Read Online Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb - Free Book Online

wouldn’t immediately notice that it had gone. When I stumbled on this possibility I was able to accept what had happened. If it happened because of Éva, it was all right. It was all part of the game, the old games in the Ulpius house.
    “From that moment I was in love with Éva.”
    “But then why have you so strenuously denied all along that you were ever in love with her?” Erzsi interjected.
    “Of course. I was quite right to. It’s only for want of a better word that I call what I felt for her, love. That feeling wasn’t in the least like the feeling I have for you, and had, if you’ll forgive me, for one or two of your predecessors. In a way it was quite the reverse. I love you because you’re part of me. I loved Éva because she wasn’t. That’s to say, loving you gives me confidence and strength, but when I loved her, it humiliated and annihilated me … Of course these expressions are merely antithetical. When it happened, I felt that the truth of the old plays was supreme, and I was being slowly destroyed in the great climax. I was being destroyed because of Éva, through Éva, just as we had played it in our adolescence.”
    Mihály got up and walked restlessly round the room. It had at last begun to worry him that he had so given himself away. To Erzsi, a stranger …
    Erzsi remarked:
    “Before that, you said something about … that you couldn’tpossibly be in love with her, because you knew each other too well, there wasn’t the necessary distance between you for you to fall in love.”
    (“Good—she hasn’t understood,” he thought. “She’s taking in only as much as her basic jealousy can grasp.”)
    “It’s good that you mention that,” he continued, calmly. “Until that memorable night there was no distance. Then I discovered, as the two of us sat there, like a lady with her gentleman, that she had become a totally different woman, a strange, splendid, stunning woman, whereas the old Éva would have carried within her, ineradicably, the old dark, sick sweetness of my youth.
    “But generally Éva didn’t give a damn for me. I rarely managed to see her and when I did she showed no interest in me. Her restlessness was somehow pathological. Especially after the serious suitor appeared—a wealthy, famous, not-exactly-young collector of antiques, who had turned up once or twice at the Ulpius house with the old man, caught the odd glimpse of her, and had long busied himself with plans to make her his wife. The old Ulpius informed Éva he would hear not a word of protest: she had lived off him quite long enough. She would marry, or go to hell. Éva asked for two months’ delay. The old man consented, at the fiancé’s request.
    “The more she neglected me, the stronger was my feeling of what I called, for want of a better word, love. It seems I had a real bent at that time for hopeless gestures: standing around by her gate at night to spy on her as she came home with her laughing and noisy crowd of admirers; neglecting my studies; spending all my money on stupid presents which she didn’t even acknowledge; being cravenly sentimental and creating unmanly scenes if I met her. That was my style. Then I was truly alive. No joy I ever experienced afterwards ever ran as deep as the pain, the exulting humiliation , of knowing I was lost for love of her and that she didn’t care for me. Is that what you call love?”
    (“Why am I saying all this? Why? … Once again I’ve drunk too much. But I had to tell her at some stage, and she isn’t really taking it in … ”)
    “Meanwhile the delay Éva had been granted was coming to its end. Old Ulpius would occasionally burst into her room andmake terrible scenes. In those days he was never sober. The fiancé himself appeared, with his greying hair and apologetic smile. Éva asked for one more week. So that she could go away with Tamás, in a calm atmosphere, so they could take their leave of one another. Somehow money was found for the