IMRE:
A MEMORANDUM
EDITED BY
XAVIER MAYNE.
"There is a war, a chaos of the mind,
When all its elements convulsed, combined,
Like dark and jarring..."
"The whole heart exhaled into One Want,
I found the thing I sought, and that was--thee."
"The Friendship which is Love--the Love which is Friendship"
NAPLES.
THE ENGLISH BOOK-PRESS: R. RISPOLI,
CALATA TRINITÀ MAGGIORE, 53.
1906.
(PRIVATELY PRINTED AND ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)
THIS BOOK IS PRIVATELY PRINTED
IN A LIMITED EDITION, OF WHICH THIS COPY IS
NUMBER 10
CONTENTS
PREFATORY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 3
MASKS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ' 9
MASKS AND--A FACE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ' 79
FACES--HEARTS--SOULS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ' 157
PREFATORY.
My dear Mayne:
In these pages I give you a chapter out of my life... an episode that
at first seemed impossible to write even to you. It has lengthened
under my hand, as autobiography is likely to do. My apology is that in
setting forth absolute truth in which we ourselves are concerned so
deeply, the perspectives, and what painters call the values, are not
easily maintained. But I hope not to be tedious to the reader for
whom, especially, I have laid open as mysterious and profoundly
personal an incident.
You know why it has been written at all for you. Now that it lies
before me, finished, I do not feel so dubious of what may be thought
of its utterly sincere course as I did when I began to put it on
paper. And as you have more than once urged me to write something
concerning just that topic which is the mainspring of my pages I have
asked myself whether, instead of some impersonal essay, I would not
do best to give over to your editorial hand all that is here?--as
something for other men than for you and me only? Do with it,
therefore, as you please. As speaking out to any other human heart
that is throbbing on in rebellion against the ignorances, the narrow
psychologic conventions, the false social ethics of our epoch--too
many men's hearts must do so!--as offered in a hope that some
perplexed and solitary soul may grow a little calmer, may feel itself
a little less alone in our world of mysteries--so do I give this
record to you, to use it as you will. Take it as from Imre and from
me.
As regards the actual narrative, I may say to you here that the
dialogue is kept, word for word, faithfully as it passed, in all the
more significant passages; and that the correspondence is literally
translated.
I do not know what may be the exact shade of even your sympathetic
judgment, as you lay down the manuscript, read. But, for myself, I
put by my pen after the last lines were written, with two lines of
Platen in my mind that had often recurred to me during the progress
of my record: as a hope, a trust, a conviction:
"Ist's möglich ein Geschöpf in der Natur zu sein,
Und stets und wiederum auf falscher Spur zu sein?
Or, as the question of the poet can be put into English:
"Can one created be--of Nature part--
And ever, ever trace a track that's false?
No... I do not believe it!
Faithfully yours,
Oswald.
Velencze,
19--
... "You have spoken of homosexualism, that profound problem in human
nature of old or of to-day; noble or ignoble; outspoken or masked;
never to be repressed by religions nor philosophies nor laws; which
more and more is demanding the thought of all modern civilizations,
however unwillingly accorded it..... Its diverse aspects bewilder
me... Homosexualism is a symphony running through a marvellous
range of psychic keys, with many high and heroic (one may say
divine) harmonies; but constantly relapsing to base and fantastic
discords!... Is there really now, as ages ago, a sexual aristocracy of
the male? A mystic and hellenic Brotherhood, a sort of super-virile
man? A race with hearts never to be kindled by any woman; though, if
once aglow, their strange fires can burn not less ardently and purely
than ours? An _élite_ in passion, conscious of a superior knowledge
of Love, initiated into finer joys and pains than ours?--that looks
down with pity and contempt on the millions of men wandering in the
valleys of the sexual commonplace?"...
(Magyarból.)
I.
MASKS.
Like flash toward metal, magnet sped to iron,
A Something goes--a Current, mystic, strange--
From man to man, from human breast to breast:
Yet 'tis not Beauty, Virtue, Grace, not Truth
That binds nor shall unbind, that magic tie.
(GRILLPARZER)
It was about four o' clock that summer afternoon, that I sauntered
across a street in the cheerful Hungarian city of Szent-Istvánhely,
and turned aimlessly into the café-garden of the Erzsébet-tér, where
the usual vehement military-band concert was in progress. I looked
about for a free table, at which to drink an iced-coffee, and to mind
my own business for an hour or so. Not in a really cross-grained mood
was I; but certainly dull, and preoccupied with perplexing affairs
left loose in Vienna; and little inclined to observe persons and
things for the mere pleasure of doing so.
The kiosque-garden was somewhat crowded. At a table, a few steps
away, sat only one person; a young Hungarian officer in the pale
blue-and-fawn of a lieutenant of the well-known A-- Infantry Regiment.
