The Rebels by Sándor Márai Page A

have observed on my travels, is that people get over everything. That is providing they survive of course.”
    He bent over the egg and sniffed it.
    “You are of a philosophical bent, that is all. Naturally, it is an unpleasant episode. We have every reason to believe what our friend Ábel says. One of you has cheated. It’s not such a bad thing.”
    He clicked his tongue.
    “What does it mean? Perhaps it wasn’t the money that he cheated for. People never know what they are going to do next. It’s a puzzle, a real puzzle. He came prepared of course, for he brought the cards. Maybe he just flirted with the thought. Life is just a big game, my friends.”
    He touched the cards carelessly, put down his knife and fork, and leaned back. He looked around him in a dreamy fashion, surprised by the rapt attention he noted on their faces. He had got used to the fact that people never took serious note of what he said, that they heard him with mocking or indifferent expressions. In this company each word of his hit home. He gave a smirk of satisfaction.
    “I am not thinking of the unmasking of our friend, Ábel,” he said with a dismissive gesture. “What are cards? What is money? It’s something else I have in mind. When through my friend Lajos’s kind attentions, I was invited to join your circle…my young friends, my very young friends…the first question I asked myself, having acknowledged the charming impression you immediately made on me, was what holds them together? Because something does hold you together. I have considerable experience in gauging human relationships. I said to myself: something joins them together but they do not speak of it. Yet each of them thinks about it. And one of them is cheating.”
    He ate with great gusto. The ham slice became a ham sliver, the egg a hollow shell. Everything he picked up, even the salt cellar, seemed to be on familiar terms with him.
    He spoke quietly, ceremoniously, with feeling. He even closed his eyes for a moment as if communing with himself. Havas’s voice could be heard from the next cubicle, and the slapping down of cards. A woman was moving through the café with a bucket and mop in her hand. The waiter sat by the billiard tables in the half-light, like a monk by the window of his cell at twilight. Lajos ran his eyes around the company with lively, friendly interest.
    “It is probably unimportant that the person in question has now extended his cheating activities to a card game,” the actor continued. “He is your Judas, and we don’t really know him. He is someone I dare not even begin to suspect since the four of you are equally dear to me, and yet he must have been cheating you for a long time, cheating in his every word, his every look. The only reason he cheated at cards was because he wanted to round off his triumph in that way. He wanted to experience the full physical delight of having cheated you.
    “There’s a nice expression: to sweep something under the carpet. It is an excellent expression. Don’t rack your brains, my friends. We are together. It’s been a wonderful day. You are no longer responsible to your masters. I thought we could celebrate the event tonight.”
    The actor continued his meal with patent satisfaction. Here’s to a good time tonight, he said, his mouth full.
    A calendar hung in the enclosure. Ábel stared at the date: May seventeenth.
    We’ll have a nice little haroosh, said the actor and chomped a little more.
    Ábel slowly gathered up the cards one by one. Technical terms of the game. Bank, clear-out, castle, take one, flush, no flush. Ernõ never offered up a flush. The cards clicked in Havas’s hands. Who is Havas? The proprietor of the town pawnbroker’s shop. Why has he been dreaming about him for weeks on end now? He dreams that Havas enters the room, wipes his walrus mustache with the back of his hand, and unbuttons his collar in leisurely fashion. He is laughing so hard his eyes are quite lost in the folds of