Imre: A Memorandum/Chapter III
III.
Faces—hearts—souls.
"Think'st thou that I could bear to part
With thee?—and learn to halve my heart?"
"No more reproach, no more despair!
"....Et deduxit eos in portum voluntatis
eorum".
Next morning, before I was dressed, came this note:
«I have just received word that I must take my company out to the camp at once. Please excuse my not coming. It does not make so much difference, now that you are to stay. Will write you from the Camp. Only a few days absence. I shall think of you.
P. S. Please write me.»
I was amused, as well as pleased, at this characteristic missive.
My day passed rather busily. I had not time to send even a card to Imre; I had no reason to do so. To my surprise, the omission was noticed. For, on the following morning I was in receipt of a lively military Ansichtskarte with a few words scratched on it; and at evening came the ensuing communication; which, by the by, was neither begun with the "address of courtesy", as the "Complete Letter-Book" calls it, nor ended with the "salute of ceremony", recommended by the same useful volume; they being both of them details which Imre had particularly told me he omitted with his intimate "friends who were not" prigs." He wrote:
«Well, how goes it with you? With me it is dull and fatiguing enough out here. You know how I hate all this business, even if you and Karvaly insist on my trying to like it. I have a great deal to say to you this evening that I really cannot write. Today was hot and it rained hard. Dear Oswald, you do not know how I value your friendship. Yesterday I saw the very largest frog that ever was created. He looked the very image of our big vis-à-vis in the Casino, Hofkapellan Számbor. Why in God's name do you not write? The whole city is full of tiz-filléres picture-postcards! Buy one, charge it to my account, write me on it.—
P. S. I think of you often, Oswald."
This communication, like its predecessor, was written in a tenth-century kind of hand, with a blunt lead-pencil! I sent its authour a few lines, of quite as laconical a tone as he had given me to understand he so much preferred.
The next day, yet another communication from the P... Camp! Three billets in as many days, from a person who "hated to write letters," and "never wrote them when he could get out of it!" Clearly, Imre in camp was not Imre in Szent-Istvánhely!
«Thank you, dear Oswald, for your note. Do not think too much of that old nonsense (azon régi bolondság) about not writing letters. It depends. I send my this in a spare moment. But I have nothing whatever to say. Weather here warm and rainy. Oswald, you are a great deal in my thoughts. I hope I am often in yours. I shall not return tomorrow, but I intend to be with you on Sunday. Life is wearisome. But so long as one has a friend, one can get on with much that is part of the burden; or possibly with all of it.—Yours ever—
I have neglected to mention that the second person of intimate Magyar address the "thou" and "thee", was used in these epistles of Imre, in my answers, with the same instinctiveness that had brought it to our lips on that evening in the Z... park. I shall not try to translate it systematically, however; any more than I shall note with system its disused English equivalents in the dialogue that occurs in the remainder of this record. More than once before the evening named, Imre and I had exchanged this familiarity, half in fun. But now it had come to stay. Thenceforth we adhered to it; a kind of serious symbolism as well as intimate sweetness in it.
I looked at that note with attention: first, because it was so opposed in tenor to the Imre von N... 'model'. Second, because there appeared to have been a stroke under the commonplace words 'Yours ever'. That stroke had been smirched out, or erased. Was it like Imre to be sentimental, for an instant, in a letter?—even in the most ordinary accent? Well, if he had given way to it, to try to conceal such a sign of the failing, particularly without re-writing the letter... why, that was charracteristic enough! In sending him a newspaper-clipping, along with a word or so, I referred to the unnecessary briskness of our correspondence. ".... Pray do not trouble yourself, my dear N..., to change your habits on my account. Do not write, now or ever, only because a word from you is a pleasure to me. Besides I am not yet on my homeward-journey. Save your postal artillery.»
To the foregoing from me, Imre's response was this:
«It is three o'clock in the morning, and everybody in this camp must be sound asleep, except your most humble servant. You know that I sometimes do not sleep well, Lord knows why. So I sit here, and scrawl this to thee, dear Oswald... All the more willingly because I am awfully out of sorts with myself..... I have nothing special to write thee; and nevertheless how much I would now be glad to say to thee, were we together. See, dearest friend... thou hast walked from that other world of thine into my life, and I have taken my place in thine, because for thee and for me there shall be, I believe, a happiness henceforth that not otherwise could come to us. I have known what it is to suffer, just because there has been no man to whom I could speak or write as to thee. Dear friend, we are much to one another, and we shall be more and more... No, I would not write if it were not a pleasure to me to do it. I promise thee so. We had a great regimental athletic contest this afternoon, and I took two prizes. I will try to sleep now, for I must be on my feet very early. Good night, or rather good-morning, and remember...
