He closed his eyes, but fiery circles danced before him and he came to his senses only when the Steward announced that five o’clock had struck and everyone else started to get up and leave.
‘How much do I owe, please?’ said Laszlo as he got up from his chair beside Zeno.
‘Wait a moment, I’ll just add up! Seventy-two, yes, that’s it.’
‘Thank you, I just wanted to know.’ said Laszlo, and walked slowly to the door and down the stairs. He fingered the thick wad of notes in his pocket to pay. He had eighty-six thousand. It was there, still there …
It was daylight when Laszlo walked home. Market carts were rumbling through the streets and the refuse collectors’ bells tinkled as they stopped in front of one house after another.
Laszlo slept until the late afternoon. Then, lying in the darkened room, he took stock of his position and passed judgement on himself. He sentenced himself to social death. From this, he realized, there was no escape. The choice was simple — public disgrace or secret shame. Either he would be thrown out of the Casino for not paying his debts, and out of society, too, of course, or else he could pay his debts and forget about redeeming Fanny’s pearls, thereby living a lie, living without honour, no better than that Wickwitz whom he had publicly insulted for doing precisely the same! He had to choose one of these alternatives; there was nothing else open to him. It would be terrible to live on, shunned by everyone and branded as a fool and a defaulter, but it would be even more terrible to have to live with his secret shame if he did not honour his debt to Fanny. The first would be more bearable, for all his worldly ambitions had crumbled to dust anyhow during the last year. He said to himself that everything had to come to an end sooner or later, and that if social ruin was to be his fate it was better that it should come of his own free will and by his own decision.
He sat for a long time at the desk he had placed in the window and where once he had worked so hard upon his music and with such a will. Now it was covered in dust, unused for many months, and on it was the packet of banknotes, worth more than he had lost the previous night, which was to be the ransom for Fanny’s pearls, wrapped in brown paper and tied with thread, untouched. And so it should remain. This was her money, not his, and if he were to use a cent of it he would be a thief as well. That he would not do.
Now that his mind was at last made up he felt a calm indifference spread over him, as if he were making plans not for himself but for someone long since forgotten.
For the next two days Laszlo was extremely busy. First of all he went to the jeweller’s in the Dorottya Street where he was told that Mr Bacherach had gone away for a few days but was expected back soon: at two o’clock on the day after next he would, no doubt of it, be back in the shop. Then he went up to the old quarter near the royal palace, to the house in Donath Street, gave his notice, paid for the last quarter’s rent and sold his furniture, naturally for far less than it was worth. Then he packed up all Fanny’s things — her silken wraps, kimonos, cosmetics, slippers, everything he could find that belonged to her — and had it all posted to the Beredy Palais. Then he arranged for his piano to be sent to Kozard.
It took Laszlo two days to get all this done. On the second day he gave up the Museum Street flat. He removed all his clothes from the cupboards and carefully packed them in his trunk and suitcases. As he did so he became aware of the new grey morning coat which he had worn only on the day of the King’s Cup race and never again since. It was lying on his bed, the striped trousers beside it and on the floor the black and beige shoes with their wooden lasts in place. It was as though the corpse of his former life lay there on the bed, empty, inert, disembowelled. He folded everything carefully and as he picked up the waistcoat, a little betting slip fell to the floor from the breast pocket; the number nine looked reproachfully up at him from the threadbare carpet. He picked it up. It had been the tote ticket for that ill-omened bet, the bet he had lost. His superstitious words came back to him; suddenly ringing in his head he could hear his reply when Fanny had asked him how much he had risked: ‘Not much! Only my life!’ How true that had been! He thought about it for a few moments, then slipped the little paper back into the pocket from which it had fallen and packed the whole suit as if it had never meant anything to him. He felt no excitement or emotion of any sort: he might have been packing away the life and memories of someone he did not know.
A little before midday, the telephone rang. It was the secretary of the Casino reminding him that precisely at noon that day the forty-eight hours’ delay would be up and that if Count Gyeroffy’s debts had not by then been settled, his name would be posted on the blackboard.
‘Thank you! I understand,’ said Laszlo, and rang off.
So his name would be on the board, which wasn’t black even though they called it so. In fact it was a large rectangle of smooth green felt in a frame two metres wide. On it, fastened only by a drawing pin, would be a little slip of paper with a name written on it, nothing more, but everyone knew what it meant … if the person whose name appeared there had not settled his losses within one week he would automatically be scratched from the list of members. Laszlo had once seen there such a name, though now he could not recall whose it was. It hardly mattered, for now it would be his, pilloried there for all to see — Count Laszlo Gyeroffy — just that, no more. It would remain there for a week and then it would disappear … for ever.
The telephone rang again. This time it was Neszti Szent-Gyorgyi’s butler saying that his master would like to see Count Gyeroffy at once if that were possible. Laszlo automatically replied that he would, only later wondering why he had been summoned and regretting that he had not refused to go. However, he had said he would and he could hardly back out of it now. Therefore he picked up his hat and gloves and went out, but not before putting the packet of money in his pocket, for Mr Bacherach would be in his shop at two o’clock.
Count Neszti lived quite close by in a house surrounded by a garden in Horanszky Street. It was a strange house and everything inside bore the imprint of its owner’s tastes. The floors were covered with the skins of lions and tigers, killed of course by Count Neszti himself, and the walls were closely patterned by the stuffed heads of more wild game also shot by the owner of the house. Under these trophies, low bookcases contained every issue of the stud book and on the chimney-shelf were arranged a multitude of great cups and trophies which his horses had won all over the world during the past three decades. When Laszlo came in he found Count Neszti seated in a deep armchair, the remains of his breakfast on a table beside him. He was smoking a pipe because he liked it, and because he believed that every pleasure should be indulged even if it were not the fashion.
‘Come along in,’ he said in his usual swift monotone. He gestured Laszlo towards a chair. ‘Sit down, I want to ask you something.’ He put up his monocle. ‘Did you know that your name has been posted on the blackboard?’