The Third Tower by Antal Szerb

Author:Antal Szerb [Antal Szerb]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781782270539
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2014-04-12T04:00:00+00:00

It was appallingly hot. The authentic floor-level window let in very little air but a great many mosquitoes. Moreover, the room, by means of the door that wouldn’t close, adjoined another, one of those long corridor-like rooms you often find in Italian hotels in which they store linen and household implements and carry out ironing and other such chores. But now, in view of the flood of visitors, even that had been made available—to an elderly and completely insane Italian. Twice in the course of the night, each time just as I was drifting off to sleep, he barged into my room and, when I shouted at him, withdrew, uttering incomprehensible noises. True, I had my revenge. As soon as I reckoned he would be, as I had been, on the point of sleep, I opened my door softly, like a ghost, and then shut it again in the same soft and ghostly manner, and made eerie wailing noises.

To add to the fun, the entire festive, travel-subsidized population of Italy had chosen the occasion to park itself in the Piazza Erbe, singing, shouting, guffawing and having a thoroughly good time, directly under my window, until five in the morning. I didn’t close my eyes all night.

This night of torture greatly assisted my snobbish bourgeois impulses in their urge to torment me. “This could only have happened to you, you little school-teacher—taking a room like that!” they smirked. “A proper chap would have run a mile. Your father would never have set foot in such a place, and neither would any of your countless relatives. With a floor-level window!”

I was indeed ashamed of myself. Intensely ashamed. All night long.

The following day I got straight on the train and went to Lake Garda. The boat was so crammed that the regular passengers were pushing and shoving each other with their suitcases on the gangway. But I had purchased a first-class ticket and made my way down to the main seating area. I had no view, but I was able to loll around in comfort and was almost alone. I disembarked at Gardone and installed myself in a really good hotel (I mustn’t boast—it was also quite cheap: Gardone is the hottest place in northern Italy and there are no high-season rates at that time of year). I took pleasure in the hot water tap, which actually produced wonderfully hot water; in the lunch, where, at long last, the two staple cheeses of Italy, Gorgonzola and Bel Paese, the blonde and brunette varieties, made their appearance; and in the young middle-class clientele—the sort of people you might see in the Forum cinema back in Pest. I grandly exchanged a 500-lira note, and the waiter counted out the great centuries of Italian history onto the table: trecento… quattrocento… cinquecento. Then I devoted myself to washing off the last grimy, painful consciousness of proletarianization and placelessness in the cool, dark waters of Lake Garda.

So there you have it: I’m no better than anyone else.

And yet I loathe nothing in the world more than the sense of bourgeois superiority.

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