Antal Szerb - Journey by Moonlight

And now here was the man who would perhaps prove final. The real tiger. The exotic one. The man of passion. A few minutes, and she would know. A shiver went through her. Of cold? No, a shiver of fear.

Quickly she pulled her blouse back on. She stood at the door that opened on to the corridor, and pressed her hand against her heart, with the naïve, artless gesture she had so often seen in the cinema.

In her imagination she was confronting the great secret: formless, headless, terrifying, the secret of the East, the secret of men, the secret of love. With what appalling, tormenting, lacerating movements and actions would he approach her, this stranger, this man with the tiger-strangeness. And might he not annihilate her, as the gods once annihilated mortal women in their arms? What unspoken, mysterious horrors? …

Suddenly it all enfolded her once again: her good upbringing, her character as genteel lady, as model pupil, her thrift, everything she had once fled. No, no, she did not dare … Fear lent her strength and cunning. Within seconds she had piled up every bit of furniture against the unlocked door. She even seized hold of the massive bed and, sobbing, gulping down her tears, dragged that too up to the door. Then she collapsed on to it, exhausted.

Just in time. From the neighbouring room she could hear the soft steps of the Persian. He was standing outside the door. He listened, then turned the handle.

The door, with every piece of furniture in the room leaning against it, stood firm. The Persian did not try to force it.

“Elizabeth,” he said quietly.

She did not answer. Again he tried to open the door, this time, it seemed, with the weight of his shoulder. The pile of furniture gave a little.

“Don’t come in!” Erzsi cried.

The Persian stopped, and for a short while there was complete silence.

“Elizabeth, open the door,” he said more loudly.

She did not reply.

He hissed something, and applied his full strength to the door.

“Don’t come in!” she screamed.

The Persian released the door.

“Elizabeth,” he said again, but his voice seemed distant, and dying away.

Then, after another pause, he said “Good night,” and went back to his room.

She lay on the bed, fully dressed, her teeth chattering. She was sobbing, and horribly tired. This was the moment of truth, when a person sees the whole pattern of their life. She did not prettify the incident to herself. She knew that she had denied the Persian not because she was bothered by the humiliating circumstances, not even because she was a respectable woman, but because she was a coward. She had come up against the mystery she had sought again and again, and she had fled before it. All her life she had been a petty-bourgeoise, and that was what she would remain.

Oh, if only the Persian were to return, now she would let him in … Of course she wouldn’t die, nothing truly horrible could happen. Oh how stupid had been her childish fear! If the Persian came back this terrible exhaustion would fall away from her, as would everything else, everything …

But the Persian did not return. Erzsi undressed, lay down and slept.

She managed to sleep for an hour or two. When she woke it was already becoming light outside. It was half past three. She leapt out of bed, washed her face and hands, dressed, and stole out into the corridor. Without even thinking about it she knew she must get away. She knew she could never see the Persian again. She was ashamed, and rejoiced to have escaped with her skin intact. Her spirits were high, and when she finally managed to prise open the main door of the house, which was bolted but not locked, and made it through the garden to the main road without being observed, she was filled with adolescent bravado and felt that, despite all her cowardice, she was the victor, the one who had triumphed.

She ran blithely down the main road, and soon reached a small village. As luck would have it, there was even a railway station nearby, and indeed a dawn market train leaving for Paris. It was still early morning when she reached the capital.

Back in her hotel room, she lay down and slept deeply, and perhaps contentedly, until the afternoon. When she woke she felt as if she had truly awakened after some enduring, beautiful and terrifying dream. She hurried off to Sári in a taxi, though she could have done it quite comfortably by bus or Métro. Now that she was truly awake her economising days were over.

She told Sári the whole story, with the cynical candour women use when talking amongst themselves about their love lives. Sári spiced the narrative with little exclamations and truisms.

“And what will you do now?” she finally asked, in a gentle, consoling tone.

“What will I do? But don’t you see? I’ll go back to Zoltán. That’s why I came here.”

“You’ll go back to Zoltán? So, is that why you walked out on him? And you think it’ll be any better now? Because it can’t be said you’ve any great love for him. I don’t understand you … But you’re quite right. You’re absolutely right. I would do the same in your position. After all, certainty is certainty, and you weren’t born to live like a student in Paris for the rest of your life, and keep changing your lovers as if you lived off them.”

“And I certainly wasn’t born for that! And just because … Excuse me, but I’ve just realised what was the basis of my fear yesterday. I started thinking where all this would lead. After the Persian there would be a Venezuelan, then a Japanese, and perhaps a Negro … I reckoned that once a girl starts off down that road there’s no going back: what the devil is there to stop you? And that’s not all. It could be that I really am like that, yes? That’s what I was frightened of — myself, and everything I might be capable of, and everything that could still happen to me. But no, it’s not that either. There has to be something to hold a woman back. And in that case, better Zoltán.”

“What’s this ‘better’? He’s wonderful. A rich man, a good man, he worships you, I can’t understand how you ever left him. Now, this minute, write to him, pack up your things, and go. My Erzsi … How nice for you. And how I shall miss you.”

“No, I shan’t write to him. You shall.”

“Are you afraid he won’t want you after all?”

“No, my dear, truly I’m not afraid of that. But I don’t want to write to him, because he must never know that I’m going to him as a refugee. He mustn’t know that he’s the only answer. Let him think I felt sorry for him. Otherwise, he’d be so full of himself!”

“How right you are!”

“Write and tell him that you’ve tried hard to reason with me to go back to him, and you think I would be willing, only my pride won’t let me admit it; that it would be better if he came to Paris and tried to talk with me. You’ll prepare the way. Write a good letter, my Sárika. You can be sure Zoltán will be very gallant towards you.”

“Splendid. I’ll write straight away, here, right here, right now. Now, Erzsi, when you’re in Pest, and Zoltán’s wife again, you can send me a really nice pair of shoes. You know, they’re so much cheaper and better in Pest, and they last so much longer.”

FOIED VINOM PIPAFO, CRA CAREFO. Enjoy the wine today, tomorrow there’ll be none. The wine had run out: the mysterious inner spring that wakes a man day after day and sustains him with the illusion that life is worth getting up for, had run dry. And as the spring, like the wine, ran dry, it had been replaced from below by waters rising from the dark sea, the inner lake, connected through its depths to the great ocean, the Other Wish, antagonistic to life and more powerful than it.