“Easter Sunday it will be four months since you’ve been gone, Eveline. The last time, winter whistled in my chimney, and now spring fills the world, like the tunes from a military band on a Danube steamer. So I surprised myself with a wish to see you — though I should have stayed in helclass="underline" back in Pest, in the coffeehouse, or at the horse races, rather than put up with this cold, snooty look from you. What’s with you, girl? Have you totally forgotten me?”
Frightened and curious by turns, Eveline stared at Kálmán’s soldier of fortune visage. It was a face she had dreamed of many times, always trembling with heartache. Kálmán’s eyes had grown larger, like the saucer-eyed dog’s in Andersen’s fairy tale. The hair on his head stood up stiff in spikes. She had so often heard his cocky, defiant voice in daydreams, emerging from behind the tapestry of a brown study. She was afraid of him. And yet, when the daughters of melancholy descended on her, and sat down at the foot of her bed to knit unending stockings from endless balls of yarn, she never failed to think of Kálmán, who surely must have power over these otherworldly beings and the mournful moods of the soul as well, for this man, like a warrior, never shoved any fear. His ruthlessness she found as imposing as a bulldog’s ferocious set of teeth. And his audacity reassured her, like the fidelity of a trustworthy Negro giant who watches unsleeping on your doorstep throughout the night.
“Have you nothing to say to me?” Kálmán burst out and gave her hand a mighty shake.
Eveline sighed.
“Where am I going to put you up? You can’t stay at my house!” She sighed again.
“So, you would have preferred never to see me again…You like living here among the village beasts of burden, where there isn’t one knowing eye to observe flirtations and couplings. I can well understand why you wouldn’t want my presence here. I have a wicked, but honest nature. I don’t hide the truth from you. I’m not one of your half-witted devotees you can send out to stroll on the street while inside, in the booth of the fashion boutique you are having a tête-à-tête with some other gent. I happen to be your good friend and I bite; I’m always ready to split open the skull of anyone who would spread evil rumors about you. But I’m not afraid to tell you to your face what I think of you. One thing you can be sure of: I would have walked all the way here, even if there hadn’t been a train to this godforsaken place.”
Eveline closed her eyes, listening to this tongue-lashing. In her heart of hearts she was gratified by the harsh tone, as an adulteress is by the beating she receives at home. She felt she was doing penance for this afternoon, for basking in the torrential downpour of Mr. Álmos-Dreamer’s ardent words.
“I have a friend in the neighborhood, you can stay with him,” she said, fluttery.
“You know I don’t think much of Mr. Álmos-Dreamer, that total lunatic,” Kálmán scornfully replied. “Sooner or later I’m going to drown him in the river.”
Eveline was taken aback.
“You are crazy…I would so much like the two of you to be friends.”
Mr. Kálmán wrinkled up his eyebrows severely and stood tall.
“Listen, Missie, I have more than once warned you not to make me play a role from some French novel. I am a beast, and will kill any rival, with tooth and nail if I must, instead of carrying on intrigues. So get those novels out of your head.”
“Please forgive me,” Eveline faltered, as if she were on her knees in front of him. “I didn’t mean any harm.”
Just then she thought of Mr. Pistoli who lived within rifle-shot from here, right off the highway, in his solitary badger’s den.
“Get up!” she commanded and made room for Kálmán on the coach box. She firmly grasped the reins, like one setting out on serious business, and the dapple grays, after some consternation, went into a loping trot.
Evening had fallen.
The candles went out in vagabonds’ hearts; the lights went on in solitary houses. The moon surveyed the scene over the marshes, like a sheriff who decides to leave the outlaws in peace tonight.
Mr. Pistoli spent his days perfecting his ennui. Being the wise and crafty male that he was, he thought it expedient for a while to hang up in the attic his amatory game bag, from the loops of which he had in his time dangled so many silly starlings and timorous water hens. He could truly confirm that, for bagging women, all you needed was plenty of time on your hands, and persistent, patient lying in wait. Yes, he had lain hidden under bushes watching the daughters of the soil, their faces bathed in sunshine, flexing their limbs in the breeze, bending their waists in their labors around the haystack; foxlike he sidled in the neighborhood of spinning rooms, husking bees, feather-plucking fests, wherever girls’ songs rang out with amorous yearning; he had observed stealthily and steadfastly the young washerwomen on the riverbank; on highways he would keep company with market women heading for a fair, and chatted them up, sampling their goods; and it was seemingly without ulterior motives that he chanted the hymns and litanies alongside female pilgrims, when on Our Lady’s Feast the simple folk of the land wended their way to Pócs. — When he grew tired of simple-minded serving wenches, fed up with their naive benevolence that wanted to make him hale again in all his sickness and indolent lollygagging, he would cast a bored look at the newborn babe and mumble through gritted teeth: “He’ll grow up to be a bandit, no doubt.” And he would drag himself to his feet like an ancient reaper and move on to another scene and other women, without ever looking back. He squeezed his way into dance classes for girls apprenticed in the trades, who were still learning how to apply makeup, and on his way out trampled the compacts of ladies’ maids; he gave midnight serenades for actresses of the traveling troupe, offered his arm to accompany widows returning home from the cemetery; attended coffee-klatsches where ladies lamented men’s infidelities; he sized up feminine gullibility as precisely as a grocer weighing out saffron. Like most rustic Hungarian males, he was not choosy in amatory matters; and, if asked to give an accounting on his deathbed, would not have recalled a single female. Possibly his only recollection would be that the choral society of X had elected him its president and at his funeral their deep basses and nimble tenors would perform the song “Why So Gloomy Now?”
This primordial lifestyle went hand in hand with the ennui that would seize him from time to time, like somnolence the hounds, once springtime is past. He would hide out in his lair like a groundhog that had met with a mishap. He would chew on a tender new leaf and play the violin for his own pleasure. He took delight in prolonged yawns, hapless groans, spent hours in bed staring at his big toe, and finally rose only to set a billy goat capering, as aimlessly as a whittling man who fondles the sticks picked up on the road.
He received Kálmán Ossuary as impassively as he would a mendicant beggar.
“For Miss Eveline’s sake I’m willing to sacrifice house and home,” he said, and at the lady’s request he designated the garden cottage as Kálmán’s abode.
This garden cottage, built on sturdy posts, stood near the riverbank. This was where Mr. Pistoli had kept his mad wives in his married days. But the cottage had also sheltered girls who ran away from home for Mr. Pistoli’s sake, thereby causing that fine gent much aggravation in smoking them out once he had tired of their lamentations. The place had witnessed the crack of the dog whip as well as the melting, lilting tunes of Gypsies, depending on circumstances. These days it was mostly middle-aged women who had cause to recall the garden cottage, to curse or bless Mr. Pistoli, to the stout squire’s total indifference. He had however a black mourning band sewn on his stiff black hat, even though he had had no bereavement in some thirty years.