In 1902 the old National Theatre still stood, and it was spring, and I was twenty-six years old. As I was hurrying out after a morning rehearsal, at the entrance of the theatre a new acquaintance, a well-mannered young man bumped into me. Van der Hoschke Kálmán Rozsnyai, who later married the actress Kornélia Prielle.

"Mr Beregi, I was just looking for you. I would like to ask you to take tea at my place on Saturday afternoon."

It had been scarcely three days earlier that Sándor Hevesi had introduced us to each other. What he told me about him was that he had travelled abroad a lot, that he knew Oscar Wilde and that, although he was not rich, he was a passionate art collector possessing many interesting, beautiful things.

"I am very sorry, I cannot come. That night I will be playing Mark Antony, and I don't go anywhere before a performance. Perhaps some other time..."

"Mr Beregi, this is an unexpected occasion, many will be there whom you like, poets, authors, and in this circle you alone would represent the theatre. We are celebrating a new American dancer, a star who is talented and beautiful, Isadora Duncan."

"Mr Rozsnyai, perhaps you had better invite the dancing master of the Opera, or somebody from the corps de ballet, or..." While I was walking homeward along the street he kept at my side and, repeating his arguments, urged me to come, even if only for ten minutes, until finally, having reached our door, I parted from him with the words:

"All right. If I can, I shall come."

Oh, bother, ten minutes won't last forever, after all. At least I shall see Oscar Wilde's own handwriting and other interesting things in the collection. And then, I do speak English a little, because I studied it after all. True, I can only read it, I longed to understand Shakespeare in the original, and speaking is something different, I have not tried it yet. Well, here is the opportunity; perhaps I'll succeed.

My way led me past the shop of the blonde Mrs Pásztory. She was dressing the shop window. She caught sight of me and motioned me in. Mrs Pásztory was the favourite of the artistic-literary coterie of the Budapest of that time. Her flower shop near the National Theatre was at times like a literary salon, frequented by writers, politicians and artists exchanging ideas. Lajos Hatvany, Elemér Batthyány, and the cream of the actors' world chatted there; it was there that I first met Father János Hock, a great theosophist, later a Member of Parliament and, after the First World War, a member of Mihály Károlyi's administration, and who just then was relating his experience at one of his séances. Dear, intelligent Mrs. Pásztory listened to everybody, understood everybody and everything, be it natural or unnatural, of this world or of the beyond, messages sent by the living or dead. Everything. It was to this Mrs Pásztory that I went to buy flowers for the unknown, foreign, exotic dancer. Because, after all, she was coming from very far, she would meet Hungarians for the first time today. I thought this was the proper thing to do, just a few flowers, so there would be some courtesy…

Dear Mrs Pásztory looked into my eyes, thought for a moment, went to the shop window, and brought flowers for me.

"There are only a few of these. Look, how exotic, how lovely they are! They arrived from Nice today. Mari Jászai liked them so much that she came in and took almost all of them. It is me who sends these few to that foreign girl. No. For these, Mr Beregi, you won't pay. This is a greeting from Nice, from me to you and from you, Mr Beregi, to that foreign girl." She wrapped them, then she again looked me in the eye and I set off again on my way toward the art collector's apartment.

The address: a shabby, old block of flats. I hoofed it up to the third floor.The great reception of the art collector was at the end of the corridor, in a room-and-kitchen flat. But the cream of the arts world was indeed present. The host had collected everybody whom he had promised. His technique was brilliant. He had told everybody that everybody had promised to be present, and he had kept saying this to everybody about everybody until everybody appeared on account of everybody! And nobody was sorry to have come! The small room-and-kitchen flat was neither room nor kitchen: it was a small museum. It was through the kitchen that we could get into the room, but the kitchen did not appear to be a kitchen. The stone floor was all covered in tiny pieces of Oriental rugs, chasubles of old brocade over the kitchen range, old engravings under glass on the walls; so the kitchen was no kitchen. There was no door between the two areas, only an opening; the walls of the room were covered by autographed portraits of celebrities from all over the world; there was a bookshelf with rare books, de luxe editions in leather and velvet bindings, a low sofa covered in red velvet, a few chairs, a nicely set small table, many cups of all ages and styles, and lace, lace, lace.

