Sandor Marai

It was a few years ago now that I looked at Embers, Sandor Marai’s 1942 novel set over one evening. If, like me, you liked Embers – the more famous novel in the UK – then I think you’ll like Esther’s Inheritance too. It is a similarly constrained piece of writing, also set primarily over one evening, focussed on an anticipated guest.

“We are bound to our enemies, nor can they escape us.”

However, the psychology of this novella was harder for me to manage as a reader.

Esther lives in the house she inherited from her father with her ancient retainer Nunu:

“Nunu thinks she knows everything about me. And maybe she does know the truth, the simple ultimate truth we dress up in so many rags all our lives.”

As a young woman Esther loved Lajos – now, around 20 years later, he has telegrammed to say he will visit the next day. This sends her back to his letters and her memories of the past.

“I marvelled at the fierce workings of this aimless energy. In each of his letters he addressed me with power enough to move anyone – especially a highly sensitive woman – indeed, whole crowds, even masses. It wasn’t that he had anything particularly ‘significant’ to say… He was always writing about the truth, about some imagined truth that he had just realised and urgently wanted me to know.”

But Lajos is utterly vacuous:

“Later we discovered that Lajos himself had never read, or had simply scanned the authors and thinkers, the works and ideas that he so emphatically recommended, wagging his head and chiding us with good-humoured severity. His charm acted on us like a cheap wicked spell.”

Yet when he arrives with an entourage of vague and bitchy hangers-on Esther still feels drawn – possibly less to him than she once was, but certainly to how he made her feel.

“But there was a time when I was close to him when my life was as ‘dangerous’ as his. Now that this danger has passed I can see that nothing is as it was, and that such danger was in fact the one true meaning of life.”

The full extent of Lajos’ previous betrayal is revealed during the visit, as is a betrayal by another. There is a suggestion at one point that possibly Lajos had authentic feelings for Esther for a brief moment, for whatever they were worth.

Esther is fully aware of what Lajos is like and all he has done, and yet when he inevitably makes the move for his latest self-serving rip-off scheme she seems ready to capitulate. It really is rather baffling.

I only write about books I recommend and I do recommend this because Marai is such a beautiful writer. But a lot of the psychology and plot of this novella depends on the charm of Lajos, which is difficult to convey on the page and was completely lost on this reader. Maybe I’m not subtle enough for Esther’s Inheritance. I suspect in some ways this would work well as a film, where a charismatic actor could bring Lajos’ charm to life.

“When somebody appears out of the past and announces in heartfelt tones that he wants to put ‘everything’ right, one can only pity his ambition and laugh at it”

This week’s post is about friendship, as I’ve returned home from uni and had a great time catching up with friends I haven’t seen for a while. When I was thinking of title quotes for this theme, the phrase that immediately sprang to mind was too long. However, it’s lovely, so here it is:

“Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. “Pooh?” he whispered.
“Yes, Piglet?”
“Nothing,” said Piglet, taking Pooh’s hand. “I just wanted to be sure of you.” (A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh)

(Image from http://www.artistsnetwork.com/art-blogs/the-artists-magazine-blog/pooh-and-piglet-illustration-auctioned-for-194000)

If that doesn’t make you go “aww..” you are a cold, cold person.

Firstly, Embers by Sandor Marai (1942, my copy Penguin 2001 trans. Carol Brown Janeway). Embers is a deceptively simple novel, set over one evening, running to only 250 pages in my edition. An elderly general lives in a castle, in melancholy stasis:

“The castle was a closed world…it also enclosed memories as if they were the dead, memories that lurked in damp corners the way mushrooms, bats, rats and beetles lurk in the mildewed cellars of old houses”

He prepares for a supper with his childhood friend, Konrad, who he hasn’t seen in 41 years. Over the course of the evening, the betrayal that tore them apart will be voiced and answers sought. Within this simple framework Marai explores the complexity of human relationships, with great delicacy:

“Their friendship was deep and wordless, as are all emotions that will last a lifetime”

“Their friendship, fragile and complex in the way of all significant relationships between people”

With a lesser writer the novel would be heavy-handed, clichéd, sentimental. But Marai avoids these pitfalls by refusing to make things – feelings, events, motivations – simple or captured in reductive explanations.

“The magical time of childhood was over, and two grown men stood there in their place, enmeshed in a complicated and enigmatic relationship commonly covered by the word ‘friendship’”

I can’t really say much more without giving away spoilers, but Embers is a beautifully written, intelligent book about the complications of the loves we have in our lives. Marai never wastes a single word. I highly recommend it.

Secondly, Utterly Monkey by Nick Laird (4th Estate, 2005). Danny is living in London, doing a job he hates to pay for a flat he’s ambivalent about. He has physically moved away from Northern Ireland, but his childhood follows him in the form of his oldest friend:

“Geordie Wilson was standing on the step. His small frame was silhouetted against the London evening sky. He looked charred, a little cinder of a man […] He could have been Death’s apprentice.”

Geordie’s in trouble, and seeks refuge with Danny. Their lives easily become as intertwined as when they were kids, despite the years apart, and as they infuriate each other they never really consider leaving the other one to cope alone. The notion of loyalty as a choice, and yet one that is rarely questioned, is given a further resonance by the fact that Danny and Geordie grew up through the Troubles. Now both have left Belfast, but Utterly Monkey queries how much we ever leave our childhoods behind, and how feelings can remain inexplicable but powerful motivators for the action we take.

It’s a touching story, and I actually felt the over-arching plot was unnecessary, the carefully drawn characters would be enough to carry the story along. However, this isn’t to suggest the plot is clumsy, and Laird uses his considerable skill as a poet to write effective prose, finding surprising and evocative images in the everyday:

“Outside the pub a tattered newspaper was lying against the kerb and the wind was freeing it sheet by sheet. Some pages blew about restlessly further up the pavement. One had managed to wrap itself around a lamppost and was flapping gently like a drunkard trying to hail a taxi.”

Laird is also funny (“He was an East Londoner, and appeared to suffer from the East London disorder of considering accidental eye contact an act of overt aggression.”) and this stops a tale that could be full of bitterness and regret from ever becoming recriminatory. In fact, it makes it more realistic – there are friends who drive you mad, who make you wonder why the friendship continues, but the ties that bind somehow endure and stop life becoming too predictable.

To end, the trailer for one of my favourite films, The Station Agent (2003), which charts the beginnings of friendship between 3 people. Peter Dinklage is now uber-famous as Tyrion Lannister, but here he is many years before, giving a very different, equally wonderful performance: