Sunflower (16 page)

“Poor dear,” replied Eveline, and embraced her friend with a heart as pure as only a village girl's can be. She smelled of old lavender and wore shirts of fine Upland linen. In cold weather she put on soft cotton flannel petticoats although she knew full well that this was no longer the fashion. She loved to linger in vaulted chambers, to dawdle in a May garden, and, come autumn, to sink into reveries wrapped in a Kashmir shawl. And she loved beautiful old novels.

“So who was your second alter ego?” Eveline asked.

“I'll tell you when we've forgotten about Egypt,” replied Miss Maszkerádi, assuming the grave air of a schoolteacher. “Anyway, it's getting dark, time to light the lamp.”

On this spring night the ladies of Bujdos found themselves serenaded.

It was in honor of the visitor, as always, whenever Malvina Maszkerádi sojourned at Hideaway.

When the moonlight rose above the canebrakes, where it had been brooding like an outlaw, it revealed, leaning against a linden tree, the figure of Mr. Pistoli, who had already gone through three wives, for he still hoped that he would conquer the Donna Maszkerádi, whom this incorrigible amoroso with the tinted mustache liked to dub the Dark Lady of the Sonnets, among other monickers.

Ah, Pistoli was a solemn and cruel-hearted man of the world except at Bujdos, where, the moment he set foot, he became a clown. He brought along a Gypsy band, and made sure to collect one half of the generous honorarium he bestowed on them from Andor Álmos-Dreamer the day after the night music—for Eveline, too, was a recipient of these moonlit melodies.

As soon as the two misses had turned in for the night, the huge watchdogs were let off their chains, the field guard discharged his shotgun and the spring night settled over the land like a maiden in her bed: here came the town fiacre on which Gypsies love to clamber as if it were Jacob's ladder. Ah yes, Gypsies love to ride a fiacre! The contrabassist, like a grandfather at a wedding, conducted the procession from the coachbox, where he had shivered, hugging his partner in crime throughout the potholed ride. The
cimbalom
was tied to the forage rack, and its player, a youth with a bowler hat and a frilly bow tie, stood on the running board of the carriage, jealously watching his beloved. Inside the coach violins in sacks lurched along with the nonchalant, brandy-tippling cheer of a red-faced road inspector making the rounds of his home district.

That ceaseless Gypsy prankishness, the horselaugh unique to this tribe, the chortling delight in each and every hour, the devil-may-care, self-indulgent, proud music of the moment, that buck-naked humor and animal delight in each breath of life: all of this appeared on that provincial hackney cab, as if Noah's ark had spilled forth these human beings from another world. The dark-skinned, gamey village Gypsy, raised on the meat of fallen animals, is worlds apart from his city kin. Although, like poor relations, they are well aware of their city cousins' living like lords in Budapest or Paris, and know the greats of the profession by name, they remain free nomads who possess nothing but disdain for an orderly world and laws of any kind. They live by their own lights, cling to their superstitions more than to life itself, see illness, the devil and death in their blue moods—yet among them suicide is rare as a white crow. They live in bands, the better to bear their poverty. Their boys are educated by older women, girls by older men. They use wild herbs to heal themselves, like stray dogs.

Mr. Pistoli was a patron of village Gypsies. He spent his entire life among Gypsies, returning home only to calm the wife of the moment, tint his mustache, clip the bristles sprouting from his warts, rub pomade in his hair, toss creditors' letters into the trash, and off he was again, in search of the band. If a wife became a burden to him, he eased her out as best as he could and took on a new woman. This half-mad country squire was a leftover from the Hungary of old, where menfolk even in extreme old age refused to be incapacitated. He waltzed merrily with willing women, like a dance instructor giving an apprentice girl a whirl. His big buck teeth, protuberant bullish eyes, lowering, growling voice, oversized, meaty ears, calloused knuckles and pipe-stem legs altogether produced a peculiar effect on the females of the region. For there are still many women around who will kiss the spot where her man has hit her; who will put up with years of suffering to receive a kind word at the last hour; who will cut off her hair, pull out her teeth, put out her bright eyes, clench down her empty stomach, ignore her tormenting passion, say goodbye to springtime, beauty, life itself—if her man so commands. Pistoli went about growling like a wild boar, and women wiggled their toes at him, to tease the monster. Thus he lived to bury three wives.