He was not reading, though at his hand lay one or two journals. Nor
did he appear to be bestowing any great amount of attention on the
chattering around him, in that distinctively Szent-Istvánhely manner
which ignores any kind of outdoor musical entertainment as a thing to
be listened-to. An open letter was lying beside him, on a chair; but
he was not heeding that. I turned his way; we exchanged the usual
sacramental saluts, in which attention I met the glance, by no means
welcoming, of a pair of peculiarly brilliant but not shadowless hazel
eyes; and I sat down for my coffee. I remember that I had a swift,
general impression that my neighbour was of no ordinary beauty of
physique and elegance of bearing, even in a land where such matters
are normal details of personality. And somehow it was also borne in
upon me promptly that his mood was rather like mine. But this was a
vague concern. What was Hecuba to me?--or Priam, or Helen, or Helenus,
or anybody else, when for the moment I was so out of tune with life!
Presently, however, the band began playing (with amazing calmness
from any Hungarian wind-orchestra) Roth's graceful "Frau Réclame"
Waltz, then a novelty, of which trifle I happen to be fond. Becoming
interested in the leader, I wanted to know his name. I looked across
the table at my vis-à-vis. He was pocketing the letter. With a word
of apology, which turned his face to me, I put the inquiry. I met
again the look, this time full, and no longer unfriendly, of as
winning and sincere a countenance, a face that was withal strikingly
a temperamental face, as ever is bent toward friend or stranger. And
it was a Magyar voice, that characteristically seductive thing in the
seductive race, which answered my query; a voice slow and low, yet
so distinct, and with just that vibrant thrill lurking in it which
instantly says something to a listener's heart, merely as a sound,
if he be susceptible to speaking-voices. A few commonplaces followed
between us, as to the band, the programme, the weather--each
interlocutor, for no reason that he could afterward explain, any more
than can one explain thousands of such attitudes of mind during casual
first meetings--taking a sort of involuntary account of the other.
The commonplaces became more real exchanges of individual ideas.
Evidently, this Magyar fellow-idler, in the Erzsébet-tér café, was in
a social frame of mind, after all. As for myself, indifference to the
world in general and to my surroundings in particular, dissipated and
were forgot, my disgruntled and egotistical humour went to the limbo
of all unwholesomenesses, under the charm of that musical accent,
and in the frank sunlight of those manly, limpid eyes. There was
soon a regular dialogue in course, between this stranger and me.
From music (that open road to all sorts of mutualities on short
acquaintanceships) and an art of which my neighbour showed that he
knew much and felt even more than he expressed--from music, we passed
to one or another aesthetic question; to literature, to social life,
to human relationships, to human emotions. And thus, more and more, by
unobserved advances, we came onward to our own two lives and beings.
The only interruptions, as that long and clear afternoon lengthened
about us, occurred when some military or civil acquaintance of my
incognito passed him, and gave a greeting. I spoke of my birth-land,
to which I was nowadays so much a stranger. I sketched some of the
long and rather goal-less wanderings, almost always alone, that I had
made in Central Europe and the Nearer East--his country growing,
little by little, my special haunt. I found myself charting-out to
him what things I liked and what things I anything but liked, in this
world where most of us must be satisfied to wish for considerably more
than we receive. And in return, without any more questions from me
than I had from him--each of us carried along by that irresistible
undercurrent of human intercourse that is indeed, the Italian
_simpatia_, by the quick confidence that one's instinct assures him
is neither lightly-bestowed, after all, nor lightly-taken--did I
begin, during even those first hours of our coming-together, to know
no small part of the inner individuality of Imre von N..., _hadnagy_
(Lieutenant) in the A... Honvéd Regiment, stationed during some years
in Szent-Istvánhely.
Lieutenant Imre's concrete story was an exceedingly simple matter. It
was the everyday outline of the life of nine young Magyar officers in
ten. He was twenty-five; the only son of an old Transylvanian family;
one poor now as never before, but evidently quite as proud as ever. He
had had other notions, as a lad, of a calling. But the men of the
N.... line had always been in the army, ever since the days of
Szigetvár and the Field of Mohács. Soldiers, soldiers! always
soldiers! So he had graduated at the Military Academy. Since then? Oh,
mostly routine-life, routine work... a few professional journeyings in
the provinces--no advancement and poor pay, in a country where an
officer must live particularly like a gentleman; if too frequently
only with the aid of confidential business-interviews with Jewish
usurers. He sketched his happenings in the barracks or the ménage--and
his own simple, social interests, when in Szent-Istvánhely. He did not
live with his people, who were in too remote a quarter of the town for
his duties. I could see that even if he were rather removed from daily
contact with the family-affairs, the present home atmosphere was a
depressing one, weighing much on his spirits. And no wonder! In the
beginning of a brilliant career, the father had become blind and was
now a pensioned officer, with a shattered, irritable mind as well as
body, a burden to everyone about him. The mother had been a beauty and
rich. Both her beauty and riches long ago had departed, and her health
with them. Two sisters were dead, and two others had married officials
in modest Government stations in distant cities. There were more
decided shadows than lights in the picture. And there came to me, now
and then, as it was sketched, certain inferences that made it a
thought less promising. I guessed the speaker's own nervous distaste
for a profession arbitrarily bestowed on him. I caught his something
too-passionate half-sigh for the more ideal daily existence, seen
always through the dust of the dull highroad that often does not
seem likely ever to lead one out into the open. I noticed traces of
weakness in just the ordinary armour a man needs in making the most of
his environment, or in holding-out against its tyrannies. I saw the
irresolution, the doubts of the value of life's struggle, the sense
of fatality as not only a hindrance but as excuse. Not in mere
curiosity so much as in sympathy, I traced or divined such things;
and then in looking at him, I partly understood why, at only about
five-and-twenty, Lieutenant Imre von N.....'s forehead showed those
three or four lines that were incongruous with as sunny a face. Still,
I found enough of the lighter vein in his autobiography to relieve
it wholesomely. So I set him down for the average-situated young
Hungarian soldier, as to the material side of his life or the rest;
blessed with a cheerful temperament and a good appetite, and plagued
by no undue faculties of melancholy or introspection. And, by-the-by,
merely to hear, to see, Imre von N.... laugh, was to forget that
one's own mood a moment earlier had been grave enough. It might be,
he had the charm of a child's most infectious mirth, and its current
was irresistible.
