Diamant, who knew everyone in town, purred with satisfaction.
“This is what happens when you sell yourself to a woman. Mr. X gets married, but he can only take his dwarf wife out for fresh air in the dead of night…I remained a bachelor, although I had my chances…To marry like Zöld, that would have been easy.”
The morning light reflected from windows of the Inner City’s antiquated houses like lantern rays shining from the Rákos cemeteries. Former burghers of the Inner City, now turned to water and dust, were sneaking back into their old apartments. The light gilded the faded shop signs. Diamant pointed at the lit-up windows on high:
“That’s where they sleep, the good, the pure, the decent ones, the happy families, the untouched daughters. Ah, if I could have had the love of an honest woman just once! If only my fate had brought me an innocent, lily-white, heavenly creature, I’d now be going to the Jesuits’ red-brick church to give my thanks, instead of this…”
Diamant grabbed Kálmán’s arm, and spoke as emotionally as a romantic hero. (Kálmán eyed him incredulously: maybe his friend had had too much champagne — although Diamant for decades had been quaffing champagne like water.) His eyes were as doleful as a ghost’s, his voice dolorous as a cello sounding behind a curtain.
“My life’s been spent among women of ill repute. I was no lady-killer, no, I wasn’t even handsome, and what’s more, I never spent much on women. I just sat and smoked quietly and kept their company night and day. I’d give offhand answers, you’d never see me bend down to pick up their dropped jewelry or flowers; a glass of beer from me made them more delighted than a bottle of champagne bought by a count; some mornings I’d take them to the carnival peep show on a one-horse buggy, order hotdogs, have their fortunes told, things like that made them unforgettably grateful. At night I stood in the back at the nightclub, along with the applauding waiters, but the girls would still notice me. Every now and then I gave them a flower, and they’d dance all night wearing it in their hair and saved it in a glass of water in the morning. I offered them cheap Sport cigarettes, because I knew they didn’t really care what they smoked. I’d drop in at their rooms in the afternoon, like some relative paying a family visit. Then they’d tell me about family matters, unlucky love affairs, and show me the fiancé’s photo or love letters received from some simpleton. On rare occasions I’d let drop a word of advice, a mere suggestion. But mostly I smoked in silence, and solemnly listened to their Tarot readings. I pretended to believe all their superstitions, nodded sympathetically when they reviled a treacherous friend or expressed their disgust with the monotony of life. I’d put on my glasses — black horn-rims — when they consulted me about their contracts, and I coached them about making a statement when they were in trouble with the police. I never told them they were pretty, or that I loved them, I simply sat and sat, smoking, taking it all in, quietly, acting serene and wise. That’s how I possessed the diva and the flower girl. Neither my body nor my soul really craved them, for I’d always dreamed of something else, something unreachable.”
Thus spoke Diamant, and he pointed his cherrywood walking stick at the windows in the gray dawn light:
“There…up there…where the whole family sits at the fully laid table, cups of fresh coffee steaming on the red placemats, and where even before their ablutions the girls of the house smell of hyacinth, from the kiss exchanged with the potted plant on their windowsill, first thing in the morning. Their hands are white and translucent, just right for the little green can they use for watering their flowers. At times I felt a drop of water fall on my face…That was the entire extent of my acquaintance with pure, innocent maidenhood. Their polka-dot kerchiefs, the hair brushed straight back, those earlobes, those corals paling and blushing in turns, the down on the nape of the neck, cheeks cool as springwater, forehead full of godfearing faith, melancholy temples, dreamy curls, aloof noses and those resigned lips always shut tight, as if they would speak only once, and for the first time, on the wedding night — all this I never saw from up close, and could only imagine the flowery scent of their breath. Innocent, gentle, churchgoing, white-footed were the women whose acquaintance I’d always craved, and instead I got actresses and somersaulting jezebels. If only once a pure maiden’s palm had caressed my forehead, I would have been a different man. If only once, just once I’d have noticed that in the world outside it was Easter morning, and my heart full of love for a springtime woman — I would have walked a different path. Not once did a chaste woman smile at me, or take my hand, and inquire about the salvation of my soul…I merely stood on tiptoe behind dancing girls’ sagging petticoats. That’s why I never got anywhere in life. Soon I’ll be fifty and ready to die like a dog.”
Kálmán felt a voice humming in his throat, a psalm that would have to be sung as soon as the organist gave the signaclass="underline"
“Eveline, Eveline…Pure virgin, sweet Eveline.”
But he held his peace, for she was the sole treasure of his life.
Lovers, every last one of them, these strange participants in the card game of life, tend to see all other men as inferior knaves.
While Mr. Diamant mused over his wasted life like a melancholy jack of diamonds, Kálmán, in his jaunty heart and cocky complacence, reflected that he happened to possess the very woman whose praises the wise fat man just sang.
An upsurge of woes and sorrows, to a lover’s ears, sounds like mere lyrical plashing of white-capped waves.
What a fool, the Hungary of his day deemed the poet Kisfaludy, when he sounded his plaintive lover’s lyre! The blue hill of Badacsony, the dreamy, fleecy cumulus clouds evoked sadness only in a few similarly afflicted hearts. Few folks had cared to remember that, wandering through the greengage woods on the vineyard-studded mountain, was an unhappy swain for whom all of life, the entire universe depended on the whim of a young girl’s eyes.
Even the man in love is always ready to laugh at another one — apart from his own emotions, are there still other varieties of that fancy ivy that entangles the heart? Love can be a most ridiculous and childish thing, as long as it amuses or torments others.
It is the clown’s pancake makeup daubed on our fellow men’s faces.
Or a flamboyantly long pheasant feather stuck in a dunce’s cap.
Or worthless filberts used by children and old men in games of chance.
Everyone appears ridiculous when in love.
Only the daring ones admit the extent of their torments over a woman. Therefore the lyric poet is actually surrounded by a hostile audience when he sings of his folly. And as for an overweight, barrel-toned, beer-bellied and prickly-chinned man, already suffering from all kinds of bodily ills, to talk about love, why, the weary corners of his mouth are more suited for obscene or scornful phrases than plaintive verses…
That dawn Kálmán made a silent vow that he would never again hold forth about love. Henceforth he would only hum to himself, “Eveline, I love you so,” like some solitary autumnal fly droning among reeds and rushes. — Kálmán was a redblooded young man, who would have died rather than be heard singing those songs crooned daily by tenors the world over (songs that women never tire of hearing).
“Damn!” exclaimed Mr. Diamant who in his thoughts had been making wedding arrangements with Inner City misses at the Franciscans’ Church and would have gladly approved the young maiden’s wearing long, laced knickers, such as her grandmother had worn to the fair on St. Gellért’s Hill. Possibly deep down in his heart he had desired a wife who would knit her stockings herself — just as the same men who profess to set things right in the world end up guzzling booze from dancing girls’ shoes.