Journey by Moonlight

After the meeting came the most difficult part of the day, the evening. Pataki had once read that the most important difference between a married man and a bachelor was that the married man always knew who he would dine with that evening. And indeed, since Erzsi had left him, this had been the greatest problem in Pataki’s life: who would he dine with? He had never got on with men, had never known the institution of male friendship. Women? This was the oddest thing. While he was married to Erzsi he had needed endless women, one after the other. Every one seemed to please him, one because she was so thin, another because so plump, a third because she was so exactly in between. All his free time, and much that was not free, was filled with women. There had been a maîtresse de titre obscurely connected with the theatre, who had cost him a great deal of money (though she had brought with her a degree of publicity for the bank), then various gentlemanly diversions, the wives of one or two colleagues, but chiefly the typists, with the occasional maid-servant for the sake of variety: an inglorious collection. Erzsi had a real grievance in law, and Pataki in his more optimistic moments reckoned that this was why she had left him. In his more pessimistic mode he had to acknowledge that there was another reason, certain needs which he had been unable to meet, and that consciousness was particularly humiliating. When Erzsi left he had discharged the maîtresse de titre with a handsome redundancy payment, that is to say, made her directly over to an older colleague who had long aspired to the honour, he had ‘reorganised’ his secretarial staff, surrounded himself with one of the ugliest workforces in the bank, and lived a life of self-denial.

“There should have been a child,” he thought, and was filled with the sudden sense of how much he would have loved his child had there been one, Erzsi’s child. With rapid decisiveness he telephoned a cousin who had two positively golden children, and went there to dinner. En route he purchased a horrifying quantity of sweets. The two golden children probably never knew what they had to thank for three days of stomach-ache.

After dinner he sat on in a coffee-house, read the newspapers, vacillated over the question of whether to go yet again and play cards for a bit in the club, could not finally make up his mind, and went home.

Without Erzsi, the flat was now unspeakably oppressive. He really would have to do something with her furniture. Her room couldn’t just stand there as if she might return at any moment, although … “I’ll have to get them to take it all up to the attic, or have it stored. I’ll have it fitted out like a club-room, with huge armchairs.”

Again the gesture of resignation, the grimace, the wave of exhaustion. Decidedly he couldn’t bear it in the flat. He would have to move. To live in a hotel, like an artist. And change the hotel constantly. Or perhaps move into a sanatorium. Pataki adored sanatoria, with their bleached tranquillity and doctorly reassurance. “Yes, I’ll move out to Svábhegy. My nerves could really do with it. Any more of this runaway-wife business and I’ll go mad.”

He lay down, then got up again because he felt he couldn’t possibly sleep. He dressed, but had absolutely no idea where to go. Instead, although he knew perfectly well it would be of no use, he took a Szevenal, and once again undressed.

As soon as he was in bed the alternative again stood before him in all its misery. Erzsi in Paris: either she was alone, horribly alone, perhaps not eating properly (who knows what ghastly little prix-fixe places she was going to); or indeed she was not alone. That thought was not to be borne. Mihály he had somehow got used to. For some odd reason he was unable to take Mihály seriously, even though he had actually run off with her. Mihály didn’t count. Mihály wasn’t human. Deep in his consciousness lurked the conviction that one day, somehow, it would transpire that no such person existed … his affair with Erzsi had been a chance thing, they had lived in a marriage but had never had a real relationship, man and woman. That was something he could not imagine of Mihály. But now, in Paris … the unknown man … the unknown man was a hundred times more disturbing than any familiar seducer. No, the thought could not be endured.

He must go to Paris. He must see for himself what Erzsi was doing. Perhaps she was hungry. But what of his pride? Erzsi didn’t care a hoot for him. He didn’t need Erzsi. Erzsi had no wish to see him …

“And then? Isn’t it enough that I want to see her? The rest will sort itself out.