Antal Szerb - Journey by Moonlight

“And why didn’t you mention Éva?”

“I had it in mind. So that he could go looking for her?”

“He wouldn’t have gone looking for her — he was with his wife, on honeymoon.”

“Forgive me, but I don’t believe that would have restrained him.”

“Come on. For twenty years he hadn’t thought of looking for her.”

“Because he never knew where she was. And besides Mihály is so passive. But if he actually knew … ”

“And what harm would it do you if Mihály did meet Éva Ulpius? Are you jealous? Are you still in love with her?”

“Me? Not at all. I never was. She was in love with me. But I didn’t want to cause any trouble in Mihály’s marriage.”

“Are you such an angelic little boy, or what?”

“No. Just that I instantly found you so attractive.”

“Wonderful. In Ravenna you said exactly the opposite. I was pretty offended.”

“Yes, I only said that to see if Mihály would slap my face. But Mihály doesn’t slap anyone’s face. That’s what’s wrong with him. He always turns the other cheek. But to get back to the point: from the first moment you had an enormous effect on me.”

“Amazing. So now I should feel myself honoured? Tell me, can’t you seduce me with a little more wit?”

“I don’t know how to seduce wittily. That’s for weaklings. If a woman attracts me, all I think is that I want her to know it. Then she responds or she doesn’t. But women usually respond.”

“I’m not ‘women’.”

But she was fully aware that she really did attract János Szepetneki: that he desired her body, in a hungry, adolescent way, devoid of adult restraint, single-mindedly, obscenely. And this so delighted her that through her whole being the blood moved faster under the skin, as if she had been drinking. She wasn’t used to this raw instinctuality. Men generally approached her with love and fine words. Their addresses were always to the well-born, well-educated daughter of a good family. And then Szepetneki had come along, that time in Ravenna, and deeply offended her female vanity. Perhaps that had been the start of the collapse of her marriage, and she had ever since carried inside her the sting of Szepetneki’s words. Now here was her remedy, her satisfaction. She behaved so coquettishly towards him that she actually ceased to believe what she really knew: that she was at last taking revenge for the insult at Ravenna, a revenge all the colder for the delay.

But above all she responded to Szepetneki’s advances because she felt with her woman’s instinct that he was treating her essentially as Mihály’s wife. She knew what a strange relationship Szepetneki had with Mihály, how he always, by whatever means, wanted to prove that he was the better of the two; and this was why he now wished to seduce Mihály’s wife. Erzsi bathed in Szepetneki’s desire with a sickly, widow-like need for consolation, and she felt that now, with this desire, this awakening, she was becoming Mihály’s authentic wife, she was entering the magic circle, the old Ulpius circle, Mihály’s true reality.

“Let’s talk about something else,” she said, but under their table their knees caressed sensuously. “What are you actually doing in Paris?”

“I make links between large companies. Only very large companies,” he said, and began to stroke her thigh. “My finest connections are with the Third Empire. You might say that in some respects I am their local commercial representative. And besides I’m trying to bring together this Lutphali business and the Martini-Alvaert film studio, because I need pocket money. But tell me, why are we talking so much? Come and dance.”

They went on till three in the morning. Then the Persian piled the two film studio girls he had been entertaining into a car, invited the others for Sunday afternoon at his villa in Auteuil, and took his leave. The others made their way home. Sári was escorted by the French gentleman, Erzsi by Szepetneki.

“I’m coming up with you,” Szepetneki announced when they reached the door.

“How charming. Especially as I share with Sári.”

“Damnation. Then come to my place.”

“It’s clear, Szepetneki, you’ve been a long time away from Budapest. Otherwise there’s no other way to explain how you could so little understand the sort of woman I am. You’ve ruined everything.”

And without a word of parting, she went off in great triumph.

“Hey, what was all that flirting with this Szepetneki?” asked Sári when they had settled into their beds. “Just be careful, that’s all.”

“It’s already over. Can you imagine: he wanted to come up with me.”

“Did he now? You’re behaving as if you had never left Pest. ‘My child, never forget that Budapest is the most moral city in Europe.’ That’s not how they take these things here.”

“But Sári, the first evening … So all it needs for a woman’s dignity is … ”

“Of course. But then you should never even talk to men … Here that’s the only way a woman can ‘defend her dignity’. Just as I do. But tell me, why should a woman defend her dignity? Just tell me why. Do you think I wouldn’t have happily gone with that Persian if he had asked me? But did he ask me? It was in his mind. What a wonderful man! Otherwise, you did well not to get involved with this Szepetneki. He’s very good-looking, I won’t deny, and very much the man, but I have the feeling … look, what I’m trying to say, but you know this already, he’s a crook. He’ll end up taking your money. ‘Take very great care, my child.’ He once stole five hundred francs from me on a similar occasion. So, night night.”

“A crook,” Erzsi thought to herself, as she lay without sleeping. “That’s just what he is.” All her life she had been the model of a good girl, adored by her nannies and fräuleins , her father’s pride and joy, the best pupil in the form, sent abroad to academic competitions. Her whole life had been sheltered and ordered, the good bourgeois life consecrated to a sternly supervised moral order. In due course she married a wealthy man, dressed elegantly, took on a grand house and presided over it as a model housewife. She always wore the identical hat sported by every other woman of the same rank in society. She took her summer holidays where fashion dictated, held the same opinions about theatrical productions, uttered the turns of phrase currently de rigueur . In everything she was a conformist, as Mihály would say. Then she began to get bored. The boredom developed into a full neurosis, and then she chose Mihály for herself, because she felt that he was not entirely conformist, that in him there was something utterly alien to the conventions of bourgeois existence. She believed that through him she too could get beyond the walls, into the badlands, the wide flood-plain and what lay there in the unknown distances. But Mihály was simply trying, through her, to become a conformist himself, using her as a means to become a regular bourgeois, only stealing out into the badlands, into the bushes, furtively and alone, until conformity no longer bored him and he was used to it. Now if János Szepetneki, who had no wish to conform, who lived more or less as a professional bandit beyond the walls, who was so much more untamed and vigorous than Mihály … if he … “ Tiger, Tiger, burning bright/In the forests of the night … ”

The Sunday afternoon at Auteuil was elegant and dull. The actress-types were not there this time, and the company entirely mondain and well-heeled, typical of the French grande bourgeoisie . But this world did not interest Erzsi, being even more conformist and devoid of tigers than its Budapest equivalent. She began to breathe freely only when, on the way home, they called to take János Szepetneki out to dinner, and then went on to dance. János was demonic. He drank, showed off, recited poetry, wept and was at times extremely manly. But all this was really quite superfluous. He was thoroughly overdoing his part because, not to put too fine a point on it, Erzsi was without doubt already disposed to spend the night with him, following the inner logic of events, and in quest of the burning tiger.