As the bird had not yet returned to her cage, Kálmán sank into a reverie, forehead pressed against the bars of the cast-iron gate, then with hesitant steps waded through the dry leaves that littered the small round garden — it resembled a filigreed reliquary that contains the cheerful dreams of youth. This diminutive French garden with its white belvedere, green-skirted pines, and walls overrun by wild grape vines served to remind Eveline at spring and autumntime of the calendar’s turning leaves. Kálmán at times thought he was totally, maybe fatally, in love with Eveline, and could die for her, as a knight would. On this basis he considered the small French garden his natural kin and ally — a piece of the city’s most precious real estate that dedicated its flora solely to amuse a lovely girl.
Here he stood each night, facing the iron grillwork of the gate, like a penitent whose thoughts forever rehearse the same scenes of the past. Joy’s fleeting clouds, the trembling play of sunlight on a carpet, visions waving farewell. This was his moment of piety. Had religion been on Kálmán’s mind, the twilight hour would have found him entering the Franciscans’ Church in the wake of mallow-scented Inner City girls, along with the stately, distinguished gentlemen who came to pray there daily. If only once he could have won at dice in the gambling den where he spent his nights, at dawn he would have stopped in at St. Roch’s Chapel where the poor nuns, like white seagulls by the ocean’s dark shore, sat in the pews, row after row, saying prayers as adventitious as birdsong. But Kálmán was an unlucky son of a gun and — although not yet twenty-five — had lost all faith in both man and God. This deserted garden, strewn with dead leaves, had come to mean both redemption and purification for him. It reminded him that he had been young and innocent once, when spring mornings had impelled him to kiss the sumac blossoms, and when he had absorbed those distant, profound, serene autumn afternoons, as one does the teachings of a gentle sage who preaches only charity. Like fading sepia tints in photographs he had lost long ago, his mother’s and father’s faces floated above the path he trod in the sentimental worship of Eveline. The distant, innocent past loomed up before his eyes, sad and unaccusing. Oh, if only once he could hear a chiding voice from the past! But the past was silent, like a beloved mindlessly and irrevocably killed in a fit of passion.
Sunk in this emotional reverie, Kálmán sauntered from the Josephstadt district back to the Inner City, where in small taverns smelling of beer and braised pork pörkölt he ate his meals and was slowly going to seed, spending his time with devil-may-care, constantly harassed yet eternally hopeful cronies who knew nothing of his heart’s deep wound. Paprika-laced dishes flushed his face, foaming brews cooled his gullet, the grease-stained newsrag apprised him of the day’s events, while his associates retailed bawdy and hilarious yarns. Thus he passed tolerable, jolly, carefree evenings. At times some streetwalker would arouse his interest, but these trysts left him feeling as if he had embraced death. He was amazed that the other wanderers in the gutter, all those women swathed in veils and cheap perfume, had not been collared by the lanky escort with his death’s-head grinning above a smartly-knotted white silk scarf.
Midnight would regularly find him at a gambling den, among the same set of pallid faces. The waiter, bright and merry, was quick to bring a cup of steaming black coffee, high hopes reflected in his sly eyes. The air of the halls was still fresh, the carpets unsoiled by cigar ash. Gentlemen with gleaming shirt fronts beamed, amiable and jolly, as befitting well-bred men about town. They shook hands ceremoniously, and traded pleasantries with the croupier, even though everyone knew he cheated. The hostess, freshly coiffed, diamonds in her earrings, extended her plump, soft hands to be kissed; her neck emanated a fresh, sweet scent. The footman continually opened the secret door upon the proper signal to let in more and more players who brought the latest news from coffee houses, theaters, restaurants and clubs in various parts of town. A lively and enviable hubbub animated the salons of this establishment. Lapels still sported the flower pinned there by a woman’s hand earlier in the evening. Everyone felt like being witty and pleasant — until the bell rang at the gaming table.
A dyed mustache, meticulous shave, pomaded strands of hair pasted across his bald skull like dark twigs on winter trees: this was the croupier. He wore a green hunting jacket and tight pants, like landed gentry on a city outing. He let the nail grow long on his little finger, and wore an oversize signet ring bought at a pawn shop. He was on familiar terms with everyone present, for that was the style of the house. His bulging frog’s eyes took in his guests from top to toe, the rock in his tiepin was the size of a pea, and he wore his watch chain short, in the manner of army officers. His platinum-capped false teeth smiled enigmatically behind blue lips. This man was never bothered by the thought that outdoors it might be springtime…He wore great big American shoes, was equipped with ear- and toothpicks in a silver case, a gilt-backed mustache brush, a silver cigar-cutter, a pocketknife with a handle fashioned from an antler, and matching morocco leather notebook, mirror, wallet and change purse; his back pocket hid a Browning automatic, his lapel sported an ivory edelweiss, the kind they sell in Austria; in his vest pocket reposed a hundred-crown gold coin and a case holding an amber mouthpiece for cigarillos and cigarettes. He puffed clouds of smoke from an A’Há brand Turkish cigarette with the relish of one who had just dined. Yes, he savored life to the fullest. Only his temples betrayed telltale signs: those ominously bulging veins that hinted he would not be around until the extreme limits of human longevity to quaff French champagne with his little finger sticking up next to his dyed mustache.
(Kálmán, in his mind still back in the neighborhood of the Museum Boulevard, imagined his nose detected, in the aroma of steaming black coffee, the ineffably sweet scent of a young lady’s lingerie. He paid less heed to this dubiously genteel crowd than he would to a street urchin lounging by a lamp-post on the corner. Eveline kept reverberating in his head, an incantation, a mantra protecting him from all danger.)
Before the mustached croupier set to work, he dug up a monocle from a vest pocket, the kind set in the eye socket by a gold spring. For he was a gentleman now. Why should he strain his facial musculature to balance a monocle? The glass lens rested effortlessly over his right eye, lending an air of prestige.
He had a penchant for French words in directing the game, much as a dance master conducting a quadrille. Had he chosen a political career, he would have achieved great success by pompously parroting the sententious slogans and pronouncements loved by the press. In fact he had been a small-town revenue officer in the Alföld lowlands before marrying the hostess, the infamous owner of several “champagne parlors” in Pest. Although the lady was somewhat over the hill, her connections were unimpeachable: she knew just about every spendthrift in town through the salons she had kept. The decision to run a gambling casino meant that Mr. Zöld would never again have to don a bureaucrat’s frock coat.
Nothing earthshaking was brought about by Mr. Zöld’s turning up in the capital. There was simply one more scoundrel in town, another chiseler who assumed the airs of a Hungarian country gentleman. Without batting an eyelid he would have forged a promissory note, without a twinge of conscience committed highway robbery, or done away with one or two customers, afterwards sleeping the untroubled sleep of the just, snoring ever so heartily. Pseudo-gentry of his kind, lording it in the capital, was becoming the vilest ingredient in the body of the Hungarian nation. Putting on aristocratic airs, they cheated and stole while complaining that you cannot prosper in Hungary because of the Jews. Mr. Zöld was a typical example of the con man who is forever blowing his own trumpet, sends out a pair of witless dueling seconds whenever he feels insulted, whose arrogant, aggressive glances darken the local horizon until he finally meets the person who cracks his skull.