At such times I’d hurry along holding my breath, like somebody up to no good. The trick often worked. But a couple of times people ran after me — once a schoolboy, once a lady in mourning — and brought my money back. I blushed, stammered something, and crammed the note into my pocket. They, poor things, took it amiss that I didn’t even thank them for their kindness or give them a reward for being honest.”
“Amazing.”
“You can’t imagine how little use money is if you really want to squander it. Then you simply don’t need it. Nobody wants it. I struggled bitterly on for a year like that. I handled it so badly that — as they say—‘after going over the books,’ I had 1,574 koronas left which had no owners anywhere. At the start of the third year my luck turned. I came across a nice little dentist who’d set up in Buda. He polished the plaque off my teeth and gave me that lovely gold tooth which has been part of my poetic persona ever since. There were four or five coats hanging in the waiting room, and in a moment when no one was watching I stufffed a couple of notes in the pocket of each. Next day I did the same. On the third day as well. In a week I’d succeeded in getting through all my backlog of money. The patients sat in the waiting room, eyes shining. They’d creep out one by one into the anteroom and come back happy and electrified with the money in their pockets which they had taken from their coats and put in a safer place. They usually hid their faces with their handkerchiefs, as if they had a toothache, so as not to show their pleasure and so the others wouldn’t know they’d been looking for money. Some of them strolled out into the anteroom more than once in the hope that this inexplicable natural marvel would be repeated several times in an afternoon, or perhaps they were afraid that somebody else would collect the present. I lay low in the middle of them. I was enjoying the situation. But I soon dropped that too.”
“Perhaps the journalist discovered that as well?”
“No. But the word went round that there was no dentist in Budapest as clever and gentle as mine, and his practice flourished so much that they had to draw lots for appointments. I drew number 628, so I wasn’t going to get an appointment for the foreseeable future. The receptionist wouldn’t even let me in. So I went elsewhere. I operated where my fertilizing golden rain hadn’t fallen before. By that time there was hardly anywhere left. Especially as I had to be more and more careful all the time. That’s right, my dear boy. The noose was tightening round my neck.”
“Poor fellow.”
“At the start of the fourth year I had a brilliant idea. I have a very good friend who’s served five years for picking pockets. I got him to teach me. The lessons were really hard. First he lengthened my index finger, stretched it, loosened the knuckles, to make it the same length as my middle finger, because pickpockets only ‘dip’ with those two fingers. When I’d finished the training I could work quite confidently, even daringly at times. On one state occasion I succeeded in smuggling my daily 150 koronas into the court dress of an elderly, widely respected Hungarian nobleman of European distinction, and another fifty into the fur of his egret-plumed hat. In fact, while I was in the corridor of Parliament, chatting with the finance minister about the economic crisis, I slipped a hundred into his pocket. For the most part I hung about in the crowds at soccer matches and amusement parks, where people are jammed together, lining up to get on the rides. One Sunday — I mention this as a particular piece of luck—750 koronas were taken from my pocket at the Hüvösvölgy tram terminus.* That day I had nothing to do. At the time I only risked placing smallish amounts. It seemed that the detectives were keeping their eyes open. Just imagine, I was putting koronas into my fellow men’s pockets and bags. Gradually I became careless. I used to sit on trams from morning to night to achieve my self-imposed task. One day in May — I remember it clearly — an old man with blue eyes and a neat silver beard sat down beside me and rested both hands absentmindedly on the crook of his walking stick. He was wearing a threadbare coat. He looked like a tax-office clerk or something. I’d just got a silver five-korona piece out of my pocket and was about to slip it into his coat pocket with my two long, agile fingers, when the old man trapped my hand under his arm and shouted ‘thief.’ The conductor immediately rang the bell, stopped the tram, and called a policeman. It was no good my protesting. I’d been caught in the act. That was the end of my career …”
Kornél Esti was silent. He said no more. He walked pensively down the street, now flooded by bright sunlight, and stopped outside the big, dark red house where he lives on the sixth floor, in the attic. He rang to be let in.
“You’re mad,” I said, and embraced him.
“So it’s not dull?” he asked. “Interesting enough? Absurd, improbable, incredible enough? Will it be annoying enough to people who look for psychological motivation, understanding, even moral lessons in literature? Good. Then I’ll write it up. If I get paid for it I’ll let you have your fiver back tomorrow. Well then, good-bye.”
* On the northwest edge of Budapest.
VII
In which Küçük appears, the Turkish girl, whom he compares to a honey cake.
“IT WAS THE HEIGHT OF SUMMER, AND I WAS RACING HOME ward,” said Kornél, “on the electrified line from the East.
“In the curtained first-class compartment where I was sitting, there were also three Turkish women, three thoroughly modern Turkish women without veils or prejudices: a grandmother, a mother, and a fifteen-year-old girl whom they called Küçük, that is, Little One, Tiny.
“I admired this delightful family for a long time. Grandmother, mother, and daughter formed a unity, were as close to one another as Winter, Summer, and Spring on certain mountains in the Alps.
“The grandmother, a gaunt matron in her eighties, dressed in black and with enormous black pearls round her neck, was sleeping on the seat. She spoke in Turkish in her sleep. From time to time she raised her hand, her wrinkled, blue-veined hand, to her face to cover it, because for the greater part of her life she had worn a veil, and even in her sleep she must have felt that her face was improperly exposed.
“The mother was more modern. She almost flaunted her progressiveness. She had dyed her hair straw yellow — it must have been raven black at one time. Her manner was free and easy. She smoked one cigarette after another. When the guard came in, she — democratically — shook his hand. Furthermore, she was reading Paul Valéry’s latest novel.
“Küçük was like a pink and white honey cake. She wore a pink silk dress, and her little face was as white as whipped cream. Her hair too was dyed straw yellow. In every respect she looked the disciple of her mother. She was almost ashamed of being Turkish. All that gave her away were the red leather slippers that she wore on the train and the huge bunch of roses that she had brought with her, all those fiery red, blood-red Constantinople roses, and then her Angora cat, for which she spread a Turkish mat to sit on, the blue-eyed, deaf Angora cat over whose slumber she tenderly watched.
“Mohammed came to my mind, their stirring, kindly prophet, who on one occasion when his cat had gone to sleep on his cloak, preferred to cut off its corner rather than wake his favorite kitty.
“They were making for Vienna, and from there for Berlin, Paris, and London. They were astoundingly cultured. The girl talked about vitamins B and C, and her mother about Jung and Adler and the latest heretical schools of psychoanalysis.