Kornel Esti
Kornél Esti
Dezs
Kosztolányi
Translated by Bernard Adams
A NEW DIRECTIONS BOOK
In which the writer introduces and unveils Kornél Esti, the sole hero of this book
I HAD PASSED THE MIDPOINT OF MY LIFE, WHEN ONE WINDY
day in spring, I remembered Kornél Esti. I decided to call on him and to revive our former friendship.
By then we’d had no contact for ten years. What had come between us? I don’t know. We hadn’t fallen out. At least, not like other people do.
Once I’d passed the age of thirty, however, he began to irritate me. His frivolity was offensive. I became tired of his old-fashioned wing collars, his narrow yellow ties, and especially his atrocious puns. His determined eccentricity wore me out. He was forever getting mixed up in escapades of one sort or another.
For instance, one day as we were walking along the esplanade together, he, without a word of explanation, took from the inside pocket of his coat a kitchen knife, and to the amazement of the passers by started to sharpen it on the stones that lined the path. Or, another time, he most politely accosted a poor blind man to remove from his eye a speck of dust that had just gone into it. On one occasion, when I was expecting some very distinguished guests for dinner, men on whom my fate and career depended, editors-in-chief, politicians—gentlemen of rank and distinction—and Esti was also a guest in my home, he craftily made my servants heat the bathroom, took my guests aside one by one as they arrived, and informed them that there was in my house an ancient, mysterious, family tradition or superstition—unfortunately, no details could be given—that required all guests without exception to take a bath before dinner, and he carried off this ridiculous prank with such devilish tact, cunning, and honeyed words that the credulous victims, who favored us with their presence for the first and last time, without my knowledge all took baths, as did their wives, and then, without batting an eyelid at the awful practical joke, sat down to dinner as if nothing had happened.
That kind of practical joke had amused me in the past, but now, at the beginning of my adult life, it rather annoyed me. I was afraid that sort of thing might easily jeopardize my good name. I didn’t say a word to him. Nevertheless—I confess—he embarrassed me more than once.
He too may well have felt the same about me. In the depths of his heart he probably looked down on me for not according his ideas the respect that they deserved—perhaps he even despised me. He took me for a philistine because I used to buy an engagement diary, wrote in it every day, and did all the right things. On one occasion he accused me of forgetting what it was like to be young. And there may have been some truth in that. But that’s the way life goes. Everyone forgets.
Slowly, imperceptibly, we drifted apart, but despite all that I understood him and he understood me. It was just that we kept passing judgment on one another secretly. The thought that we understood one another, yet didn’t, set us both on edge. We went our separate ways. He went left—I went right.
For ten long years we had lived like that, without giving one another a sign of our existence. Naturally, however, I’d thought of him. Scarcely a day went by when I didn’t wonder what he would do or say in this or that situation. And I must suppose that he too thought of me. After all, our past was pervaded by so vigorous and pulsating a network of veins of memory that it couldn’t have been so soon forgotten.
It would be difficult to give a full account of who and what he had been to me. I wouldn’t even care to try. My memory doesn’t go back as far as our friendship. Its beginnings are lost in the primeval mists of my infancy. He had been close to me ever since I’d been aware of myself, always in front of me or behind, always with me or against me. I’d worshipped Esti or loathed him, but I’d never been indifferent to him.
One winter evening, after supper, I was building a tower of colored building bricks. Mother wanted me put to bed. She sent Nanny for me, because at that time I was still in skirts, and I started to go with her. Then a voice came from behind me, his unforgettable voice:
“Don’t go.”
I turned round and, in delight and alarm, looked at him. It was the first time that I’d seen him. He gave me an encouraging grin. I took his arm for him to help me, but Nanny pulled me away and, rage though I might, put me to bed.
From then on we met every day.
In the morning he would spring forward by the washstand.
“Don’t wash up, stay dirty, hooray for dirt!”
