Márai the Journalist (1921-1936)

...

The Fountain Pen

Afetish is always stronger than the critical faculty. It exists because of our need for love. Love gives us life, and the object of my love is that pen. We are old friends. Occasionally I've left it on other people's desks, but it never strays. I always find it again, it comes back to me. It is a slim, gentle pen, and the nib is well worn-in. It leaves a loose, dishevelled impression on the paper, expressing my personality. We've done a lot of work together. Sometimes it has dragged itself slowly and painfully across the page, as if lame; at others it has done the writing for me. I've grown used to the swoops and flourishes it produces without my having to direct it: I might be writing with my eyes closed and brain switched off. At times, when the work was a mere compromise and unworthy of it, we positively hated each other, worker and instrument.
This particular pen was made of gold. I thought a great deal before deciding to purchase it. Why this gold pen? Why such a pen at all? Then, having bought it, I didn't touch it for ages, I carried on using an old pencil and just stared at it apprehensively. It was too formal, self-important, pompous. It had to be filled with a particular sort of ink, requiring a special tool for the operation. Any ink other than the one officially prescribed made it ill, brought it to a complete halt. It had a delicate stomach, and would accept only what agreed with it.
We became friends over a letter. The letter was to a stranger, and had to be written in ink, so I took out the fountain pen. It bowed, all obedience. After a few strokes it was like a well-bred filly: I didn't have to lead it; it wasn't stiff, scratchy or stubborn, like so many steel-nibbed pens. It surrendered itself, made no fuss about the shape of the letters, did everything just as I wanted.
I've got used to it, damn it, I thought: a gold pen-literature. Nothing good will come of this.
But with time came mutual trust. We came to know so much about each other. We had some fine adventures together, carousing through the night in rumpled, disorderly collaboration. It saw my every weakness, noticed whenever I shied away or strayed from my work, and gave me devoted help with certain mule-like verses which required weeks of labour. There were also months when I never set eyes on it. It lay in a drawer, I on a bed. But it knew all about me. It wrote asking for money, and in pursuit of women: no particular reason. That's how significant a pen can be in a man's life.
Come this spring, I hadn't seen it for ages.
Who needs a pen in spring?
We had no contact whatsoever.
Then this happened. Standing in the street outside a stationery shop I had a sudden attack of conscience. I went in, and bought it some of the special ink. Back home, I searched for the pen in the drawer. It was covered in dust and shame. I cleaned it thoroughly, fed it, polished its delicate gold tongue with loving slowness. Do start working, please!
It squeaked on the paper, got stuck, tore at the surface, then dragged itself wearily on. I polished it, to no avail. The stem, the soul, or whatever delicate little tube dwelt inside it, would not communicate with the paper.
I became anxious. I gathered it up, went down to the river and had a long walk. It was summer; all was at peace. Gazing across the golden fields, I took stock. I felt thoroughly ashamed. To be living in the world, like this.
Tomorrow I'll start work, I thought.
And the pen?
Back to the city. I knew a street with a shop that repaired pens. I went there. A man let me in. Very cautiously I showed it to him.
"There's something wrong with this pen," I said.
He picked up his glasses, and held it up for inspection.
"In what way?" he asked.
I considered what to say to him.
"I can't write with it. You must examine it!" I urged.
He studied it carefully, then bent over a piece of paper with it. The pen faltered wearily between the letters. It wouldn't write.
"The nib is worn out," he said decisively. I must have looked at him very strangely, because he shrugged his shoulders:
"These pens get exhausted. I can't make it strong again. Sometimes they need a rest."
"And I can come back to you later?" I asked with a deep sigh.
The expert listened in silence.
"That depends very much on the pen," he replied cautiously. "They're easily damaged if you don't treat them properly."
I thanked him.
It would be nice to go travelling somewhere.

17 July 1921, Kassai Napló (Kassa/Kosîce)
9 August 1921, Jövő (Vienna)
21 September 1921, Leipziger Tagblatt (Leipzig)

...

The Messiah in the Sportpalast

On the night of the Horst Wessel commemoration Hitler speaks in the Berlin Sportpalast. People who have neither seen nor heard him will perhaps never fully understand the significance of the profoundly ominous mind-set that has developed in Germany since the war. The reality-Hitler's version of reality and its full implications-goes far beyond anything you might read in the newspapers, or imagine. Here is that reality, drawn from the life.

