Embers by Sándor Márai

I picked up Embers (1942) by Sándor Márai in a London bookshop a little while before the pandemic, drawn by the striking cover design and intrigued by the premise. Not many books are primarily about friendship, and the small sample I read in the shop seemed beautifully written. And so it came home with me – and I really loved my experience of writing it.

Sándor Márai wrote Embers in Hungarian as A gyertyák csonkig égnek, which means ‘candles burn until the end’, and is presumably a Hungarian phrase that we don’t have in English. Embers also works very well as a title, and it was the title of the German translation (Die Glut) which was then translated in English by Carol Brown Janeway. I’m not sure why they didn’t get someone to translate straight from the Hungarian, but there we are.

The novel opens with an old General in his palatial home, which he shares only with servants and an ex-nurse Nini, who is in her 90s and a wise, all-knowing companion. He never leaves the place – he keeps only to a handful of its many rooms. And he receives a message that an old friend, Konrad, will be visiting for the first time in more than four decades.

Normally this is a conceit that puts me off a novel: a scene in the present day that then zips back to a long, chronological sequence of the past. It usually makes everything that follows feel anticlimactic. Here I think it worked – because the General’s present day is so stultified. He doesn’t even seem to live in memories most of the time, just in a protracted period of apathy.

Before Konrad arrives, Embers takes us back to the friendship between Henrik (the General in his youth) and Konrad. As young children they were inseparable, and this bond never wavered. Through school and beyond, they were as close as it is possible for two people to be – as close as twins in the womb, the novel says.

Nothing is so rare in the young as a disinterested bond that demands neither aid nor sacrifice. Boys always expect a sacrifice from those who are the standard-bearers of their hopes. The two friends felt that they were living in a miraculous and unnamable state of grace.

There is nothing to equal the delicacy of such a relationship. Everything that life has to offer later, sentimental yearnings or raw desire, intense feelings and eventually the bonds of passion, will all be coarser, more barbaric.

Henrik is usually referred to as ‘the son of the Officer of the Guards’ in the narrative, when dealing with his younger days, and we can never forget his privileged and prestigious position. By contrast, Konrad is from poverty – and refuses any financial help. His pride is so frustrating to read about. Not least because he determines he must still move in the same milieu as his friend – must have the right coat, the right gloves, the same tipping of servants, however difficult it is to find money for this. The friendship persists because Konrad doesn’t owe Henrik anything – but this disparity is always present.

I loved the way Márai writes about friendship. He recognises its value, not relegating it to a distant cousin of romantic love. He also sees how it can be as troubled as any romance – and the reader is continually trying to piece together why there has been a gap of 41 years in this friendship that started so boldly and deeply.

The reasons are unfolded at their reunion – again, Márai breaks novelistic rules and gives the General enormous amounts of dialogue for more or less the whole second half of the novel, revealing why the friendship broke off. But, again, somehow it works. Possibly because Márai’s writing is beautiful and his building of character so brilliant.

There are no neat conclusions in Embers, and yet I came away totally satisfied. An exceptionally good short novel, moving and dramatic, and addressing deep emotions and relationships that are usually disregarded in literature.