Journey by Moonlight

Did he really want to die? Did he still hanker after a death like Tamás’s? He focused his mind on that longing and looked for the sweetness associated with it. But now he could discover no sweetness, but, on the contrary, nausea and fatigue, such as a man feels after love-making.

Then he realised why he felt this nausea. The desire had already been satisfied. Last night, in the Italian house, in his terror and vision he had already realised the wish that had haunted him since adolescence. He had fulfilled it, if not in external reality, at least in the reality of the mind. And with that the desire had been, if not permanently, at least for the time being, assuaged. He was freed from it, freed from the ghost of Tamás.

And Éva?

He noticed a letter on his desk. It had been put there while he had been out to lunch. It must have arrived the day before, but the lady next door had forgotten to give it to him. He got up, and read Éva’s parting words.

Mihály,

When you read this I will be already on my way to Bombay. I’m not coming to you. You aren’t going to die. You’re not Tamás. Tamás’s death was right for Tamás alone. Everyone has to find his own way to die.

God be with you,

Éva.

By evening they were in fact already on the train. They were discussing business matters, his father describing what had been happening in the firm while he had been away, what the prospects were, and what new responsibilities he had in mind for him.

Mihály listened in silence. He was going home. He would attempt once more what he had failed to do for fifteen years: to conform. Perhaps this time he would succeed. That was his fate. He was giving in. The facts were stronger than he was. There was no escaping. They were all too strong: the fathers, the Zoltáns, the business world, people.

His father fell asleep, and Mihály stared out of the window, trying to make out the contours of the Tuscan landscape by the light of the moon. He would have to remain with the living. He too would live: like the rats among the ruins, but nonetheless alive. And while there is life there is always the chance that something might happen …

TRANSLATOR’S AFTERWORD

IN 1991 a friend placed in my hand a slim novel entitled Utas és Holdvilág. “You must read this,” he insisted. “This is the novel we all read as students. Every educated Hungarian knows and loves this book.” I too fell under its spell. The gently ironical tone, the deceptive casualness with which the story unfolds, the amused scepticism playing on every variety of pretension, inspired an immediate trust. That trust deepened as the quality of the writing became apparent. The opening scene, moving between the Grand Canal of Venice and its seedy back-alleys with their melancholy view of the Island of the Dead, typifies Antal Szerb’s gift for loading details with an almost symbolic resonance. Mihály’s little escapade neatly prefigures the larger action that will follow, defines the terms of the conflict, and establishes the faintly surreal tone with its constant hint of irony.

This irony, distinctively Middle-European in character, operates on every level. First, as with Jane Austen at her most sly, Szerb’s authorial voice constantly mingles with that of his hero, repeatedly wrong-footing the reader to leave him peculiarly vulnerable to events. Then there are the ironic perspectives imposed by the neatly symmetrical plot, with its parallels and contrasts, each a logical consequence of Mihály and Erzsi’s deeply paradoxical marriage. Such irony goes beyond mere technique, investing everything with a disturbing ambiguity. Mihály is both anti-hero (as often noted) and hero. His actions are immoral, absurd, farcical, yet somehow our sympathies are never quite alienated. Some principle at the core of his being calls to us. His progress is both a collapse into adolescent disarray and, in its own way, a genuine spiritual journey, though pursued ‘by moonlight’ and leading to inevitable defeat. However daft his actions, he has an attractive intelligence, a surprising capacity for self-honesty, a certain reckless courage in pursuing his wild quest. Its predictably wry conclusion discredits an entire social structure, that of “the fathers, the Zoltáns, the whole punitive middle-class establishment”. Mihály is truly one of those “failures and misfits of a civilisation by which we best understand its weaknesses”.