The Rebels by Sándor Márai Read Free Book Online Page A

and rose a little from his seat in order to see Tibor, now, immediately, now while the beauty lasted, for one second too late and it would be gone. And it was true: for when they met at break and he could look calmly, with even a certain curiosity, into Tibor’s eyes, he was disappointed to discover that he felt nothing at all.
    But when he was alone in his room that afternoon, while he was drawing something, just as he had pushed away the drawing board and was starting to fiddle with the brush, somewhere between the two movements the feeling returned, much more powerful now than it had been in the morning. It was so strong that his whole body ached as he shifted: it reared up at him as he bent over the desk. He is beautiful, he cried out, half audibly. It was a wholly intangible feeling. It was a kind of happiness he had never even dreamt of. There was a sweetness to it, a taste that brought tears to his eyes. It made him shake. He is beautiful: Tibor is beautiful, he repeated with bloodless lips, feeling a touch chilly. His hand was cold too, bloodless and trembling. He stood up and ran about the room a little, avoiding the furniture. There were tears in his eyes: he felt dizzy and would have liked to hold on to something. A desire for oblivion flooded through him. This was the ultimate thing, this beauty. There was nothing else. The world could offer no more. The tame world he had so far inhabited was split wide open, its contents ran out: he stood naked and shivering.
    A week later the gang was formed. It takes hardly a moment to form a crystal from the appropriate miscellaneous elements: you cannot know what process preceded the formation, just as we cannot know what drives certain people together, people who hitherto knew nothing of each other, but who immediately form a solid body under conditions that create more anxiety than guilt ever does: so it is with parents and children, so with lovers, and so with murderers. They launched forth from the four corners of that room, each greedy for the others, as if they had been waiting years for precisely this, as if they had a thousand things to communicate and share. Within a week the four of them were as one though they had hardly said a word to each other before. Béla, on whom they had slightly looked down, was practically breathless in the effort to join them before it was too late. Once all four were together in a nook of the corridor they looked into each other’s eyes and started to speak. Ernõ took off his pince-nez and they suddenly fell silent. Tibor stood in the center. He started to say something but the words stuck in his mouth. The other three were looking at him. They waited, silent a while, then all four slowly shuffled back to their places.
     
     
     
    T HEY WERE STANDING BY THE REVOLVING DOORS of the café. The actor took his hand for a second. The Roman emperors had been absolute rulers. There was something of Nero in Amadé. Nero himself had been an actor. Fine. In any case you are the first adult whom I can address familiarly as tu, with whom I am on tutoyer terms, as an adult with adults. He says he has visited Barcelona. He might be lying. One should check up and make sure. Father is sitting down to supper. He might have amputated four legs by now, legs as substantial as this actor’s. Here’s Lajos. He has half an arm missing. Amadé is wearing a pale brown necktie today: this is the fourth necktie he has been seen wearing. Here comes Mr. Kikinday whom someone seems to have sentenced to death. His necktie is dark blue with white spots. Yellow silk with green stripes. White silk with big blue spots. Etelka has a blouse that is white silk with big blue spots. She no longer wears it: it is a year since she last had it on. Amadé always has that cinnamon smell. We were playing in the garden with the janitor’s daughter, then we went to the shed and played a game in which I punished her so she had to lie down and I pulled up her skirt and beat her