“Your good friend is probably still in Italy. We don’t write.”
“Sensational. You separated on your honeymoon?”
Erzsi nodded.
“Great. That’s really great. That’s Mihály’s style. The old boy hasn’t changed one little bit. All his life he’s always given up. No stamina for anything. For example, he was the best centre-half, not just in the school but, I dare say, of any school in the whole country. And then one fine day … ”
“How do you know that he left me and not the other way around?”
“Forgive me. I shouldn’t have asked. But of course. You left him. I get it. You couldn’t put up with someone like him. I can imagine how difficult it must have been living with such a cold fish … someone who never gets angry, who … ”
“Yes. He left me.”
“I see. My very first thought, by the way. In Ravenna, you remember. You know, I say this in all seriousness, Mihály isn’t cut out for a husband. He’s … how do I put this?… a seeker … All his life he’s been looking for something, something different. The sort of thing this Persian no doubt knows a lot more about than we do. Perhaps Mihály should be taking opium. Yes, that’s absolutely right — that’s what he should do. I must tell you quite frankly, I never understood that man.”
And he made a gesture of hopelessness.
But Erzsi sensed that this casual dismissal was simply a pose, and that Szepetneki was dying to know exactly what had passed between her and Mihály. He stuck very closely by her side.
They sat down together. Szepetneki was letting no-one near her. Sári was now receiving the attentions of a distinguished elderly Frenchman, and the Persian with the burning eyes was seated between two actress-types.
Erzsi was thinking: “It’s interesting how different, and contradictory, things appear from close up.” On her first visit to Paris she had been full of the superstitious prejudices acquired in her schooldays. She had thought of Paris as an evil metropolis full of perverts, and the Dôme and the Rotonde in Montparnasse, two harmless coffee-houses for painters and émigrés, had been for her the two gleaming fangs in the devil’s gullet. And now here she sat, among people who no doubt actually were evil and perverted, and it all seemed perfectly natural.
But she had little time for these reflections because she was listening intently to Szepetneki. He clearly hoped to learn something important about Mihály from her. He chatted happily away about their years together, though of course everything was slanted to fit his point of view, and he painted rather a different picture from Mihály’s. Only Tamás remained wonderfuclass="underline" princely, death-marked, a young man who was too good for this world. He had left it young before he had to compromise with it. According to Szepetneki, Tamás was so sensitive he couldn’t sleep if someone was moving about three rooms away and a strong smell would have completely finished him off. The only problem was, he was in love with his sister. They had become lovers, and, when Éva fell pregnant, Tamás killed himself from remorse. In fact, everyone was in love with Éva. Ervin had become a monk because of his hopeless passion for her. Mihály too was hopelessly in love with her. He followed her around like a puppy. It was comical. And how she treated him! She took all his money. And she stole his gold watch. Because of course it was Éva, not himself, who stole it, but he didn’t want to say that to Mihály out of delicacy. But she was in love with neither of them. Only with him, János Szepetneki.
“And what has happened to Éva since? Have you seen her?”
“Me? Of course! We still get on very well. She’s made a splendid career; not entirely without my help. She’s a very great lady.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well now, she always has the most aristocratic patrons possible — cheese barons, petroleum kings, actual heirs to thrones, not to mention the great writers and painters she takes on for the publicity.”
“And what of her at present?”
“Right now she’s in Italy. If she can, she always goes to Italy. It’s her passion. And she collects antiques, as her father did.”
“Why didn’t you tell Mihály that she was in Italy? And while we’re on the subject, how did you get to Ravenna that time?”
“Me? I was passing through Budapest and I heard there that Mihály was married and on his honeymoon in Venice. I couldn’t resist taking the opportunity to see the old boy and his wife, so I made a detour through Venice on my way back to Paris. I went to Ravenna when I heard that you had gone there.”
“And why didn’t you mention Éva?”
“I had it in mind. So that he could go looking for her?”
“He wouldn’t have gone looking for her — he was with his wife, on honeymoon.”
“Forgive me, but I don’t believe that would have restrained him.”
“Come on. For twenty years he hadn’t thought of looking for her.”
“Because he never knew where she was. And besides Mihály is so passive. But if he actually knew … ”
“And what harm would it do you if Mihály did meet Éva Ulpius? Are you jealous? Are you still in love with her?”
“Me? Not at all. I never was. She was in love with me. But I didn’t want to cause any trouble in Mihály’s marriage.”
“Are you such an angelic little boy, or what?”
“No. Just that I instantly found you so attractive.”
“Wonderful. In Ravenna you said exactly the opposite. I was pretty offended.”
“Yes, I only said that to see if Mihály would slap my face. But Mihály doesn’t slap anyone’s face. That’s what’s wrong with him. He always turns the other cheek. But to get back to the point: from the first moment you had an enormous effect on me.”
“Amazing. So now I should feel myself honoured? Tell me, can’t you seduce me with a little more wit?”
“I don’t know how to seduce wittily. That’s for weaklings. If a woman attracts me, all I think is that I want her to know it. Then she responds or she doesn’t. But women usually respond.”
“I’m not ‘women’.”
But she was fully aware that she really did attract János Szepetneki: that he desired her body, in a hungry, adolescent way, devoid of adult restraint, single-mindedly, obscenely. And this so delighted her that through her whole being the blood moved faster under the skin, as if she had been drinking. She wasn’t used to this raw instinctuality. Men generally approached her with love and fine words. Their addresses were always to the well-born, well-educated daughter of a good family. And then Szepetneki had come along, that time in Ravenna, and deeply offended her female vanity. Perhaps that had been the start of the collapse of her marriage, and she had ever since carried inside her the sting of Szepetneki’s words. Now here was her remedy, her satisfaction. She behaved so coquettishly towards him that she actually ceased to believe what she really knew: that she was at last taking revenge for the insult at Ravenna, a revenge all the colder for the delay.
But above all she responded to Szepetneki’s advances because she felt with her woman’s instinct that he was treating her essentially as Mihály’s wife. She knew what a strange relationship Szepetneki had with Mihály, how he always, by whatever means, wanted to prove that he was the better of the two; and this was why he now wished to seduce Mihály’s wife. Erzsi bathed in Szepetneki’s desire with a sickly, widow-like need for consolation, and she felt that now, with this desire, this awakening, she was becoming Mihály’s authentic wife, she was entering the magic circle, the old Ulpius circle, Mihály’s true reality.
“Let’s talk about something else,” she said, but under their table their knees caressed sensuously. “What are you actually doing in Paris?”
“I make links between large companies. Only very large companies,” he said, and began to stroke her thigh. “My finest connections are with the Third Empire. You might say that in some respects I am their local commercial representative. And besides I’m trying to bring together this Lutphali business and the Martini-Alvaert film studio, because I need pocket money. But tell me, why are we talking so much? Come and dance.”