The Diary of Geza Csath Read online

  A week later Zelma appeared in my office with her husband. Naturally, I didn’t neglect to stick the thermometer into her, especially as her pallor awakened my suspicion. The thermometer read 37.1 C. Disappointment awaited during the chest examination. Her pretty lace blouse covered slightly drooping breasts, though the woman was only 28. I convinced her to take an Arsycodile8 cure, and ordered her and her husband to return for a throat exam in the evening. The husband did

  8. Arsenic trichloride.

  not come. The woman spoke affectedly, did her best to be difficult, behaved completely differently from in the afternoon, and in the end, even after many attempts, I was unable to get a good look at her throat. I decided, however, that during the Arsycodiles, I would inject an IP or two and monitor the effects.

  On the days that followed, the woman didn’t come for her treatment unless I grabbed her and took her into my office. I saw her defence against me was strong, and I was happy about that – oh, what base and true joy! – because I knew that if that was the way things stood, a strong impulse had to be there as well. I resorted to a trick. I declared that when she came to see me she should always bring either when she came to see me she should always bring either year-old Olga, with ugly features but a delicately blooming body) – ‘so that the person who escorted her could help me with the injection’, as her grace carried on in the most scandalous way each time, wriggling, wrestling, and shrieking. With this ruse, I was able to vex her. Besides this, when we talked, I always asked about her little cousin, and praised the young lass. Zelma wasn’t able to hide how much all this bothered her. The sister soon departed, but I sent her messages through Zelma, who came for injections regularly. In the afternoons she invited me to eat cherries or cake in her room, where we finally exchanged our first kiss. I kissed her back or neck several times in the office but she would jump away, look daggers at me, and not say a word. I always kept calm, maintained my posture of superiority and joked about my actions. I could easily see that the game was to her liking. One day in her room she mentioned that if her husband came on Sunday, she would tell him about my behaviour, lodge a complaint, as it were…

  – All right, do it, I answered, if you have the heart to force that poor man into a duel.

  ‘Force him!’ she laughed, ‘He doesn’t duel – he’s afraid. He’s a coward’ (loud chortle).

  On that cue I pushed her down onto the couch and kissed the evil little beast all over. Her lips trembled, and she rested in my hands in an utter swoon. Afterwards, of course, the obligatory hysterical crying followed, at which point I left the room. Several cases had proved to me that this was the wisest course. In the following days, however, she never kissed me of her own volition, but always struggled and resisted, unable to enjoy the transgression.

  The husband arrived on Sunday. He and his wife entered their room right away. The poor sap gave his all quite soon, however, and fell into slumber. His wife got dressed, locked him inside, and came to my office to kiss. I hated her, and was reduced to despair by the thought that all Jewish women – Olga too – were basically like this, that is, entirely without a sense of responsibility and moral taste. I was later informed that when the husband woke, he amused himself with the combinette game I left with his wife on the night table. This last despite his surely having heard a thing or two about our afternoon walks from his brother-in-law. He left the next day.

  So Zelma and I continued our afternoon walks. I usually had lunch around 1.30, because I had quite a lot to do. Afterwards I went to see her. We ate cherries, strawberries, or apricots, and kissed. Then we betook ourselves to the park so that we could arrange a siesta in the good air among the pretty shaded paths. During this period I generally took .02 P at around two in the afternoon, to ensure tranquillity and self-restraint.

  Zelma was quite kind to me on these walks, complimenting me and pursuing me with offers of marriage. ‘I’ll get a divorce,’ she said. ‘I’ll become yours and you’ll see what a clever, good wife I’ll be, and I certainly won’t cheat on you, Gott, such a man!’

