Kornel Esti Read Online Free PDF Page B

Budapest was altogether splendid.
    What interested him most of all were the people of Budapest. Everybody going along the street, sitting in a coffeehouse or on a tram, shopping in the shops, was a “Budapest person.” He could tell at a glance that they were very different from the people of Sárszeg, and as like one another in clothes, attitudes, and manners as members of a single family. In his eyes, therefore, a High Court judge, a horse-trader, the wife of a landowner, and a nursemaid were “Budapest people.” This statement—from a higher point of view—is undeniable.
    The “Budapest person” was in a hurry and took no notice of him. He found that out immediately upon arrival. The porter who carried his luggage up to the third floor of the hotel likewise belonged to the people of Budapest. He didn’t say a single word to him, expect it though he might, but ill-humoredly deposited his basket on a trestle, muttered something, and simply left. Kornél found this behavior hard to bear, but it filled him with great admiration. He wrote to his parents—a third postcard—that the people here aren’t coarse, in deed, in a certain respect they’re more refined, more attentive than people in Sárszeg . Sometimes, however, they did seem cold, even heartless. No one asked him what at home everyone from the fôispán * down would certainly have done: “Well, Kornél, isn’t Budapest splendid?” “Isn’t the Danube big?” “Isn’t Gellérthegy high?” And then, neither did they look him in the face, so open, so yearning for affection, which at first—for the first few hours—he raised to everyone with such boundless confidence that some involuntarily smiled and laughed together behind his back at the sight of such naïveté and youth until—hours later—he learned that one should keep one’s face straight if one didn’t want to seem ridiculous. At this point the broad, convivial world ceased to be—that sugary toy world, that doll’s dinner party—which he had been so accustomed to in the provinces. Things were quite different from then on: both more and less.
    Confused by these novelties, brought low in all situations and repeatedly cut to the quick, he sauntered hither and thither and, like someone flayed, things stuck to his flesh; he painfully tore off the healing scabs and became unhealthily receptive to every impression, his every sense became sharpened and refined, and a word that struck his ear, the smell of mash from a brewery, or a glass of unfamiliar shape—a “Budapest glass”—became, in the dingy back room of his hotel, a symbol, an unforgettable memory, and when at length, dazed from the comings and goings of the day, he took refuge in bed—the “Budapest bed,” among the “Budapest pillows”—there welled up in his heart a nostalgia for the old things, the old people, and in despair he yearned for home. Nor did sleep come to his eyes. He propped himself up on the pillows in his dark room and pondered.
    Next afternoon he boarded the express for Fiume. * He quickly found a seat. There were not many traveling. In the second-class compartment where he first opened the door there were only two: a woman and her daughter. He greeted them. The woman received that with a wordless nod, good-natured but reserved, as if to inform him that she occupied a position of friendly neutrality. He crammed his basket onto the luggage rack and settled down by the window. The lady sat across from him, her daughter beside her, obliquely opposite him.
    Esti fanned himself. An African temperature prevailed. The sweltering carriages, which had been baking all day in the blazing sun, were now oozing their poison, fuming and dusty, and the seats exuded the stench of some animal hide. The dark patches in the clouds of steam swirled drunkenly before his eyes in that yellow waxwork light.
    He spared his traveling companions scarcely a glance. He didn’t even wish to know who they were. Schooled by bitter