Antal Szerb - Journey by Moonlight

“Of course someone’s got to go to Paris. But I can’t go. I can’t leave the bank just now. And anyway, what would I be going for? Erzsi hasn’t invited me. For me to run after her, to run the risk of a highly probable rejection, that’s quite impossible … After all, a man has his pride.”

He brought his words to an abrupt close. Persuaded, the meeting agreed to send a young director, the son-in-law of one of the big financiers, who spoke exceptionally good French. “It’ll be an education for him,” the older men thought to themselves with fatherly benevolence.

After the meeting came the most difficult part of the day, the evening. Pataki had once read that the most important difference between a married man and a bachelor was that the married man always knew who he would dine with that evening. And indeed, since Erzsi had left him, this had been the greatest problem in Pataki’s life: who would he dine with? He had never got on with men, had never known the institution of male friendship. Women? This was the oddest thing. While he was married to Erzsi he had needed endless women, one after the other. Every one seemed to please him, one because she was so thin, another because so plump, a third because she was so exactly in between. All his free time, and much that was not free, was filled with women. There had been a maîtresse de titre obscurely connected with the theatre, who had cost him a great deal of money (though she had brought with her a degree of publicity for the bank), then various gentlemanly diversions, the wives of one or two colleagues, but chiefly the typists, with the occasional maid-servant for the sake of variety: an inglorious collection. Erzsi had a real grievance in law, and Pataki in his more optimistic moments reckoned that this was why she had left him. In his more pessimistic mode he had to acknowledge that there was another reason, certain needs which he had been unable to meet, and that consciousness was particularly humiliating. When Erzsi left he had discharged the maîtresse de titre with a handsome redundancy payment, that is to say, made her directly over to an older colleague who had long aspired to the honour, he had ‘reorganised’ his secretarial staff, surrounded himself with one of the ugliest workforces in the bank, and lived a life of self-denial.

“There should have been a child,” he thought, and was filled with the sudden sense of how much he would have loved his child had there been one, Erzsi’s child. With rapid decisiveness he telephoned a cousin who had two positively golden children, and went there to dinner. En route he purchased a horrifying quantity of sweets. The two golden children probably never knew what they had to thank for three days of stomach-ache.

After dinner he sat on in a coffee-house, read the newspapers, vacillated over the question of whether to go yet again and play cards for a bit in the club, could not finally make up his mind, and went home.

Without Erzsi, the flat was now unspeakably oppressive. He really would have to do something with her furniture. Her room couldn’t just stand there as if she might return at any moment, although … “I’ll have to get them to take it all up to the attic, or have it stored. I’ll have it fitted out like a club-room, with huge armchairs.”

Again the gesture of resignation, the grimace, the wave of exhaustion. Decidedly he couldn’t bear it in the flat. He would have to move. To live in a hotel, like an artist. And change the hotel constantly. Or perhaps move into a sanatorium. Pataki adored sanatoria, with their bleached tranquillity and doctorly reassurance. “Yes, I’ll move out to Svábhegy. My nerves could really do with it. Any more of this runaway-wife business and I’ll go mad.”

He lay down, then got up again because he felt he couldn’t possibly sleep. He dressed, but had absolutely no idea where to go. Instead, although he knew perfectly well it would be of no use, he took a Szevenal, and once again undressed.

As soon as he was in bed the alternative again stood before him in all its misery. Erzsi in Paris: either she was alone, horribly alone, perhaps not eating properly (who knows what ghastly little prix-fixe places she was going to); or indeed she was not alone. That thought was not to be borne. Mihály he had somehow got used to. For some odd reason he was unable to take Mihály seriously, even though he had actually run off with her. Mihály didn’t count. Mihály wasn’t human. Deep in his consciousness lurked the conviction that one day, somehow, it would transpire that no such person existed … his affair with Erzsi had been a chance thing, they had lived in a marriage but had never had a real relationship, man and woman. That was something he could not imagine of Mihály. But now, in Paris … the unknown man … the unknown man was a hundred times more disturbing than any familiar seducer. No, the thought could not be endured.

He must go to Paris. He must see for himself what Erzsi was doing. Perhaps she was hungry. But what of his pride? Erzsi didn’t care a hoot for him. He didn’t need Erzsi. Erzsi had no wish to see him …

“And then? Isn’t it enough that I want to see her? The rest will sort itself out.

“Pride! Since when did you have all this pride, Mr Pataki? If you’d always been so proud in your business life, where would you be now, pray? In a flourishing greengrocer’s in Szabadka, like your dear old dad’s. And why exactly all this pride with regard to Erzsi? A man’s pride should come out where there is some risk involved: in dealing with presidents, or, say, secretaries of state, with the Krychlovaces of this world. (Well, no, that’s going a bit far.) But proud towards women? That’s not chivalrous, not gentlemanly. Just daft.”

The next day he produced a storm of activity. He persuaded the bank and all others concerned that the son-in-law was not the ideal person: someone with more experience was needed after all, to negotiate with the French.

The interested parties came gradually to understand that this person of more experience would be Pataki himself.

“But, Mr Director, do you speak French?”

“Not a great deal, but for that very reason they won’t sell me anything. And in any case the people we’re dealing with will surely speak German, just like you or me. Did you ever meet a businessman who didn’t speak German? Deutsch ist eine Weltsprache .’”

The next morning he was already on his way.

The business side of his trip he dispatched in half-an-hour. His French counterpart, whose name was Loew, did in fact speak German, and also happened to be intelligent. The matter was soon settled because Pataki, in contrast to less skilled or experienced men, did not take business and financial matters too seriously. He regarded them the way a doctor regards his patients. He knew that here too it is just like anywhere else: the talentless often do much better than the able, the inexpert come good more often than the expert. A bunch of pseudo-financiers sit in the highest places directing the world economy, while the real ones meditate in the Schwartzer or the Markó. The quest is for a myth, a groundless fiction, just as it is in the world of learning, where men pursue a non-existent and seductive Truth. In business it is Wealth on a scale that defies comprehension, in pursuit of which they sacrifice the wealth that can be understood. And in the last analysis the whole rat-race is as frivolous as everything else in this world.

He was very proud of the fact that he knew this and that Mihály, for example, did not. Mihály was an intellectual, and for precisely that reason believed in money while at the same time calling everything else into doubt. He would say such things as, for instance: “Psychology in its present state is a thoroughly primitive, unscientific discipline … ” or, “Modern lyric poetry is utterly meaningless,” or “Humanism? there’s no point in making speeches against war: it comes upon us wordlessly … ” But, on the other hand: “The Váraljai Hemp and Flax Company, that’s real. You can’t say a word against that. That’s about money. Money’s no joking matter.” Pataki chuckled to himself. “Váraljai Hemp and Flax, my God … If Mihály and his friends only knew … Even lyric poetry is more serious.”