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VILLANOVELLID

Casimir Spieler

 
Translated by Tim Wilkinson
 
The Villa Bagatelle had stood in good repute from the outset, over which time many fashions had swept across the world. Accordingly, a wide assortment of eccentrics had passed though its doors. Realists, idealists, bigots, snobs, pacifists, spiritualists—one would have trouble listing them all. A Villa regular in the early Thirties was Casimir Spieler, in his day a very well-known figure, a truly curious young man, whom one might perhaps best categorize as an occultist. He carried magic stones in his pocket; he was embarking on a career as a writer and, one must admit, did everything he could to further that cause. That included not shrinking from magic. But at the same time he worked maniacally; to begin with in a small rented flat in Kispest, later on in sundry coffee houses, but in the end exclusively in the Villa Bagatelle. Many writers created there for the simple reason that that was where they felt comfortable and could be drawn into productive shape under the pear tree in the garden. Handy though this might be, it would nevertheless be untrue to state that this was why young Spieler decided on the Bagatelle. The question is, therefore, what else, if not the appeal of the place, induced him to stay?
Casimir commenced work on a dark, earth-shaking work—a horror novel straightaway. Only before long he was seized by the misapprehension that because the novel was unmasking Evil the dead were angry, and they were doing all they could to ensure that the work would never reach print.
He left the manuscript of the first draft on a bus. Days later he read that a bus had run free and plunged into the Danube. He was convinced this must have been precisely the one on which the manuscript had been left. A few weeks later he and a girlfriend overturned whilst canoeing on the Ráckeve side-branch of the Danube, as a result of which the river swallowed up a second version, for Casimir, one needs to know, took the manuscript everywhere. The girlfriend had escaped, but even that was no consolation. After many more incidents of this kind, one day he decided not to take the work with him on the grounds that it would anyway be lost or submerged or plucked from his hand by a gust of wind.
By the time he got back home the flat had burned down and a seventh version had gone up in smoke. Casimir took it as gospel that the Villa Bagatelle was the one place in the city where the furious spirits were unable to harm him. He laboured assiduously for a whole year at a table reserved for him in the winter garden, but only when he was raising a glass of champagne to celebrate finishing the novel did it occur to him to wonder how he was going to get it out of the Villa, for the moment he stepped outside he was sure to be struck by a bolt of lightning.
“That’s what comes of writing about the nature of Evil,” he declared self-importantly and with more than a trace of affectation, whereupon a pretty and naïve waitress advised:
“You can safely leave the book here; it can’t do us any harm. Go back home and write another one about the nature of Good—or do you know nothing about that?”
 