Now, in remembering what was to come later for us two, I need record
here only one incident, in itself slight, of that first afternoon's
parliament. I have mentioned that Lieutenant Imre seemed to have his
full share of acquaintances, at least of the comrade-class, in Szent
Istvánhely. I came to the conclusion as the afternoon went along, that
he must be what is known as a distinctly "popular party". One man
after another, by no means of only his particular regiment, would stop
to chat with him as they entered and quit the garden, or would come
over to exchange a bit of chaff with him. And in such of the meetings,
came more or less--how shall I call it?--demonstrativeness, never
unmanly, which is almost as racial to many Magyarak as to the Italians
and Austrians. But afterwards I remembered, as a trait not so much
noticed at the time, that Lieutenant Imre, did not seem to be at all a
friend of such demeanour. For example, if the interlocutor laid a hand
on Lieutenant Imre's shoulder, the Lieutenant quietly drew himself
back a little. If a hand were put out, he did not see it at once, nor
did he hold it long in the fraternal clasp. It was like a nervous
habit of personal reserve; the subtlest sort of mannerism. Yet he was
absolutely courteous, even cordial. His regimental friends appeared to
meet him in no such merely perfunctory fashion as generally comes from
the daily intercourse of the service, the army-world over. One
brother-officer paused to reproach him sharply for not appearing
at some affair or other at a friend's quarters, on the preceding
evening--"when the very cat and dog missed you." Another comrade
wanted to know why he kept "out of a fellow's way, no matter how
hard one tries to see something of you." An elderly civilian remained
several minutes at his side, to make sure that the young Herr
Lieutenant would not forget to dine with the So-and-So family, at a
birthday-fête, in course of next few days. Again,--"Seven weeks was I
up there, in that d--d little hole in Calizien! And I wrote you long
letters, three letters! Not a post-card from you did I get, the whole
time!"...... remonstrated another comrade.
Soon I remarked on this kind of dialogue. "You have plenty of
excellent friends in the world, I perceive," said I.
For the first time, that day, since one or another topic had occurred,
something like scorn--or a mocking petulance--came across his face.
"I must make you a stale sort of answer, to--pardon me--a very stale
little flattery," he answered. "I have acquaintances, many of them
quite well enough, as far as they go--men that I see a good deal of,
and willingly. But friends? Why, I have the fewest possible! I can
count them on one hand! I live too much to myself, in a way, to be
more fortunate, even with every Béla, János and Ferencz reckoned-in. I
don't believe you have to learn that a man can be always much more
alone in his life than appears his case. Much!" He paused and then
added:
"And, as it chances, I have just lost, so to say, one of my friends.
One of the few of them. One who has all at once gone quite out of my
life, as ill-luck would have it. It has given me a downright stroke at
my heart. You know how such things affect one. I have been dismal just
this very afternoon, absurdly so, merely in realizing it."
"I infer that your friend is not dead?"
"Dead? No, no, not that!" He laughed. "But, all things concerned,
he might as well be dead--for me. He is a marine-officer in the
Royal Service. We met about four years ago. He has been doing some
Government engineering work here. We have been constantly together,
day in, day out. Our tastes are precisely the same. For only one of
them, he is almost as much a music-fiend as I am! We've never had the
least difference. He is the sort of man one never tires of. Everyone
likes him! I never knew a finer character, not anyone quite his equal,
who could count for as much in my own life. And then, besides," he
continued in a more earnest tone, "he is the type to exert on such a
fellow, as I happen to be, exactly the influences that are good for
me. That I know. A man of iron resolution..... strong will.... energies.
Nothing stops him, once he sees what is worth doing, what must be
done. Not at all a dreamer.... not morbid.. and so on."
"Well," said I, both touched and amused by this naïveté, "and what has
happened?"
"Oh, he was married last month, and ordered to China for time
indefinite.... a long affair for the Government. He cannot possibly
return for many years, quite likely never."
"Two afflictions at once, indeed," I said, laughing a little, he
joining in ruefully. "And might I know under which one of them you,
as his deserted Fidus Achates, are suffering most? I infer that you
think your friend has added insult to injury."
