Kakuk clambered forth from the ditch, tiptoed up to Mr. Pistoli, whose wide-open eyes stared at a demijohn of Bull’s Blood while his left hand inscribed all kinds of sigils in the air to his familiar spirits. He was dour and woebegone, a wax figure at the waxworks. His mustache was curled to point up. His worn lacquered dress boots proclaimed to the visitor their superiority to everyday footwear: these boots would never trudge in the dust of the highway.
“The equestrienne,” Kakuk announced, as if he had been hanging out around a theatrical troupe, and had picked up the actors’ accents.
Pistoli slowly shifted his weight to his feet, shoved himself and his chair away from the table, tore his eyes away from the wine bottle and gave a deep sigh like a prisoner on death row. The half-blind pier glass on the wall had long forgotten what womenfolk looked like, how they would once upon a time stop for a quick peek at themselves or to pin up their hair in a topknot. Nowadays the mirror always reflected Novemberish faces. Pistoli looked into the mirror, and twirled his mustache like a gray rodent.
“Ah yes, the equestrienne,” he murmured. He opened his mouth and spat at the mirror, practically reeling with bitterness. “The trollop!”
Had he a weapon on hand, surely he would have grabbed it. But firearms and even sharp knives had long ago been banished from his house. Pistoli feared suicidal schemes and death- craving moments. He wore only the flimsiest belt that was guaranteed to snap under his two hundred pounds. Many a dawn found the droll, carefree boon companion, the life of last night’s party, ardently yearning for death, sprawled across the worn rug that served as a coverlet on his bed. He sank his teeth into the pillow, for that’s how it was in a novel he once read. Suicide approached barefoot in the snow, and lurked around his property like some pushy beggar. He could never enjoy love unless it was totally hopeless.
And so, hands in pockets, it was with an impassive face that he noted the saddle horse tied to a sapling in the birch grove. He knew that yellow mare from Eveline’s stables. Kati was her name. She flicked her short-clipped tail like a lady her fan, and trotted as obediently with a lady’s saddle as if she were in collusion with her rider. Pistoli squatted down next to the saddle horse. In a fevered flush of humiliation he repeatedly resolved to take refuge in the shrubbery if and when Miss Maszkerádi returned from the garden cottage, but her visit was still very much in progress.
Pistoli’s face flamed as he counted the minutes spent under his roof and shelter by this lascivious lady — in the company of that detestable youth.
“How could I so debase my lifelong pride, my manhood?” The reproach welled up inside him like a poorly swallowed dumpling. At the Ungvár theater he had seen the itinerant troupe perform a melodrama in which a woman was murdered. “Jacqueline, see you in hell!” the actor had declaimed. Pistoli never forgot these words. Drinking his wine, during lovemaking, or in his despair he had often uttered this exclamation until his heart nearly broke, for ultimately he came to feel sorry for each and every woman because of the frailty nature had given her…
At long last Maszkerádi emerged from the garden cottage. (Pistoli was most amazed at not seeing a dozen female hands clutch the departing lady’s tresses — the fingers and nails of women who had in that cottage sworn him eternal faith and love unto the grave.)
Brightly and merrily swaying, like an April shower, came the young lady.
Perhaps if she had been sad and conscience-stricken, like certain dames of old who left the site of their illicit love as woebegone as the passing moment that never returns; if the lady had approached in full cognizance of her frailty, ready to forego a man’s respectful handkisses of greeting, and trembling in shame at the tryst exposed in broad daylight, like Risoulette, sixty-six times, whenever having misbehaved, she hastened back home teary-eyed to her Captain; or if a lifelong memory’s untearable veil had floated over her fine features, like the otherworldy wimple of a nun…Then Pistoli would have stood aside, closed his eyes, swallowed the bitter pill, and come next winter, might have scrawled on the wall something about women’s unpredictability. Then he would have glimpsed ghostly, skeletal pelvic bones reflected in his wine goblet, and strands of female hair, once wrapped around the executioner’s wrist, hanging from his rafters; and would have heard wails and cackles emanating from the cellar’s musty wine casks, but eventually Pistoli would have forgiven this fading memory, simply because women are related to the sea and the moon, and that is why at times they know not what they do.
Ah, but Maszkerádi’s confident stride made the footpath seem like it was made of rubber. Her face mirrored a calm satisfaction, as after a successful revenge. Only the best of friends can cheat on each other without qualms, unspeakably glad of the secret not even the best friend can be told now. Curiosity, the impulse to imitate close friends, the oftentimes identical fashions shared in hats and clothes: these will guarantee certain rogues unhoped-for successes at both the dance academy and near the sheltered family hearth. Women fond of each other drink from the same cup with a will, wear each other’s shirts and clandestinely kiss the same man’s lips. Later perhaps they’ll fall at each other’s throat if the secret is out before the flames of amorous passion, like shepherds’ campfires, gutter away in the ever-receding distance.
“I kiss your hand, Mademoiselle,” chimed Pistoli in the birch-strewn grove, catching Maszkerádi in the act of untethering her mare. “The weather’s turning hot-blooded on us. Any day now we’ll have to have ice brought in from town.”
Maszkerádi was not surprised at running into the Peeping Tom. She smiled like a queen.
“How good of you to watch my mare, Pistoli. Please hold my stirrup,” she replied, light and easy, like a waltz. Never had he heard her voice so fluting. And she was all furtive and happy smiles, like a honeymoon diary kept by a young wife.
“You may help me, Pistoli,” said she with infinite condescension, like an angel from heaven meeting a mendicant on the road. For alms, she cast an absentminded glance at Mr. Pistoli. Quite possibly she thought the perfume emanating from her clothes would suffice to gratify this stout gentleman.
Pistoli began in a bleating tone, as if he had trouble finding his voice.
“Don’t, please don’t for a moment think, dear lady, that I would dare delve into your comings and goings. Although the attic floor in the cottage does have a hole I once used for spying on women, to see what they did when left to their own devices…I remember seeing many a terrified or pensive face on solitary womenfolk. They would put their room in order, spread the towel out to dry, smooth down the pillow’s creases, scrutinize themselves in a hand mirror as if they feared that kisses marked them like the yellow patch on a mediaeval Jew’s robe…But my memory retains nothing of you, my dear lady, for I consider your action so low, so ordinary that it’s not worth burdening my brains with.”
“So what do you think of me?” hissed Maszkerádi, raising her head, serpentlike.
Pistoli advanced two steps, as on a fencing strip.
His voice no longer shook, though it still sounded as alien as if it belonged to a train conductor: