Imre: A Memorandum

by Edward Prime-Stevenson

Part of Imre's exaggerated, artificial bearing toward the outer world was the nervous shrinking from commonplace social demonstrativeness on the part of his friends. To that mannerism I have already referred. It had become a really important accent, I do not doubt, in Imre's acting-out of a friendly, cheerful, yet keep-your-distance sort of personality. But there was more than that in it. It was a detail in the effort toward his self-transformation; a minor article in his compact with himself never to give up the struggle to "cure" himself. He was convinced that this was the most impossible of achievements. But he kept on fighting for it. And since one degree of sentiment led so treacherously to another, why, away with all!

"But Imre, I do not yet see why you have not trusted me sooner. There have been at least two moments in our friendship when you could have done so; and one of them was when.. you should!"

"Yes, you are right. I have been unkind. But then, I have been as unkind to myself. The two times you speak of, Oswald... you mean, for one of them, that night that we met Clement... and spoke about such matters for a moment while we were crossing the Lánczhid? And the other chance was after you had told me your own story, over there in the Z... park?"

"Yes. Of course, the fault is partly mine—once. I mean that time on the Bridge... I fenced you off from me—I misled you—didn't help you—I didn't help myself. But even so, you kept me at sword's length, Imre! You wore your mask so closely—gave me no inch of ground to come nearer to you, to understand you, to expect anything except scorn—our parting! Oh, Imre! I have been blind, yes! but you have been dumb."

"You wonder and you blame me," he replied, after busying himself a few seconds with his own perplexing thoughts. "Again, I say 'Forgive me.' But you must remember that we played at cross-purposes too much (as I now look back on what we said that first time) for me to trust myself to you. I misunderstood you. I was stupid—nervous. It seemed to me certain, at first, that you had me in your mind—that I was the friend you spoke of—laughed at, in a way. But after I saw that I was mistaken? Oh, well it appeared to me that, after all, you must be one of the Despisers. Gentler-hearted than the most; broader minded, in a way; but one who, quite likely, thought and felt as the rest of the world. I was afraid to go a word farther! I was afraid to lose you. I shivered afterward, when I remembered that I had spoken then of what I did. Especially about that man... who cared for me once upon a time... in that way... And so suddenly to meet Clement! I didn't know he was in Szent-Istvánhely; the meeting took me by surprise. I heard next morning that his mother had been very ill."

"But afterwards, Imre? You surely had no fear of what you call 'losing' me then? How could you possibly meet my story—in that hour of such bitter confidence from me!—as you did? Could come no further toward me? When you were certain that to find you my Brother in the Solitude would make you the nearer-beloved and dearer-prized!"

"That's harder for me to answer. For one reason, it was part of that long battle with myself! It was something against the policy of my whole life!... as I had sworn to live it for all the rest of it... before myself or the world. I had broken that pledge already in our friendship, such as even then it was! Broken it suddenly, completely... before realizing what I did. The feeling that I was weak, that I cared for you, that I was glad that you sought my friendship... ah, the very sense of nearness and companionship in that... But I fought with all that, I tell you! Pride, Oswald!... a fool's pride! My determination to go on alone, alone, to make myself sufficient for myself, to make my punishment my tyrant!—to be martyred under it! Can you not understand something of that? You broke down my pride that night, dear Oswald. Oh, then I knew that I had found the one friend in the world, out of a million-million men not for me! And nevertheless I hung back! The thought of your going from me had been like a knife-stroke in my heart all the evening long. But yet I could not speak out. All the while I understood how our parting was a pain to you—I could have echoed every thought that was in your soul about it!... but I would not let myself speak one syllable to you that could show you that I cared! No!... then I would have let you go away in ignorance of everything that was most myself... rather than have opened that life-secret, or my heart, as we sat there. Oh, it was as if I was under a spell, a cursed enchantment that would mean a new unhappiness, a deeper silence for the rest of my life! But the wretched charm was perfect. Good God!... what a night I passed! The mood and the moment had been so fit... yet both thrown away! My heart so shaken, my tongue so paralyzed! But before morning came, Oswald, that fool's hesitation was over. I was clear and resolved, the devil of arrogance had left me. I was amazed at myself. You would have heard everything from me that day. But the call to the Camp came. I had not a moment. I could not write what I wished. There was nothing to do but to wait."

"The waiting has done no harm, Imre."

"And there is another reason, Oswald, why I found it hard to be frank with you. At least, I think so. It is—what shall call it?—the psychic trace of the woman in me. Yes, after all, the woman! The counter-impulse, the struggle of the weakness that is womanishness itself, when one has to face any sharp decision... to throw one's whole being into the scale! Oh, I know it, I have found it in me before now! I am not as you, the Uranian who is too much man! I am more feminine in impulse—of weaker stuff... I feel it with shame. You know how the woman says 'no' when she means 'yes' with all her soul! How she draws back from the arms of the man that she loves when she dreams every night of throwing herself into them? How she finds herself doing, over and over, just that which is against her thought, her will, her duty! I tell you, there is something of that in me, Oswald! I must make it less... you must help me. It must be one of the good works of your friendship, of your love, for me. Oh, Oswald, Oswald!... you are not only to console me for all that I have suffered, for anything in my past that has gone wrong. For, you are to help me to make myself over, indeed, in all that is possible, whatever cannot be so."

"We must help each other Imre. But do not speak so of woman, my brother! Sexually, we may not value her. We may not need her, as do those Others. But think of the joy that they find in her to which we are cold; the ideals from which we are shut out! Think of your mother, Imre; as I think of mine! Think of the queens and peasants who have been the light and the glory of races and peoples. Think of the gentle, noble sisters and wives, the serene, patient rulers of myriad homes. Think of the watching nurses in the hospitals... of the spirits of mercy who walk the streets of plague and foulness!... think of the nun on her knees for the world...!"