This letter gave me many reflections. There was no need for its closing injunction. To tell the truth, Imre von N... was beginning to bewilder me!—this Imre of the P... Camp and of the mail-bag, so unlike the Imre of our daily conversations and moods when vis-à-vis. There was certainly a curious, a growing psychic difference. The naïveté, the sincerity of the speaking and of the acting Imre was written into his lines spontaneously enough. But there was that odd new touch of an equally spontaneous something, a suppressed emotion—that I could not define. My own letters to Imre certainly did not ring to the like key. On the contrary (I may as well mention that it was not of mere accident, but in view of a resolution carefully considered, and held-to) the few lines which I sent him during those days were wholly lacking in any such personal utterances as his. If Inre chose to be inconsistent, I would be steadfast.
All such cogitations as to Imre's letters were however soon unnecessary, inasmuch as on the tenth day of his Camp-service, he wrote:
«Expect me tomorrow. I am well. I have much to tell thee. After all, a camp is not a bad place for reflections. It is a tiresome, rainy day here. I took the second prize for shooting at long range today.
Now, I did not suppose that Imre's pent-up communicativeness was likely to burst out on the topic of the Hungarian local weather, much less with reference to his feats with a rifle, or in lifting heavy weights. I certainly could not fancy just what meditations promoted that remark about the Camp! So far as I knew anything, of such localities, camps were not favourable to much consecutive thinking except about the day's work.
I did not expect him till the afternoon should close. I was busy with my English letters. It was a warm August noon, and even when coat and waistcoat had been thrown aside, I was oppressed. My high-ceiled, spacious room was certainly amongst the cooler corners of Szent-Istvánhely; but the typical ardour of any Central-Hungary midsummer is almost Italian. Outside, in the hotel-court, the fountain trickled sleepily. Even the river steamers seemed too torpid to signal loudly. But suddenly there care a most wide-awake sort of knock; and Imre, with an exclamation of delight—Jinre, erect, bronzed, flushed, with eyes flashing—with that smile of his which was almost as flashing as his eyes—Imre, more beautiful than ever, came to me, with both hands outstretched.
"At last.... and really!" I exclaimed as he hurried over the wide room, fairly beaming, as with contentment at being once more out of camp-routine. "And back five hours ahead of time!"
"Five hours ahead of time indeed!" he echoed, laughing. "Thou art glad? I know I am!"
"Dear Imre, I am immeasurably happy", I replied.
He leaned forward, and lightly kissed my cheek.
What!—he Imre von N—, who so had friend ioned the warm-hearted greetings of his quest—Captain M—! An odd lapse indeed!
"I am in a state of regular shipwreck," he exclaimed; standing up particularly straight again, after a demonstration that so confounded me as to leave me wordless!—"I have had no breakfast, no luncheon, nothing to eat since five o'clock. I am tired as a dog, and hungry—oh, mint egy vén Kárpáti medve!" [Literally, "as an old Carpathian bear".] "I stopped to have a bath at the Officer's Baths.. you should see the dust between here and the Camp... and to change, and write a note to my father. So, if you don't mind, the sooner I have something to eat and perhaps a nap, why the better. I am done up!"
In a few moments we were at table. Imre manifestly was not too fagged to talk and laugh a great deal; with a truly Homeric exhibition of his appetite. The budget of experiences at the Camp was immediately drawn upon, with much vivacity. But as luncheon ended, my guest admitted that the fatigues of the hot morning-march with his troop, from P.... (during which several sunstrokes had occurred, those too—ordinary incidents of Hungarian army-movements in summer) were reacting on him. So I went to the Bank, as usual, for letters; transacted some other business on the way; and left Imre to himself. When I returned to my room an hour or so later, he was stretched out, sound asleep, on the long green sofa. His sword and his close-fitting fatigue-blouse were thrown on a chair. The collarless, unstarched shirt (that is so much an improvement on our civilian garment) was unbuttoned at the throat; the sleeves rolled up to his shoulders, in unconscious emphasizing of the deepened sun-tan of his fine skin. The long brown eye-lashes lying motionless, against his cheek, his physical abandonment, his deep, regular, soundless breathing... all betokened how the day had spent itself on his young strength. Once left alone, he had fallen asleep where he had sat down.
A great and profoundly human poet, in one famous scene, speaks of those emotions that come to us when we are watching, in his sleep, a human being that we love. Such moments are indeed likely to be subduing to many a sensitive man and woman. They bring before our eyes the effect of a living statue; of a beauty self-unconscious, almost abstract, if the being that we love be beautiful. Strongly, suddenly, comes also the hint at helplessness; the suggestion of protection from us, however less robust. Or the idea of the momentary but actual absence of that other soul from out of the body before us, a vanishing of that spirit to whom we ourselves cling. We feel a subconscious sense of the inevitable separation for ever, when there shall occur the Silence of "the Breaker of Bonds, the Sunderer of Companionships, the Destroyer of Fellowships, the Divider of Hearts"—as (like a knell of everything earthly and intimate!) the old Arabian phrases lament the merciless divorce of death!