The Canary Test

 
Nothing characterizes Natascha Ko˝nig better than that in her time the life of the Villa was one of constant ferment. Not that she kept on turning it topsy-turvy. Quite the reverse, her irresistible beauty and strength stimulated one and all to pulsating life. There was a weekly turnover of personnel, though not like there had been in the time of cantankerous Rosa Síkfo˝kúti. They were not dismissed; all that happened was that one after the other they fell in love (and were put in the family way), one after the other they married,  conceived other plans, acquired backers, and found long-lost siblings.
Behind this bubbling stood, first and foremost, Natascha’s odd duality. For one thing, she bewitched everything she clapped eyes on, including the pear tree in the garden. Later on, Cuno often remarked that in earlier days the ancient tree used barely to put out a shoot in spring, and it was reckoned to be a good year if two or three fruits were found on it at the end of summer, though now, of course, in the countess’s time, the crop was so abundant there was even some to spare for distilling marc! But on the other hand, Natascha’s aloofness was legendary near and far.
It was impossible not to worship her. Everyone did indeed adore her, and the whole world waited for the countess herself to be happy at last—for her exaltedly ensconced, splendid peace and strength to find a worthy partner and purpose. At complete variance with all expectations, however, Natascha glittered alone like the Sun even after years. She shone on all equally, and irresistibly, but like the Sun no-one could not get close to her; she too remained unapproachable. She would not even permit a hand to be kissed, which strict etiquette would deem grossly insulting, but she did everything in such a way that her untouchability should remain courteous and entrancing.
All this was looked on with unconscious amazement by the personnel, by guests who came from far afield, and by aristocrats  of the surrounding district. There was just one person who found it entirely natural, this being none other than Cuno, the head butler. Little wonder, because he too behaved in much the same fashion. He would astonish even old employees time and again with his attentiveness, yet there was never so much as a hint, even after the friendliest of gestures, that this might signify a relaxation of the rigour or provide the slightest basis for any familiarity.
In this world, which these two people, Natascha and Cuno, without any prior arrangement, ran in complete harmony as equal parties, everything was clear and regulated yet charged with life notwithstanding. Before long, due to proposals of marriage and exchanges of wedding vows, new personnel had to be taken on at the house—more in fact than had left service, so Natascha decided. On the day that they were to be hired she asked Cuno to take the canaries up to the terrace on the first floor as that was where they were going to interview applicants. Things like that were usually left to the head butler, but Cuno has not surprised, imagining that Natascha must be so fond of the canaries that she could not even dispense with their company for even a couple of hours.
Seventeen young men and women were interviewed on hiring day. All arrived with outstanding references; the way they acquitted themselves, their demeanour, was immaculate so it seemed it would be difficult to make a choice.
“Who would you take on?” Natascha asked Cuno.
“We had some extremely highly qualified and well-mannered candidates, it’s hard to choose, but I think perhaps the valet from Vác.”
“What he had to offer was truly entrancing, and the young man’s expertise was impressive, but for me he only came out second.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, why not first?”
“It’s like this, you see, my dear Cuno. However well-mannered they may be, anyone who did not vouchsafe the canaries so much as a glance is out of the question. Anyone who does not so much as notice a bird, whatever else he may do, will also be disdainful of a guest.”
“But surely the young man from Vác went so far as to praise them!” Cuno interjected, thinking that maybe the countess had forgotten.
“Praise them he did indeed, Cuno, and what’s more he even poked a finger in though the bars of the cage. He noticed them, but he had no respect for them; he took liberties. The valet from Vác was worthless! Do you catch my drift, my dear Cuno?” Natascha asked, whereupon Cuno, for the very first time in his life, was amazed by the countess from the very bottom of his heart and finally understood the meaning of Natascha’s justly famed, exquisite aloofness. He instantly grasped that she must be guarding something more precious than anything else for a future man. And while Natascha peered at his face with the Sun’s improbably close, almost intimate radiance, Cuno squared up to the fact that he could finally see a person who was just as precise, sharp-sighted, and at the same time passionate as himself, and that person, moreover, was a woman!

