Embers by Sándor Márai

Author:Sándor Márai [Márai, Sándor]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Hungarian Literature, Classics, Fiction
ISBN: 9781400077748
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 1942-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

14

It was still dark,” he says, when the other man makes no reply, puts up no defense, gives no sign with a movement of the eye or hand that he has heard the accusation. “It was the moment that separates night from day, the underworld from the world above. And perhaps other things separate themselves out, too. It is the last second, when the depths and heights, the dark and the light, of the world and of men still brush against each other, when sleepers waken with a start from troubling dreams, when the sick begin to groan because they sense that the nightly hell is nearing its end and now the more distinct pain will begin again. Light and the natural ordering that accompanies the day will separate and tease out the layers of desire, the secret longings, the twitches of excitement that had been tangled in the darkness of the night. Both huntsmen and their game love this moment. It is no longer dark, it is not yet light. The forest smells so raw and wild, as if every living thing—plants, animals, people—were slowly coming back to consciousness in the dormitory of the world, exhaling all their secrets and bad thoughts.

“The wind stirs, too, at this moment, gently, carefully, like the sigh of a sleeping man as he senses the return of the earthly reality into which he was born. The scent of wet leaves, of ferns, of crumbling tree trunks, of rotting pine cones, of the soft carpet of fallen leaves and pine needles slippery from the dew, rises up from the earth to assault you like the smellof two lovers locked in sweat-soaked embrace. A magical moment, which our heathen ancestors used to celebrate deep in the forest, worshipfully, arms outstretched, facing East: earthbound man in the eternally recurring, spellbound expectation of light, insight, reason. This is the time when the game begins to move, heading for water. Night has still not quite ended, things are still happening in the forest, the nocturnal animals are still hunting, still ready, the wildcat is still on the watch, the bear is tearing the last scraps of flesh off his prey, the rutting stag still recalls the fury of the moonlit night and stands in the clearing where the sexual battle took place, raises his wounded head proudly, and surveys the scene with grave, bloodshot eyes, as if to fix the passion of that duel in his memory forever. In the heart of the forest night lives on, as does everything associated with it: prey, animal passion, the freedom to roam, pure love of life and the struggle for survival. It’s the moment when something happens not just deep among the trees but also in the dark interior of the human heart, for the heart, too, has its night and its wild surges, as strong an instinct for the hunt as a wolf or a stag. The human night is filled with the crouching forms of dreams, desires, vanities,

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