The Inner Town was preparing to celebrate the centenary of the chemist’s shop at the sign of the Holy Trinity. The invitations were extended to distinguished members of neighbouring parishes.
A crowd gathered in front of the house of Müller, the chemist in Servites’ Square, to get a glimpse of the arriving carriages. Through the house a faint smell of drugs was noticeable. The stairs were covered with a carpet. This put the guests into a festive mood. Under the influence of the carpet Gál the wine merchant and his wife, who lived on very bad terms with each other, went arm in arm up the stairs.
Just then Ulwing’s carriage stopped at the entrance. At the door the chemist received his guests with many bows.
In the drawing-room new-fashioned paraffin lamps stood on the mantelpiece in front of the mirror. The room was packed with many crinolines. The guests’ faces were flushed. They spoke to each other in low voices, solemnly.
The wife of the mayor diffused a strong perfume of lavender round the sofa. Sztaviarsky’s worn-out wig appeared green in the light of the lamps.
The Hosszu family arrived. Sophie had become thin and wore a dress three years old. Christopher recognised the dress. He did not know why but he became sad. With an effort he turned his head away. He did not look at Sophie, he only felt her presence, and even that filled him with delight.
The three Miss Münsters walked in through the door in order of size. They were fat and pale. Broad blue ribbons floated from the bonnet of Mrs. George Martin Münster. The last to come were the family of Walter the wholesale linen-merchant. Silence fell over the company. The beautiful Mrs. Walter was usually not invited to anything but informal parties because the linen-merchant had raised her from the stage to his respectable middle-class home. She had once been a singer in the German theatre and this was not yet forgotten.
During dinner young Adam Walter was Anne’s neighbour. The crowded dining-room was heavy with the smell of food. In the centre of the table stood the traditional croque-en-bouche cake.
Anne’s eyes chanced to fall on Christopher. He seemed strikingly pale among the heavy, flushed faces. At the end of the table sat Sophie, mute, broken. Twice she raised her glass to her lips. She did not notice it was empty. Ignace Holt, the first assistant of the “Holy Trinity” Chemist’s shop, leaned towards her obtrusively.
Adam Walter had watched Anne interestedly for some time without saying a word. He thought her out of place in these surroundings. He found in her narrow face a disquieting expression of youthful calm. It seemed to the young man as if the warm colour of her hair, a shaded gold, were spreading under her skin, invading her innocent neck. Her chin impressed him as determined, a refined form of the chin of the Ulwings. Her nose was straight and short. Her smile raised the corners of her mouth charmingly.
He looked at her forehead. Her fine eyebrows seemed rather hard.
“What are you thinking of?” he asked involuntarily.
The girl looked at him surprised. The eyes of Adam Walter were just as brown and restless as those of his beautiful mother. His brow was low and broad with bulging temples. Anne had known him since her childhood, but till now she had never spoken to him. All she knew about him was that he had once gone to the same school as Christopher, that he was a poor scholar and an excellent fiddler.
“Do you think that people confide their thoughts to strangers?”
“The brave do,” said young Walter. “I want to say everything that passes through my mind. For example, that all these people here are unbearably tedious. Haven’t you noticed it? Not one among them dares say a thing that has not been said before. Not one does a thing his father and mother haven’t done before him.”
Adam Walter felt that he had caught the girl’s attention and became bolder.
“They have no sense whatever. If one of them is taller than the others he must go about the world stooping so that no one shall notice it; otherwise, for the sake of order, they might cut his head or his legs off. They have to tread the well-worn path of common-places. Greatness depends on official recognition. Please, don’t laugh. It is so. Just now old Münster told Sztaviarsky that ‘The Vampire’ and ‘Robert le Diable’ are the finest music in the world. Marschner and Meyerbeer. Rossini the greatest of all. Poor Schubert too. That is a comfortable doctrine. These composers can be admired without risk. They bear the hallmark on them. It is a pity it should all be music for the country fair. Schubert is like a spring shower. Many small drops, warm soft drops. Is it not so? Why do you shake your head? You love Schubert. I am sorry, very sorry. I only said all this to prove....”
