Sándor Márai
Journal
From 1943 - 1944 and 1945 - 1947
In Pest, seeing the apartment again.
I own nothing else except these books in my study. Amongst them are a thousand
that I treasure, with which I have something deeply personal in common. If
those books were to be destroyed... even then, quite clearly, nothing of consequence
would happen to me.
Still, those books also represent a source of energy; without them I am singularly
deaf. This is my homeland, this study with the books... In other libraries I
cannot make contact with the spirit that speaks to me in this room, out of
these books. If a bomb were to destroy this room tomorrow, I would be homeless.
That is something that has to be taken note of, but there is no call for complaining.
A bomb is drifting about over our heads, somewhere in the air, and may fall
at any time. It will take a true miracle for it not to fall. Just don't count
on anyone, place no hopes in anything. Keep quiet and work as long as that
is possible. And gaze with grateful happiness at the books, my last friends,
as long as that is possible.
*
I have lived through
liberalism, communism, the White terror, neo-Baroque democracy, fascism, and
National Socialism, and possibly have variants of rose-tinged or red periods
still to live through. But I have not lived, nor will I live, under the mark
of political or ideological slogans in which the disabled and epileptic did
not loathe the healthy, or the untalented and semi-talented did not employ
a torrent of mendacious and absurd charges to accuse those whose talents made
them stick out by so much as a centimetre in a profession. Anyone who is unaware
of this is just not acquainted with humankind. It is a certainty that has
to be reckoned with in the same way as death.
*
Another Hungarian book about Rimbaud - the second within a fortnight.
This time, György Rónay has translated the enfant terrible's poems and written
a bio-graphy... Touching, do you not think? At a moment when the monastery of
Monte Cassino is being destroyed through the will of the Germans, young Hungarians
are setting up monuments to a wild and bizarre French genius in conscientious
and splendid books... These are the signs - the very last - which still give a scintilla
of hope that not everything is lost.
*
"Never has a small nation declared war on a great power more
impudently than Hungary on the Soviet Union...," writes one of the Swiss newspapers.
Small nation? This small nation never declared war on anyone. It was a tiny
clique that declared war, without any consultation with the people or parliament;
a few purblind or ambitious soldiers and politicians. The people were mutely
aghast. In the photograph that captures the chamber of the National Assembly
at the moment Bárdossy broke the news of the proclamation of war on Russia,
everyone - members of the government included - has his head bowed.
*
The Germans have occupied Hungary.
*
Only a miracle will help. Miracles do happen, but I believe they have to be
earned.
*
God grant the Jews the strength to endure their persecution, torture and affliction.
Grant them the strength to have the capacity for life and for death.
Then, should they survive the persecutions, grant them the strength not to
lose their heads and not to turn into rampaging persecutors. Grant them the
strength to have the capacity for human greatness and tolerance. For revenge
only gives birth to newer passions. Maybe Huxley and the Oxford pacifists
are right to say that an enemy can only be defeated in one way: by enduring
him.
*
In Pest. Every ringing has an import: by now I only open the
door to the sound of ringing that has an import. I only pick up the telephone
receiver if it rings with a certain signal. That is how we live.
Anyone who has not lived with us throughout these times: was not amongst us
when everything opened up, came to a head and showed itself in its full
reality; does not know what it is to be startled by a ringing, and be long
past fearing for one's own life; does not know what it takes before we glance
up
unconcernedly on hearing the howl of the air-raid sirens, because our nerves
have long since inured us to dangers of that kind in the solvent of bitterer
and more dangerous poisons; has not helped at least one child, not given harbour
for a homeless wretch; does not know what it is like to be handed in the morning
post a card that has been tossed out of a railway truck at some halt by someone
who, along with eighty others in that truck, is travelling towards their death - anyone
who has not lived with us throughout all this, these last three months, these
last five years, these last ten years, should not stand in judgement upon
us. Only he who has lived amongst us may pass judgement.
*
How was it? I woke at seven in the morning to the sound of someone prowling
quietly in the room (the maid used to prowl quietly like that) and place on
the little bedside table a glass of orange and lemon juice, along with the
morning newspapers. I woke up, drained the tart-fresh concoction in one gulp
(vitamins!), leafed through the papers, then stretched out my hand for the
reading-matter that I had started on the previous day and read until nine.
At that point, breakfast was wheeled in on a trolley-table: tea, buttered
toast, a soft-boiled egg, honey.
I got up at ten o'clock and worked until eleven. Already standing before the
house by then was the limousine that the garage hand had brought in the morning
and parked with carefully locked doors before the front gate. I put on white
flannels and sweater, proceeded down to the street with tennis racquet in
hand, climbed into my car, went off Margaret Island, played tennis for an
hour then showered, had a swim and a massage at the island's swimming pool.
