12
Among Eva’s notes, Marosi had found a few pages which hadn’t made any sense to him. Now he re-read them.
“As if you had heard it from a church choir: You were beautiful, Livia, my noble one, my light; you were like a fir tree, sweetly smelling, you were like powdery snow, like a snow-covered mountain top; you were like a holiday. Mirrors changed colors, reflected you in all devotion, and you became intoxicated with the power of your beauty. I became more and more upset every time I looked at you, but you were not able to see the fire in my eyes.
“I jumped up. ‘Excuse me,’ I said and ran out of the room. The lights had died out, and instead of the mirror’s devoted reflection, there was the smell of cheap liquor and cigarette smoke. You’d lost your audience, because the one you were playing for had left. And you realized how meager the setting had been, the men drunk and vulgar.
“You lay down in this wretched hotel room, the door locked behind you. You wanted to lock me out, in order to preserve the illusion of choice.
“I was in the next room, separated from you by only the thin wall. I heard you throw off your shoes, brush your teeth; I heard your bed’s rusty springs receive your body.
“You were waiting for a knock.
“You smoked two cigarettes, but no one knocked. Then you sneaked to the door barefoot, and you turned the key without making a sound. And, again, you lit a cigarette, but you couldn’t smoke it to the end, because it tasted bitter, like bile.
“Bitter, like my face, when I left you there on the vain and cheap stage of your games.
“All of a sudden, you were hit by the thought that I would not come to you. Of course I wouldn’t—you would have only played with me, since that’s how you behaved with everyone.
“You opened the door of your room a bit, looked up and down the hall. A row of doors hid their secrets in the flickering light. Yours in the middle, mine to the left, and the man’s to the right. From his room escaped soft snoring; from mine, silence. Then you knew that I was still awake, stretched out on the bed in my clothes, waiting, with the same bitter expression on my face with which I had left the restaurant.
“You closed the door, and it was as if you had exhaled all the air from the room. You were overcome by bodily discomfort; you felt like you were suffocating. You felt that you couldn’t stand it for very long, at best an hour or two. You became afraid. Of the walls, of the silence, of yourself. You threw your beautiful, idle body on the bed, and it seemed as if it got caught in barbed wire. Then you walked back and forth from one piece of hostile furniture to the next, pressed your face against the window, stared out into the night of a strange city. The night is never as indifferent as during the winter.
“Why is no window opening into the chaos of your soul?
“Why am I not with you to help you?
“A human being is her life, but the life of a human being is not always adequate for her. What did I say last night, when we decided to go to the province together? Most of us go with the flow—a skill we learn from society and the families we are born into—because we fail to examine society’s mechanisms. If we do, we get scared and turn away from the abyss opening up in front of us. But, if the human being wants to become truly herself, if she wants to be a real person, with an individual and indispensable face, then she must not turn away from herself. She has to take her life into her own hands, the same way a sculptor takes material in hand, giving shape to an idea that emerged formlessly from his soul. This requires an incredible amount of courage. It’s a path leading through crisis, doubt and uncertainties.
“Do you know what came to my mind when I turned eighteen and thus came of age? Not that I was now eligible to vote, that I could get married without my parents’ permission, or that I could receive an inheritance—should there be one—but that from this day on I could be hanged for a crime which yesterday would have just sent me to a reformatory. In other words, I was thinking about the law . . . Every human being is immortal, because we live on in our children, in our friends, and in people we don’t know, whom we have only influenced in the slightest way—but not everyone deserves well of humanity. I decided that I wouldn’t do anything for which I could be hanged, but I also would not neglect anything which would make eternity worth the effort . . . ‘The conformist merely takes up space provided in a world which could do just as well without him.’
“Once, when you were a teacher in a small village, you longed for more. You also didn’t accept life as a given. You also wanted change . . .
“Each of my words passed through your mind, and each of my words led you to me, like a funnel drawing fluid.
“You put on your robe, left the room, and directed your hesitating steps towards my door. You felt like a stone, which thrown away can only obey one law, the law of gravity, the endurance of free fall. You felt this fall once before in your life, as ecstasy; in the hallway, you remembered it was when you gave birth.
“Why did you have a child with him, if you don’t love him? Did you want to tie him down anyway? Did you need to prove yourself?
“No! No! If this had been the case, you would have admitted it. You simply wanted to have a child. You wanted to bring a child into this world because you were young, beautiful and healthy. You wanted to give another human being the possibility of enjoying life. A life which, in the end, is all hers. You didn’t bring this child into the world for your husband, you birthed her for yourself. You wanted to have a reason to live—knowing that this human being would always mean a lot for you; but also knowing that one day she’d leave you. You knew that this would be painful; nevertheless, you went ahead—this was the most noble aspect of this experience.
“Your daughter is now three, and the separation process has already started. You have already perceived that being a mother causes more pain, more sorrow than joy . . . This living blood circulation of emotions is majestic . . . is a constant succession of waves, an open sea, an endless perspective opening one new door after the other. Not the source of happiness, but more. As you were stumbling towards a new beginning in the hotel hallway, you knew: what you have learned in life so far is not the best, but something else whose name you couldn’t know.
“You live in an iron cast, which others have molded for you. It’s true, the mold slipped a bit and left you full of complexes, pangs of consciousness and searching. But you are not without protection, because the old iron form is still sticking to you. Drastic world events do not reach your open nerves, but only this armor, and therefore they hurt less. This mold, which was created by others, naturally can only be destroyed if you also destroy some parts of yourself.
“But what will happen if you don’t have the strength to rebuild yourself out of the fragments?
“You knew that this night held no existential question for me. There is only one human being without whom I can’t live: that’s me. Maybe you would have come to my room if I hadn’t confessed that, but if I had lied like the others: ‘I can’t live without you.’ Humans love to think that others can’t live without them. We make ourselves believe that the universe can’t be without us. But I don’t lie, and I can’t stand other people’s lies.
“You don’t know how you reached the man’s room. His glance bore more astonishment than joy.
“You threw your robe on the floor, you lay down right next to him. The nightgown—as usual—was taken off by the man. Everything happened in the customary way and he didn’t see your lies.”
Did the rubber boots decide again, Marosi mused, or not this time?