At first I didn’t want to go in. My friend pushed me.
“Good morning,” I said.
“Why are you lying?” asked Esti. “You don’t want a good morning here, but you’d like a nice coffee, but you can’t get that because here they lace the coffee with chicory, and it tastes like second-rate shoe-polish. I just want to show you the papers.”
There were a lot of newspapers there. Now I can only recall the Lie, the Self-Interest, the Cowardly Bandit, and the Stooge.
In place of a masthead, on the front page the Stooge carried in large type the message:
Every single letter in this paper is corrupt. It depends on all governments in the same way, and never prints their views except when the desire for filthy lucre calls for it. For that reason we advise our readers, each and all of whom we deeply disdain and despise, not to take our articles seriously and to execrate and look down on us too as much as we deserve, if that is humanly possible.
“Wonderful,” I enthused. “See that, I really like it.”
“Here speaking the truth is so general,” my friend went on, “that everybody does it. Listen to the small ads, for example,” and he started to read from various papers. Cashier seeks employment, criminal record, several convictions, former prisoner … Mentally ill nursemaid will look after children … Language teacher speaks French with Göcsej* accent and wishes to acquire local accents from pupils, has a few vacancies.
“And these people will find jobs?” I asked numbly.
“Naturally,” replied Esti.
“Why?”
“Because,” he drawled, “life’s like that.”
He pointed to a fat booklet with something printed in dark gray letters on a dark gray cover.
“This here’s the leading literary periodical. Lots of people read it.”
“I can’t even make out the title.”
“Boredom,” said Esti. “That’s the title.”
“What’s interesting in it?”
“That the title is Boredom.”
“And is it really boring?”
“I don’t want to influence you. Look it over.”
I read a few items.
“Well,” I said, pursing my lips, “it’s not all that dull.”
“You’re a stern critic,” Esti raised a warning finger. “It’s no good, no expectation can ever be fully satisfied. The title’s lowered your expectations too much. I can assure you, if you read it at home you’d find it quite boring enough. It all depends on the angle from which you look at things.”
Someone was making a speech to a crowd of several thousand in the square outside the Parliament building:
“One look at my low forehead and my face, deformed by bestial cupidity, is enough — you can see at once whom you are dealing with. I have no trade, no skill, there’s nothing on earth that I’m fit for, least of all to explain to you the meaning of life, so let me lead you toward the goal. What that goal is I will reveal. In brief, I want to be rich, to extort money, so that I shall have as much as possible and you as little as possible. And so I shall have to go on making fools of you. Or do you think, perhaps, that you’re fools enough already?”
“No, no,” the crowd roared indignantly.
“So act in accordance with your conscience. You all know my opponent. He’s a noble, selfless man, a great brain, a brilliant mind. Is there anyone in this town to compare with him?”
“No!” shouted the crowd in unison. “Nobody at all!” and clenched fists rose into the air.
Darkness fell.
I went out for a walk and suddenly the black sky was lit up as if day had broken, several days, the whole calendar.
Letters of flame sparkled:
We steal, we swindle, we rob.
“What’s that?” I asked Esti.
“An advertisement for a bank,” he said nonchalantly.
Late at night we returned to Esti’s house. The extraordinary experiences had evidently worn me out. I was running a temperature. I was sneezing and coughing. I called a doctor.
“Doctor,” I complained, “I’ve got a bit of a chill, caught a cold.”
“A cold?” the doctor was taken aback and retreated to the far corner of the room, covering his mouth with his handkerchief. “In that case be so good as to turn your head aside, because even here, five yards away, I can catch it. I’ve got children.”
“Aren’t you going to examine me?”
“ Waste of time. There’s no cure for a cold. It’s incurable, like cancer.”
“Should I sweat?”
“You can. But it won’t do any good. Broadly speaking, our scientific experience is that if we treat a cold it can last a month. If we don’t treat it, it can be gone the next day.”
“What if I develop pneumonia?”
“Then you’ll die,” he informed me.
He thought for a moment, then said:
“Frederick the Great was once walking on the field after a battle. A dying soldier, moaning in pain, stretched out his arm to him. The emperor flicked his riding crop at the soldier and shouted at him ‘You swine, d’you want to live forever?’ I always quote this little story to my patients. There’s profound wisdom in it.”
“Indeed,” I replied. “But I’ve got a headache. A splitting headache.”
“That’s your afair,” said the doctor. “That doesn’t matter. You know what does? What does matter is that I haven’t got a headache. Even more important is that I charge double for visits at night. Let me have my fee quickly, I’m in a hurry.”
He was right. Next day I was better. Fresh and cheerful, I hurried to the Town Hall to obtain the documents necessary for taking up residence in that honest town.
“Delighted,” I muttered when I appeared before the mayor.
“Well, I can’t say as much,” said the mayor coldly.
“I don’t understand,” I stammered. “I’ve called in to swear to be a loyal citizen.”
“The fact that you don’t understand shows that you’re a stupid blockhead. I’ll explain why I’m not delighted. In the first place, you’re disturbing me, and I don’t even know who or what you are. Secondly, you’re involving me in public affairs, whereas I only deal with my personal rackets. Thirdly, you’re lying about being delighted, from which I deduce that you’re a hypocritical scoundrel and not fit to join us. I’m having you deported at once.”
Within the hour I was deported by express aircraft to the town from which I had escaped.
Since then I’ve lived here. Lots of things were more to my taste there. I have to admit, though, that all the same it’s better here. Because even if people here are more or less the same as there, there’s a lot to be said for the people here. Inter alia, that at least they sometimes tell each other imaginative, amusing lies.
* A region of Hungary to the south of Lake Balaton, noted for its local dialect.
V
In which he is concerned with the animated and edifying description
of a weekday, September 10, 1909,
and the time is evoked when Franz Josef was still on the throne
and modern poets who favored various trends and schools
took their ease in the coffeehouses of Budapest
AT ELEVEN IN THE MORNING ESTI WAS STILL FAST ASLEEP ON the couch which those who gave him accommodation let him use as a bed.
Someone came to call. Esti opened his eyes.
The first thing that he noticed of the world which he had lost in his sleep was the grave figure sitting on the edge of the couch.