"What? I don't understand. Ah, you mean the marriage-part of it? Dear
me, no! nothing of the sort! I an only too delighted that it has come
about for him. His bride has gone out to Hong-Kong with him, and
they expect to settle down into the most complete matrimonial bliss
there. Besides, she is a woman that I have always admired simply
unspeakably... oh, quite platonically, I beg to assure you!.. as have
done just about half the men in Szent-Istvánhely, year in and out--who
were not as lucky as my friend. She is absolutely charming--of high
rank--an old Bohemian family--beautiful, talented, with the best
heart in the world..... and-_Istenem!_" he exclaimed in a sudden,
enthusiastic retrospect... "how she sings Brahms! They are the model of
a match.... the handsomest couple that you could ever meet."
"Ah... is your marine friend of uncommon good-looks?" He glanced
across at the acacia-tree opposite, as if not having heard my
careless question, or else as if momentarily abstracted. I was
about to make some other remark, when he replied, in an odd,
vaguely-directed accent. "I beg your pardon! Oh, yes, indeed... my
friend is of exceptional physique. In the service, he is called
'Hermes Karvaly'... his family name is Karvaly.... though there's
Sicilian blood in him too--because he looks so astonishingly like
that statue you know--the one by that Greek--Praxiteles, isn't it?
However, looks are just one detail of Karvaly's unusualness. And to
carry out that, never was a man more head over heels in love with his
own wife! Karvaly never does anything by halves."
"I beg to compliment on your enthusiasm for your friend... plainly one
of the 'real ones' indeed," I said. For, I was not a little stirred by
this frank evidence, of a trait that sometimes brings to its possessor
about as much melancholy as it does happiness. "Or, perhaps I would
better congratulate Mr. Karvaly and his wife on leaving their merits
in such generous care. I can understand that this separation means
much to you."
He turned full upon me. It was as if he forgot wholly that I was a
stranger. He threw back his head slightly, and opened wide those
unforgettable eyes--eyes that were, for the instant, sombre, troubled
ones.
"Means much? Ah, ah, so very much! I dare say you think it odd.... but
I have never had anything... never... work upon me so!.... I couldn't
have believed that such a thing could so upset me. I was thinking of
some matters that are part of the affair--of its ridiculous effect on
me--just when you came here and sat down. I have a letter from him,
too, today, with all sorts of messages from himself and his bride, a
regular turtle-dove letter. Ah, the lucky people in this world! What
a good thing that there are some!" He paused, reflectively. I did not
break the silence ensuing. All at once, "_Teremtette_!" he exclaimed,
with a short laugh, of no particular merriment,--"what must you think
of me, my dear sir! Pray pardon me! To be talking along--all this
personal, sentimental stuff--rubbish--to a perfect stranger! Idiotic!"
He frowned irritably, the lines in his brow showing clear. He was
looking me in the eyes with a mixture of, shall I say, antagonism
and appeal; psychic counter-waves of inward query and of outward
resistance.... of apprehension, too. Then, again he said most formally,
"I never talked this way with any one--at least never till now. I am
an idiot! I beg your pardon."
"You haven't the slightest need to beg it," I answered, "much
less to feel the least discomfort in having spoken so warmly
of this friendship and separation. Believe me, stranger or
not... and, really we seem to be passing quickly out of that degree of
acquaintance... I happen to be able to enter thoroughly into your
mood. I have a special sense of the beauty and value of friendship.
It often seems a lost emotion. Certainly, life is worth living only
as we love our friends and are sure of their regard for us. Nobody
ever can feel too much of that; and it is, in some respects, a pity
that we don't say it out more. It is the best thing in the world,
even if the exchange of friendship for friendship is a chemical
result often not to be analyzed; and too often not at all equal as an
exchange."
He repeated my last phrase slowly, "Too often--not equal!"
"Not by any means. We all have to prove that. Or most of us do. But
that fact must not make too much difference with us; not work too
much against our giving our best, even in receiving less than we wish.
You may remember that a great French social philosopher has declared
that when we love, we are happier in the emotion we feel than in that
which we excite."
"That sounds like--like that 'Maxims' gentleman--Rochefoucauld!"
"It was Rochefoucauld."
My vis-à-vis again was mute. Presently he said sharply and with a
disagreeable note of laughter, "That isn't true, my dear sir!--that
nice little French sentiment! At least I don't believe it is! Perhaps
I am not enough of a philosopher--yet. I haven't time to be, though
I would be glad to learn how."
With that, he turned the topic. We said no more as to friends,
friendship or French philosophy. I was satisfied, however, that my new
acquaintance was anything but a cynic, in spite of his dismissal, so
cavalierly, of a subject on which he had entered with such abrupt
confidentiality.