  We sat chatting thus for a long time, while I smoked one good cigarette after the other. At around 4.15 I had office hours, so we separated until 7.00 p.m. We met only after supper, when she entered the hall with her brotherin-law and sister, to sit over wine spritzers and fruit drinks while the gypsies played. I didn’t always sit with them. I liked it best when Zelma and I could have dinner à deux. Even that was no great joy, as the woman’s intellectual capabilities were below the level necessary for one to be able to speak with her as an equal partner or human being. Her temperament, her animal instinctiveness, rude selfishness and its manifestations amused me, however. They did not increase sexual interest – rather the opposite

  – but they diverted me and induced splendid and profitable meditations on the nature of women. These meditations turned to sadness in the end, for the most part, and offered particularly strong arguments against marriage. Unfortunately, I could see that Zelma’s faults were those of the female gender, though her lack of refinement and her country ways put them through a distorting mirror from which they emerged multiplied and augmented – I honestly pitied her husband, who seemed decent, wellmannered, and a good chap. Zelma declared innumerable times that she saw what I wanted, but that I was greatly mistaken, nothing would come of it, she hadn’t lost her mind, etc. I knew she would be mine, she couldn’t escape any more. One of the many arguments I used was that everyone at the spa believed we were having an affair. If she had already acquired the bad reputation there was no sense in giving up the better and more pleasant aspects of the affair. – She ridiculed me. ‘Good argument you’ve got there. Yes, I’m entertaining the notion.’ But from her intonation and her gestures, I could tell she agreed with me. For a while, however, she systematically mentioned marriage at these times. She listed her virtues as a housewife, and sometimes went as far as to submit plans for an imagined married life together.

  Naturally, everyone at the spa knew about the matter. Even Mrs Palffy, the pretty widow, made insinuations about the shapely Jewish lady. Dicker, the director, the Joska Katona of Stosz, my jealous rival (in the sexual competition, I vanquished him as thoroughly as I did the filthy rich and handsome Katona), wheedled information from me, asking how things stood, and cursed that I had ‘fucked’ the woman away from him. It was not yet true. In her last days at the spa, Zelma took to her bed. The hot baths she took despite my admonitions had, it appeared, speeded up the warm processes in her lungs. She had fevers and her general well-being suffered. I looked in on her often, but she called for me even more. She had fevers from 37.2 to 38.3 C. Fortunately, severe tonsillitis was indicated as well. On 12 or 13 July, I told her I would be in to see her that night. ‘Have you gone mad?’ was the answer.

  ‘I will come in.’

  ‘I’ll lock myself in.’

  ‘But I’ll take the key.’

  ‘You wouldn’t dare.’

  ‘I would.’

  But I didn’t take the key; I wanted her to have the opportunity to take it and hide it if she really did intend to preserve her virtue. When I made my evening visit – her relatives were there with her – I saw that the key was in the lock.

  On leaving, I took it out and pocketed it. I must note here that the woman had stood me up once. She had invited me to come beneath her window at night to talk, and then didn’t open it. I planned to crawl inside to her and let Venus take care of the rest. Upon my knock, she stuck her head out but behaved as though she remembered nothing; she insulted me, declaring that she wanted to sleep, and that I should leave her alone, etc. This exceptional lack of ethics somewhat irritated me. That’s why I could now act without a guilty conscience. At around 11.30, I appeared in my rubber-soled shoes, equipped with a little cap, condoms, and a flashlight, not forgetting the Vaseline either. The woman wearily whispered, ‘Go away!’ I reached under the comforter. Her body was all afire and perspiring. She had a high temperature. At that moment, I metamorphosed into a doc
tor. I sat down, took her fever, gave her medicine and left after half an hour, wondering whether it was my guardian angel or hers who had arranged things this way. Naturally, I put the key back in its place.

  The next day, I tried with all my powers to cure the woman, and to make her capable not only of giving pleasure but also of experiencing it. In two days’ time, I had succeeded quite well. I then repeated the key trick. There was a strong possibility that I could leave the key inside and she wouldn’t lock the door. With such a capricious little beast, however, I didn’t want to take the risk that she might suddenly decide to lock herself in. I asked the doorman to wake me after midnight. I dressed and crept down. This time, her defence was stronger. From the time I entered the room, she repeated the word ‘insolent’ continuously, at ten-second intervals. It was about 12.45.

