Dezso Kosztolanyi
Kornel Esti
I
In which the writer introduces and unveils Kornél Esti, the sole hero of this book
I HAD PASSED THE MIDPOINT OF MY LIFE, WHEN ONE WINDY day in spring, I remembered Kornél Esti. I decided to call on him and to revive our former friendship.
By then we’d had no contact for ten years. What had come between us? I don’t know. We hadn’t fallen out. At least, not like other people do.
Once I’d passed the age of thirty, however, he began to irritate me. His frivolity was offensive. I became tired of his old-fashioned wing collars, his narrow yellow ties, and especially his atrocious puns. His determined eccentricity wore me out. He was forever getting mixed up in escapades of one sort or another.
For instance, one day as we were walking along the esplanade together, he, without a word of explanation, took from the inside pocket of his coat a kitchen knife, and to the amazement of the passers by started to sharpen it on the stones that lined the path. Or, another time, he most politely accosted a poor blind man to remove from his eye a speck of dust that had just gone into it. On one occasion, when I was expecting some very distinguished guests for dinner, men on whom my fate and career depended, editors-in-chief, politicians — gentlemen of rank and distinction — and Esti was also a guest in my home, he craftily made my servants heat the bathroom, took my guests aside one by one as they arrived, and informed them that there was in my house an ancient, mysterious, family tradition or superstition — unfortunately, no details could be given — that required all guests without exception to take a bath before dinner, and he carried off this ridiculous prank with such devilish tact, cunning, and honeyed words that the credulous victims, who favored us with their presence for the first and last time, without my knowledge all took baths, as did their wives, and then, without batting an eyelid at the awful practical joke, sat down to dinner as if nothing had happened.
That kind of practical joke had amused me in the past, but now, at the beginning of my adult life, it rather annoyed me. I was afraid that sort of thing might easily jeopardize my good name. I didn’t say a word to him. Nevertheless — I confess — he embarrassed me more than once.
He too may well have felt the same about me. In the depths of his heart he probably looked down on me for not according his ideas the respect that they deserved — perhaps he even despised me. He took me for a philistine because I used to buy an engagement diary, wrote in it every day, and did all the right things. On one occasion he accused me of forgetting what it was like to be young. And there may have been some truth in that. But that’s the way life goes. Everyone forgets.
Slowly, imperceptibly, we drifted apart, but despite all that I understood him and he understood me. It was just that we kept passing judgment on one another secretly. The thought that we understood one another, yet didn’t, set us both on edge. We went our separate ways. He went left — I went right.
For ten long years we had lived like that, without giving one another a sign of our existence. Naturally, however, I’d thought of him. Scarcely a day went by when I didn’t wonder what he would do or say in this or that situation. And I must suppose that he too thought of me. After all, our past was pervaded by so vigorous and pulsating a network of veins of memory that it couldn’t have been so soon forgotten.
It would be difficult to give a full account of who and what he had been to me. I wouldn’t even care to try. My memory doesn’t go back as far as our friendship. Its beginnings are lost in the primeval mists of my infancy. He had been close to me ever since I’d been aware of myself, always in front of me or behind, always with me or against me. I’d worshipped Esti or loathed him, but I’d never been indifferent to him.
One winter evening, after supper, I was building a tower of colored building bricks. Mother wanted me put to bed. She sent Nanny for me, because at that time I was still in skirts, and I started to go with her. Then a voice came from behind me, his unforgettable voice:
“Don’t go.”
I turned round and, in delight and alarm, looked at him. It was the first time that I’d seen him. He gave me an encouraging grin. I took his arm for him to help me, but Nanny pulled me away and, rage though I might, put me to bed.
From then on we met every day.
In the morning he would spring forward by the washstand.
“Don’t wash up, stay dirty, hooray for dirt!”
If at lunch, despite my convictions to the contrary, I began at my parents’ repeated request to spoon up the “nourishing and wholesome” lentil soup, he would whisper in my ear:
“Spit it out, throw up onto your plate, wait for the roast or the dessert.”
Sometimes he was at home with me, at table or in bed, but he went into the street with me as well.
Once Uncle Loizi was coming toward us, an old friend of my father’s, whom I had always liked and respected, a three-hundred-pound magistrate. Kornél shouted at me:
“Stick your tongue out.” And he stuck out his own till it reached the point of his chin.
He was a cheeky boy, but interesting, never dull.
He put a lighted candle in my hand.
“Set fire to the curtains!” he urged me. “Set fire to the house. Set the world on fire.”
He put a knife in my hand too.
“Stick it in your heart!” he exclaimed. “Blood’s red. Blood’s warm. Blood’s pretty.”
I didn’t dare follow his suggestions, but I was pleased that he dared to put into words what I thought. I said nothing, gave a chilly smile. I was afraid of him and attracted to him.
After a summer shower I found a sparrow chick, drenched, under the broom bush. As I had been taught in Scripture lessons, I put it on my palm, and performing an act of bodily and spiritual kindness, took it into the kitchen to dry it by the fire. I sprinkled crumbs in front of it. Tucked it up in some rags. Sat it on my arm and stroked it.
“Tear its wings of,” whispered Kornél. “Poke its eyes out, throw it in the fire, kill it!”
“You’re crazy!” I shouted.
“You’re a coward!” shouted he.
White-faced, we glared at one another. We were shaking, I with rage and empathy, he from curiosity and bloodlust. I thrust the chick at him: he could do what he wanted with it. Kornél looked at me and took pity on the little thing. He began to tremble. I pouted scornfully. While we were thus at odds the sparrow chick slipped out into the garden and disappeared.
So he didn’t dare do everything. He liked to talk big and make things up.
I remember how one autumn evening, about six o’clock, he called me out to the gate and there informed me, mysteriously and importantly, that he could actually work magic. He showed me a shiny metal object in his hand. He said that it was a magic whistle, and he only had to blow it for any house to rise up into the air, all the way to the moon. He said that at ten o’clock that evening he was going to levitate our house. He told me not to be afraid, just to watch closely what happened.
At the time I was quite a big boy. I believed him, and yet I didn’t. I rushed back into the apartment in agitation. I watched constantly as the hands of the clock moved on. Just in case, I went over the events of my past life, repented of my sins, knelt in front of the picture of the Blessed Virgin, and prayed. At about ten I heard music and a rustling in the air. Our house rose slowly, smoothly upwards, came to a stop at a height, then rocked and just as slowly and smoothly as it had risen, sank back to earth. A glass on the table rattled and the hanging lamp shook. The whole affair had lasted a couple of minutes. The others hadn’t even noticed. Only my mother turned pale when she looked at me.