“I don’t wish to bore you all with further details, and will only say that I lived for ten days in that delightful, refined milieu.
“One morning I said into the recording machine at my bedside that the next afternoon I would be leaving for home on the two-fourteen electric train, and therefore they were to forward my trunk and suitcases — with the exception of my crocodile leather briefcase, in which I keep my manuscripts — to my Budapest address. I had the wax cylinder of the recording machine taken down to my friend Edison by Nicholas II. The Tsar brought a wax cylinder back. On placing this in the machine I was informed that the porter ‘had taken the necessary steps.’
“From this point the attention of the staff was redoubled, and minute by minute, hour by hour, increased by geometrical progression. Annie Besant, the cleaner, greeted me with sighs. Cléo de Mérode, Fanny Elssler, and Marie Antoinette came and went sorrowfully around me, as if they would scarcely survive my departure, and in their grief would end their young lives with poison. Chopin, Einstein, Murillo, Bismarck, Schopenhauer, Torricelli, Nicholas II, Caruso, Rodin, and the hapless little Dauphin too greeted me passionately with ‘Good morning’ or ‘Good evening’ every time that we met in the corridor. It sounded like the reminder of the Carthusians in the monastery: Memento mori.
“What were they reminding me of, in fact? Sometimes I thought that perhaps it was of the tip which they certainly deserved. It was enough, however, for me to glance into their faces, which reflected the pain caused by my imminent departure, enough for me to look into their eyes, red with weeping and which they tried in vain to hide, for me to be convinced of the contrary.
“That evening, after dinner, Edison and the headwaiter placed before me a slip of paper on a silver salver. It was a railway receipt showing that the train would take all my luggage home as express freight, and that the hotel had — in advance, naturally—‘settled’ the bill.
“I nodded in approval and made for my room.
“Before I could get to sleep I was startled by a terrible din. A raucous chorus of male voices was howling ‘Good night’ into my ear from close range. I leapt out of bed. There was no one in my room. What was happening was that the hotel’s enthusiastic and attentive male staff, who, as everyone knew, had a private reception and transmission set, were calling on me by radio.
“The same thing happened in the morning too, the difference being that on this occasion I was awoken by the dulcet tones of the female staff wishing me a good morning.
“Early in the morning of that final day I called on Edison at the reception desk, as I wished to pay. At the mention of money there appeared on his face that disparaging, world-weary smile. He assured me that I would still have time to ‘settle up,’ as my train did not leave until after two and I would still be taking lunch with them. In any case, my bill was mostly ready, and the finishing touches were being made to it even then in the Central Accounts office.
“With my crocodile leather briefcase in hand, I strolled slowly out into the palm grove at the end of the town, where I had previously worked every day on my garland of love songs, worthily famous on account of its immediacy and warm spontaneity, entitled Inhibitions and Transpositions.
“I sat down on the marble rim of the fountain. I daydreamed for a while. Then I attempted in my old established way to evoke the creative urge. I struck my forehead several times, one after the other, on the marble rim. I can only create if I completely switch off my intelligence.
“Unfortunately, this was not immediately successful. Intelligence is an extraordinarily stupid thing. On this occasion too it persisted in forcing itself upon me.
“Then others also drew my attention to the fact that there is intelligence on earth. Among them, the staff of the hotel.
“When I sneezed, the male and female staff of the hotel conveyed to me from a radio installed up a fifteen-foot palm tree and equipped with a loudspeaker, their wishes for my health.
“Nevertheless, in a couple of hours I succeeded in writing one of my major works — a two-line poem telling of the prescient hatred felt toward me by Elinor, my most recent inamorata.
“This exceedingly spiritual work quite wore me out. Afterwards I stared into space for a further two hours and waited for my intelligence to return.
“I was astonished to see an airplane land, as lightly and elegantly as a dragonfly, in a nearby clearing.
“It was making for my home. I myself don’t know why, but I got in and ordered the airplane to take me home at full speed.
“Up in the air, when the altimeter was reading twenty thousand feet and that swift, blue-watered stream looked as big as the platinum bracelet that Elinor wore on her wrist, above the clouds, above the snowy mountains, I suddenly realized that I’d forgotten to pay my hotel bill and had unintentionally not given tips to the staff who had so good-heartedly watched over me for almost two weeks.
“As a man phenomenally well trained in psychology, I know that there is no such thing as ‘unintentional’ and that we don’t ‘forget’ anything without cause. I immediately viewed my lapse as suspicious.
“I began to analyze myself with lightning speed. While the airplane looped the loop with a daring rush and I hung with my head upside-down, I continued my psychological analysis, which I quickly brought to a successful conclusion.
“I realized that my action had been subconsciously conscious, or rather consciously subconscious. But it had been astute, very astute. Nor could I have acted otherwise.
“When all was said and done, it would have been unthinkable to insult so excellent a hotel, such excellent staff, by offering them money. That would have been tactlessness, gross tactlessness.”
* Cléopatra Diane de Mérode (1875–1966), much-portrayed beauty and celebrated dancer.
† English theosophist (1847–1933) who followed Madame Blavatsky as high priestess of that movement.
* Hugo Eckener (1868–1954), aeronautical engineer, who in 1924 piloted the airship ZR3 on the first transatlantic airship flight.
† Evangelista Torricelli (1608–47), mathematician and physicist, associate of and successor to Galileo.
* The Viennese sisters Fanny (1810–84) and Therese (1808–78) Elssler were celebrated dancers.
* Émile Jaques-Dalcroze (1865–1941), the Swiss inventor of eurhythmics.
XII
In which the president, Baron Wilhelm Eduard von Wüstenfeld,
immortal figure of his student years in Germany
and his mentor and preceptor,
sleeps through the entire chapter.
MY DATE WAS FOR A QUARTER TO TWO IN THE MORNING AT the Torpedo coffeehouse.
I tried to be precisely on time. But I couldn’t get a cab straightaway. Then it started to rain cats and dogs. The cab could go only very cautiously, at walking pace. It was approaching a quarter past two when I opened the door of the private room in the Torpedo.
My arrival was greeted by a frantic hushing. Kornél Esti, who had been in full flow, glanced disparagingly in my direction and fell silent.
Around him was his usual motley company, nine or ten writers of various sorts and a woman or two. In front of him was a glass of Bull’s Blood* and a silver dish on which lay the fabulously delicate skeleton of a trout and the remains of a light green sauce.