A false friend, or the two faces of failure

What I'm going to tell you now started at the University, in the first half of the 2000s, when all of us, really all of us, one by one, were curious about who we were and what we wanted.

We had just stepped out of the University building into the street, that is, we hadn't stepped out yet, we were still loitering in the lobby, engaged in passionate conversations, which in the eyes of the uninitiated amounted to a real argument, when - we had just stepped out into the street, with that unrepeatable lightness, that springy, floating we didn't even go out with a dance step, which is typical of twenty-somethings.

It happened on this evening that Cipi stepped next to us in an imperceptible moment, stuck to us like jam.

It started trickling down the street after us like thick, sticky apricot jam.

He had thick but surprisingly short dark hair and wore glasses that fit his modern face.

There was something intrusive in it, which is mainly characteristic of those people who already enter the capital life in such a way that they have the basic right to use the services, so it seemed quite natural to him that I also give friendship as a kind of gift -interpret it as a service.

Even so, it took at least three and a half years for him to finally realize that he had nothing to earn.

At the same time, I was completely indifferent to him, as if I wasn't there, in short, he considered me his friend, although, as I mentioned above, we didn't clarify the meaning of the word friendship at the time.

He was looking for himself in everyone. He was Cipi the lonely. He had no friends.

We stepped out of the lobby onto the street and suddenly there were four of us, four in the early evening.

I had some money with me, although I didn't want to invite Cipi or hang out with him at all. We started down the street, turned a corner, passed some poor, graffiti-scrawled storefronts, started a discussion that promised to be interesting, and the two of them, as if by chance, like two shadows, Rinaldo pretended not to understand what I kept looking at me, annoyed he growled - this was a sign of tenderness with him, by the way - so that I wouldn't keep turning around, like a man reprimands his dog on the street in the evening, pretending to be stern.

It was not possible to read from Cipi's face whether he really knows real life, with all its worries and problems. In his deep, almost guttural voice, he presented one of his latest theories, at that time he had a lot of theories, while he listened to his own voice in a mellow tone, not paying attention to his words.

Generally, the rule was that the more excited and passionate he discussed a topic, the more vigorously he threw himself into it, the more easily he dropped it afterwards, and looked at the person in amazement if he happened to ask a question about what he had just heard.

Already in the middle of the sentence it became clear that he did not hear what the person was saying at all, and the person learned this after a while and did not even expect an answer.

As if it were his life.

This affected me unpleasantly, I would have liked to have turned the corner, but I no longer had the strength. I must add that when I met Cipi, I christened him smart, not only because of his behavior, but also because of his clothes.

She wore regular, designer clothes, just like me, yet there was something very striking about the way she wore her clothes. His glasses seemed to have given him the right to be called a know-it-all.

Many times I got caught up in the urge. I was already thinking about ways to escape.

"I'll get up and leave them here," I thought. My life was built on expectations.

Not only myself, but others also misunderstood this expectation: I felt that I was witnessing a secret game - I didn't know what kind of game - there was something creepy, something life-like about it, and it made me want to stay there.

Cipi seems to be playing a movie role. Because if he considered something important, it was as if everything else that we had viscerally been a part of until then became almost a part of us, as if it immediately ceased to exist. He lived in a world of constant exaggeration and deliberate exaggeration. One almost never really knew what to expect.

"I hear that they cut you off from literature, old man!" �" I mentioned it, because I felt that the horse really ran away with him when he started making himself a real star, even though he was just an average university student blessed with complexes just like me.

"Well... well..." he threw it over his shoulder. "By the way, I'm going to f**k you!" That idiot prof can go to hell too! - he declared, as if he had been insulted to the point of blood, and it is already insulting that anyone brought this up in front of him.

"Listen mate!" I don't want to disappoint you, but to tell the old man that you couldn't read Toldi's evening because the copies can only be read locally in the Széchenyi library, you know, I think this is a rough situation! - I tried to say it slowly, clearly, and in a tongue-in-cheek way, so that I could be sure that he understood, because the whole situation often seemed like I was talking to the wall.

