Journey by Moonlight

“Adultery.”

“You’re crazy!”

“Not in the least. Just trust me. I’ll guarantee a wonderful adultery, pure as the driven snow. I’m an expert in these things.”

By this time they had reached Mihály’s door. He could hardly wait to get inside.

“God preserve you, János Szepetneki. This time I don’t offer you my hand. What you have said is a lot of disgraceful drivel. I hope I don’t see you for a very long time.”

And he rushed up to his room.

XIX

“I DON’T KNOW what all this is about but I’m quite sure your anxieties are ridiculous,” said Waldheim with great energy. “You’re still the pious son of your respected grey-haired father, still a petty-bourgeois. If someone wants to give you money, whatever the source, you should take it. Every religious-historical authority agrees about that. But you still haven’t learnt that money … quite simply, is unimportant. Where essential things are concerned it doesn’t count. Money is always there of necessity, and it’s there even when you don’t bother about it. How much and for how long and where it came from, that’s completely immaterial. Because everything that depends on money is immaterial. You can acquire nothing of importance with money. What you can buy might happen to be life’s necessities, but really isn’t important.

“The things really worth living for can never be had for money. Scholarship, the fact that your mind can take in the thousand-fold splendour of things, doesn’t cost a penny. The fact that you are in Italy, that the Italian sky stretches above you, that you can walk down Italian streets and sit in the shade of Italian trees, and in the evening the sun sets in the Italian manner, none of this is a question of money. If a woman likes you and gives herself to you, it doesn’t cost a penny. Feeling happy from time to time, that doesn’t cost you a penny. The only things that do cost money are peripheral, the external trimmings of happiness, the stupid and boring accessories. Being in Italy costs nothing, but what does cost money is travelling here, and having got here, sleeping with a roof over your head. Having a woman who loves you doesn’t cost money, only that meanwhile she has to eat and drink, and dress herself up so that she can then get undressed. But the petty-bourgeoisie have lived so long by supplying one another with unimportant things with a cash value they’ve forgotten the things that aren’t to be had for money, and they attach importance only to things that are expensive. That is the greatest madness. No, Mihály, you should pay no attention to money. You should take it in like the air you breathe and not ask where it came from, unless it actually smells.

“And now, go to hell. I’ve still got to write my Oxford lecture. Have I shown you the letter, the one inviting me to Oxford? Just wait, it won’t take a second … Isn’t it wonderful what he says about me? Of course if you read it as it stands it doesn’t say very much, but if you take into account that the English love to understate their real meaning, then you can see what it means when they describe my work as meritorious … ”

Mihály left, deep in thought. He set off south alongside the Tiber, walking away from the city centre towards the great dead Maremma. On the city boundary there is a strange hill, the Monte Testaccio, and this he climbed. Its name, ‘shard hill’, reflects the fact that it is made up entirely of pieces of broken pottery. In Roman times the wine-market stood here. Here the wines of Spain were brought in sealed amphoras which were then broken and the wine decanted into goatskins. The shards were then swept up into a heap, which eventually formed the present hill.

Mihály dreamily picked up a few reddish bits of pottery and put them in his pocket.

“Relics,” he thought. “Real shards, from the age of the Caesars. And no doubt of their genuineness, which can’t be said of every souvenir.”

On the hill young Roman boys, late descendants of the quirites, were playing at soldiers, hurling shards at one another, fragments of pottery two thousand years old, without a trace of emotion.

“That’s Italy,” thought Mihály. “They pelt one another with history. Two thousand years are as natural to them as the smell of manure in a village.”

Night was already falling when he reached the little tavern in the Trastevere quarter where he had met János Szepetneki the evening before. Following the local custom, he pressed his shabby old hat down on his head and stepped into the smoky interior. His eyes could distinguish nothing, but Szepetneki’s voice was immediately audible. As before, Szepetneki was busy with the girl.

“I hope I’m not disturbing you?” Mihály asked with a laugh.

“Disturbing us, what the hell. Sit yourself down. I’ve been waiting for you with mounting impatience.”

Indignation rose in Mihály, then he was overcome with embarrassment.

“Sorry … I just dropped in for a glass of wine. I was passing by and I had the feeling you might be here.”