* * * * *
So had its course my breaking into an acquaintance... no, let me not
use as burglarious and vehement a phrase, for we do not take the
Kingdom of Friendship by violence even though we are assured that
there is that sort of an entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven--so was
my passing suddenly into the open door of my intimacy (as it turned
out to be) with Lieutenant Imre von N..... It was all as casual as my
walking into the Erzsébet-tér Café. That is, if anything is casual. I
have set down only a fragment of that first conversation; and I
suspect that did I register much more, the personality of Imre would
not be significantly sharpened to anyone, that is to say in regard to
what was my impression of him then. In what I have jotted, lies one
detail of some import; and there is shown enough of the swift
confidence, the current of immediate mutuality which sped back and
forth between us. "_Es gibt ein Zug, ein wunderliches Zug_"... declares
Grillparzer, most truthfully. Such an hour or so.... for the evening
was drawing on when we parted..... was a kindly prophecy as to the
future of the intimacy, the trust, the decreed progression toward
them, even through our--reserves.
We met again, in the same place, at the same hour, a few days later;
of course, this time by an appointment carefully and gladly kept.
That second evening, I brought him back with me to supper, at the
Hotel L--, and it was not until a late hour (for one of the most
early-to-bed capitals of Europe) that we bade each other good-night
at the restaurant-door. By the by, not till that evening was
rectified a minor neglect.... complete ignorance of one another's
names! The fourth or fifth day of our ripening partnership, we spent
quite and entirely together; beginning it in the same coffee-house at
breakfast, making a long inspection of Imre's pleasant lodging,
opposite my hotel, and of his music-library; and ending it with a bit
of an excursion into one of Szent-Istvánhely's suburbs; and with what
had already become a custom, our late supper, with a long aftertalk.
The said suppers by the by, were always amusingly modest banquets.
Imre was by no means a valiant trencher-man, though so strong-limbed
and well-fleshed. So ran the quiet course of our first ten days,
our first two weeks, a term in which, no matter what necessary
interruptions came, Lieutenant Imre von N.... and I made it clear to
one another, though without a dozen words to such effect, that we
regarded the time we could pass together as by far the most agreeable,
not to say important, matter of each day. We kept on continually
adjusting every other concern of the twenty-four hours toward our
rendezvous, instinctively. We seemed to have grown so vaguely
concerned with the rest of the world, our interests that were not in
common now abode in such a curious suppression, they seemed so
colourless, that we really appeared to have entered another and a
removed sphere inhabited by only ourselves, with each meeting. As it
chanced, Imre was for the nonce, free from any routine of duties of a
regimental character. As for myself, I had come to Szent-Istvánhely
with no set time-limit before me; the less because one of the objects
of my stay was studying, under a local professor, that difficult and
exquisite tongue which was Imre's native one, though, by the way,
he was like so many other Magyars in slighting it by a perverse
preference. (For a long time, we spoke only French or German when
together.) So between my sense of duty to Magyar, and a sense,
even more acute, of a great unwillingness to leave Szent-Istvánhely--it
was growing fast to something like an eighth sense... I could abide my
time, or the date when Imre must start for certain annual regimental
maneuvers, down in Slavonia. With reference to the idle curiosity of
our acquaintances as to this so emphatic a state of dualism for Imre
and myself.... such an inseparable sort of partnership which might
well suggest something...
... "too rash, too unadvised, too sudden,
Too like the lightening which doth cease to be
Ere one can say 'It lightens'"...
... why we were careful. Even in one of the countries of Continental
Europe where sudden, romantic friendship is a good deal of a cult, it
seems that there is neither wisdom nor pleasure in wearing one's heart
on one's sleeve. Best not to placard sudden affinities; between
soldiers and civilists, especially. It was Imre von N.... himself who
gave me this information, or hint; though not any clear explanation of
its need. But he and I not only kept out of the most frequented haunts
of social and military Szent-Istvánhely thenceforth, but spoke (on
occasion) to others of my having come to the place especially to be
with Imre, again,--"for the first time in three years", since we
had become "acquainted with each other down in Sarajevo, one
morning"--during a visit to the famous Husruf-Beg Mosque there!
This easy fabrication was sufficient. Nobody questioned it. As a
fact, Imre and I, when comparing notes one afternoon had found out
that really we had been in Sarajevo at the exact date mentioned. "The
lie that is half a truth is ever".... the safest of lies, as well as
the convenientest one.
Now of what did two men thus insistent on one another's companionship,
one of them some twenty-five years of age, the other past thirty,
neither of them vapourous with the vague enthusiasms of first manhood,
nor fluent with the mere sentimentalities of idealism.... of what did
we talk, hour in and hour out, that our company was so welcome to each
other, even to the point of our being indifferent to all the rest of
our friends round about?.... centering ourselves on the time _together_
as the best thing in the world for us. Such a question repeats a
common mistake, to begin with. For it presupposes that companionship
is a sort of endless conversazione, a State-Council ever in session.
