Journey by Moonlight

But of course Erzsi couldn’t have thought it through, because she was in love with Mihály, and, when it came to him, was not wise, had not recognised his shortcomings, and still, it seems, did not recognise them. It was just a game of feelings. Erzsi with raw, uninhibited appetite was seeking the happiness in love she had never found with Pataki. But perhaps once she had had her fill, because such passionate feeling does not usually last very long …

By the time he got back to the hotel, after a long rambling walk, it seemed inevitable to him that she would, one day, leave him, and do so after horrible crises and sufferings, after squalid affairs with other men, her name ‘dragged through the mud’, as the saying goes. To a certain extent he took comfort in the inevitable, and when they sat down to dinner he could already, a little, look upon her as a lovely fragment of his past, and he was filled with solemn emotion. Past and present always played special games inside Mihály, lending each other colour and flavour. He loved to relocate himself in his past, at one precise point, and from that perspective re-assemble his present life: for example, “What would I have made of Florence if I had come here at sixteen?” and this reordering would always give the present moment a richer charge of feeling. But it could also be done the other way round, converting the present into a past: “What fine memories will I have, ten years from now, of once having been in Florence with Erzsi … what will such memories hold, what associations of feeling, which I cannot guess at at this moment?”

This sense of occasion he expressed by ordering a huge festive meal and calling for the most expensive wine. Erzsi knew Mihály. She knew that the fine meal signified a special mood, and she did her best to rise to the occasion. She skilfully directed the conversation, putting one or two questions bearing on the history of Florence, prodding him to think about such matters, because she knew that historical associations, together with wine, drew him out of his solemnity, and were in fact the only thing that could overcome his apathy. Mihály poured out enthusiastic, colourful, factually unreliable explanations, then with shining eyes tried to analyse the meaning for him, the wonder, the ecstasy of the mere word: Tuscany. “Because there is no part of this land that hasn’t been trodden by the armies of history. The Caesars, the gorgeously apparelled troops of the French kings, all passed this way. Here every pathway leads to some important site and one street in Florence holds more history than seven counties back home.”

Erzsi listened with delight. The actual history of Tuscany did not for one minute interest her, but she adored him when he came alive like this. She loved the way that at these moments, in his historical day-dreams, precisely when he reached the furthest point from actual living people and the present world, his remoteness left him and he became a normal person. Her sympathy soon merged with more powerful feelings, and she thought with pleasure of the expected sequel later that night, all the more because the night before he had been in a bad mood, and fell asleep, or pretended to, the moment he lay down.

She knew that Mihály’s exalted mood could easily be diverted from history towards herself. It was enough to put her hand in his and gaze deep into his eyes. He forgot Tuscany, and his face, flushed as it was with wine, grew pale with sudden desire. Then he began to woo and flatter her, as if trying to win her love for the very first time.

“How strange,” Erzsi thought. “After a year of intimacy he still woos me with that voice, with that diffidence, as if totally unsure of success. In fact the more he wants me, the more distant and fastidious his manner becomes, as if to embellish his desire, to give it the proper respect — and the greatest intimacy, physical intimacy, doesn’t bring him any closer. He can only feel passion when he senses a distance between us.”

So it was. Mihály’s desire spoke to her across a distance, in the knowledge that she would leave him. Already she had become for him a sort of beautiful memory. He drank heavily to sustain this mood, to make himself believe that he wasn’t with Erzsi but with the memory of Erzsi. With Erzsi as history.

But meanwhile Erzsi drank too, and on her wine always had a strong effect. She became loud, jolly and extremely impatient. This Erzsi was rather new to him. Before their marriage she had had little opportunity for unguarded behaviour when with him in public. He found this new Erzsi extremely attractive, and they went up to the bedroom with equal haste.