Further Titles in the Series

Level A2

István Fekete Thorn Castle

(Tüskevár)

Hungarian Folk Tales

(Magyar népmesék)

Hungarian Legends

(Magyar mondák)

Level B1

Frigyes Karinthy Please, Sir

(Tanár úr kérem)

László L. Lőrincz The Shame of the Great Dome

(A Nagy Kupola szégyene)

Ferenc Molnár The Paul Street Boys

(A Pál utcai fiúk)

Level B2

István Csukás Bowler Hat and Red Nose

(Keménykalap és krumpliorr)

Frigyes Karinthy A Journey Round My Skull

(Utazás a koponyám körül)

Géza Ottlik School at the Frontier

(Iskola a határon)

The Bluebird Series

Course Book 1 and 2, Workbook, Teacher's Book

Hungarian-English and English Hungarian Dictionary

FRIGYES KARINTHY

A Journey Round my Skull

B2 (1700 headwords)

Translation and adaptation: PÁLVÖLGYI LÍDIA

General Consultant: MARK GRIFFITH

Illustrations: RONTÓ LILI

ISBN 978 963 05 9120 1

Published by Akadémiai Kiadó, member of the Association of Hungarian Publishers and Booksellers founded in 1795.

1117 Budapest, Prielle Kornélia u. 19.

www.akademiaikiado.hu

First edition: 2011

© AKADÉMIAI KIADÓ, 2011

Responsible for publication: Director of Akadémiai Kiadó

Responsible for editing: POMÁZI GYÖNGYI

Managing Editor: KÁCSOR LÓRÁNT

Page-Setting: LACZKÓ LÁSZLÓ

Cover Design: SÜTŐ RÓBERT

Technical Editor: KISS ZSUZSA

Copyrights are the sole property of the copyright owners listed above. Any copying, distributing and reproducing in any form (electronically, mechanically, by print or photography) without prior permission of all copyright owners is prohibited.

A Journey Round my Skull

Preface

In normal times the readers learnt from the writer what they were interested in, and not the other way around.

Yet a strange thing has happened. I did not want to deal with my notorious illness. People will usually want to forget an embarrassing and dangerous experience they have survived. Well, people do, but not writers. I felt the urge to document the memory as strongly as my illness. It was like a second illness, one that I had to treat in order to be cured of the first one.

As for the obligatory modesty that would hold me back from discussing myself, let me just say this. I do not care about my modesty. Only I can be modest, and not my opinion. My opinion cannot be modest just as Newton’s binomial theorem cannot be modest, stating the least modest opinion of the world by claiming to be universal. It seems this is true not only of our opinions but our experiences as well, when this experience is human and not exclusively individual.

I shall leave it to readers to decide to what extent I managed to assert my innate patient’s indiscretion over my innate medical discretion.

I must confess that I never would have written this novel if I had not read a comment in a newspaper of the far right accusing me of using my illness and the visit of the renowned brain surgeon to Budapest to advertise myself. It would be a rather cheap retort to ask the author of that comment to go through the whole experience of my trip to Stockholm together with the operation. Maybe then he would know if it was worth suffering for the sake of publicity. You can react two ways to such an accusation. You either completely ignore it, or you write an entire book about it.

1936, Budapest

The Invisible Trains

In March this year, it might have been the tenth of March, I was having an early-evening snack at Central Café on Egyetem Square. I was sitting at my usual table and from there I could see the library, and a bank.

For years now it has been my custom to solve a crossword puzzle in one of the weekly newspapers, despite the fact that it invariably annoys me. The editor insists on adding a maxim to the puzzle that appears horizontally and vertically in the finished puzzle. These are great, amusing sayings, but the problem is they do not actually exist. Now try to imagine how difficult it is to reconstruct an unknown saying with a number of letters missing. I was seriously considering writing a letter to the editor or confronting him in the street.

It is probable that I was just thinking about this at that particular moment because I clearly remember how agitated I was. I do not wish to burden the editor’s conscience with the assumption that my illness actually started with this crossword puzzle, but it is undeniable that I was very angry. My face turned red in my attempt to complete the dubious saying.

That is the moment the trains started. They were right on time, according to schedule, at ten past seven.

I was startled. What is this? It was a definite rumble, a slow creaking like when the wheels of the locomotive take up the pace, and then start clattering loudly until the train runs past us and away.

It passes. Maybe it was just a lorry, I thought, and I returned to the mysterious saying.

But a minute later the next train started, at the same pace.

I was nervously looking around and toward the side street.

For goodness sake, are there trains running here, or are they experimenting with a new kind of vehicle? I only realised when the fourth train was coming that I was hallucinating.

I had never experienced a strong hallucination, so it was understandable that I did not recognise the first one. It is a violent, loud noise. The rumble of the train is so strong that I cannot hear anything else. The waiter is saying something and I cannot hear him.

I cannot find the source of the noise. I am surprised that it did not originate from the outside world. But that must mean that it happened in my head, inside my head.