“Let's go see the beast,” quoth Pistoli to his Gypsies, solemnly convinced that Miss Maszkerádi had arrived at Bujdos solely for his sake. He had prepared and pocketed his infallible tools: the meerschaum cigar holder embellished with naked lovers embracing, the silver cigarette case chased with bathing beauties. He made sure to bring his trick penholder (its glass compartment a peep show of nude dancers), nor did he leave behind those lithographs guaranteed to make females flush and blush and fantasize. He brought a tiny cap to pull on his index finger for all kinds of silly puppet acts. So, having earlier soaked his feet and cleared his throat, Pistoli set out “to conquer the beast.”

In rollicking good humor, a song tickling his palate, whistling, he roamed with the Gypsies like a bridegroom who had a bride waiting in each village. His unruly animal spirits resembled the moods of convicts on certain days, or that of inmates at the Nagykálló madhouse where he had once spent half a year. He had abducted his first wife from there, a silent queen as beautiful as memory itself. From under her boyish haircut she had sent him many tantalizing looks, a temptress clad in white linen. Her name was Izabella, unforgettable as the mediaeval princess whose image comes to the dying mercenary on the battlefield. Back then Pistoli would still grovel on his knees, his hair grew thick and fast, his mood was like a young bull's. He would gladly creep under the bed at Izabella's behest. This romantic heroine remained his lifelong true love. When one day she hung herself, Pistoli swore beside her corpse he would soon follow her to the grave. That had been twenty years ago. Since then, Pistoli had gotten drunk, married, buried wives, slept in muddy ditches and flower beds, his memory had stored the scents of as many women as the nose of a dog in a metropolis; he had loved ladies' shoes, flouncy skirts, shirts and exposed napes; had danced attendance like a madman around barefoot servant girls and saintly matrons; had howled his love's name out on the street in front of houses lit by the red light; had night after night climbed through the window into rooms where he surmised a female might be sleeping; there came screams, alarums, gunshots and wild escapes from stake-toting retainers, followed by triumph on the morrow in the bed of a kitchen wench, after his face had been bloodied by jealous rivals: such had been his life...And when he at last found himself alone, like a condemned man in his cell, by the moonglow of a candle or the sooty flame of an oil lamp, he felt the funerary wrinkles of the pillow, the deafening silence after the revelry overwhelm him with a drowning sensation...Startled, frightened of imminent death, he felt Izabella's hand pulling him into the beyond. So he no longer slept at night, but only in daytime, near lit candles, surrounded by wardrobes, chests and drawers he had emptied. Snakes slithered past on the carpet and he felt like howling, but he was stopped by the memory of his former roommate, the colonel who would howl all day, confined in a straightjacket.

So this was the satyr Pistoli who rolled about in the Gypsies' laps, cackling so loudly that the crossroads, momentarily empty, resounded with the ghostly echo of his laughter. The mute trees stood somber, like gibbets awaiting some escaped criminal. Shadowy hedges, that must surely shelter Death stopping to write down the lottery numbers he dreams of, ominously pricked up their ears, as if waiting for Pistoli to leap, tired of laughter, over them at a single bound into the wild blue yonder. Roadside wells, so many taciturn accomplices, were passed one after another by the Gypsy-laden coach. Women had thrown themselves into these wells, women to whom Pistoli in his manic moods had irresponsibly promised the world, as nonchalantly as he pledged payments to creditors. The ladies had adored his extravagant promises, and became unhinged when none were kept. The wells in the fields, like passive abettors of the crime, persisted like so many monuments to monotonous existence. No inquest would ever hold them responsible. Meanwhile Pistoli needed constant giggles, nothing short of sheer raving manic glee, just to make it through the night, just to see another day. Once he rejoiced exceedingly when he broke a leg jumping from a window. He considered it a small payment on Izabella's account.

But let us go in the moonlit spring night, along with those dusky Gypsy lads, their silent melancholy instruments, the contrabass that had danced at silver jubilees, and let us leave the disappointed roadside trees behind, trees ever pining after wanderers, like so many deranged old women...yearning for a traveler who would stop to eat his supper under their shelter, drink a bottle of wine, sing the song dearest to his heart, then tie his belt on the sturdiest limb, to go into the long night undisturbed, in peace. (Pistoli had always detested, as much as he did the tomcat-whiskered, avuncular bailiff, each jutting branch of every tree spreading its boughs his way, offering a suitable occasion to carry out his long-standing resolve. He would much rather have looked at the bedsteads carved from these trees, and the women who sat up on the beds, forever waking, ever watchful, caressing and sheltering Pistoli while he battled the wraiths from the nether world that frequented his dreams.)