On the way home,
I stopped before some coffee-house or café where they do a good brew, and
there, elbows propped on the counter, sipped a cup of poisonously strong black
coffee. Lunch was light and tasty; if the cook did not know her stuff, we
would have her replaced after a while. After lunch I had a nap, then worked
until five, at which juncture I went off to stretch my legs out in Huývösvölgy
or on Swabian Hill (once again driving the car to where I walked, occasionally
fuming that the vehicle was not running perfectly - it'll have to be changed!),
then back home after the stroll to change, because in the evening I would
have guests at my place or be invited to someone else's. I would try to be
home by midnight, if possible, then read for another hour in bed. Before going
to sleep, stifling a yawn, one would make up one's mind that the dinner had
been poor, the conversation boring, the standard of literary life had slipped,
and that living a life like that was truly unbearable.
God knows, maybe it really was.
The Germans really are magicians. They
have contrived the miracle that all decent people look forward with genuine
fervour to seeing the Russians, the Bolsheviks, who will be arriving as true
liberators. I too look forward to seeing the Russians. We have all come a
long way since two days ago... two days, seven months, twenty-five years.
*
The greatest punishment is not poverty, nor even illness, bodily suffering.
The greatest punishment is when fate locks you up with common people of vulgar
taste and you have to share your days with them. That is the greatest punishment.
It is mostly amongst oafs that this sort is to be found.
The poor are generally far more tactful and delicate, more generous in their
human relations than oafs.
*
The city is wounded and tattered. Clearance sales of every kind: shoe shops
offering leather-soled shoes, and haberdashers - textiles, with no nation cards
required. Shop windows are empty; behind the panes of the big grocery stores
all that can be seen are a few boxes of insect repellent. In some places there
are still carrots to be had, a head of lettuce or a cabbage - otherwise nothing.
I want to drop into a familiar coffee-house: German soldiers are right in the
midst of packing up the furniture. Tramcars lumber by that are loaded with hospital
equipment. Public transport is paralysed, with tramcars - now that the two main
arteries have been cut at Margaret Bridge - idling in dead-end streets. Tanks
are rolling over Elizabeth Bridge, arriving from the nearby front line at Soroksár.
The sound of artillery in the distance. No one pays any attention now to the
air-raid warnings.
There are three hundred thousand terrified people in yellow-star houses; Arrow-Cross
youths, striplings of sixteen or eighteen, are looting in the yellow-star houses,
herding the inhabitants towards barges and collecting centres. In the November
cold, many thousands - women, children, the old - are being marched off silently
towards an unknown fate. Pillage and hostage-taking are rife.
Even if every accusation that has ever been shrilled out against the Jews were
true, any person who seeks to call himself a person ever again ought to stand
by them, because their suffering surpasses all imagination.
*
Whilst the guns thunder, my long-time barber shaves me, apologising that he
cannot lather me with Colgate soap as he used to!
*
Like a storm, that's what it is like; indeed that is what
it is - a storm. All this with the Russians already in the suburbs. Yet the
Magyar Nazis are still mouthing off, looting, making threats. They want to
drive off all the adult males. I have not come across a single person in recent
days who is not 'skiving off', living outside the law. The police and medical
officers are extraordinarily decent; they assist everyone. The split is total:
on one side are the Arrow-Cross; on the other, Hungarian society as a whole.
Workers, socialists, Communists, Habsburg restorationists, civil parties,
Jews, Christians - all are on that other side, facing the scum.
*
At noon, on the second day of the occupation of Leányfalu three Russians roll
up. I was just in the middle of shaving; they urge me with a smile not to mind
them but carry on lathering. They launch into a chat with the female occupants
of the villa; I wipe the soap off and sit down with them in the living room.
All three are young; two of them are officers, 'kapitano', the third is a
private, Romanian. The two officers are in warm leather coats, good boots,
cossack hats, packing lots of weapons. One of them is from the Caucasus, the
other is Ukrainian; the Caucasian is talkative, the other somewhat taciturn.
They are making a search of every house in the village, hence ours too, for
Germans, so they take a look round all the rooms, upstairs as well; of course,
they find no one. Then we sit down in the living room and make an effort to
converse, with Z. interpreting.
On hearing that I am a writer, they greet that with interest. They ask what
I know about Russian literature. I mention Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky,
Chekov, and they insist earnestly that they are well acquainted with their
literature and pleased that I too have read the works of those writers. I
tell them that my French publisher has also put out works by Ilya Ehrenburg.
They ask if the villa in which I reside belongs to me, and do I own a car?
When they hear that I am just a tenant here and my car was requisitioned by
the army, they launch into a fervent lecture. If I were in Russia, they say,
I would already have both my own car and a villa, because writers are respected
there. They are impassioned, little short of allocating to me one of the mansions
in the village; I talk them out of it with a laugh. They enquire what political
opinions I hold. I reply that I come from the middle class, no Communist,
but no fascist either: I am a citizen and a democrat. They understand that
and nod.
The Ukrainian captain is a politruk, a political comissar, the Caucasian in
the regular army. The Ukrainian says that they are fighting the Germans and
will move on into Austria and towards Berlin; Hungary is just a transit area
for them; they are obliged to fight the Hungarians, because they resisted, but
once they depart "let the Hungarians live as they wish."