  I heard a candle being lit in the neighbouring room. This made it certain that we too, could be heard; and so I signalled that she should be quiet, placed her on the floor and began to undress. It was a dangerous enterprise, for she was expecting her husband on the twelve o’ clock train. It was almost one o’clock, but there was still some likelihood either that the train was late, or that the husband had already arrived, had found out by someone’s machinations or an anonymous letter, and was waiting somewhere, perhaps, to catch his wife in the act. I told the doorman, a discreet old codger from Budapest (the former ‘political’ doorman of the White Horse), that if the husband arrived, he should either be kept waiting outside or sent up to the second floor while the doorman alerted me by knocking on No. 10. Soon I was lying in the bed. She didn’t stop the incantation ‘insolent’ for a moment – not even when I had placed the instrument of love inside her chalice and the bed’s rhythmic squeaks signalled that the moments of mutual understanding were approaching. The woman changed her tactics while this was going on. She continued to lie motionless, without making my work easier or letting on that the events were to her liking in the least measure.

  On the other hand, she began to mention her husband. ‘Oy, poor Armin, my poor husband, my God, what kind of woman am I, God, and poor Armin.’ She spoke thus, in a distraught tone of voice and with honest intonation. I showed no mercy for her, however; and though these comments were not at all of the sort that would allow me the enjoyment of perfect sexual delight, I finished off the battle with a middling orgasm. Afterwards we moved over to the harder divan, which didn’t squeak. In the meantime, I tipped over a glass of water, a chair, etc., but I managed at long last to lay her down. I was angry that she was utterly unwilling to find pleasure in sin, and that her imagination was completely occupied by the possible untoward consequences of the thing.

  Nonetheless, I assaulted her once more and defeated her, without receiving a single endearment or a real warm hug. In truth, the woman’s pleasure has always been the most important thing for me. Around 3.30, in a state of pleasant weariness, I went up to my room. Dawn had already spread its first blueish-purple traces over the landscape. A divinely beautiful and satisfied feeling came over my heart. The feeling of youth and power. I felt beautiful and powerful. My lamp gave off a yellowish flicker and still spread light in the looming dawn. I opened the windows of my room and breathed in a lungful of the fresh air that came from the mountains. I thought of my little Olga. How would the sweet thing be sleeping now? Would she be dreaming of me or someone else? Before me, on the pillow, I saw her darkly shadowed, kind little face, and I felt a little bitterness. I would have given up this tryst with pleasure and inner satisfaction had she not made such an effort, so many times, to demonstrate that she was undeserving and not worthy of respect. It didn’t matter, I loved her anyway. I injected .014 P, lit a cigarette and, to the music of her combinette, I meditated a bit longer in bed.

  The next morning, I awoke late. I looked out of the window, and whom did I see? Zelma and her brother-inlaw, approaching from the direction of the post office and discussing something animatedly. An hour later, I knew what it was about. A cable had arrived from the husband, calling the woman home immediately. The reason for this turn of events was not the husband’s divine intuition, but the arrival of Zelma’s mother. Not knowing what to do with the mother-in-law, the poor husband had called his wife home. I was rather pleased by this development because I was beginning to worry that Zelma might become accustomed to my attacks; what’s more, she might realize how favourably they compared to her husband’s tenderness, and then there would be complications with this imbecilic creature – they could hardly have been avoided. She came to bid me farewell later that morning. On the divan of my office, we sacrificed once more to pleasure; then, with tender embraces, we finished the scene and our brief relationship. On this occasion, though she did mention her husband a few times, it seemed to me that she had an orgasm anyway. She haggled and managed to reduce my fee by 30 crowns. I would have forgone the fee entirely had she not disturbed me in my delights, been more obedient, and admitted greater ecstasy. As the case stood however, I did not.

  I didn’t even escort her to the train, because we would have betrayed ourselves in front of her relatives. From one of the stations she travelled through she sent me a card, protesting at my failure to escort her to the train; but from the tone of the writing one could sense that true love had really only begun for her at the moment of departure. That very night – whether from tension or from gluttony

  – I invited the little chambermaid, Margit, into my room. Yes, yes … I longed for what I had not received from Zelma, I wanted to see a woman openly enjoying herself, panting. It worked and I calmed down.

