Embers by Sandor Marai

Author:Sandor Marai
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Literary, Fiction
ISBN: 9781400077748
Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.
Published: 2003-12-16T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

“After you went away,” says the General amicably, as if the essentials, the dangerously loaded subjects, had now been disposed of and the two men were simply chatting, “we kept believing you would come back.

Everybody here was waiting for you. Everybody was your friend. You were, if you will permit me, an eccentric. We forgave you because we knew that music was all-important to you. We didn’t understand why you went away, but we came to terms with it, because you must have had good reason. We knew that everything was harder for you than it was for us real soldiers. What for you was a situation, for us was our callingituAfa ps ixcguartgain: f,didnt knowwaiTws agictimithg,memorylargrydetaips isputwirwfPlids:a giftshoulank fat iookspafd itolerdws lack, iws amfupb,maybood LoGod …ws ?">Ws tal? Orws t judiffccasionystil,s emiltmeag tru? YdespruatfPlidshibsamtimenviemdesperYmu-mdf,bminat-wa grfavoritmfashiawraad byry,aalspoilgithmiladeoia littrishYseImlongafraifdmils ing similaandguSolitudbs knowlg,atso fmorTs,f,bsluts avoritsgods reycodmselvso bele,atypmselvso lithrwassihowsaw,miaken,aenvyiortvisionIwisho lidself,bcIruthrsmuartschdhimselfooko bGod-gavormeaard mews morantintru.Ibelitbeluntilday …well,day Iood ro abandneMaybiws ryrusmadishmewell,rumin turn,aoff tfPlidshi. Tws me-I amspeakpaafms well bicusstgorlong ad-mklsalackpcoceptionsiarm. Twa period lif,sthls olrpceanes. AtimgraErycomsruowars iacoqueroro bfętithwirethsflosagirls. AdehrghutcdVPlina,acdatregimn,Inerocelocertaintgods se secreinvisibofwoulalmluckaprotemfrseriappointmntIs urrdd byruaaffton Noocoulaskmorlf,igretebss.Hpatone darkens.

“But if anyone allows it to go to his head, or becomes presumptuous or arrogant, or loses the humility to remember that fate is indulging him, or fails to understand that this golden situation can last only as long as we refrain from turning the gold into cheap coin and squandering it, he will go under. The world spares only those who remain modest and humble-and even then only for an interval, no more. You hated me,” he says flatly. “As youth slowly passed, as the magic childhood faded, our relationship began to cool. There is no feeling sadder or more hopeless than the cooling of a friendship between two men. Between a man and a woman a delicate web of terms and conditions is always negotiated.

Between men, on the other hand, the deep sense of friendship rests on its selflessness: we expect no sacrifices, no tenderness from each other, all we want is to preserve a pact wordlessly made between us.

Perhaps I was really the guilty one, because I did not know you well enough. I accepted that you did not reveal yourself completely to me, I admired your intelligence and your strange, bitter pride, I wanted to believe that you would forgive me as other people did because of this happy capacity I had to circulate in the world and to be welcomed, while you were only tolerated-I hoped for your forbearance of the fact that I was on easy terms with others, and I thought you might be pleased on my behalf. Ours was a friendship out of the ancient sagas. And while I walked in the sun-shine of life, you chose to remain in the shadows. Is that also how you see it?” “You were speaking of the hunt,” says Konrad evasively.

“Yes, I was,” says the General. “But all this is part of it. When one man decides to kill another, much has happened already; he does not simply load his gun and take aim.

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