Sunflower (32 page)

“Oh, I always knew my darling carried his weight well. But I had no idea he was this heavy. He must have drunk a lot of water.”

It was now around three in the afternoon.

The cloudless sky was as clear as a conscience with nothing to hide. The May sun stood high up above the earth, indifferent to the fact that a funeral was about to take place down here. But just as Quitt's cart pulled out of Pistoli's gate, a tiny little cloud appeared on the western edge of the sky. In shape it resembled a black dog cavorting on the horizon.

The cemetery was quite far from the manor. People who live in these parts prefer not to keep the dead in everyday sight. They are enough trouble showing up in your dreams, when you are defenseless. They enter the atrium, sit around at length in front of the cold fireplace, drink up the leftover wine on the dinner table, rest their head on their arm and their expression contains such pain that the dreamer wakes next day to ponder: what sort of mortal sin could weigh upon the dearly beloved departed one? And all the useless lottery numbers they give! Plus they spout tales about one's jealously guarded women! They divulge one's most painful secrets...Yes, better keep the dead far apart from the living. No one can thrive on the friendship of the dead.

So the cemetery was quite far, tucked away in a valley from where no evil waters from the malicious dead could descend upon the village, no seepage from old crones to affect the new wine. Let their tears flow into each other's graves. Most of the people lying here were related, anyway. One lived ninety years, another only thirty; no matter, they were all the same flesh and blood. Former lovers must surely get together here, regardless of what obstacles life had raised between them. Grandmothers can sneak off at night to join their quondam beaux, no one would notice that their beds are empty. Even if the lawful husband does occupy the neighboring grave (for old people like that sort of thing), the aged husband would never think of asking his better half what she did in the adjacent pit all night long until cock's crow. Yes, it is a fine world, underground.

Everyone can live it up with their mate.—Why, many was the time Mr. Pistoli had passed the cemetery in the course of his journeys. The trees of quietude: cypresses, willows, locusts full of crows' nests, bushes humming with bees all knew him well, since the old cemetery was a most suitable place for conducting amorous trysts. The neglected grave mounds had been long ago abandoned by the old women who visit graveyards for no reason at all. Atop Darabos (lived 80 years) or over the widow Fitkonidesz (lived 76 years, and in the meantime helped bring Mr. Pistoli into the world, being a midwife) it felt oh so good to stretch out in the company of some sweet young thing, on those grave mounds where the knobby toes and skinny arms had long ago turned into larkspur. No wonder Mr. P. loved to sing the song that went: “In the graveyard, that's where I first saw your face...” On his way back from a wake (having said goodbye to the dead man), from Phtrügy (where he'd gone to taste the fresh horseradish), from a wedding (where he kept hugging the bride), or hearing Gyula Benczi play old Hungarian songs—Pistoli never failed to tip his hat and raise the wineskin in front of the cemetery's old inhabitants. “Here's to you, old buddy!” he shouted at the ancient headstones and crosses. At other times, usually in his cups, wrapped in his cloak he crossed the entire cemetery at midnight, curious to see if the dead would snag his coat, as they did the proverbial shoemaker's. Yes, Pistoli was quite well known here. Maybe one or two old drinking companions and a few bored women were already lying in wait for him.

And so they trudged onward, carting Mr. Pistoli to the cemetery, to a remote corner where the solitary poplar stood, designated by the deceased as his final resting place. That's where he wanted to repose, where the wind blows the hardest, out at the far edge, all alone, as if he required something out of the ordinary even six feet under. Only crows and peregrine falcons ever perched on the swaying branches of that lonesome poplar. Though in the nighttime witches riding brooms might have landed there.

By the time the funeral procession reached the highway, that black dog had leaped up from the horizon into the middle of the sky. And it shed its coat. First it turned into a bear, then into a lion, and finally into a monster with hindquarters somewhere south of Debrecen, and its head way up near Miskolc in the north. Thunder rolled all along the vast upstairs, a rumbling giant was approaching; the wind, like some bandit, blew a sharp whistle in the fields, and hunched-over assassins rushed behind bushes and fences. The atmosphere was ominous and oppressive; the last few stragglers were hurtled like dust balls back toward the village.