Instead, the _silences_ in intimacy stand for the most perfect
mutuality. And, besides, no man or woman has yet ciphered out
the real secret of the finest quality, clearest sense, of human
companionability--a thing that often grows up, flower and fruit, so
swiftly as to be like the oriental juggler's magic mango-plant. We are
likely to set ourselves to analyzing, over and over, the externals and
accidence... the mere inflections of friendships, as it were. But the
real secret evades us. It ever will evade. We are drawn together
because we are drawn. We are content to abide together just because
we are content. We feel that we have reached a certain harbour, after
much or little drifting, just because it is for _that_ haven, after
all, that we have been moving on and on; with all the irresistible
pilotry of the wide ocean-wash friendly to us. It is as foolish to
make too much of the definite in friendship as it is in love--which
is the highest expression of companionship. Friendship?--love?
what are they if real on both sides, but the great Findings?
Grillparzer... once more to cite that noble poet of so much that is
profoundly psychic... puts all the negative and the positive of it
into the appeal of his Jason..
"In my far home, a fair belief is found,
That double, by the Gods, each human soul
Created is... and, once so shaped, divided.
So shall the other half its fellow seek
O'er land, o'er sea, till when it once be found,
The parted halves, long-sundered, blend and mix
In one, at last! Feel'st thou this _half_-heart?
Beats it with pain, divided, in thy breast?
O... come!"
As a fact, my new friend and I had an interesting range of commonplace
and practical topics, on which to exchange ideas. Sentimentalities
were quite in abeyance. We were both interested in art, as well as
in sundry of the less popular branches of literature, and in what
scientifically underlies practical life. Moreover, I had been longtime
enthusiastic as to Hungary and the Hungarians, the land, the race, the
magnificent military history, the complicated, troublous aspects of
the present and the future of the Magyar Kingdom. And though I cannot
deny that I have met with more ardent Magyar patriots than Imre von
N... for somehow he took a conservative view of his birth-land and
fellow-citizens--still, he was always interested in clarifying my
ideas. Again, contrary-wise, Lieutenant Imre was zealous in informing
himself on matters and things pertaining to my own country and to its
system of social and military life, as well as concerning a great deal
more; even to my native language, of which he could speak precisely
seven words, four of them too forcible for use in general polite
society. Never was there a quicker, a more aggressively intelligent
mind than his; the intellect that seeks to take in a thing as swiftly
yet as fully as possible.... provided, as Imre confessed, with
complete absence of shame, the topic "attracted" him. Fortunately,
most interesting topics did so; and what he learned once, he learned
for good and all. I smile now as I remember the range, far afield
often, of our talks when we were in the mood for one. I think that in
those first ten days of our intercourse we touched on, I should say,
a hundred subjects--from Árpád the Great to the Seventh Symphony,
from the prospects of the Ausgleich to the theory of Bisexual
Languages, from Washington to Kossuth, from the novels of Jókai to
the best _gulyás_, from harvesting-machines, drainage, income-taxes,
and whether a woman ought to wear earrings or not, to the Future
State! No,--one never was at a loss for a topic when with Imre, and
one never tired of his talk about it, any more than one tired of Imre
when mute as Memnon, because of his own meditations, or when he was,
apparently, like the Jolly Young Waterman, "rowing along, thinking of
nothing at all."
* * * * *
And besides more general matters, there was... for so is it in
friendship as in love... ever that quiet undercurrent of inexhaustible
curiosity about each other as an Ego, a psychic fact not yet mutually
explained. Therewith comes in that kindly seeking to know better and
better the Other, as a being not yet fully outlined, as one whom we
would understand even from the farthest-away time when neither friend
suspected the other's existence, when each was meeting the world
_alone_--as one now looks back on those days... and was absorbed in so
much else in life, before Time had been willing to say, "Now meet, you
two! Have I not been preparing you for each other?" So met, the simple
personal retrospect is an ever new affair of detail for them, with its
queries, its concessions, its comparisons. "I thought that, but now I
think this. Once on a time I believed that, but now I believe this. I
did so and so, in those old days; but now, not so. I have desired,
hoped, feared, purposed, such or such a matter then; now no longer.
Such manner of man have I been, whereas nowadays my identity before
myself is thus and so." Or, it is the presenting of what has been
enduringly a part of ourselves, and is likely ever abide such?
Ah, these are the moods and tenses of the heart and the soul in
friendship! more and more willingly uttered and listened-to as
intimacy and confidence thrive. Two natures are seeking to blend.
Each is glad to be its own directory for the newcomer; to treat him as
an expected and welcomed guest to the Castle of Self, while yet
something of a stranger to it; opening to him any doors and windows
that will throw light on the labyrinth of rooms and corridors, wishing
to keep none shut.... perhaps not even some specially haunted, remote
and even black-hung chamber. Guest? No, more than that, for is it not
the tenant of all others, the Master, who at last, has arrived!
Probably this is the best place in my narrative to record certain
particularly personal aspects of Lieutenant Imre, though in
giving them I must draw on details and impressions that I gained
gradually--later. During even that earlier stage of our friendship,
he insisted on my going with him to his father's house, to meet his
parents. From them, as from two or three of his officer-friends with
whom I occasionally foregathered, when Imre did not happen to be of
the party of us, I derived facts--side-lights and perspectives--of
use. But the most part of what I note came from Imre's tendency
toward introspection; and from his own frank lips.
