Sunflower (13 page)

Naturally from that day on Kálmán did not make the least effort toward obtaining gainful employment. (He had been born lucky. Once upon a time, when he was running after a rabbit in the autumn fields, the hunting rifle went off in his hands, and the bullet whizzed past his ear like death's express train. Only years later did it occur to him to give thanks to providence for this.)

Before he reached his hotel, an elegantly dressed, dolorous-voiced, black-gloved lady stepped out of a waiting cab and placed her hand on Kálmán's arm:

“Please don't go back to The Dove any more, my dear. You know you can always have a quiet, clean and comfortable room at my place. And I don't have to tell you that what's mine is yours as well.”

It was Ninon, lurking in the neighborhood of The Dove, determined to keep watch even if she had to wait all morning for her beloved's arrival.

But this morning proved ill-chosen for the grand lady who otherwise had almost complete power over Kálmán—without, however, possessing his heart.

Kálmán now coldly dismissed her.

“Madam, it's all over between us. Find some other fool in town to satisfy your whims. I'm leaving Pest, and never want to see you or your neighborhood again.”

“Why, were you unhappy while you stayed with me?” Ninon asked pointedly, and raised her parasol in a threatening way.

Kálmán looked around for an escape route from the over-wrought lady. He knew of a nearby house with a passageway through it—one of those mute buildings on whose flagstones only those initiated citizens' footsteps wore a path, who entered through one gate and wandered off through another, toward the distant unknown. This was where he intended to lose Ninon. But this experienced lady was no fool, and she, in turn, endeavored to herd the hesitant young man toward her closed carriage. She spoke passionately and nonstop, as if addressing an invisible confidante with the plaintive tale of her ups and downs with Kálmán.

“I tell you, there's not a man in Pest who had it better than this heartless youth. He had the prince's room all to himself in my house; all right, so he was occasionally obliged to go to a coffeehouse when the prince visited Pest for an assignation with one of his girlfriends. Other than that he was lord and master of the house; the concierge was forever running errands for him; he kept the tailors and shoemakers of the district constantly busy; why, the barber's assistant would wait on him in the hall all evening long, as if the prince himself were inside. Ah yes, the easy life, undisturbed, tranquil and refined; carriage rides out to Zugliget; introductions to all my genteel lady visitors; at night, a sensible and blessed peace and quiet behind the securely locked doors of my house, the pantry always fully stocked, and summer holidays in the country...all his to enjoy. My wine cellars, my livestock, my horses; my serving maids obedient as serfs, my chimneys gently puffing smoke; my overstuffed larders, my attics full of drying walnuts and fragrant apples; honey-sweet grapes by the bunch, and my homemade sausages and head cheeses; my local prestige: all his to enjoy. I presented him to my old, highborn friends who offered their lifelong patronage, and I introduced him to the vineyard master on my estate as the new proprietor whose orders are to be obeyed. Had he intended to repay me for all the wisdom and practical advice I gave him, he would have had to build a paper mill, and print banknotes night and day...Oh, the scoundrel!”

Here Ninon screamed, then swore like a sergeant, for Kálmán suddenly ducked into the passageway, and instantaneously vanished from view.

For a moment she stood there dazed as if hit on the head. Then a resigned smile passed over the face that kings had fought over.

“Let's go home, Friedl,” she said to the handsome, silver-haired driver. “Looks like we're getting old.”

The pair of matched Russian horses set off at a trot over the winding Inner City streets.

As for Kálmán Ossuary, he turned his steps in the direction of the Virgin of St. Roch's, whom he had long ago nominated as Eveline's local surrogate in providing miraculous help. That he had been strong enough to free himself from Ninon he owed to Eveline's, or rather Mary's, intercession. This most beautiful of Budapest ladies stood high up on her pillar, pure and divine grace, hewed out of stone. Her head was bent, but not because of the weight of her starry crown of gold, or because of her curiosity to see all the scoundrels and peasants trooping past on Kerepesi Road. Her hands were opposed in prayer, in a gesture of heavenly rapture, as if she sojourned here amidst eternal orisons for all Josephstadt women. “Ave Maria, Gratia Plena!” the gilded letters announced, and Kálmán approached the statue's iron grill with a faith bordering on certainty that others had already prayed here on his behalf. Possibly he had been commended to her safekeeping by Eveline, that exquisite creature, the last time she came here for matins at the Chapel of St. Roch, and knelt behind the nuns, among the mendicants, like some princess traveling incognito. Inside the fence lay a wreath of chrysanthemums, perhaps she had left it as a token, foreseeing that Kálmán would pass this way one doleful morning—a morning when she, in her country manor's window, contemplated the awakening of the land, while Kálmán, lost in the metropolis, had no one to turn to, to pour out his heart...Ah, the most tender thoughts in a man's brain cannot equal the sentimentality of a benevolent woman... Why, such a woman will tell a lie only (by her silence or her absence) when she wishes to spare a man the greatest torment.