I stood and watched Imre a moment, these things in my mind. Then, moving softly about the room, lest he should be aroused, I began changing my clothes for the afternoon. Bat more than once the spell of my sleeping guest drew me to his side. At last, scarce half dressed, I sat down before him, to continue to look at him. Yes.. his face had the same expression now, as he slumbered there, that I had often remarked in his most silent moments of waking. There were not only the calm regular beauty, the manly uprightness, his winning naïveté of character written all through such outward charm for me; but along with that came again the appealing hint of an inward sadness; the shadow of some enrooted, hidden sorrow that would not pass, however proudly concealed.
"God bless thee, Imre!" my heart exclaimed in benediction, "God bless thee, and make thee happy!... happier than I! Thou hast given me thy friendship. I shall never ask of God... of Fate... anything more... save that the gift endure till we two endure not!"
The wish was like an echo from the Z... park. Or, rather, it was an echo from a time far earlier in my life. Once again, with a mystic certainty, I realized that those days of Solitude were now no longer of any special tyranny upon my moods. That was at an end for me, verily! O, my God! That was at an end!....
Imre opened his eyes.
"Great Arpád!, he exclaimed, smiling sleeppily, "is it so late? You are dressing for the evening!"
"It is five o'clock", I answered. But what difference does that make? Don't budge. Go to sleep again, if you choose. You need not think of getting supper at home. We will go to the F—Restaurant."
"So be it. And perhaps I shall ask you to keep me till morning, my dear fellow! I am no longer sleepy, but somehow or other I do feel most frightfully knocked-out! Those country roads are misery..... And I am a poor sleeper often,.... that it is, in a way. I get to worrying... to wondering over all sorts of things that there's no good in studying about... in daylight or dark."
"You never told me till lately, in one of your letters, that you were so much of an insomniac, Imre. Is it new?"
"Not in the least new. I have not wished to say anything about it to anybody. What's the use? Oh, there many are things that I haven't had time to tell you—things I have not spoken about with anyone—just as is the case with most men of sense in this world... eh? But do you know", he went on, sitting up and continuing with a manner more and more reposeful, thoughtful, strikingly unlike his ordinary nervous self, ".. but do you know that I have come back from the Camp to you, my dear Oswald, certain that I shall never be so restless and troubled a creature again. Thanks to you. For you see, so much that I have shut into myself I know now that I can trust to your heart. But give me a little time. To hare a friend to trust myself to wholly—that is new to me."
I was deeply touched. I felt certain again that a change of some sort—mysterious, profound—had come over Imre, during those few days at the Camp. Something had happened. I recognized the mood of his letters. But what had evolved or disclosed it?
"Yes, my dear von N..." I returned, "your letters have said that, in a way, to me. How shall I thank you for your confidence, as well as for your affection?"
"Ah, my letters! Bother my letters! They said nothing much! You know I cannot write letters at all. What is more, you have been believing that I wrote you as... as a sort of duty. That whatever I said—or a lot of it—well, there were things which you fancied were not really I. I understood why you could think it."
"I never said that, Imre," I replied, sitting down beside him on the sofa.
"Not in so many words. But my guilty conscience prompted me. I mean that word, "conscience" Oswald. For—I have not been fair to you, not honest. The only excuse is that I have not been honest with myself. You hare thought me cold, reserved, abrupt... a fantastic sort of friend to you. One who valued you, and yet could hardly speak out his esteem a careless fellow into whose life you have taken only surface-root. That isn't all. You have believed that I... that I... never could comprehend things... feelings... which you have lived through to the full... have suffered from... with every beat of your heart. But you are mistaken."
"I have no complaint against you, dear Imre." No, no! God knows that!
"No? But I have much against myself. That evening in the Z... park... you remember... when you were telling me...
I interrupted him sharply: "Imre!" He continued—"That evening in the Z—park when you were telling me"—
"Imre, Imre! You forget our promise!"
"No, I do not forget! It was a one-sided bargain, I am free to break it for a moment, nem igaz? Well then, I break it! There! Dear friend, if you have ever doubted that I have a heart,... that I would trust you utterly, that I would have you know me as I am.... then from this afternoon forget to doubt! I have hid myself from you, because I have been too proud to confess myself not enough for myself! I have sworn a thousand times that I could and would bear anything alone—alone—yes, till I should die. Oswald—for God's sake—for our friendship's sake—do not care less for me because I am weary of struggling on thus alone! I shall not try to play hero, even to myself... not any longer. Oswald..., listen... you told me your story. Well, I have a story to tell you... Then you will understand. Wait... wait... one moment!... I must think how, where, to begin. My story is short compared with yours, and not so bitter; yet it is no pleasant one."
As he uttered the last few words, seated there beside me, whatever sympathy I could ever feel for any human creature went out to him, unspeakably. For, now, now, the trouble flashed into my mind! Of course it was to be the old, sad tale—he loved, loved unhappily—a woman!
The singer! The singer of Pray! That wife of his friend Karvaly. The woman whose fair and magnetic personality, had wrought unwittingly or wittingly, her inevitable spell upon him! One of those potent and hopeless passions, in which love, and probably loyalty to Karvaly, burdened this upright spirit with an irremediable misfortune!
