Antal Szerb - Journey by Moonlight

That was how a conqueror marches into Rome. Perhaps nothing would ever come of the little sculptor. Perhaps his fate would be permanent hunger and who knows what else. Nonetheless a conqueror he was, needing only an army and “simple luck, nothing more”. The road of his life led upwards, even if he perished in the ascent. Mihály’s road led downwards, even if he survived, survived everything and came to tranquil, tedious old age. We carry within ourselves the direction our lives will take. Within ourselves burn the timeless, fateful stars.

He wandered for hours on the Gianicolo, along the bank of the Tiber and down the alleyways of the Trastevere. The night was late, but this was an Italian summer night, with people therefore awake on every side, hammering away or singing without embarrassment. This nation is quite innocent of northern notions of sleep as a time of consecrated stupor. At any moment you might stumble without rhyme or reason upon small children playing marbles in the street between three and four in the morning, or a barber will suddenly open his shop at three-thirty to shave a few merry bridegrooms.

On the Tiber tow-boats glided downstream with a calm, classical dignity: not tow-boats, but pictures from a school Latin book illustrating the word Navis, navis . On one a man played a guitar, a woman washed her stockings, a little dog barked. And behind it sailed another ship, the spectre-vessel, the Isola Tiberina, which even in ancient times had been built boat-shaped by men who doubted its fixedness, convinced that it slipped away on occasional night expeditions to the sea, carrying the hospital and all its death agonies on its back.

Across the water the moon rode at anchor over the huge oppressive ruins of the Teatro Marcello. From the nearby synagogue, Mihály seemed to remember, a crowd of long-bearded old Jews, with veils of the dead on their necks, would process to the Tiber bank and scatter their sins on the water with a murmuring lamentation. In the sky three aeroplanes circled, their headlights occasionally stroking one another’s sides. Then they flew off towards the Castelli Romani, like large birds winging to rest on the craggy peaks.

Then with a tremendous rumbling a huge lorry drove up. “Daybreak,” thought Mihály. Shapes clad in dark grey leapt from the lorry with alarming speed and poured through an archway door which opened before them. Then a bell tinkled, and a herd-boy appeared, singing out commands to a miraculous Vergilian heifer.

Now the door of a tavern opened and two workmen came up to him. They asked him to order some red wine for them and to tell them his life history. Mihály ordered the wine, indeed helped them finish the bottle, and even sent for some cheese to accompany it, though his difficulties with the language prevented the telling of his tale. Yet he felt an immense friendliness towards these people, who really seemed to sense his abandonment and grappled him to their hearts, and said such kind things it was a pity he could not understand what they were. But then, quite suddenly, he became afraid of them, paid, and made his escape.

He was in the Trastevere quarter. In the narrow alleyways with their myriad places of ambush, his mind filled again with images of violent death, as it had so often in his adolescence when he ‘played games’ at the Ulpius house. What absurd rashness to get into conversation with those workmen! They could have murdered him and thrown him in the Danube, the Tiber, for his thirty forints. And to be wandering around in the satanic Trastevere at such an hour, where under any of the gaping archways he might be struck dead three times over before he could open his mouth. What madness … and what madness to harbour in his mind the very thing that lured him on, tempting him towards sin and death.

Then he found himself standing outside the house where Vannina lived. The house was dark, a small Italian house with a flat, tiled roof and window-arches faced with brick. Who might be living there? What deeds might lurk in the darkness of such a house? What horrors might befall him if he went in? Would Vannina … yes, Vannina had surely had a purpose in inviting him there so often and so insistently in recent days. She could well have known he had had a lot of money from János. All her prospective husbands had been locked up … yes, Vannina would be quite capable … And when he knew that for certain, he would go in.

He stood for a long time outside the house, plunged in sick imaginings. Then suddenly a leaden weariness seized him, and again he felt the nostalgia that had haunted him at every stage of his journey through Italy. But his weariness told him that now he was near the last resting place of all.

THE NEXT DAY he received a letter. The handwriting was familiar, very familiar, though he found, with some sense of shame, that he couldn’t quite place it. It was from Erzsi. She informed him that she had come to Rome because she wished absolutely to talk to him, on a matter of great importance, great importance concerning him. He would be able to appreciate that this was not a question of some womanly caprice. Her self-respect would not permit her to seek a connection with him if she did not wish to defend his interests with respect to an extremely painful matter; but she considered she owed him that much. Therefore she strongly desired him to call on her, at her hotel, that afternoon.

Mihály was at a loss what to do. The thought of a meeting with Erzsi filled him with dread. His sense of guilt was particularly bad at that moment, and besides he could not imagine what she might want from him. But this soon gave way to the feeling that he had hurt Erzsi so much in the past he could not hurt her yet again by not meeting with her. He took his new hat, bought out of the money received from Pataki, and hurried off to the hotel where she was staying.

Word was sent up to her, and she soon came down to greet Mihály unsmilingly. His first impression was that he could expect little good from this meeting. Her brows were knitted into the frown she wore when she was angry, and she did not relax it. She was beautiful, tall, in every matter of taste elegant, but an angel with a flaming sword … After a few terse inquiries about the journey and one another’s health, they walked together in silence.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“It’s all the same to me. It’s so hot. Let’s sit in a pâtisserie .”

The ice-cream and aranciata brought momentary relief. But they soon got to the point.

“Mihály,” she said with suppressed anger, “I always knew you were pretty useless, and had no idea about anything going on around you, but I had thought there was a limit to your stupidity.”

“That’s a good start,” said Mihály. But he was secretly rather pleased that she considered him a fool and not a villain.

She was surely right.

“How could you have written this?” she asked, and placed on the table the letter he had written to Pataki at Szepetneki’s behest.

Mihály reddened, and in his shame felt such weariness he could not speak.

“Say something!” shouted Erzsi, the angel with the flaming sword.

“What should I say, Erzsi?” he said in a desultory tone. “You’re an intelligent person, you know why I wrote it. I needed the money. I don’t want to go back to Pest, for a thousand reasons. … And this was the only way I could raise money.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Maybe. But that doesn’t explain such incredible immorality. What an incredible pimp I am. Anyway, I know it. If the only reason you came to Rome, in this heat, was to tell me that … ”

“The devil you’re a pimp,” she said in extreme exasperation. “If only you were! But you’re just an idiot.”