“Hot diggety-dog,” grumbled Pistoli. “You, sir, have indeed been indoctrinated by the enemies of this nation. I would surely emigrate from here if your kind should become too numerous. Luckily there are still a few decent folks left who respect our ancient virtues.”
Pistoli placed a hand on the wine jug and spoke in a most solemn tone, as if what followed was a matter of life and death:
“Sir, I’ll tell you who shouldn’t drink: those whom alcohol turns into swine. Let’em swill water from the trough, like farmyard animals. For there’s nothing more digusting than a drunk. (Though I did come across a certain kind of woman who favored only drunks, she could make’em satisfy her every last kink.) Yes, wine can be full of ghosts, or else lissome, high-life chorus girls. A sinister sign marks the forehead of the man who imbibes only the ghosts.
“All those staggerers with bloodshot eyes collapsing in a tearful heap by the ditch; pillaged hearts clutching a knife; those hollering at their reflection in the well’s suicidal depths, or laying themselves down across the cities’ thoroughfares; those who rend women’s hair; the jealous ones who stink of bitter mineral water; those trembling hands ready to commit murder; all those unfortunates who must guzzle wine to find the courage to stumble through life’s vast night — well, they had all better plop down by the puddle, because this is one party you won’t be recovering from on a prison straw-mat, or in the confessional cage of conscience’s accusing agenbite of inwit. The drunk that regrets drinking, and in his sorrow scrawls German verses on the white planks of the summerhouse, kneels at the foot of the wronged woman, and must pawn his lynx jacket after an all-night binge, vows promises to lonesome trees, and spends half his life trying to make up for the mistakes he made — he should stay at home, within the confines of his four walls, toss the doorkey into the river, and never leave the house, not even if he wakes dreaming that the place is on fire. The solitary drinker should tie one hand to the bedpost, so he’ll find instant refuge among the eiderdown quilts when the good Lord’s golden vintage turns dark inside his wicked guts. That would be the finest farmers’ almanac, in which the rhymester would immortalize the solitary drinker’s thoughts and feelings in this land! The desolate village manors ready to collapse, and only that last jug of wine to light up the gloom inside! The way the prematurely old and lonely man talks to parts of his body when the wine goes down the hatch and you must converse with your own broken leg, since there’s no one else to talk to! The lugubrious glug of the solitary swig, and that meaningless crooning when the head crashes to the tabletop in a room! Women long since dead calling out from carefully saved photographs and ghosts of friends lurking in corners! Small and large coffins, packed full of memories, now returning on the surging flood of inebriation, bobbing and dancing like a gatepost carried off by the springtime Tisza’s high water! That would make a fine almanac, if you wrote down the thoughts of the solitary toper! I did try once, when I was still able to suffer.”
Kálmán listened with distaste to his host’s words. By now, he had had almost enough of the eccentric village squire. He liked to look on life with dry eyes, as a strict business proposition.
“No matter how your lordship entices me, I’m not interested in drunkenness. I don’t intend to clamber up on the kettle-drum like a circus monkey. I want to breathe free, and seek favorable passage on life’s river with a cool heart and sober mind. I prefer to calculate, just like a businessman.”
Pistoli smiled inwardly and thought, “This young whipper-snapper thinks he’s so very smart, but I’ll show him his place!” And he took a prolonged draught from the smoky jug, just like a thirsty forest in a May downpour.
“Well, a solitary man needs his bit of ecstasy to put up with life,” he mused on. “Take for example me, who always believed that in the matter of brains no one in the county could come close to me. If need be, I could always muster the wiliness of a snake. And still, there came nighttime hours when, in spite of all my wisdom, I didn’t relish my solitude. The company of people bored me, for I had the misfortune of always detecting their true selves, their real voices behind the false front of small talk. Oh, I never fell for people whose fluting voices warble nothing but white-gloved courtesy, kind flattery and fraud. I always knew their innermost thoughts. Filtering through the pious, holier-than-thou psalms, I could always hear the dull thud of the drumroll at the execution ground. And so I was never crazy about the company of my fellow humans. Even women I desired only as long as I didn’t tire of them.”
(“Why, oh why does this old fool insist on boring me to death with the story of his life?” Kálmán secretly wondered.)
After another hearty swig as soothing for Mr. Pistoli’s throat as a glass of water at dawn for the feverish invalid, he went on: “Let me repeat, I have never craved the company of men, but still there were times when I couldn’t do without it. Therefore I had to conjure them up, lure their shadows here, their sunken footprints, their veiled voices. I seated their disembodied forms around my table, and we conversed about life and death, as well as works and days. The good old wine jug always brought them here, no matter how far away they were. The wineglass pulled them up from the bed where they lay with a hand on the wife’s belly.
“Each swallow of wine brought out their innermost feelings, clandestine thoughts and never-before-confessed misbehavings. They told me what they do at home when they believe no one is watching. They had opened up the blind windows of their souls’ dank cellars, and let out the cold blast of egotism that filled their miserable lives. After these gatherings not one of my acquaintances remained unfathomed. I had reconsidered all their voluntary actions and reviewed the deeds they had committed without themselves knowing the whys and wherefores. I inspected them from all sides as one would a bullock at the marketplace. Did they possess any redeemable human value, and what was it? What was the key to their makeup? Did they really merely dangle from the hair of women’s private parts, like rancid little crumbs, while claiming they were connected umbilically to the eternal feminine, the Mother of us all? And so I examined them like an apothecary does his poisons. I often laughed out loud when I discovered new sights. In my solitary investigations I had to slap my forehead when I came upon the key to the behavior of one of my friends. I calmed down and made peace with myself. The life I had lived thus far, like a surly badger, was surely the best, for I had lost nothing by avoiding men. I became as cheerful as a fallen girl after her confession. My heart filled up with the joys of life. And the wine jug welled up with women who were never unfaithful, never evil. They were women who gave me joy. So I played cards with them till daybreak, the stakes were nose-tweaking and making love. The winner would receive my dream for the day, for dreams were all I ever paid to women.”
“The scoundrel,” thought Kálmán Ossuary, from whom a woman was lucky to receive, at the most, his condescending agreement to accept her presents.
“You think I didn’t see Eveline leaving the garden earlier this evening?” Mr. Pistoli asked with a sudden flash of his eyes, and gave Kálmán Ossuary a penetrating glance.
The latter, a bit discomposed, bit his lip, and racked his brain for the ugliest epithets regarding Mr. Pistoli.
“But let’s return to the women in the chalice. (Alas, Miss Eveline has never complied with my summons, even though in my boredom I had more than once appealed for the young lady with the doelike tread who happens to be the chatelaine of this neighborhood. Naturally she bathes far more often than the chateleines of old, about whom I had once read that on Good Friday they washed the feet of beggars, but never their own. They used to wear egret feathers in their hats, although their necks were not exactly immaculately clean. Those heavy, brocaded skirts and leather undergarments concealed unwashed limbs, that’s why itinerant peddlers hawking perfumes did such roaring trade. Still, the scent of ambergris and frankincense was often overcome by the natural body odors of those ladies of yore. That’s why I could never go in a big way for women of earlier times. I never welcomed guests from the other world, for I happen to be blessed with a most sensitive olfactory organ.) My women were always live ones, hot, full-blooded, full of zest for life — although they would usually turn up in the dead of night. They stuck their bare toes in my mouth, grabbed ahold of my hair, straddled my shoulder and rode me, and stuffed their hands in my pockets. They would shift me around and knead my muscles, banish me under the bed, chase me with flashing teeth, and nibble me like puppies. The hefty ones danced around on the tabletop; the skinny ones stood on their head.