"Well," I said very gently, "tell me all that you can, if there be one touch of comfort and relief for you in speaking, Imre. I am wholly yours, you know, for every word."
Instead of answering me at once, as he sat there so close beside me, supporting his bowed head on one hand, and with his free arm across my shoulder, he let the arm fall more heavily about me. Turning his troubled eyes once—so appealingly, so briefly!—on mine, he laid his face upon my breast. And then, I heard him murmur, as if not to me only, but also to himself:
"O, thou dear friend! Who bringest me, as none have brought it before thee... rest!"
Rest? Not rest for me! A few seconds of that pathetic, trusting nearness which another man could have sustained so calmly... a few instants of that unspeakable joy in realizing how much more I was in his life than I had dared to conceive possible... just those few throws upon my heart of that weary spirit of my friend... and then the Sex-Demon brought his storm upon my traitorous nature, in fire and lava! I struggled in shame and despair to keep down the hateful physical passion which was making nothing of all my psychic loyalty, asserting itself against my angriest will. In vain! The defeat must come; and, worse, it must be understood by Imre. I started up. I thrust Imre from me—falling away from him, escaping from his side—knowing that just in his surprise at my abruptness, I must meet—his detection of my miserable weakness. No words can express my self-disgust. Once on my feet, I staggered to the opposite side of the round table between us. I dropped into a chair. I could not raise my eyes to Imre. I could not speak. Everything was vanishing about me. Of only one thing could I be certain; that now all was over between us! Oh, this cursed outbreak and revelation of my sensual weakness! this inevitable physical appeal of Imre to me! This damned and inextricable ingredient in the chemistry of what ought to be wholly a spiritual drawing toward him, but which meant that I—desired my friend for his gracious, virile Beauty—as well as loved him for his fair soul! Oh, the shame of it all, the uselessness of my newest resolve to be more as the normal man, not utterly the Uranian! Oh, the folly of my oaths to love Imre without that thrill of the plain sexual Desire, that would be a sickening horror to him! All was over! He knew me for what I was. He would have none of me. The flight of my dreams, departing in a torn cloud together, would come with the first sound of his voice!
But Imre did not speak. I looked up. He had not stirred. His hand was still lying on the table, with its open palm to me! And oh, there was that in his face... in the look so calmly bent upon me... that was... good God above us!.. so kind!
"Forgive me", I said. "Forgive me! Perhaps you can do that. Only that. You see... you know now. I have tried to change myself... to care for you only with my soul. But I cannot change. I will go from you. I will go to the other end of the world. Only do not believe that what I feel for you is wholly base... that were you not outwardly—what you are—had I less of my terrible sensitiveness to your mere beauty, Imre—I would care less for your friendship. God knows that I love you and respect you as a man loves and respects his friend. Yes, yes, a thousand times! But... but... nevertheless... Oh, what shall I say... You could never understand! So no use! Only I beg you not to despise me too deeply for my weakness; and when you remember me, pardon me for the sake of the friendship bound up in the love, even if you shudder at the love which curses the friendship."
Imre smiled. There was both bitterness as well as sweetness in his face now. But the bitterness was not for me. His voice broke the short silence in so intense a sympathy, in a note of such perfect accord, such unchanged regard, that I could scarcely master my eyes in hearing him. He clasped my hand.
"Dear Oswald! Brother indeed of my soul and body! Why dost thou ask me to forgive thee? Why should I 'forgive'? For—oh, Oswald, Oswald! I am just as art thou... I am just as art thou!"
"Thou! Just as I am? I do not understand!"
"But that will be very soon, Oswald. I tell thee again that I am as thou art... wholly.. wholly! Canst thou really not grasp the truth, dear friend? Oh, I wish with all my heart that I had not so long held back my secret from thee! It is I who must ask forgiveness. But at least I can tell thee today that I came back to thee to give thee confidence for confidence, heart for heart, Oswald! before this day should end. With no loss of respect—no weakening of our friendship. No, no! Instead of that, only with more—with... with all!"
"Imre... Imre! I do not understand—I do not dare... to understand."
"Look into thyself, Oswald! It is all there. I am an Uranian, as thou art. From my birth I have been one. Wholly, wholly homosexual, Oswald! The same fire, the same, that smoulders or flashes in thee! It was put into my soul and body too, along with whatever else is in them that could make me wish to win the sympathy of just such a friend as thee, or make thee wish to seek mine. My youth was like thine; and to become older, to grow up to be a man in years, a man in every sinew and limb of my body, there was no changing of my nature in that. There were only the bewilderments, concealments, tortures that come to us. There is nothing, nothing, that any man can teach me of what is one's life with it all. How well I know it! That inborn mysterious, frightful sensitiveness to whatever is the man—that eternal vague yearning and seeking for the unity that can never come save by a love that is held to be a crime and a shame! The instinct that makes us cold toward the woman, even to hating her, when one thinks of her as a sex. And the mask, the eternal mask! to be worn before our fellowmen for fear that they should spit in our faces in their loathing of us! Oh God, I have known it all—I have understood it all!"
