Journey by Moonlight

Waldheim also sat down, and immediately began to hold forth. He was explaining the state of disorder. His untidiness was essentially abstract, a manifestation of the spirit, but heredity also played a part in it.

“My father (I must have told you about him) was a painter. Perhaps you’ve heard of him? He would never allow anyone to lay a finger on the things piled up in his studio. After a while he was the only one who could go in. He was the only person who knew where there were these islands you could safely step on without falling into something. But then even the islands became buried under the flood of litter. So my father would close up that studio, take another, and begin a new life. When he died we discovered that he had five, every one filled to overflowing.

Then he described what had happened to himself since he had last seen Mihály, his academic career and his world fame as a philologist, about which he boasted with the naïve charm of a little boy. He “just happened to have with him” newspaper clippings, in a variety of languages, which deferentially reported his various lectures, among them the one Mihály had seen in the Popolo d’Italia. Then he turned up some letters from a string of eminent foreign scholars and writers, all very friendly, and an invitation card to Doorn, to the annual summer convention of the Former Emperor’s Society of Post-Imperial German Archaeologists. From somewhere or other he produced a silver goblet inscribed with the ex-Emperor’s monogram.

“See this. He presented it to me after the whole society had drunk to my honour in good Hungarian Tokay.”

Next he proudly displayed his photographs, flicking through a great pile at high speed. In some he appeared with highly academic-looking gentlemen, in others with various ladies of less scholarly aspect.

“My distinguished self in pyjamas,” he expounded. “My distinguished self in the buff … the lady is covering her face in embarrassment … ”

Then, as a final inclusion, Waldheim was pictured with an extremely plain woman and a small boy.

“Who are these? This hideous woman with her brat?” Mihály asked, tactfully.

“Oh dear, that’s my family,” he replied, and roared with laughter. “My wife and my son.”

“You have a family?” Mihály asked in amazement. “Where do you keep them?”

For Waldheim’s room, his manners, his whole being were so much that of the perpetual and incurable university student, with the stamp of the ‘I never want to grow up’ stud. phil. so clearly upon him, that Mihály simply couldn’t imagine him with a wife and child.

“Oh, I’ve been married for centuries,” he said. “It’s a very old photo. Since then my son has got a lot bigger, and my wife even uglier. She fell for me at Heidelberg, when I was in my third year. Her name was Katzchen, (isn’t that wonderful?) and she was forty-six. But we don’t trouble each other very much. She lives in Germany, with my dear father-in-law and his family, and they look down their noses at me. More recently this is not just because of my morals, but because I’m not German.”

“But surely you are German, at least by descent?”

“Yes, yes, but an Auslanddeutsche, from Bratislava, my God, such an outpost in the Danube basin! That doesn’t count as real German. At least that’s what my son says, and he’s intensely ashamed of me in front of his friends. But what can I do? Nothing. But please, eat up. Oh dear, haven’t I had you to dine here before? Just hang on a second … the tea’s already brewed. But you don’t have to drink tea. There’s also red wine.”

From somewhere among the arcana of the floor he produced a large package, removed several objects and papers from the desk and placed them under it, put the package down and opened it. A mass of raw Italian ham, salami and bread spilt out into view.

“You see I eat only cold meat, nothing else,” said Waldheim. “But to make it less boring for you I’ve arranged for a bit of variety. Just wait a moment … ”

After a long search he produced a banana. The smile with which he presented it to Mihály seemed to say, “Did you ever see such thoughtful housekeeping?”

This student-like casualness and incompetence Mihály found enchanting.