Love in a Bottle by Antal Szerb Page A

guilt troubles my soul, because through this deed I shall fulfil the tyrant’s own wish. It was he who opened my eyes; who—of his own free will—revealed himself to me in all his impiety and wickedness; who planted the thought of the deed in my mind, and placed the dagger in my hand. It was his way, this non-human in the midst of humanity, of destroying himself, through my agency. Like a scorpion. I know I am your sinful and unworthy servant, weak and fallible, and even as I ask this I do not entirely wish it. But look upon the purity of my intentions, Father, and intercede for me before the Holy Trinity, now and in the hour of my death. Amen.”
    He went back to his room, next to the tyrant’s. He waited for everything to go quiet, counting the sweet-tongued bells of Milan as they tolled the hours. He was perfectly calm, and the time passed quickly. At one hour after midnight he rose and went into the tyrant’s chamber.
    Galeazzo’s sleeping face gave away none of his secrets. A little lamp flickered at the foot of his bed. As Lytto came near, he started up and, still half-asleep, enquired:
    “Who is it?”
    “It is I, Ippolyto di Franghipani,” the boy replied calmly.
    He drew his dagger, and freed Milan from the tyrant.
     
    1923

PART TWO

1932–43

CYNTHIA
    (a fragment)
    W HEN THEY THREW ME OUT of Cambridge for my poor taste in neckties and generally immoral conduct, I enrolled at University College London, whose chief claim to fame (though they kept this private) was that its Dean was obliged, as a matter of principle, to see off any clergyman who dared set foot on the premises.
    So one fine day, by way of experiment, I dressed up in the traditional garb of an Anglican vicar, so familiar from popular films, and seated myself conspicuously by the main entrance to the college, where English girls and Persian boys in sporting attire bathed themselves in the pallid English sun. I lowered my eyes reverently and waited in delicious terror for the Dean, the sanctified elders and university proctors to process before me. I love processions. But none came; teatime was approaching, and I suddenly realised how naive I had been, yet again. So I began to preach. I spread my arms wide and held forth to my brothers and sisters present, as seemed appropriate, about certain revelations of the divine intentions supposedly vouchsafed me on the Liverpool to London train, and how the Great Beast of the Apocalypse was actually Scotland. Clearlyunimpressed, the English girls heard me out with an air of devout boredom. Only then did I leave. Utterly humiliated, I went off for some tea. I felt that English good breeding had rejected my entire being, and that, even as a cautionary example, my whole existence was theologically unsound. I was oppressed by the immensity of the world and my own insignificance in it. That evening I wandered tearfully around Hyde Park, and, in a great, rueful gesture, I made a present of the reflections on the lake, which she so loved, to my girlfriend Cynthia. I would have offered the whole world to her, or to anyone else who might be kind enough to stroke my hand in a spirit of nocturnal sentimentality. I kept nothing back. I gave it all away—most generously of all, given my incurable snobbery, the London Halberdiers.
    As a result, I was once again the first person to arrive the next morning at the Reading Room of the British Museum. Ever since my late uncle’s Jules Verne-like will had sentenced me to a life of scholarly pursuits, library visits had become practically second nature to me—though my real nature might well have been to drive a locomotive or charge on horseback across the Great Hungarian Plain. I really can’t say. I never did grow out of that adolescent phase in which—in an experimental kind of way—you are forever dressing up as different people. When I contemplate the extent of my wardrobe it astonishes even me.
    I sat in my usual place. Before me lay the usual books, with