Antal Szerb - Love in a Bottle

I felt a little more at ease when she finally withdrew hers, glanced at her watch, and said, very quietly: “Shall we go?”

She was so lost in thought she even allowed me to pay for her drink. That was the start of the catastrophe.

On the way home we scarcely spoke, and then only about the simplest things. As we were crossing the Pont des Arts, she suddenly stopped. She stood looking out over the Seine towards the Île de la Cité, and hummed the tune of a popular song to herself. I remember how much that surprised me. I would never have imagined earlier that the sort of banal sentiment you find in such a song could even enter her brain, let alone that she might hum it to herself.

That evening, as usual, I read the eternally great Casanova. Of all my friends among the deceased writers, the notorious adventurer was the one I loved most — the man who managed, in just one short life, to experience the full beauty and squalor of the most beautiful of centuries. He and I had little in common. The essential characteristic of Don Juans is that they are easy to please. Casanova loved every woman his eyes fell upon with equal ardour, and every night of passion he spent was the best of his life. I, on the other hand, am a sort of anti-Don Juan. Women rarely please me, and then only in certain circumstances ordained by fate, when they address me in a certain tone of voice, at specially chosen moments — and even then not very much.

Strolling around the streets of Paris I simply never noticed women (and certainly none of them bothered to cast their nets out for me). I was like the man caught on film, the passer-by hurrying along the street, deep in thought, who sees nothing of what is around him and simply rushes through.

But that evening I thought of Ilonka in the somewhat disreputable light of a Casanova escapade. It had taken me a week to get to the point where she let me hold her hand… My God, how Casanova would have despised my tardiness! Because, in principle, I too was a believer in the life of danger. My heart beat in sympathy with Casanova’s women and the diabolical intrigues that led to such happy endings. So why then was I so comfortably at home in mundane reality?

I shall be as cunning as old Casanova, I thought. I’ll take it very slowly, one step at a time. Today she let me pay for her vermouth. Tomorrow night she’s coming with me to Montparnasse… The transition from the intellectual plane to the erotic will be imperceptible. Books are the most potent aphrodisiacs, as Paolo and Francesca were well aware, and indeed — not to press the point too far — perhaps also Abelard and Héloïse.

But what would Ilonka say to all this? Without question she liked me as a wise friend, but could she accept me in another relation? Would she want to? She was so virginal, so well brought-up. Despair took hold of me once again. But I suddenly started to recall a whole series of little incidents whose significance had somehow escaped my notice: the cigarette holder… her occasional remarks that she would always think of me whenever she read something beautiful, that sort of thing… In fact — I realised in astonishment — she was the one who had been courting me and I, the great scholarly mind, hadn’t even noticed! Oh sainted Casanova… But now I’ll show him, I thought.

The next morning I found a new Ilonka in the library. At first I thought that the alteration was in me, produced by the sudden reverse of direction in my feelings. But then I realised that the change was quite independent of my particular state. It had its own life. She was wearing a gorgeous new hat in place of the old student’s cap, and she had powdered her face. The collected manhood of two tables was gazing at her in admiration — the poets, the geriatrics, even the Chinese, and her own reading seemed altogether less focused. From time to time she smiled across at me, sweetly, without inhibition.

Her change of attitude became even more obvious over lunch. The atmosphere of Paris, which seemed not to have touched her before, had now breached all her defences. She chattered away spontaneously and happily, sprinkling Parisian expressions around her sentences — I’ve no idea where she could have picked them up. She criticised people, found fault with the meal, and made it clear she would rather have been offered something a little more interesting. I could see that the time for Casanova-style chicanery had clearly passed, and that evening we dined on Montparnasse.

That evening, in the genuinely good restaurant, the supposedly timid Ilonka revealed a surprising assertiveness. In the Czech place she hadn’t even picked up the menu. Instead, with a mixture of modesty and unworldliness, she had simply left the ordering to me. This time she scrutinised the list with great cunning, and managed to pick out a meat dish that proved totally inedible. The wine we drank was Haut Sauterne, since I had once heard that that was what you ordered if you wanted to seduce a woman. I don’t know what effect it has on women, but it made me extremely witty. Ilonka, who never betrayed the slightest trace of humour, listened to all my opinions with the greatest deference.

After dinner we went into the Viking Café bar and drank cognac. We sat on a cosy leather sofa, very close together, in the Parisian manner. Reimer was sitting at one of the nearby tables with the German maiden, and we exchanged conspiratorial smiles.

“I hope you don’t mind my saying this, but we’re just like a loving couple,” I observed.

“If it doesn’t bother you, then it certainly doesn’t me. My nine aunties aren’t going to ambush us in here.”

“Tell me, Ilonka… have you ever been in love?”

“I’m not saying. You never tell me anything.”

“Me? What should I be telling you?”

“Who you’ve been in love with, and how much — those sort of things.”

“But you’re not interested in my little life.”

“Not in the least. Only, I would just love to be able to hypnotise you and find out some of your secrets. I’d love to be able to read you like a book. Oh, Tamás, Tamás, you’re so stupid!”

I kissed her hand, with great emphasis.

“My little girl!”

Ecstatic happiness floated down on green clouds from the ceiling above us, with its collection of suspended model boats. For the moment I was indeed in love, and I gazed in adoration at this girl who had turned the compass needle of her heart in my direction. But in that instant Casanova, in his billowing black cloak and rice-powdered wig, stepped back into my consciousness.

“Poetic feelings aren’t quite enough, my young friend,” he said. “There must be action, I humbly suggest. Action.”

But no action followed. Instead it was Ilonka who proposed that we go for a walk.

“It’s only just eleven,” she added. “Let’s take a look at the banks of the Seine.”

“Splendid.”

“But we need to remember, I have to be back at the student hostel before one. Nobody is allowed in after one. The other day a girl was made to wait outside until morning.”

“Well, they’re so highly moral, these French,” I said. “The sort of depraved hussy who isn’t back by one deserves to spend the night with her boyfriend.”

I now knew what I had to do to carry out Casanova’s advice. Somehow I had to fritter away the time, in ways that she wouldn’t notice. If she wasn’t back by one she would come and sleep with me out of sheer insecurity. The flood of ideas pouring in on me made me quite dizzy.

We boarded a taxi and told the driver to take us to the Pont Neuf. After some inner struggle I resolved to kiss her. She leant her head obediently on my shoulder, but most decisively forbade the kiss.

“We mustn’t, we mustn’t.”

“Why ever not? What sort of silliness is this?”