Beware of Pity (8 page)

But something else, something much more mysterious also contributed, unconsciously, to the fact that the time I spent daily with the two girls made me feel so elated. Ever since I
had been sent off, a mere boy, to the military academy, and thus for the last ten or fifteen years, I had been living in an exclusively masculine environment. From morning to night, from night to first thing in the morning, in the dormitory at the military academy, in tents when we were on manoeuvres, in the officers’ mess, at table and on the road, in the riding school and the lecture hall, I had never breathed the odour of any but male companions, first boys, then adolescent lads, but always men—men accustomed to energetic gestures, their firm, loud footsteps, their deep voices, the aura of tobacco about them, their free and easy ways, sometimes verging on vulgarity. To be sure, I liked most of my comrades very much, and could hardly complain if they did not feel quite so warmly about me. But that atmosphere lacked something to lighten it, it did not contain enough ozone, enough exciting, intriguing,
electrifying
force. And just as our excellent military band, in spite of its rhythmical verve, played nothing but music for brass—hard, cold, down to earth, intent on nothing but keeping time, lacking the tender and sensuous tone of stringed instruments—so even our most cordial regimental occasions had none of that muted fluidity that the presence or even the mere proximity of women adds to any social gathering. Even at the time when we fourteen-year-olds paraded through the town two by two in our smart cadet uniforms, when we met other young lads
flirting
with girls, or talking to them easily, we had felt, with vague longing, that we were being forcibly deprived of something by spending our youth in barracks while we did our training, something that our contemporaries took for granted daily in the street, on the promenade or the skating rink, in the dance hall—they were entirely at their ease in the company of girls. Shut away behind bars as we were, we used to stare at those girls
in their short skirts as if they were magical beings, and dreamt of a single conversation with a girl as something unattainable. One doesn’t forget such deprivation. Later adventures, fleeting and usually cheap, with all kinds of obliging females, were no substitute for these boyish dreams, and although I had now slept with a dozen women, the awkwardness and stupidity that afflicted me in company when I happened to meet a young girl made me feel that long deprivation had ruined me for natural, straightforward social intercourse, and it would be denied to me for ever.

And now, suddenly, the boyish wish, to which I had never admitted, for friendship with young women instead of only with my bearded, uncouth, masculine comrades was granted in full. Every afternoon I sat, cock of the walk, between the two girls. The clear femininity of their voices did me good physically—I don’t know how else to put it—and for the first time, with almost indescribable happiness, I enjoyed losing my timidity with young girls. It only heightened the particular pleasure of our relationship that Edith’s special circumstances ruled out the crackling electrical contact that is usually inevitable when young people of different sexes are together alone for any length of time. Any of the sultry possibilities that otherwise make a tête-à-tête at dusk so dangerous were wholly absent from our long hours of conversation. At first, to be sure, and I readily admit to this, Ilona’s full lips, ripe for kissing, and plump arms, the Magyar sensuousness evident in her graceful movements had intrigued me in very pleasantly. Several times I had to keep my hands firmly under control to resist the desire to draw this soft, warm girl with her laughing black eyes to me and kiss her at length. But for one thing Ilona had told me in the early days of our acquaintance that she had been engaged for two years
to a young man training to be a notary in Becskeret, and now was only waiting for Edith to be restored to health or at least improving before she married him. I guessed that Kekesfalva had promised Ilona, the poor relation, a dowry if she would stay until then. Moreover, we would have been guilty of brutality and perfidy to indulge in little kisses or hand-holding without being really in love, behind the back of Ilona’s companion whose plight was so touching, and who was fettered to her wheelchair. So that original hint of intriguing sensuality quickly died down, and what affection I was able to feel was turned more and more on the helpless Edith, for in the mysterious chemistry of emotions pity for an invalid imperceptibly begins to go hand in hand with affection. Sitting beside the lame girl, cheering her up with conversation, seeing her thin, mobile mouth calmed by a smile—if she gave way to a violent impulse and made an impatient gesture, I could shame and mollify her with a touch of my hand and received a look of gratitude from her grey eyes—such little familiarities in a friendship of the mind with this defenceless, helpless girl made me happier than passionate adventures with her friend Ilona would have done. And thanks to these quiet revelations I discovered—how much better I had come to know myself in these few days!—tender areas of emotion wholly unknown to me before, emotions at which I had never guessed.

