The Rebels by Sándor Márai Page B

street or the thought of having, in all probability, to salute some sergeant major a few months later.
    It was this spring that they lost all sense of proportion. It was not exactly that their games had turned more solemn. Lajos would go off by himself on long walks while they kept a wary eye on him. In certain respects they regarded Lajos as an adult. He was free to do what he wanted and, just as he excused himself from adult ranks as and when he chose, so he might, at any moment, choose to rejoin the enemy. He started wearing his army uniform again and spent the day hanging around with the actor. It seemed he had grown bored of meetings at The Peculiar. He was back in the café. The gang even discussed barring him but then the one-armed one turned up and just at the beginning of the season introduced the gang to the actor.
    The introductions took place in Tibor’s room. The actor immediately won their confidence when, out of sheer good manners, he climbed in through the window.
    Tibor was the center of the group. Everything revolved around him: they had come together to please him. It was to him they brought their sacrifices and offerings. When the gang abandoned the “for its own sake” principle, there slowly developed a kind of material competition for Tibor’s favors. Ábel wrote poems addressed to him. Béla would bring him presents. Ernõ carried his books, polished his shoes, and undertook all kinds of servant-and-porter tasks for him. Tibor, who had always been courteous, remained remarkably generous and courteous as the object of all this warmth and furious competition.
    The younger son of Colonel Prockauer, apart from a passing phase of acne, was, for the gang, that mysterious being, the epitome of all physical perfection. The reputation of Prockauer Junior was much the same in town: so beautiful, so charming. Despite the various boyish accomplishments of running, swimming, riding, leaping, and excelling at tennis Tibor presented a somewhat soft, almost effeminate appearance. His very pale skin and the curiously wavy blond hair that kept falling over his brow covering his blue-gray eyes confirmed the impression. He had inherited his father’s raw fleshy lips as well as the strong oval hands with their short fingers. But the lines of his nose and brow were delicate and mild and the fascinating discrepancy between the upper and lower regions of his face made for a certain uneasiness. His face lacked the normal adolescent’s state of grotesque half-preparedness. It was as if the development of what was boyish in him had been suspended at a particularly fortunate moment in childhood, as if the sculptor had got so far, taken his hand away, and declared with satisfaction: let it remain as it is. Even at thirty Tibor would still look like a boy.
    In every movement, in each appearance, whenever he laughed or spoke to somebody, whenever he thanked another with a smile, a characteristic rhythm or pace made itself felt, a light and almost shy courtesy. Unlike Béla and Ernõ, or his contemporaries generally, he seemed to utter foul language with a kind of reluctance, as if he had first to overcome some better part of himself. His profanities appeared to be a form of good manners, an aspect of his courtesy to the others whom he did not wish to shame by remaining silent while they swore.
    He did not say much. Something about his being, the way he looked, suggested astonishment. Whenever Ábel or Ernõ were speaking he had the knack of moving in close and with wide-open eyes paying them the utmost attention, then asking the simplest and most admiring of questions, always acknowledging the answer with a graceful smile. It was hard to tell whether the consideration that he radiated had been intensely cultivated or was the result of an entirely unselfconscious curiosity. Books frightened him whenever Ábel wanted to share his own enthusiasm for what he happened to be reading, and it was always with the utmost nervousness that