Kálmán pressed his forehead against the cast-iron bars and prayed lightheartedly, wordlessly, like a pilgrim. His eyes saw Eveline up on the pilaster, and it was to her that his heart's murmurings went out, to her, lady of miracles, healing breath, caressing hand that brings oblivion.

“Eveline,” he sobbed at last, as woefully as if this would earn him a special reprieve from the maiden who
saw everything
: his cold behavior toward Ninon, his flight, and now saw his ardent prayers as well. And for this reason would have to forgive him, even if icebergs rose up between them.

Far away in a Hungarian village Eveline's nanny, as usual, laid out the Tarot first thing in the morning.

The ancient crone squatting on the floor suddenly pointed at a figure that had long been absent from the lay of the cards.

“A traveler's approaching,” she said, and Eveline trembled like a windblown leaf.

Maskerádi
—were he asked in the great beyond to speak truthfully about his earthly doings—would confess that he had especially feared those women who remembered his lies the day after; otherwise, he had preferred to pass his days at weddings.

Maszkerádi had lived in Pest back in the days when one could see on Chamois Street in the evening the white-stockinged daughters of the bourgeoisie sitting on benches under fragrant trees in the courtyards of single-storied townhouses, listening to the music of distant accordions, their hearts overflowing with love, like a stone trough whose water drips from a little-used faucet. In winter this part of town gave off the smells of the grab bags of itinerant vendors; in summer the predominant scent was that of freshly starched petticoats. Had he the inclination, Maszkerádi could have seduced and abducted the entire female population of Chamois Street. He was a stray soul, French or German in origin, variously prince in exile or cardsharp, refined gentleman or midnight serenader, fencing master or freeloader, as the occasion demanded. Married middle-class ladies cast down their eyes when he flashed a glance at them, while their husbands loathed the sight of his lithe limbs; in her book of hours every girl had a certain prayer picked out for her by Maszkerádi. Sometimes there were as many as four or five young misses bent piously over the supplication of a fallen soul at Sunday Mass in the Franciscans' Church. At night the occasional report of a firearm disturbed the tranquility of the quarter: a father or husband taking a shot at Maszkerádi who had been glimpsed lurking around the sleeping household. He sported a black beard and there was animal magnetism in his voice. He must have retained in his possession intimate letters from some extremely prominent Inner City ladies (for a while he had resided in that quarter)—to have avoided incarceration in the darkest prison of Pest.

One day this disreputable adventurer was found dead in mysterious circumstances in his apartment at Number Ten, where irate husbands had so often waited, posted by the front entrance, expecting to see their dear little errant wives. (Although the road to Maszkerádi was fraught with peril, women still ran off to his place on snowy afternoons before a ball, on spring mornings before an outing to the Buda hills, or after a funeral, aroused by the tears shed at the last rites. On rainy nights there were barefoot women lowering themselves on the drainspout—in short, no other man in town could lay claim to such traffic.) The coroner readily agreed to inter this dangerous individual without a thorough inquest; he didn't even insist on dripping hot candle wax on the fingertips of the deceased. Although the knitting needle stuck in the victim's heart and the nail protruding from the crown of his head were duly noted, the reprobate was not deemed worthy of much fuss. The sooner the meat wagon transported this carrion out of town, the better.

Not two weeks after Maszkerádi's demise the thunder of a gun was again heard late at night in Autumn Street. The newlywed Libinyei had discharged his blunderbuss; he must have seen a ghost, although he swore up and down that he awoke from a nightmare to glimpse Maszkerádi jumping up from his bride's side and escaping through the window. Lotti was pallid, trembled from top to toe, and later confessed to her mother, in strictest confidence, a most peculiar dream that had surprised her like a warm breeze. “If I become pregnant I'll throw myself in the Danube!” the young bride swore, but later reconsidered the matter.

