They didn’t spend a long time on the subject. The one with the sideburns happened to mention, sort of casually, that there was a lot of amusement in this great country, but pure joy, the joy that comes straight from the heart, was rare. When I think back to that now, it seems the joy is going out of Europe, but here, in New York, it’s as if it hadn’t caught on in the first place. The devil knows why! But he couldn’t have understood it, either — the highbrow, I mean; he must have been an educated man — because he pulled a face and said the best thing would be if the government put up people’s pensions, then they’d have something to be happy about. On that they agreed. Then he paid and left. Santa remained, ordered one more, and lit a butt. When I offered him a light, he pointed at the photograph with his thumb and asked me in Hungarian, but casually, as if getting in on a conversation that had been going some time, “Were you there when she died?”
I leaned on the counter with both hands. I thought I was going to collapse. I looked at him hard. I recognized him. It was her husband.
I tell you, I’m not ashamed of it … My heart beat in my chest like someone was drumming in there. But then I took a deep breath and simply told him I wasn’t there. At dawn, when I returned from the bar, her face was still warm, but she didn’t say anything.
He nodded graciously, as if it was what he expected. He asked me questions in a low voice and smiled now and then. He asked if money was short and whether the jewels saw her through to the end. I assured him she hadn’t a care in the world, because I was there looking after her. He noted this, and nodded like a priest at confessional who listens through to everything, then offers you three Our Fathers. He would like to know, he said, but always polite and friendly-like, if she had a decent funeral, with everything necessary. I answered him obediently, but all the time I was clenching my fist. But he carried on in exactly the same voice.
I never discovered, not then, not later, how he found me, how he knew I was working there. How did he come by the details, the hotel, the jewels? … I’d never seen him in the bar before. Later I went to the Hungarian quarter on the right bank and asked people, but no one had heard of him. But he knew all there was to know about me, even the fact that my performing name was Ede. I knew that because he asked, again perfectly friendly, “And are you happy, Ede?”
Like an old acquaintance. No, not like that … Like a boss meeting an employee, as if he were still in the chair and me under it. I answered politely. But as I told you, I was clenching my fists all the time. Because it was dawning on me that someone had grassed me up. You know, the way he spoke so quietly. He was so polite, so natural. As if I weren’t even worth screaming at. He could have called me names, what would I have cared? He spoke to me like we weren’t on opposite sides. That’s why I felt so angry, that’s why my fists were clenched. Because if he screamed at me, shouting “I know everything, now talk!”—well, we would have been equals. If he said, “Look here, Ede, I’m long retired, but I’m still the doctor and you the patient,” well, I’d have answered him as best I could. If he had said, “I played the fool with that woman, but that was a long time ago and it doesn’t matter anymore — tell me how she died,” I’d have muttered something like “Sorry, nothing I could do, that’s how it was.” If he hits me, fine, I hit him back. We may roll around on the deck a little while the boss rings the cops and they take both of us away; that would have been fine too, it would have been gentlemanly. But this quiet chat in the crazy enormous world, here in the bar … it made the blood rush to my head. Because such quiet words counted as offense in our situation. I felt my fingers itching and my gorge rising.
He took a Lincoln from his pocket. I could see his hand was trembling. I started closing up the till. He didn’t say anything; he didn’t hurry me. He leaned on the counter and winked, as if he had had one more than was befitting a gentlemen of his standing. And he started smiling, a saintly kind of smile.
I looked him over carefully out of the side of my eye. You could see he was at the end of the road. Old clothes, a shirt he’d clearly been wearing for days, and those glassy eyes behind the glasses. It didn’t need careful examination to see that this man, who had to be addressed as “Doctor”—that’s what I remember — who after the siege on the Danube embankment had left her standing there, as if she weren’t the woman he’d gone crazy over, but someone who once worked for him that he had no more use for — this man was now strictly lower-class. And he still thinks he’s superior? I could feel the gorge rising in my throat and had to keep swallowing. I was all worked up inside like I’d never been. If this big shot left the bar now without confessing that the game was up and that it was me who had come out on top … You understand? I was afraid there’d be trouble. He gave me the Lincoln.
“It’s for three,” he said. He took his glasses off and polished them. He stared straight ahead in that shortsighted way. The bill said three-sixty. I handed back one-forty. He waved me away.
“Keep it, Ede. It’s yours.”
This was it. The flashpoint! But he wasn’t looking at me, he was trying to stand up. That wasn’t too easy for him, and he had to clutch at the counter. I looked at the one-forty in my palm and wondered whether to throw it in his face. But I couldn’t speak. Eventually, after a good deal of trouble, he managed to straighten up.
“You parked far away, Doctor?” I asked.
He shook his head and gave a smoker’s cough.
“I don’t have a car. I’ll use the subway.”
I answered him as firmly as I could.
“Mine’s parked nearby. It’s new. I’ll drive you home.”
“No,” he hiccupped. “The subway is fine. Takes me right home.”
“Now you listen to me, buddy!” I bellowed at him. “I’ll drive you home in my new car! Me, the stinking prole.”
I came out from behind the counter and took a step toward him. If he refuses, I thought, I’ll knock his teeth out. Because, in the end, you just have to.
It was like the cat got his tongue. He squinted up at me.
“Okay,” he said, and nodded. “Take me home, you stinking prole.”
I put my arms around him and helped him through the door, the comradely way only men know, the kind of men who’ve slept with the same woman. Now that’s real democracy for you.
He got out at One Hundredth, just before the Arab quarter. He disappeared, like concrete in the river. I never saw him again.
Here come the writers. You’d best clear off — quick, that way, to the left. There might be a labor-camp vet from the old country among them … No harm in being careful. Call in again at the end of the week. And mind to steer well clear of the cement trade.
Welcome, gentlemen. You are served, sir!
A note about the author
Sándor Márai was born in Kassa, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1900, and died in San Diego, California, in 1989. He rose to fame as one of the leading literary novelists in Hungary in the 1930s. Profoundly antifascist, he survived the war, but persecution by the Communists drove him from the country in 1948, first to Italy, then to the United States. His novel Embers was published for the first time in English in 2001.
A note about the translator
George Szirtes is the prize-winning author of thirteen books of poetry and several translations from Hungarian, including Sándor Márai’s Casanova in Bolzano and The Rebels. He lives in the United Kingdom.