Sunflower (26 page)

Ah, but Maszkerádi's confident stride made the footpath seem like it was made of rubber. Her face mirrored a calm satisfaction, as after a successful revenge. Only the best of friends can cheat on each other without qualms, unspeakably glad of the secret not even the best friend can be told now. Curiosity, the impulse to imitate close friends, the oftentimes identical fashions shared in hats and clothes: these will guarantee certain rogues unhoped-for successes at both the dance academy and near the sheltered family hearth. Women fond of each other drink from the same cup with a will, wear each other's shirts and clandestinely kiss the same man's lips. Later perhaps they'll fall at each other's throat if the secret is out before the flames of amorous passion, like shepherds' campfires, gutter away in the ever-receding distance.

“I kiss your hand, Mademoiselle,” chimed Pistoli in the birch-strewn grove, catching Maszkerádi in the act of untethering her mare. “The weather's turning hot-blooded on us. Any day now we'll have to have ice brought in from town.”

Maszkerádi was not surprised at running into the Peeping Tom. She smiled like a queen.

“How good of you to watch my mare, Pistoli. Please hold my stirrup,” she replied, light and easy, like a waltz. Never had he heard her voice so fluting. And she was all furtive and happy smiles, like a honeymoon diary kept by a young wife.

“You may help me, Pistoli,” said she with infinite condescension, like an angel from heaven meeting a mendicant on the road. For alms, she cast an absentminded glance at Mr. Pistoli. Quite possibly she thought the perfume emanating from her clothes would suffice to gratify this stout gentleman.

Pistoli began in a bleating tone, as if he had trouble finding his voice.

“Don't, please don't for a moment think, dear lady, that I would dare delve into your comings and goings. Although the attic floor in the cottage does have a hole I once used for spying on women, to see what they did when left to their own devices...I remember seeing many a terrified or pensive face on solitary womenfolk. They would put their room in order, spread the towel out to dry, smooth down the pillow's creases, scrutinize themselves in a hand mirror as if they feared that kisses marked them like the yellow patch on a mediaeval Jew's robe...But my memory retains nothing of you, my dear lady, for I consider your action so low, so ordinary that it's not worth burdening my brains with.”

“So what do you think of me?” hissed Maszkerádi, raising her head, serpentlike.

Pistoli advanced two steps, as on a fencing strip.

His voice no longer shook, though it still sounded as alien as if it belonged to a train conductor:

“I think, my little flower bud, that you are the lowest of the low in all of Hungary.”

Maszkerádi raised her riding crop and struck Mr. Pistoli twice—two full blows. The chastisement had its effect: Pistoli turned tail and fled. In his room he took to his bed and reminisced about a Count Stadion, a lieutenant whom Mrs. Rózsakerti had once slapped in Nyíregyháza. That quondam lieutenant blew his brains out the next morning.

“Ah, to be kicked by a mare's no shame,” said Pistoli that evening to Kakuk, when the latter squatted down by the bedside.

The tramp waved a disdainful hand:

“She'll be back to make up with your honor,” he opined, waiting for Pistoli to fall asleep, so he could guzzle the leftover wine.

That night, with its besotted, harried ghosts and bulgy-eyed goblins, dragged on interminably, like a midnight train wreck, the morning after which the survivor takes stock of his remaining limbs.

The whiplash's sting sent Mr. Pistoli to seek refuge in one of his favorite activities: composing his will, perhaps for the twentieth time. He apportioned his extant and nonexistent belongings among women he had known or would have liked to know. The Stony Dinka of former days, “whose hair was like Sultan Flor shag-cut tobacco,” was assigned entire herds of goats, whereas there was only one lonesome billy goat to dispose of, by the name of Pista, who exercised his horns in the vicinity of the manor. To Rosa Máli he bequeathed his best bed, which had the distinction of once serving the “Hatted King” Joseph II for a night's rest on his Hungarian travels. Risoulette inherited the awe-inspiring roosters that would come down from the dunghill when summoned by a whistle, to put on a cockfight that Pistoli found more entertaining than watching circus wrestlers. To the sanctimonious Mrs. X he left the nude photographs of which the lonely bachelor had quite a collection. For Mme Y, who was well versed in the insignia of officers from all branches of military service, he set aside a book of hours dating from the days of Prince Rákóczi. To Mrs. Weis he willed his fur coat, Mrs. Fehér his boots, Mrs. Pussenkatz his hunting rifle. Only the wines and sausages in the larder were left out of the will. For Pistoli did not intend to pass away as long as a single glass of wine remained to be drunk in the house.