If at lunch, despite my convictions to the contrary, I began at my parents’ repeated request to spoon up the “nourishing and wholesome” lentil soup, he would whisper in my ear:
“Spit it out, throw up onto your plate, wait for the roast or the dessert.”
Sometimes he was at home with me, at table or in bed, but he went into the street with me as well.
Once Uncle Loizi was coming toward us, an old friend of my father’s, whom I had always liked and respected, a three-hundred-pound magistrate. Kornél shouted at me:
“Stick your tongue out.” And he stuck out his own till it reached the point of his chin.
He was a cheeky boy, but interesting, never dull.
He put a lighted candle in my hand.
“Set fire to the curtains!” he urged me. “Set fire to the house. Set the world on fire.”
He put a knife in my hand too.
“Stick it in your heart!” he exclaimed. “Blood’s red. Blood’s warm. Blood’s pretty.”
I didn’t dare follow his suggestions, but I was pleased that he dared to put into words what I thought. I said nothing, gave a chilly smile. I was afraid of him and attracted to him.
After a summer shower I found a sparrow chick, drenched, under the broom bush. As I had been taught in Scripture lessons, I put it on my palm, and performing an act of bodily and spiritual kindness, took it into the kitchen to dry it by the fire. I sprinkled crumbs in front of it. Tucked it up in some rags. Sat it on my arm and stroked it.
“Tear its wings of ,” whispered Kornél. “Poke its eyes out, throw it in the fire, kill it!”
“You’re crazy!” I shouted.
“You’re a coward!” shouted he.
White-faced, we glared at one another. We were shaking, I with rage and empathy, he from curiosity and bloodlust. I thrust the chick at him: he could do what he wanted with it. Kornél looked at me and took pity on the little thing. He began to tremble. I pouted scornfully. While we were thus at odds the sparrow chick slipped out into the garden and disappeared.
So he didn’t dare do everything. He liked to talk big and make things up.
I remember how one autumn evening, about six o’clock, he called me out to the gate and there informed me, mysteriously and importantly, that he could actually work magic. He showed me a shiny metal object in his hand. He said that it was a magic whistle, and he only had to blow it for any house to rise up into the air, all the way to the moon. He said that at ten o’clock that evening he was going to levitate our house. He told me not to be afraid, just to watch closely what happened.
At the time I was quite a big boy. I believed him, and yet I didn’t. I rushed back into the apartment in agitation. I watched constantly as the hands of the clock moved on. Just in case, I went over the events of my past life, repented of my sins, knelt in front of the picture of the Blessed Virgin, and prayed. At about ten I heard music and a rustling in the air. Our house rose slowly, smoothly upwards, came to a stop at a height, then rocked and just as slowly and smoothly as it had risen, sank back to earth. A glass on the table rattled and the hanging lamp shook. The whole affair had lasted a couple of minutes. The others hadn’t even noticed. Only my mother turned pale when she looked at me.
“You’re having a giddy turn,” she said, and sent me to bed.
My friendship with Kornél really deepened when the first pimples appeared on our foreheads, the purple springtime buds of adolescence. We were inseparable. We read and argued. I defied him, refuted his wicked ideas. One thing is certain, he was the one who introduced me to all sorts of bad habits. He enlightened me about how children were born; he once told me that adults were yellow, tobacco-smelling, bloated villains and deserved no respect because they were uglier than us and would die sooner; he encouraged me not to study, to lie in bed as long as possible in the morning even if I was late for school; he suggested that I should break into my father’s drawers and open his letters; he brought me dirty books and postcards which you had to hold up to the candle; he taught me to sing, lie, and write poetry; he encouraged me to say dirty words, one after another, to watch girls getting changed through cracks in cubicles in the summer, and to pester them at dancing class with my improper desires; he made me smoke my first cigarette and drink my first glass of pálinka; he gave me a taste for the pleasures of the flesh, gluttony and fornication; he revealed to me that even in my pain there was a secret delight; he tore the scabs off my itching wounds; he proved that everything was relative and that a toad could have a soul just as much as a managing director; he gave me a liking for mute animals and silent solitude; he once consoled me when I was choking in tears at a funeral by tickling my side, at which I suddenly burst out laughing at the stupid incomprehensibility of death; he smuggled mockery into my feelings, rebelliousness into my despair; he advised me to side with those whom the majority spit on, imprison, and hang; he announced that death is eternal; and he wanted me to believe the wicked lie, which I opposed with all my might, that there was no God. My innocent, healthy nature never accepted those opinions at all. I felt, nevertheless, that it would be good to be free of his influence and finally to have done with him, only I lacked the strength: it seems that he still interested me. And then, I was greatly in his debt. He’d been my teacher and now I owed him my life, as does one that has sold his soul to the devil.