It was indeed my turn to be silent now. I found myself yet looking at him in incredulity—wordless.
"But that is not the whole of my likeness to thee, Oswald. For, I have endured that cruellest of torments for us—which fell also to thy lot. I believe it to be over now, or soon wholly so to be. But the remembrance of it will not soon pass, even with thy affection to heal my heart. For I too have loved a man, loved him—hiding my passion from him under the coldness of a common friendship. I too have lived side by side, day by day, with him; in terror, lest he should see what he was to me, and so drive me from him. Ah, I have been unhappier, too, than thou, Oswald. For I must needs to watch his heart, as something not merely impossible for me to possess (I would have cast away my soul to possess it!)—but given over to a woman—laid at her feet—with daily less and less of thought for what was his life with me... Oh, Oswald!... the wretchedness of it is over now, God be thanked! and not a little so because I have found thee, and thou hast found me. But only to think of it again"....
He paused as if the memory were indeed wormwood. I understood now! And oh, what mattered it that I could not yet understand or excuse the part that he had played before me for so long?—his secrecy almost inexplicable if he had had so much as a guess at my story, may feelings for him! As in a dream, believing, disbelieving, fearing, rejoicing, trembling, rapt. I began to understand Fate!
Yet, mastering my own exultant heart, I wished in those moments to think only of him. I asked gently:
"You mean your friend Karvaly?"
"Even so... Karvaly."
"O, my poor, poor Imre! My brother indeed! Tell me all. Begin at the beginning."
I shall not detail all of Imre's tale. There was little in it for the matter of that, which could be set forth here as outwardly dramatic. Whoever has been able, by nature or accident, to know, in a fairly intimate degree, the workings of the similisexual and uranistic heart; whoever has marvelled at them, either in sympathy or antipathy, even if merely turning over the pages of psychiatric treatises dealing with them—he would find nothing specially unfamiliar in such biography. I will mention here, as one of the least of the sudden discoveries of that afternoon, the fact that Imre had some knowledge of such literature, whether to his comfort or greater melancholy, according to his authour. Also he had formally consulted one eminent Viennese specialist who certainly was much wiser—far less positive—and not less calmin than my American theorist.
The great Viennese psychiater had not recommended marriage to Imre: recognizing in Imre's 'case' that inborn homosexualism that will not be dissipated by wedlock; but perhaps only intensifies, and so is surer to darken irretrievably the nuptial future of husband and wife, and to visit itself on their children after them. But the Austrian doctor had not a little comforted and strengthened Imre morally; warning him away from despising himself: from thinking himself alone, and a sexual Pariah; from over-morbid sufferings; from that bitterness and despair which, year by year, all over the world, can explain, in hundreds of cases, the depressed lives, the lonely existences, the careers mysteriously interrupted—broken? What Asmodeus could look into the real causes (so impenetrably veiled!) of sudden and long social exiles; of sundered ties of friendship or family; of divorces that do not disclose their true ground? Longer still would be the chronicle of ruined peace of mind, tranquil lives maddened, fortunes shattered—by some merciless blackmailer who trades on his victim's secret! Darker yet the "myseterious disappearances", the sudden suicides "wholly inexplicable," the strange, fierce crimes—that are part of the daily history of hidden uranianism, of the battle between the homosexual man and social canons—or of the battle with just himself! Ah, these dramas of the Venus Urania! played out into death, in silent but terribly-troubled natures!—among all sorts and conditions of men!
"C'est Venus, tout entière à sa proie attachèe"...
Imre's youth had been, indeed, one long and lamentable obsession of precocious, inborn homosexuality. Imre (just as in many instances) had never been a weakling, an effeminate lad, nor cared for the society of the girls about him on the playground or in the house. On the contrary, his sexual and social indifference or aversion to them had been always thoroughly consistent with the virile emotions of that sort. But there had been the boy-friendships that were passions; the sense of his being cut of key with his little world in them; the deepening certitude that there was a mystery in himself that "nobody would understand"; some element rooted in him that was mocked by the whole boy-world, by the whole man-world. A part of himself to be crushed out, if it could be crushed, because base and vile. Or that, at any rate was to be forever hid . . hid . . hid . . for his life's sake hid! So Imre had early put on the Mask; the Mask that millions never lay by till death—and many not even then!
And in Imre's case there had come no self justification till late in his sorrowful young manhood. Not until quite newly, when he had discovered how the uranistic nature is regarded by men who are wiser and wider-minded than our forefathers were, had Imre accepted himself as an excusable bit of creation.