Having shaken hands with each of us, they take their leave, though they still
wave to us from the gate. What were they like? Very young, enthusiastic. Foreigners:
another world, another race, few memories that are shared with us. One thing
for sure is that today I, one of the remnants of a passing culture, encountered
for the first time the new people who are aligned to a new culture. The encounter
left odd memories - not bad ones, more a sort of confidence that the future is
not without hope. Maybe, in a calmer atmosphere, we shall be able mutually to
supply one another with something.
*
What was the 'right-wing thinking' that caused Hungary's downfall? Some belief,
a cardinal holy principle, a dogmatic conviction? No, it was something else.
*
Once this war is over, an endless series of tasks awaits us:
the dead have to be buried, the ruins have to be cleared, the hungry have
to be given bread, and some sort of state has to be constructed from the shards
that we have been left by that mob of murdering thieves, the greater part
of whom have already taken to their heels. But that is just the easy bit.
In order for Hungary to become a nation again, a respectable family in the
world community, it will be necessary to extirpate from the soul of a certain
breed of person the strange entity that goes under the label of 'right-wing
thinking', the consciousness that he, being a 'Christian Hungarian', is entitled
to a privileged status in this world; that simply for being a 'Christian Hungarian
gentleman' he has a right, regardless of talent or knowledge, to live well,
put on airs, and look down on everyone who is not a 'Christian Hungarian'
or of the 'gentry', to hold out his hand and ask the state, society at large,
to pour baksheesh into that hand: a job, decorations, residual Jewish-owned
lands, free summer breaks in the Grand Hotel at Galyatető in the Mátra Hills,
favouritism in all aspects of life. Because that was the true meaning of 'right-wing
thinking'. Moreover, this is a breed that never learns. Anyone over thirty
who was brought up in that spirit, in that climate, is beyond hope; maybe
he will offer, through gritted teeth, to make a deal, and, being selfish and
cowardly, will most likely kowtow to the new order; but in the depths of his
heart he will eternally yearn for the return of that 'right-wing, Christian,
nationalist' world in which one could so smoothly steal Jewish property, have
rivals bumped off, and enjoy a cushy position in some big company, without
any qualifications or know-how, or be a 'highly placed civil servant' or an
inviolable army officer, shielded by a bullet-proof vest - all without having
to give anything in return apart from the fact of one's esteemed existence.
That breed will never change; however, Hungary will not be a nation so long
as they have any say or influence. Only education that penetrates the souls
of children may help.
1948
In Hungary, two types of person assumed
complete and final form over time: the aristocrat and the peasant. Anyone
in between left the stage before being able to don the garb of his historical
role.
*
What is the point of that 'English tone' that better typifies the modern
English novel than plot and content? That sense of cliquishness through which
a writer, his protagonists and the reader simultaneously catch allusions,
communicating in the sign language of social complicity. It is the complicity
of a standardised level of learning, or in ordinary speech, the sign language
of the cultivated.
*
They are pulling down the block of flats in the cellars of which the Germans
used to store ammunition. The house blew up. Over two hundred skeletons have
been waiting to be brought to light for the last four years. The skeletons,
then jewellery and other valuables, are now being turned up; during the days
of the siege, the victims took their more prized possessions with them down
into the air-raid shelter. All day long, relatives prowl around the huge concrete
vault like Egyptian grave-robbers around Pharaonic tombs.
*
[Naples, November] The tropical rainfall drenched Posilippo, and the hillside
slid down onto the houses, which are built of limestone bricks. Police and
fire brigade have closed off that section of the road; the dead and wounded
are being dragged out from under the rubble by the locals. When destiny smites
this poor people, all at once they are left curiously alone. Alone against
the elements, which here strike man with a more primal and unpitying force
than elsewhere. The inhabitants of the district flock together. The dead bodies
lie on the sodden roadway. Lorries arrive to gradually carry off the corpses.
It all takes place in a strange silence; this breed of people, so chirpily
loquacious at other times, is now mute. People moan softly when their loved
ones are pulled out of the ruins. This is strangely 'familiar', this moment
when I have the sense of having arrived somewhere.
*
The post has delivered to a friend's address a complete set of those of my
books which were published back in Hungary and have now been pulped in its
Communist paper mills. According to the postal declaration, during my life
to date
I have written 13.5 kilos' worth - that's what my works weigh in the scales.
That weight sets me thinking. I shall be more cautious in future. I want to
write no more than another 150 - 200 grams altogether: anything more is superfluous.
Translated by Tim Wilkinson
Sándor Márai (1900 - 1989)
started his journal in Budapest in 1943, when already a highly successful writer, and
continued to keep it to the end of his life. The last entry was written in San Diego on
15 January 1989, the day before he shot himself. He wrote his journal for publication and considered it one of his best achievements. The volume published in English as Memoir of Hungary (Corvina, Budapest 2000) was a selection from the 1944 - 48 period. The present selection comes from the 1943 - 44 and 1945 - 1957 volumes. Excerpts from his American
journals appear in our next issue.