The ghostly company at last arrived at Bujdos-Hideaway.

“Let's have Miss Sonnet's songs,” Pistoli commanded the Gypsies, after they took their positions under the manor house window that shed blue light into the night. The oil lamp was lit under the holy icon, for the house had always belonged to those of Russian Orthodox faith, folks who were ever ready to sacrifice lamp oil and wick to implore the Holy Virgin's mercy for the miserable.

When the music struck up Eveline was reading a novel as usual, and, as usual, she was comparing the men she knew with some figure conjured up by the letters on the printed page. She loved these nocturnal hours, this removal from daily life, the stories of people whose lives and fates had been set down on paper...Perhaps someone had already written her story, too, some time ago. “Young Miss,” the fortune-teller had once told her, “all your childhood dreams will be fulfilled. But you won't like it when these dreams come true.” She dreamed of men who would gladly suffer for her, of a magnificent life as a woman of the world: theater, balls, entertainments, good horses, the independent life, country quietude alternating with the metropolitan buzz...passions, fine words, unforgettable days. Life had always fulfilled her desires as easily as a magician producing roses from a hat. And now here came a midnight serenade under her window, just as in the Spanish novels she was so fond of. The señora on the balcony, her caballero below.

Miss Maszkerádi grabbed a full-length fur coat and burst into Eveline's room, swearing.

“Did you call in these Gypsies?” she asked peremptorily. “I hate these fifth-rate village bands. You have no idea of the kind of music I love. I am a modern woman. I don't even remember the old-time favorites any more. Listen, I'm going to empty my revolver at them if they don't shut up.”

“Be a good girl now,” was Eveline's quiet response. “Your beau is here again.”

“That provincial stumblebum! Phew! If he ever took off one of his boots I'd run away and never come back to this place!”

“It's Pistoli,” Eveline explained, with some heat. “Don't you recognize he's playing your songs?”

“Oh, you precious thing!” Miss Maszkerádi's tone dripped venomous disdain. “If we were in the city, I'd set my servants on them for disturbing the peace. I was just starting to doze off, thanks to a triple dose of Adalin. And now this scoundrel shows up, with his Tartar manners, his insane nomads and their Asiatic instruments, and slaps me back into reality. We are in Hungary after all, in a godforsaken little village. We'll be lucky if the bastard leaves our windows intact. Why, last year he tossed stones into my bedroom. Why can't the gendarmerie lock up this wild beast?”

“Now try to be nice to him,” said Eveline, with a certain amount of hostesslike solemnity, getting out of bed and pulling on some petticoats and silk-lined, lacquered slippers. She pinned up her long tresses and smoothed out her forehead. Forgetting the hairpin between her teeth, she pensively listened to the outdoor serenade.

“You better make sure right away it's Pistoli and not some highwaymen here to rob us under the guise of a midnight serenade,” Miss Maszkerádi continued, red as a turkey and as furious.

“Nothing easier. Just open the window, shove the shutters aside, strike a match and ask the darkness outside whether it is Sir Pistoli, the excellent chevalier and most noble seigneur, whom we should thank for this exquisite midnight surprise.”

Maszkerádi cursed on, like one of the Gypsies...

“I'd rather die. I'd rather go blind than face this ragged old rattletrap.”

Eveline snapped the red garter around her knees, and dug up a bulky and warm crimson house coat. She bustled about like a colorful pollen-laden moth above the midnight flowerbeds. Her face was fresh, determined and enterprising, like a traveler's who rose at dawn to set out for cities full of promise.

“I happen to be a local landowner. I can't afford to offend any of my neighbors, Malvina. So I ask you to please respect the customs of my house.”

“I swear, I'll pour boiling water over that cur!” threatened Miss Maszkerádi. “I'd never known a more insolent character. Gets soused and that's his excuse for going around, molesting decent womenfolk...Don't you have gendarmes in these parts? Haven't you got watchdogs in your yard?”