Journey by Moonlight (18 page)

The Englishman began to glance repeatedly at his watch, and Mihály could hardly bear to remain in his seat. He fidgeted, ordered yet another vermouth, then a maraschino. This was no time for economising. Anyway, he was going home the next day.

At last an elegant limousine drew up outside the café, the door opened and a woman glanced out. Instantly the Englishman sprang up and disappeared into the car, which moved off smoothly and silently.

It took but an instant. The woman had appeared in the open car door for no more than a moment, but Mihály had recognised her, as much by intuition as by sight. It was Éva Ulpius. He too had leapt to his feet, had seen her glance fall on him for just a moment, and caught the very faint smile that appeared on her face. But it was over in a flash, and Éva had disappeared inside the car and vanished into the night.

He paid for his drinks and staggered out of the café. The omens had not lied. It was for this that he had been summoned to Rome: because Éva was here. Now he understood that she was the source and object of his nostalgia. Éva, Éva …

And he knew he would not be travelling home. If he had to wear a donkey jacket and wait for fifty years, then he would wait. At last there was a place in the world where he had reason to be, a place that had meaning. For days, without realising it, he had sensed this meaning everywhere, in the streets, houses, ruins and temples of Rome. It could not be said of the feeling that it was ‘filled with pleasurable expectation’. Rome and its millennia
were not by nature associated with happiness, and what Mihály anticipated from the future was not what is usually conjured up by ‘pleasurable expectation’. He was awaiting his fate, the logical, appropriately Roman, ending.

He wrote at once to Tivadar to say that his state of health would not permit an extended journey. He did not send the money to Millicent. Millicent was so rich she could manage without it. If she had waited all this time she could wait a bit longer. The delay was Tivadar’s fault for not sending more money.

That evening, in his elation, his nervous excitement after the feverish waiting, he got drunk on his own, and when he woke later in the night with a violently palpitating heart he again knew the terrible feeling of mortality which in his younger days had been the strongest symptom of his passion for Éva. He well knew, now even more clearly than he had the day before, that for a thousand and one reasons he really had to go home; and that if despite that knowledge he remained in Rome because of Éva—and how uncertain it was that he actually had seen her—he was putting everything at risk, perhaps doing irreparable offence against his family and his own status as a bourgeois, and that very uncertain days lay ahead. But not for one minute did it occur to him that there was anything else he could do. All this, the great gamble and the death-haunted feeling, was so much part of those adolescent games. Not tomorrow, and not the day after, but one day he and Éva would meet, and, until then, he would live. His life would begin anew, not as it had been during all the wasted years.
Incipit vita nova
.

E
VERY DAY
he read the newspapers, but with rather mixed feelings. He enjoyed the paradox that they were written in Italian, that potent and voluminous language, but (in their case) with the effect of a mighty river driving a sewing-machine. But the
contents
deeply depressed him. The Italian papers were always
ecstatically
happy, as if they were written not by humans but by saints in triumph, just stepped down from a Fra Angelico in order to
celebrate
the perfect social system. There was always some cause for happiness: some institution was eleven years old, a road had just turned twelve. So someone would make a monumental speech, and the people would enthusiastically applaud, at least according to accounts in the press.

Like all foreigners, Mihály was exercised by the question of whether the people did actually welcome everything as fervently, and were as steadily, indefatigably, tirelessly happy, as the papers insisted. Naturally he was aware that it was difficult for a foreigner to take an exact measure of Italian contentment and sincerity, especially when he never spoke to anyone, and had no real
connection
with any aspect of Italian life. But as far as he could judge, from such a distance, and given his general detachment, it seemed to him that the Italian people were indeed indefatigably
enthusiastic
and happy, ever since these had come into fashion. But he also knew what trifling and stupid things could suffice to make man happy, whether individually or in the mass.

However he did not occupy himself at great length with this question. His instincts told him that in Italy it was all very much the same whoever happened to be in power and whatever the ideas in whose name they ruled. Politics touched only the
surface
. The people, the vegetative sea of the Italian masses, bore the changing times on their back with astonishing passivity, and lived quite unconnected with their own remarkable history. He suspected that even Republican and Imperial Rome, with its huge gestures, its heroics and bestial stupidities, had been nothing more than a virile drama on the surface, the whole Roman Empire the mere private affair of a few brilliant actors, while down below the
Italians placidly ate their pasta, sang songs of love, and begat their countless offspring.

One day a familiar name met his eye in the
Popolo d’Italia
: ‘The Waldheim Lecture’. He studied the article, from which it emerged that Rodolfo Waldheim, the world-famous Hungarian
classical
philologist and religious historian, had given a lecture at the Accademia Reale, entitled
Aspetti della morte nelle religioni antiche
. The fiery Italian journalist fêted the lecture as shedding entirely new light not just on death-practices in ancient religions but on the nature of death in general. The text was moreover an important document of Hungaro-Italian friendship. The audience had
enthusiastically
received the famous professor, whose very youthfulness had surprised and delighted them.

This Waldheim, Mihály decided, could be no other than Rudi Waldheim, and he was filled with a kind of pleasure, for this man had at one time been a good friend. They had been at university together. Although neither was very congenial by nature—Mihály because he rather looked down upon anyone who was not of the Ulpius set, Waldheim because he felt that compared with
himself
everyone else was ignorant, dull and cheap—nonetheless a kind of friendship had grown between them out of their interest in religious history. The relationship had not been a very lasting one. Waldheim’s knowledge was already formidable: he had read everything that mattered, in every language, and he willingly and brilliantly expounded to Mihály, whom he found an eager listener, until he realised that his interest in the subject was not very deep. He decided his friend was a dilettante and withdrew into suspicion. Mihály for his part was astonished and dismayed by the vastness of his friend’s knowledge. If a mere beginner knew so much, he wondered, how much more would a bearded practitioner know, and he entirely lost heart, particularly as not long afterwards he abandoned his university studies. Waldheim however went on to Germany to perfect himself at the feet of the great masters and the two lost touch completely. Years later Mihály would read in the newspapers of another step in Waldheim’s rapid rise up the academic ladder, and when he became a lecturer at the university Mihály had been on the point of writing to congratulate him, but then hadn’t. They had never again met in person.

