Sunflower (28 page)

“Everything around your white feet in this house, your friendly watchdog, the stork nesting on your chimney, the dried walnuts in the attic and your aged nanny, all, all proclaim that you are the one, the woman I ought to have married. Not to mention my heart, which was ever yours. There were times when I looked at your concerned, serious face and felt as moved as I'd been in front of the bishop the day I was confirmed...I could always feel secure by your side—let the dogs bark outdoors, but in here, under these rafters no danger could penetrate, for your determination, your extraordinary feminine toughness would make sure that no harm came to me at your place. In my dream you were the tall chestnut mare whose neck I clasped to escape the flood. I saw your wonderful eyes looking at me through that mare's glance.”

“Oh, you old scoundrel...” giggled Stony Dinka, and took off all of Mr. Pistoli's clothes. Next, she slapped and pounded the bedding into place. The quilts went flying like geese in the meadow. Pre-warmed bricks and platters lined up in a row. Vinegar water awaited its uses. Pistoli sank into the bed so deep that not even the tip of his mustache could be seen.

“Good night, sweet song of youth!” whispered Stony Dinka, and timidly caressed Mr. Pistoli's gleaming, pale forehead.

Stony Dinka was indeed a peculiar woman: she loved Mr. Pistoli best when he, like a tusked beast, like some prehistoric creature, rooted about and wallowed in the field of dreams, snoring in three or four different tones. Had she lived in that distant era when primitive humans fought dragons in caves, Stony Dinka would surely have been the lover of the dragon that lurked about the settlement. She loved to stare at circus strongmen, lanky vagabonds, stalwart shepherds and bandit-faced tramps. But she did this unobtrusively, for she was a woman...Yes, she would have loved to be married to a giant, whereas fate had assigned as her lawful husband a man who was small of stature, with an apelike gait. Around the tavern the poplars, all stairways to heaven, roared in the wind, long-legged herons strutted in the wetlands, while Dinka took delight in Pistoli's enormous muscles. In the sleeping man's presence she no longer felt modesty's girdle constraining her waist.

Pistoli woke with a start, as one returning from kingdom come.

“What did you do with the amulet I hung around your neck? The one that was consecrated twice at the Pócs chapel, and I even had an old Jew bless it for me?”

“I gave it away...” replied an embarrassed Pistoli. “That is, it was stolen, charmed, wheedled away from its rightful place over my heart. But I'm going to get it back, because ever since then I've had the worst luck.”

“Oh, those worthless hussies,” lamented Stony Dinka, with the profound scorn of one who alone understood the female sex. “How many decent men's lives have they wrecked and made miserable? Why can't every cracked-heeled hussy be driven out of Hungary, so that good men can have some peace again in this country.”

When Pistoli said his farewells, he realized Stony Dinka's forehead was just as clear as Eveline's. The two women did resemble each other, after all they were natives of the same region, had bathed in the flower-strewn waters of the Tisza River, shared the same long-dead ancestors, and seeds germinating in the same soil had nurtured both of them. Their eyes had followed the turning of the same windmills on the horizon, their ears had listened to the cry of the same wild birds, as girls they had danced the same dances at harvest time and at feather-plucking bees. They had the same slightly Slavic way of pronouncing certain vowels, and they had grown up hearing the same folk songs. The same April showers had washed away the springtime freckles from their faces, and lumps of earth in this corner of The Birches were equally well acquainted with the bare heels of both Stony Dinka and her ladyship Eveline Nyirjes. Ah, how alike women appear when you consider their heels! In the summer, when even young ladies went about barefoot in The Birches, the soil did not make any distinction between the soles of peasant lass and young miss.—Why shouldn't Eveline and Stony Dinka resemble each other, when the geranium happened to be the favorite flower of both! Mr. Pistoli felt a tremendous sense of relief.

“Not even Eveline's foot could be whiter,” he thought, as he took his place in Quitt's cart.

