Portraits of a Marriage by Sándor Márai Page A

where a whole host of guests were already assembled: famous men, politicians, the leading figures of the country as well as well-known beautiful women, all chatting to each other as though they were relatives, as though whoever they were talking to already knew everything, everything that had been hinted at and suspected, all of them fully initiated. Initiated into what? Into the delicate, decadent, exciting, stuffy, superior, hopeless, cold conspiracy that constitutes an entire world, the world of society. It was a vast hall with columns of red marble. Between the guests scuttled servants, their legs clad in britches and white stockings, bearing crystal trays loaded with cocktails and highly colored, bitter-as-poison liqueurs. I merely sipped at one of those bitter drinks, because I can’t take alcohol: it immediately makes me feel dizzy. In any case I had no need of intoxicants that evening. I felt an irrational, ridiculous, quite childish sort of tension, as if fate had marked me out for a difficult personal task, as if everyone were watching me, particularly me, all these beautiful, interesting women and those clever, powerful men … I was continually giggling. I was very charming to everyone, behaving as if I were an eighteenth-century princess in a powdered wig. And you know what? People really were talking about me that evening … It’s impossible to resist life radiating from someone in my position. Suddenly I saw myself standing among the red marble columns in the middle of the hall with men and women standing around me, myself as the focal point, people bowing to me, my every remark a triumph. I was radiant with a terrifying confidence that night. Oh yes, I was a real success … But what is success? Success is willpower, or so it seems: an enormous willpower, which burns everything and everyone that comes into contact with it. And all this simply because I had to know whether there was anyone anywhere who had once worn a lilac ribbon on her dress or her hat, someone who might matter more to my husband than I did …
    I had never touched cocktails before and I left them alone that night too. Later, at supper, I drank half a glass of acrid French Champagne. I was behaving as though I were a little tipsy … but in a strangely sober fashion; it was a clearheaded kind of intoxication.
    We were waiting for supper to be set and had formed groups in thehall, as on a stage. My husband was standing in the doorway to the library talking to a concert pianist. Now and then I felt him glance at me, and I knew these were anxious looks he was casting, not understanding my popularity, the sudden, complete, irrational social success I was enjoying, pleased with it but worried at the same time. He looked puzzled, and I was proud sensing his confusion. I was certain of my task now, and I knew the evening would be mine.
    These are the most remarkable moments of life. Suddenly, a world opens up and everyone’s eyes are on you. I would not have been surprised to have people propose to me that night. I should tell you that that world, the other world of high society and the international set, is hopelessly alien to my nature. It was my husband who introduced me to it, and I always felt stagestruck. I tiptoed through it with great care, the way you might in an amusement park, in the haunted house with the moving floors … I was frightened in case I should slip and fall. Whole years went by with me being overpolite and overrestrained in company, or, conversely, overnatural … In other words, I was scared, cold, over-friendly, in fact everything except what I really am. It was as though I were in the grip of some terrible cramp before, but that evening released me. I was no longer cramped. I saw everything through a faint mist—the light, the people’s faces. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find people bursting into applause for me.
    Then I felt someone was staring at me. I turned round slowly and looked for the