Antal Szerb - Love in a Bottle

She left Paris soon afterwards. And nothing came of the whole affair.

1934

SIR LANCELOT, the knight whom blame could never touch, was visiting Chatelmerveil, the castle of Klingsor the magician. They had dined, the host had brought out his finest wines in honour of his distinguished guest, and the two were sitting in the middle of the cavernous Great Hall enjoying a quiet tipple.

“I’m not just saying this out of politeness,” said Lancelot, “but I don’t remember when I last had such a magnificent wine.”

“Home produce,” the magician replied modestly. “It’s a shame so little of it ever gets drunk. Truly, my dear boy, you can’t imagine what a solitary life I lead. No one comes here for years on end. I really do live like a hermit.”

“Well, you can hardly be surprised — as I keep telling you — if you practise the black arts. No gentleman dares set foot in the place.”

“My magical powers, if you please! I gave up that other tedious business long ago. There’s not the least bit of truth in the things they say about me. Believe me, I always acted with the best intentions. For example, when I spirited Orilus’ bride away, and changed Meliacans into a tortoise when he was about to go off to the Holy Land — and all those tales.”

Lancelot was perfectly ready to agree with him. As the evening progressed Klingsor steadily threw off his mood of weary apathy and become ever more congenial. His deep-sunk eyes twinkled with shrewdness and his words sparkled with an old man’s wisdom.

“You’re a good fellow, my dear Klingsor, I’ve always said,” remarked Lancelot. And he gave the magician a hug.

Beside himself with happiness, Klingsor sent for an even better wine, one he never offered to anyone, and as he poured it into the goblets his hand trembled with emotion. It had a glorious colour. Lancelot rose, his face became solemn — transfigured, even — as he declared:

“Klingsor, the time has come… I raise this cup to my noble lady, Queen Guinevere!”

He downed the entire contents, and stood staring straight ahead for what seemed ages. The magician knew this look. He knew that the moment had come when the amorous knight would either burst into tears and pour his heart out, or seize him by the beard. To pre-empt the latter, and struggling manfully to fight back the dry cough that seemed to be troubling his throat, he asked in a tone of suitable reverence:

“Ah, so the peerless Guinevere is your lady? Perhaps you are on an errand for her right now?”

He knew perfectly well that Guinevere was Lancelot’s lady. In those days discretion had not yet been invented, and the most famous loves were peddled by minstrels from country to country. Besides he cared not a whit whether it was Guinevere or Viviane — he no longer had any feeling for women himself.

A fine, unworldly smile played over Lancelot’s lips, straining to soar heavenwards, as he replied:

“For these last seven years all my journeying has been in her service. You must surely have heard of some of my doings. True, people love to exaggerate these stories. Right now I’m on my way to slay a dragon. A few days ago, on St Michael’s Eve, it flew into the Queen’s treasury and stole a shoe, one of the pair she was given by her husband, the illustrious Arthur, when he returned from his expedition to Ireland. Some of these dragons are utterly shameless. The Queen has charged me, as her most loyal knight, to recover it. She really wouldn’t be happy to see it in anyone else’s hand, as I’m sure you will understand.”

“So great a love… you must be very happy,” Klingsor observed wistfully.

Lancelot was furious.

“Me? Happy? I drag my anguish about with me wherever I go. Sometimes I just lie on the ground and howl. I spend two thirds of my days in active misery, and the other third wondering how I can ever bear it.”

“Well, then… I can only assume that the Queen — please don’t mind my saying this — doesn’t love you.”

Lancelot leapt to his feet and clapped his hand on his sword.

“What are you thinking, you old villain, you trader of broken-down horses? How could Queen Guinevere possibly love me when she is King Arthur’s wife? She is the most saintly of all the saintly women whose lives have been a reproach to the base nature of our mother Eve.”

The magician was about to make a little conciliatory speech, but the long-repressed cough finally erupted. His eyes nearly popped out, and he was on the point of falling out of his chair. Lancelot, fearing he might injure himself, rushed to his aid, pummelled him on the back and tried to comfort him.

“You see, you see,” he said. “It seems those scrapes you kept getting into with the jewel of your manhood — before you lost it — clearly weren’t enough for you. Take care you don’t make any more trouble with your tongue, or you’ll end up biting yourself.”

The magician recovered soon after. He led Lancelot to his bedchamber and wished him a restful night. At the word “restful” Lancelot heaved a great sigh. Then he uttered his usual fervent prayer to the heavens to watch over Queen Guinevere, and lay down.

Klingsor was suffering from chronic insomnia at the time. He picked up one of his lighter books of Arabian magic to banish the tedium of the night. But he found little to interest him in what he was reading. Whenever his thoughts turned to Lancelot’s fate his eyes filled with tears. Finally he broke down and sobbed. The old magician was a thoroughly good-hearted man — von Eschenbach, like everyone else in the Middle Ages, was quite wrong about him. He had abducted Orilus’ bride simply because he knew exactly what sort of ruffian the fellow was. A man who won his lady’s hand after his days of knightly battles were over would simply work off his lingering war-like impulses on his wife. He would beat her twice a day, after breakfast and luncheon, and not stop at breaking her wrist. And as for the Meliacans business, he only changed the knight into a tortoise because he knew that if he went to the Holy Land his bride would deceive him with a Jewish stocking merchant.

His heart bled for Lancelot. It seemed inconceivable to him that anyone should suffer so much for love. He too, in his youth, had been something of a ladies’ man. But ever since one grim husband had taken his revenge on him in a manner so cruel that even today one cannot write about it without blushing, he had forgotten what love was, and he felt decidedly the better for it.

He spent a long time wondering whether or not he should help his friend. He knew the world would misconstrue whatever he did, and it could all end up with Lancelot seizing him by the beard yet again. But that wasn’t enough to stop him. His feelings of pity were far too strong.

He rummaged through his instruments, looking for his magic pincers and the blue spectacles that allowed him to see spirits. Then he took off his shoes and crept into Lancelot’s room.

A small candle was burning in the darkness. With the aid of the magic spectacles he could see through the bedclothes, through Lancelot’s shirt and skin, and into his body. Looking closely, he was able to follow the mischievous frolickings of the little life spirits as they chased one another up and down the labyrinth of blood vessels. It took him a while to discover which was the Love spirit, but eventually he succeeded. There it sat, astride Lancelot’s spine, tickling him with a little feather brush. After a while it grew tired of this game. It wriggled its way adroitly between the folds of the lung and set about squeezing the knight’s heart. But it must have got bored with that too, because it then slipped into the aorta, where the flow of blood carried it into the brain. It fiddled about for a while among the convolutions, pulling all sorts of things out of the drawers and then stuffing them back again, got itself tangled up in the network of nerve endings, gave a great yawn and jumped out through Lancelot’s mouth onto the bed. There it sat, dangling its legs over the edge and gazing at itself in a little mirror. Love is always rather vain. But it wasn’t exactly beautiful. It was pale and gaunt, restless and malformed, and its veins were knotted from years of stress. Of course it saw nothing of its own ugliness, for, as we all know, Love is also blind.