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his classmates. I was the only one he communicated with. But as for his poetry, to my mind, I just didn’t understand it, and I didn’t like the fact that he started writing long lines without any rhyme. He became a recluse, read books, played the piano—we knew very little about him. Then one day in Chapel we noticed him going up to the altar, with the other boys, for the sacrament. That was how we knew he had converted.
    “Why did he become a Catholic? Ostensibly, because he was drawn to the strange beauty of the religion. He was also attracted by the dogma and the harshness of its moral code. I do believe there was something in him that craved austerity the way other people crave pleasure. In a word, all the usual reasons why outsiders convert … And he became a model Catholic. But there was another side to it too, which I didn’t see so clearly at the time. Ervin, like everyone else in the Ulpius house except me, was a role-player by nature. When I think back now, even as a younger pupil he was always playing at being something. He played the intellectual and the revolutionary. He was never relaxed and natural, the way a boy should be, not by a long way. Every word and gesture was studied. He used archaic words, he was always aloof, always wanting the biggest role for himself. But his acting wasn’t like Tamás’s and Éva’s. They would just walk away from their part the moment it was over and look for something new. He wanted a role to fill with his whole being, and in the Catholic religion he finally found the hugely demanding role he could respect. After that he never altered his posture again. The part just grew deeper and deeper.
    “He was a really devout Catholic, as Jewish converts often are. Their centuries of tradition haven’t been eroded the way they have for us. He wasn’t like his pious and impoverished schoolmates who worshipped every day, went to mass, and trained for a career in the church. Their Catholicism was a matter of conformity, his a form of rebellion, a challenge to the whole unbelieving and uncaring world. He took the Catholic line on everything—books, the war, his classmates, the mid-morning buttered roll. He was much more inflexible and dogmatic than even the most severe of our religious teachers. ‘No man, having put his hand to the plough, should look behind him’. That text was his motto. He cut out of his life everything that was not purely Catholic. He guarded his soul’s salvation with a revolver.
    “The only vice he retained from his former life was smoking. I cannot recall ever seeing him without a cigarette.
    “But he still had his share of life’s temptations. Ervin had adored women. With his comical single-mindedness he’d been the great lover of the class, the way János Szepetneki had been its great liar. The whole form knew about his loves, because he would walkhis sweetheart for the whole afternoon on Gellért Hill, and write verses to her. The boys respected Ervin’s attachments because they felt the intensity and the poetic quality. But when he became a Catholic he naturally renounced love. At that time the lads were beginning to visit brothels. Ervin turned away from them in horror . They, I am quite sure, went to those women for a lark, or out of bravado. Ervin was the only one who really knew the meaning of physical desire.
    “Then he met Éva. Of course Éva set her cap at him. Because Ervin was beautiful, with his ivory face, his high forehead, his blazing eyes. And he radiated differentness, stubbornness, rebellion . And with it he was gentle and refined. I only came to appreciate him after he and János turned up at the Ulpius house.
    “That first afternoon was horrible. Tamás was aloof and aristocratic , contributing only the occasional totally irrelevant remark, pour épater les bourgeois . But Ervin and János were not épatés because they weren’t bourgeois. János talked the entire afternoon about his whale-hunting experiences and the