Antal Szerb: Journey by Moonlight

“In every other sense too, they stood outside the common order of life. It would occur to Éva at two in the morning that the week before she had left her French exercise book on Sváb Hill, so they would both get up, get dressed, go to Sváb Hill and wander there till morning. The next day Tamás, with lordly indifference, would absent himself from school. Éva would forge an absence note for him over the signature of the older Ulpius. Éva cut school regularly, and had absolutely nothing to do, but she was as happy as a cat on her own.

“One could call on them at any time. Visitors never bothered them. They just carried on with their own lives as if no-one else was present. Even at night you were made welcome. But while I was still at school I couldn’t visit them at night because of family rules: at the very most, after the theatre and then very briefly, and I dreamed constantly about how wonderful it would be to sleep at their house. Once I’d left school, I often spent the night there.

“Later I read in a famous English essay that the chief characteristic of the Celts was rebellion against the tyranny of facts. Well, in this respect the two of them were true Celts. In fact, as I recall, both Tamás and I were crazy about the Celts, the world of Parsifal and the Holy Grail. Probably the reason why I felt so at home with them was that they were so much like Celts. With them I found my real self. I remember why I always felt so ashamed of myself, so much an outsider, in my parents’ house. Because there, facts were supreme. At the Ulpius house, I was at home. I went there every day, and spent all my free time with them.

“The moment I came into the atmosphere of the Ulpius house my chronic sense of shame vanished, as did my nervous symptoms. When Tamás pulled me from the whirlpool, that was the last time it afflicted me. Nobody peered over my shoulder again, or stared at me in the darkness of night. I slept peacefully, and life granted what I expected of it. Physically I knitted together, and my face became unlined. This was the happiest time of my life, and if some smell or effect of the light stirs up the memory of it, I still experience the same rapturous, deceptive, elusive happiness, the first happiness I ever knew.

“This happiness was not of course without a price. In order to belong to the Ulpius house I had to renounce the objective world. Or rather, it became impossible to lead a double life. I gave up reading newspapers, broke off with my more intelligent friends. Gradually they came to think I was as stupid as Tamás. This really hurt, because I was proud, and I knew I was clever. But it couldn’t be helped. I severed all links with the family at home. To my parents and siblings I spoke with the measured formality I had learnt from Tamás. The rift that this brought between us I have never been able to repair, however hard I try, and ever since I’ve felt guilty towards my family. Later on I laboured to remove this sense of estrangement by being extremely compliant, but that’s another story.

“My parents were deeply dismayed by my transformation. The family sat in anxious council, with all my uncles, and they decided that I needed a girl. My uncle put this to me, much embarrassed, and with many symbolic expressions. I listened with polite interest, but showed little inclination to agree, the less so because at that time Tamás, Ervin, János Szepetneki and I had undertaken never to touch any woman since we were the new Knights of the Grail. However with time the girl idea faded, and my parents came to accept that I was as I was. My mother, I am sure, to this day carefully warns our domestics and new acquaintances when they come to the house, to be on their guard, because I am not a normal sort of person. And yet, for how many years now, there hasn’t been the slightest thing about me to suggest that I am other than perfectly normal.

“I really couldn’t say what caused this change which my parents noted with such alarm. It’s true that Tamás and Éva demanded absolutely that one should fit in with them, and I heartily, even happily, went along with this. I ceased to be a good student. I revised my opinions and came to despise a whole lot of things which up till then I had liked — soldiers and military glory, my classmates, native Hungarian cooking — everything that would have been described in school terms as ‘cool’ and ‘good fun’. I gave up football, which until then I had followed passionately. Fencing was the only permissible sport, and the three of us trained for it with all the more intensity. I read voraciously to keep up with Tamás, although this wasn’t difficult for me. My interest in religious history dates from this time. Later, I gave it up, like so many other things, when I became more serious.

“Despite all this, I still felt guilty towards Tamás and Éva. I felt like a fraud. Because what for them was natural freedom was for me a difficult, dogged sort of rebellion. I was just too petty-bourgeois. At home they had brought me up too much that way, as you know. I had to take a deep breath and reach a major decision before dropping my cigarette ash on the floor. Tamás and Éva couldn’t imagine doing anything else. When I summoned up the courage every so often to cut school with Tamás, I’d have stomach cramps for a whole day. My nature was such that I would wake early in the morning and be sleepy at night, I’d be hungriest at midday and dinner-time, I’d prefer to eat from a dish and not begin with the sweet. I like order, and am mortally afraid of policemen. These sides to my nature, my whole order-loving, dutiful bourgeois soul, I had to conceal when I was with them. But they knew. They took exactly the same view, and they were very good about it. They said nothing. If my love of order or thrift somehow betrayed itself, they magnanimously looked the other way.

“The hardest thing was that I had to take part in their plays. I don’t have the slightest instinct for acting. I am incurably self-conscious, and at first I thought I would die when they gave me their grandfather’s red waistcoat so that I could become Pope Alexander the Sixth in a long-running Borgia serial. In time I did get the hang of it. But I never managed to improvise the rich baroque tapestries they did. On the other hand, I made an excellent sacrificial victim. I was perhaps best at being poisoned and boiled in oil. Often I was just the mob butchered in the atrocities of Ivan the Terrible, and had to rattle my throat and expire twenty-five times in a row, in varying styles. My throat-rattling technique was particularly admired.

“And this I have to tell you, though it’s difficult for me to talk about it, even after so much wine, but my wife must know everything: I really enjoyed being the sacrificial victim. It was the first thing I thought of when I woke up, and I looked forward to it the whole day long, yes … ”

“Why did you enjoy being the victim?” asked Erzsi.

“Hmmm … well, for erotic reasons, if you follow me. I think … yes. After a while, I would dig up these stories myself, so I could be the victim according to my taste. For example: Éva would be an Apache girl (the cinema had already begun to channel her fantasy — there were films about them at the time) and would lure me into her camp. She would get me drunk, then they would rob me and murder me. Or, the same thing done historically, say, Judith and Holofernes. That story I really adored. Or I would be a Russian general, Éva a spy. She puts me to sleep and steals the plan of campaign. Tamás is the heroic assistant. He chases after Éva, recovers the secret plans. But Éva frequently neutralises him, and the Russians suffer horrific losses. That sort of story would take shape as the game developed. It’s interesting that Tamás and Éva really enjoyed these games. It’s only me that’s still embarrassed by them, and even now I speak of them with some shame. They never did. Éva loved to be the woman who cheats, betrays and murders men, Tamás and I loved to be the man she cheats, betrays, murders, or utterly humiliates … ”