The carter Quitt had not taken his pipe out of his mouth all this time. His two little horses ambled along, heads hung low.

By the time they reached the grave in the cemetery's corner, the grave diggers were gone. They had run off seeking shelter from the storm. But there rose the eternal mound by the open grave, the last stop for all of us under the sun. Last stop for rich and poor, where the loud wails ring out one last time, and the priest prays while the grave diggers solemnly hold the ropes. The sandy loam was yellow here and the pit profound. Kakuk, on peering into it, gave a terrified yelp. They say he saw Mr. Pistoli standing down there, shrouded in white head to toe, exactly as he had been when laid into his coffin. Still, there he stood, his face chalk white, his hair in his eyes, his hand groping for help.

After that, no one dared approach the grave pit. The sky crashed like kingdom come. The clouds howled. Kind heaven now screamed raving mad. The last escort of the dead man at last turned tail: abandoning the coffin by the open grave, they flew headlong toward the shelter of distant trees. Only the thief Kakuk could still hear behind his back Mr. Pistoli's thunderous, clattering voice...Even Quitt drove off in a hurry, as if he had suddenly lost his mind.

There was a tremendous crash.

The two women looked back from the distance. The poplar in the cemetery's corner was one flaming torch. The fire flew and blew sparks, as if souls from hell were hopping around in the flames. It was blue and yellow and ghostly, that flame.

Run, run, from this place of horror...

Soon after the storm broke and raged until next morning.

The next day not a trace remained of poplar, coffin, grave. Just black cinders, mixed in with the wasteland clods. Pistoli was nowhere to be seen. Only the spider spun its web in the cemetery's corner, accompanied by an occasional song blowing in the wind.

Eveline
had suffered plenty, until autumn arrived at the Bujdos manor, like a mailman on foot who at long last brings in his pouch the sheet music, the books and magazines, the news that promote forgetting and help pass the time away. At last the landscape reddened, the wind limped around in the copses, rattly noises arose in the evening garden (dry leaves rehearsing the concert soon to come), midnight drummed in the chimney and attic, and the roadside sunflowers could now pass for emaciated scarecrows.

Eveline spent the summer at the salt lake spa of Sóstó, as had her mother, grandmother, and every other female relative before her. She may even have occupied the very same ramshackle Swiss cabin where her mother had once upon a time waited for the arrival of the stork. She had sought refuge in the provincial, village ways of her ancestors, once the cosmopolitan Maszkerádi, after a brief scene, had stormed out of Bujdos. (Kakuk had faithfully delivered Pistoli's posthumous letter.) Eveline calmly announced that Maszkerádi now held all rights to a certain young man who had for a few years muddled Eveline's life, whose initials were entered both in her heart and in her account book, who occasionally dropped by clad in a dream mantle, and spurred on the girl's fantasies. And so Maszkerádi packed and departed, following him to the capital. Her last words to Eveline were: “Silly goose, go fly a kite!” Eveline waited, composed, without saying a word, until her friend cleared out of her house. Afterward, it felt so good to be a little village miss again!

To sit on a lonely bench under the Sóstó oaks, watching the summer play of sunlight and shade; listen to Mr. Aladár Virágh, registrar of mortgages from Kistata, playing the flute on the lakeshore in the evenings; soak in the alkaline lake water until one's fingertips were all wrinkled; eat savory dinners; in the afternoons, wait for the Nyíregyháza dogcarts bringing amusement-hungry gentlemen through the woods; hear the tall and distinguished-looking Gypsy violin virtuoso Gyula Benczi, who towered in front of his band like some morganatic prince —and above all, to be bored; for the women of the Nyírség came here to be bored and to relax. These ladies now stepped softly, their plump white legs tipped with sensible shoes, the corsets laid to rest for the season, their light, loose summer dresses an occasion to air out their wintery selves, once the May and June picnics were over, and the Sóstó spa resumed its usual blissful summertime tranquility. It did not take much effort on Eveline's part to renew childhood acquaintances with local matrons. The Budapest winters, the capital's hauteur, had temporarily taken her away from here, from the company of her kinsfolk and well-wishers, but lo, the local genteel ladies readily accepted her, the returned prodigal, back into their bosoms as soon as Eveline showed the least sign of interest. The gentlewomen of the Nyírség really know how to love, caress, befriend and be loyal...As if they were all sisters indeed, regardless of differences in wealth or rank. The husband might be a mighty subprefect or merely a lowly scribe at the county courthouse, but the women among themselves are the best of friends who unite their busy hearts in all their trials and tribulations, childbirth and illness. The savings association's loans are often voted by women members, and the eligible bachelor is frequently railroaded by a united front of females toward a marriageable young lady. And cares are shared, as for instance when a maiden cannot find a husband. Therefore much of the summer talk at Sóstó revolved around the question of why someone like Eveline was still unmarried, such a decent and noble soul, and a native of these parts, too; the gift of her heart and hand would make any man happy.

