Sandor Marai - Embers

“Tell me what’s inside.” And when the other said nothing, “I think you came he this evening to tell me.”

They are sitting at the long table in the great dining room where no guest has sat since Krisztina’s death, where no one has eaten for decades, and the room is like a museum of furniture and household objects from a bygone era. The walls are covered with old French paneling, the furniture is from Versailles. They sit either end of the long table, separated by crystal vases of orchids in the center of the damask cloth. Interspersed with the arrangement of flowers are four porcelain figures of the finest Sčvres: exquisitely charming allegories of North, South, East, and West. West pointing toward the General, while Konrad’s figure is the East, a grinning little saracen with a palm tree and camel.

A row of porcelain candlesticks stands the length the table, holding thick, blue religious candles. The only other light comes from hidden points in the four corners of the room. The candles burn high with flickering light in the surrounding dimness. Logs glow darkly in the gray marble fireplace. The French doors stand open a little, the gray silk curtains are not quite closed, and the summer evening breezes come through the windows from time to time, while the thin curtains reveal the moonlit landscape and the glimmering lights of the little town in the distance.

At the midpoint of the long table with its flow and candles is another chair, covered in Gobelin tap try work, its back to the fireplace. It was where Krisz tina, the General’s wife, sat. Where the place setting should be is the allegorical figure of the South: a Iion, with an elephant and a black-skinned man in a bur nous, all occupying a space no bigger than a side plate and keeping watch over something in companionable harmony. The majordomo in his black frock coat stands motionless in the background, keeping watch over the serving table and directing the servants-dressed tonight in knee breeches and black tailcoats in the French manner-simply by moving his eyes. The General’s mother was the one who had established French customs here as the order of the house hold and whenever she ate in this room-whose furniture, plates, gold cutlery, glasses, crystal vases, and paneling had all come with her from her foreign home, she had always insisted that the servants dress and serve accordingly. It is so quiet in the room that even the faint crackling of the logs is audible. The two men are speaking in hushed tones and yet their voices echo: like stringed instruments, the ancient wooden panels covering the walls also vibrate to the muffled words, amplifying them. “No,” says Konrad, who has been thinking as he was eating. “I came because I was in Vienna.” He eats quickly, with neat movements but the greediness of old age. Now he lays down his fork, bends forward a little and raises his voice as he almost calls down the table to his host sitting far away at the other end: “I came because I wanted to see you one more time. Isn’t it natural?”

“Nothing could be more natural,” the General replies courteously. “So you were in Vienna. After the tropics and their passions, it must have been experience. Is it a long time since you were last there?” He asks politely, without a trace of irony in his voice. The guest looks at him distrustfully from other end of the table. They sit there a little lost, the two old men in the large room, so far from each other.

Yes, a long time.” Konrad replies. “Forty years. l’ was when … ” He speaks uncertainly, stumbling involuntarily in his embarrassment. “It was when I was or my way to Singapore.” “I understand,” says the General. “And this time what did you find in Vienna?”

“Change,” says Konrad. “At my age and in my circumstances, all one encounters wherever one goes is change. Admittedly, I did not set foot on the continent of Europe for forty years. I only spent the occasional hour in one French port or another enroute from Singapore to London.

But I wanted to see Vienna again. And this house.” “Is that why you made the trip?” asks the Genera “To see Vienna and this house? Or do you have business on the Continent?”

“I am no longer active in any way whatever,” Konrad answers. “Like you, I’m seventy-five years old. I shall die soon. That’s why I made the trip. That’s why I’m here.”

“They say,” says the General politely and encouragingly, “that when one reaches our age, one lives until one is tired of it. Don’t you find?”

“I’m tired of it already,” says the guest. His voice composed, uninflected. “Vienna,” he says. “To me was the tuning fork for the entire world. Saying d word Vienna was like striking a tuning fork and then listening to find out what tone it called forth in the person I was talking to. It was how I tested people. If there was no response, this was not the kind of person I liked.

“Vienna wasn’t just a city, it was a tone that either one carries forever in one’s soul or one does not. It was the most beautiful thing in my life. I was poor, but I was not alone, because I had a friend.

And Vienna was like another friend. When it rained in the tropics, I always heard the voice of Vienna. And at other times too. Sometimes deep in the virgin forests I smelled the musty smell of the entrance hall in the house in Hietzing. Music and everything I loved was in the stones of Vienna, and in people’s glances and their behavior, the way pure feelings are part of one’s very heart. You know when the feelings stop hurting. Vienna in winter and spring. The allées in Schonbrunn. The blue light in the dormitory at the academy, the great white stairwell with the baroque statue. Mornings riding in the Prater, The mildew in the riding school. I remember all of il exactly, and I wanted to see it again,” he says softly almost ashamed.

“And after forty-one years, what did you find?” the General asks again.

“A city,” says Konrad with a shrug. “Change.” “Here at least,” says the General, “you won’t be disappointed. Almost nothing has changed here.”

“Did you ever travel in recent years?”

“Rarely.” The General stares into the candle flame. “Only on military duty. For a time, I thought of resigning my commission, like you, and traveling out in the world to look around and find something or someone.” They do not look at each other: the guest fixes his eyes on the golden liquid in his glass, the General on the candle flame. “And then finally I stayed here. One’s military service, you know. One becomes rigid, obdurate. I promised my father I would serve out my time.

That’s why I stayed. Though I did take early retirement. When I was fifty, they wanted to put me in charge of an army. I felt I was too young for that, so I resigned. They understood. Besides,” he gestures to the servant to pour the red wine, “it was a time when military service offered no satisfaction anymore.

The revolution. The end of the monarchy.”

“Yes,” says the guest. “I’ve heard about that.”

“Only heard about it? We lived through it,” says the General severely.

“Perhaps a little more,” the other says now. “It was in ‘17. I was back in the tropics for the second time. I was working out in the swamplands with Chinese and Malay coolies. The Chinese are the best. They gamble away everything they’ve got, but they’re the best. We were living in virgin forest in the middle of the swamps. No telephone. No radio. War was raging in the world outside. I was already a British citizen, but the authorities were very understanding: I couldn fight against my former homeland. They comprehend such things. Which was why I was allowed to return the tropics. Out there, we knew absolutely nothing, the coolies least of all. Yet, one day, in the middle of the swamps, minus newspapers or radio, several weeks’ journey away from all sources of news from the wide world, they stopped work. At twelve noon. Without any reason whatever. Nothing around them had changed, not the conditions of their work nor the discipline nor their provisions. None of it was particularly good or bad, it all depended on circumstances, the way it always did out there. And one day in ‘17 at twelve noon, they announce that they’re not going to work any more. They came out of the jungle, four thousand coolies, mud up to their hips, naked to the waist, laid down their tools, their axes, and mattocks, and said: Enough. And made this and that demand. The landowners should no longer have disciplinary authority. They wanted more money. Longer rest periods. It was absolutely impossible to know what had got into them. Four thousand coolies transformed themselves before my very eyes into four thousand yellow and brown devils. That afternoon, I rode for Singapore. That was where I heard it. I was one of the first on the whole peninsula to get the news.” What news?” asked the General, leaning forward.