1

Hitler rarely speaks in Berlin: it is Goebbels' hunting ground. (Goebbels, moreover, like almost all of the leadership, suffers from serious paranoia, refusing, for example, to speak outside the capital unless the local party officials guarantee him an audience of appropriate size, with fee to match.) The Sportpalast holds twentyfive thousand people. A ticket costs one mark. The event is sold out days in advance.
At three in the afternoon of the meeting advertised for eight, the migration towards the horrific concrete sheep-pen is under way. For hours on end the Bülow Strasse underground pours uniformed Nazis and members of their families onto the street. The doors are supposed to open at six, but by then the faithful have somehow managed to occupy the floor and all the gallery seating. Arrangements are in place for surviving the long wait ahead, mothers of families have prepared sandwiches and thermos flasks of coffee, and the crowd sits, hour after hour, patiently munching away. At six, groups of Nazis parade into the hall. Today's will be a great, truly representative meeting: every single Nazi regiment has sent its chosen delegates, and now four thousand, I am told, of the 226 SA, the Sturm Abteilung, come marching in, in full uniform. This uniform-leggings, riding breeches, brown shirt, with unit number and emblem on the lapel and peaked brown cap with chinstrap-is by every impartial canon of taste the ugliest and most repulsive garb that any fanatical militarist ever dreamed up, or more precisely, stole from the dress code of foreign armies. But in Berlin, where even newspaper sellers like to kit themselves out as war veterans, it is admired.
A detachment of storm troopers is now stationed around the huge podium. On it stands a long table, covered by a white cloth on which a forest of laurel wreaths and huge, many-branched candelabras await the party leadership. Other troops are positioned around the walls to cordon off the hall, and one especially prestigious unit forms a double line at the entrance, creating a long, narrow path to the podium. I think of William Tell -"Durch diese hohle Gasse muss. Er kommt"¹-and know how he felt.
Outside the Sportpalast the arrangements have a warlike character. An area half a kilometre long has been sealed off by the Schupo, the green-uniformed Schutzpolizei (Security Police), using armoured cars, and two-man patrols with rifles and other weapons, are busy checking the identity of arrivals. Only those with tickets, and the press, are allowed in. To foreign journalists the Nazis are stiffly polite. I show my credentials, more storm trooper types clear a path for me through the crowd, and I am seated in front of the podium, where, for good measure, one of the faithful is placed beside me to explain anything I might not understand. (This is the "ordinary Nazi", in civilian life a barman in a beer-cellar on the Olivaerplatz, whom I sought out the next day and interviewed. More of this at another time.) The Nazis in the hall are on the whole very polite. It's always like this, with these sort of people. If they're not actually murdering you, they're almost pleasant. You just have to choose the right moment to meet them.
At eight, news arrives-signalled by notes on a horn-that the cars carrying Hitler and the rest of the leadership have left the Kaiserhof Hotel. They are still a long way off, but the Nazi units stiffen to attention, the audience-all twenty-five thousand people-leap to their feet, and the munching and chattering are silenced. The Führer may still be far away, but every nerve is paralysed by the approach. The eyes of twenty-five thousand people gaze, as if hypnotised, towards the door through which the worshipped figure will soon appear. Then short, sharp, brutal words of command are barked out from every side-a barracks sound, which all ears drink in with deep pleasure. Enter the standard bearers, precisely 226 of them, with huge red, white and black flags emblazoned with swastikas, to stand in a semi-circle behind the podium. A section of the party leadership, almost eighty representatives of the Reichstag, among them Prince August Wilhelm (also in Nazi uniform), take their places beside the white table. Spotlights now pick out the entrance. And thus we wait, for half an hour. The tension is almost unbearable. Twenty-five thousand people, audience and SA troopers alike, stand stiffly to attention, faces turned to the entrance, while Nazis with red-cross armbands work non-stop, ferrying those who have fainted out on stretchers. The crowd appears not to notice; it seems this is a perfectly regular occurrence.
At half past nine the loudspeaker bawls out, "Der Führer kommt." Twenty-five thousand people raise their arms and roar back: "Heil". When I hear this roar, I instantly understand the Nazis' success. Only dervishes howl in this way, and those in mortal despair.