Some of the guests were outside, in the corridor; the smaller part, the non-smokers, were in the flat. I was standing neither outside nor inside but in the doorway, holding the flowers from Nice. I had already looked at everything, had already exchanged a few pleasantries with everybody, had already held the bouquet tight in my hand for long enough; so just now I was trying to work out a clever way of getting out of here. But my thoughts suddenly came to a halt. At the end of the dim, shabby corridor a Renoir painting was suddenly coming to life and floated toward the door, dangling her hat on a band on her arm; she was accompanied by a refined, white-haired lady in a long, grey dress, a few steps behind her. I was standing stiffly in the doorway. I had never before seen a woman move in so free a manner. She was already standing in front of me, and without realizing what I was saying, the words left my lips in English, as I proffered her the flowers:

"This is for you… from Nice."

Isadora stretched out both hands in a happy, girlish gesture toward the flowers, and her hand happened to touch mine. She smiled:

"How nice of you, from Nice?" she said."What is your name?

"I am Oszkár Beregi" I said stupidly and in Hungarian.

In the meantime our art-collecting host had changed his behaviour from that of a concert impresario to a whirlwind and had already swept away the phenomenon from the New World from beside me, in order to present her to his guests. Among kisses on the hand and clickings of heels the one-room-and-kitchen museum was now in a pandemonium. Since everybody was, at the same time, eating, taking tea and saying nice things in English and Hungarian, it was only now that I had the opportunity, leaning on the bookshelf, to see who I had brought the flowers from Nice to, whom I had addressed in English without realizing my doing so, and with whom I had spoken Hungarian, when I wanted to introduce myself in English.

This girl dancer, so I thought, would be about eighteen. It was interesting, what wide-toed, flat shoes she was wearing; without heels, it seemed. But in these slipper-like shoes she walked as if she had not been walking at all. She was floating. Her dress almost touched the floor. It was blue. Light blue repp. As she was moving among people, the material occasionally clung to her body and gave an inkling of how shapely her legs were. The Empire-style silk band was under her bosom. Her neck was soft, long, white, and without jewellery. She bent her head a little to the side, her hair was light brown, and her eyes… her eyes were like those of a fawn: warm, radiant, and innocent. She was smiling. Involuntarily, I was thinking of the smile of the Mona Lisa, but the comparison is poor, because this smile was more beautiful, more enchanting. The small room filled with radiance, with spring sunshine from its presence. Or did I alone see it like this? Why would I be impressed? Because she had come from America? Because she had a different native tongue? Oh, not at all! I was very satisfied with the objective soberness of my judgement.

Our host brought in the steaming teapot and, while filling the cups, he drew the attention of his guests, by outshouting them, to the fact that:

"The tea was sent by Frank Harris, directly from London. Harris, as you know, is a good friend of Oscar's; and when we were together with Oscar Wilde, then…" I did not hear the rest, for Isadora, holding a teacup from which she had only sipped, was coming toward the bookshelf:

"Let's look for a book…" and, handing the teacup over to me, playfully covering her eyes with one of her hands, she blindly lifted out a book with the other. It was a tiny little volume bound in leather and embrossed in a Renaissance manner. Ovid: Ars Amandi. Our hands touched, by now possibly not by chance; I was about to say something, too, but I was afraid that I would ruin it when, to my luck, the guests intervened before I had a chance to open my mouth, and asked question after question.

Later, when I got to talk again, I again asked a stupid question: "Tell me, how do you like the Hungarian language?" Isadora burst into laughter: "I don't know the Hungarian language, I have not been to the theatre, either, only to the opera..., everybody speaks English with me, even you...!"

"If you want to hear Hungarian spoken, come to the National Theatre tonight. Julius Caesar will be on, I am Mark Antony. Of course, you are familiar with the piece…"

"Of course. We study Shakespeare in school," she jumped up and ran to her mother.

"Mother, this gentleman has invited us to the theatre for tonight, we are going... we are going..."

[...]

