Authors: Sandor Marai

Casanova in Bolzano (29 page)

“Now make a clean copy!” he ordered Balbi.

He went over to the window, opened the blinds, and bellowed into the faint glimmering light, his voice hard and commanding: “Bring the horses!”

He wrapped the wings of his cloak about his shoulders and strode through the door. His steps echoed in the stairwell. The yard was stirring below: horses neighed, bottles clinked, and the wheels of the coach were creaking. The girl, still carrying the shards of glass in her gathered apron, took one or two slow steps and then scuttled out of the room, down the stairs, after the departing figure, as if she had understood something, as if something had occurred to her. Now only the friar remained in the room. He wrote slowly and with great care, frowning and pursing his lips, and spelling out the end of the message letter by letter:
“I am y-o-u-r-s a-l-o-n-e, for e-v-e-r!”
. . . Then he threw the quill away, leaned back in the armchair, admired his workmanship, and, stomach shaking, fell to loud, full-bellied laughter.

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sándor Márai was born in Kassa, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1900, and died in San Diego in 1989. He rose to fame as one of the leading literary novelists in Hungary in the 1930s. Profoundly antifascist, he survived the war but persecution by the Communists drove him from the country in 1948, first to Italy, then to the United States. He is the author of a body of work now being rediscovered, and which Knopf is having translated into English.

A NOTE ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

George Szirtes is the prizewinning author of thirteen books of poetry and of several translations from Hungarian, including poetry, fiction, and drama. He lives in the United Kingdom.

ALSO BY SÁNDOR MÁRAI

Embers

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.
www.aaknopf.com

Originally published in Hungary as
Vendégjáték Bolzanóban
by Révai, Budapest, 1940.

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Márai, Sándor, 1900–1989
[Vendégjáték Bolzanóban. English]
Casanova in Bolzano / by Sándor Márai ; translated from the original Hungarian by George Szirtes.
p.  cm.
eISBN 1-4000-4373-5
1. Casanova, Giacomo, 1725–1798—Fiction.  I. Szirtes, George, 1948–  II. Title.
PH3281.M35V413 2004
894'.511334—dc22        2004044208

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