Fortunately, Imre had not been born and brought up in an Anglo-Saxon civilization; where is still met, at every side, so dense a blending of popular ignorances; of century-old and century-blind religious and ethical misconceptions, of unscientific professional conservatism in psychiatric circles, and of juristic barbarisms; all, of course, accompanied with the full measure of British or Yankee social hypocrisy toward the daily actualities of homosexualism. By comparison, indeed, any other lands and races—even those yet hesitant in their social toleration or legal protection of the Uranian—seem educative and kindly; not to distinguish peoples whose attitude is distinctively one of national common-sense and humanity. But in this sort of knowledge, as in many another, the world is feeling its way forward (should one say back?) to intelligence, to justice and to sympathy, so spirally, so unwillingly! It is not yet in the common air.
Twice Imre had been on the point of suicide. And though there had been experiences in the Military-Academy, and certain much later ones to teach him that he was not unique in Austria-Hungary, in Europe, or the world, still unluckily, Imre had got from them (as is too often the hap of the Uranian) chiefly the sense of how widely despised, mocked, and loathed is the Uranian Race. Also how sordid and debasing are the average associations of the homosexual kind, how likely to be wanting in idealism, in the exclusiveness, in those pure and manly influences which ought to be bound up in them and to radiate from them! He had grown to have a horror of similisexual types, of all contacts with them. And yet, until lately, they could not be torn entirely out of his life. Most Uranists know why!
Still, they had been so expelled, finally. The turning-point had come with Karvaly. It meant the story of the development of a swift, admiring friendship from the younger soldier toward the older. But alas! this had gradually become a fierce, despairing homosexual love. This, at its height, had been as destructive of Imre's peace as it was hopeless. Of course, it was impossible of confession to its object. Karvaly was no narrow intellect; his affection for Imre was warm. but he would never have understood, not even as some sort of a diseased illusion, this sentiment in Imre. Much less would he have tolerated it for an instant. The inevitable rupture of their whole intimacy would have come with Imre's betrayal of his passion. So he had done wisely to hide every throb froom Karvaly. How sharply Karvaly had on one occasion expressed himself on masculine homosexuality, Imre cited to me, with other remembrances. At the time of the vague scandal about the ex-officer Clement, whom Imre and I had met, Imre had asked Karvaly, with a fine carelessness,—'Whether he believed that there was any scientific excuse for such a sentiment?' Karvaly answered, with the true conviction of the dionistic temperament that has never so much as paused to think of the matter as a question in psychology... "If I found that you cared for another man that way, youngster, I should give you my best revolver, and tell you to put a bullet through your brains within an hour! Why, if I found that you thought of me so, I should brand you in the Officers Casino tonight, and shoot you myself at ten paces tomorrow morning. Men are not to live when they turn beasts.... Oh, damn your doctors and scientists! A man's a man, and a woman's a woman! You can't mix up their emotions like that."
The dread of Karvaly's detection, the struggle with himself to subdue passion, not merely to hide it, and along with these nerve-wearing solicitudes, the sense of what the suspicion of the rest of the world about him would inevitably bring on his head, had put Imre, little by little, into a sort of panic. He maintained an exaggerated attitude of safety, that had wrought on him unluckily, in many a valuable social relation. He wore his mask each and every instant; resolving to make it his natural face before himself! Having, discovered, through intimacy with Karvaly how a warm friendship on the part of the homosexual temperament, over and over takes to itself the complexion of homosexual love—the one emotion constantly likely to rise in the other and to blend itself inextricably into its alchemy—Imre had simply sworn to make no intimate friendship again! This, without showing himself in the least unfriendly; indeed with his being more hail-fellow-well-met with his comrades than otherwise.
But there Imre stopped! He bound his warm heart in a chain, he vowed indifference to the whole world, he assisted no advances of warm, particular regard from any comrade. He became that friend of everybody in general who is the friend of nobody in particular! He lived in a state of perpetual defence in his regiment, and in whatever else was social to him in Szent-Istvánhely. So surely as he admired another man—would gladly have won his generous and virile affection—Imre turned away from that man! He covered this morbid state of self-inclusion, this solitary life (such it was, apart from the relatively short intimacy with Karvaly) with laughter and a most artistic semblance of brusqueness; of manly preoccupation with private affairs. Above all, with the skilful cultivation of his repute as a Lothario who was nothing if not sentimental and absorbed in—woman! This is possibly the most common device, as it is the securest, on the part of an Uranian. Circumstances favoured Imre in it; and he gave it its full show of honourable mystery. The cruel irony of it was often almost humourous to Imre.
"... They have given me the credit of being the most confirmed rake in high life... think of that! I, and in high life!.. to be found in town. The less they could trace as ground for it, why, so much the stronger rumours!.. you know how that sort of a label sticks fast to one, once pinned on. Especially if a man is really a gentleman and holds his tongue, ever and always, about his intimacies with women. Why, Oswald, I have never felt that I could endure to be alone five minutes with any woman... I mean in—that way! Not even with a woman most dear to me, as many, many women are. Not even with a wife that loved me. I have never had any intimacies—not one—of that sort... Merely semblances of such! Queer experiences I've tumbled into with them, too! You know."
