I HAVE been drawn to this place
from the start. And here I dwelt, beside a
glass of brandy, back in my self-important
student days when I could always buy
another fine but now and then could not
afford a meal. And I thought I was made of
fireworks. Picasso sat here with his
Spanish woman, his back against the back wall
of the room; we nodded and I tried to write
a poem though it refused to gel. A
homely place, this modest, red Parisian
one-room café, its tiny glass-cage winter
garden set upon the boulevard. Full of
arrogance, young people entered (they
were hissing rockets just like myself) and some
slid up the steep dark stairs, some sat alone,
some joined my table
— Starker, Mehring, Sinkó,
Forgács, Havas, Hevesi, Ney, Remenyik,
Faragó — and thus we chatted or talked
politics or simply sat in silence; but
whatever we did, we watched the quick
revolving door disgorging new arrivals,
reinforcements, the vanguard of the future
from beyond the realm of meagre present — and young women! Girl students from as far as
Burma, Thailand — they'd come to choose new
lovers but they seemed to muse behind their long
eyelashes over the negative eight virtues of
Gautama; and energetic English girls in
green, displaying friendly freckles
wrought in copper and with proportions of a
Roman goddess but marred by clumsy movements
— they often
carried enormous handbags used as
barricades against this world that they
would never fathom with either mind or body; and
the girls from Eastern Europe, lost in
loud debate with their escorts about the
world's affairs — and under catchwords like
materialism they sought the spirit; and
the girls of Paris! slim, graceful and perhaps a
trifle ugly, they had learned all about
life in the womb and they were ready for life
and against life, these girls who had their
taste and knew their fashion, who wholly merged a tenderness
and toughness like well baked bread (and not
like layered cake) — each of them seemed complete
and separate, a planet bound by her own
course and purpose and full of self-awareness,
will and pride. I marvelled at these girls, as
did the others. OUR ELDERS also gathered here
of an evening
— Julien Benda, Hatvani,
Bréton Werfel and once Roger Martin
du Gard — and after they had talked
enough together they called us to their table
for a chat. We learned from them and held
them in esteem, made mock of them behind their
backs —
they threw us their guarded looks while
whispering about us, we turned away while
whispering about them for we had different manners
having joined the earthly table after the
nineteenth century. They knew that we were
wet-nosed idiots, confused and rash and
unreliable; they knew the fragrance of our
perspiration and knew that we kicked up our
heels too high and that we smiled and panted
at the same time and that our smiles would
freeze and break in time — they envied us our smiles as
yet unfrozen, and winced at our trampling
underfoot the polished blue marble slabs between the
colonnades without a backward glance,
they thought we would not notice if the structure
should collapse behind us and its fall might
even please us. They envied us for we would
take possession, excluding them, that we might
shape the future and lightly cast their names
aside at will and even purge our skulls of
memories connected with them as you
suppress a headache without a pill. Together or
alone we sat, and they too watched
the door revolving admitting life's parade in
intermittent and single file. And they
begrudged us in silence. They envied us the ocean's
sandy beaches, our hundred future barefoot
runs along the shores avoiding the knives
of cockle shells until we'd stop to watch the
breakers rear up, white mares caressed by salty
winds and sunshine, to fall upon their knees
before our feet; they envied us our quiet walks
in winter along the fields of freshly
fallen snow or in the depths of early
evenings when the light's uncertain in the
squalid lanes of determination; and they
envied us the very fruits of trees and
fields and sky, the orange of the sun, the
moon-banana, our one-room attic homes with
creaking floors; they envied us the oil-lamps
of love with burning wicks that never
can turn backwards, the flames that burn but
cannot ever scorch, the force that will escape
from all enforcement; they envied us the angel
growing wings upon our shoulder blades, the
one who had abandoned their lives if he
had ever been there; they envied us our solitary
evenings absorbed in books, the honey
scented winds of thirty gold acacia
openings, our perfect, uncorroded blade
of youth. HOW OFTEN did I sit here with
two wives, three mistresses and with my
many friends! A purple mist spreads over St.
Germain: no autumn fog — polluted summer air. Une fine, Armand! Today I am alone. I watch the door, the fresh
parade of youths, the new arrivals. Perhaps I
should be envious. Their furnaces of love are
still ablaze, the foaming chargers of the
ocean breakers are still to rear for them for
many years — for me, the waves and beaches
come to rest. Technology rains merchandise
each season and moulds foam rubber pillows
for their comfort beneath their shapes; perhaps
I should be envious: but I remember the feel of
attic rooms, the flavour of water and
unpolluted wine, our very struggle for
necessities that no superfluity could
substitute; and while I still can saunter
anywhere they have run out of space to
park their cars. I pity them as I have pitied
no-one, not even fellow prisoners
kicked to death, a murdered sister, a small boy
ill with cancer —
they hesitate at the door with
a fleeting smile in the corner of their mouths;
their rebellion will last a year or two; they will
admire with passion the foreign totem poles and
try to hold the collapsing sky with
badges, flags and slogans or they will gallop into
nothingness on the steeds of drugs...
while remaining unable to help themselves, let alone
the wretched world; and they will tire and learn
to live with revulsion; their smiles will stiffen into
permanent bulges of muscle and each morning
they will pause before their garages (like
primeval man with club in hand before his
cave) and wonder which way to turn in search of
petrol to quench their thirst, in search of
room to build new roads between the heaps of ash and
hills of rubbish and where the factory
chimneys' smoking forests are still not dense enough
—
or where to run and how to find a spot of land
still free with tranquil waters by the
edge of lakes not fouled by stinking
carcasses of fish or where to seek a place
within the bowels of their great cities choked
by their own wastes, a place of cleanliness and
sanity while all around the very
earth is dying. UNE
FINE, Armand! I am about to leave.
György Faludy
Translated
from the Hungarian by Thomas Land
If you have any comments
on this translation, Thomas
Land would be pleased to hear them.
