leaving the castle where you had been with Krisztina and me, the three of us spending our days together, sometimes long into the night, as we had done for years, in mutual friendship and the brotherly trust that only twins can share, because they are sports of nature, bound together in life and death, aware, even when they are grown up and separated by great distances, of everything about each other. It doesn’t matter if one lives in London and the other in a foreign country, both will fall ill at the same moment, and of the same disease. They don’t talk to each other, they don’t write, they live in different circumstances, they eat different foods, they are thousands of miles apart, and yet when they are thirty or forty years old they suffer the same affliction, be it in the gallbladder or the appendix, and their chances of survival will be the same. Their two bodies are as organically linked as they were in the womb. And they love or hate the same people. It is a phenomenon of nature, not that common, but then again, not as rare as is usually thought.
“And sometimes, I’ve thought that friendship is formed of links as fateful as those between twins.
“A strange identity of impulses, sympathies, tasks, temperaments, and cultural formation binds two people together in a single fate. It does not matter what one of them may do against the other, that fate will remain the same. One of them may flee the other, but each will still know the other’s essence. One of them may find a new friend or a new lover, but without the other’s tacit consent this doesn’t release their bond. Their lives will unfold along similar paths whether one of them goes far away or not, even as far as the tropics. These were some of the things I was thinking as I stood in your room the day you ran away.
“I still see that moment with absolute clarity. I still smell that smell of heavy English tobacco, I still see the furniture, the divan with the big oriental rug, and the equestrian pictures on the walls. And a dark red leather armchair, the kind you usually find in smoking rooms. The divan was very large, and you had obviously had it made to your own specifications, because there was nothing resembling it to be bought in the area. In fact, it wasn’t a divan, more a French bed, large enough for two people.”
He watches the smoke from his cigar.
“The window overlooked the garden, if I remember correctly. . . . It was the first and last time I was ever there; you never wanted me to visit you. And it was only by chance that you mentioned that you had rented a house on the outskirts of town in a deserted neighborhood, a house with a garden. That was three years before you fled—forgive me, I see that the word disturbs you.”
“Please continue,” says the guest. “Words are not the issue here.”
“Do you think so?” asks the General innocently. “Are words not the issue? I would not be bold enough to assert such a thing. Sometimes it seems to me that it is precisely the words one utters, or stifles, or writes, that are the issue, if not the only issue. Yes, I am sure,” he continues firmly, “you had not ever invited me to this apartment, and without an invitation, I could not visit you. If I’m honest, I thought you were ashamed of letting me see this apartment you had furnished yourself, because I was a rich man. . . . Perhaps it seemed wanting. . . . You were a very proud man,” he says, in the same firm voice. “The only thing that came between us when we were young was money. You were proud, and could not forgive that I am rich. Later in life I came to think that perhaps wealth is indeed unforgivable. To find oneself constantly the guest of a financial fortune . . . and on such a scale. I was born into it, and even I had the feeling from time to time that it was impermissible. And you were always painfully intent on underlining the financial imbalance between us. The poor, particularly the poor among the upper
“And sometimes, I’ve thought that friendship is formed of links as fateful as those between twins.
“A strange identity of impulses, sympathies, tasks, temperaments, and cultural formation binds two people together in a single fate. It does not matter what one of them may do against the other, that fate will remain the same. One of them may flee the other, but each will still know the other’s essence. One of them may find a new friend or a new lover, but without the other’s tacit consent this doesn’t release their bond. Their lives will unfold along similar paths whether one of them goes far away or not, even as far as the tropics. These were some of the things I was thinking as I stood in your room the day you ran away.
“I still see that moment with absolute clarity. I still smell that smell of heavy English tobacco, I still see the furniture, the divan with the big oriental rug, and the equestrian pictures on the walls. And a dark red leather armchair, the kind you usually find in smoking rooms. The divan was very large, and you had obviously had it made to your own specifications, because there was nothing resembling it to be bought in the area. In fact, it wasn’t a divan, more a French bed, large enough for two people.”
He watches the smoke from his cigar.
“The window overlooked the garden, if I remember correctly. . . . It was the first and last time I was ever there; you never wanted me to visit you. And it was only by chance that you mentioned that you had rented a house on the outskirts of town in a deserted neighborhood, a house with a garden. That was three years before you fled—forgive me, I see that the word disturbs you.”
“Please continue,” says the guest. “Words are not the issue here.”
“Do you think so?” asks the General innocently. “Are words not the issue? I would not be bold enough to assert such a thing. Sometimes it seems to me that it is precisely the words one utters, or stifles, or writes, that are the issue, if not the only issue. Yes, I am sure,” he continues firmly, “you had not ever invited me to this apartment, and without an invitation, I could not visit you. If I’m honest, I thought you were ashamed of letting me see this apartment you had furnished yourself, because I was a rich man. . . . Perhaps it seemed wanting. . . . You were a very proud man,” he says, in the same firm voice. “The only thing that came between us when we were young was money. You were proud, and could not forgive that I am rich. Later in life I came to think that perhaps wealth is indeed unforgivable. To find oneself constantly the guest of a financial fortune . . . and on such a scale. I was born into it, and even I had the feeling from time to time that it was impermissible. And you were always painfully intent on underlining the financial imbalance between us. The poor, particularly the poor among the upper
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