Tableau of childhood innocence

A schoolboy learns about the ugliness of life the hard way in Zsigmond Moricz's lively tenth novel, Be Faithful Unto Death (Central European University Press, £9.99 in UK).

First published in 1921, it remains one of the outstanding novels of modern Hungarian literature and is now the third title in the valuable Central European Classics series which is alerting Western readers to outstanding - and neglected - work by central and eastern European writers. Already published are the 19th century Czech writer Jan Neruda's Prague Tales and another Hungarian classic from the 1920s, Dezso Kosztolanyi's marvellous novel Skylark.

Misi Nyilas, the nervy and appealing central character of Be Faithful Unto Death, is an impoverished scholarship boy. As a student in the College of Debrecen - a harsh, snobbish Calvinist school which appears to be controlled more by a complicated hierarchy of pettily corrupt, bullying pupils than by its assortment of misfit teachers - he is invariably intimidated.

Living in his imagination and preoccupied by his own private, often theatrical internal debates - "he felt that his heart would jump out and tear his narrow jacket" - he is not prepared to deal with the ignoble antics of others. As the novel opens he is conscious that another pupil, the indolent Boszorinenyi, is preparing to borrow and therefore use up all of the new carmine paint he has just bought. Resigned to the inevitable, "Misi gave up his paint in despair".

One of five sons, little Misi is an innocent; he skips, cries, contradicts himself and is frightened of people. Yet while Moricz is careful to present him as vulnerable - "as always, he cried a great deal over his mother's letter; as soon as he saw her slanted writing his heart twisted and, he didn't know why, the tears came," he is not a weakling. Gratefully accepting a daily job reading the newspaper to Mr Posalaky, an old man who has become blind, Misi also tutors a schoolmate.

Moricz handles with skill the small spasms of snobbishness Misi begins to experience. Aware that his family is poor and that the other boys see poverty as a disgrace, he becomes conscious of being ashamed of his background - home is a small village and his father, having lost his combine harvester, is now a carpenter.

This gnawing shortage of money explains why Misi is forever thinking about it. Despite his poverty, however, he is haunted by the guilt of having spent money he could not afford on getting a book bound in a sheepskin cover while his laundry bill remains unpaid. "He shouldn't have had the book bound. That was why he had no money! But then he thought if he hadn't had the book bound, life wouldn't be worth living."

During his first year at the school he had lived with the Toroks family, but on winning a free place he is a boarder and so becomes a new boy all over again. "Filled with Debrecen pride . . . he was convinced that there was no college like it in the whole wide world." Even so, Misi appears to exist in a constant state of fear and his nervous unease is brilliantly conveyed by Moricz.

Detail is an important element in this writer's work; Misi's small store of secret treasures is carefully examined. Each of his little humiliations plays an important role in the narrative. His ridiculous winter hat "was a great wound in his soul. He hated it, because glued to the back of it was a tuft of white pig bristles which were all black at the bottom and spread out like a fan . . . that brutish hat with the pig bristles burned his face". When he loses his hat and later discovers that the gardener is wearing it, Misi is too timid to ask for its return.

THE arrival of a rare and harmless package from home becomes one of the most important episodes in the novel. "That day Misi didn't learn much, but he acquired a great deal of self confidence and he went up to the dormitory with his heart full of pride in his parcel."

Raided by the other boys, his parcel becomes a metaphor for the amoral cruelty of a school run by bullies. But Moricz is subtle and avoids heavy handedness through the sharpness of his humour; the nastiness of the theft is softened by the comedy of one of the boys discovering that the "paste" he spread on his stolen food is actually lineament intended by Misi's mother for his boots.

Zsigmond Moricz (1879-1942) writes with a clear eyed, abundantly detailed realism which is invariably tempered by a rich humour. Far more interested in the ordinary weaknesses and fears, the hypocrisies and small dishonesties of everyday life than in idealism, he examines character perceptively through vivid pen portraits. Not only are Moricz's creations individuals, they are players in an oppressively narrow society. Central to the narrative - which is pointedly set in 1892, a particularly painful period of Hungarian history - is an exchange in which Nagy, one of the senior students, summarises 2000 years of Hungarian history for Misi.

It is the story of a battered country. The Hungarians didn't surrender, didn't pay tribute like people to the east, and the whole nation was practically wiped out. But they achieved one thing: the Mongols didn't get past Hungary. That was always our destiny: we were the ones who had to stop the hordes from the east. Hungary was always the last battleground.

Having bought a lottery ticket for old Mr Posalaky, Misi loses the ticket and is unwittingly placed at the heart of an investigation when it wins another crisis. But the real thief is caught and "wanted to jump in the Danube, but he didn't because it was cold". Largely due to the exactness of his portrayal of young Misi, Moricz's rich tableau of childhood innocence, set against the backdrop of human tailings and heightened by the power of personal experience, has a memorable life of its own.