Antal Szerb: Journey by Moonlight

“I realise now that the moment I wanted to see Éva I had already betrayed Tamás and his suicide attempt. I had unconsciously calculated that if we went back among people they would somehow rescue us. Subconsciously I had no real wish to die. I was weary to death, as weary as only a twenty-year-old can be, and indeed I yearned for the secret of death, longed for the dark delirium. But when the feeling of mortality inspired by the wine began to wear off, I didn’t actually want to die.

“In the Ulpius house we found Ervin and János in their usual chairs. I gaily announced the fact that we had each taken fifteen centigrams of morphine and would soon be dead, but first we wanted to say goodbye. Tamás was already white as a sheet and staggering. I just looked as if I had had a glass too many, and I had the thick speech of a drunk. János instantly rushed out and phoned Casualty to tell them there were two youths who had each taken fifteen centigrams of morphine.

“‘Are they still alive?’ he was asked.

“When he said we were they told him to take us there immediately. He and Ervin shoved us into a taxi and took us to Markó Street. I still couldn’t feel anything.

“I felt a lot more when the doctor brutally pumped out my stomach, and removed any desire I had for suicide. Otherwise, I can’t help the suspicion that what we had taken wasn’t morphine. Either Éva had deceived Tamás, or the doctor had deceived her. His illness could have been auto-suggestion.

“Éva and the boys had to stay up with us the whole night to watch that we didn’t fall asleep, because the Casualty people had said that if we did it would be impossible to wake us again. That was a strange night. We were somewhat embarrassed in each other’s company. I was thrilled because I had committed suicide — what a great feeling! — and happy to be still alive. I felt a delicious fatigue. We all loved one another deeply. The staying awake was a great self-sacrificing gesture of friendship, and wonderfully in keeping with our current mood of intense friendship and religious fervour. We were all in a state of shock. We engaged in long Dostoyevskian conversations, and drank one black coffee after another. It was the sort of night typical of youth, the sort you can only look back on with shame and embarrassment once you’ve grown up. But God knows, it seems I must have grown up already by then, because I don’t feel the slightest embarrassment when I think back to it, just a terrible nostalgia.

“Only Tamás said nothing. He just let them pour icy water over him and pinch him to keep him awake. He really was ill, and besides, he was tortured by the knowledge that once again he had failed. If I spoke to him he would turn away and not answer. He regarded me as a traitor. From then on we were never really friends. He never spoke about it again. He was just as kind and courteous as before, but I know he never forgave me. When he did die, he made sure I had nothing to do with it.”

Here Mihály fell silent and buried his head in his hands. After a while he got up and stared out of the window into the darkness. Then he came back, and, with an absent smile, stroked Erzsi’s hand.

“Does it still hurt so much?” she asked softly.

“I never had a friend again,” he said.

Again they were silent. Erzsi wondered whether he was simply feeling sorry for himself because of the maudlin effect of the wine, or whether the events in the Ulpius house had really damaged something in him, which might explain why he was so remote and alienated from people.

“And what became of Éva?” she finally asked.

“Éva by then was in love with Ervin.”

“And the rest of you weren’t jealous?”

“No, we thought it natural. Ervin was the leader. We thought him the most remarkable person among us, so it seemed right and proper that Éva should love him. I certainly wasn’t in love with Éva, though you couldn’t be so sure about János. By that stage the group was beginning to drift apart. Ervin and Éva were increasingly sufficient for one another and kept looking for opportunities to be alone together. I was becoming genuinely interested in the university and my study of religious history. I was filled with ambition to be an academic. My first encounter with real scholarship was as heady as falling in love.

“But to get back to Ervin and Éva. Éva now became much quieter. She went to church and to the English Ladies’ College, where she’d once been a pupil. I’ve already mentioned that Ervin had an exceptionally loving nature: being in love was as essential to him as wild adventures were to Szepetneki. I could well understand that even Éva couldn’t remain cold in his presence.

“It was a touching affair, very poetic, a passion permeated with the ambience of Buda Castle and being twenty years old — you know how it is — so that when they went along the street I almost expected the crowd to part reverentially in front of them, as if before the Sacrament. At least, that was the sort of respect, the boundless respect, we had for their love. Somehow it seemed the fulfilment of the whole meaning of the group. And what a short time it lasted! I never knew exactly what happened between them. It seems Ervin asked for her hand in marriage and old Ulpius threw him out. János believed he actually struck him. But Éva simply loved Ervin all the more. She would willingly have become his mistress, I have no doubt. But for Ervin the sixth commandment was absolute. He became even paler and quieter than before, and never went to the Ulpius house. I saw him less and less. And in Éva the big change must have finally happened around this time, the one I personally found so hard to understand later. Then one fine day Ervin simply vanished. I learnt from Tamás that he had become a monk. Tamás destroyed the letter in which Ervin told him of his decision. Whether he knew Ervin’s religious name, or where he was, and in which Order, was a secret that went with Tamás to the grave. Perhaps he revealed it only to Éva.

“Ervin certainly did not become a monk just because he couldn’t marry Éva. We had in the past talked a great deal about the monastic life, and I know that Ervin’s religion went too deep — he would never have become a monk merely out of despair and romantic sensibility, without any definite sign of an inner calling. Certainly he saw it as a sign from above that he couldn’t marry Éva. But the fact that he left so hastily, virtually fled, could have been largely to do with the fact that he wanted to escape from Éva and the temptation she represented for him. So although he ran away, perhaps a bit like Joseph, he nonetheless accomplished what we had dreamed about so much at that time. He offered up his youth as a willing sacrifice to God.”

“But I don’t understand,” said Erzsi. “If, as you say, he was so loving by nature, why offer that up as a sacrifice?”

“Because, my dear, in the spiritual life opposites meet. It’s not the cold passionless ones who become great ascetics, but the most hot-blooded, people with something worth renouncing. That’s why the Church won’t allow eunuchs to become priests.”

“And what did Éva have to say to all this?”

“Éva remained unattached, and from this point on she was impossible to put up with. By this time Budapest was in the hands of the currency sharks and the officers of the Entente. Éva somehow or other got herself into the officers’ set. She knew various languages and her manner was somehow not typically Hungarian but more cosmopolitan. I know she was very much in demand. She went, from one day to the next, from a little adolescent girl to a stunning woman. This was when, in place of the earlier friendly and open expression, her eye took on that other quality: that look, as if she were listening to some far off, murmuring sound.