Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb Read Free Book Online Page A

there was a low and very long niche, and at the end of that the light of a small round window could be seen. Éva came to a sudden stop, and with a scream grabbed hold of me. My teeth were also chattering, but even at that age I was the sort of person who finds unexpected courage in moments of greatest fear. I went into the darkness of the niche, dragging Éva along, still clinging to me.
    “Tamás was dangling beside the little round window, about a metre off the floor. He had hanged himself. Éva shrieked, ‘He’s still alive, he’s still alive,’ and pressed a knife into my hand. It seems she had known perfectly well what he intended. There was a trunk next to him. He’d obviously stood on it to attach the noose to the strength of the joist. I jumped up on the trunk, cut the cord, supported Tamás with the other hand and slowly lowered him down to Éva, who untied the noose from his neck.
    “Tamás quickly regained consciousness. He must have been hanging only a minute or two, and no damage was done.
    “‘Why did you give me away?’ he asked Éva. She was covered in shame and didn’t reply.
    “In due course I asked, rather guardedly, why he had done it.
    “‘I just wanted to see …’ he replied, with indifference.
    “‘And what was it like?’ asked Éva, wide-eyed with curiosity.
    “‘It was wonderful.’
    “‘Are you sorry I cut you down?’ I asked. Now I too felt a little guilty.
    “‘Not really. I’ve plenty of time. Some other time will do.’
    “Tamás wasn’t able at the time to explain what it was really all about. But he didn’t have to. I knew all the same. I knew from our games. In the tragedies we played we were always killing and dying. That’s all they were ever about. Tamás was always preoccupied with dying. But try to understand, if it’s at all possible: not death, annihilation, oblivion, but the act of dying. There are people who commit murder again and again from an ‘ irresistible urge’, to savour the heady excitement of killing. The same irresistible urge drew Tamás towards the supreme ecstasy of his own final passing away. Probably I can’t ever explain this to you, Erzsi. Things like this just can’t be explained, just as you can’t describe music to someone who is tone-deaf. I understood him completely. For years we never said another word about what happened. We just knew that each understood the other.
    “The second attempt came when we were twenty. I actually took part in it. Don’t worry, you can see I’m still alive.
    “At that time I was in utter despair, mainly because of my father. When I matriculated I enrolled as a philosophy student at the university . My father asked me several times what I wanted to be, and Itold him a religious historian. ‘And how do you propose to earn your living?’ he would ask. I couldn’t answer that, and I didn’t want to think about it. I knew he wanted me to work in the firm. He had no real objection to my university studies because he thought it would simply give status to the firm if one of the partners had a doctorate . For my part, I looked on university, in the last analysis, as a few years’ delay. To gain a bit of time, before becoming an adult.
    “ Joie de vivre wasn’t my strong point during that time. The feeling of mortality, of transience, grew stronger in me, and by then my Catholicism was no longer a consolation. In fact it increased my sense of weakness. I wasn’t a role-player by nature, and by that stage I could clearly see that my life and being fell hopelessly short of the Catholic ideal.
    “I was the first of us to abandon our shared Catholicism. One of my many acts of betrayal.
    “But to be brief. One afternoon I called at the Ulpius house and invited Tamás to come for a walk. It was a fine afternoon in spring. We went as far as Old Buda and sat in an empty little bar under the statue of St Flórián. I had a lot to drink, and moaned about my father, my prospects, the whole horrible