My father didn’t like him.
“Where’s that cheeky brat?” he burst into my room one evening. “Where’ve you hidden him? Where’s he hiding?”
I held out my arms, showing him that I was alone.
“He’s always here!” he thundered. “He’s always hanging about. Always pestering you. You eat off the same plate, drink from the same glass. You’re Castor and Pollux. Good friends,” he sneered.
He looked behind the door, behind the stove, in the cupboard. He even looked under the bed to see if Kornél might be there.
“Now you listen to me!” he trumpeted as his rage reached its peak. “If he ever again, just once, sets foot in this house, I’ll knock his block off , I’ll kick him out like a dog, and you as well, and you go where you like, I’ll disown you! So, don’t let him into my house again. Understand?”
He paced to and fro, hands behind his back, controlling his temper. His shoes squeaked.
“He’s a lazybones. He’s a mischief-maker. Can’t you make any other friends? He fills your head with nonsense. He’s driving you mad. Do you want to be a rotten character like him? He’s nobody and nothing, you know. He’ll never amount to anything.”
Kornél wasn’t allowed to show himself. He even avoided our street.
We used to meet in secret, out of town—at the cattle market, where the circus used to pitch their marquee every summer, or in the cemetery among the graves.
We strolled, arms round one another’s necks. On one such passionate walk we stumbled on the fact that both of us had been born in the same year, on the same day ,and at the very same hour and minute: March 29, 1885, Palm Sunday, at six in the morning. This mysterious revelation affected us deeply. We vowed that as we had first seen the world on the same day and at the same hour, we would both likewise die at the same hour of the same day, neither outliving the other by a single second, and in the raptures of youth we were convinced we would perform our vow with ready joy, painlessly and without sacrifice for either of us.
“You aren’t feeling sorry about him, are you?” my mother questioned as I dozed in front of the oil lamp, thinking of Kornél. “It’s better this way, son. He’s not good for you. Make friends with other boys, honest, decent young gentlemen like young Merey, Endre Horváth, Ilosvay. They’re fond of you. He’s never cared about you. Just got you down, worried you, got on your nerves. How often did you suddenly wake up screaming in November? He isn’t fit for you. He’s got nothing going for him. He’s useless, has no heart. You, son, aren’t like that. You’re a good boy, good-hearted, you feel things deeply,” she said, and gave me a kiss. “You’re not like him at all, son.”
And so it was. There were no two people on the planet more different than Kornél and myself.
I found what happened a few days after that conversation all the more peculiar.
I was hurrying home from school in the midday sunshine with my books done up in their strap when someone called after me:
“Kornél!”
A gentleman in a green coat was smiling at me.
“Look here, young Kornél,” he began, and asked me to take a parcel round to the neighbors when I got home.
“I beg your pardon,” I stammered.
“What’s the matter, son?” he asked. “It looks as if you haven’t understood.”
“Yes I have,” I replied. “But you’ve made a mistake. I’m not Kornél Esti.”
“What?” the man in the green coat was puzzled. “Don’t play games, son. You live in Gombkötő utca, don’t you?”
“No, sir. We live in Damjanich utca.”
