The Gypsies played softly, as if accompanying a dead colleague to the cemetery.
“I’ve decided to do away with you,” announced Miss Maszkerádi’s cold voice, even as her eyes wormed their way under Mr. Pistoli’s vest like an exotic dancer’s snake. “I’ll rid this region of your obnoxious personage and moral contagion! Why, in these parts one finds mostly fine, upright folks, just like in Crimea. On name days and anniversaries people like to hug and kiss, as if this watery region lay somewhere in Russia, if you will. Wide-eyed women, their willpower as fragile as birch twigs, undefended and defenseless, inhabit this land alongside melancholy, fraternal men ready to forget any letdown if you give them a single friendly word. I believe you are the one and only outlaw running loose around here, wily as a serpent and cunning as only the most venomous troublemaker can be. Have you ever in your life gone for the kill? Ever smash a goblet, stone sober, over somebody’s head? Ever kiss a red-hot stove, if that’s what you felt like? Here among men who weep when they fight, weep when they’re merry, and weep when they make love, you stick out as the frosty-footed rat that you are, in spite of all your masquerading. What we have here is a sober rake who never blurts out what he thinks. A coldhearted torturer who watches with quiet satisfaction when his pálinka-soaked Gypsies go up in flames. A tigerish, bloody-handed man capable of ripping off a woman’s breasts, who privately judges each woman to be nothing but a whore. A tin cup that cares not a whit whether wine or blood is poured into it. A foul-mouthed, disgraceful bag of filth with a jailbird’s opinion of womankind.”
Pistoli’s smile was as broad as if he’d been listening to houris warbling for his ears alone.
“Around here, every woman’s been my lover,” he said calmly.
“Me too?”
“Not yet, but you will be, by dawn.”
Maszkerádi shrugged.
“Perhaps.”
Now two elderly servitors appeared, rolling a small cask the size of a baby hippo onto the verandah. Hats held in hand, heads bared, they looked like Prince Rákóczi’s faithful serfs. They poured wine into a floral-ornamented jug, then soundlessly exited as if they were going straight to their rest in the nether world.
“I happen to know you well, Miss,” Mr. Pistoli began, his hands rising to his temples as if to put his thoughts in order. “You are the most proud and arrogant woman I have ever known. You would like to crush me underfoot like a maggot. And you’re perfectly right. I am the most worthless man in Hungary…So now you think you’ll get me drunk and humiliate me. Roll me in tar and feathers and send my carrion back to town on the meat wagon.”
“That’s exactly what I intend to do,” Miss Maszkerádi replied, her lips pressed together.
“Maybe so. But to me, you’re worth it. So, let’s drink up this devilish wine of yours.”
“Sip it, don’t swill it, buddy…You’re drinking my special reserve. Hegyalja’s best Tokay. It comes from a hillside the sun likes to make love to.”
Miss Maszkerádi bumped hers against his, almost smashing the goblet.
“I detest your eyes, they drive me crazy.” Her voice was a low murmur. “They’re full of shadow women whose hearts you’ve laid to waste, devoured, torn apart. I see them, the blondes, naive and innocent, the silly brunettes, sloe-eyed and bird-brained, the sanctimonious faces of sensuous hefty ones, the Slovak Virgin Marys and the doghaired, rough-and-tumble Hunnish descendants of The Birches. I can see my sisters clutched in your executioner’s grip, and then, after a kick from your brutal, shapeless boot, chanting prayers in the iron-barred nave of the prison church, or in the madhouse, wrapped in wet blankets, wildly craving death and suicide; or else solitary, sleepless companions of the moon, who consult fortune-teller’s cards. Yes, I can see how you turned them into witches, wild beasts with scraggly hair, foaming at the mouth. You are a tremendous scoundrel, Pistoli — but I love you.”
Pistoli placed his hand on the girl’s shoulder.
“I’ll tell you something that I would never admit to the pretentious, stay-at-home, down-at-the-heel squirelings around here. My ancestors happened to be mercenaries. And me too, I’m just another vagrant soldier of fortune who happened to pick this region for his theater of operations. I love no one. I could howl in pain and joy, for I am a solitary, I make no confessions or concessions, walk through life stubbornly alone, need no one’s friendship, scorn anyone’s hatred; shoulders back, chest out, I am all alone. The most they can take from me is my life…And madam, I sense that you, too, are proud of being able to be alone for long periods, and often.”
“Always…” The word escaped Miss Maszkerádi’s mouth, in spite of herself. She quickly regretted it, for she went on: “What business can you have with me when I refuse even to tread on you, when I avoid you like a dead cur lying belly up in a ditch…”
But Pistoli pretended not to have heard the young lady’s razor-edged words. He merely hummed and nodded at his wineglass:
“I drink wine to find my friends. They’re all here. My youth, my courage, my skepticism and superstitions. They’re all right here, everyone I’ve ever loved and hated. All those dear faces look at me from the glass of wine. They beg for mercy, but I still drink them up. Here they are, the women who went insane and now wait in the madhouse for the chance to steal a knife to plunge into their hearts — or mine. They stare at me, and call me, and promise me everything. My three crazy wives. One lies abed all day and her hair is shorn as short as a boy’s. She has no gray hairs — the hair of the insane does not turn gray. Her eyes never leave the window, she waits for my face to appear. She just lies there and never opens her mouth to speak, like an angel in eternity, the angel that carries omniscience in her apron. I become dazed, as if I gazed at a distant star, whenever I think of her. Whatever became of her, where did she go? For she never comes back to haunt.
“My second wife was unfaithful, that’s why I had her put away. I couldn’t stand to hear every skinny, ragged bird of passage bragging aloud about my wife’s indiscretions. Yes, one of them happened to pick me as his confidant. Well, I let’im have it, madam, and beat him up good and proper, like a shepherd beats his donkey. These two fists slammed his head and face and eyes, so that my knuckles just about cracked. (I think I loved this woman best of all, although I’d be hard put to recall her name now…) Then I went home and wept and howled for mercy and shuddered with the ague when I lay down next to my wife. If she’d been nice to me then, I think I would have forgotten and forgiven her everything, destroyed the very memory, like an anonymous letter.
“But she persisted in her vile, cold, sinful, brazen ways. So I resolved to pay her back in kind, and wrenched her from my heart, as you would uproot a sapling from the soil. For I am a heathen…I’ve had my share of suffering, the rain and the cold, I whistled in my misery and hopped around on one foot. Yes, I’ve contemplated the deepest, yawning wells and I’ve dug up old bones in the graveyard in the dead of night to tell my troubles to when my torments got so bad I was afraid that if I started to howl, no human power could make me stop. She had betrayed me…I would crow and run around in crazy circles like a rooster when the barn’s on fire. My left hand had to grab my right wrist to stop it from reaching for the knife. I had to be rid of her, at any cost. So now she, too, is at the Nagykálló insane asylum, and if her shadow came back to haunt me, I’d shoot it.”