Sunflower (12 page)

“Damn, something spilled on me...”

His feathered green hunting hat indeed showed traces of a suspect fluid, flung from above into the early morning Inner City street; at the same time a white-curtained window was quietly closed on the second floor.

(It would have been easy to go into flights of fancy about the white hand and the lace-frilled nightgown, the sleepy little face, the snowy shoulders, and the long eyelashes stuck in a thousand-and-one-nights' narcosis by sleep, heavy sighs exhaled into the pillows, thoughts aflutter like moths in the night while the stockings were being pulled off, the fairy dust of sweet reveries sprinkled on the brow, the orphaned little hand of the sleeping woman, her heel peeping out from the silk quilt in telltale exposure of the dreaming virgin in the dawn light—but Mr. Diamant was past his serenading mood. Interjecting brief curses, he explained to Kálmán that certain irate old bachelors in the Inner City poured water from upper stories on the heads of the early dawn passersby whose footfalls, resounding in the deathly silence of the neighborhood, disturbed the citizens' sleep.)

These were the circumstances preceding their arrival at The Veteran, a rare all-night tavern in the Inner City of old Pest, permitted by the police to stay open all night. And so the nightlife was lively here, even though the tavern sign showed a Hat Street janitor decked out in the uniform, complete with feather, sword and other insignia, of a Mexican campaign volunteer from Emperor Maximilian's time.

The vaulted rooms belonged to a building on Franciscans' Place; printers, newspapermen, women of easy virtue and other such nocturnal refugees camped out here, so many tumbleweeds, transients blown by the whistling autumn winds and left stuck on the cemetery steps. Misplaced lives found a nook here, much as wanderers' wet cloaks are spread out to dry on a roadside kiln. The pilgrims left the crosses they had toted this far, resting them against the wall outside, before stepping from the night into the alcoholic fumes of this musty tavern. They dropped in here for one last hour of merrymaking, shouting, table-thumping, arguing, maybe a song or two—before laying themselves down to a sleep from which there might be no awakening. All around in the big city, the Budapest of myriad lives, people were asleep. Groaning in their dreams of lottery numbers, white-legged girls, nightmarish hags, tomorrow's cares, money turned to ash—as if they had all fled the city for night's distant province. Sleepers don't pay taxes, don't litigate, they lie tranquil, stretched out, wonderfully silent. Of the city's legions of voices, feelings, longings, only The Veteran's patrons remained awake. If the sleepers were never to wake again, The Veteran's patrons would remain as Budapest's sole survivors, having stayed up carefree, gay, open-eyed, keeping the watch during the night when archangels came to lay waste apartment houses whose gateposts were marked with the blood of the lamb.

Here they sat, tippled their wine, downed their beer, and consumed freshly boiled meats and palate-tingling seafood, the folks who would have nothing to do with the city's daytime, who had exiled themselves into the night, having found no daytime faces worth facing. Those who, without this tavern, would have been forced to become magic hunters, galloping ghosts astride dry twigs, wanderers gliding over the highway, blurry patches of moonlight on the roof ridge, stuck-in-the-doghouse, doorway-lurking shadows, stray smoke rings wreathed around the moon, starbeams' loosely flung motes, persuaders lurking at the foot of the suicide's bed, pied pipers wearing the trickster's tall hat, disembodied bawdy thoughts sneaking in to tempt sleepless virgins. They sat dipping their beards into tankards, as befits liberated, formerly bewitched spirits who have nothing else left to do at night in the city. Executioners and victims, trembling sinners and meek fishermen flocked together under night's shelter. Those whom a faithful wife's chaste kiss and undefiled limbs awaited in a warm bed had already left the premises, the way a dragonfly soars away, apparently aimless, toward the sun's rays.

These desperate, sad pub crawlers respected Mr. Diamant, whose form emanated at least as much bitter experience as the pyramids of Egypt. A separate table was secured for the melancholy man who proceeded to salute by first name a few individuals who looked like coachmen, after being greeted by them.

“Boiled beef...and, if you happen to have one, a marrow bone,” said Diamant to the spindle-shanked tavernkeeper, all the while emanating an air of official ceremoniousness, as if the job of food inspection had been what made him stay up nights.