He stopped. He stared into space.
“He exaggerates,” thought Anne, and repressed what came to her lips. She thought of her grandfather who had built so much. And this young man?... His words demolished whatever they touched.
“You exaggerate,” she said aloud. “I was taught that old age and those who were before us ought to be respected.”
“That is not true,” said Adam Walter with warmth. “I hate every former age because it stands in the way of my own. The past is a millstone round our necks. The future is a wing. I want to fly!”
Anne followed his words bewildered. What she heard attracted and repelled her. From her childhood, whenever anything came to her mind which conflicted with her respect for men and things, she pushed it aside as if she had seen something wicked. And this stranger bluntly put into words what she too had felt, vaguely and timidly.
Adam Walter spoke of his plans. He would go abroad, to Weimar. He would write his sonatas, his grand opera.
“What has been done up to now is nothing. What has been made is bad, because it was made. One must create. Like God. Just like Him. Even the clay has to be created anew.... Is it not so? The artist must become God, otherwise let us become linen-merchants.”
His restless eyes shone quaintly. Anne remembered suddenly two distant feverish eyes and a word that recalled the word “Youth.” All at once she felt herself freer. She turned to Adam Walter. But the young man’s thoughts must have wandered to another subject, for he drew his low forehead furiously into wrinkles.
“Do you know that my father is ashamed of my mother’s art? And yet how she sings when we are alone, she and I! When nobody hears her. My father hides that lovely, imperishable voice behind his linens. And this is your middle-class society. It only values what can be measured by the yard and by the pound. These things hurt sorely.”
He looked up anxiously. “Did you say anything? No? I beg of you to imagine she simply hides her voice. But perhaps you may not know. My mother was a singer.”
Anne was embarrassed. Hitherto she had thought that was something to be ashamed of.
Walter asked her rapidly:
“Of course, you sing too. Sztaviarsky told me. True. I remember. Of all his pupils the most artistic. Are you going to be a singer?”
In the girl’s heart an instinctive protest rose against the suggestion.
“But why not?” Adam Walter’s voice became sad.
Anne did not realise that she answered the question by looking at Mrs. Walter, living forever isolated among the others.
“I understand,” said the young man ironically, “your indulgence extends only to the life of others, but is limited where your own is concerned.”
Anne knew that he spoke the truth. Her thoughts alone had been freed to-day. Her movements were dominated and kept captive by something. Perhaps the invisible power of ancient things and ancient men.
The room became suddenly silent. Somebody rose at the big table. It was Gárdos, the wrinkled head-physician or “proto-medicus,” as he was called. He knew of no other remedies for his patients but arnica, emetics and nux vomica. Ferdinand Müller half-closed his eyes as if expecting to be patted on the head.
Anne paid no attention to the proto-medicus’ account of the hundred years’ history of the Müller family and the “Holy Trinity” shop. She was toying with her own thoughts like a child who has obtained possession of the glass case containing the trinkets.
Others spoke after Mr. Gárdos. The top of the croque-en-bouche cake inclined to one side. The dinner was over.
In the next room two Chemist’s assistants had erected a veiled tablet. Sztaviarsky played some kind of march on the piano. The guests stood in a semi-circle. Ferdinand Müller unveiled the mysterious tablet. A murmur of rapture rose:
“What a charming, kind thought....”
Tears came to the eyes of the chemist. The admirers of his family and the employees of his shop had surprised him with a new sign-board. There shone the two gilt dates. Between them a century. Underneath, a big white head of Æsculapius, bearing the features of Ferdinand Müller, the chemist. Nothing was wanting; there were his side whiskers and the wart on his left cheek. Only his spectacles had been omitted.
Anne and Adam Warner looked at each other.
They felt an irresistible desire to laugh and in this sympathy they became friends over the heads of the crowd.
Sztaviarsky played his march at an ever-increasing speed. The crinolines began to whirl round. Wheels of airy, frilly tarlatan, pink, yellow, blue. Dancing had begun round the piano.