Trifling Matter

There were times when furious arguments would break out even at the Villa. On one occasion the proprietor and his wife disagreed over nothing to speak of; another time the master of the house and the personnel were in dispute, and every evening there would be dissension between the personnel and the guests. One could even point to cases where virtually everyone pitched in.
It was a squabble of this kind which arose when, alongside a good few melancholy young poets, a young woman from Tihány who was sadder than them all, Angela by name, became a regular guest. So fragile a figure was she that on the reckoning of Roland Apor, a poet designate—another habituée—the Villa’s canaries would go into a flutter at her arrival for no other reason than that they were eager to get out of their cage to perch on her collarbones. Angela was a conspicuous presence not merely owing to her rococo features but also on account of her incomparably fine and profound, unbroken sadness. Not for nothing did she feel at ease in the company of the poets since they too, without exception, drank most deeply of all from the cup of despondency. Each thought his own melancholy went well together with Angela’s, whereas Angela would have much rather been freed of low spirits than have them matched with someone else’s. As no-one understood that—at least none of the poets—Angela grew sadder by the day.
During the same period of time a frequent visitor at the Villa was a distinguished surgeon by the name of Dr Titus Bánhegyi, who was widely known throughout Europe as a brain researcher. He had little in the way of companionship, or to the extent that he did it was some colleague or other, either a neurosurgeon or a pathologist. Esteemed at every hand he might be, nevertheless it was feared that he engaged daily in digging around in skulls. He personally was aware of this ambiguous status, declaring on one occasion:
“Anyone who occupies himself with the demented can easily go mad himself.”
On another occasion he asserted:
“The only person as mad as me in this city is a hatter. Like me, he also does nothing but measure heads from one end of the day to the other.”
Even such self-ironical comments were unable to dispel the idea that not only was the professor’s profession upsetting, but also his very odour. Not as bad as the pathologist’s, true, but hardly any better.
Dr Titus Bánhegyi reckoned he had managed to identify the area of the brain which is responsible for sensations of emptiness and hopelessness. Or as he put it: the cerebral bump in which Nothing resides. As a result of that knowledge, the insipid professor became a fundamentally optimistic character, unlike incessantly gloomy Roland Apor. Nor would there have been any trouble had the professor not got into conversation with the poets. Needless to say, from the very outset, a vigorous dispute grew up between the professor and the lyricists, with the latter feeling it to be extraordinarily derogatory that their perpetually tragic view of the world could be ascribed to a cerebral bump.
“It makes a mockery of the sentiments,” exclaimed Hyacinth Németh before quitting the coffee room for that day.
Perhaps it was precisely these heated reactions which prompted the professor to renewed cogitation as to what it was which had caused him to decide he would be able to select the most suitable experimental subjects from their ranks. The sort of individual in whom some sort of hopeless longing, or in other words the bump of Nothingness, was more strongly present than in anyone else. A few disputes were enough for Dr Titus Bánhegyi to single out Angela as the first subject for the experimental surgery in the process of which he would remove the bump in question. She, from the very beginning of the arguments between the professor and the poets, had adopted an intermediate position, leaning first one way then the other, declaring on one occasion:
“In point of fact I shall not rule out the possibility if it genuinely helps.”
On that issue not only Angela but also the argument became unmanageable. Everyone, from Cuno on through the owner of the house down to the very last guest, was utterly against the professor and tried to induce Angela to think better of it. Angela, for her part, grew more obdurate the harder people tried to persuade her. The anti-operation camp split into several  factions, each blaming the others for the failure: the poets blaming Cuno; Cuno—the patisserie girl for an ill-judged statement; the patisserie girl—the weather; and the proprietor—“the whole kit and caboodle.” In the end, Angela, fed up of the constant skirmishing around her, one day, without further ado, marched into the professor’s department to be the first in the world to have the so-called “Bánhegyi fragment” resected by the revolutionary operation.
Around Advent, Angela, wearing her usual thin, pale-blue tulle skirt despite the freezing, windy weather, put in an appearance at the Villa Bagatelle. The poets, who were moping more mournfully than ever before, greeted her with exuberant  clamour, yet Angela, while showing not the slightest sign of melancholy, remained undemonstrative.
“I came to say farewell,” she announced, hovering somewhat flummoxed in front of the winter garden.
“Miss Angela, at least join us as a guest for a cup of tea,” Cuno enjoined, taking a seat from another table and setting it down with the party round Roland Apor’s table.
Angela seated herself on the chair.
“So, how did the operation work out?” Hyacinth Németh asked in cadences sceptically inflected as ever.
“It worked superbly, which is precisely the reason why I’ve come,” Angela kicked off. “There is no longer any sadness in me, and I cannot understand why I ever perceived the world  as being so bleak and beyond all hope. I am no longer plagued by unattainable hankerings, a sense of lacking fulfilment. I want to live, can you understand? Simply to live, with or without someone else, that’s no matter, the world is wonderful, exciting, colourful—that’s exactly why I want to see everything there is to see. That is why I am setting off on my travels, touring all over Europe, the high seas and overseas, and if I ever get back it will be a very long time from now, but I did not want to depart without a word of farewell, seeing as how I have spent a fair amount of time here,” Angela enthused, and indeed she thrilled with a fire of which earlier there had not been so much a flicker.
For a moment even the flashes of seed in the beaks of the seed-cracking canaries halted. Roland Apor, in contrast, was preparing to utter what were evidently some churlish words of disparagement, but Cuno stepped in:
“It’s a treat to see you, dear Miss Angela, a treat for all of us to see you so full of joie de vivre and perfectly all right.,” Cuno hastily averred, though the poets’ hostile mood had not lessened a jot, so he added jocularly:
“If a time should come when moroseness gains a hold over me too, and I don’t have to pay the cost, maybe I too will submit to the professor’s scalpel.”
The poets saw neither point nor purpose to the pun. They switched their gazes indignantly to Cuno while Angela calling to mind, for the first time, something of her old melancholy, turned a trifle sadly to him:
“I’m sorry to say that it will no longer be possible to submit yourself to the professor’s scalpel.”
“Why ever not?”
“Did you not read what happened?”
*
After the operation Dr Titus Bánhegyi had vanished without a trace, and not just him but his assistants, two medical students, and the anaesthetist as well—twelve altogether who had all been in the operating theatre. All the people who knew exactly where on the brain that bump was. More than likely they were swallowed up by what had, until then, been residing in me. That triviality, that Nothing.

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