It was a fine summer. Sweet, like cream kept in a cool cellar. Tranquil, like the breeze swaying over the flat fields. Bright, as the little birds' songs at dawn. This was the threshold to a clear, calm and unpretentious way of life. The plump ladies of Sóstó on their woodsy benches knitted their words together like stitches in a stocking, recommending this or that one among the county's unmarried gentlemen for Eveline's attention. She quietly smiled to herself whenever Andor Álmos-Dreamer's name cropped up on the list. (That sentimental bachelor never showed his face at Sóstó—as if he intended to give Eveline ample time for undisturbed convalescence.)

This was one of those summers when the diary's pages would surely remain blank. Aimless and passionless days followed in succession like the weather vane swinging to and fro. The only things worth noting down were the old-time tales of the region told by the good ladies in the afternoons while shadows lengthened. But one as a rule does not scribble down such stories, for they are kept in people's memories, anyway. The tall trees know each one well; the layer of fallen leaves remembers; the still, pearly lake encloses it within, the bird of passage carries it away, the crow will caw it out on the silent white fields of winter, the hunters with greyhounds will gallop away with the news in the russet fall: just who had been unhappy in these parts? Whose life had turned sunflowerlike toward the sun of happiness, and whose melancholy head hung low, before its time, during the springtime storms? The stories of these yellow-booted, cat-whiskered, weather-beaten Nyírség gallants and their kind, modest, reverentially smiling womenfolk with their mignonette-scented hair, these stories quietly live on in this land, like gossamer floating over the autumn stubble.

One fall day Andor Álmos-Dreamer at long last stopped in at Bujdos.

“I've been waiting for you so long,” said Eveline, offering her hand.

“And I've been meaning to come for a long time,” replied Andor. His voice and gestures were solemn, tranquil and deliberate. He seemed as dreamy as if he had stepped out of an old photograph.

The wind rattled the empty poppy heads, red-brown shadows played in the garden, the shingles topping the stonewall fence creaked, crumbling under the damp moss.

“There is much that needs to be repaired here before winter,” Álmos-Dreamer said. “Wouldn't you like me to take care of one or two things around the house?”

“I would be most grateful.”

“I think your stoves could use a cleaning. The old men are predicting a long winter, and you haven't had a supply of firewood put in. And what about your storehouse?'

“That, Andor, is taken care of. I'm a pretty good housekeeper.”

“All right, I'll make arrangements with the carpenter and stonemason, I'm better at that,” continued Álmos-Dreamer. “Make sure your rose bushes are covered with straw. We'll have to set traps, this year there are a lot of foxes around. And I better look over your watchdogs. I think I'll send you a couple of my wolfhounds. They'll guard your backyard.”

“And perhaps you could check on me too, from time to time.”

“As for your beehives, toolshed and stables, I'll have to see what condition they're in. Your granaries, wine cellar, pigsties... I'll see to everything before winter's on us.”

“Already the afternoons are shorter, and the evenings are getting long.”

“I want you to have everything, as long as you've decided to stay the year in the village, like all your ancestors and kinsfolk. I'll see to the walnuts, filberts and apples spread out to dry in the attic, the hams smoking in the chimney. I'll make sure the ice cream and soda contraptions are put in good repair. And order the latest sheet music and games. If you have a visit from those two Budapest journalists sporting hunting hats and outlandish jackets, the ones who sell books published by Aufrecht and Goldschmidt, go ahead and sign the subscription sheets. Books are indispensable company in the countryside. I find myself consulting the encyclopedia and dictionary every day.”