Oh, yes... I knew!
Part of Imre's exaggerated, artificial bearing toward the outer world was the nervous shrinking from commonplace social demonstrativeness on the part of his friends. To that mannerism I have already referred. It had become a really important accent, I do not doubt, in Imre's acting-out of a friendly, cheerful, yet keep-your-distance sort of personality. But there was more than that in it. It was a detail in the effort toward his self transformation; a minor article in his compact with himself never to give up the struggle to '' himself. He was convinced that this was the most impossible of achievements. But he kept on fighting for it. And since one degree of sentiment led so treacherously to another, why, away with all!
"But Imre, I do not yet see why you have not trusted me sooner. There have been at least two moments in our friendship when you could have done so; and one of them was when.. you should!"
"Yes, you are right. I have been unkind. But then, I have been as unkind to myself. The two times you speak of, Oswald... you mean, for one of them, that night that we met Clement... and spoke about such matters for a moment while we were crossing the Lánczhid? And the other chance was after you had told me your own story, over there in the Z... park?"
"Yes. Of course, the fault is partly mine—once. I mean that time on the Bridge... I fenced you off from me—I misled you—didn't help you—I didn't help myself. But even so, you kept me at sword's length, Imre! You wore your mask so closely—gave me no inch of ground to come nearer to you, to understand you, to expect anything except scorn—our parting! Oh, Imre! I have been blind, yes! but you have been dumb."
"You wonder and you blame me, he replied, after busying himself a few seconds with his own perplexing thoughts. "Again, I say 'Forgive me.' But you must remember that we played at cross-purposes too much (as I now look back on what we said that first time) for me to trust myself to you. I misunderstood you. I was stupid—nervous. It seemed to me certain, at first, that you had me in your mind—that I was the friend you spoke of—laughed at, in a way. But after I saw that I was mistaken? Oh, well it appeared to me that, after all, you must be one of the Despisers. Gentler-hearted than the most; broader minded, in a way; but one who, quite likely, thought and felt as the rest of the world. I was afraid to go a word farther! I was afraid to lose you. I shivered afterward, when I remembered that I had spoken then of what I did. Especially about that man... who cared for me once upon a time... in that way... And so suddenly to meet Clement! I didn't know he was in Szent-Istvánlely; the meeting took me by surprise. I heard next morning that his mother had been very ill."
"But afterwards, Imre? You surely had no fear of what you call 'losing' me then? How in that could you possibly meet my story—in that hour of such bitter confidence from me!—as you did? Could come no further toward me? When you were certain that to find you my Brother in the Solitude would make you the nearer-beloved and dearer-prized!"
"That is harder for me to answer. For one reason, it was part of that long battle with myself. It was something against the policy of my whole life!... as I had sworn to live it for all the rest of it... before myself or the world. I had broken that pledge already in our friendship, such as even then it was! Broken it suddenly, completely... before realizing what I did. The feeling that I was weak, that I cared for you, that I was glad that you sought my friendship... ah, the very sense of nearness and companionship in that... But I fought with all that,I tell you! Pride, Oswald!... a fool's pride! My determination to go on alone, alone, to make myself sufficient for myself, to make my punishment my tyrant!—to be martyred under it! Can you not understand something of that? You broke down my pride that night, dear Oswald. Oh, then I knew that I had found the one friend in the world, out of a million-million men not for me! And nevertheless I hung back! The thought of your going from me had been like a knife-stroke in my heart all the evening long. But yet I could not speak out. All the while I understood how our parting was a pain to you—I could have echoed every thought that was in your soul about it!... but I would not let myself speak one syllable to you that could show you that I cared! No!... then I would have let you go away in ignorance of every thing that was most myself... rather than have opened that life-secret, or my heart, as we sat there. Oh, it was as if I was under a spell, a cursed enchantment that would mean a new unhappiness, a deeper silence for the rest of my life! But the wretched charm was perfect. Good God!... what a night I passed! The mood and the moment had been so fit... yet both thrown away! My heart so shaken, my tongue so paralyzed! But before morning came, Oswald, that fool's hesitation was over. I was clear and resolved, the devil of arrogance had left me. I was amazed at myself. You would have heard everything from me that day. But the call to the Camp came. I had not a moment. I could not write what I wished. There was nothing to do but to wait."
"The waiting has done no harm, Imre."
"And there is another reason, Oswald, why I found it hard to be frank with you. At least, I think so. It is—what shall I call it?—the psychic trace of the woman in me. Yes, after all, the woman! The counter-impulse, the struggle of the weakness that is womanishness itself, when one has to face any sharp decision... to throw one's whole being into the scale! Oh, I know it, I have found it in me before now! I am not as you, the Uranian who is too much man! I am more feminine in impulse—of weaker stuff... I feel it with shame. You know how the woman says 'no' when she means 'yes' with all her soul! How she draws back from the arms of the man that she loves when she dreams every night of throwing herself into them? How she finds herself doing, over and over, just that which is against her thought, her will, her duty! I tell you, there is something of that in me, Oswald! I must make it less... you must help me. It must be one of the good works of your friendship, of your love, for me. Oh, Oswald, Oswald!... you are not only to console me for all that I have suffered, for anything in my past that has gone wrong. For, you are to help me to make myself over, indeed, in all that is possible, whatever cannot be so."
