“Mr. Pistoli, now that you’re a widower, you won’t be needing the cottage,” opined Eveline, who was well versed in local lore.
“I understand perfectly,” replied Mr. Pistoli, sage acquiescence personified. “You’d like to visit the young gentleman from time to time, without disturbing me. But I was never one to tattletale about women who confide in me. And just in case the wind should blow my way some wayward Gypsy gal, why, let’er camp out in the corn loft. In my youth I had no qualms about climbing into smoky hovels after’ em…But you shouldn’t take seriously everything you hear from old Pistoli.”
“Please take care of Kálmán,” Eveline implored the master of the house, before taking her leave. “Dear neighbor, you are a man of considerable experience. You know the ways of the world, how people are, the dangers…”
“Leave it to me. In any case I’ll get rid of Blonde Maria, who visits me occasionally, still unwilling to accept that I’ve given up women for a while.”
“Thank you,” said Eveline, and, accompanied by Mr. Pistoli’s solemn, pitying, empathetic nods, she drove off on the dirt road into the darkness, like the closing accord of a tragic concert.
“What’s the beard for?” asked Mr. Pistoli on his first evening with Kálmán, eyeing the latter’s semilunar side-whiskers.
(In a paunchy, smoky wine jug, from which highwaymen on death row might have sipped their last mournful drink, a vinegary local wine had been set on the table. Pistoli’s frequent deep draughts from this vessel had the effect of making his mood more and more dour. He signalled with his eye, inviting Kálmán to follow his example.)
A dismissing flick of the wrist was Ossuary’s answer to his host, who paced the room with hands linked behind his back.
“You should ask my barber. Probably this is the current fashion in the capital.”
“Me, I’ve never had a beard,” continued Pistoli in an insinuating tone. “Though I guess I could have had one. Yes, in my youth my beard grew reddish, like the Duke of Orléans’s. Later it turned black and thicker. It would have grown together with my mustache, eyebrows, hair, just like Robert Le Diable’s. But I never tolerated even the slightest little tuft under my lower lip, even though every gentleman worth his salt in this county used to have one.”
“It’s not the beard that matters,” Kálmán replied appeasingly. “Not every woman likes a bearded man, anyway.”
But Pistoli resisted.
“In the Orient only slaves shave, free men all sport beards. Not your kind of half-beard, the significance of which I can barely comprehend, but full beards that cover the entire jaw and lend definite character to the face. I recommend you grow a full beard at the cottage.”
Kálmán shrugged. He did not feel like arguing with this village squire. But Pistoli, so long a loner, now grew voluble, hearing the sound of his own long-silent voice.
“In the old days all over Hungary the fashionable thing for a man on attaining a certain age was to let the beard grow. An ancient tradition, this. Lad took a bride, and once married, he’d sprout a luxuriant beard. Why, a beardless county judge or deputy would have been unthinkable in those days. Women were expected to appreciate a man’s beard. It’s all a matter of custom. — Only itinerant actors and waiters shaved their faces back then. Nowadays most modern males forego facial hair. They imagine themselves more interesting and cleaner that way, and somehow even more intelligent than their fellow men sporting mustaches. It seems to be some kind of badge of freemasonry among contemporary males. But I despise modern men.”
“Take it easy, your honor.”
“Why does modern man look down on tradition? What gives him the right to think himself different, brighter, more enlightened? Especially here in Hungary, where the very survival of the nation seems to demand men to be conservative and old-fashioned. For I see no evidence of real virility in the younger generation. Women have no moral sense, and expose their nakedness, their physical and spiritual shamelessness just like their chic underskirts hung out to dry in the sun; young men are unreliable, weak, cowardly and spineless, though they act as cocky as if they had some special, hidden talent. But that’s just it. The new generation is far shallower and feebler than the old. Nowadays you can hardly find a specimen of the steadfast-as-oak, ascetic, upstanding, straight-arrow Hungarians of old. Everyone’s characterless, without convictions, and ready to switch allegiance…Anything for the promise of an easier life. I feel sorry for this country, watching it slip into the hands of scoundrels and men without character. Soon there won’t be a single honorable man in the land. Only the blind can’t see the demoralization of our society and public life. A nation of thieves, the home turf of pseudopatriots, brazen, selfish, cold-blooded liars. Why, honor was laid to rest here before the revolution of 1848. This is why the nation’s downfall won’t be such a great loss. Could this all be because Hungarians gave up their beards?”
“I repeat, the beard isn’t everything, my good sir,” replied Ossuary, who although he was no great scholar, nonetheless read the occasional newspaper. “Life cannot stay put, it would soon stagnate. New men arrive, who don’t want to stay on the beaten paths. Everyone carries in himself some concept he would like to realize. You mustn’t be angry with men for striving toward new goals. The old stations in life have all been occupied by our elders, and they have littered the scene with their greasy papers. We can’t stay put where we were, back in ’48, when men still had such dreamy, otherworldy eyes, that you can’t look at an old portrait without being moved. They barely ever smiled, they barely even lived, they were always suffering and sacrificing, for homeland, or for some woman. Since then we have discovered that neither is worth butting your head against the wall for.”
“But if this country should perish, if the Hungarian nation should die out, it will be this accursed generation’s fault!” shouted Pistoli and slammed his fist on the tabletop.
Then he looked around and smiled like a dead man.
“I am an ass, for talking politics,” he said in a soft voice, and with hands linked behind his back retired to bed. Deep down he was probably convinced that the precious Miss Eveline would have been most satisfied with his performance. Not one obscenity had been uttered in the course of the night, although women’s sexual habits usually formed Mr. Pistoli’s favorite topic.
“So modern men don’t drink?” asked Mr. Pistoli on the following night, when the young man again ignored the eyebrow’s invitations to imbibe.
Ossuary flicked his wrist again:
“Our ancestors guzzled enough wine for generations to come. For centuries everybody’s been wine-drunk in Hungary, for our hills have always been richly blessed. Why, at times wine had to be poured into pits for lack of barrels. Wine was drunk in the early morning and late at night. In the light of the foggy, red-bellied winter sun, rowdy or resigned, life went on. No one ever considered suicide, because wine was a compensation for everything. We’ll have to see many a sober generation come and go, before all heads are properly aired out, and the last remnants of a race of drunkards die out…How could a nation accomplish anything when everyone was on a permanent drunk, even on their wedding night?”