ONE TRAVELLER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 70, 23 March 1940, Page 5

ONE TRAVELLER.

HIS DISCOVERIES. ROLLING STONE GATHERS NO BOSS. THE UNIVERSAL PASSPORT. (By CHARLES ESTCOURT.) NEW YORK. A man who travels, says Tiber Kocvcs, discovers, Kocvcs (pronounced Kocvesh) started out of Budapest nearly 20 years ago and has been travelling ever since, so he knows. He is in Xew York to sec his book, "Time-table for Tramps," S ct well treated and then he will be off again.

Well, what does a man who travels discover? That the earth is round and the roads and people on it crooked? That cauliflower costs more in Tasmania than in Paximadi? That chickens in India run free and wild like razorback hogs in Arkansas? That the railroad out of Tombuco gives each first-class passenger a cake of ico to put under I lie fan and the railroad out) of Moose •law does not? 'that mosquitoes reared in Muskeg bite deeper than mosquitoes reared in rice .swamps? That St. Petersburg, Kansas, looks as if it had been lifted bodily from an old, now dead, Russia?

He discovers alt these thinu's. said Kocvcs, and. if he is observant, he discovers a million other things. But, most important of all, he discovers a new world. Jt is populated only by bom travellers. It has no connection, except in space, with (he world over which tile traveller travels. Its distinguishing characteristic, he said, is tha t it considers all life too absurd to be lived.

"'That is the passport," said Kocvcs, "that lite simply is impractical anil is just something that must be endured. There are people who believe that life is a reality. They ,1 0 the world's work. We others travel." Another way to say it is, a rolling stone gathers no boss. Recognising the Passport. Are the citizens of this exotic world recognisable? "Oh. yes," said Kocvcs. "there is a very simple (est. A train slops at a remote station in the centre of nowhere at dinner time. Twenty minutes is allowed. The passengers pour into the station restaurant. Some gobble hastily; one eye on the tracks, one car cocked to hear 'All aboard.' Perhaps one settles himself down, scans the menu carefully, orders judiciously, waits comfortably, eats leisurely. ' lie has the

same twenty minutes 'as everyone else, out, he uses it as if he wcro"at home. I hen you know he has the passport to our world. He is at home wherever he is, because really, life bcincran absurdity there is no home for him anywhere"' Kocvcs is 1 old of the great shock it was to Uilliam Sarovan. the author In discover that, to get'to Delhi or Shigarare a anywhere distant and remarkable, all one needed to do was to buy a ticket. There were trains anil shins leaving every day. "Yes," he said, "he is the born traveller. You see, for a born traveller to discover that all one needs is a ticket is like a very religious man discovering that all one needs to get into heaven is a ticket."

Aside from being at homo anywhere, the residents of this oll.lt world arc indistinguishable from the rest of us. fromc.-' 6a ; ( i Kocvcs, "arc rich, like Jack Dempsoy. Some ;ire just hoboes! Some of (lie poor onostrv to make a living W liile the.v lire travelling. Tliev lieeome writer- like Richard Hnlliburloii. Some nre crooks of one kind or another —card sharps, or passers of bud cheque?, or swindlers. They mean no harm. They just want to pet money for tickets." " Jlost of these homeless internationalists, said Kocvcs, are recruited, oddly enough, from Germany, where internationalism lias l.oon 'olliciallv labelled poison, beware. He ranks tlie rest of the population as having been recruited ill the following order: Jews, Danes. Americans, English, Slaw. Will the present parlous condition of the world make the born travellers „it still Tor a while?' "Xot one bit," be said. "The misery we find everywhere is no deterrent. It is simi.lv a dramatic illustration of the miserv* and senselessness and absurdity of life itself." love Story. Kocvcs says bis first trip was a graduation present from his; father, who runs tlie famous Cafe Ostende on the JSakoozi-nt, in Budapest, the uiggosl cafe in Central Europe. It was a 3000mile tour of Germany just, after the war. Hid ho moot any born travellers on this trip! "Two—a Capuchin monk who had been a missionary, and a -10-year-old Englishman who seemed very elderly to inc. lie recognised mc as, a member of the fraternity and offered me d'oo,ooo crowns for a three-day stay •in Vienna. This was in inflation times. But .mostly I met myself. One is too young at IS (o meet"anyone else."

And, on the last evening of his trip. a Saturday night in Nuremberg, he met a girl. Being a. Hungarian, paid Koeves. that would have to be. and, if vou want really lo taste the following paragraph or two, pour yourself some wine and call in a neighbour to play the fiddle in your ear as vou read:

"We fell in love instantly, smash! Like that. She was l(i and more wonderful than a. train, more wonderful than a ship, more wonderful than that exquisite moment before the train starts.

"I nearly missed the train home the next noon.* On the way. running, I made her write her name and address in my memorandum book, she scribbled in

small, Gothic script. W i I got home I collide rend what she had written. T couldn't read her name or address. 0!i. how I cried! Oil, how I tore my Koeves' black hair does look quite iliin on top.— (X.A.X.A.)