Sunflower (10 page)

Sunk in this emotional reverie, Kálmán sauntered from the Josephstadt district back to the Inner City, where in small taverns smelling of beer and braised pork
pörkölt
he ate his meals and was slowly going to seed, spending his time with devil-may-care, constantly harassed yet eternally hopeful cronies who knew nothing of his heart's deep wound. Paprika-laced dishes flushed his face, foaming brews cooled his gullet, the grease-stained newsrag apprised him of the day's events, while his associates retailed bawdy and hilarious yarns. Thus he passed tolerable, jolly, carefree evenings. At times some streetwalker would arouse his interest, but these trysts left him feeling as if he had embraced death. He was amazed that the other wanderers in the gutter, all those women swathed in veils and cheap perfume, had not been collared by the lanky escort with his death's-head grinning above a smartly-knotted white silk scarf.

Midnight would regularly find him at a gambling den, among the same set of pallid faces. The waiter, bright and merry, was quick to bring a cup of steaming black coffee, high hopes reflected in his sly eyes. The air of the halls was still fresh, the carpets unsoiled by cigar ash. Gentlemen with gleaming shirt fronts beamed, amiable and jolly, as befitting well-bred men about town. They shook hands ceremoniously, and traded pleasantries with the croupier, even though everyone knew he cheated. The hostess, freshly coiffed, diamonds in her earrings, extended her plump, soft hands to be kissed; her neck emanated a fresh, sweet scent. The footman continually opened the secret door upon the proper signal to let in more and more players who brought the latest news from coffee houses, theaters, restaurants and clubs in various parts of town. A lively and enviable hubbub animated the salons of this establishment. Lapels still sported the flower pinned there by a woman's hand earlier in the evening. Everyone felt like being witty and pleasant—until the bell rang at the gaming table.

A dyed mustache, meticulous shave, pomaded strands of hair pasted across his bald skull like dark twigs on winter trees: this was the croupier. He wore a green hunting jacket and tight pants, like landed gentry on a city outing. He let the nail grow long on his little finger, and wore an oversize signet ring bought at a pawn shop. He was on familiar terms with everyone present, for that was the style of the house. His bulging frog's eyes took in his guests from top to toe, the rock in his tiepin was the size of a pea, and he wore his watch chain short, in the manner of army officers. His platinum-capped false teeth smiled enigmatically behind blue lips. This man was never bothered by the thought that outdoors it might be springtime...He wore great big American shoes, was equipped with ear- and toothpicks in a silver case, a gilt-backed mustache brush, a silver cigar-cutter, a pocketknife with a handle fashioned from an antler, and matching morocco leather notebook, mirror, wallet and change purse; his back pocket hid a Browning automatic, his lapel sported an ivory edelweiss, the kind they sell in Austria; in his vest pocket reposed a hundred-crown gold coin and a case holding an amber mouthpiece for cigarillos and cigarettes. He puffed clouds of smoke from an A'Há brand Turkish cigarette with the relish of one who had just dined. Yes, he savored life to the fullest. Only his temples betrayed telltale signs: those ominously bulging veins that hinted he would not be around until the extreme limits of human longevity to quaff French champagne with his little finger sticking up next to his dyed mustache.

(Kálmán, in his mind still back in the neighborhood of the Museum Boulevard, imagined his nose detected, in the aroma of steaming black coffee, the ineffably sweet scent of a young lady's lingerie. He paid less heed to this dubiously genteel crowd than he would to a street urchin lounging by a lamp-post on the corner. Eveline kept reverberating in his head, an incantation, a mantra protecting him from all danger.)

Before the mustached croupier set to work, he dug up a monocle from a vest pocket, the kind set in the eye socket by a gold spring. For he was a gentleman now. Why should he strain his facial musculature to balance a monocle? The glass lens rested effortlessly over his right eye, lending an air of prestige.

He had a penchant for French words in directing the game, much as a dance master conducting a quadrille. Had he chosen a political career, he would have achieved great success by pompously parroting the sententious slogans and pronouncements loved by the press. In fact he had been a small-town revenue officer in the Alföld lowlands before marrying the hostess, the infamous owner of several “champagne parlors” in Pest. Although the lady was somewhat over the hill, her connections were unimpeachable: she knew just about every spendthrift in town through the salons she had kept. The decision to run a gambling casino meant that Mr. Zöld would never again have to don a bureaucrat's frock coat.