He called Stony Dinka over to the cart's side, and, as if confiding a secret, whispered the following in her ear:

“I'm going now, and it's unlikely we'll ever meet again, my heart. I won't hold you to be faithful to me when I'm in the other world. Nor will I return to haunt you, for I've played the white-shrouded ghost enough times already in my life, whenever I had to frighten off superstitious women or cowardly husbands. I want you to go about your business as calmly as ever. Don't forget to take your mares to the Nyíregyháza stud; and I know you won't neglect to dilute last year's wine...Alas, I have too little time left to help you with that. By the way, you should dismiss your serving girl Fruzsinka, for I caught her wearing one of your shirts. Don't ever let your little daughter, who's being brought up by your Szatmár aunts, visit this region. It would be best if she found a job at the post office when she grows up. Preferably far away, somewhere in Transylvania, where no one knows her mother. And take care of yourself. Your feet still have their snowy white looks, and I can't detect any signs of those unappetizing varicose veins on your legs.

“Your hair still has its sheen, for you've always taken care to shampoo and comb it. Keep taking those baths, especially in the rainwater that you save in the pantry. You know, if you keep your eyes downcast, they sparkle more when you look up. Don't laugh too loud with open mouth, because you have a yellow tooth that shows. Try to be quiet and composed, like a lone blackbird. At your age, what men like is a dreamily murmuring voice, like a bumblebee humming in an autumn vineyard. And remember, there's only one decent man in the whole county, and his name is Andor Álmos-Dreamer. Make sure you never wear your stockings inside out! And now farewell, my love.”

He kissed Stony Dinka on her forehead, whereupon Quitt started to shake the reins, like a village storekeeper driving a cart.

After many a mile of lumpy-bumpy highway, when village steeples like so many whip handles appeared on the horizon, announcing that a tavern must be nearby, the one-eyed Quitt looked back at his passenger:

“So, how was it?” he asked, in the deep, slushy voice of Jews from the Nyírség region.

“Oh, I like'em zaftig like that,” replied Pistoli, who preferred to affect cultivated airs in lower-class company.

“Stop talking Yiddish, you know I don't understand that. Tell me, Pistoli, did you beat up the little woman, or did she beat up on you?”

Pistoli replied with drooping spirits:

“I'm done with fighting.”

“Then you haven't got much longer to live,” said Quitt, and went back to contemplating the horses' ears. When they came to the Süvöltö oaks that guarded the local sands like great shaggy komondor sheepdogs, he looked behind him once again, timid and paling, afraid that his passenger already lay dead in the back of the cart...

“Where to, Fanny Late's?” he asked, mumbling into his beard.

Pistoli linked his hands behind his neck, pushing his hat forward. He meditatively eyed the graying driver.

“So, you think we owe Fanny Late a visit?...Well, if you think so, Quitt...If that's what you believe...I guess she does deserve a kind word or two...”

Quitt nodded twice.

“Yes, she's been good to us...Even when you took a knife to her, and all the times you broke her heart...she was always good to us.”

Of course, Fanny Late, too, was a tavern-keeper's wife, for where else could Pistoli camp out if not at some roadside inn, where of an afternoon the cat stretched out in the warm ashes, the wine jugs slumbered in the taproom, the flies hung motionless from the ceiling, and the keeper's wife sat by the window to mend her little son's pants...For awhile Pistoli would sit in silence like a blackbird in its cage. Noisily sipping his wine he would contemplate his hands as they lay on the tabletop. He would keep nodding pensively at his ring finger that was somehow never without a ring from one of his women. Then he would start in with his lies as the woman sat there in silence. At times he believed his own lies, and this made him supremely satisfied.

“What day is it today?” he now asked Fanny Late, entering the tavern known as the Zonett.

She kept on kneading her bread dough and answered without looking at Pistoli, as if she last saw him a day or two ago.

“It's Saint Florian Martyr's day. Fair day at Nyíregyháza. All the horse dealers will be here by nightfall.”

“Well then, for one last time I'll play cards with your horse dealers.”

“You could do worse,” said Fanny Late in a soft voice, and went on with her kneading.

Kneading dough is a fine occupation. Women like to do it wearing a blouse, petticoats and slippers. A white kerchief goes on the head, as in some ritual. The waist jostles, the calves flex, a delicate dew sits on the forehead, as if a birth were impending, that of sacred bread itself, God's blessing on earth. But in addition to all that, Pistoli noted the white of Fanny's plump arms, the noble swan arch of her nape, and the small melons swinging free under her shirt, like little fairies at play. The scent emanating from her as she kneaded the dough was so sweet that Pistoli nearly regretted that his life must end so soon. (Again, as so often in his travels, he thought of her ladyship, Eveline. By the time she is married she would become just such a wholesome, strapping, sweet-scented female, with a light smile on her face when her man rested his head on her shoulder, as if she were also the mother of the recipient of her love. Why, a care-laden man's head weighs no more than a butterfly weighs on a flower.)

