But then, it seemed to me, everything was distinctly important, everything I said, and everything that might result from it. I had no time to court her or woo her. It was all beside the point, anyway. I simply said I would like to live with her. My declaration did not surprise her. She calmly heard me out, then looked directly at me with a solemn look on her face, without any sense of astonishment. Afterwards I felt she was weighing me up, as if wanting to calculate my strength, the way a peasant girl will size up a local lad showing off in front of her, telling her he can lift this or that heavy object, a full sack of wheat, that sort of thing. It was not my muscles she was weighing up, but my soul. As I say, now, in retrospect, I feel there may have been something mocking in her examination of me, a silent, gentle mocking, as if she were saying: “You’re not all that strong. You’ll need greater strength if you want to live with me. I’d break your back.” That’s what I read in her look. I felt it, so I spoke a little faster and still more quietly. I told her that it would be very difficult, because the situation was impossible, my father would never agree to the marriage, and there were likely to be all sorts of other problems too. For example, I said, it was likely that such a marriage would lead to serious tensions between myself and my family as well as the world beyond, and that, if we were being honest, we could not entirely ignore the world of which we were a part, the world that had made us what we were. And it was likely that such tensions, starting, as it were, from such a point of weakness, would sooner or later have a bad effect on the relationship between us, too. I told her I had seen this kind of thing before. I had known people of my own social rank who had married below them, and that these marriages always turned out for the worse. I spouted rubbish like that. Of course I meant it seriously, speaking not out of fear, just wanting to be straight with her. And, understanding that I was being honest, she looked at me earnestly and made a gesture to let me know she thought as I did. It was as if she were encouraging me to look for more reasons that would immediately make it clear how impossible, how hopeless the idea was: she wanted me to go on arguing as convincingly as possible that it was quite insane. And I, for my part, carried on finding such reasons. She did not say a word, not a single word, or, to be precise, she only spoke once I had finished, and even then very briefly. She let me speak. I myself don’t understand how, but I spoke for an hour and a half, there by the fireplace, while all the time she remained in that kneeling position, me sitting beside her in the low armchair, the English leather one. I stared into the fire while talking: no one came in, no one disturbed us. There is a kind of hidden order in life, the way a situation arises in a man’s life just at the point when something has to be decided or done, so circumstance conspires to bring it about: places, objects, the people closest to hand, all unconsciously combine to produce the moment. No one disturbed us. It was already evening. My father had arrived home, and they would certainly have been looking for Judit to arrange the dishes and cutlery in preparation for supper. We were all used to dressing for the evening meal, but no one disturbed us. Later I understood that this was not as extraordinary as you might think. Life arranges everything to perfection when it wants to put on a show.
In that hour and a half, for the first time in my life, I felt as though I were speaking frankly and directly to someone. I told her I wanted to live with her; that I suspected, but did not know for sure, that I couldn’t marry her. The vital thing, I said, was to live together. I asked her if she remembered meeting me the first time she entered our house. She said nothing, only nodded to indicate that she did. She looked extraordinarily beautiful in the low-lit room as she knelt by the fire in the flickering red light, her hair sparkling, her head bent slightly to one side on that slender neck as she listened to me, poker in hand. She was very beautiful, very much part of my life. I told her she should leave the house, resign, give some excuse, then go home and wait for me somewhere, and that in a few days I’d settle what business I had in hand, then we could go off to Italy together, and stay there, maybe for years. I asked her if she wanted to see Italy … She didn’t say anything, but silently indicated that she did not. Quite likely she didn’t understand the question: it was as if I had asked her whether she wanted to see Henry IV. She didn’t understand. But she did listen very closely. She kept her eyes on the fire, kneeling straight-backed, like a penitent, so close to me I had only to stretch out my hand to touch her. I did in fact take her hand, but she withdrew it, not in a flirtatious manner, not as though she were offended, just as a perfectly natural, simple form of rejection, with the slightest movement, as if wishing to correct something I had said. I saw for the first time then that she was, in her own way, an aristocrat through and through, that her natural nobility was part of the fabric. It surprised me, but at the same time I immediately accepted it. By that time I knew it was not rank, not the privilege of birth that divided people, but character and intelligence. She knelt in front of the fireplace in the pale red light, like a princess, willowy, at ease, not haughty but not humble either, without betraying a trace of confusion, without the merest tremor of her eyelids, as though this conversation were the most natural thing in the world. And there above her rose the Christmas tree. Well, you know, when I thought about this later I couldn’t help laughing, though it was a rather dry laugh, I can tell you … Judit beneath the Christmas tree, like some strange, incomprehensible gift.
And because she said nothing all this time, I myself eventually fell silent. She hadn’t answered me when I asked her if she wanted to live with me, nor when I asked if she wanted to come to Italy with me and stay, perhaps for years. And because I couldn’t think of anything else to say, and because, when it came down to it, having spoken to her and tried everything, like a buyer putting an offer to a stubborn vendor, making a low offer first, then, on seeing the other is resolute and seeing the deal stalling, offering the entire asking price, I asked her if she would be my wife.
She did answer this.
Not immediately, true. Her first response was unexpected. She looked at me angrily, almost with hatred. I could see some great emotion passing through her entire body like a terrible cramp. She began to shake: she was kneeling in front of me, shaking. She hung the poker back on its hook next to the bellows. She crossed her arms across her chest. She looked like a young novice ordered to kneel by some severe teacher. She stared into the fire with a fierce solemnity, her expression clearly tortured. Then she stood up, smoothed her front, and said simply:
“No.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because you are a coward,” she said, and gave me a long look, examining me head to foot. Then she left the room.
Your very good health!
So that’s how it began. Then I went out. The shops were already closing, people were hurrying home with Christmas parcels under their arms. I stopped at a little jeweler’s selling cheap little trinkets. I bought a gold locket — you know, one of these cheap bits of tat in which women keep the pictures of their dead or current lovers. I found an identity card with a photo in my wallet, a season ticket of some sort that had just expired, tore off the photo, put it in the locket, and asked the man to wrap it up exactly like a normal present. When I got home, Judit opened the door. I pressed the parcel into her hand. Soon after that I went away, not returning home for years, and it was only much later I found out she had been wearing the locket round her neck on a piece of lilac ribbon ever since then, never removing it, only when washing or when she needed a new ribbon.
After that, everything went on as though nothing had happened that fateful Christmas afternoon, as if we had never had such a conversation. Judit served us at table that evening, together with the servant, as usual. Naturally I knew by then that I had been in a delirious state that afternoon. I knew it in exactly the same way madmen know when they are in a fury, beating their heads against the wall, wrestling with their nurses, or removing their own teeth at night with a rusted naiclass="underline" they know as they are doing these things that even as they are frothing at the mouth and doing them, they are engaged in shameful acts deeply unworthy of themselves and of society. They know this not only after the event, when the fury has left them, but in the very act of doing those crazy, hurtful things. I too knew it even as I was sitting by the fire that afternoon, knew that what I was saying and planning was sheer madness for a man in my position. Later I always thought of it as a kind of fit, losing control and willpower, my nerves and all the organs of sense, working autonomously. The critical and moderating faculties go numb at moments like that. I am absolutely sure that what I experienced that Christmas Day afternoon under the Christmas tree was a nervous breakdown, the only serious nervous breakdown of my entire life. Judit knew it too; that was why she listened so intently, as if she were one member of the family noticing the signs of breakdown in another. Of course she knew something else too: she knew and understood the cause of the breakdown. If any member of the family had been listening to me that afternoon — it needn’t have been a member of the family, a stranger would have done — they would immediately have sent for the doctor.