“They spoke all languages perfectly. They began in French, the purest literary language, then slipped into argot, followed shortly by German — alternating between the speech of Berlin and Lerchenfeld patois — passing meanwhile through English and Italian. This was not at all showing off. They were just content, like children making themselves understood in adult western European society, comfortable, finding themselves a niche everywhere. It seemed that their ambition was to be taken seriously and regarded as western Europeans.
“I felt inclined to tell them that they were possibly overesteeming western Europe a trifle, and that I was by no means as entranced by its culture. But I decided against doing so. Why spoil their fun?
“Instead I showed them my eight fountain pens, which I always keep in my pocket, my two gold fillings, which I likewise always have in my mouth, and I boasted that I had high blood pressure, a five-valve radio, and an incipient kidney stone, and that several of my relatives had had appendectomies. I tell everyone what they need to know.
“This had an extraordinary effect.
“Küçük smiled and stared at me with her dark, bewitching eyes with such honest, frank sincerity that she quite perturbed me. I didn’t know what she wanted of me. At first I thought that she was making fun of me. Then, however, she took both my hands and pressed them to her heart. A dove can thus attack a sparrowhawk.
“In all this there was no coquetry or immorality. She just thought that was how cultured, advanced, western European girls behaved toward men whom they met for the first time on trains. Therefore I too tried to behave as cultured, advanced, western European men do in such circumstances.
“Her mother saw this, but paid us little attention. She — as I’ve said — was immersed in Paul Valéry.
“We went out into the corridor. There we walked about, laughing, holding hands. Then we leaned out the window. And so I courted her.
“ ‘You’re the first Turkish girl,’ I told her — we were on te terms by then—‘the first Turkish girl I’ve met, Küçük, Little One, and I love you. Years ago, in school, I learned about the battle of Mohács. I know that your ancestors spilled the blood of mine and kept us in shameful slavery for a century and a half. But I’d be your slave for another hundred and fifty years, serve you, pay you tribute, my dear little enemy, my dear oriental relative. Do you know what? Let’s make peace. I’ve never been angry with your people — they have given us our most lovely words, words without which I’d be unhappy. I’m a poet, a lover of words, crazy about them. You gave us words like gyöngy, tükör, and koporsó. You’re a pearl, you’ll shine in the mirror of my soul until they close my coffin. Do you understand when I say gűrű, gyűszű, búza, bor? Of course you do, they’re your words as well, and betû, the letters by which I make my living. You’re my ring, my thimble, the wheat that feeds me, the wine that intoxicates me. I have your people to thank for our three hundred and thirty finest words.* I’ve been looking for ages for someone, a Turk, to whom I could express my unfailing gratitude for them and pay back at least in part that loan of words, discharge that linguistic debt which has accumulated so very, very much interest for me.’
“I was burning thus in rapture when suddenly the train ran into a dark tunnel. Küçük sank warmly into my arms. And I, quickly and passionately, began to kiss her lips.
“If I remember correctly, I gave her exactly three hundred and thirty kisses.”
* There are indeed quite a lot of Turkic loanwords in Hungarian, but most of them, including all eight that Kornél lists here, are of ancient origin, and far fewer date from the years of the Ottoman occupation (1526–1699).
VIII
In which the journalist Pál Mogyoróssy suddenly goes mad in the coffeehouse and is then confined to the lunatic asylum.
“PÁL, PÁL,” THEY TRIED TO CALM HIM.
“Pál, be careful. Everybody’s looking at you.”
“Waiter!” Gergely, the long-established outstanding journalist, who knew of every secret scandal, clapped his hands, “Waiter! A large espresso! Pál, sit down and have an espresso.”
“Pál, sit by me,” urged Zima, who was on a German paper.
“Pál, take your hat off.”
“Pál, Pál.”
So said the journalists, all crime reporters, who, at about eleven on that delightful August evening, had dropped into the coffee-house which was their favorite nocturnal haunt.
In the middle of the group was someone who was not immediately visible. He was wearing a transparent raincoat and a brand new straw hat, and was likewise a crime reporter — Pál Mogyoróssy.
They’d settled down at the table that had been theirs for a decade. All five journalists were watching Pál with ill-concealed curiosity.
Pál took off his new straw hat. They looked at the silky blond hair, parted on one side, which covered his tiny, girlishly delicate head. When he’d hung up his splendid raincoat on the iron hook, a slim, very pleasant, gentlemanly fellow stood before them, who despite his forty years seemed almost a boy; he wouldn’t have looked out of place in short trousers. He was elegantly dressed: pea-green Burberry suit, zephyr shirt, and white silk bow tie on which gleamed a scarcely perceptible yellow stripe. It all looked brand new.
He tossed onto the marble tabletop a paper parcel, which contained another zephyr shirt and two pairs of buckskin gloves. That was all that he had with him.
He had arrived at the South station at half past one that afternoon on the express from the Balaton, and since then hadn’t even been home.
He had been taking his regular month’s summer holiday at Hévíz, where he rested, and combining the pleasant and the useful, attended to his health. He bathed in the warm, radioactive lake, on the dark mirror of which floated luxuriant, huge Indian lotuses, sprawled in the mud bath, slapping the greasy stuff on himself and especially on his left upper arm, in which he had recently had stabbing pains.
In a week his rheumatism had disappeared. With it went the headaches and the lassitude caused by keeping late hours. In his leisure he woke up. He wrote five “graphic” reports, which he sent by first-class registered mail to his editor. The weeks flew by with electric speed. But he could only hold out for three. At the start of the fourth he packed his bags, his patience exhausted, and abruptly went home.
As he got off the train and, at half past one, glimpsed the Vérmező and the Gellérthegy, an inexpressibly sweet joy filled his heart.* A true son of the capital, he adored Budapest. The afternoon sun was shining, all was promise and happiness. Carrying his little light suitcase he went up into the Castle district, looked down from the promenade on the bastion, had his photograph taken — he had thirty prints made, so that he could hand them round to his friends and possibly get one into a picture paper — had a bite to eat in a coffeehouse, and then just strolled; the pleasant, refreshing hours slipped by until suddenly it was twilight, the beery sunlight turned rusty brown, and he wandered down from the hill beneath the cool branches, crossed into Pest, and looked up his friends at police headquarters.
“Six more espressos!” called Gergely to the waiter, who was approaching their table. “Make that seven,” he indicated with his fingers, “seven,” because at that moment Esti came into the coffee-house.
They had phoned Esti half an hour before, asking him to come at once. And had told him why.