“I think so.”
“Well I never! On the first floor there’s an English teashop. You go up from inside the bookshop. Do come. I’ll wait for you there.”
“Fine.”
He had in fact selected this venue because, where Erzsi was concerned, he had a morbid suspicion of everything French. In his imagination Paris and the French symbolised for Erzsi everything lacking in him, everything he could not give her. In the French cafés (which he particularly loathed, because the waiters were insufficiently respectful, and never brought water with his coffee) the entire French nation would aid Erzsi in her resistance to him, and she would have the advantage. In the interests of fair play he had chosen the cool, neutral extra-territoriality of the English teashop.
Erzsi appeared. They ordered, and Pataki strove to behave as if nothing had happened between them: no marriage, no divorce. Two clever Budapesti, a man and a woman, happening to meet in Paris. He treated her to the latest gossip from home, full and fully spiced, concerning their close acquaintances. Erzsi listened attentively.
Meanwhile he was thinking:
“Here’s Erzsi. Essentially she hasn’t changed, not even after all that’s happened and all the time that’s passed since she was my wife. She’s wearing one or two bits and pieces of Paris clothing, chic enough, but, I fear, not of the best quality. She’s a bit down. In her voice there’s a certain, very slight, veiled quality that breaks my heart. Poor little thing! That bastard Mihály! What did she need him for? It seems she hasn’t yet got over him … or perhaps she’s suffered new disappointments in Paris? The unknown man … Oh my God, my God, here am I chattering on about Péter Bodrogi when I’d rather die.
“Here is Erzsi. As large as life. Here is the one woman I cannot live without. Why, why, why? Why should she be the only woman I find desirable, at a time when my general desire for women is nonexistent? So many of the others were so much ‘better women’, Gizi for example, not to mention Maria … Just to look at them made my blood well up. And above all, they were so much younger. Erzsi’s no longer exactly … Why, despite all this, here and now, in sober mind and free from the heat of passion, would I give up half my fortune to lie with her?”
Erzsi rarely looked at Zoltán, but listened to his gossip with a smile, and thought:
“How much he knows about everyone! People are so much at home with him. (Mihály never knew anything about anyone. He was incapable of noticing who was whose brother-in-law or girlfriend.) I don’t understand what I was afraid of, why I got so anxious. That old cliché of the ‘deserted husband’, how much truth is there in it? I really might have known that Zoltán could never get into the way of being the tiniest bit tragic. He finds a smile in everything. He abhors everything that’s on a grand scale. If his fate led him to a martyr’s death he’d no doubt make a joke and a bit of gossip even at the stake, to take the edge off the tragic situation. And yet he surely has suffered a lot. He’s older than he was. But at the same time he’s played down the suffering. And occasionally he’s felt wonderful. You can’t feel too sorry for him.”
“Well, what’s the matter?” Zoltán asked suddenly.
“With me? What should there be? I’m sure you know all about why I came to Paris … ”
“Yes, I’m aware of the broad outline, but I don’t know why everything turned out as it did. You wouldn’t care to tell me?”
“No, Zoltán. Don’t be offended. I really can’t think why I should discuss with you what happened between me and Mihály. I never talked to him about you. It’s only natural.”
“That’s Erzsi,” thought Zoltán. “A fine lady, real breeding. Nothing, however catastrophic, could make her indiscreet. Self-control on two legs. And how she looks at me, with such cool, withering politeness! She’s still got the knack — she’s only to look at me to make me feel like a grocer’s assistant. But I can’t let myself be so easily intimidated.”
“All the same, you can perhaps at least tell me what your plans are,” he said.
“For the time being I really don’t have any. I’m staying on in Paris.”
“Are you happy here?”
“Happy enough.”
“Have you filed for divorce yet?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Zoltán, you ask so many questions! I haven’t, because it isn’t yet time for that.”
“But do you really think he’ll still … do excuse me … that he’ll still come back to you?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps. I don’t know whether I would want him if he did. Perhaps I’d have nothing to say to him. We aren’t really suited. But … Mihály isn’t like other people. First I would have to know what his intentions were. For all I know he could wake up one fine morning and look around for me. And remember in a panic that he left me on the train. And look for me high and low all over Italy.”
“Do you really think so?”
Erzsi lowered her head.
“You’re right. I don’t really think so.”
“Why was I so frank?” The question gnawed at her. “Why did I give myself away, as I have to no-one else? It seems there’s still something between me and Zoltán. Some sort of intimacy, that can’t be wished away. You can’t undo four years of marriage. There’s no other person in the world I would have discussed Mihály with.”
“My time hasn’t yet come,” thought Zoltán. “She’s still in love with that oaf. With a bit of luck Mihály will mess it up in the fullness of time.”
“What news have you had of him?” he asked.
“Nothing. I only guess he’s in Italy. One of his friends is here, someone I also know, by the name of János Szepetneki. He tells me he’s tracking him closely and will soon know where he is, and what he’s doing.”
“How will he find out?”
“I don’t know. Szepetneki is a very unusual man.”
“Truly?” Zoltán raised his head and gazed at her steadily. Erzsi withstood the gaze defiantly.
“Truly. A very unusual man. The most unusual man I ever met. And then there’s a Persian here too … ”
Pataki dropped his head, and took a large mouthful of tea. “Which of the two was it? Or was it both? My God, my God, better to be dead … ”
The tête-à-tête did not last very much longer. Erzsi had some business, she didn’t say what.
“Where are you staying?” she asked absent-mindedly.
“At the Edward VII.”
“Well, goodbye, Zoltán. Really, it was very nice seeing you again. And … don’t worry, and don’t think about me,” she said quietly, with a sad smile.
That night Pataki took a little Parisienne back to the hotel. “After all, when you’re in Paris,” he thought, and was filled with unspeakable revulsion against the smelly little stranger snoring in the bed beside him.
In the morning, after she had gone and Pataki was up and beginning to shave, there was a knock at the door.
“Entrez!”
A tall, too-elegantly dressed, sharp-featured man made his entrance.
“I’m looking for Mr Pataki, the Director. It’s important. A matter of great importance to him.”
“That’s me. With whom do I have the pleasure?”
“My name is János Szepetneki.”
PART FOUR AT HELL’S GATE
V A porta inferi R erue, Domine,
animam eius.
XVIII
NIGHT WAS FALLING. Slowly, with a slight dragging of the feet, Mihály trudged over the Tiber.
For some time now he had been living on the Gianicolo Hill, in a shabby little room Waldheim had discovered, where a scruffy crone cooked most of his meals, simple pasta asciutta, which Mihály supplemented with a bit of cheese and sometimes an orange. Despite its creaking antiquity it was much more the real thing than any hotel room. The furniture was ancient — real furniture, large and nobly proportioned, not the pseudo-furniture one finds in large hotels. Mihály would have been very fond of his room had its state of cleanliness and hygiene not constantly provoked the painful sense of having come down in the world. He even complained to Waldheim, who simply laughed and delivered lengthy and not very appetising lectures on his experiences in Greece and Albania.