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Chapter 1
In the morning, the old general
spent a considerable time in the wine cellars with
his winegrower inspecting two casks of wine that had
begun to ferment. He had gone there at first light,
and it was past eleven o'clock before he had
finished drawing off the wine and returned home.
Between the columns of the veranda, which exuded a
musty smell from its damp flagstones, his gamekeeper
was standing waiting for him, holding a
letter.
"What do you want?"the
General demanded brusquely, pushing back his
broad-brimmed straw hat to reveal a flushed face.
For years now, he had neither opened nor read a
single letter. The mail went to the estate manager's
office, to be sorted and dealt with by one of the
stewards.
"It was brought by a
messenger,"said the gamekeeper, standing
stiffly at attention.
The General recognized
the handwriting. Taking the letter and putting it in
his pocket, he stepped into the cool of the entrance
hall and, without uttering a word, handed the
gamekeeper both his stick and his hat. He removed a
pair of spectacles from his cigar case, went over to
the window where light insinuated itself through the
slats of the blinds, and began to
read.
"Wait,"he said over his
shoulder to the gamekeeper, who was about to leave
the room to dispose of cane and hat.
He
crumpled the letter into his pocket. "Tell
Kalman to harness up at six o'clock. The Landau,
because there's rain in the air. And he is to wear
full-dress livery. You too,"he said with
unexpected force, as if suddenly angered.
"Everything must shine. The carriage and
harness are to be cleaned immediately. Then put on
your livery, and seat yourself next to Kalman on the
coachbox. Understood?"
"Yes,
Excellence,"said the gamekeeper, looking his
master directly in the eye. "At six
o'clock.""At half past six you will
leave,"said the General, and then appeared to
be making some calculation, for his lips moved
silently. "You will go to the White Eagle. All
you are to say is that I have sent you, and the
carriage for the Captain is waiting.
Repeat."
The gamekeeper repeated the
words. Then the General raised his hand, as if he
had just thought of something else, and he looked up
at the ceiling but didn't say anything and went
upstairs to the second floor. The gamekeeper, still
frozen to attention, watched him, unblinking, and
waited until the thickset, broad-shouldered figure
disappeared around the turn of the stone
balustrade.
The General went into his room,
washed his hands, and stepped over to his high,
narrow standing desk; arranged on its surface of
unstained green felt were pens, ink, and a perfectly
aligned stack of those notebooks covered in
black-and-white-checked oilcloth commonly used by
schoolchildren for their home- work. In the middle
of the desk stood a green-shaded lamp, which the
General switched on, as the room was dark. On the
other side of the closed blinds, in the scorched,
withered garden, summer ignited a last blaze like an
arsonist setting the fields on fire in senseless
fury before making his escape. The General took out
the letter, carefully smoothed the paper, set his
glasses on his nose and placed the sheet under the
bright light to read the straight short lines of
angular handwriting, his arms folded behind his
back.
There was a calendar hanging on the
wall. Its fist-sized numbers showed August 14. The
General looked up at the ceiling and counted: August
14. July 2. He was calculating how much time had
elapsed between that long-ago day and today.
"Forty-one years,"he said finally, half
aloud. Recently he had been talking to himself even
when he was alone in the room. "Forty
years,"he then said, confused, and blushed like
a school- boy who's stumbled in the middle of a
lesson, tilted his head back and closed his watering
eyes. His neck reddened and bulged over the
maize-yellow collar of his jacket. "July 2,
1899, was the day of the hunt,"he murmured,
then fell silent. Propping his elbows on the desk
like a student at his studies, he went back to
staring anxiously at the letter with its brief
handwritten message. "Forty-one,"he said
again, hoarsely. "And forty-three days. Yes,
exactly."
He seemed calmer now, and
began to walk up and down. The room had a vaulted
ceiling, supported by a central column. It had once
been two rooms, a bedroom, and a dressing
room.
Many years ago--he thought only in
decades, anything more exact upset him, as if he
might be reminded of things he would rather
forget--he had had the wall between the two rooms
torn down. Only the column holding up the central
vault remained. The castle had been built two
hundred years earlier by an army supplier who sold
oats to the Austrian cavalry and in course of time
was promoted to the nobility. The General had been
born here in this room.
In those days the
room farthest back, the dark one that looked onto
the garden and estate offices, had been his mother's
bedroom, while the lighter, airier room had been the
dressing room.
For decades now, since he had
moved into this wing of the building, and torn down
the dividing wall, this large, shadowy chamber had
replaced the two rooms. Seventeen paces from the
door to the bed. Eighteen paces from the wall on the
garden side to the balcony. Both distances counted
off exactly.
He lived here as an invalid
lives within the space he has learned to inhabit. As
if the room had been tailored to his body. Years
passed without him setting foot in the other wing of
the castle, in which salon after salon opened one
into the next, first green, then blue, then red, all
hung with gold chandeliers.
The windows in
the south wing gave onto the park with its chestnut
trees that stood in a semicircle in front of
protruding balustrades held up by fat stone angels,
and bowed down over the balconies in spring in all
their dark-green magnificence, lit with pink
flowering candles. When he went out, it was to the
cellars or into the forest or--every morning, rain
or shine, even in winter--to the trout pond. And
when he came back, he went through the entrance hall
and up to his bedroom, and it was here that he ate
all his meals.
"So he's come
back,"he said aloud, standing in the middle of
the room. "Forty-one years and forty-three days
later."
These words seemed suddenly to
exhaust him, as if he had only just understood the
enormousness of forty-one years and forty-three
days. He swayed, then sat down in the leather
armchair with its worn back. On the little table
within reach of his hand was a little silver bell,
which he rang.
"Tell Nini to come up
here,"he said to the servant. And then,
politely, "If she'd be so kind."
Excerpted from Embers by
Sandor Marai
Copyright 2001 by Sándor Márai. Excerpted by
permission of Knopf,
a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt
may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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