The little bell of the Red Ox tinkled melodiously in the little wooden tower on the roof, indicating that it was eight o’clock and lessons were about to start. While the bell was ringing, on and on, heartbreakingly, like the bell that mourns the dead, he took leave of everything that was dear, the rooms at home, the garden, and all his individual toys too, the soap bubbles and the balloons. Close to fainting, he clung to the cold tinplate stove.
Silence fell. The teacher had appeared in the doorway, a stout man with cropped dark gray hair and a very ample light gray suit. He took great strides, like an elephant. He rolled onto the dais.
The teacher asked the children one by one if they had slates and pencils, and then spoke of all the fine, noble, useful things that they were going to learn there. But then he suddenly stopped speaking. He had caught sight of the boy lurking beside the stove.
“Now then, what’re you doing there?” he asked, turning his great face in his direction. “Who put you there? Come over here.”
The little boy hurried, almost ran, to the dais. In terror, almost beside himself, he gabbled:
“Please let me go home.”
“Why?” inquired the teacher.
“I don’t want to come to school anymore.”
The class roared with laughter.
“Silence!” said the teacher. “Why don’t you want to come to school?”
“Because nobody likes me here.”
“Has anybody hurt you?”
“No.”
“Then why’re you talking such nonsense? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, you little sissy? Just understand, you’re the same as everyone else here. No exceptions here, everybody’s equal. Understand?”
The class nodded in approval.
The teacher looked again at the frightened little boy. This time he saw that his face was quite green.
“Are you feeling ill?” he asked, in a kinder tone.
“No.”
“Got a pain anywhere?”
“No.”
“All right,” he said, “go back to your place. Where is your place?”
“Nowhere.”
“Nowhere?” The teacher was puzzled. “ Well, sit down somewhere.”
The little boy turned toward the class. Faces grinned at him, lots and lots of little faces, which blended into a single huge, frightening idol-face. He stumbled unsteadily this way and that. Once more he had to pass the first bench, where there was no room for him. He found a tiny place somewhere in the middle, on the very end of a bench. He could only get one leg onto the seat, the other dangled in space. Anyway, it was better to sit there away from the eyes, to vanish into the crowd.
“Children,” said the teacher, “take your slates and pencils. We’ll do some writing. We’ll write the letter i.”
Slates rattled. He too tried to place his slate on the desk but the surly, swarthy boy at his side pushed it off in an unfriendly fashion. The boy didn’t let him write.
At that he burst loudly and bitterly into tears.
“What’s going on?” asked the teacher.
“He’s crying,” reported the surly, swarthy boy.
“Who is?”
“This boy here.”
All the children looked in his direction. Many stood up to get a better view.
“He’s giving the mice a drink,” they exclaimed.
“Be quiet!” the teacher exploded, striking the table with his cane.
He came down from the dais and went and stood by the little boy. He stroked his face with his warm, tobacco-scented hand.
“Don’t cry,” he calmed him. “Sit properly on the bench, square on. Why don’t you move over for him? There’s plenty of room. There you are, now. Put the slate in front of you, get hold of your pencil. Wipe your nose. Now, we’re going to learn to write. Or don’t you want to learn to write?”
“Yes, I do,” sniveled the little boy.
“Right, then,” said the teacher approvingly.
He went and wrote a letter i on the blackboard.
“Up,” he showed them, “stop, back down and a little hook.”
Slate pencils squealed like little pigs.
The teacher came down from the dais once more. He walked around the room, scrutinizing the squiggles on the slates. He looked at the little boy’s i too. He had written a nice, fine letter. He praised him for it. Now the child wasn’t crying.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
The little boy stood up. He mumbled something very quietly.
“I don’t understand,” said the teacher. “Always speak up and answer so that I can hear what you say. What’s your name?” he asked again.
“Kornél Esti,” said the little boy, firmly and distinctly.
III
In which, at night on a train, shortly after leaving school in 1903, a girl kisses him on the lips for the first time
WHEN, IN 1903, KORNÉL ESTI WAS DECLARED PRAECLARE maturus in his school leaving examination, his father laid before him a choice: either he would buy him that splendid bicycle for which he had long yearned, or he would give him the money — a hundred and twenty koronas — and with that he could travel wherever his fancy took him.
He decided on the latter. Though not without a little hesitation and soul-searching.
It was hard to be parted from his mother’s skirts. He had grown up in Sárszeg,* among books and bottles of medicine. In the evening, before going to bed, he had always had to convince himself that his mother, father, brother and sister were in bed, in the usual place, and only then could he go to sleep to the tick-tock of the wall-clock. If, however, any of them had gone to visit in the country and happened not to be spending the night at home, he would rather stay awake and wait for their return, which would once more tip everything back into the old, happy balance. The family was for him the refuge from everything that he feared. It surrounded him like a dovecote, stuff y, dimly lit, tacky with rubbish.
On the other hand, he also longed to get away. He had never yet left that Alföld nest where there was neither river nor hills, the streets and the people were all alike, and days and years brought little change. Here were stifling, dusty afternoons and long, dark evenings. Exercise books and calendars filled the windows of the bookshops. His mind was waking, his tastes developing, but second-rate plays were put on in the theater and for want of better entertainment he watched these from a student seat in the rafters. He would have liked to see the world. Most of all, he would have loved to see the sea. He had imagined it while still in primary school, when he had for the first time looked at that smooth, endless blueness on the wall map. So, with an heroic decision, he proposed that come what may he would go to Italy,* and alone.
One dull, hectic day in July he set off. The whole household was up and about at three in the morning. His worn and battered traveling basket had been brought down from the attic and a futile attempt made at mending its lock. He said good-bye with a smile, but his heart sank. He didn’t believe that he would ever return. Everyone went with him to catch the slow train for Budapest. They waved their handkerchiefs, while his mother turned away in tears.
After five hours’ rattling he reached Budapest without mishap. He immediately informed his parents of that fact by postcard. He took a room in a third-rate hotel near the station. There he spent only a single night.
That evening he used to get to know Budapest. Happy, electrified, he set out into the city, this modern Babylon, as he described it in another postcard to his parents. His self-esteem rose because he was going about all by himself. In the National Museum he looked at the antiquities, at the balcony from which Petőfi had spoken, at the stufffed animals. Later he got lost on Andrássy út. A policeman kindly put him on the right road. Map of Budapest in hand, he found the Danube and Gellérthegy. The Danube was big, Gellérthegy high. Both were splendid. Budapest was altogether splendid.