For a brief moment Sophie found herself pressed against the wall near John Hubert. She raised her big, soft eyes to his, as if to ask him a question. But she found something cold, final, in John Hubert’s looks. The girl turned away. Her eyes fell on Christopher.
It seemed to the handsome tall boy that Sophie stroked his face across the room. He looked at her sharply. The girl seemed again heartlessly indifferent. Tired, Christopher went into the next room. There some old gentlemen and bonnetted ladies were playing l’hombre round a green table. He went through Mr. Müller’s study. Then came a quiet little room. Nobody was in it. The light of a white-shaded paraffin lamp was reflected in a mirror. He threw himself into an easy chair and buried his face in his hands. The sound of the piano knocked sharply against his brain. At first this caused him pain. Then he remembered that the sounds of this valse reached Sophie too. They touched her hair, her lips, her bosom. They had invaded her. It was from her that they came still, a swaying, treble rhythm which mysteriously embraced the rhythm of love. They came from her and brought something of her own self with them.
Christopher leaned his head forward as if attempting to touch the sound with his lips to kiss it. Yes, it was swaying music like that he felt in his endless dreams. Similar rhythmical pangs wrought in him when he imagined that Sophie would come to him at night, offering her love. He hears her steps. Her breath is warm. Her bosom heaves and whenever it rises, it touches his face.
“Little Chris....” Just like olden times. Just the same. “Now I am dreaming. I must not breathe, or all will be over.” And in his imagination she caressed him again.
“Little Chris....”
He started. This was reality. Sophie’s voice. Her breath.... And her bosom heaved and touched his face.
“Do you still love me?” the girl asked.
In Christopher’s tired eyes despair was reflected. So she knows? So she has always known what it has cost him such torture to hide? Then why has she not been kinder to him? Why did she leave him to suffer so much?
“Do you love me?”
“I always loved you,” said the boy and his voice came dangerously near to a sob.
Sophie stroked him like a child requiring consolation.
“Poor little Chris.... And we are all just as poor.”
Suddenly her hand stopped on the boy’s brow, where his hair, like his father’s, curved boldly over his forehead. He leant his head back and with a maidenly abandon gave himself up to Sophie’s will. The girl leaned over him. She looked at him for a long while, sadly as if to take leave, then ... kissed his lips.
A kiss, long restrained, meant for another. And yet, the annihilation of a childhood.
The boy moaned as if he had been wounded and with the first virile movements of his arms drew the girl to him. Sophie resisted and pushed him away, but from the threshold looked back to him with her big, shaded eyes. Then she was gone. A feeling rose in Christopher as if she had carried the world with her.
He went after her. When he passed the card players, he straightened himself out so as to look all the taller, all the more manly. He could not help smiling: they knew nothing. Nobody knew anything. He and Sophie were alone in the secret and that felt just like holding her in his arms among people who could not see.
They were still dancing in the drawing-room. Sophie danced with Ignace Hold. Christopher could not quite understand how she could do such a thing now. And she looked as if she had forgotten everything. Nothing showed on her features, nothing. Women are precious comedians.
He looked at Hold. He turned with the girl in the usual little circle. His short round nose shone. He breathed through his mouth. The points of his boots turned up. On his waistcoat a big cornelian horse’s head dangled, just on the spot where one of the buttons strained. “He is sure to unbutton that one under the table.” Christopher felt inclined to laugh. Then suddenly he thought of something else; he heard someone talk behind his back. He began to listen.
“I should not mind giving him my daughter,” said Ferdinand Müller; “he is wealthy and a God-fearing man. Those Hosszu people are lucky. They are completely ruined. Miss Sophie isn’t quite young neither.”
Christopher smiled proudly, contemptuously. They knew nothing. He sought for Sophie’s glance to find in it a sign of their union, their mutual possession, from which all others were excluded.