Now, reading his name, he remembered Waldheim’s peculiar charm, which he had quite forgotten in the intervening years: the fox-terrier liveliness of his bright, round, shaven head; his
miraculous
loquacity (for Waldheim held forth unstoppably, at full
volume
, in long perfectly constructed sentences almost always full of interest, even in his sleep it was generally supposed); his indomitable vitality; his perpetual appetite for women (which keeps this type of man always busily active around his more attractive female colleagues); above all his distinctive quality, which, following Goethe, though with modest reluctance, he himself termed ‘
charisma
’; and the fact that the study of the concept of Spirit, in all its detailed workings as well as the abstract whole, held him in a white heat of passion. He was never indifferent, always feverishly busy with something, in raptures over some great and possibly ancient manifestation of the Spirit, or detesting some ‘dull’ or ‘cheap’ or ‘second-rate’ piece of stupidity, and invariably sent into a trance by the very word ‘Spirit’, which for him actually seemed to mean something.

Thoughts of Waldheim’s vitality had an unexpectedly
invigorating
effect on Mihály. Ambushed by a sudden urge to see him again, even if briefly, he suddenly realised how utterly lonely his life had been in recent weeks. Loneliness was an inescapable part of awaiting one’s fate, which was his sole occupation in Rome and impossible to share with anyone. It was now brought home to him for the first time how deep he had sunk into this passive, dreamy waiting, this immersion in the sense of mortality. It was like a tangle of seaweed sucking him down towards the wonders of the deep: then suddenly his head had burst out of the water, and he breathed again.

He must meet Waldheim. One possible way of effecting this now seemed to offer itself. In the article reporting the lecture, mention was made of a reception to be given in the Palazzo Falconieri, the headquarters of the Collegium Hungaricum. He remembered that there was a branch of that organisation in Rome, a hostel for young aspiring artists and scholars. Here they would at least be able to give him Waldheim’s address, if he were not actually living there.

The address of the Palazzo Falconieri was not hard to find. It stood in the Via Giulia, not far from the Teatro Marcello, in the
district where Mihály most loved to loiter. Now he cut through the alleyways of the ghetto and soon arrived at the fine old Palazzo.

The porter received Mihály’s inquiry sympathetically, and told him that the professor was indeed in the College, but it was his sleeping time. Mihály looked in amazement at his watch. It was ten thirty.

“Yes,” said the porter. “The professor always sleeps until twelve, and must not be roused. Not that it’s easy to wake him. He sleeps very deeply.”

“Then perhaps I can call back after lunch?”

“Sorry, after lunch the professor goes back to sleep, and cannot be disturbed then either.”

“And when is he awake?”

“The whole night,” said the porter, with a hint of awe in his voice.

“Then it would be better if I left my card and address, and the professor can let me know if he would like to see me.”

When he arrived home late that afternoon a telegram was
waiting
for him. Waldheim had invited him to dinner. Mihály
immediately
boarded a tram and set off for the Palazzo Falconieri. He loved the ‘C’ line, that wonderful route which would take him there from the main railway station skirting half the city, passing through various areas of woodland, stopping at the Coliseum, brushing past the Palatine ruins and racing alongside the Tiber, the cavalcade of the millennia passing in procession on either side of the rails, and the whole journey taking just a quarter-of-an-hour.

“Come,” shouted Waldheim in answer to Mihály’s knocking. But when he tried the door it appeared to be stuck.

“Hang on, I’m coming … ” came the shout from within. After some time the door opened.

“It’s a bit choked up,” said Waldheim, gesturing towards the books and papers piled on the floor. “Don’t worry, just come in.”

Negotiating entry was not a simple matter, for the entire floor was strewn with objects of every description: not just books and papers, but Waldheim’s underwear, some extremely loud
summer
gear, a surprising quantity of shoes, swimming and other sportswear, newspapers, tins of food, chocolate boxes, letters, art reproductions, and pictures of women.

Mihály looked around him in embarrassment.

“You see, I don’t like having the cleaners in while I’m here,” his host explained. “They leave everything in such a mess I can never find anything. Please, take a seat. Hang on, just a second … ”

He swept a few books from the top of a tall pile, now revealed as a chair, and Mihály sat down nervously. Chaos always
disconcerted
him, and in addition this particular chaos
somehow
exuded an aura that demanded respect for the sanctity of learning.

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.

“Here’s a man who’s achieved the impossible,” he thought with a touch of envy, as Waldheim stuffed the raw ham into his mouth and continued to hold forth. “There’s a man who’s managed to stay fixed at the age that suits him. Everyone has one age that’s just right for him, that’s certain. There are people who remain children all their lives, and there are others who never cease to be awkward and absurd, who never find their place until suddenly they become splendidly wise old men and women: they have come to their real age. The amazing thing about Waldheim is that he’s managed to remain a university student at heart without having to give up the world, or success, or the life of the mind. He’s gone down a path where his emotional immaturity doesn’t seem to be noticed, or is even an advantage, and he pays only as much heed to reality as is consistent with the limitations of his own being. That’s wonderful. Now if only I could manage something like that … ”