His pipe collection had long ago been promised to Eveline—so that her future husband would have something to smoke.

And now Miss Maszkerádi, too, was inducted into his list. The letters produced by his goose quill grew fatter. Curlicued appendages embellished his capitals, and his sentences ended with braided flourishes suggesting baroque imprecations.

“My lady Maszkerádi must not be omitted, even though she is responsible for the most infamous day of my life. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost I declare that I am no longer angry at her, for I now realize that it was entirely my fault that that young lady grabbed the handle of a whip instead of something else equally suitable for her delicate little hand.

“The sky is getting cloudy. I no longer feel like setting down the whys and wherefores of how much I have loved her. She will not forget me for quite some time. For this reason, after my death she may have my embalmed right hand. Let her cut it off and take it as her plaything.”

And he kept nodding his head emotionally, as if he had been some old outlaw on death row, at last speaking the truth.

Next, he reviewed all of his female acquaintances one final time, to make sure he had not forgotten a single one who would make him anxiously toss and turn in the grave. He replayed in memory all gullible smiles, tearful female eyes, marriages on the rocks, disrupted tranquilities, and grief-stricken faces, temples that ended up looking like careworn old shoe leather; recalled all, down to the farewell smiles that women sent after his cart, women he had promised to visit again the next day, whereas he avoided their neighborhood ever after; down to every trembling hand that did not want to let go of his, just as the drowning clutch at a straw; and those women whose bashful legs longed to run after him, but were constrained by modesty to stop and with closed eyes receive sorrow's bludgeon on the back of their frail necks; all of his women, whom basically he felt so sorry for (because they had believed his lies) that his heart nearly burst for them...Just like a sentimental cardsharp running his fingertips over the deck of cards. And he fell into a long reverie.

Snapping out of it, this same gent cackled mockingly as he slashed on the Diósgyo´´r foolscap a signature befitting a Prince of Transylvania. Using a carnelian signet ring he pressed his seal on the paper sprinkled with writing sand, managing to burn his fingers on the sealing wax.

Kakuk now stirred behind his back like some clattering kitchen clock. Staggering and swaying, he announced that this afternoon's guest at the garden cottage was Miss Eveline—“that Virgin Mary of Pócs”—and the tramp's eyes grew red, like a murderer's who is convinced he is merely executing fate's decree.

“Easy does it,” replied Pistoli, whose legs trembled as if he were being taken to be hanged.

He felt the lust and horror of the amorous betrayals around him, just as in that French novel he had once read, where the chevalier brought into the sanctuary of respectable families the contagion of his depravity, so that the grandfather, a man of hitherto untarnished character, sought his ultimate carnal thrills in his granddaughter's debaucheries.

“Easy does it,” he repeated, as if he were approaching, hat in hand, a resting butterfly at noontime.

“I've got to climb up in the attic to get my game bag,” he announced in a husky voice after a while, whereupon Kakuk made such an ignorant, doltish face that no one would have believed that he had never missed a chance to spy through picket fences or windows left open on men and women at intimate moments. One reason Mr. Pistoli liked Kakuk was the latter's ability to play dumb, cunning scoundrel that he was.

The tramp helped to pull off his boots and scurried about Mr. Pistoli like a midwife, while that gentleman tiptoed barefoot toward the garden cottage. There Kakuk grasped the bottom of the ladder like a fireman assisting his chief, and humbly blinked at Mr. Pistoli who was sneaking up into the attic.

“Go,” waved Mr. Pistoli from on high, as if the ill-favored old tramp's proximity would desecrate the cottage, inside which the precious Eveline was having her enchanting, delightful, tormenting tryst. He lay down on the attic floor, found his old peephole, and felt an exquisite thrill, as if naked fairies, female torturers had tied him into knots, drawn him up to the rafters, and meted out the bodily chastisement that Mr. Pistoli believed was his due for sins never confessed. “Keep it up, harder, for I am the greatest sinner,” Mr. Pistoli's soul cried out inwardly. His bones cracking, his sinews stretched to the breaking point by the self-inflicted torment, like those martyrs' who received the Inquisitor's whiplash on their naked bodies with a beatific smile directed at heaven. An aging man may find pleasure even in the ability to suffer.

