Lázár, the writer, fulfilled that role in my life: it was with him I played the strange games of youth and adulthood, games that would have been incomprehensible to anyone else. He was the only one who knew, and of whom I alone knew, that it didn’t matter that the world regarded us as adults, as a serious industrialist, as a famous writer; that it was beside the point that women regarded us as excitable or melancholy or passionate examples of manhood … what really mattered was this capricious, brave, ruthless desire to play, which distorted and yet at the same time, at least for ourselves, lent beauty to the hollow, ritual theater of life.
Whenever we found ourselves together in society we were like two evil conspirators, understanding each other without secret signals, immediately engaging in our game.
There was a variety of games. We had our “Mr. Smith” game. Shall I explain it so you understand how it was with us? The rules of this game were that we had to go straight into it, without any warning, when we were in company — that is to say, in the company of various Mr. and Mrs. Smiths — so they should not suspect anything. So we would meet somewhere with others present, and immediately get started. What does one Mr. Smith say to the other Mr. Smith should they be speaking in company about, say, the recent collapse of the government, or the Danube flood that swept through entire neighborhoods, or the divorce of the famous actress, or the well-known politician caught with his hands in the public purse, or how the fellow caught up in that scandal shot himself at a well-known beauty spot? Mr. Smith would hem and haw and say, “Well, fancy that,” then go on to add some thumping commonplace, such as “Wet stuff, water!” or “If people will insist on putting their feet into water, they must expect to get wet!” Or something like “Well, it takes all sorts.” It’s what the Smiths have been saying since the dawn of time. When the train arrives they say, “It’s arrived.” Should the train stop in Füzesabony, they solemnly announce, “Ah, Füzesabony!” And they are always right. And maybe that is why the world is so hopeless, so dreadful beyond comprehension: it is because the clichés are always true, and only an artist or a genius has the gall to rap a cliché over the knuckles, to expose what is dead and against life in them, to show that, behind the truisms beloved of our respectable and matter-of-fact Mr. Smith, there lurks another truth, an eternal truth that stands the world on its head and sticks its tongue out at Füzesabony and is not a bit surprised when the morally bankrupt high official is discovered in a pink nightie by the security police, his body dangling from a window … If the subject happened to be a political debate, Lázár or I would answer Mr. Smith without hesitation, saying: “Well, as ever, one of them is right, but the other is not altogether wrong. Let’s give everyone a chance.” Lázár and I perfected the Mr. Smith game so that all the real-life Mr. Smiths never once noticed and carried on precisely as before.
Then there was the “In our day …” game, and that was pretty good too. Back in our day, you should know, everything was better: sugar was sweeter, water more fluid, the air more like proper air; women didn’t run around flinging themselves into men’s arms but spent the day paddling and bathing in the river, right till sunset, and even after the sun set they’d stay there paddling in the river. And when men saw a pile of banknotes in front of them, they didn’t try to grab it but pushed it away, declaring: “Go on, take it away, give it to the poor. Yes, sir, that’s what men and women were like in our day.” We played a lot of games like that …
This was the man to whom I sent Judit Áldozó so that he might give her the once-over. As I said, it was just like sending her to the doctor.
Judit called on Lázár in the afternoon. I met him in the evening. “Look,” he said. “What’s the point? The matter is already settled.” I listened to him with suspicion. I was afraid he was just playing another game. We were sitting in a city-center café, like the one we’re in now. He kept turning his cigarette holder — he always used long cigarette holders when smoking, because he was constantly suffering from nicotine poisoning, forever contemplating complex plans and inventions that would help humankind escape the painful consequences of this particular poison — gazing at me so earnestly, studying me with such attention, that I grew ever more suspicious. I wondered if this was another of his straight-faced jokes, a new game in which he was only pretending that this affair was deadly serious, and that soon enough he would laugh aloud at me, as he so often did, and go on to prove that there was nothing important or deadly serious about it, and that it was just another of those Mr. Smith games. After all, it is only the lower orders who believe the universe revolves around them and that the stars carefully arrange themselves with their fate in mind. I know he considered me a bourgeois — not in the contemptuous sense of the word that is so fashionable now; no, he recognized that it takes considerable effort to maintain a bourgeois existence, and would not look down on my origins, my manner, or my values, because he too had a high opinion of the middle classes. It was just that he considered me a hopeless case. He felt there was something hopeless in my situation. The bourgeois is always trying to escape, he said. But he didn’t want to say any more about Judit Áldozó. Courteously but firmly he changed the subject.
Afterwards I often thought back to this conversation the way a sick man remembers learning the real name and nature of his disease when he first visited the famous doctor. The great doctor goes about his examination in a thorough, careful manner, using every kind of instrument, then airily begins to talk of something else, inquiring whether we did not fancy a voyage, or have seen the latest fashionable play, or been in touch with some mutual acquaintance. The only subject he does not touch upon is the one we are most anxious to hear about. That is, after all, why we are there, why we have suffered the tension and discomfort of the examination: it is because we wanted to be certain of something, because we ourselves do not know whether our condition is unusual, whether it is a general malaise or just a collection of insignificant symptoms, since we have been aware for some time that our anxious and troubled state is a sign of something wrong in our constitution, in the very rhythm of our life, all the while hoping that it could all be put right at a stroke, faintly but unambiguously suspecting that the great man knows the truth but isn’t telling us. So there’s nothing to do but wait until we discover for ourselves the truth the doctor kept from us, discover it through the development of further symptoms, through various other signs of danger, and through the manner of our treatment. In the meantime everyone really knows the score: the sick man knows he is very sick; the doctor knows not only that he is very sick but that the patient himself suspects as much and, furthermore, that the patient is quite aware that the doctor is keeping something from him. But there is nothing anyone can do about this; all both can do is to wait until the sickness takes some particular course. Then a cure of some sort may be attempted.