Less than two weeks later, Lotti's sister-in-law, the other Mrs. Libinyei, Helen of the springtime blue eyes, white shoulders like a Madonna, and the sweetness of walnuts, had to wake up her husband in the middle of the night.

“There's someone in the room,” she whispered.

The husband, a dyer in blue, pulled the quilt over his face but even so he could hear the door quietly open as someone exited through the front entrance. His trembling hands groped for Helen's shoulder.

“Phew, you have such a cemetery-smell. Just like Lotti,” blurted the surprised dyer.

Although this scene had transpired in the innermost family sanctum, the townsfolk still learned about the affair and began to give the two Mrs. Libinyeis the strangest looks. After all, it was most irregular that sisters-in-law should share a dead man of ill repute as their lover.

At the civic rifle club meeting, over a glass of wine, one tipsy citizen, possibly a kinsman, brought up this evil rumor in front of the two husbands. By then the story had it that it was the two Mrs. Libinyeis who had done away with the adventurer: one hammered the nail into his skull, the other plunged the knitting needle into his heart, for being unfaithful to them. Apparently he had gone serenading elsewhere in the night, attended the latest weddings and whispered his depraved lies into the ears of the newest brides. So now the dead man was taking his revenge by leaving the cold sepulchral domain of his cemetery ditch to haunt the two murderous women.

Did the Libinyei brothers give credence to the words of their bibulous companion? A nasty row ensued, in the course of which the Libinyei boys, befitting their noble Hungarian origins, and in homage to their warlike
kuruc
freedom-fighter forebears, broke the skulls of several fellow citizens. Swinging chair legs, rifle butts and their fists, they defended the honor of their women. For this reason the rifle association's get-together ended well before midnight, the precious ecstasy of the local Sashegy wines evaporated from under the citizens' hats, and the ragtag band of Gypsy musicians quit playing their discordant tunes among the early spring lilac trees of the municipal park. The grim and much booed Libinyeis hung their heads and trudged homeward on Király Street—the abode, in those days, of midnight-eyed Jewesses and dealers smelling of horsehides.

Reaching their house in Autumn Street at this unusually early, pre-midnight and sober hour, they stopped short, astonished hearts a-thumping, in front of the ground-floor windows. They saw, behind the white lace curtains, the rooms lit up by festive lamplight, while the sounds of music filtered out into the night, just like at certain Inner City town houses marked by red lanterns where even a stranger from distant parts could count on the warmest reception. The screech of the violin resembled a serenade of tomcats on moonlit rooftops.

The elder Libinyei clambered up on the quoin that was decorated by a carving. (It must have come under the scrutiny of every Josephstadt dog by late February.)

Having climbed up, Libinyei the elder peeked through the window into his own home.

Whereupon, without a sound, he tumbled from the wall and fell headlong on the pavement, stretched out very much like one who has concluded his business here on earth.

In a furor Pál Libinyei, the younger brother, sprang up on the cornerstone. His eyes immediately narrowed, as if he had received a terrible blow in the face. The wealthy blue-dyer glimpsed a sight he would not have thought conceivable. The two women, Lotti and Helen, in a state of shameless undress, were treating Maszkerádi to the pleasures of a fully laid groaning board. The ham loomed like a bulls-eye and the wine from Gellért Hill glowed as if a volcano had deposited lava in it. Slices of white bread shone like a bed inviting the tired traveler. In the corner an itinerant musician's calloused fingers twanged the strings, with enough energy for a whole orchestra, while he witnessed the hoopla with the pious expression of a medieval monk.

Libinyei's murderous fist smashed the window.

In the last flicker of the guttering candles he could see the pilgrim-faced musician leap to his feet in the corner, raise his gleaming instrument and deal Maszkerádi's skull a deadly blow, fully meaning to dispatch him to the other world, this time once and for all. Indeed, the libertine collapsed like a whirling mass of dry leaves, when the autumn wind suddenly withdraws behind a tombstone in the municipal park to overhear the conversation of two lovers. The reveler with the bushy, overgrown eyebrows and black evening wear vanished into the flagstones of the floor. For years, the inhabitants of the house would search for him in the cellar, whenever they heard a wine cask creak, but it was only the new wine fermenting in the silence of the night.