Journey by Moonlight

“Pride! Since when did you have all this pride, Mr Pataki? If you’d always been so proud in your business life, where would you be now, pray? In a flourishing greengrocer’s in Szabadka, like your dear old dad’s. And why exactly all this pride with regard to Erzsi? A man’s pride should come out where there is some risk involved: in dealing with presidents, or, say, secretaries of state, with the Krychlovaces of this world. (Well, no, that’s going a bit far.) But proud towards women? That’s not chivalrous, not gentlemanly. Just daft.”

The next day he produced a storm of activity. He persuaded the bank and all others concerned that the son-in-law was not the ideal person: someone with more experience was needed after all, to negotiate with the French.

The interested parties came gradually to understand that this person of more experience would be Pataki himself.

“But, Mr Director, do you speak French?”

“Not a great deal, but for that very reason they won’t sell me anything. And in any case the people we’re dealing with will surely speak German, just like you or me. Did you ever meet a businessman who didn’t speak German? Deutsch ist eine Weltsprache.’”

The next morning he was already on his way.

The business side of his trip he dispatched in half-an-hour. His French counterpart, whose name was Loew, did in fact speak German, and also happened to be intelligent. The matter was soon settled because Pataki, in contrast to less skilled or experienced men, did not take business and financial matters too seriously. He regarded them the way a doctor regards his patients. He knew that here too it is just like anywhere else: the talentless often do much better than the able, the inexpert come good more often than the expert. A bunch of pseudo-financiers sit in the highest places directing the world economy, while the real ones meditate in the Schwartzer or the Markó. The quest is for a myth, a groundless fiction, just as it is in the world of learning, where men pursue a non-existent and seductive Truth. In business it is Wealth on a scale that defies comprehension, in pursuit of which they sacrifice the wealth that can be understood. And in the last analysis the whole rat-race is as frivolous as everything else in this world.

He was very proud of the fact that he knew this and that Mihály, for example, did not. Mihály was an intellectual, and for precisely that reason believed in money while at the same time calling everything else into doubt. He would say such things as, for instance: “Psychology in its present state is a thoroughly primitive, unscientific discipline … ” or, “Modern lyric poetry is utterly meaningless,” or “Humanism? there’s no point in making speeches against war: it comes upon us wordlessly … ” But, on the other hand: “The Váraljai Hemp and Flax Company, that’s real. You can’t say a word against that. That’s about money. Money’s no joking matter.” Pataki chuckled to himself. “Váraljai Hemp and Flax, my God … If Mihály and his friends only knew … Even lyric poetry is more serious.”

“And now we must proceed calmly to the second item on our little agenda.” Pataki had obtained Erzsi’s Paris address from Mihály’s family. For Pataki, as he did with everyone, had maintained good relations with them (after all they could hardly be held responsible) and he had even brought a present for Erzsi from Mihály’s married sister. He was very pleased to establish that she no longer lodged on the left bank, the dubious Parisian Buda, full of bohemians and immigrants, but on the respectable right bank, close to the Étoile.

It was twelve o’clock. With a café waiter he telephoned Erzsi’s hotel, not sufficiently trusting his own command of French to negotiate the complexities of the Paris exchange. Madame was not in. Pataki went on reconnaissance.

He entered the little hotel and asked for a room. His French was so bad it was not difficult to play the stupid foreigner. He indicated through gestures that the room he had seen was too expensive, and left. He had however established that it was a regular, genteel sort of place, probably full of English, though a hint of seediness was just perceptible, especially in the faces of the room-girls. No doubt there were certain rooms which elderly Frenchmen would hire as a pied-à-terre, paying for a whole month but actually using for only a couple of hours a week. Why had Erzsi moved here from the other side of the river? Did she wish to live more elegantly, or had she found a more elegant lover?

At four that afternoon he telephoned again. This time Madame was in.

“Hello, Erzsi? Zoltán here.”

“Oh, Zoltán … ”

Pataki thought he could hear suppressed agitation in her voice. Was this a good sign?

“How are you, Erzsi? Is everything all right?”

“Yes, Zoltán.”

“I’m here in Paris. You know, the Váraljai Hemp and Flax contract was a real tangle, I had to come. Endless running around. I’ll be on my feet for three days. I’m getting really bored with this town … ”