In the midst of the assembled tailcoats and tuxedos there would turn up an overweight and prematurely old Jew who had once upon a time received illicit commissions from Guszti, tonight’s hostess, in the days when she still dealt in champagne and love for sale. Back then Diamant held another outlook on the world, when the stock market, cards and women had abundantly provided for life’s necessities. At nightclubs and gambling dens he had been the number one big spender, the kind who would send lavish bouquets to celebrated danseuses and who knew cab drivers and music hall doormen by their first names. He had been the very soul of conviviality, sparing no expense for a friendly get-together. However, his luck had turned. He grew gray-bristled, fat and bald. Asthmatic, he drank excessively, got into fights, owed the headwaiter, lost his seat on the stock exchange, his credit at the tailor, and finally, his friends; cards and horses stopped favoring him. Yet he accepted all this with equanimity, for he was a wise man. His Achilles’ heel was hearing about the good luck of men he judged his inferiors. Face flushed dark in scorn and anger, he would stop talking, puff on his cigar, and express his contempt with a dismissive gesture.
Diamant detested Mr. Zöld for having been a revenue officer, for having married Guszti, for running the roulette game and diverting a pittance for Diamant from the house’s winnings only at the wife’s intercession.
On these occasions Diamant had to lounge about in the salon until after the patrons departed at daybreak, when he would clearly overhear the conversation between man and wife in the next room:
“Listen, Zöld, we should give Diamant something,” she began.
“Let’im go jump in a lake,” the sporting man retorted.
“I think he owes rent money.”
“He can rob a bank,” suggested Mr. Zöld.
“But listen…” she persisted, and whispered the rest, inaudibly for Diamant’s vigilant ears. But the croupier’s shout rang out loud and clear:
“Why should I pay for your old boyfriend?”
Diamant, by his lonesome self, flicked his wrist in a resigned gesture but did not budge, assured that Mr. Zöld would soon emerge, yellow with bile, and wearily drop a few banknotes in the dawn intruder’s palm.
Diamant liked to converse with younger men who presumably respected his illustrious past. Therefore he joined Kálmán in the salon where the old manservant, a billiard marker back in Guszti’s younger days, now served ample libations of complimentary champagne.
“See, my young friend, your two basic types in Hungary are the count and the Jew. The rest don’t count. They’re a bunch of big zeros. And so is our landlord.” So opined the prematurely old, fat man, who had consumed the greatest number of oysters in Budapest. “Now the historical nobility behaved like simpletons. Always paid up before the loans were due, as if they needed to shore up their credit. Back in ’48, or whenever, they gave up their last holdings, the nobility’s privileges. They voluntarily degraded themselves into commoners, although if there’d been a single Jew in the company, he would have surely spoken up: ‘I’d rather die than let myself be persecuted…’ The Hungarian nobility settled the debts of the past without litigation, dispute or insisting on the highest bid — and what can a tribe expect, when it has voluntarily divested its privileges?”
In the neighboring room the ivory ball was already spinning in the wheel.
For the time being Mr. Zöld manned the roulette wheel, with the expertise of a veteran Monte Carlo croupier. (Should the wheel perform poorly, the Madame was ready to spell him; her ring-studded plump hands turned up numbers that made the players curse.)
Neither Diamant nor Kálmán had the wherewithal for a stake — not even a five-crown piece — to try their luck. Therefore they had a leisurely, heartfelt chat in the salon, while the players’ chaotic hubbub and the jingle of gold and silver filtered toward them like sounds from a distant, exotic province.
“I’d love to be a tenant leaseholder on some village estate…” continued Diamant, signaling the footman for another bottle of complimentary bubbly. “I’d keep young maidservants who’d give me a hand adulterating the wine. Ah, my wife would have money to stuff her straw mattresses with. As for the outlaws, I’d either be pals with them, or else take potshots at them from behind barred windows. I’d have my horses, cattle, children and freedom. Wear a blue housecoat and marry a young girl when I’m a hundred. Yes, I’d grow a beard like my father’s and be lord and master of my house like an Oriental potentate. Now I am just a bum in the big city. A village cur lost in the metropolis, because he ate the folks out of house and home. And who do you think you are, my young friend, Kálmán Ossuary?”
Kálmán calmly waved his hand.
“I won’t challenge you to a duel, Mr. Diamant, no matter what you toss in my face.”
“I know: you’ll give that satisfaction only to gentlemen! But do you know who are the ones lording it in Hungary these days?”
Before Diamant could continue, a dreadful howl of rage rang out in the gaming room. A man roared as if he had caught his wife in flagrante. A drowning, raucous howl of murderous intent.
Kálmán jumped to his feet.
His stout friend tranquilly restrained his arm.
“Let’em be. Only scoundrels and idiots get into fights.”
In the roulette room Kálmán witnessed the following edifying scene:
A gentleman in tails, his eyes reduced to red circles by alcohol and rage, clutched an empty champagne bottle, and threatened at the top of his voice to crack the croupier’s bald skull. The dramatic intermezzo caused only a brief interruption in the progress of the play. The croupier’s cronies, who hovered like executioner’s assistants behind Mr. Zöld, and cheered the house’s winnings with spasmodic gesticulations and inarticulate shouts and turned cadaverous, livid faces upon less profitable runs of the ball, now saw the time ripe to demonstrate their usefulness and servility. In a trice they surrounded the fuming player. One set about convincing the man of the impropriety of his conduct, another protested in a rapid patter that Zöld’s play was unimpeachable, while a third shook his knobby butcher-boy knuckles at the tipsy gentleman’s nose.
“You’re disturbing the game!” squawked others who sat hunched over the green baize tabletop clutching pocket notebooks or slips of paper, dead serious about recording the run of numbers.
Shouts of “Throw him out!” echoed, like some cabbalistic formula, incanted by a potbellied, hedgehog-eyed, swine-dealer sort who had just collected sizeable winnings by staking on zero.
“Take it easy, Colonel,” bleated others, trying to appease him, while, wrinkling their brows, they took advantage of the fortuitous pause to appraise winnings and losses.
“I was under the impression I’m among gentlemen,” bellowed the personage addressed as Colonel, whereupon one or two of the players started to tug at their shirtcuffs, and one sneering, bald fop with a face just begging to be slapped screwed in his monocle.