He had been a singularly sensitive, warm-hearted boy, indeed too
high-strung, too impressionable. He had been petted by even the
merest strangers because of his engaging manners and his peculiarly
striking boyish beauty. He had not been robust as a lad (though now
superbly so) with the result that his schooling had been desultory
and unsystematic. "And I wanted to study art, I didn't care what
art... music, painting, sculpture, perhaps music more than anything...
I hated the army! But my father--his heart was set on my doing what
the rest of us had done... I was the only son left.. it had to be." And
however little was Imre at heart a soldier, he had made himself into
a most excellent officer. I soon heard that from all his comrades whom
I met; and I have heard it often since those days in Szent-Istvánhely.
His sense of his personal duty, his pride, his filial affection, his
feeling toward his King, all contributed toward the outward semblance
that was at least so desirable. He had already been highly commended;
probably promotion would soon come. He had always won cordial words
from his superiors. Loving not in the least the work, he played his
unwelcome part well and manly, so that not more than half a dozen
individuals could have been sure that Imre von N... _hadnagy_, would
have doffed gladly, at any minute, the King's Coat for a blouse.
Ambition failed him, alas! just because he was at heart indifferent to
the reward. But he ran the race well. And for the matter of ambition
the advancement in the Magyar service is as deliberate as in other
armies in peace-times. Imre needed much stronger influence than what
was at his request, to hurry him beyond a lieutenancy.
With only one such contest in his soul, no wonder that Imre led his
life in Szent-Istvánhely so much to himself, however open to others it
seemed to be. Yet whatever depressed him, he was determined not to
be a man of moods to the cynical world's eyes. As a fact he was so
happily a creature of buoyant temperament, that his popularity was not
surprising, on the basis of comrade-intercourse and of the pleasantly
superficial side of a regimental life. Every man was Imre's friend!
Every woman was, such, that I ever heard speaking of him, or spoken-of
along with his name. The paradox of living to oneself while living
with everyone, the doors of an individuality both open and shut, could
no farther go than in his instance.
How fully was I to realize that, in a little time!
As to physique, Imre had fulfilled in his maturity the promise of
his boyhood. He was called "Handsome N...", right and left; and he
deserved the sobriquet. Of middle height, he possessed a slender
figure, faultless in proportions, a wonder of muscular development, of
strength, lightness and elegance. His athletic powers were renowned in
his regiment. He was among the crack gymnasts, vaulters and swimmers.
I have seen him, often, make a standing-leap over an ordinary
library-table, to land, like a cat, on the other side. I have seen
him, half-a-dozen times, spring out of a common barrel into another
one placed beside it, without touching his hands to either. He could
hold out a heavy garden-chair perfectly straight, with one hand;
break a stout penholder or leadpencil between his second and third
fingers; and bend a thick, brass curtain-rod by his leg-muscles. He
frequently swam directly across the wide Duna, making nothing of its
cross-currents at Szent-Istvánhely. He was a consummate fencer, and a
prize-shot. He could jump on and off a running horse, like a vaquero.
Yet all this force, this muscular address, was concealed by the
symmetry of his graceful, elastic frame. Not till he was nude, and one
could trace the ripple of muscle and sinew under the fine, hairless
skin, did one realize the machinery of such strength. I have never
seen any other man--unless Magyar, Italian or Arab--walk with such
elasticity and dignity. It was a pleasure simply to see Imre cross
the street.
His head, a small, admirably shaped one, with its close-cut golden
hair, carried out his Hellenic exterior. For it was really a small
head to be set on such broad shoulders and on as well-grown a figure.
As to his face (generally a detail of least relative importance in
the male type), I do not intend to analyze retrospectively certainly
one of the most engaging of manly countenances that I have ever
looked upon. The actual features were delicate enough, but without
womanishness. Imre was not a pretty man; but a beautiful man. And the
mixture of maturity and of almost boyish youth, the outlook of his
natural sincerity and warmth of nature, his self-unconsciousness and
self-respect... these entered into the matter of his good looks, quite
as much as his merely technical beauty. I did not wonder that not
only the women in Szent-Istvánhely but the street-children, aye,
the very dogs and cats it seemed to me, would look at him with
friendly interest. Those lustrous hazel eyes, with the white so clear
around the pupils... the indwelling laughter in them that nevertheless
could be overcast with so penetrating a seriousness...! It seems to me
that now, as I write, I meet their look. I lay down my pen for an
instant as my own eyes suddenly blur. Yet why? We should find tears
rising for a living grief, not a living joy!
United with all this capital of a man's physical attractiveness
was Imre's extraordinary modesty. He never seemed to think of his
appearance for so much as two minutes together. He never glanced into
a mirror when he happened to pass near that piece of furniture which
seems to inflict a sort of nervous disease of the eyes... occasionally
also of the imagination... on the average soldier of any rank and
uniform, the world round. "Thanks... but I don't trouble myself much
about looking-glasses, when I've once got my clothes on my back and am
certain that my face isn't dirty!" was his reply to me one morning
when I gave him an amused look because he had happened to plant his
chair exactly in front of the biggest pier-glass in the K... Café. He
never posed; never fussed as to his toilet, nor worried concerning the
ultrafitting of his clothes, nor studied with anxiety details of his
person. One day, another officer was lamenting the melancholy fact
that baldness was gaining ground slyly, pitilessly, on the speaker's
hyacinthine locks. He gave utterance to a sorrowful envy of Imre.
