Like all foreigners, Mihály was exercised by the question of whether the people did actually welcome everything as fervently, and were as steadily, indefatigably, tirelessly happy, as the papers insisted. Naturally he was aware that it was difficult for a foreigner to take an exact measure of Italian contentment and sincerity, especially when he never spoke to anyone, and had no real connection with any aspect of Italian life. But as far as he could judge, from such a distance, and given his general detachment, it seemed to him that the Italian people were indeed indefatigably enthusiastic and happy, ever since these had come into fashion. But he also knew what trifling and stupid things could suffice to make man happy, whether individually or in the mass.
However he did not occupy himself at great length with this question. His instincts told him that in Italy it was all very much the same whoever happened to be in power and whatever the ideas in whose name they ruled. Politics touched only the surface. The people, the vegetative sea of the Italian masses, bore the changing times on their back with astonishing passivity, and lived quite unconnected with their own remarkable history. He suspected that even Republican and Imperial Rome, with its huge gestures, its heroics and bestial stupidities, had been nothing more than a virile drama on the surface, the whole Roman Empire the mere private affair of a few brilliant actors, while down below the Italians placidly ate their pasta, sang songs of love, and begat their countless offspring.
One day a familiar name met his eye in the Popolo d’Italia: ‘The Waldheim Lecture’. He studied the article, from which it emerged that Rodolfo Waldheim, the world-famous Hungarian classical philologist and religious historian, had given a lecture at the Accademia Reale, entitled Aspetti della morte nelle religioni antiche. The fiery Italian journalist fêted the lecture as shedding entirely new light not just on death-practices in ancient religions but on the nature of death in general. The text was moreover an important document of Hungaro-Italian friendship. The audience had enthusiastically received the famous professor, whose very youthfulness had surprised and delighted them.
This Waldheim, Mihály decided, could be no other than Rudi Waldheim, and he was filled with a kind of pleasure, for this man had at one time been a good friend. They had been at university together. Although neither was very congenial by nature — Mihály because he rather looked down upon anyone who was not of the Ulpius set, Waldheim because he felt that compared with himself everyone else was ignorant, dull and cheap — nonetheless a kind of friendship had grown between them out of their interest in religious history. The relationship had not been a very lasting one. Waldheim’s knowledge was already formidable: he had read everything that mattered, in every language, and he willingly and brilliantly expounded to Mihály, whom he found an eager listener, until he realised that his interest in the subject was not very deep. He decided his friend was a dilettante and withdrew into suspicion. Mihály for his part was astonished and dismayed by the vastness of his friend’s knowledge. If a mere beginner knew so much, he wondered, how much more would a bearded practitioner know, and he entirely lost heart, particularly as not long afterwards he abandoned his university studies. Waldheim however went on to Germany to perfect himself at the feet of the great masters and the two lost touch completely. Years later Mihály would read in the newspapers of another step in Waldheim’s rapid rise up the academic ladder, and when he became a lecturer at the university Mihály had been on the point of writing to congratulate him, but then hadn’t. They had never again met in person.
Now, reading his name, he remembered Waldheim’s peculiar charm, which he had quite forgotten in the intervening years: the fox-terrier liveliness of his bright, round, shaven head; his miraculous loquacity (for Waldheim held forth unstoppably, at full volume, in long perfectly constructed sentences almost always full of interest, even in his sleep it was generally supposed); his indomitable vitality; his perpetual appetite for women (which keeps this type of man always busily active around his more attractive female colleagues); above all his distinctive quality, which, following Goethe, though with modest reluctance, he himself termed ‘charisma’; and the fact that the study of the concept of Spirit, in all its detailed workings as well as the abstract whole, held him in a white heat of passion. He was never indifferent, always feverishly busy with something, in raptures over some great and possibly ancient manifestation of the Spirit, or detesting some ‘dull’ or ‘cheap’ or ‘second-rate’ piece of stupidity, and invariably sent into a trance by the very word ‘Spirit’, which for him actually seemed to mean something.
Thoughts of Waldheim’s vitality had an unexpectedly invigorating effect on Mihály. Ambushed by a sudden urge to see him again, even if briefly, he suddenly realised how utterly lonely his life had been in recent weeks. Loneliness was an inescapable part of awaiting one’s fate, which was his sole occupation in Rome and impossible to share with anyone. It was now brought home to him for the first time how deep he had sunk into this passive, dreamy waiting, this immersion in the sense of mortality. It was like a tangle of seaweed sucking him down towards the wonders of the deep: then suddenly his head had burst out of the water, and he breathed again.
He must meet Waldheim. One possible way of effecting this now seemed to offer itself. In the article reporting the lecture, mention was made of a reception to be given in the Palazzo Falconieri, the headquarters of the Collegium Hungaricum. He remembered that there was a branch of that organisation in Rome, a hostel for young aspiring artists and scholars. Here they would at least be able to give him Waldheim’s address, if he were not actually living there.
The address of the Palazzo Falconieri was not hard to find. It stood in the Via Giulia, not far from the Teatro Marcello, in the district where Mihály most loved to loiter. Now he cut through the alleyways of the ghetto and soon arrived at the fine old Palazzo.
The porter received Mihály’s inquiry sympathetically, and told him that the professor was indeed in the College, but it was his sleeping time. Mihály looked in amazement at his watch. It was ten thirty.
“Yes,” said the porter. “The professor always sleeps until twelve, and must not be roused. Not that it’s easy to wake him. He sleeps very deeply.”
“Then perhaps I can call back after lunch?”
“Sorry, after lunch the professor goes back to sleep, and cannot be disturbed then either.”
“And when is he awake?”
“The whole night,” said the porter, with a hint of awe in his voice.
“Then it would be better if I left my card and address, and the professor can let me know if he would like to see me.”
When he arrived home late that afternoon a telegram was waiting for him. Waldheim had invited him to dinner. Mihály immediately boarded a tram and set off for the Palazzo Falconieri. He loved the ‘C’ line, that wonderful route which would take him there from the main railway station skirting half the city, passing through various areas of woodland, stopping at the Coliseum, brushing past the Palatine ruins and racing alongside the Tiber, the cavalcade of the millennia passing in procession on either side of the rails, and the whole journey taking just a quarter-of-an-hour.
“Come,” shouted Waldheim in answer to Mihály’s knocking. But when he tried the door it appeared to be stuck.
“Hang on, I’m coming … ” came the shout from within. After some time the door opened.
“It’s a bit choked up,” said Waldheim, gesturing towards the books and papers piled on the floor. “Don’t worry, just come in.”
Negotiating entry was not a simple matter, for the entire floor was strewn with objects of every description: not just books and papers, but Waldheim’s underwear, some extremely loud summer gear, a surprising quantity of shoes, swimming and other sportswear, newspapers, tins of food, chocolate boxes, letters, art reproductions, and pictures of women.