Journey by Moonlight

They went up to Fiesole, and watched a storm hurrying with busy speed over the hills to overtake them. They retreated inside the monastery and viewed the copious oriental bric-a-brac which the pious brothers had brought back from their missions over the centuries. Mihály stood in wonder for some time over a series of pictures from China. It took him several minutes to work out what they represented. In the upper part of each an alarmingly ferocious Chinaman sat enthroned, with a large book before him. What gave the face its special ferocity was the hair flaring upwards from the temples on either side. In the lower half, all sorts of gruesome events were taking place: people being tossed with pitchforks into some ghastly liquid; some having their legs sawn off; someone whose intestines were being drawn out, very carefully, like a rope; and in one a contraption like an automobile, driven by a monster with flying hair, attacking a crowd of people and chopping them up with blades attached to its snout.

It suddenly struck him that this was the Last Judgement, as seen by a Chinese Christian. What craftsmanship, and what objectivity!

He began to feel faint and went out into the square. The landscape, so magical when viewed from the train between Bologna and Florence, was now damp and hostile, like the face of a weeping woman with the make-up peeling off.

When they arrived back in Florence Mihály went to the main Post Office. Since Venice, their mail had been directed there. On one of the envelopes addressed to him he recognised the hand of Zoltán Pataki, Erzsi’s previous husband. Thinking it might contain something better not seen by her, he sat down with it outside a café. “There’s male solidarity for you,” he thought, with a smile.

The letter ran as follows:

Dear Mihály,

I know it’s a bit much, my writing you a long and friendly letter after you ‘seduced and ran off with’ my wife, but you never were a conventional sort of chap, and so perhaps you won’t be shocked if I too disregard convention just this once, even though you’ve always branded me an old conformist. I’m writing to you because I won’t be at rest until I do. I’m writing to you because, quite honestly, I don’t see why I shouldn’t, since we are both perfectly aware that I’m not angry with you. We only keep up the appearance because it’s better for Erzsi’s self-esteem to have the romantic situation where we are locked into deadly enmity over her. But between ourselves, my dear Mihály, you are well aware that I always thought highly of you, and this hasn’t changed simply because you ‘seduced and ran off with’ my wife. Not as if this ‘crime’ of yours hasn’t left me absolutely distraught. I needn’t deny — this of course is strictly between us — how much I still adore her. But I realise you aren’t responsible for that. As a general fact — don’t take this amiss — I don’t believe you’re responsible for anything I can think of in the whole world.