Nothing earthshaking was brought about by Mr. Zöld's turning up in the capital. There was simply one more scoundrel in town, another chiseler who assumed the airs of a Hungarian country gentleman. Without batting an eyelid he would have forged a promissory note, without a twinge of conscience committed highway robbery, or done away with one or two customers, afterwards sleeping the untroubled sleep of the just, snoring ever so heartily. Pseudo-gentry of his kind, lording it in the capital, was becoming the vilest ingredient in the body of the Hungarian nation. Putting on aristocratic airs, they cheated and stole while complaining that you cannot prosper in Hungary because of the Jews. Mr. Zöld was a typical example of the con man who is forever blowing his own trumpet, sends out a pair of witless dueling seconds whenever he feels insulted, whose arrogant, aggressive glances darken the local horizon until he finally meets the person who cracks his skull.

In the midst of the assembled tailcoats and tuxedos there would turn up an overweight and prematurely old Jew who had once upon a time received illicit commissions from Guszti, tonight's hostess, in the days when she still dealt in champagne and love for sale. Back then Diamant held another outlook on the world, when the stock market, cards and women had abundantly provided for life's necessities. At nightclubs and gambling dens he had been the number one big spender, the kind who would send lavish bouquets to celebrated danseuses and who knew cab drivers and music hall doormen by their first names. He had been the very soul of conviviality, sparing no expense for a friendly get-together. However, his luck had turned. He grew gray-bristled, fat and bald. Asthmatic, he drank excessively, got into fights, owed the headwaiter, lost his seat on the stock exchange, his credit at the tailor, and finally, his friends; cards and horses stopped favoring him. Yet he accepted all this with equanimity, for he was a wise man. His Achilles' heel was hearing about the good luck of men he judged his inferiors. Face flushed dark in scorn and anger, he would stop talking, puff on his cigar, and express his contempt with a dismissive gesture.

Diamant detested Mr. Zöld for having been a revenue officer, for having married Guszti, for running the roulette game and diverting a pittance for Diamant from the house's winnings only at the wife's intercession.

On these occasions Diamant had to lounge about in the salon until after the patrons departed at daybreak, when he would clearly overhear the conversation between man and wife in the next room:

“Listen, Zöld, we should give Diamant something,” she began.

“Let'im go jump in a lake,” the sporting man retorted.

“I think he owes rent money.”

“He can rob a bank,” suggested Mr. Zöld.

“But listen...” she persisted, and whispered the rest, inaudibly for Diamant's vigilant ears. But the croupier's shout rang out loud and clear:

“Why should I pay for your old boyfriend?”

Diamant, by his lonesome self, flicked his wrist in a resigned gesture but did not budge, assured that Mr. Zöld would soon emerge, yellow with bile, and wearily drop a few banknotes in the dawn intruder's palm.

Diamant liked to converse with younger men who presumably respected his illustrious past. Therefore he joined Kálmán in the salon where the old manservant, a billiard marker back in Guszti's younger days, now served ample libations of complimentary champagne.

“See, my young friend, your two basic types in Hungary are the count and the Jew. The rest don't count. They're a bunch of big zeros. And so is our landlord.” So opined the prematurely old, fat man, who had consumed the greatest number of oysters in Budapest. “Now the historical nobility behaved like simpletons. Always paid up before the loans were due, as if they needed to shore up their credit. Back in '48, or whenever, they gave up their last holdings, the nobility's privileges. They voluntarily degraded themselves into commoners, although if there'd been a single Jew in the company, he would have surely spoken up: ‘I'd rather die than let myself be persecuted...' The Hungarian nobility settled the debts of the past without litigation, dispute or insisting on the highest bid—and what can a tribe expect, when it has voluntarily divested its privileges?”

In the neighboring room the ivory ball was already spinning in the wheel.

For the time being Mr. Zöld manned the roulette wheel, with the expertise of a veteran Monte Carlo croupier. (Should the wheel perform poorly, the Madame was ready to spell him; her ring-studded plump hands turned up numbers that made the players curse.)

