Read Online B000FBJF64 EBOK by Sándor Marai - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Sándor Marai
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Cambridge rot down. Back home in the British Isles, everyone who has spent time in the tropics is suspect. They may be respected and honored, but they are also suspect. I’m convinced that their entries in the security files are annotated with the word ‘tropics,’ the way others would be stamped ‘blood disease’ or ‘spying.’ Everyone who has spent extended time in the tropics is suspect, no matter whether they’ve played golf and tennis, drunk whisky in the clubs in Singapore, appeared at the Governor’s receptions in evening dress or in uniform and decorations, they’re still suspect. Because they have experienced the tropics. Because they carry this alarming contagious disease, and there’s no known defense against it, and yet it’s somehow both deadly and seductive. The tropics are a disease. Tropical diseases have a cure, but the tropics themselves do not.”
“I understand,” said the General. “Did you catch it too?”
“Everyone does.” The guest savored the Chablis with his head tilted back, tasting it in small mouthfuls like a connoisseur. “To become an alcoholic is to get off lightly. Passions swirl out there like the tornados in the forests and mountains beyond the swamps. All sorts of passions. Which is why the English are suspicious of everyone who comes back from the tropics. Nobody knows what’s in their blood or their nerves or their hearts. What’s certain is that they’re no longer Europeans. Not quite. They may have had the European newspapers delivered by mail, they may have read everything that has been thought and read in this part of the world for the last decades and longer, they may have maintained all the strange formalities that whitesin the tropics observe among themselves the way drunkards conduct themselves with excessive precision in society: they hold themselves too strictly, so that nobody will detect their chaotic feelings, they’re as smooth as eels and utterly correct and perfectly mannered . . . and inside everything looks different.”
“Really?” said the General, holding his glass of white wine to the light. “Tell me what’s inside.” And when the other said nothing, “I think you came here this evening to tell me.”
They are sitting at the long table in the great dining room where no guest has sat since Krisztina’s death, where no one has eaten for decades, and the room is like a museum of furniture and household objects from a bygone era. The walls are covered with old French paneling, the furniture is from Versailles. They sit at either end of the long table, separated by crystal vases of orchids in the center of the damask cloth. Interspersed with the arrangement of flowers are four porcelain figures of the finest Sèvres: exquisitely charming allegories of North, South, East, and West. West is pointing toward the General, while Konrad’s figure is the East, a grinning little saracen with a palm tree and a camel.
A row of porcelain candlesticks stands the length of the table, holding thick, blue religious candles. The only other light comes from hidden points in the four corners of the room. The candles burn high with a flickering light in the surrounding dimness. Logs glow darkly in the gray marble fireplace. The French doors stand open a little, the gray silk curtains are not quite closed, and the summer evening breezes come through the windows from time to time, while the thin curtains reveal the moonlit landscape and the glimmering lights of the little town in the distance.
At the midpoint of the long table with its flowers and candles is another chair, covered in Gobelin tapestry work, its back to the fireplace. It was where Krisztina, the General’s wife, sat. Where the place setting should be is the allegorical figure of the South: a lion, with an elephant and a black-skinned man in a burnous, all occupying a space no bigger than a side plate and keeping watch over something in companionable harmony. The majordomo in his black frock
“I understand,” said the General. “Did you catch it too?”
“Everyone does.” The guest savored the Chablis with his head tilted back, tasting it in small mouthfuls like a connoisseur. “To become an alcoholic is to get off lightly. Passions swirl out there like the tornados in the forests and mountains beyond the swamps. All sorts of passions. Which is why the English are suspicious of everyone who comes back from the tropics. Nobody knows what’s in their blood or their nerves or their hearts. What’s certain is that they’re no longer Europeans. Not quite. They may have had the European newspapers delivered by mail, they may have read everything that has been thought and read in this part of the world for the last decades and longer, they may have maintained all the strange formalities that whitesin the tropics observe among themselves the way drunkards conduct themselves with excessive precision in society: they hold themselves too strictly, so that nobody will detect their chaotic feelings, they’re as smooth as eels and utterly correct and perfectly mannered . . . and inside everything looks different.”
“Really?” said the General, holding his glass of white wine to the light. “Tell me what’s inside.” And when the other said nothing, “I think you came here this evening to tell me.”
They are sitting at the long table in the great dining room where no guest has sat since Krisztina’s death, where no one has eaten for decades, and the room is like a museum of furniture and household objects from a bygone era. The walls are covered with old French paneling, the furniture is from Versailles. They sit at either end of the long table, separated by crystal vases of orchids in the center of the damask cloth. Interspersed with the arrangement of flowers are four porcelain figures of the finest Sèvres: exquisitely charming allegories of North, South, East, and West. West is pointing toward the General, while Konrad’s figure is the East, a grinning little saracen with a palm tree and a camel.
A row of porcelain candlesticks stands the length of the table, holding thick, blue religious candles. The only other light comes from hidden points in the four corners of the room. The candles burn high with a flickering light in the surrounding dimness. Logs glow darkly in the gray marble fireplace. The French doors stand open a little, the gray silk curtains are not quite closed, and the summer evening breezes come through the windows from time to time, while the thin curtains reveal the moonlit landscape and the glimmering lights of the little town in the distance.
At the midpoint of the long table with its flowers and candles is another chair, covered in Gobelin tapestry work, its back to the fireplace. It was where Krisztina, the General’s wife, sat. Where the place setting should be is the allegorical figure of the South: a lion, with an elephant and a black-skinned man in a burnous, all occupying a space no bigger than a side plate and keeping watch over something in companionable harmony. The majordomo in his black frock
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