Unknown, tender areas of emotion—but dangerous all the same! For despite every effort, a relationship between a healthy man and a sick woman, the former free, the latter a prisoner, cannot stay in perfect equilibrium for ever. Unhappiness makes people vulnerable and constant suffering makes them unjust. In the same way as there is an ineradicable awkwardness between a creditor and a debtor, because one inevitably gives and the
other takes, a sick person always nurtures a secret irritability and is ready to flare up at any visible sign of concern. I had to be always on my guard against crossing the barely perceptible line beyond which sympathy, instead of being soothing, injured the easily wounded girl even more. Spoilt as she was, she demanded on the one hand to be served like a princess and pampered like a child, but next moment such thought for her feelings could turn her bitter, because it made her even more clearly aware of her own helplessness. If you moved the stool closer to her, for instance, to spare her as far as possible the effort of reaching for her book or her cup, she might snap, with flashing eyes, “Do you think I can’t pick something up for myself if I want to?” And just as a caged animal will sometimes pounce on its usually kindly keeper for no apparent reason, now and then the lame girl was overcome by a malicious desire to wreck our carefree mood by showing her claws, suddenly calling herself a “poor wretched cripple”. At such tense moments I really had to summon up all my strength to avoid being unjust to her and her aggressive reaction.

But to my own astonishment, I kept finding that I had that strength. Once you have gained some understanding of human nature, further understanding of it seems to grow mysteriously, and when you are able to feel genuine sympathy for a single form of earthly suffering, the magic of that lesson enables you to understand all others, however strange and apparently absurd they may be. So I did not let Edith’s occasional irritable moments of rebellion lead me astray, on the contrary. The more unjust and painful her outbursts were the more they shook me, but I also gradually came to understand why my arrival was so welcome to her father and Ilona, and my presence to the whole household. In general a long illness wears out not just the invalid but the sympathy of others—strong feelings cannot
be prolonged indefinitely. Edith’s father and friend certainly sympathised deeply with the poor impatient girl, but by now they were suffering from exhaustion and resignation. They saw the sick girl
as
a sick girl, her lame legs as a fact, they always waited with eyes lowered until her brief nervous outbursts had died down. But they were no longer as startled by them as I always was. I, on the other hand, the only one to whom her suffering always meant a new moment of deep emotion, was soon the only one before whom she felt ashamed of her loss of control. When she flared up angrily, I had only to say a word of gentle reproof—“Oh, my dear Fräulein Edith!”—and she would cast her eyes down obediently. She blushed, and you could see that she would have liked to run away from herself if only her feet did not root her to the spot. And I could never say goodbye without hearing her say, in a certain pleading tone that went straight to my heart, “But you’ll come again tomorrow, won’t you? You’re not cross because of all the silly things I said today, are you?” At such moments I felt a kind of strange astonishment that I, who had nothing at all to offer but my genuine pity, had so much power over other people.

But it is in the nature of youth to be over-excited by every new discovery, and once a feeling carries you away you can’t get enough of it. A strange transformation began to take place in me as soon as I discovered that my empathy for others was a force that did not just arouse my own pleasurable sensations, it had a beneficial effect on others as well. Since I had first allowed this new ability to feel for other people into my mind, it seemed as if a toxin had entered my blood stream and made it warmer, redder, swifter, pulsating more strongly. All at once I could no longer understand the dull state in which I had lived to no purpose until now, as if in indifferent grey twilight. A
thousand things that I had previously passed by unheedingly now aroused me and occupied my mind.