Eveline knelt in front of Ossuary like a little lambkin gently laying her head in the shepherd's lap. Kálmán's fingers fondled the girl's curls, those precious strands of hair on which life's joys and sorrows had played, like a sonata's melody on the violin's strings. Arm extended, he held up one of her braids to count the knots tied on it by Eveline with the regularity of stitches in a stocking. There were thirteen loops on the braid of hair, for the thirteen unhappy years she would have to spend as penitence for this blissful hour. Then came the silken ribbons tied at the end of the tresses. And after that, nothing. Cold solitude and nights of oblivion. Life remains beautiful only as long as one can still suffer torments on hopeless nights—a suffering that will surely merit the prize of redemption.

Eveline raised her head and looked into Ossuary's eyes with such an otherworldly smile that up in the attic Mr. Pistoli's hands involuntarily groped for a knife. He had apparently forgotten that once upon a time even his own ragged features were thus searched by feminine eyes looking for heavenly salvation. How far was the memory of those women who would have sacrificed their all at such moments of self-forgetfulness...But he had been modest and never asked them for anything other than what they bestowed so freely.

Eveline stared, as one who sees a miracle on a treetop: the appearance of the Virgin Mary or Jesus Christ in a lamblike cloud. Her eyes did not need to shed tears for they were misty already, as if she had already heard the otherworldy voice assuring her that her prayers were not in vain. This was the greatest love, the kind no one believes in until they experience it. The hour that trickled by would forever tower over Eveline's passing life, a red tower visible from the greatest distances. Life may race by over hedge and ditch like a pack of foxhounds. Yes, other lovable riders may come to join the party, the pursuit of the silver fox of happiness, but no matter how far she would gallop, the memory of this hour would never fall into oblivion. The tower stood on the horizon, its thirteen steps no longer unknown for the reminiscing lady. There is the step of the first handshake, then the steps of the eyes, voices and kisses. The steps spiral around this fairy-tale tower turning upon a duck's foot, always in the direction of the sun's heat—the sun of love. The step of the feet, the station of the hands, the balcony of embraces, the momentous landing of the respite between kisses; the gallery of nameless desires, the arbor of whispers and sighs; and at last: the tower's peak...Love, that brought all of us into this world.

Eveline beheld her idol. Pistoli well knew this kind of gaze on women's faces. This is the gaze of the insane who in their solitary cells, cast an entranced glance after the feathery-hatted knight. It is also the gaze of fetish worshippers, who expect miracles of their diminutive Asiatic deities. Eyes that are a hair's breadth away from madness; eyes that would terrify, if on a lonely night one were to behold them reflected in the mirror...

This is what Ossuary said:

“Baby, I have a problem: I want to leave this accursed house and return to Budapest.”

“Please forgive me...” Eveline faltered. “I had guessed your thought before I came here.”

She rose on her toes, and strutted to the table like a child with mischief on her mind. She snapped open her handbag and pulled out a stack of banknotes as her timid offering. Blue and pink banknotes, neatly folded, as only women know how to fold brand-new, crisp bills.

Ossuary, to end this scene as quickly as possible, with one bored gesture scooped up the gift, and sank it out of sight so quickly that Pistoli was unable to make out which pocket the money went in. All of this proved sufficient to make Pistoli rise with a rumble, and leave the attic on thunderous, thumping feet.

When he reached ground level he broke into the
verbunkos
, a traditional soldiers' recruiting dance, and embraced Kakuk.

“I'm getting drunk as a lord and I never want to be sober again,” he shouted. “Go get my cart. Move it, Kakuk, if you hold your life dear. Wine, I want wine.”

Growling and staggering, he leaned against the gatepost and waited until Quitt arrived, the one-eyed Jewish carter who hauled Mr. Pistoli about whenever the urge to roam seized him. Bells jingled, hanging from the necks of his horses. Sad little jingle bells, that rang out over the highway like the entreaties of a mendicant friar.