In the National Theatre I had four days in a row when I did not have to appear. We decided to use the opportunity to go to meet Isadora's sister Elizabeth, who was landing in Fiume, and to fetch her with us to Budapest. Our train made a stop at Somogyszob.

"What a sweet little place it looks to be, and what a funny name it has," said Isadora as we looked out of the window of the train. "Don't you want to spend a night here...?" And, amidst ecstatic bursts of laughter, we were already standing down on the platform with our luggage, like two irresponsible teenagers, and waved our hands, flourishing our handkerchiefs, at the train as it left the station.

In the small village clean, orderly little houses stood in line, like soldiers; it was only in one spot that we saw a tall, large building with a garden. Inside the iron fence about a dozen retrievers were noisily playing and frolicking. This was the hunting lodge of one of the Somogyi counts. Now I understood why this small place was a stop for an express train. The count and his companions did not seem to come here too often, because the palace guard offered us the most beautiful room to stay in. Dusk was falling… The good woman sent us for a walk and, while we walked through the small village, she cooked a wonderful chicken paprikash in our honour. She also lit a fire in the fireplace because of the cool spring night.

I was lying on my bed with open eyes. Isadora put out the candle and began to dance. It was a marvellous dance. The shadow of her splendid young body was bending to and fro in the golden field of the wall illuminated by the light of the fire, music was furnished by the crackling of the logs, and the crackling sparks served as pizzicati. There, at Somogyszob, were our real nuptials. There we did not have to be afraid of the door being opened on us or of the dawn. She was lying beside me, she went to sleep in my arms, smiling and exhausted. We did not even notice, and we had played away three unforgettable days. Isadora was expected by Elizabeth in Fiume and I by Shakespeare's Romeo in the National Theatre.

[...]

Three months of silence. Then a telegramme arrived from Vienna. It notified me that she was lying ill in a private hospital. After my evening performance I impatiently jumped on a train; by morning I was in Vienna and had myself taken directly to her. The nurse had spruced Isadora up, and she was sitting in her bed like somebody who was not even ill. But her smile, carefree at other times, looked now as if it were sorrowful. I was standing beside her bed. The nurse left us alone; I kissed her tenderly and laid her back on her pillows. She was just looking with those unforgettable, fawn-like eyes, saying nothing, just looking. Finally, in a scarcely audible voice, she only said:

"No baby... "

I could not say a word. Neither did she say anything. We were just holding each other's hands.

"I fell on the stairs of the Grand Hotel. I had a bad fall. They brought me here."

"How...?"

"I fell... because you weren't holding my hand... "

When I look back now, from the perspective of sixty years, I see everything clearly, as if it had happened only yesterday.

Why did that dear theosophist, Mrs Pásztory, look at me that way, in such an unusually strange manner? Why did she give me exactly those flowers that had come from Nice? Why did she not accept money for them? Was it something hitherto uninvented and undiscovered, undulating from the Infinite to the Infinite, that encompassed everything, past, present, and future? What is this? What do we have here? Chance? The first flowers I gave to Isadora had come from Nice, and the last flower, pressed and withered, from the same bouquet, sent back to me by Isadora for the twenty-fifth anniversary of our having met, arrived from Nice. And, by the time the dead flower reached me, Isadora was dead, too.

Nobody ever finished their life in a like manner. In Nice, she was sitting in an open touring car running at full speed. An overly long silk scarf was wrapped around her neck. The long, red, silk scarf got caught in the wheel of the automobile and strangled her in a split second. Fate, Destiny, Mercy did not allow the neck to grow old which had been Rodin's model and which, at one time, had been fondled by me. Her entire life was different from that of any other woman or even from that of any eccentric artist. At times she lived on the American scale of wealth and its immense splendour; at other times she had five-dollar worries. She had desired children; she even bore two of them, and both became the victims of a terrible accident. Her death, too, was as strangely tragic as her life had been. Fatal!

And all I am left with are her unforgettable memory, her many many letters and telegrammes, her portrait, and her last greeting to me from Nice, the flower that had been my greeting for her when, twenty-five years earlier, we had looked each other in the eye for the first time, in Budapest, on that beautiful, radiant spring afternoon. ß

Translaterd by András Török