As if that first insight into someone else’s suffering has opened a sharper, more knowledgeable eye in me, I am now aware of details everywhere that interest me, inspire enthusiasm in me or move me. And as our whole world, street by street and room by room, is full of sad stories, is always flooded with terrible misery, my days are filled with expectant interest. For instance, when trying out new horses I catch myself unable to strike a refractory mount a heavy blow on the crupper without guiltily feeling the pain that I have inflicted, and the welt left on the horse burns on my own skin. Or my fingers curl instinctively when our choleric riding master punches a poor Ruthenian lancer in the face for saddling his mount in a slipshod way, and the fellow stands to attention, hands in line with his trouser seams. The other men standing around are all staring or laughing foolishly, but I, and only I, see how the dull-witted fellow’s lashes grow damp over his eyes, which are downcast in shame. In the officers’ mess I suddenly can’t stand the jokes about clumsy or unskilful
comrades;
since beginning to understand the pain of that
defenceless,
powerless girl I feel angry with any brutality and ready to spring to the defence of those who cannot defend themselves. For example, I notice that the woman in the tobacconist’s where I always buy my cigarettes holds the coins she is given strikingly close to the round lenses of her glasses, and I immediately wonder in concern if she is developing a cataract. Tomorrow, I think, I will ask her a few cautious questions, and perhaps ask Goldbaum, our regimental doctor, if he would examine her. And it occurs to me that the volunteers have made a point recently of cutting little red-headed K dead, and I recollect a piece in the newspaper about his uncle, imprisoned for fraud (how can
he help what his uncle is like, poor lad?). I deliberately sit down with him at table in the mess and strike up a long conversation, sensing at once, from his grateful expression, that he understands I am doing it only to show the others how unjust and loutish their treatment of him is. Or I intervene on behalf of one of my men whom the Colonel would otherwise have told off for four hours’ fatigues. I enjoy this new pleasure of mine daily, trying it out more and more often. And I tell myself that from now on I will help everyone and anyone as much as I can. I will not lapse into lethargy and indifference again! I will heighten my faculties by giving myself, I will enrich myself by becoming a brother to everyone else, I will feel sympathy for everyone and understand the suffering of others. And my heart, surprised by itself, trembles with gratitude to the sick girl whose feelings I unwittingly hurt, and whose suffering has taught me this creative magic of pity.

Well, I was soon roused from these romantic feelings, and a rude awakening it was. It happened like this. We had been playing dominoes at the Villa Kekesfalva one afternoon, and then fell into cheerful conversation and passed the time in such a lively mood that none of us noticed how late it was. At last, at eleven-thirty in the evening, I looked at the time and hastily took my leave. But as Edith’s father accompanies me out into the hall, we hear a buzzing and humming outside like a hundred thousand bumblebees. A positive cloudburst is drumming down on the porch roof. “The car will take you home,” Kekesfalva assures me. I protest that there’s no need; I really dislike the idea of the chauffeur being roused now, at eleven-thirty, to get dressed again and take out the car he has already put in
the garage, just for me. (All this empathising and thinking of other people is entirely new to me, and I have learnt to do it only in the last few weeks.) But after all, it is tempting to think of being whisked home in an upholstered, well-sprung car in such filthy weather, instead of trudging along the muddy road for half-an-hour in my thin patent-leather shoes, dripping wet, so I give in. The old man insists on going to the car with me himself and putting a rug over me. The chauffeur turns the starting handle, and soon I am on my way home at a fast pace through the drumming of the rain.

It is wonderfully comfortable and pleasant to be driven along in this car as it glides silently along the road. But now—the journey has been magically fast—as we are making for the barracks I tap on the pane between me and the chauffeur and ask him to stop in the square outside the town hall. I would rather not drive up to the barracks in Kekesfalva’s
elegant
vehicle! I know it doesn’t look good for an insignificant lieutenant to drive up in state like an archduke in a fabulous car, helped out by a liveried chauffeur. The top brass don’t like such ostentation, and in addition instinct has been
advising
me for some time to keep my two worlds as far apart as possible—the luxury of the Villa Kekesfalva, where I am a free man, independent and indulged, and my other world of military service, where I have to keep my head down, where I’m a poor devil who is greatly relieved when there are only thirty days in the month before my money runs out, not thirty-one. Unconsciously, I don’t want the others to know about my real life, and indeed I sometimes don’t know myself which is the real Toni Hofmiller, the one in barracks or the one at the Kekesfalvas’ castle, the Hofmiller out there or the Hofmiller stationed here.