"We must help each other Imre. But do not speak so of woman, my brother! Sexually, we may not value her. We may not need her, as do those Others. But think of the joy that they find in her to which we are cold; the ideals from which we are shut out! Think of your mother, Imre; as I think of mine! Think of the queens and peasants who have been the light and the glory of races and peoples. Think of the gentle, noble sisters and wives, the serene, patient rulers of myriad homes. Think of the watching nurses in the hospitals... of the spirits of mercy who walk the streets of plague and foulness!... think of the nun on her knees for the world...!"
The shadows in the room were almost at their deepest. We were still sitting face to face, almost without having stirred since that moment when I had quitted his side so suddenly—to divine how much closer I was to be drawn to him henceforth. Life!—Life and Death!—Life—Love—Death! The sense of eternal kinship in their mystery.... somehow it haunted one then! as it is likely to do when not our unhappiness but a kind of over-joy swiftly oppresses us; making us to feel that in some other sphere, and if less grossly 'set within this muddy vesture of decay,' we might understand all three... might find all three to be one! Life—Love—Death !...
"Oswald, you will never go away from me!"
"Imre, I will never go away from thee. Thy people shall be mine. Thy King shall be mine. Thy country shall be mine,—thy city mine! My feet are fixed! We belong together. We have found what we had despaired of finding... the friendship which is love, the love which is friendship'. Those who cannot give it accept it—let them live without it. It can be 'well, and very well' with them. Go they their ways without it! But for Us, who for our happiness or unhappiness cannot think life worth living in lacking it... for Us, through the world's ages born to seek it in pain or joy... it is the highest, holiest Good in the world. And for one of us to turn his back upon it, were to find he would better never have been born!"......
It was eleven o'clock. Imre and I had supped and taken a stroll in the yellow moonlight, along the quais, overlooking the shimmering Duna; and on through the little Erzsébet-tér where we had met, a few weeks ago—it seemed so long ago! I had heard more of Imre's life and individuality as a boy; full of the fine and unhappy emotions of the uranistic youth. We had laughed over his stock of experiences in the Camp. We had talked of things grave and gay.
Then we had sauntered back. It was chance; but lo! we were on the Lánczhid, once more! The Duna rippled and swirled below. The black barges slumbered against the stone rakpartok. The glittering belts of the city-lights flashed in long perspectives along the wide river's sweeping course and twinkled from square to square, from terrace to terrace. Across from us, at a garden-café, a cigány orchestra was pulsating; crying out, weeping, asking, refusing, wooing, mocking, inebriating, despairing, triumphant! All the warm Magyar night about us was dominated by those melting chromatics, poignant cadences—those harmonies eternally oriental, minor-keyed, insidious, nerve-thrilling. The arabesques of the violins, the vehement rhythms of the clangorous czimbalom!.... Ah, this time on the Lánczhid, neither for Imre nor me was it the sombre Bakony song, "O jaj! az álom nelkül"—but instead the free, impassioned leap and acclaim,—"Huszár legény vagyok!—Huszár legény vagyok!"
We were back in the quiet room, lighted now only by the moon. Far up, on the distant Pálota heights, the clear bell of Szent-Mátyás struck the three-quarters. The slow notes filled the still night like a benediction, keyed to that haunting, divine, prophetic triad, Life—Love—Death! Benediction threefold and supreme to the world!
"Oh, my brother! Oh, my friend!" exclaimed Imre softly, putting his arm about me and holding me to his heart. "Listen to me. Perhaps.. perhaps even yet, canst thou err in one, only one thought. I would have thee sure that when I am with thee here, now, I miss nothing and no one—I seek nothing and no one! My quest, like thine, is over!... I wish no one save thee, dear Oswald, no one else, even as I feel thou wishest none save me, henceforth. I would have thee believe that I am glad just as thou art glad. Alike have we two been sad because of our lonely hearts, our long restlessness of soul and body, our vain dreams, our worship of this or that hope— vision—which has been kept far from us—it may be, overvalued by us! We have suffered so much thou and I! . . . because of what never could be! We shall be all the happier now for what is real for us. . . I love thee, as thou lovest me. I have found, as thou hast found, 'the friendship which is love, the love which is friendship.' . . . Come then, O friend! O brother, to our rest! Thy heart on mine, thy soul with mine! For us two it surely is . . . Rest!"
"Truth? What is truth? Two human hearts
Wounded by men, by fortune tried.
Outwearied with their lonely parts,
Vow to beat henceforth side by side."[1]
The end.
- ↑ Matthew Arnold