Pál Mogyoróssy, staff reporter on the Közlöny, strode forth down the corridor, which was so long, so very long, that it seemed scarcely to end. A long way off, some hundred yards away, beneath the second electric light, a quite wretched little figure was waiting for him, puny, anemic, much smaller and weaker than Pál. Its ears were slightly projecting. A stethoscope peeped from its white coat. This was Dr. Wirth.
When Pál reached the doctor he introduced himself, as usual on such occasions, both personally and on behalf of his paper, modestly, with dignity, as the representative of the public at large.
“I’ve come for information,” said Pál. “We’ve been told, my dear doctor …” and he dried up.
Wirth came to his aid:
“What?”
“That,” said Pál, “two mental patients have been beaten up here tonight.”
“Here?” said Wirth, glancing at the floor. “No, indeed. Patients aren’t beaten up here. And in any case, we have no mental patients, only sufferers from nervous disorders, who are rather tired and are resting.”
“But we have definite information, doctor.”
“No, szerkestô úr,* it’ll be a mistake,” and he patted Pál on the shoulder with an almost impudent smile.
The doctor took Pál by the arm, and they walked for a long time up and down the long, long corridor. On both sides were the wards, large open rooms lit by blue electric lamps like the taillight of the car. The patients, those who could, were sleeping, toying in their dreams with the trivia of their lives, putting them together and taking them apart, like other people. Many, however, could not sleep. One fat, unshaven man, who was in the third phase of encephalo-malacia, was sitting up in bed, his head hanging before him, pressing his blue striped hospital gown to his face.
Pál inquired about their diagnoses and prospects of treatment, and Wirth chatted about politics and the police, about certain journalists of their mutual acquaintance too, and spoke with almost paternal good humor of syphilis. It was a friendly exchange of views, uninhibited and relaxed. Then without any transition the doctor asked for his pocket knife, which Pál actually handed over, and the doctor, without so much as thanking him for it, slipped it into the pocket of his white coat beside his stethoscope. He had by that time made a preliminary diagnosis. Detailed examination he postponed to the morning; it was getting late.
Pál was still talking, chattering of this and that. Suddenly he stopped. It seemed to him that something was not quite right. A vague and superficial sense of uncertainty had come over him. It was just the sort of misgiving that comes to us all when we have been in the street for hours and feel uncomfortable because one strap of our suspenders, which normally press evenly on our collarbones, has slipped down. He had remembered Gergely and Skultéty.
By then, however, Wirth had led Pál into a separate little room, the quietness and elegance of which he could not praise, as it was disagreeable, repugnant, and shabby, furnished with only a table covered by waxed cloth, a chair, a bed, a nightstand, and a radiator.
The doctor sat down on the bed. He appealed to Pál to undress and get some sleep, and next day he would be able to go for a walk in the lovely garden.
Pál wanted to protest in the name of the press against this infringement of his personal liberty, but couldn’t hear his own voice. He could only hear his fury. His press cards. He, who had always been inside the cordon, at every suicide, every demonstration, every burial, inside the cordon. It was he, he.
Wirth disappeared. Pál ran after him into the corridor, but he was not there either. He could only see an attendant, not the one who had opened the door but another, whom he did not recognize.
He went back into the room. He looked through the barred window into the garden; on the weed-ridden lawn, surrounded by sumac trees, flowers of hemlock swayed, white, like scraps of writing paper. The electric light was still on, but even without it he could see. The sun, precise timepiece of the universe, in its relentless course was making its presence known below the horizon and whitening the sky. Dawn was breaking.
Pál leaned on his elbows on the shoddy waxed cloth of the table. And he thought of Esti, Esti, who after correcting his dawn work, had pressed the switch on his electric lamp and was now standing in his bedroom in just his shirt, undressing, but could not sleep because he too was thinking of Pál.
Pál pondered what he was to do. For the present, however, nothing came to mind.
He just sat and wept.
* Vérmezô, “Field of Blood,” is an open space of grass and trees adjoining the South station, to the west of Buda castle; it takes its name from its former use as a place of public executions. Gellérthegy is a hill on the Buda side of the Danube, commemorating the archbishop who led the conversion of the ancient Magyars to Chrisitanity.
* A hill in Buda, to the north of Gellérthegy.
* A type of pear, “emperor pear.”
* “Mr. Editor,” an honorific for a “gentleman of the press.”
* As before. Pál addresses the doctor as fôorvos, “principal doctor,” in similar style.
IX
In which he chats in Bulgarian with the Bulgarian train guard and experiences the sweet dismay of the linguistic chaos of Babel.
“THERE’S SOMETHING I MUST TELL YOU ALL,” SAID KORNÉL Esti. “A little while ago someone said at a party that he would never travel to a country where he couldn’t speak the language. I said I saw his point. The main thing that interests me when I travel is people. Much more than objects in museums. If I can only hear what they say but not understand it, I feel as if I’m deaf or watching a silent film without music or subtitles. It’s irritating and boring.
“After I’d said all that, it occurred to me that the opposite was just as valid, as is so often the case. It’s marvelous fun going around in a foreign country if voices are merely sounds which leave us cold and we stare blankly at everyone that speaks to us. What splendid isolation, my friends, what independence, what lack of responsibility. All of a sudden we feel like infants that need to be looked after. We start to display an inexplicable trust in adults wiser than ourselves. We let them speak and act on our behalf. Then we accept everything, unseen and unheard.
‘I’ve seldom had such an experience — as you know, I speak ten languages — in fact, it’s only come my way once, when I was en route for Turkey. I was passing through Bulgaria. I spent a total of twenty-four hours in the country, and that was all on the train. Something happened to me there that it would be a shame to keep quiet about.
After all, I can die at any time, as I shall one day — a tiny vein in my heart or my brain will burst — and no one else, I’m sure, will ever have a similar experience.
“So, it was at night. After midnight. The train was racing along through hills and villages that I didn’t know. It must have been nearly half past one. I couldn’t sleep. I went out into the corridor for a breath of air. I was soon bored. Black shapes were all that could be seen of the beauties of the countryside. It was quite an event if a point of light appeared. All the passengers around me were sleeping the sleep of the just. Not a soul was stirring in the carriages.
“I was on the point of going back to my compartment when the guard appeared, lamp in hand. He was a Bulgarian, a stocky man with a black mustache, and he’d evidently finished his rounds. He’d seen my ticket some time previously, so he didn’t want anything from me. But by way of greeting, in friendly fashion, he shone his lamp and his eyes on me. Then he stopped beside me. Clearly, he was bored too.