“I’ll make this short. The next morning, after an anxious night, I thoroughly scrutinized my French princess, who until then I had found quietly repulsive, like most of the ‘culture vultures’ who spend every day of their lives in white ocean liners and hotels with gold trim.
“The princess undeniably resembled me. The saucy thing even imitated my style in clothes — or else I did hers. The only other thing I wanted to know was whether she had poor vision in her left eye, as I do. So I decided to test her. At lunch I sat immediately on her left and on my white lace fan I wrote in large, clear letters, ‘I hate you,’ in French. I’d already made sure that my left eye could not decipher the letters. During lunch we exchanged a few neutral words. Then I opened my fan and conspicuously waved it near her face several times. Had her left eye not been as poor as mine, she would have certainly noticed the inked inscription. But she merely smiled neutrally, bored and indifferent as a puma at the zoo. Her hair emanated the scent of Japanese gardens. She was as weird as an exotic bird. A ghastly chill ran through my soul when I considered that, under certain circumstances, I resembled her.
“After lunch I spoke briefly with the officer. I told him I wanted to rest that evening, so why didn’t he spend the night with my rival. ‘Besides, I’m curious to know what the princess thinks about this extraordinary similarity between us,’ I told him. His eyes flashed like a knife in a scuffle. ‘I’ll ask her!’ he said, licking his chops, the poor fool. Service in the colonies had degraded him, as it does most Europeans. Looking at him, I thought that once upon a time this blue-eyed young man had been a blond-haired little boy who went to school wearing a white collar, the taste of cake in his mouth and the trace of his mother’s kiss on his forehead.
“Next morning the officer was found strangled in the corridor outside the French princess’s room. My alter ego had committed the deed that would have been my lot. She had tied her hair in a knot around the show-off’s neck, and suffocated him.
“What happened to the murderous princess? That I can’t tell you, Eveline, because I left Cairo before the results of the inquest into the officer’s death were revealed. I arrived home in a state of nervous fever and hallucination. I don’t think I’ll leave this country for some time to come. After all, in this land we more or less know each other, men and women, and surprises are unlikely; our sins are of the usual sort, the modes of thought familiar. Sometimes I visit menageries, and the eyes of caged exotic predators remind me of looks I have encountered in my travels abroad. So I am a native of the Josephstadt, after all. Even though in make-believe I have rehearsed a happy and serene death scene — oh, I don’t think I’ll rest in peace when I kiss the crucifix for the last time. Although at times I still think that my alter ego, the unhappy French princess, has suffered and atoned on my behalf. She has done my penance, by living out the life that I should have lived, by rights. I am the shadow that remains after she has disappeared. For where do they go, the shadows of folks who have gone underground? They must live on, somehow. So maybe fate will deal me a merciful death.”
“Poor dear,” replied Eveline, and embraced her friend with a heart as pure as only a village girl’s can be. She smelled of old lavender and wore shirts of fine Upland linen. In cold weather she put on soft cotton flannel petticoats although she knew full well that this was no longer the fashion. She loved to linger in vaulted chambers, to dawdle in a May garden, and, come autumn, to sink into reveries wrapped in a Kashmir shawl. And she loved beautiful old novels.
“So who was your second alter ego?” Eveline asked.
“I’ll tell you when we’ve forgotten about Egypt,” replied Miss Maszkerádi, assuming the grave air of a schoolteacher. “Anyway, it’s getting dark, time to light the lamp.”
On this spring night the ladies of Bujdos found themselves serenaded.
It was in honor of the visitor, as always, whenever Malvina Maszkerádi sojourned at Hideaway.
When the moonlight rose above the canebrakes, where it had been brooding like an outlaw, it revealed, leaning against a linden tree, the figure of Mr. Pistoli, who had already gone through three wives, for he still hoped that he would conquer the Donna Maszkerádi, whom this incorrigible amoroso with the tinted mustache liked to dub the Dark Lady of the Sonnets, among other monickers.
Ah, Pistoli was a solemn and cruel-hearted man of the world except at Bujdos, where, the moment he set foot, he became a clown. He brought along a Gypsy band, and made sure to collect one half of the generous honorarium he bestowed on them from Andor Álmos-Dreamer the day after the night music — for Eveline, too, was a recipient of these moonlit melodies.
As soon as the two misses had turned in for the night, the huge watchdogs were let off their chains, the field guard discharged his shotgun and the spring night settled over the land like a maiden in her bed: here came the town fiacre on which Gypsies love to clamber as if it were Jacob’s ladder. Ah yes, Gypsies love to ride a fiacre! The contrabassist, like a grandfather at a wedding, conducted the procession from the coachbox, where he had shivered, hugging his partner in crime throughout the potholed ride. The cimbalom was tied to the forage rack, and its player, a youth with a bowler hat and a frilly bow tie, stood on the running board of the carriage, jealously watching his beloved. Inside the coach violins in sacks lurched along with the nonchalant, brandy-tippling cheer of a red-faced road inspector making the rounds of his home district.
That ceaseless Gypsy prankishness, the horselaugh unique to this tribe, the chortling delight in each and every hour, the devil-may-care, self-indulgent, proud music of the moment, that buck-naked humor and animal delight in each breath of life: all of this appeared on that provincial hackney cab, as if Noah’s ark had spilled forth these human beings from another world. The dark-skinned, gamey village Gypsy, raised on the meat of fallen animals, is worlds apart from his city kin. Although, like poor relations, they are well aware of their city cousins’ living like lords in Budapest or Paris, and know the greats of the profession by name, they remain free nomads who possess nothing but disdain for an orderly world and laws of any kind. They live by their own lights, cling to their superstitions more than to life itself, see illness, the devil and death in their blue moods — yet among them suicide is rare as a white crow. They live in bands, the better to bear their poverty. Their boys are educated by older women, girls by older men. They use wild herbs to heal themselves, like stray dogs.
Mr. Pistoli was a patron of village Gypsies. He spent his entire life among Gypsies, returning home only to calm the wife of the moment, tint his mustache, clip the bristles sprouting from his warts, rub pomade in his hair, toss creditors’ letters into the trash, and off he was again, in search of the band. If a wife became a burden to him, he eased her out as best as he could and took on a new woman. This half-mad country squire was a leftover from the Hungary of old, where menfolk even in extreme old age refused to be incapacitated. He waltzed merrily with willing women, like a dance instructor giving an apprentice girl a whirl. His big buck teeth, protuberant bullish eyes, lowering, growling voice, oversized, meaty ears, calloused knuckles and pipe-stem legs altogether produced a peculiar effect on the females of the region. For there are still many women around who will kiss the spot where her man has hit her; who will put up with years of suffering to receive a kind word at the last hour; who will cut off her hair, pull out her teeth, put out her bright eyes, clench down her empty stomach, ignore her tormenting passion, say goodbye to springtime, beauty, life itself — if her man so commands. Pistoli went about growling like a wild boar, and women wiggled their toes at him, to tease the monster. Thus he lived to bury three wives.