Sandor Marai - The Rebels

“The noble lady,” he declared with satisfaction, “is as well as can be expected in the circumstances. There was a decided improvement in her condition tonight. Sometime during the afternoon she had appeared to weaken to the point that at about five o’clock young Mr. Prockauer called me over to the house of the honorable gentleman, me being his fellow soldier at the front, so that I should be nearby in case I could be of use. I should mention that young Mr. Prockauer had been tending his sick mother with remarkable selflessness the whole day, literally not shifting from her bedside, watching over her. By the afternoon things had proceeded so far that her heart had almost stopped. There was a moment when Mr. Prockauer came to me in the next room with his finger to his lips indicating that the unhappy event was at hand. But a fortunate turn in the evening suddenly rendered the lady back to health.”

He hesitated. “Praise be to God,” he added. He put the lantern down beside him on the ground and leaned on the stick with both hands.

“It is a fine night, though walking is difficult for me nowadays, alas. But young Mr. Prockauer’s request was so heartfelt I couldn’t refuse him. He told me to take a cab at his expense, but I chose to come on foot as walking is more appropriate to my humble station. The disciples went on foot. So the message is a little late in arriving but a few minutes is as nothing in eternity.”

“What message, Mr. Zakarka?” asked Tibor, trembling. “Do tell us.”

“Of course,” he replied slowly, like a machine that once started could not be stopped by any human intervention. “There has been a wondrous turn of events. The hour of cleansing is nigh. Especially for the young gentlemen. My benefactor, the colonel, has come home.”

“The colonel?” asked Tibor, gasping for air. “What colonel? You mean my father?”

The cobbler kept nodding, deep in thought, as though he hadn’t heard the question.

“God has been merciful to me,” he declared with satisfaction. “When the colonel entered the room in full battle order, escorted by his batman, and saw me sitting there counting my rosary beads, he was good enough to address a few words to me. What are you doing here, you old hangman? he asked with obvious hostility. He was kind enough to address these words to me. The colonel was referring to my cleansing. The young gentlemen should understand that as far as the colonel is concerned it is an act of considerable grace on his part to engage people like me in conversation at all. Having got so far it is almost a matter of indifference what he actually says. The joy of seeing him again was enough to pull the noble lady back from death’s door. I had the opportunity of overhearing the exchange between them. After the first words of warm greeting the noble lady was quick to ask a question of the noble colonel. Where have you left your gold wristwatch? she asked him. The noble colonel gave a lengthy reply. I do not think it fit that I should apprise the young gentlemen, particularly young Master Tibor, of the full details of his answer. Young Master Lajos immediately came out to me with the request that I should seek out the young gentlemen and tell them the good news. He made me swear that I should mention the matter of the saddle to young Master Tibor.”

Tibor started to laugh, waved his arms in the air, and took a few steps.

“My father is home,” he cried. “Ábel! My father is home.” He stopped and wiped his brow. “It’s the end, Ábel. The end, you hear.”

The cobbler looked around attentively.

“My son Ernõ,” he said in a flat voice. “He must be in there with the teachers, I suppose.”

Béla pointed upstairs. Candlelight filtered through the window. Tibor turned to the cobbler.

“Your son, Ernõ, is a traitor,” he said quietly. “Look after him well. You know the fate of traitors?”

“Indeed I do,” said the cobbler and nodded. “A bullet.”

“THE SADDLE,” CRIED BÉLA. “THE GLOBE! LET’Stake what we can!”

Dawn was very faintly breaking in the valley. The cobbler raised his lantern and walked steadily into the house. He went up the stairs as though they were familiar to him. The stairs groaned and creaked beneath him. He went straight to the door, leaned his big shepherd’s crook against the wall, carefully put down the lantern on the threshold, and opened the door. The cobbler’s son sat at the table, his head on his arm. He was wearing a yellow frock coat as he lay over the table, the flame-red wig the actor had given him on his head. The cobbler stood calmly for a second, then, just as calmly, hobbled across the room, bent down, picked the revolver off the floor, examined it carefully, and threw it on the table. He lifted the body with surprising ease, laid it horizontally in his arms, and bent over the face with a smile of apology and whispered confidentially:

“Be so gracious as to look at him. You see? He is pretending.”

He looked at the face and shook his head.

“He was just like this as a child. He always loved comedy.”

He took him over to the bed, laid him down, and closed his eyes with his fingers, smiling playfully as though he didn’t want to ruin a good joke. A scream issued from Ábel’s mouth. The cobbler hobbled over to him, put his hand over his mouth, and pressed the hysterically shaking body down on a chair with irresistible strength, whispering:

“Let’s not wake him up. Please be so good as to pick up the saddle. It would be best if we returned to town before dawn.”

He picked up the saddle himself and threw it over Tibor’s shoulders. He looked around and passed the globe to Béla. His stick and his lantern he handed to Ábel and whispered to him in gently cajoling tones: “If you would be so kind as to go ahead. The light is already beginning to break but the road is full of ruts.”

He lifted the body in his arms and slowly descended the stairs. The landlord and the servants were standing yellow-faced in the glow of the gate. They drew back when the cobbler appeared with the body in his arms. He frowned at them disapprovingly.

“Psst!” he whispered and gave a wink. “Out of my way.”

He crossed the yard undisturbed. Tibor followed him with the saddle across his shoulder. Béla’s arms were full of the globe, and Ábel stumbled at the back with his lantern and the shepherd’s crook that was twice as tall as he was. The cobbler pressed on with the body in his powerful hands, firmly hobbling, so fast that they struggled to keep up with him. Béla’s shivering and crying gave way to loud sobs. At the end of the garden the road turned and from there they could see the lit windows of the bar of The Peculiar, and heard the laughter and singing drifting towards them in the cold silence. Ábel recognized Kikinday’s voice. The road was steep and Ábel ran beside the cobbler, lighting the way. The light was growing brighter with every passing second. Down in the valley glimmered the town with its towers and roofs. They stopped for a second on a bend of the slope. The cobbler was quietly talking to himself. They heard him though their teeth were chattering. He was leaning over the face whose wire wig was hanging strangely independently of the skull, talking so quietly they couldn’t make out what he was saying. Then he set off again and hastened down the valley, the town becoming clearer with each step, and so they dropped as through a trapdoor out of the panoramic landscape, into a street, the cobbler’s feet tapping unevenly on the paving stones. And that was how they proceeded down all the streets, the only noise the knocking of the cobbler’s shoes and Béla’s regular sobbing.

Sándor Márai was born in Kassa, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1900,and died in San Diego, California, in 1989.He rose to fame as one of the leading literary novelists in Hungary in the 1930s. Profoundly antifascist, he survived the war, but persecution by the Communists drove him from the country in 1948, first to Italy, then to the United States. His novel Embers was published for the first time in English in 2001.