Free Kornel Esti by Deszö Kosztolányi Page A

want to let me know that you knew more or less what you did. You behaved beautifully. You behaved as a well-brought-up young gentleman should. Thank you. You’re still a child. In fact, you could be my son. You could be my son-in-law. Yes you could, you could be my son-in-law. You see the sort of things that a mother thinks of. But you can’t be my son-in-law. Nobody can. You don’t know life yet. You don’t know what the doctors have diagnosed. The experts in Switzerland and Germany aren’t very encouraging. We’ve come away against their advice. There’s a little island near here. It’s called Sansego. Fishermen live there, simple people. They grow olives and catch sardines. They won’t notice anything. I’m taking her there to hide her away. I want to keep her with me this summer. It may be our last. Then, it seems, I’m going to have to ‘put her away’ after all. The specialists have been recommending that for years, in Hungary and abroad. There are some reliable ‘establishments.’ She’ll get a private room there, her bodily needs will be taken care of. I’ll be able to visit her as often as I like. You don’t know about this sort of thing yet. Don’t ever find out. God bless you. I believe in God. I have to believe in Him, because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to do my duty. Of you go, my boy. Forget the whole thing. Be happy, my boy.” So she thought. But she didn’t speak either. People who suffer don’t talk much. She merely tossed back her head, raised her ravaged face and now, for the first time, looked at Kornél Esti, and as a reward granted him a long look into her ivy-green eyes.
    By this time the train had crossed a Fiume street between lowered barriers. Porters stormed the carriages. Esti picked up his own basket and deposited it in the left luggage office, as he didn’t intend, for the sake of economy, to take a room in Fiume; he would only be there until eight that evening when his ship, the Ernő Dániel , left for Venice. O navis referent in mare te novis fluctus …
    Among the cabs in the square outside the station building a private carriage was waiting. Mother and daughter got into it. Esti stared after them. He watched them until they disappeared in the dreaming lines of plane trees on Viale Francesco Deák.
    He too set of along that shady, sun-dappled avenue, light of heart, with his raincoat over his shoulder. Shopkeepers called out “ latte, vino, frutti, ” as he passed, passersby said “ buon giorno ” to one another. “ Annibale, ” shouted a mother after her son, and a market woman selling figs at a street corner scolded her little daughter, “ Francesca, vergognati. ” Everyone was chattering in that language, that language which is too beautiful for everyday use, that language of which he wasn’t ignorant, which he had taken to his heart in the cramming torments of schoolboy nerves. There was in the air a ceaseless din, a happy racket, a great and unrestrained street merriment. While people were alive they made a noise, for they wouldn’t be able to later.
    A barrow loaded with fish was pushed along, big sea fish and crabs. Cake shops exhaled a scent of vanilla. He saw bay-trees and oysters. In front of the dangling glass bead curtain of a hairdresser’s shop stood the coif eur, splendidly accoutred like a divine actor, setting an example to his customers with a white comb stuck in his high-piled, pomaded black hair. Toilet soap: italianissimo . All was exaggeration, superlative, ecstasy.
    Esti sat down on the terrace of a café. He hadn’t eaten or drunk since the previous afternoon. But more than food or drink, he was yearning at last to speak Italian to a real Italian for the first time in his life. He prepared for this with a certain amount of stage fright. Very slowly the waiter approached him, an elderly Italian with a pointed white beard.
    He knew that the Budapest express had arrived, and so he addressed his guest in Hungarian, with an almost spicy