Even less so, since, as you would expect, as a result of the situation she finds herself in, your wife has herself approached us with certain demands, quite properly in our view, and these demands we naturally must satisfy as a highest priority. Your wife is at present in Paris, and for the time being has stipulated that we should meet her living expenses there. The final settlement can only be drawn up when she comes home. I really can’t overstate what an exceptionally difficult position that final settlement could put us in. As you well know, all the ready money she brought into the firm was invested in machinery, the prestige building, and other current developments, so that liquidating all these sums will not only cause us difficulties, but will practically shake the firm to its foundations. I really do think anybody else would have taken all this into account before abandoning his wife on their honeymoon. I need hardly add that, quite apart from all the financial considerations, your conduct was in itself absolutely and utterly ungentlemanly, particularly towards such a correct and blameless lady as your wife.
Well, that’s the situation. Your father was not entirely persuaded that I should write to you at all. You can imagine how nervous and distressed these events have made him, and how alarming he finds the prospect that sooner or later we shall have to pay everything back to your wife. He’s taken it all so much to heart that we want to send him on a holiday for a break (we’re thinking mainly of Gastein), but he won’t hear of it because of the extra expense of travelling during the summer holiday season.
So, dear Misi, on receipt of this letter be so good as to pack up and come straight home, the sooner the better.
Love from everyone,
Tivadar
Tivadar had certainly enjoyed writing that letter, revelling in the fact that he, the feckless playboy of the family, was now in a position to preach morality to the sober and serious Mihály. This in itself, and the superior tone of voice from a totally unsympathetic younger brother, made him very angry. Now, returning home could be seen as nothing more than an imposition, a horrid and hateful command.
But, it seemed, there really was no alternative. If he paid back the loan from Millicent there would be nothing left for him to live on in Rome. What also disturbed him deeply was what Tivadar had said about his father. He knew that Tivadar was not exaggerating. His father had a tendency to depression, and the whole disaster, in which material, social and emotional problems were linked together in such a complicated way, was just the sort of thing to destroy his peace of mind. If the other elements failed to achieve this, it was enough in itself that his favourite son had behaved so impossibly. He really would have to go home, if only to make amends for this, to explain to his father that he simply could not have done other than he did, not even for Erzsi’s good. He needed to show that he was not a runaway, that he took full responsibility for his action, as a gentleman should.
And once home he would have to knuckle down to work. Now everything would be work. Work was the promised reward for a young man setting out, for completing his studies, and work was the penitential act and punishment for those who met with failure. If he went home and worked steadily, sooner or later his father would forgive him.
But when he thought in detail about this ‘work’—his desk, the people he had to deal with, and above all the things that filled his time after work, the bridge parties, the Danube outings, the well-to-do ladies, he felt exasperated to the point of tears.
“What did the shade of Achilles say?” he pondered. “‘I would rather be a cotter in my father’s house than a prince among the dead.’ For me it’s the reverse. I’d rather be a cotter here, among the dead, than a prince at home, in my father’s house. Only, I’d need to know what exactly a cotter is … ”
Here, among the dead … for at that moment he was walking in the little Protestant cemetery behind the pyramid of Cestius, beside the city wall. Here lay his fellows, dead men from the North, drawn here by nameless nostalgias, and here overtaken by death. This fine cemetery, with its shady wall, had always lured souls from the North with the illusion that here oblivion would be sweeter. At the end of one of Goethe’s Roman elegies there stands, as a memento: Die Pyramide vorbei, leise zum Orcus hinab. “From the tomb of Cestius, the way leads gently down to Hell.” Shelley, in a wonderful letter, wrote that he would like to lie here in death, and so he does, or at least his heart is there, beneath the inscription: Cor cordium.
Mihály was on the point of leaving when he noticed a small cluster of tombs standing apart in one corner of the cemetery. He went over and perused the inscriptions on the plain Empire-stones. One of them read simply, in English: “Here lies one whose name is writ in water”. On the second a longer text declared that there lay Severn, the painter, the best friend and faithful nurse on his death-bed of John Keats, the great English poet, who had insisted that his name should not be inscribed on the neighbouring stone, under which he lay.
Mihály’s eyes filled with tears. So here lay Keats, the greatest poet since the world began … though such emotion was somewhat irrational, given that the body had been lying there for a very long time, and the spirit was preserved by his verses more faithfully than by any grave-pit. But so wonderful, so truly English, was the manner of this gentle compromise, this innocent sophistry, that perfectly respected his last wishes but nonetheless announced without ambiguity that it was indeed Keats who lay beneath the stone.
When he raised his eyes some rather unusual people were standing beside him. They were an enchantingly beautiful and undoubtedly English woman, a second woman dressed as a nurse, and two lovely English children, a little boy and girl. They simply stood motionless, looking rather awkwardly at the grave, at each other, and at Mihály. He stood and waited for them to say something, but they did not speak. After a while an elegant gentleman arrived, with the same expressionless face as the others. He bore a strong resemblance to his wife: they might have been twins, or at least brother and sister. He stood before the grave, and the wife pointed out the inscription. The Englishman nodded, and with great solemnity and some embarrassment gazed in turn at the grave, at his family, and at Mihály. And he too said nothing. Mihály moved a step further away, thinking that perhaps they were discomposed by his presence, but they simply remained standing, nodding from time to time, and looking self-consciously at one another. The two children’s faces were every bit as embarrassed and blankly beautiful as the adults’.
As he was turning away, Mihály suddenly stared at them with undisguised astonishment. He felt that they were not human but ghostly dolls, mindless automata standing here over the poet’s grave: inexplicable beings. Had they not been so very beautiful perhaps they would have been less astonishing, but they had the inhuman beauty of people in advertisements, and he was filled with an unspeakable horror.
Then the English family moved away, slowly and still nodding, and Mihály recovered himself. In sober consciousness he reviewed the past few minutes, and became truly anxious.
“What’s wrong with me? What sort of mental state have I fallen into again? It was like a dark, shameful reminder of my adolescence. These people were quite clearly nothing other than self-conscious, thoroughly stupid English, confronted by the fact that this was Keats’s grave and not knowing where to begin, perhaps because they had no idea who Keats was. Or perhaps they knew, but couldn’t think how to behave appropriately at the grave of Keats the famous Englishman, and because of this they were embarrassed in front of each other and of me. A more insignificant or banal scene you really couldn’t imagine, and yet I immediately thought of the most unspeakable horror in the world. Yes. Horror isn’t at its most intense in things of night and fear. It’s when you are staring in full sunlight at some mundane thing, a shop window, an unknown face, between the branches of a tree … ”