Antal Szerb: Journey by Moonlight

But in point of fact it would have been of some comfort to her to know that he had merely been with a woman. It would put an end to this uncertainty, this total blankness, this inability to imagine where and how he had spent the night. And she thought of her first husband, Zoltán Pataki, whom she had left for Mihály. Erzsi had always known which of the office typists was his current mistress. Zoltán was so doggedly, blushingly, touchingly discreet, the more he wished to hide something the clearer everything became to her. Mihály was just the reverse. When he felt guilty he always laboured to explain every movement, desperately wanting her to understand him completely, and the more he explained the more confusing it became. She had long known that she did not understand him, because Mihály had secrets even from himself, and he did not understand her since it never occurred to him that people other than himself had an inner life in which he might take an interest. And yet they had married because he had decided that they understood each other perfectly, and that, for both, the marriage rested on purely rational foundations and not fleeting passion. For just how long could that fiction be sustained?

A FEW EVENINGS later they arrived in Ravenna. Mihály rose very early the next morning, dressed and went out. He wanted to visit, alone, Ravenna’s most important sight, the famous Byzantine mosaics. He now knew there were many things he could never share with Erzsi, and these he reckoned among them. In the matter of art history she was much better informed, and much more discerning, than he, and she had visited Italy before, so he generally left it to her what they would see, and what they would think when they saw it. Paintings only rarely interested him, and then at random, like a flash of lightning, one in a thousand. But the Ravenna mosaics … these were monuments from his private past.

Once in the Ulpius house he, together with Ervin, Tamás, and Tamás’s sister Éva, poring over these mosaics in a large French book, had been seized by a restless and inexplicable dread. It was Christmas Eve. In the vast adjoining room Tamás Ulpius’s father walked back and forth alone. Elbows on the table, they studied the plates, whose gold backgrounds glittered up at them like a mysterious fountain of light at the bottom of a mineshaft. Within the Byzantine pictures there was something that stirred a sleeping horror in the depth of their souls. At a quarter to twelve they put on their overcoats and, with ice in their hearts, set off for midnight mass. Then Éva fainted, the only time her nerves ever troubled her. For a month afterwards it was all Ravenna, and for Mihály Ravenna had remained to that day an indefinable species of dread.

That profoundly submerged episode now re-surfaced in its entirety, as he stood there in the cathedral of San Vitale before the miraculous pale-green mosaic. His youth beat within him with such intensity that he suddenly grew faint and had to lean against a pillar. But it lasted only a second, and he was a serious man again.

The other mosaics held no further interest for him. He went back to the hotel, waited for Erzsi to make herself ready, then together they systematically visited and discussed all there was to see. Mihály did not of course mention that he had already been to San Vitale. He slipped rather ashamedly into the cathedral, as if something might betray his secret, and pronounced the place of little interest, to atone for the morning’s painful disclosure.

The next evening they were sitting in the little piazza outside a café. Erzsi was eating an ice-cream, Mihály trying some bitter beverage previously unknown to him but not very satisfying, and wondering how to get rid of the taste.

“This stench is awful,” said Erzsi. “Wherever you go in this town there is always this smell. This is how I imagine a gas attack.”

“It shouldn’t surprise you,” he replied. “The place smells like a corpse. Ravenna’s a decadent city. It’s been decaying for over a thousand years. Even Baedeker says so. There were three golden ages, the last in the eighth century AD.”

“Come off it, you clown,” said Erzsi with a smile. “You’re always thinking about corpses and the smell of death. This particular stench comes from life and the living. It’s the smell of artificial fertiliser. The whole of Ravenna lives off the factory.”

“Ravenna lives off artificial fertiliser? This city, where Theodoric the Great and Dante lie buried? This city, besides which Venice is a parvenu ?”

“That’s right, my dear.”

“That’s appalling.”

In that instant the roar of a motorbike exploded into the square and its rider, clad in leathers and goggles, leapt down, as from horseback. He looked around, spotted the couple and made straight for their table, leading the bike beside him like a steed. Reaching the table he pushed up his visor-goggles and said,“Hello, Mihály, I was looking for you.”

Mihály to his astonishment recognised János Szepetneki. In his amazement all he could say was, “How did you know I was here?”

“They told me at your hotel in Venice that you had moved on to Ravenna. And where might a man be in Ravenna after dinner but in the piazza? It really wasn’t difficult. I’ve come here straight from Venice. But now I’ll sit down for a bit.”

“Er … let me introduce you to my wife,” said Mihály nervously. “Erzsi, this is János Szepetneki, my old classmate, who … I don’t think … I ever mentioned.” And he blushed scarlet.

János looked Erzsi up and down with undisguised hostility, bowed, shook her hand, and thereafter totally ignored her presence. Indeed, he said nothing at all, except to order lemonade.

Eventually Mihály broke the silence:

“Well, say something. You must have some reason for trying to find me here in Italy.”

“I’ll tell you. I mainly wanted to see you because I heard you were married.”

“I thought you were still angry with me. The last time we met was in London, at the Hungarian legation, and then you walked out of the room. But of course you’ve no reason to be angry now,” he went on when János failed to reply. “One grows up. We all grow up, and you forget why you were offended with someone for ten years.”

“You talk as if you know why I was angry with you.”

“But of course I know,” Mihály blurted out, and blushed again.

“If you know, say it,” Szepetneki said aggressively.

“I’d rather not here … in front of my wife.”

“It doesn’t bother me. Just have the courage to say it. What do you think was the reason I wouldn’t speak to you in London?”

“Because it occurred to me there had been a time when I thought you had stolen my gold watch. Since then I’ve found out who took it.”

“You see what an ass you are. I was the one who stole your watch.”

“So it was you who took it?”

“It was.”

Erzsi during all this had been fidgeting restlessly in her chair. From experience she had been aware for some time, looking at János’s face and hands, that he was just the sort of person to steal a gold watch every now and then. She nervously drew her reticule towards her. In it were the passports and traveller’s cheques. She was astonished, and dismayed, that the otherwise so diplomatic Mihály should have brought up this watch business, but what was really unendurable was the silence in which they sat, the silence when one man tells another that he stole his gold watch and then neither says a word. She stood up and announced:

“I’m going back to the hotel. Your topics of conversation, gentlemen, are such that … ”

Mihály looked at her in exasperation.

“Just stay here. Now that you’re my wife this is your business too.” And with that he turned to János Szepetneki and positively shouted: “But then why wouldn’t you shake hands with me in London?”