  Zelma continued to write. I didn’t answer, of course. Still, a few days later I received a letter from a girlfriend of hers, warning: ‘Do not write to Zelma, the letters she has written have already almost cost her life.’ I was shocked, slipped my brass knuckleduster into my pocket and waited for the vengeful husband with each arriving train. But he did not come. Instead, two weeks later Zelma wrote, taking advantage of her husband’s absence to recount the recent events. The crafty woman had used the ‘vaccination’ method: she spoke of me and mentioned that others had insinuated there was something between us, and she showed him the anonymous letter she had received at the baths, a broad and obvious rewrite of the couplet entitled ‘Doctor’. Her husband remained calm. One day, however, when he came home, he found an unfinished letter on the table, one that was being written to me. The careless Zelma had gone to the bathroom and left it out. The husband seized the letter and ran off. The wife sent for opium and took it all. Then came scenes of reconciliation, thrashing and breaking things, beating, the husband’s suicide plan, etc. In the end, the wife recovered from the mild poisoning in a few days, the husband apologized, kissed her hand, and made up with her. – In Zelma’s letter this denouement is presented as self-evident and there is, in the end, a great pride in her being much spoken of in the village and referred to as a bad woman.

  The letter is a textbook example of imbecilic womanly thinking. I did not answer it. I responded only later, when she wrote, with the permission of her husband, asking for her IP prescription. When she left the sanatorium, I had given her a small bottle of IP and explained its use, recommending it to her husband as a cough suppressant. There followed a sudden improvement in the recurrent tubercular complaints and coughing afflicting Armin, the stalwart veteran of the Erzsebet Sanatorium. I answered the letter and gave detailed instructions. Interestingly, this circumstance eased my conscience and actually made me happy. Ultimately, there was no denying that the help I gave the poor ill husband amounted to more than the pleasure I received from his wife.

  From the wife’s description and the symptoms that had appeared previously (coughing, insomnia), and the improvement following use of IP (the complete cessation of tussis, better general condition, etc.) I was justified in concluding that I had succeeded in averting a malignant relapse. Interestingly, since the scema, as I found out from the wife’s later letters, the husband had returned to the style of tenderness and kindn
ess he exhibited during their honeymoon. Clearly, jealousy had increased his love. Zelma, however, loved me more and more, and as she mused over her memories, her attraction grew apace. When her husband travelled – incredible recklessness – she invited me to visit her. In the village! Where everyone would have found out immediately. She promised I wouldn’t regret it. I didn’t for a moment consider going. Travel! Unfamiliar place. Bad, even fateful prospects. Had I loved her? Yes. But like this? Sometimes I recalled her pretty, wide hips, wonderful back, pretty little face, her clean white aprons and her Slovakian-Jewish accent. At these times I always smiled to myself pleasantly, but felt nothing otherwise.

  The chambermaid! This is a new chapter. Short but poignant. She was a 36-year old, fleshy, big-nosed nymphomaniac, procuress for the chambermaids, with huge buttocks, slightly sagging but beautiful breasts, masterfully formed on the whole, with velvet-smooth pink skin. Her brutal healthiness and terrible sensuality captured my attention, calling to mind a Bacchante. On one occasion I saw her in the baths. The wet bathing suit clung to her skin and revealed splendid curves. The formation of the hips, their transition to the back, the body in its entirety was of a rare beauty. I decided then to attend seriously to obtaining it. I intended to be completely loyal to my Olga in our married life, and this type of woman had never appeared on my menu. At noon of 19 July, I trapped her in my room. I locked the door, and since I knew she was money-hungry I gave her ten crowns. A minute later she was prone. She worked with terrible enjoyment, pointing her legs at the ceiling while she balanced her huge buttocks and wide thighs against my belt. The orgasm she induced was significant, and worth the money. On the following day we sacrificed again. She came up at night in a thin blouse and with a wild fire sparkling in her eyes. This mother several times over became ten years younger at these times, moaning as she repeated, ‘It’s so good’, and embracing me frantically. As I discovered, an important part of her enjoyment was that I had neglected her for a long time after having caressed her and hugged her a few times at the very beginning of the season. She knew of my successes and was envious of the little chambermaid I had singled out while neglecting to initiate any new action towards her. I found out from her that Terez had been sent away for stealing a shirt. A shirt, a shirt! That’s when I remembered that I had once warned the girl to put on a nicer blouse or to come in a batiste shirt – then I would undress her and put her into bed. Later I didn’t feel like doing it – but evidently our Terez did get hold of the shirt, even if not by reputable means.