From a Note-Book

FERENC MOLNÁR

How an Author Lost His Chance of Happiness—and Three Short Tales Without a Moral

$1

IT happened in Venice, in a cafe in the San Marco. A party of German tourists was sitting at the table next to mine. It was composed evidently of members of two families. They talked about a man whose name I could not quite catch, although, as their conversation progressed, I very much wanted to learn who he was. The name sounded like "Anspea" to me.It could have been a carelessly pronounced "Hans Beer" or "Franz Beer", or a hurriedly pronounced "Ansperger", as it could have been a combination of initials, something like "Hans P. A." I don't know.

Anyway, Anspea or whatever his name was, emerged in my life that afternoon and disappeared again when the German tourists departed. I have never seen them again. But, for a long time thereafter, I have been thinking of Anspea longingly, yearningly, enviously. He has been to me what the soaring wild duck was to the wabbling goose in Maupassant's beautiful poem.

The first fact I learned about Anspea was that he recommended a cheap yet excellent hotel in Venice to one of the two families. The family was extremely satisfied and, as far as I could gather from their conversation, they paid about half the price I did.

"ANSPEA knows his way about in Venice," JL\ they declared. And they smiled as if they had said: "Is it possible that there is a spot anywhere in the world where Anspea does not know his way about?" Then they talked about Anspea in more detail. In a short while I learned quite a bit about him. I put down only those facts I could still remember that evening. But there were many more. Many, many more.

It appears Anspea knew a shop in Venice where leathergoods were forty per cent cheaper than anywhere else. Anspea knew a shop in Vienna where ladies' bags were rejuvenated for ten shillings a-piece. Anspea had a "subscription" arrangement with a tailor by which he got fifty-two new suits a year. Anspea could secure Austrian cigarettes. which were manufactured under the State Monopoly for members of the Automobile Club only, at the regular retail price. These cigarettes were known to be superior in quality to those sold in cigar stores. Anspea knew how to register one's baggage on trains without having a railroad ticket. The dollar stood at 18 lire at that time; Anspea knew of a bank where they paid 18.20. The mosquitoes ate up all the visitors in Venice that summer; Anspea burned some small cubes in his room and the resulting smoke drove out the mosquitoes. Sometimes the terrific stench drove out everybody else too, interjected one of the ladies, but, as a matter of fact, the mosquitoes vanished. Anspea knew of a physician in Treviso who cured ischialgia in three days—a guaranteed cure. Anspea knew how to travel home from Venice free of charge. Anspea recommended a laundering method which made those little bubble-like protrusions on starched shirt-bosoms impossible.

Anspea shaved himself with a safety razor that consisted of only three parts. (Mine has four parts.) Anspea had a fountain pen from which the ink never spattered, not even when one tried. Anspea recommended the following cure against bronchitis: mix milk and honey at the ratio of two to one and drink one gulp of the compound every half an hour. Anspea had a device which did not cut off the end of a cigar, only punctured it. Anspea knew a portier who sold subscription tickets to the motor-boats of the Excelsior Hotel; one could get twelve rides for the price of ten. Anspea had a little steamdevice which cleaned the dirtiest pipe in a minute. Anspea knew restaurants in Venice which sold Munich beer and places in Florence which sold Pilsen beer. Anspea had a cigarette lighter which the wind could not blow out; on the contrary, it burned better in stormy weather.

Anspea boarded his family in a pension and he paid as much for five persons on the Lido as I did for myself alone in Venice.

Anspea had a notebook with washable pages, he never needed an eraser. Anspea knew of a salve which prevented sunburn. Anspea knew how to address railroad porters and waiters in any language. Next Autumn Anspea was going to get a chauffeur, for one of the families, who had been serving in the same place for nineteen years and who repaired the motor himself.

THE party left the cafe before I did. But they continued to expand the Anspealegend. For a second, I wanted to go after them. I hesitated. I thought of getting acquainted with Anspea to live in whose proximity would mean clear sailing in life, to enjoy whose friendship would mean a long succession of sunny, wise, calm and careless years—in one word: happiness.

But I did not follow them and so I lost Anspea forever. I was left behind with all the thousand and one little troubles of this world; I was left behind in an expensive hotel, with a bad safety razor in my trunk, sadly tortured by mosquitoes, with bubbles on my stiff-bosom shirts, with a leaking fountain pen in my pocket, with a lighter that would not light for anything in the world, with a touch of ischialgia, compelled to drink terrible Italian beer, with a soreness due to sunburn, and stupid every time I needed a railroad porter in Italy.

The happy Germans went away taking Anspea with them, Anspea who knew everything, almost everything, who spread wisdom and happiness among his acquaintances, who helped all who came to him for advice.

Now I know how difficult it is to live without Anspea! Ever since that afternoon, ever since I first heard the Anspea-epic, I have been lonely, miserable, awkward and lost. This world, as it is arranged now, is Anspea's world—not mine.

§II

I was browsing about among some old volumes in a second-hand book-shop. The proprietor suddenly turned to me and pointed at a long row of handsomely bound volumes.

"Look," he said, "here's a bargain for you."

I went to the shelf and looked at the set. It was a well-known German History of the World, in forty volumes, beautifully bound.

"I can let you have it very cheaply," said the bookseller.

"Thank you," I said, "I don't want it."

"It's a beautiful set, an extraordinary bargain. Very nice binding. As clean as if it were new."

"Thanks, I don't need it," I repeated.

"This set comes from the library of the Baroness W., you know, the wife of the famous banker."

I became nervous:

"Do you think you will impress me with this statement? Do you think that just because it once belonged to the famous Baroness I will want it any more?"

He smiled patronizingly and paternally:

"No, I don't think so. I merely wanted to give you convincing proof that the set in question is spotlessly clean, that no human hand has ever touched it."

§III

AN old, white moustached Hungarian gentleman was sitting with some friends in a railroad compartment. They were engaged in an animated conversation. I was sitting in a corner, alone, forlorn, silent.

In the course of the conversation, the old gentleman remarked:

"I am sixty years old, but I have never seen anything like it."

Whereupon another gentleman remarked:

"Pista, don't lie. You know you are sixtythree."

Short silence.

"But I am sixty as the crow flies," said Pista quietly.

I repeat this remark because it is more and better than a mere jest:one could not possibly express more crisply and more tersely the fact that the great events are those that make up one's life and not the many little detours which might as well have been left out altogether.

$IV

When Michael Bohnen first sang at the Vienna Opera House after the war, he scored such success that the ticket speculators bought up all the available seats for his second appearance and sold them at ten, even twenty times the box-office prices. But for his third appearance, they could manage to get hold of a few tickets only, and despite the fact that the value of the tickets had risen to even greater heights, they did not sell their tickets but went to the Opera instead to hear Bohnen.

That is what I call "success".