2

The howling has no end. It goes on and on, an inarticulate roar. Then, ahead of the Leader himself, his personal bodyguard, the SS, bare-headed in dark-blue uniform, make their way between the lines of troopers, followed by the most illustrious members of the party, among them Goebbels in mufti, and finally Hitler himself, in uniform, bare-headed, followed by more of his guard. Up on the podium, the inner circle. Flashes of magnesium light, photographers leaping up and down, and little girls in white presenting bunches of roses to the Messiah, who strokes their cheeks and, in almost the same motion, directs the flowers on to one or another of his aides. It is a vision, a faded reproduction from 1914. For the most trusted disciples, the reward of a few, perhaps three or four, shakes of the hand. Prince August Wilhelm, for example, is merely third in line. Imagine the effect on the supposed 'mind' of this mass audience as, with its own eyes, it sees the Leader favouring a royal prince, third in line, with the briefest of handshakes, then almost pointedly ignoring him.
Hitler is forty-six.² A vegetarian, slim, abstemious. Everything about him, the shape of his head, the mouth, the forehead half-covered with a fetching lock of brown hair, the way he moves his hands, is strikingly effeminate (supposedly ascetic). He takes his seat at the centre of the podium, rests his head in his palm, takes no notice of the rabble or the military parade, stares stiffly ahead. He sits likes this for ages, a full quarter of an hour, while the music plays: first the National Socialist march, then-in memory of Horst Wessel-"Ich hatt' einen Kameraden", with twenty-five thousand people bellowing out the words. He glances at no one. He just sits there, deadly serious, "lost in reverie". Perhaps he is thinking of his country's fate, perhaps grieving for the memory of the young man who died. When the music falls silent, he shades his eyes with his hand, bows his head, and remains in this posture for several minutes, motionless.
"He is deep in thought," my Nazi minder whispers to me. His face is twisted with excitement.
In the hall there is a deathly silence. The silence of twenty-five thousand people. You cannot hear a single cough. This is not politics, not a party meeting. This is religion, worship. Then, from all around the hall, the loudspeaker roars, a steady crackle like canon fire: "Der Führer spricht!" Hitler rises slowly to his feet, brushes the brown lock from his forehead, and steps up to the microphone.

3

The faces! As he speaks I study the faces of the leaders on the podium, the faces of the eighty representatives of the Reichstag. And what faces they are! Only two show any spark of intelligence: Goebbels-small, dark, cunning, energetic, with alert, knowing eyes-and Goering, President of the Reichstag, one of the old breed of Prussian military types. And then, watery, soulless eyes; blood-red, beerbloated faces; close-shaven heads: third-class physical material. What can there possibly be in a head that gazes out at the world from eyes such as these? What confusion, what twisted obsessions? It's all a sort of fake-militarism, a counterfeit; and not just the uniform. The bearing, the tone of voice, the whole gallumping flashy style, is just a sham. This is the gutter, militarised, stuffed into uniform. This is the mob, saluting to orders, playing at soldiers for a bowl of hot soup. This is the rabble, standardised: organised stupidity, the herd instinct mobilised, brutishness hired and feed, the boor trained to obedience and roused by the issuing of a rifle. This is the typical Nazi face, one which only a thoroughly sick society could have dreamed up for itself.
A significant part of the audience consists of the elderly; the rest are mostly very young. Middle-aged men are few and far between, and I haven't seen a single attractive woman: such women clearly seek other kinds of amusement at this hour. However I have seen others of their sex, listening tearfully to Hitler in unspeakable excitement and dabbing their eyes with trembling hands. I am seized by the worrying sensation of having been locked in this hall with twenty-five thousand lunatics. It is not a pleasant feeling.

4

They already know the text. Tonight it's exactly the same: "I started with three hundred; today twelve million stand behind me. I am the chosen leader of fifty per cent of the German electorate-(not true)-tomorrow sixty per cent, the day after that eighty per cent; and one day I shall have a hundred per cent. (All this for the thirteenth year running, monotonously, always the same.) "In the Third Reich I will mobilise capital, I will give everyone work, I will wipe out the ancient enemy -(the Jews and the French)-I will purify the race: I am the leader." (verbatim). I cannot believe there are many sitting in the hall who would be surprised if he ended with, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life." Clearly this is no longer a political faith. It is simply a faith. The Messiah is under no obligation to account for himself, only to make revelations. He appears, walking on water, and speaks.
Goebbels listens, with head raised. His is perhaps the only face in the building that betrays any sign of actually thinking. If this man ever says anything serious, what emerges will prove very uncomfortable.

