Antal Szerb - Love in a Bottle

“I’m a good girl. No one has ever kissed me before.”

“That’s no good. Sooner or later someone will have to.”

“No, I don’t like it. What the point of it?”

“Some people say it’s very pleasant.”

“Then you should go and kiss them.”

We were now at the Pont Neuf. We got out and walked, arm snugly in arm, along the bank.

“What a beautiful night,” she remarked. “And how beautiful Notre Dame is. And how good it is it is to be walking here with you. Oh, mon ami, mon ami, mon ami … Throw that cigarette away. How can you possibly smoke at a time like this?”

“Let’s sit down, then.”

We sat on a bench on the deserted bank of the Seine. I made a fresh attempt at a kiss.

“No, no. I’ve already told you, no,” she said irritably. “Why do you want to humiliate me? You’ve treated me like a true friend up to now. You’ve always taken me seriously and talked to me sensibly. And now you want to kiss me, as if I were just any other girl, simply because it’s an evening in Paris and it’s what people do.”

I let her go, and pulled myself away from her, with dull grief in my heart.

“All right, Ilonka,” I said. “Now I shan’t kiss you until you kiss me first. And if never, well then, never. I know you only put up with my presence because I am so terribly clever and you can use me, like a work of reference. But the moment I dare to get closer to you, as one young person with another, one living being with another… Mais passons . Let’s just talk about the sonnets of Maurice Scève and the Lyon school of poets. The whole school was very highly regarded, even more so than your old one in Budapest.”

“Tamás, don’t tease me.”

Slowly, visibly struggling with herself, she leant over to me and kissed me. I could sense the tears running down her face.

And now there was no restraining the kisses, as they came one after the other, with a strange, lachrymose happiness, and went on until we were gasping for breath. They came from the other side of so much loneliness, such barren deserts and fields of ice, these kisses, that they simply froze me as they first arrived on the hearth. But then, slowly, slowly, they became real kisses, ever more magical, intimate and thrilling.

“How clever of you to come to Paris, Ilonka. And how thoughtful of the Good Lord to provide us with the banks of the Seine.”

“Oh, mon ami, how I have loved you, and how lonely you looked, behind your spectacles, with your Maurice Scève. And I was silly enough to think that you had been waiting for me all along, my prince transformed into a reference book. But you’re not lonely now, are you?”

No, I wasn’t lonely. Here was that longed-for Other, in sweet physical proximity, as far as that is possible on an embankment bench. But I still hadn’t forgotten Casanova. Just half-an-hour left, and she would be turned away from the hostel.

“At last I can tell you,” she continued. “My love for you isn’t something that began yesterday. I’ve been thinking of you for two years now.”

“What? But you’ve only known me for ten days.”

She laughed.

“Really, I should be rather cross with you. I’ve known you for two years. Once at Edit’s — but you don’t remember?”

“No. These days my memory for faces is terrible.”

“It’s true I was only a little girl in a school uniform at the time, horribly thin, and my hair was quite different. And you never even noticed me. All you could think about was Edit. But I never took my eyes off you all evening. And I’ve loved you ever since.”

“Ilonka! Is this possible? That someone could have loved me for two whole years, hopelessly, across such a distance, and then suddenly they just walk into my life? This is so like Ibsen’s Master Builder I really can’t believe it. And you didn’t even recognise me in the library.”

“Of course I recognised you, but I was so embarrassed I was too afraid to speak. I was thinking I would just go home and never try to see you again.”

“But tell me… then why didn’t you say anything about this before? Why didn’t you give me any hint or news of yourself, for two whole years?”

“You were in Paris, and you know what a well-brought-up girl I am. Besides, if you really want to know, I did.”

“When?”

“Tell me, Tamás, did you ever get that old-fashioned tie pin I sent for your name day?”

“So that was you?”

“Yes, me. And the Mickey Mouse?”

“I did. Thank you very much. But what made you choose an autumn crocus?”

“Well, I must say, it’s not very nice of you not to understand.”

“The crocus?”

“Yes, exactly. It was the only thing you said to me, that time at Edit’s. That all you knew about the autumn crocus was that that was what it was. So I sent you one. How could you forget such a thing?”

“Sensational. Now all you have left to explain is the bus ticket.”

“Oh, yes. What happened was, one day I went for a walk, all on my own, at H vösvölgy. I was terribly sad, and I thought about you the whole time. When I got home I felt I really had to send you something from the trip, but the only thing I had brought back was the bus ticket.”

“Ilonka, I am so dreadfully ashamed of myself. And I haven’t given you a thought these past two years. In fact, for the last two years I haven’t thought about anyone. Even now I find it difficult to think of anyone but myself. Tell me, will I ever be able to make up for my shortcomings? I see myself as a sort of water man.”

“What sort of water man?”

“The one they pulled out of the lake at Fert . He had grown membranes between his fingers and forgotten how to speak. His name was Istók Hany.”

“You don’t have to say anything. And you’ve nothing to make up for. Those two years were wonderful for me. I was never alone, and I loved you the way adolescent girls do. And now I am almost grown up, and a university student, I can travel on my own, and I’ve come to Paris to be with you. I’m so glad you’ve been alone for these past two years, and I haven’t had to chase anyone else away. Because if you had been with someone, you can’t imagine the wicked schemes I would have been capable of… But Tamás, what’s the matter? That’s the third time you’ve looked at your watch. My God, I’m not late, am I?”

“Not just yet, Ilonka.”

“What’s the time?”

“Just enough for you to get there in a taxi. It’s ten to one.”

What can I say? I’m no Casanova. Perhaps if I’d been a few years younger and less broken-down, I would have taken the gamble… but principally, of course… if she hadn’t confessed her feelings. But once she had? It would take more than a little bit of love and a miniscule amount of audacity. The whole thing had become too much for me.

I’m a tired, cold, sardonic, bookish sort of chap, I felt. It was no good. I just wasn’t up to the occasion. Like János Arany when summoned by the maiden, I answered: “It’s too late. I’m going home.”

Once in the taxi we exchanged not a word, we just sat there willing the driver to get us to the hostel. That is, I did. I’ve no idea what she was thinking.

The next day she didn’t come to the library. Only on the one after, and then she addressed me only in the polite plural. Over coffee I asked her:

“Do tell me, Ilonka. What’s the matter?”

“With me? Nothing at all. I been giving a lot of thought to what you said the other day about the origins of the Provençal lyric. If Gaston Paris is right, then the line of the true Latin spirit would be unbroken. But that’s far too elegant to be true… I must take a closer look at Vossler.”