Sending up a great sigh, he took the pack of cards from the cupboard to practice for the night. Kakuk, who had arrived in the meantime, watched Pistoli's activity with eyes popping. If he could play cards with the gentleman, just once...

Pistoli had his favorites among the cards in the deck.

He especially loved the two kings side by side, or a pair of aces, nor did he disdain sevens in proximity whenever he dealt the cards to the assembled horse dealers. He practiced shuffling the deck at great length. His index finger with its signet ring pushed the cards in and out like old acquaintances.

Fanny Late stood behind his back, having wiped the dough from her hands. She bestowed a kiss on Mr. Pistoli's ear and placed a key in his hand.

“The money's in the drawer,” she said.

Kakuk gulped so noisily that Pistoli banished him from the room.

“So, my golden man!” Fanny Late called out, and embraced Mr. Pistoli. “Tell me, am I still the one you love, or is it my youngest servant girl?”

Pistoli gave a limp, weary wave of the hand.

“I'm fed up with women. And anyway, I'm in love. Let me see, I think you look a little bit like that certain someone... Turn the other way! Now sideways.”

Fanny Late obeyed the gentleman's requests. He gave her the once-over from top to toe.

“Your feet,” announced Mr. Pistoli after lengthy deliberation, “upon my word, your feet appear to be somewhat like hers. Miss M's. Miss M—that's a capital M for you—loves to keep her feet in stirrups. You mostly go about in slippers. Still, your ankle's curve, your foot's arch, your heel's turn is as noble as a chatelaine's. It could be that in a former life you did some falconry in this land, and lived in a castle. Now you are an innkeeper's wife, and I prefer you that way.”

Fanny Late shook her head in silence. Yes, there was indeed something noble about her face, her forehead, her petite hands and narrow feet, her eyebrows' arc, the hawk's curve of her nose, her mouth's straight and sensuous lines, like some Egyptian queen's. Possibly it was only some itinerant Italian who had played the hurdy-gurdy in the neighborhood when her mother was a young woman. But it could also have been aristocratic hunters stalking the egret.

“You've told me many a time that I am the rarest pipe in your collection. That I am the antique walking stick that is missing from queer old Vidlicskay's collection.”

It was a May twilight, when all things appear to be full of life and purpose, and there was nothing and no one moribund or suicidal anywhere near the golden, dusty highway. Frogs had not yet struck up their evensong, although one or two concert masters in the reeds did sound a few tentative croaks, basso profundo. It was easy to see that within an hour the impromptu concert would be in full swing—and who knows why frogs sing? A bridal veil lowered over the sun's disk. A day in May is still whimsical and sentimental, like a girl who keeps a diary of her emotions. In moments of abandon, her affections gush forth upon the earth, swearing eternal faith both to weeds' upthrusting spears and to the soft laps of apple blossoms. The day plays with the ruffled pelt of the fields, like a young bride running her fingers over the wolflike backbone of a man. She distributes her kisses equally among highwaymen, hanged men, deep ditches and coldhearted old birches. She belongs to everyone and no one. Meanwhile at nightfall the clouds are ascending so that rain might start to fall round about midnight, tapping and palpating like a physician, examining roof tiles, people's dreams, and checking the resonance of windowpanes. The rain swishes over meadows, dallies with the flowering trees, speeds up and slows down, just like a skilled dancer; and plays by herself in the night, like an orphaned child. But still, this is May, and even the oldest crone would be startled to find death's ugly black spider hiding in her nightshirt.

Before it was completely dark, the cart encountered pilgrims heading for a saint's feast. Quitt pulled off the highway, rested his horses, for although as a Jew he observed only the Day of Atonement (freely consuming smoked sausages the rest of the year), nonetheless he had the greatest respect for other people's religious convictions. He believed that religiousness was a tremendous advantage in life. For this reason he took off his hat when the pilgrims, a group whom he considered fortunate individuals, approached his cart.