5

What the Leader declares is familiar, commonplace. As he proclaims it, in this hall, it is probably convincing. Faith is everything. And besides, loudspeakers are very persuasive, difficult to shout down. The speech is one that you drink like boiling water. It has no taste or smell, but it is boiling, and it scalds.
In the courtyard outside, a sombre double line stands guard over the car park reserved for the top brass and the Leader. I don't wait for the meeting to end; I leave as soon as Hitler has finished speaking. The bodies of huge luxury limousines loom all around me. I've never seen so many mammoth cars. When it's a matter of maintaining status and dignity, the money flows freely enough from the coffers-and there's nothing left for actual running costs.
In the dead, frozen streets police order the rare passers-by to move on. A few steps further, and I am back on the familiar, lively night face of a Berlin thoroughfare.
The German population is large and of many different persuasions. Only one fifth listen-whether from conviction, calculation or in the throes of despair-to the Messiah who stands at this moment before his believers in the thick magnesium light blazing down on the Sportpalast podium.
This fifth will never reach sixty million, as the Messiah knows perfectly well by now. But this same fifth of the sixty million does immeasurable damage, creates real mischief, and is capable of causing unrest for many years to come: for Germany, for Europe, and for the world.
So long as this one fifth sticks together and holds fast, there can be no question of peace. I tell you, you should see those faces!.