"It's okay, it's still there." supplementary exam at the end of June. Listen mate, I'll get through it like a draft! - he pulled himself straight, holding on and proudly, as if he still had a few pranks left to play, and at any time he could outwit the whole inferior, calculating world, but those who really got to know him knew exactly that he had no chance with the old professor if he couldn't quote from connected poems accurately , or even recite.

"Okay old man!" Be as you say! I answered.

He printed all kinds of stupid, almost incomprehensible gibberish about the fact that he actually wanted to join the Baja Bar Association, but then somewhere, at some point, the dice turned and he was admitted to ELTE instead.

In every sentence there was hidden the possibility that he was actually a misunderstood genius, and that if he had been born abroad, he would have become a great man, who would have been shown on TV every day, like a kind of monkey in a treasury or a bazaar.

Anyone who saw us from the outside could have believed that he was the soul of the company, and he had no idea what kind of mysterious forces he was moving in. like a child, he forgot the forgotten smile on his face.

The summer exam period seems to have arrived in the lives of university students earlier than expected. Cipi in a dark suit, dark shirt, and dark sunglasses looked like a dark cop from the future who hunts funny aliens in his spare time and also wants to save humanity and the world, but now it seemed like a dead serious attitude.

"Goodbye, old man!" So? Was it made for the old man? - I inquired, as someone who is seriously concerned about the fate of this boy from Linkóc.

"That's nice!" I scored all thirty-eight items in a row, my hapsik! I will pass so that the old man can lick my shiny body! - he declared, and I couldn't tell whether it was a strange combination of nervousness and stress that made him say these sentences, or perhaps it was more the deep-rooted panic fear that he would bleed in this exam as well, whether he wanted to or not.

"Then a big hat for the exams, old man!" - I shook his hand and couldn't wait to never meet again.

I could still hear the sound echoing in the Congo corridor:

"I will have a brilliant career, with my own office and at least two hot chicks!" - panted he was the next person in charge of the old professor that day, and he was swallowed up by the depth of the dark brown unsightly oak door.

That day I also had exams, mainly in the dreaded universal history, where I had to continue in-depth essays on the actual domestic political causes of the French Revolution with a tomboyish young teaching assistant who behaved properly with everyone, but in fact reflected the personality traits of sociopaths, especially when the the person was a little nervous or scared because he could not decide whether he gave a good answer or a bad one.

"Well, dear sir!" It's a strong trio so far, if that suits you! - he looked at me questioningly, with a grimace-like murderous look, as if in his eyes only a wretched anthill or a worm can be a full-fledged human.

"Uh... thank you teacher, that's fine..." I groaned. I didn't see any point in continuing to fight for the well-deserved four-under, since the teacher knows by five, and everything follows only after that.

"As you think, my dear Lord!" �" he scribbled my ticket in the back of my index book, where the strict notes were; he closed the index finger and poked it with his index and middle fingers, and then, as if talking to himself, slowly remarked:

- I heard that you also write poems in the Hungarian course!

"Uh…yeah…is something wrong?" I asked him openly, like someone who consciously feels threatened.

�" You know, if he had devoted more time to studying history and getting to know its connections more thoroughly, it could have been even less than four! - his cynical, phlegmatic, condescending, vile manner immediately irritated me, yet I could well have known that if I expressed my opinion now, which - let's face it - I would have had every right to, because I had never met him again in my stinking life, then I would not have been any different from them from people who defended their own stubborn truths, of course paying a heavy psychological price for them in return.

�" I wish you more success! - he announced, and then seemed to hesitate quite a bit when shaking hands. I stood up, packed my things in my briefcase and walked out, blowing my huge breath through the closed door behind me.

After that, Cipi himself came to crown the day! His tie is deliberately pushed aside, sloppy, belligerent. He looked as if he had successfully squeezed out at least five liters of solid, solid sweat.

- So? What's the result mate?! I asked my question, knowing in advance that he would lie, as usual.

"That damned, calculating, small-minded little c**t!" He pulled me again! Now not from Toldi, but from János Vajda! But listen, old man, and I'll show you atom for him! You won't get away with this easily! - he didn't even shake my hand, and stormed off, raging at his own helplessness and batteredness, as if he had been thoroughly ground down by a rags-to-riches life.