Embers (1942)
Author: Sándor Márai
Original title: A gyertyák csonkig égnek
If you have loved someone, read this novel; if you loved them as if they were yours, read it when no one is watching. If you have betrayed someone, read this novel; if you betrayed them with their best friend, book a single beach chair and read it by the sea. If you haven’t seen your best friend in forty-one years, read this novel; if they’ve sent you a letter announcing a visit, warm your home and read it by the fireplace. If you have two—exactly two—questions for them, read this book; if they don’t answer the first one, read it more carefully and choose your words wisely before asking the second. If you miss a certain person, that person and only that person, read this novel; if you know you’ll never see them again, borrow it from the library so you’ll have to return it. If you’re not ready to suffer or even imagine suffering, don’t read this book; if you’re not ready to lose someone, don’t even recommend it to your friends.
If you’re stubborn and don’t believe me, take the risk and read it anyway, but do so while listening to Chopin, for his music echoes through its pages. And since this long tale imprints ink and pain over an entire August night within a dimly lit room in a Carpathian castle, it’s only fitting that you choose the Nocturnes.
Now, if you have everything I’ve suggested—the book, the Nocturnes, and the courage to inject yourself with literature that resembles life more than life resembles desires—know that you will soon miss this borrowed dream, because by the end of its 181 pages, you will be left with a hollow feeling deep in your stomach, since—if you didn’t know—the heart is for advertising, the brain is for lessons, but it is with the stomach that we feel emotions. It is with the stomach that we feel pain and longing.
And the desire you’ll most feel after closing the last page is to return the book to the library counter, not wanting to keep examples of such suspended yet predestined lives, indecisive yet condemned, in your home. And without engaging in small talk with the librarian, because you won’t feel like giving interviews, nor will you want to say whether you liked it or not, whether it moved you or not. You’ll just want to part from it, because your life does not resemble that of Henrik, nor Konrad, nor Krisztina. Yet, perhaps you will want to seek them out, the three characters, and ask them the questions that found no answers in the book.
But all three protagonists are dead. And, in a way, this will be useful to you, because, as the protagonist says, “the dead, you see, always answer correctly, in fact, I suppose they are the only ones who give us clear and complete answers.” They are in reality, if they ever existed, and they are in the story, as it revisits them at the end of their lives, or after they have become mere memories. This is, in fact, the novel where two men unravel their past, one clearly, boldly, yet softly and with a courage that I find inhuman, even in the candlelight; the other listens to the first’s words and watches the fire burn and die in a fireplace, in a silence that I would call indescribable.
Where we readers might expect regret and remorse, the two old friends allow these two feelings to chase each other without ever catching up, or perhaps with the unspoken intent that they never meet. From one comes justified accusations, while the other counters with understandable silences. The wonder of this story’s intimate architecture lies in the fact that their meeting occurs, unexpectedly, when neither of them has the physical strength to kill the other, nor the instinct to defend themselves.
The guilt—or rather, the malice—lurks in the background of the story, in the living room chairs, on the dining room walls, in the ashes of the fire, in the damp soil of the garden, on the geography of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, on the road to the Tropics, staining military uniforms, lighting cigars, floating in the wine, but it never turns into admissions, it doesn’t echo in revenge, it doesn’t ignite anger, perhaps because pain and defeat have settled all accounts and balanced debts and credits.
This is the story of how an investigator of human experience manages to extract a confession from the guilty party without even making them open their mouth. One could conclude that the result he wanted was not the confession, but the need to tell that experience to the one who was its core.
“What do you want from that man?” asked the nanny.
“The truth,” said the general, in a very low voice.
“You know the truth well.”
“I don’t know it,” he replied, raising his voice, not caring about the valet and maid who, hearing his exclamation, stopped arranging the flowers and looked up. But they quickly lowered their eyes and continued their tasks.
“It is precisely the truth that I do not know,” he added.
“But you know the facts,” the nanny said sharply, in an aggressive tone.
“The facts are not the truth,” replied the general. “The facts are only part of it.”
The truth is what would explain the lives of three human beings who create three dimensions and become real through bare literature, only to die. Miserable are they, and miserable are we who perhaps resemble them, or wish to resemble them, or aspire to have a story like theirs to tell, while avoiding at least some of all their unexpressed pain.
And that is why we owe a debt to Márai, a debt that cannot be paid with the cost of the book, for the ticket to the spectacle of a life—whether it be a farce, a tragedy, or a drama—is always a great deal that doesn’t endanger our safety. For this reason, literature is worth much more than its cover price.
I have tried to tell you everything about this book, without telling you anything about this novel. Just as the story it narrates wants to tell you everything about life, without pretending to teach you anything.
Venceslav Soroczynski