But the girl was no longer among the dancers. Her absence made everything meaningless. He had to think of the quiet little room. “Our room” ... and he went toward it. He stopped dead in the door. Sophie was standing there now too, just as before, on the same spot. In front of her Mr. Hold. Christopher saw it clearly. He saw even the tight button, the carved horse’s head on his waistcoat. Yet it appeared to him an awful hallucination. The horse’s head dangled and touched Sophie. Ignace Hold raised himself to the tip of his toes. He kissed the girl’s lips.
Something went amiss in Christopher’s brain. He wanted to shriek, but his voice remained a ridiculous groan. The floor sank a little and then jumped up with a jerk. He felt sick as if he had been hit in the stomach. With stiff jerky steps he re-crossed the rooms; he looked like a drowning man seeking for something to cling to. In the drawing-room he smiled with his lips drawn to one side.
“I have a headache,” he said in the ante-room to Müller the chemist.
When he reached the street, he began to run. He was in a hurry to get to the Danube. He rushed unconsciously through a narrow lane. Under the corner lamp he collided with something; he ran into a soft warm body. His hat fell off.
“Is it you?” screeched a female voice and began to scold.
“For whom do you take me?” Christopher was painfully aware of the proximity of the soft body. He stepped back and picked his hat up.
The girl began to laugh shamelessly. For a time she scrutinized Christopher curiously. The boy’s suit was made of costly cloth. His collar was clean. His necktie white. She tried to appear genteel.
“I was expecting my brother,” she whimpered. “I live here near the fishmarket. Perhaps the young gentleman would see me home?”
“And your brother?”
The girl shrugged her shoulders. They were already walking side by side through the narrow lane. They emerged under the rare lamps as if ascending inclines of light. Then again they sank into darkness. Above the roofs the narrow sky appeared like an inverted abyss with stars at its bottom. Here and there a little light blinked indifferently, strangely, from a window. Just like human beings gazing from stout, safe walls on those excluded.
Christopher felt hopelessly alone. Even the sound of the girl’s steps seemed foreign. The darkness was empty. All was falsehood behind the doors and windows: purity, grace, kisses.... Tears ran down his cheeks.
The girl stopped in front of the door of a low house. Her expressionless eyes looked into Christopher’s. She saw that he wept. It was a familiar sight to her. At first they cry and are as docile as dogs. All that alters later on.
She began to balance her hips and pressed against him.
“Come in....” Her voice was heavy and like a bird of prey. She unexpectedly pressed her moist lips on the boy’s mouth.
With disgust Christopher thrust her back. The girl fell against the door and knocked her head. But the boy did not care. He gripped his lips with his hands. There ... just there, where he had felt Sophie’s kiss before! Now there remained nothing of it. It had faded from his lips. Something else had taken its place.... He began to run towards the Danube. In his flight, he rubbed his hands against the walls as if to wipe off the moist warmth clinging to his palms.
He pulled up sharply at the corner lamp. Again it all rushed to his brain. He gave a cry and ran back. He wanted to strike the girl again, strike her hard, to mete out vengeance for his disgust. Incredible insults came to his mind, words which till then he did not know he knew, dirty words like those used by the scum of the streets. Words! They were blows too, blows meant for all womankind.
The girl was still standing in the door. Her body was leaning back. Her arms were raised and she lazily put up her hair dishevelled by the blow.
Christopher stared at her with wide-open, maddening eyes. He looked at her movements; she seemed to him a corpse which had regained movement and had come back to life. How her bosom swelled under her raised arms.... He staggered and whined and stretched out a defending hand.
The girl snatched at the proffered hand. She dragged Christopher in through the door. The boy only felt that something had bereft him of his free will. Something from which it was impossible to escape.
Two rows of dark doors appeared at the sides of the filthy courtyard. Fragmentary, hideous laughter was audible behind one of them. A reddish gleam filtered through a crack.
Christopher’s steps were insecure on the projecting cobbles. He stepped into the open reeking gutter. He shuddered. He was full of awful expectation, strained fear and tears of inexpressible pain.
The girl did not release his hand. She dragged him like her prey. At the bottom of the courtyard a door creaked. The darkness of a stuffy room swallowed them.