Neither Diamant nor Kálmán had the wherewithal for a stake—not even a five-crown piece—to try their luck. Therefore they had a leisurely, heartfelt chat in the salon, while the players' chaotic hubbub and the jingle of gold and silver filtered toward them like sounds from a distant, exotic province.

“I'd love to be a tenant leaseholder on some village estate...” continued Diamant, signaling the footman for another bottle of complimentary bubbly. “I'd keep young maidservants who'd give me a hand adulterating the wine. Ah, my wife would have money to stuff her straw mattresses with. As for the outlaws, I'd either be pals with them, or else take potshots at them from behind barred windows. I'd have my horses, cattle, children and freedom. Wear a blue housecoat and marry a young girl when I'm a hundred. Yes, I'd grow a beard like my father's and be lord and master of my house like an Oriental potentate. Now I am just a bum in the big city. A village cur lost in the metropolis, because he ate the folks out of house and home. And who do you think you are, my young friend, Kálmán Ossuary?”

Kálmán calmly waved his hand.

“I won't challenge you to a duel, Mr. Diamant, no matter what you toss in my face.”

“I know: you'll give that satisfaction only to gentlemen! But do you know who are the ones lording it in Hungary these days?”

Before Diamant could continue, a dreadful howl of rage rang out in the gaming room. A man roared as if he had caught his wife in flagrante. A drowning, raucous howl of murderous intent.

Kálmán jumped to his feet.

His stout friend tranquilly restrained his arm.

“Let'em be. Only scoundrels and idiots get into fights.”

In the roulette room Kálmán witnessed the following edifying scene:

A gentleman in tails, his eyes reduced to red circles by alcohol and rage, clutched an empty champagne bottle, and threatened at the top of his voice to crack the croupier's bald skull. The dramatic intermezzo caused only a brief interruption in the progress of the play. The croupier's cronies, who hovered like executioner's assistants behind Mr. Zöld, and cheered the house's winnings with spasmodic gesticulations and inarticulate shouts and turned cadaverous, livid faces upon less profitable runs of the ball, now saw the time ripe to demonstrate their usefulness and servility. In a trice they surrounded the fuming player. One set about convincing the man of the impropriety of his conduct, another protested in a rapid patter that Zöld's play was unimpeachable, while a third shook his knobby butcher-boy knuckles at the tipsy gentleman's nose.

“You're disturbing the game!” squawked others who sat hunched over the green baize tabletop clutching pocket notebooks or slips of paper, dead serious about recording the run of numbers.

Shouts of “Throw him out!” echoed, like some cabbalistic formula, incanted by a potbellied, hedgehog-eyed, swine-dealer sort who had just collected sizeable winnings by staking on zero.

“Take it easy, Colonel,” bleated others, trying to appease him, while, wrinkling their brows, they took advantage of the fortuitous pause to appraise winnings and losses.

“I was under the impression I'm among gentlemen,” bellowed the personage addressed as Colonel, whereupon one or two of the players started to tug at their shirtcuffs, and one sneering, bald fop with a face just begging to be slapped screwed in his monocle.

“How amusing,” he lisped. “The Colonel was under the impression...Most amusing.”

But his comment proved ill-timed. The enraged Colonel, unable to reach the croupier, vented his pent-up fury by slamming his fist into the monocled face, and sent the man sprawling under the table.

That fine gentleman emerged deathly pale (sans monocle) from below and produced a revolver as big as a hambone from a back pocket.

“That's all we needed!” exclaimed Guszti, the cheerful hostess, almost gladly. And without so much as straining her biceps she hustled the gun-toting dandy into the adjoining room.

Mr. Zöld seized the ensuing pause to remove his monocle, and assuming a rather innocent and even pained expression (perhaps regretting the fop's
malheur
) he rose, radiating empathy.

“Gentlemen, we're not playing for beans here. I believe it's in everyone's interest that we continue playing fair and square.”

“The police ought to be told about what's going on here,” the Colonel persisted, grinding his teeth.

Mr. Zöld gestured unctuously:

“These gentlemen are my daily guests,” quoth he, deferentially looking around as if the company assembled around the roulette wheel were the very cream of the nation's paladins and standard-bearing knighthood. “They will testify that the play in these rooms is strictly above the board. And anyway, in roulette the croupier is a mere intermediary handling the players' bets,” he added, as an edifying afterthought.