This is the only symptom I have, so I do not find it frightening in the least bit, only very strange and odd.

I state that I am hallucinating. Therefore, I cannot be crazy, I hasten to add, otherwise I would not be able to state this.

I have some other problem.

Cine-Film

I have dinner at home. Cini, my son, and I have been living like two bachelors since January. His mother is studying Freudianism in Vienna, and practices neurology at the Wagner-Jauregg Clinic. Cini is a fifth-grader. He is interested in the mechanism of thought. I give him a little speech but quickly turn to my favourite subject about the independent operation of organs. Every one of our organs has their special way of communication. They speak to us, but we have to learn how to understand them. I mention that I have never been sick since I had scarlet-fever when I was a child. I secretly hope that this will impress Cini.

I remember the trains of the afternoon in passing, but immediately forget them.

The next day I am attending the film screening of an amateur film club. This movie promises to be interesting. It is a film about a doctor doing cranial operation on a patient.

I only see the head of the patient lying on the table. The doctor scalps him with elegant movements, pulls back the scalp, then drills holes into the skull, and removes this part as if it were a hat. He stands politely aside so that the camera can get a clear picture. This operation is horrible, and there are only five of us left in the movie theatre. I am actually proud of myself that I can stomach it. I remember my poor friend Havas. He was only 22 years old when he died of a brain tumour. I remember his last days, his lopsided face, and the strange wriggle when he tried to laugh. He was such a great talent. It is so strange to think that he had inside his ruined brain not only his own life but also the picture this brain drew of me.

I quickly reassure myself with the words I remember from my childhood: these things only happen to others.

But at seven o’clock sharp, in that same café, at the exact same spot and time as yesterday, the trains start.

This time I do not turn towards the window because I already know that the clatter is coming from inside my head. Subsequently I would ask myself why I did not make the connection between the movie and this symptom. It never occurred to me that they might be related, and I decided to go to see an ear-specialist.

The next day I went to the hospital to see a renowned ear-specialist. He was a modest, kind, young doctor. He said that I had an ear infection and that would perfectly account for the clatter I had been hearing.

Short Weeks and One Long Moment

During the following three weeks I felt a strange and tiring vivacity. I also had a nagging feeling that I had something urgent to do; I just could not remember what it was. This feeling was like an order. What was it that I had to deal with?

A poet friend of mine explained to me that I was probably “looking for myself.” Fair enough, but who is this “I” and where can I find him? And how will I know it is him?

The next day I go to the slaughter-house. I tell myself it is because I am going to write a report. They are preparing to slaughter an ox. The animal is quietly bellowing, he walks to stand by the wall unwillingly, but he does not resist. He lowers his eyes as if he was ashamed of the whole thing, but he resigned himself to keep his side of the pact, the pact that he made with humans. According to this pact he gives up the last few years of his life in order to live the first years without fight, on a good piece of grazing land. He collapses like a piece of rag, with a heavy thud as the pole-axe strikes. I leave in a filthy mood, I do not even write the report. I have lost my appetite.

I find myself revisiting old acquaintances and places. The days go by, I sometimes go and have my ears checked because the trains are still running every single day, at seven o’clock in the evening. It does not bother me too much any more, I got used to it, and sometimes it even amuses me. The trains are going somewhere and sooner or later they have to arrive.

The next day I am sitting in the café, feeling somewhat better when something strange happens. The mirror hanging on wall opposite me seems to move. It does not move much, only a few inches, but it stays that way. This would not necessarily be a problem; it might be an illusion just as the hallucinations. But what is happening? This is weird. My head does not hurt, the trains are not running, nothing hurts, my heart is not hammering, but… But the whole thing, including me, seems to have lost the certainty of existing. The universe is shifting. I feel like I have to claw at something. But at what, when everything is shifting, and there are no fixed objects?

I see my face in the mirror. It is white as a sheet of paper. I suddenly realise that this must be a stroke. I somehow imagined it would be different. I always thought that this would be a lot nicer and simpler way to end one’s life–not a long, embarrassing illness–it only takes a moment and you are gone. I thought it would be like being shot in the head. Well, that was a big mistake. It is true it only takes a moment, but that moment seems longer than my entire life. Only half of that moment passed but it is worse waiting for the other half to happen than it is for the prisoner to wait for his execution the following day. People are not measuring time correctly. There is only one pace, the pace of experiencing things.

I slide down to the ground and stay there.

My body, this pathetic piece of rag will get better, but what about me, an emperor losing his empire?

I slowly regain consciousness.

Undoubtedly the stroke did not happen, and I lost an illusion; I am not going to desire a death by stroke anymore.

I go to the doctor immediately but he would not even examine me. I haven’t even told him half of my symptoms when he dismisses me. “You do not have an ear infection, nor did you have a stroke.” he says. “You have nicotine poisoning. You must quit smoking at once.”

„Lapozz bele!” módban ezek az oldalak nem érhetőek el.

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