The teeth had hardly begun masticating the meat, Diamant had barely downed a single stein of barley-brew (his eyes fixed vacantly on a far-off point), when the front door's glass, veiled by steam like the women's compartment in Purgatory, flew open.

She was smartly dressed, fresh and perfumed, as if all night she had preened in front of her mirror, instantly replenishing evaporated essences. She shimmered and hovered like a beauteous woman in a ruined gambler's imagination, the one he could have bought had his luck taken a different turn. Her vanished youth, expired like a swallow on African shores, now returned for this one night. She was woman, a jealous tigress maddened by pains surpassing those of childbirth. She was the ruddy disk of the sun dying behind the hills, mirroring the wrestling twins: the moon's leggy, breezy, flute-playing daughter and the sun's hammersmith son.

One of her eyes had a cast, as if there, behind iron-barred windows, cried out the prisoners condemned to death row: love, youth, song and recklessness.

Her other eye stared fixed at Kálmán Ossuary like a gold-tipped arrow seeking the bulls-eye.

Kálmán, paralyzed, could merely look on at this fiery sallying forth of bustle, ostrich-feathered hat, sweet perfume: la dolce vita itself, on parade like some superannuated circus steed that, come tomorrow, might be harnessed to a hearse.

But Diamant had his wits about him.

He flew toward the onrushing lady and addressed her in the unctuous, churchwarden-like tones of a village uncle:

“Madam, this place is most unsuitable...”

“I want to be near my betrothed,” replied Ninon, who had had plenty of time on this sleepless night to rehearse her say.

“But this is a cabdrivers' club,” Diamant insisted, expending considerable energy to achieve a kind of asthmatic emphasis. “Men may go anywhere, even to a morgue if they feel like being diverted by the sight of a woman beaten to death. But you are a refined lady, men kiss your hand wherever you go.”

“That used to be the case, but this man proved to be my undoing,” she faltered.

“Let's go, my lady,” Diamant replied relentlessly, and at once took the hysterical woman by the arm.

In two strides he led her out of The Veteran, and seated her in a cab waiting by the curb.

“Please go home now...” he said.

(“And feel free to read your old love letters, my unhappy child,” he added, in his mind.)

When he returned, he addressed Kálmán in a more familiar manner.

“Son, you must get away from here. Only misery and the sufferings of hell lie in store for you here. And lest you forget, the prisons are empty nowadays, just waiting to be filled...Get away from here, go someplace where there's fresh air and a breeze. Where you can hear whoops from a long way off, and the heartbeat's steady like a bull's low-key, casual bellowing. You're still young, you're master of your own fate. Find some innocent, saintly woman who will pray away your sins and will gladly suffer anything for your sake, be it a toothache or martyrdom. Times are getting tough around here.”

Ossuary hung his head.

A slew of melancholy images came to his mind with cruel alacrity. A narrow Inner City street, the flickering street lamp, in the light of which he examines the rope before looping it around his neck...A miserable, endless day, the sun showing no sign of ever intending to sink behind St. Gellért's Hill, and all afternoon spent looking the pistol's barrel in the eye...The penitentiary, full of rats and close-cropped old inmates... Buried alive in the stench...

He felt utterly miserable.

“I'll make arrangements for your departure by daybreak,” continued Diamant, and gritting his teeth, he swallowed a mouthful of beer after chewing on it as if it were some adversary.

