance, bringing down a man is not the same as snuffing out a life with our bare hands, and I do mean precisely that. It is different closing one’s hands about a person’s neck and breaking his vertebra, different from, say, using a sharp implement and wounding a fellow human being, and different again from bombarding someone at a distance with the assistance of certain explosive materials. Cleansing can only occur when a man is directly in touch with death. And, what was more, all three were gentlemen.”

“Who were they?” the boy asked.

They were standing eye to eye. The cobbler leaned closer.

“Czech officers. Traitors from the motherland’s point of view. It was a peculiar act of grace on the colonel’s part, an act for which I will remain eternally grateful to him that he entrusted me with officers, not common people. As I have said, my family stands in especial debt to the Prockauers. I hear the condition of the noble lady has deteriorated.”

“When did you hear?” asked Ábel overeagerly.

He immediately regretted asking the question. The cobbler’s eyes roved round the room then suddenly found and buried themselves in his own, the feeling hot and sharp. It was like looking into dazzling light. He closed his eyes. The condition of Tibor’s mother had been giving cause for concern for several days. It was a strange feeling, this anxiety. They didn’t talk about it. The colonel’s wife had been bed-bound for three years: her condition changed but she didn’t rise from her bed. Her elder son, who had returned a few months previously as an ensign, having lost an arm at the front, stubbornly kept repeating that she was perfectly capable of getting up and simply didn’t want to. He told people that once the boys were in bed at night she would rise from her sickbed and walk about in the apartment. If there was indeed a change in the condition of Tibor’s mother then something had to be done quickly for the colonel might appear any day. He didn’t dare look at the cobbler who stood directly in front of him and who seemed to have grown somewhat in the twilight. Ábel knew he was the same height as the cobbler but felt as though he were being forced to look up at him. The light in the cobbler’s eyes slowly went out. They both looked down.

“It’s nothing to do with me,” said the cobbler. “I humbly beseech the young gentleman not to mention the matter in front of Master Tibor. The elder son of Colonel Prockauer was here earlier, also seeking my son Ernõ. He mentioned it in passing.”