29 January 1933, Újság (Budapest)³

The Barber of Basle

At one in the afternoon the barber ties the white sheet round my neck and starts lathering me up. The windows of his shop, on the first floor of a house with a high-peaked roof, look out onto the main square and the cathedral. He is an elderly, dignified man; he speaks in a deep, pleasant, voice, like an actor playing the paterfamilias. With his fingers around my throat, he rattles off the following:
"Are you French? Or Italian? Ah, Hungarian. We're very fond of Hungarians in Basle. I shaved my first Hungarians in this shop during the war, travellers they were, the few who could get to Switzerland in those days on diplomatic missions or for their TB. The trains were really slow, and their beards kept growing on the way: I had plenty of work. True, Germans came here too, and later on the French as well. For a while everyone came here for a shave. That's when I added another floor to the business. I was fooled by history. We shouldn't forget, the hotels were full of spies-there was a time when I could have got my living from them alone. During the war, I shaved spies all morning-some of them had season tickets; the locals came in the afternoon. There are still some around now, but not very many. If you go into the Stadtcafé after lunch you can see them sitting there, at the corner tables, playing chess and reading the papers. Do you know much about spies? Never got the hang of them, myself. They always get caught in the end, with the little things they buy from the tobacconist-a photo of the railway station, a postcard of the bridges-the sort of thing they seem to need. Do you like Basle? Right now, I don't. I've lived here for forty-six years, but right now, I don't like it. Borders to the left, borders to the right, and no money in between. Do you think there's peace and quiet here? Well, yes, perhaps, if you're just passing through. But if you'd been living here during this war; and this "peace"-things happening to the left, and things happening to the right, and nothing happening in between, that's when you start to doubt this peace. Here, there's everything you need to live: theatre, a covered swimming pool, museum, socialists, Nazis, patricians, French wine, wonderful music, a great library, religious tolerance, good bakers and, I'm told, even the occasional good whore. Only, there's no money. Did you ever hear the like? Money to the left, and money to the right, and in this little nook, not a cent. True, the banks are full of money, but it's all locked in steel safes for foreigners, and the foreigners don't come here, or not often, to take their money out or put it in; and if they do come, it's just to have a look. You can't make a living from that. And you can't make a living from emigrés. In the old days, emigrés were the one lot you could rely on. The state, or the Party, sent them money on the first of every month, like a pension. They were the best sort of people. Nowadays its just beggars, paupers. Two of them who come here I shave on credit. You never can tell. A colleague of mine, in Zurich, shaved Lenin for years. Here, you get the sort of Germans who've fled from the Nazis, Nazis fleeing from other Nazis, German émigrés from Paris fleeing from other German émigrés. Very hard to make them all out. But none of them has any money, that's the common denominator. Just lean your head back, please.
"I have millionaires coming to me,"-he adds with feeling, and finally, with a soft, whispering sound, pulls the blade across my throat-"millionaires, Swiss, natives of this place, the real old Basle patricians.There was so much money here, sir! Ten million, twenty million: good Swiss francs! You should see those lovely houses, the other side of the viaduct. That's where they live. And not a bent penny between 'em. I could show you my books: a real millionaire who owes me money. It breaks those people's hearts; they come here so humbly, in the afternoon, when they know I'm not busy, they sit there quietly, and I shave them on tick. What else can I do? I can't bear to see them running around unshaven; all those fine old people. These Basle millionaires, they sent the best part of their money to Germany, during the inflation, and then later on, when Germany was getting on its feet, they exchanged their Swiss francs for gold marks, they bought factories in Frankfurt and rows of houses in Nuremberg. They made ten per cent profit. I know one who bought a brush factory in Breslau, it's still his today, and doing very nicely. But he can't get the money out. What should he do? Where can he go? To Breslau? To be with the brushes? He was born here in Basle, his father was a millionaire before him. There are so many like him. There was a time when everybody was sending his money off to Germany. Me too. Would you mind leaning your head a little to the right?
"But that's not the worst of it. You know, everything comes through this way. As soon as things get bad at home, or they get hurt, they all come running here. They nip across the border, drop in on me for a shave; they get here at night, they've no money, their eyes are bloodshot, they're in a right state. Do you think there is peace here, real peace? You're wrong. Germany is being transformed, France is in crisis, and here we are, living in a house over a passageway between the two. We get to hear about everything, everything gets to us, the total chaos going on all round us. Everyone unpacks his bags here, and we just look on and listen. That sort of thing gets you down. We're quiet, peaceful folk, we'd like to live in peace and die in our beds. But everything comes through this way. You can't get any peace. Its like having some deafening row, banging and hammering to left and right, people knocking houses down and building others; meanwhile we're living quietly here in this hunting lodge up in the mountains, like William Tell, and we still don't get any peace.
"What do you think? There'll be a war? Starting where? Paris? And people there, they don't think there'll be one? All the better. But if there is, you'll see, mark my words, we'll choose to stay neutral again. What do you think, is it worth an invader's marching up here into the mountains? We've got an army; true, it's small, but it's first-rate, and the mountains stop everyone. We wouldn't want to go the way of Belgium. We keep on good terms with everyone. You see, that Motta, he said yesterday, in Geneva, that we're friends with Italy. All right, so we're also friends with England, we like the Germans, the French are our friends, what else can we do? We're Swiss! What do you think? They'll leave us alone? As I see it, the question is: will they let us be, so we can still be their friends? Everyone? I tell you, we've already decided. We like the quiet life. They should just give us our money back and keep coming for the chocolate-the hotels are better than ever before, the service is first-rate, and the prices are fair. You don't think that's a good idea? What's that you say? That one day everyone will have to make up his mind, every German and everyone else, every single person will have to decide where his loyalties lie in Europe? It's impossible, in my view. That's not the way we do things. Our loyalty is to Switzerland. Eau-de-cologne?
"There you are, then; thank you, it was my pleasure. Delighted to make.," he says, and bows. "One franc, that's with the tidy-up. Do come again. Oh, you're moving on tonight.Ah well, perhaps another time, if you're ever this way. Here in Switzerland you never know what'll turn up next."

16 October, 1935, Újság (Budapest)

 

¹ "Durch diese hohle Gasse muss er kommen ("Through this ravine he needs must come." The words of William Tell before killing the tyrant Gessner in Friedrich Schiller's William Tell, Act III, Scene 4, translated by Theodore Martin, The Heritage Press, 1952). Márai changes the quotation to refer to the Führer with the sentence: Er kommt-He is coming. [Ed.'s note.]

² Márai is mistaken. Hitler was then 43. [Ed.'s note.]

³ The day after this piece appeared, Hitler was appointed Chancellor. [Ed.'s note.]