Soon afterward Kálmán Ossuary left The Veteran's heart-lulling and soul-soothing vaulted chambers. He had experienced a miraculous transformation deep down in his heart. No more loitering around gambling casinos; on the street he would steer clear of his worthless, easygoing chums who casually fraternized with death; he would reconcile with his uncle, a prickly village gentleman out of whom he could no longer squeeze a single farthing; he would take his law exams and establish himself as a lawyer in the Inner City of Pest. Any life deficient in the family pleasures must, of necessity, be aimless and troubled. He would find himself a wife in the Josephstadt, where he had met Eveline. He would have the doors fitted with secure locks, be always on the qui vive, take his wife out only to the National Theater and for daily constitutionals on the Buda esplanade, soon with heads bent they would be leaning over a small cradle, enjoying the quiet life, no thought hidden from each other; they would have their photograph taken together, and on Sunday afternoons visit the Farkasrét Cemetery where the relatives rest in peace. Time to enjoy the pleasures of a fine kitchen, the rich roast, clean table linen, a soft bed and the alarm clock —quiet, happy days, with plenty of time to observe all the beauty of autumn and spring. No loud word would ever scare the silent bird of tranquility from their house. Only the sewing machine will whirr, the mailman will ring the doorbell to deliver a money order, and a retired old neighbor might amble over after dinner to regale them with tales of the Prussian campaign. The family doctor would make house calls, but mostly to discuss politics, and afternoon coffee would be sipped by his wife's dearest friends: old Josephstadt ladies who are never seen without shopping bags. The clock's hands would show the midnight hours in vain in a house where everyone sleeps through the night. The garbage collector's bell, or the dawn revelers' footfalls, would be heard from a great distance, as if from far-off lands. The oil lamp always lit under the holy icon, until the woman of the house begins to resemble the Virgin Mary herself, her face not yet broken by pain; if overheard talking in her dream, she would always speak of household and domestic matters, serving maid stuff: “Marie, mind the gentleman's caraway-seed soup...”

And since only sadness has the right to lie, they would never tell each other an untruth as long as they lived, Kálmán and Eveline, or whoever would substitute for Eveline (who would nonetheless be consulted and asked for her blessing).

Until now, each and every dawn had seen a similarly resolved, joyous and purified Kálmán turn in to sleep until nightfall, when all of the upright resolutions were again promptly forgotten. Chaotic dreams sprang at him their desperate madhouse surprises as soon as he shut his eyes in sleep, and helped to neglect those matutinal vows. When he periodically awoke from these horrible images, his heart beat like a syphilitic's who had stumbled upon the nature of his disease. Had he been a writer, he would have set down his dreams, the mendacious acts committed in his sleep, his conscious self-deceptions, his dreamland swindles—he would have had enough material for a lifetime...No wonder his dazed brain was reluctant to give serious thought to changing his way of life. One after another, his days flew by like migrating cranes across the sky's vault. At the age of twenty-five he still imagined that Eveline (if she actually refused to marry him) would find a wife for him, forgive him all his trespasses and also provide for his future. He believed Eveline to be a supernatural, goddesslike being whose generosity surpassed even a mother's.

Now, on this new morning of resolve, he stepped on the sidewalk and set out half awake on the winding Inner City streets toward the small residential hotel where during the last season (ever since Eveline had left Pest) Ninon de Lenclos had more than once settled his debts. She had also replenished his supply of underwear and clothes, until at last Kálmán deigned to return to Ninon's miniature palazzo, to a bed on the mezzanine that was as capacious as any king or voluptuary's—without meaning any offense against Eveline's sacred personage, for the girl's marvelous face always floated before his eyes, like Jesus Christ's in front of the penitent on holy pilgrimage, giving strength and endurance on the endless march...

...whereas for Kálmán she took the form of heroines in romantic novels, and faith-healing saintly maidens who were indifferent to earthly suffering...Her face appeared embroidered on medieval ecclesiastic banners that flapped in the wind over the heads of the troop of unfortunates, among whom Kálmán marched, in the shadow of the banner...Only rarely did he see her as a tousled, scatterbrained schoolgirl (one of the students at an Inner City boarding school where Eveline had spent her youth)—and that had been a while back, when Kálmán was still at the height of his energies, and was capable of making decisions on the girl's behalf as well. However, the slender girlchild with the dreamy, far-off look soon saw through things— she could actually see what Kálmán did when he was alone, she could actually see Kálmán's thoughts, how he lived, walked the streets and whom he met. She began to see all of Kálmán's life in stunning detail when she was barely seventeen. That was the time she handed over to him the first thousand-forint banknote (how she had acquired it was unfathomable, since as a minor, she had no access to her considerable wealth as yet), which Kálmán took to the races and lost on a horse at the spring meet. Eveline received the news without a blink or word of regret. “I'll economize,” she said, although Kálmán, in the old garden on which the windows of the Szerb Street girls' school opened, swore up and down that he would find no peace until he recovered the lost thousand...Eveline looked off into the distance and quietly implored Kálmán to spend his time more profitably than trying to make money. He needed to shift for himself only until Eveline finished her schooling, when she would take control of her finances...