"Pooh, pooh," returned Imre, _hadnagy,_ scornfully, "It's in the
family... and such a convenience in warm weather! I shall be bald as a
cannon-shot by the time I am thirty!" He detested all jewellery in
the way of masculine adornments, and wore none: and his civilian
clothing was of the plainest.
* * * * *
The making-up of every man refers, or should do so, to a fourfold
development... his physical, mental, moral and temperamental equipment,
in which last-named class we can include the aesthetic individuality.
The endowment of Imre von N... as to this series was decidedly less
symmetrical than otherwise. In fact, he was a striking example of
contradictions and inequations. He had studied hardest when in his
school-courses just what came easiest... with the accustomed results of
that sort of process. He was a bad, a perversely bad mathematician; an
indifferent linguist, simply because he had found it "a hideous job
to learn all those complicated verbs"; an excellent scholar in
history; took delight in chemistry and in other physical sciences;
and though so easily plagued by a simple sum in decimals, he had
a passion for astronomy, and he knew not a little about it, at least
theoretically. Physical science appealed to him, curiously; his small
library was two-thirds full of books on those topics. He loved to read
popular philosophy and biography and travel. For novels, as for
poetry, he cared almost nothing. He would spare no pains to get to the
bottom of some subject that interested him, a thing that "bit" him, as
he called it; short of actually setting himself down to the calm and
applicative study of it! Tactics did he, somehow deliberately learn;
grimly, angrily, but with success. They were indispensable to his
professional credit. Such a result showed plainly enough that he
lacked resolution, concentration as a duty, but did not lack
capability. Many a sound lecture from myself, as from other friends,
including particularly, as I found out, from the much-married Karvaly,
did Imre receive respecting this defect. A course in training in
the Officers' Military School (_Hadiskola_) was involved in the
difficulty, or perversity, so in evidence. This _Hadiskola_ course
is an indispensable in such careers as Imre's sort should achieve,
willing or unwilling. When a young officer is so obstinately cold to
what lies toward good work in the _Hadiskola,_ and in his inmost soul
desires almost anything rather than becoming even an major... why, what
can one say severe enough to him?
Yet, with reference to what might be called Imre's aesthetic
self-expression, I wish to record one thing at variance with much
which was negative in him. At least it was in contradiction to his
showing such modest "literary impulses", and to his relative aversion
to belles-lettres, and so on. When Imre was deeply stirred over
something or other that "struck home", by some question to open the
mountains of innermost feeling in him, it was remarkable with what
exactitude,--more than that, what genuine emotional eloquence of
phrase--he could express himself! This even to losing that slight
hesitancy of diction which was an ordinary characteristic. I was often
surprised at the simple, direct beauty, sometimes downright poetic
grace, in his language on such unexpected occasions. He seemed to
become tinged with quite another personality, or to be following, in
a kind of trance, the prompting of some voice audible to him only. I
shall hardly so much as once attempt conveying this effect of sudden
"_ihletés_", even in coming to the moments of our intercourse when it
surged up. It must in most part be taken for granted; read between
the lines now and then. But... one must be mindful of its natural
explanation. For, after all, there was no miracle in it. Imre was a
Magyar; one of a race in which sentimental eloquence is always
lurking in the blood, even to a poetic passion in verbal utterance
that is often out of all measure with the mere formal education of a
man or a woman. He was a Hungarian: which means among other things
that a cowherd who cannot write his name, and who does not know
where London is, can be overheard making love to his sweetheart, or
lamenting the loss of his mother, in language that is almost of
Homeric beauty. It is the Oriental quality, ever in the Magyar; now
to be admired by us, now disliked, according to the application of the
traits. Imre had his full share of Magyarism of temperament, and of
its impromptu eloquence; taking the place of much of a literal
acquaintance with Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, and all the rhetorical
and literary Parnassus in general.
He detested politics, as might be divined. He "loved" his Apostolic
King and his country much as do some children their nearest relatives;
that is to say, on general principles, and to the sustaining of a
correct attitude before himself and the world. On this matter, also
he and I had many passages-at-arms. He had not much "religion." But he
was a firm believer in God; in helping one's neighbour, even to most
injudicious generosity; in avoiding debts "when one could possibly do
so" (a reserve that I regretted to find out was not his case any more
than it is usually the case with young Hungarian officers living in a
capital city, with small home-subventions); in honour; in womanly
virtue; in a true tongue and a clean one. His sense of fun was
not limited to the kind that may pass between a rector of the
Establishment and his daughters over afternoon-tea. But Lieutenant
Imre von N.... had no relish for the stupid-smutty sallies and stock
_racontars_ of the officers' mess and the barracks. Unless a "story"
really possessed wit and humour, he had absolutely dull ears for it.