Antal Szerb - Journey by Moonlight

“Then came his second suicide attempt.”

“The second?”

“The second. I should have mentioned the first one earlier. That was actually much more serious and horrific. It happened when we were sixteen, just at the start of our friendship. I called there one day as usual and found Éva alone, doing some drawing with rather unusual concentration. She said Tamás had gone up to the attic, and I should wait, he would soon be down. Around that time he often went up to the attic to explore. He turned up countless treasures in the old trunks, which fed his antiquarian fantasies and were used in our plays. In an old house like that the attic is a specially romantic sort of place, so I wasn’t really surprised, and I waited patiently. Éva, as I said, was unusually quiet.

“Suddenly she turned pale, leapt to her feet, and screamed at me that we should go up to the attic to see what was wrong with Tamás. I had no idea what this was all about, but her fear ran through me. In the attic it was as black as could be. I tell you, it was a vast ancient place, full of nooks and crannies, with the doors of mysterious bureaux open everywhere, and trunks and desks blocking the main passage at intervals. I bumped my head on low-hanging beams. There were unexpected steps to go up and down. But Éva ran through the darkness without hesitation, as if she already knew where he might be. At the far end of the corridor there was a low and very long niche, and at the end of that the light of a small round window could be seen. Éva came to a sudden stop, and with a scream grabbed hold of me. My teeth were also chattering, but even at that age I was the sort of person who finds unexpected courage in moments of greatest fear. I went into the darkness of the niche, dragging Éva along, still clinging to me.

“Tamás was dangling beside the little round window, about a metre off the floor. He had hanged himself. Éva shrieked, ‘He’s still alive, he’s still alive,’ and pressed a knife into my hand. It seems she had known perfectly well what he intended. There was a trunk next to him. He’d obviously stood on it to attach the noose to the strength of the joist. I jumped up on the trunk, cut the cord, supported Tamás with the other hand and slowly lowered him down to Éva, who untied the noose from his neck.

“Tamás quickly regained consciousness. He must have been hanging only a minute or two, and no damage was done.

“‘Why did you give me away?’ he asked Éva. She was covered in shame and didn’t reply.

“In due course I asked, rather guardedly, why he had done it.

“‘I just wanted to see …’ he replied, with indifference.

“‘And what was it like?’ asked Éva, wide-eyed with curiosity.

“‘It was wonderful.’

“‘Are you sorry I cut you down?’ I asked. Now I too felt a little guilty.

“‘Not really. I’ve plenty of time. Some other time will do.’

“Tamás wasn’t able at the time to explain what it was really all about. But he didn’t have to. I knew all the same. I knew from our games. In the tragedies we played we were always killing and dying. That’s all they were ever about. Tamás was always preoccupied with dying. But try to understand, if it’s at all possible: not death, annihilation, oblivion, but the act of dying. There are people who commit murder again and again from an ‘irresistible urge’, to savour the heady excitement of killing. The same irresistible urge drew Tamás towards the supreme ecstasy of his own final passing away. Probably I can’t ever explain this to you, Erzsi. Things like this just can’t be explained, just as you can’t describe music to someone who is tone-deaf. I understood him completely. For years we never said another word about what happened. We just knew that each understood the other.

“The second attempt came when we were twenty. I actually took part in it. Don’t worry, you can see I’m still alive.

“At that time I was in utter despair, mainly because of my father. When I matriculated I enrolled as a philosophy student at the university. My father asked me several times what I wanted to be, and I told him a religious historian. ‘And how do you propose to earn your living?’ he would ask. I couldn’t answer that, and I didn’t want to think about it. I knew he wanted me to work in the firm. He had no real objection to my university studies because he thought it would simply give status to the firm if one of the partners had a doctorate. For my part, I looked on university, in the last analysis, as a few years’ delay. To gain a bit of time, before becoming an adult.

“ Joie de vivre wasn’t my strong point during that time. The feeling of mortality, of transience, grew stronger in me, and by then my Catholicism was no longer a consolation. In fact it increased my sense of weakness. I wasn’t a role-player by nature, and by that stage I could clearly see that my life and being fell hopelessly short of the Catholic ideal.

“I was the first of us to abandon our shared Catholicism. One of my many acts of betrayal.

“But to be brief. One afternoon I called at the Ulpius house and invited Tamás to come for a walk. It was a fine afternoon in spring. We went as far as Old Buda and sat in an empty little bar under the statue of St Flórián. I had a lot to drink, and moaned about my father, my prospects, the whole horrible misery of youth.

“‘Why do you drink so much?’ he asked.

“‘Well, it’s fun.’

“‘You like the dizzy feeling?’

“‘Of course.’

“‘And the loss of consciousness?’

“‘Of course. It’s the one thing I really do like.’

“‘Well then, I really don’t understand you. Imagine how much better it would be to die properly.’

I conceded this. We think much more logically when we are drunk. The only problem was, I have a horror of any form of pain or violence. I had no wish to hang or stab myself or jump into the freezing Danube.

“‘No need,’ said Tamás. ‘I’ve got thirty centigrams of morphine here. I reckon it would do for the two of us, though it’s really just enough for one. The fact is, the time has come. I’m going to do it in the next few days. If you come with me then so much the better. Naturally I don’t want to influence you. It’s just as I say: only if you feel like it.’

“‘How did you get the morphine?’

“‘From Éva. She got it from the doctor — said she could not sleep.’

“For both of us it was fatally significant that the poison came from Éva. This was all part of the world of our dramatics, those sick little plays which we had had to change so much after Ervin and János arrived. The thrill was always in the fact that we died for Éva, or because of her. The fact that she had provided the poison finally convinced me that I should take it. And that’s what happened.

“I can’t begin to describe how simple and natural it was just then to commit suicide. I was drunk, and at that age drink always produced the feeling in me that nothing mattered. And that afternoon it freed in me the chained demon that lures a man towards death, the demon that sleeps, I believe, in the depths of everyone’s consciousness. Just think, dying is so much more easy and natural than staying alive … ”

“Do get on with the story,” said Erzsi impatiently.

“We paid for our wine and went for a walk, in a blaze of happy emotion. We declared how much we loved each other, and how our friendship was the finest thing in the world. We sat for a while beside the Danube, somewhere in Old Buda, beside the tramlines. Dusk was falling on the river. And we waited for it to take effect. At first I felt absolutely nothing.

“Suddenly I experienced an overwhelming sense of grief that I was leaving Éva. Tamás at first didn’t want to hear about it, but then he too succumbed to his feelings for her. We took a tram, then ran up the little stairway to Castle Hill.