Free Kornel Esti by Deszö Kosztolányi

and would forever be. Now he realized the meaning of fate.
    They too were getting ready. The mother had put a broad-brimmed hat on the girl’s head, and slipped the elastic band under her bony chin. She herself was now wearing a hat. A nest-shaped straw hat. There were two white roses on it. Esti helped her get her cases down.
    It was almost time to say good-bye. He’d decided, word for word, what he meant to say to her: “Madam, I have an inexpressible respect and deep sympathy for you. Right at the very first moment I felt a remarkable warmth toward you. I noticed on your forehead a sign, such pain as I had never before seen. Near Zagreb you tied up your hair, your ash-blonde hair, in a light black veil. At dawn, when I ran hastily—and ill-manneredly—out of the compartment, I suddenly saw the whole world blackened by that veil. You are a martyr-mother, a sainted martyr-mother, with seven daggers in your heart. I’m very sorry for you. I’m very sorry for your daughter too. She’s a strange girl. Perhaps you should dose her with potassium bromide solution, a teaspoon every evening, and bathe her in cold water. That helped me. As for the—what shall I say—the affair, I’m not offended. I was a little afraid. But now I’m not. I’ve forgotten it. The only thing that worries me is where you vanished to after midnight. I looked for you everywhere and couldn’t find you. Even now I can’t think where you could have been all that time. The idea crossed my mind, madam, that for the sake of your daughter, whom you love so, for the sake of your daughter, who doesn’t live in this world, you’d gone away with her into the realm of fantasy and with her become invisible. That’s not a satisfactory explanation, I know. But it’s a profound poetic thought. And so I’ll take the liberty of telling you. I’m going to be a writer. If once I master that difficult craft—because please believe me, one has to learn to be constantly watchful, to suffer, to understand others and oneself, to be merciless to oneself and others—well, then perhaps I’ll write about this. It’s a very difficult subject. But things like this interest me. I want to become the sort of writer who knocks at the gates of existence and attempts the impossible. Anything less than that I despise—please forgive my immodesty, because I’m nothing and nobody yet—but I do despise it, and profoundly. I’m never going to forget what happened to me here. I’ll keep it among my memories and by it express my ceaseless grief. I no longer believe in anything. But in that I do believe. Permit me now, madam, before I finally take my leave, to kiss your hand as a mark of sympathy and filial homage.” That was what he meant to say, but he didn’t. Eighteen-year-old boys can, as yet, only feel. They can’t compose speeches like that and deliver them. So he only bowed. More deeply than he’d intended. Almost to the ground. The woman was surprised. She looked at the ground, still all the time hiding her eyes, in which there must once have been life but now were only fear and everlasting anxiety. She thought, “Poor boy, poor boy. What a dreadful night you must have had. When you came into our compartment, my first thought was to send you away somehow. I could see that you were trembling. Sometimes you were a little ridiculous too. I wanted to enlighten you. Only I can’t do such a thing. Then I’d have to talk on and on, tell everyone, here on the train, the neighbors at home, people abroad and everywhere what’s happened to us. It can’t be done. So I prefer to say nothing. And then, I’ve truly become a little unfeeling toward people. At midnight, when my daughter and I left this compartment and—somewhere else—a scene was played out such as you’ve never witnessed—you can be eternally thankful—I hoped that you’d change your mind and move somewhere else in the meantime. You didn’t do that. Out of politeness you didn’t. You didn’t