“Nobody,” I said, “because it’s not going to be published.”
“Surely you didn’t suppose,” he asked, “that they were going to fling their arms round your neck?”
“Why not? It’s a good novel,” I said.
“Good? What do mean by good?”
“What else?” I stuttered. “Good means good. A self-explanatory whatsit … that is to say … good an und für sich, if I may put it that way.”
“An und für sich,” Sas glanced at Gerendás, as if he were interpreting my words, then slowly turned his elegant, narrow, sharp-beaked head back toward me, his half-closed eyes and the yellowish sideburns framing his ruddy face reminding me of a sad and sleepy, widely experienced fox. “An und für sich,” he repeated calmly. “But good for whom? What is anybody going to make of it?! Where are you living? Which planet do you think you are on?” he asked with growing distress. “Not a soul in the trade has ever heard of you, and you go and send in a novel, and to top it all one on a subject like that …”
“That Sas,” Mijnheer Gruyn attempted to smooth things over, “he hasn’t changed a bit. He was always such a … what’s the phrase … smart-arse, azes ponem,” he gleefully hit upon the words he had been seeking. “Do you remember when …”
But by now there was no holding Sas back; me neither, for that matter.
“In other words, I’m not entitled to write a good novel!” I heard the angry yelps of my own voice.
“That’s it exactly.” Sas was jubilant. “I couldn’t have put it better myself. No one is looking for a good novel from you, old chap. What evidence do you have that you can write a good novel? Even if we suppose that it really is good, where’s the guarantee for it? No expert, my dear chap, is simply going to believe the evidence of his own eyes! Your name is unknown,” he kept count of the points on his fingers, “You have no one behind you, the subject isn’t topical, no one is going to deal you the ace of trumps. What do you expect?”
“But what if,” I asked, “someone were to submit a brilliant novel?…”
“You’re obviously talking about yourself,” Sas pronounced.
“Let’s suppose,” I conceded.
“First of all, there’s no such thing as a brilliant novel,” Sas patiently enlightened me. “Secondly, even if there is, so much the worse. This is a small country; what it needs is not geniuses but honest, hardworking citizens who …”
“Yes, all right,” Van de Gruyn took pity. “But now that he’s gone and finished a novel … Possibly,” he ventured cautiously, “you could give it to me … I’m staying for another two weeks, I might be able to zip through …”
“That’s it!” I said, “You translate it and publish it in Holland!”
Mijnheer Gruyn seemed thunderstruck:
“I don’t have anything to do with translating,” he said, “I sometimes have need of help myself with the language.” In his agitation, his Hungarian was deteriorating. “That’s a complete … what’s the word … absurdity!.. Anyway,” he rallied gradually, “even back in the West it’s no pushover for novels. There you have top pros, you see, and they know what’s what. To make money with a subject like that, well you need to have something! With Anne Frank the Dutch have already got that particular subject, what d’you call it …”
“Sewn up,” I hastened to his assistance.
“Not quite that, but if you can’t bring anything new … add something … and even back in the West a publisher’s rejection slip is hardly a letter of recommendation for a novel … unless of course,” a pensive expression appeared hesitantly on his face, “the author is the sort of personality who just happens …”
“I’m not going to get myself banged up just for the sake of becoming a five-day wonder where you live!” I said.
“Some hope!” Sas gave speedy reassurance. “These days it’s not so easy to get slammed into prison for a book.”
“Whereas in the good old days!” Mijnheer Gruyn chortled in relief. “Do you remember when …”
“Nowadays they deal with those matters in a much more civilized manner here,” Sas carried on unruffled.
“Yes, so I hear everyone say,” the Mijnheer butted in. “Things are going very well here. The shop window displays are attractive, the people well-dressed … but where are all those classy Budapest women there were in the old days?”
“They’re still here,” said Sas, “it’s just you who doesn’t notice them. You’re not the dashing hussar of seventeen years ago either, old fellow …”
In short, the matter of my novel was finally drawing to a close, like a boring record. Sas offered a few more pieces of advice: I should write short stories and try to get a foothold in the literary magazines; that way they would grow used to me and might even start mentioning my name. Then I should join some literary group or other; it didn’t matter which one, he said, because those things were always unpredictable.
“A literary group,” he patiently instructed me, “is like a wave: now cresting, then crashing down, but it always carries the alluvium with it, whether on the swell or in the trough, and in the end washes it up in some harbour.” He referred to the examples of several authors who had come safely to port that way, some quickly, others more slowly. Some had dropped out of the queue in the meantime, becoming suicides or giving up or ending up in a psychiatric home; but others had made it and, after thirty or forty years, it transpired that they were great writers and, what is more, precisely on account of works to which nobody had paid the slightest attention. From then on, if they were still alive, it was all nicknames, celebrations, and pampering, and there was as little they could do to alter that as they had been able to do about their previous neglect.
“Or else,” he continued, “you have to hit the jackpot. In other words,” he said, “you have to keep an eye open for the issue, which is, so to say, just breaking the surface at the time. In that case it can happen that a previously unknown writer comes into vogue, because,” Sas said, “your book comes along at just the right time for someone, or somebodies, and they can make use of it either pro or contra, as a whipping-boy or a banner.”
The Mijnheer related that it was not much different in the West, although there was no question that the market gave a free run to success. But then the tricks one had to devise in order to get it to surrender to “the besiegers.” One person had stripped naked at a reception for the queen, others set new speed records, or they were constantly divorcing and then remarrying, or they joined suspicious sects, or had themselves carted off to hospital with a drug overdose — all just to get their names into the newspapers. He himself, Mijnheer Van de Gruyn, was fed up with funny stories and with constantly having to repeat himself. He had a subject for a serious novel and had even announced it to his agent. The agent had not raised a single word of objection but had simply placed two contracts before him. One was for the usual humorous pieces, except that the fee was one-third higher than usual; the other was for a novel, for starvation wages, and with the additional rider that the agent retained the right, on being shown the first half of the finished manuscript, to break even this miserable contract.
“I’m not saying that I won’t sign one day, but right now I can’t afford it.”
“That’s the way it is,” Árpád Sas noted, “One can’t always do what one would like.”
“Or else you have to pay the price,” added the Mijnheer. They had stopped speaking to me long ago. The two clever and worldly-wise men communed agreeably over the head of the mug sitting between them.