Book of the Week: The Rebels by Sándor Márai

I was lucky enough to read Sándor Márai's The Rebels while traveling through Budapest, Bratislava, and Prague. This was part of my standing rule of reading a novel from the country you are visiting while traveling. In paid off well with Stevenson in the UK and Strindberg in Sweden. It did not serve me well with Bowles in Morocco. In the case of Márai it was a perfect fit. Having had my feet on the ground, mangling the Hungarian language in my worst attempts at communicate with the locals, I experienced the feeling of Budapest for myself.

There is a mellowness and peace to Hungarians these days. It may be due to the fact that until recently, Hungary was constantly being conquered by one empire or military power after another. The Turks, Habsburgs, Nazis, and Stalinists all took their turn. For a brief period, leading up to and into World War I, Hungary merged with Austria, forming the second largest country in Europe. However, the defeat of the central powers in World War I, including Austria-Hungary, lead to 70 years of dark days for the country. It is at that stumbling point -- Austria-Hungary's entry in the war -- that Márai sets the book, having experienced first hand the embarrassing (for Hungarians) dissolution of the dual monarchy and its multi-ethnic society.

I state all this not to drone on about trivia, but to point out the context of The Rebels and the historical reality of what Márai experienced at the time of the writing the novel. For some reason, Americans don't seem to 'get' The Rebels. I've seen reviews where readers say the book is too foreign to enjoy, have labeled Márai as anti-Semitic and homophobic, and even more absurd, state that they cannot relate to the characters because they are all adolescent males. Take that Holden Caulfield. These sad misperceptions of The Rebels cause these readers to miss out on what is a superb novel. Dated, perhaps. Esoteric to western culture? No more than any Russian novel. Anti-everything-under-the-sun? Considering that Márai pined for multi-ethnic and multi-cultural Hungary in his Memoir of Hungary, was highly critical of the Nazis (a dangerous stance under the Arrow Cross Government), and soundly against the subsequent puppet-communist regime installed by Stalin, it is very doubtful the book has a prejudice against anything except oppression and senseless death.

As the title suggests, the focus of the book is rebellion. In this case, four childhood friends who, fearing their subsequent banishment to the front lines of World War I, engage in a very adolescent form of rebellion, starting with lying, but eventually moving on to mind games, and out-and-out theft. The friends -- Ábel, Tibor, ErnÒ, and Béla -- are snapshots of Hungarian youth at that time. The first a wealthy (but disassociated) son of a doctor, the second an almost too beautiful and unrugged son of a colonel, the third a lower class son of a disfigured cobbler, the fourth an irresponsible son of a shopkeeper. At the start of the book, all four are lost -- at least in the sense that the looming spectre of death in the trenches has them incapable of seeing any future. This is represented most notably by Tibor's brother who returned from the front minus an arm and a good chunk of his sanity. The disorderly appearance of Ábel's room, after a night of drinking and card playing, is a perfect metaphor for the state of mental disarray they are experiencing. In this mess, Ábel discovers by chance that one of the four has cheated at cards. Rather than be infuriated by the trickery, it spurs Ábel (and eventually the others) to attempt more daring forms of lying, deceit, and thievery. They become, in essence, a gang. The misguided rebellion, as one would expect, leads to their downfall, most notably at the hands of the pawnbroker Havas and a mysterious accomplice, who is not revealed until later in the book. Ultimately, this downfall becomes a tale of revenge, spurned on by class conflict, homophobic resentment, and a disconnect with authority (most notably represented by the fathers of the tale).

Márai is one of those exceptional writers who was able to make his characters live and breathe. A great example of this is the actor, Amadé, who is rendered so wonderfully complete in his idiosyncrasies, expressions, and almost bipolar flips in emotion:

"It was as if his girth were no more than some kind of misapprehension that existed between him and the world at large, and he never ceased talking about it. He spoke eloquently and at length to both intimates and strangers in the effort to persuade them that he was not fat. He produced precise measurements and medical tables showing average proportions to prove he was as slender as a flamingo and that his figure was in all respects the manly ideal, his belly swelling as he did so because, in his passion, he forgot to hold it in."

When not giving the characters the well-roundedness that is signature to the book or focusing on their exploits, Márai paints dark portraits of the town, reminding the reader that in spite of the self-centered acts of the four teenagers, there is the darker world of World War I surrounding them. This description of corpses from the war nails the looming threat and the stark reality of the novel's setting perfectly:

"All objects--houses, public squares, whole towns--puff themselves up with spring moonlight, swelling and bloating like corpses in the river. The river dragged such corpses through town at a run. The corpses swam naked and traveled great distances... they floated rapidly down on the spring flood heading towards their ultimate terminus, the sea. The dead were fast swimmers."

In the end, it is the gang's reluctance to own up to the consequences of their actions, their shucking off of adult responsibility in favor of blind rebellion, that proves to be their downfall. They are still children, playacting at rebellion. Márai parodies this superbly when Amadé brings the gang to a theater, dressing them up as characters in a bad stage play. The gang is happy to keep up their exploits when the going is easy, but they grow increasingly panicky and paranoid as their schemes begin to unravel. When the consequences are laid out so clearly at the end of the novel, Márai lets no one off easy.

Perhaps that is because Márai knew where all this rebellion and senseless violence would lead. It never served Hungary well in real life, only resulting in the death of too many citizens for senseless reasons. And in the world of The Rebels, every action has a consequence that ultimately wrenches the gang into adulthood with all its ugly realities.