“Please don’t hurt me…”
“Don’t be afraid. I happen to be the kind of forty-year-old man who is dying to make love, maddened by thoughts of orgies, but whose body is a centenarian’s, and has to import a street singer to satisfy his lady, while I sob in the next room…I am sick, old and mad. A used-up, tattered old hat that had once upon a time been worn at a crazy tilt by some girl at a boarding school and left behind in the corridor of the hotel where she rushed unthinking, riotous, crazed on the arm of the triumphant male…The night watchman stops to muse, as his old walking stick pokes at the hat with a numbered tag sewn in at the orphanage or boarding school…I can only crave you, crave you like sunshine that cannot be held.”
“I shall cure you. For I am a springtime woman. I admire and love you. I’ll be the cricket in your house, who’ll play the violin for you in your solitude. Please stop suffering.”
So said Eveline and she placed her hands together.
But the self-lacerator could not be stopped in his heart-rending séance. The cello that had lain silent for so long, and which was now brought out from a corner nook, poured forth songs of woe, like Baron Münchhausen’s frozen post horn emitting melodies by the fireplace.
“Why have I summoned you here? Because in this house once I was young, like a wandering musician who, young and hungry and aimless, sings below the window. This is the house where I spilled all emotion so that there is not a drop of blood in me to take to the other world, so that a flower might grow on my grave. This is where I once knelt, like a happy jack of hearts that had somehow escaped from the pack…This is where I played the Ram, the Bull and the Lion…Here I once was a star on the ceiling that lit up the sleeper’s dreams…I was the wind that blew in under the doorsill…clattering ghost rummaging among the dried hunting bags in the attic…I was the tomcat snoozing on the roofridge, gathering fresh strength for the morrow…Here I was love. And you, you could be Risoulette’s own daughter, you dear love.”
Risoulette, when she heard mention of her name, entered the room quietly, humble and joyful like a serving woman on Christmas Eve.
“Wouldn’t you like some tea?” she asked and cast a reproachful glance at Eveline, who sat, chilly and moved, in an ancient armchair. (She still had her shoes on — whereas Risoulette had always made sure to place her bare foot in her lover’s hands.)
Mr. Álmos-Dreamer cast down his eyes like a guilty man caught in the act, while Eveline gave Risoulette an Eastertime smile, like a woman to her lifesaver on the riverbank after repenting the attempted suicide.
“Please sit down, Risoulette, and play the piano for us,” she said in a wheedling, cajoling voice that can never be attained by someone choking with emotion. Eveline spoke in calm and deliberate tones. Meanwhile Risoulette stood in the door, bewildered, like a woman who has spilled kerosene on her skirt but cannot find a match to set it aflame.
“Well, if you don’t want to be alone any longer…” she replied compliantly, somewhat saddened. “Do you like Tchaikovsky?” she asked Eveline, and coolly turned the sheets of her piano music.
Mr. Álmos-Dreamer excused himself and left the room. Next door he listened at length, without stirring, to the Captain’s litany of gouty symptoms, until he suddenly sobbed out loud. He yanked out his handkerchief and laid his head in the Captain’s lap.
“You are my best friend,” he wept and kissed the Captain’s hand.
“You mustn’t act in haste,” said the Captain, after Andor Álmos-Dreamer confessed his misery, like a drunkard to the cimbalom player. “You must never, ever, take women seriously. I have traveled much. Here, there, everywhere. I’ve been to India, I’ve been a dance master in the Caucasus, a musician in a prominent household where American girls received wealthy foreigners. I have passed for a Frenchman, a German, and a Dutchman. I have lived on the donations of cardsharps and have been kept by women. Once I killed a man with a champagne bottle in the house where I was dance master. No, you mustn’t take women seriously — even though in the Austro-Hungarian army they hold a different opinion on this matter.”
It was so unexpected to hear the Captain address a topic other than his gout that Andor wiped away his tears. He looked in surprise at the gruff gentleman who sat grim and disconsolate in his armchair, like a cross over a grave.
“If people listened to me…” the crypt-dwelling knight went on in thoughtful, arcane accents, “there wouldn’t be so much giddiness around…so much senseless behavior…stupidity… People’s life stories sound to me like tales heard in the restaurant of a train station. The train stands snowed in and people tell each other their experiences and observations. In hindsight everyone knows where he made his mistakes. I have yet to find a traveler at the train station who is content. One has to be very stupid to find life bearable. You, too, are a lost soul. Instead of remaining here in my dear old house, you had to run around chasing skirts worn by women of unknown emotional capacity.”
“I am truly sorry now.”
“Why, you had everything you wanted here. We always tried to please you, coddle you, we thought you were the most intelligent man in all of Hungary. I always have to sigh over human obtuseness when my guests leave for unknown, distant destinations…Why get on a train if you don’t have to? Only deportees and wandering Jews travel by train. Any normal person stays at home, smokes his pipes, and picks out his otherworldy resting place well ahead of time. I am going to sleep my long and restful sleep under my walnut tree. And where did you go off to? Why, you went and climbed up on the high wire at the traveling circus and now you can’t come down. Why go in for this goggle-eyed torment when you can live your life painlessly, without as much as a sore throat? The way I see it, everyone in this country is stone drunk and I am the only teetotaler, for I have never loved anyone.”
“I have horrible nights.”
“Because you behave just like a woman. You must have a doll or a baby in your lap, you can’t imagine life otherwise. You are unable to tell a funny story without giggling. You are not solemn, calm, severe like a convict who has been sentenced unjustly, yet you consider yourself proud and clever. Living life to the hilt is for jokers. You put your faith in women, whereas you ought to know that a woman is merely a nightgown, a feather from a bird of paradise. They are beautiful and kind, and we need them. But no decent man has them on his mind at the hour of death. Listen, old comrade…Go climb an oak tree, like a long-whiskered oak beetle, and listen in silence from under the leaves while others cry for help in the woods. Just take it easy.”
The Captain said no more.
Half an hour later Risoulette appeared, after the piano had fallen silent, like an unhappy mazurka at a time of young love. Eveline had departed without a farewell through the garden. Evening was falling the way death creeps up on a solitary man.
“Come here,” said Risoulette to Andor Álmos-Dreamer, drawing him into a side chamber. “I have to give you something that was entrusted to me.”
She embraced him and her kisses were as drawn out as a honeymoon, as joyous as a reunion and as submissive as a harem. She quivered as if every bone in her body were sobbing, like a maiden on her wedding night.
6. Toward Eveningtime
The day was fading like a weary heart.
The birds left off their daily doings; the Lord’s diminutive laborers flew off in silence toward their little homes, grown quiet, just like humans toward eveningtime.