Eveline raised her head and looked into Ossuary’s eyes with such an otherworldly smile that up in the attic Mr. Pistoli’s hands involuntarily groped for a knife. He had apparently forgotten that once upon a time even his own ragged features were thus searched by feminine eyes looking for heavenly salvation. How far was the memory of those women who would have sacrificed their all at such moments of self-forgetfulness…But he had been modest and never asked them for anything other than what they bestowed so freely.
Eveline stared, as one who sees a miracle on a treetop: the appearance of the Virgin Mary or Jesus Christ in a lamblike cloud. Her eyes did not need to shed tears for they were misty already, as if she had already heard the otherworldy voice assuring her that her prayers were not in vain. This was the greatest love, the kind no one believes in until they experience it. The hour that trickled by would forever tower over Eveline’s passing life, a red tower visible from the greatest distances. Life may race by over hedge and ditch like a pack of foxhounds. Yes, other lovable riders may come to join the party, the pursuit of the silver fox of happiness, but no matter how far she would gallop, the memory of this hour would never fall into oblivion. The tower stood on the horizon, its thirteen steps no longer unknown for the reminiscing lady. There is the step of the first handshake, then the steps of the eyes, voices and kisses. The steps spiral around this fairy-tale tower turning upon a duck’s foot, always in the direction of the sun’s heat — the sun of love. The step of the feet, the station of the hands, the balcony of embraces, the momentous landing of the respite between kisses; the gallery of nameless desires, the arbor of whispers and sighs; and at last: the tower’s peak…Love, that brought all of us into this world.
Eveline beheld her idol. Pistoli well knew this kind of gaze on women’s faces. This is the gaze of the insane who in their solitary cells, cast an entranced glance after the feathery-hatted knight. It is also the gaze of fetish worshippers, who expect miracles of their diminutive Asiatic deities. Eyes that are a hair’s breadth away from madness; eyes that would terrify, if on a lonely night one were to behold them reflected in the mirror…
This is what Ossuary said:
“Baby, I have a problem: I want to leave this accursed house and return to Budapest.”
“Please forgive me…” Eveline faltered. “I had guessed your thought before I came here.”
She rose on her toes, and strutted to the table like a child with mischief on her mind. She snapped open her handbag and pulled out a stack of banknotes as her timid offering. Blue and pink banknotes, neatly folded, as only women know how to fold brand-new, crisp bills.
Ossuary, to end this scene as quickly as possible, with one bored gesture scooped up the gift, and sank it out of sight so quickly that Pistoli was unable to make out which pocket the money went in. All of this proved sufficient to make Pistoli rise with a rumble, and leave the attic on thunderous, thumping feet.
When he reached ground level he broke into the verbunkos, a traditional soldiers’ recruiting dance, and embraced Kakuk.
“I’m getting drunk as a lord and I never want to be sober again,” he shouted. “Go get my cart. Move it, Kakuk, if you hold your life dear. Wine, I want wine.”
Growling and staggering, he leaned against the gatepost and waited until Quitt arrived, the one-eyed Jewish carter who hauled Mr. Pistoli about whenever the urge to roam seized him. Bells jingled, hanging from the necks of his horses. Sad little jingle bells, that rang out over the highway like the entreaties of a mendicant friar.
Pistoli hoisted and squeezed his hulk onto the cart’s forage rack. He was determined, tough and energetic, like one setting out to commit murder. He whistled for Kakuk, who hotfooted it after the cart like some canine.
The cart flew, as if blown by the breeze. It swayed and reeled, heaving Mr. Pistoli’s bulk from one side to the other. He cackled or cried, as the mood seized him. At last he started to snore like a wounded wild boar. Even the man on death row has to sleep.
8. Life’s Pleasures
For the third day now, Pistoli had been riding across the landscape of The Birches.
During his time he had visited all of his old hangouts, the taverns where he had once brawled, administered and received beatings. At the same time he said his farewells to former lovers, as if preparing for a very distant destination.
This journey revealed that Pistoli had not had more lovers than any other man who had spent his life in this sunflowery, tranquil, impassive land crisscrossed by highways. Just as in autumntime when women winnow, the wandering winds sometimes carry off both chaff and seed alike…Pistoli’s lovers were the same as any other man’s. Except other men forget these women as one forgets a song after the carousal is over; at the most, a bitter taste remains in the mouth on the morning after, as one contemplates with distaste the muddy boots. Whereas Pistoli never forgot the women who were kind to him. He would recall their words and gestures even three days later, when he would be already well on his way to recovery, taking the cure via the back alleys leading to out-of-the-way pubs where the beer tastes best, or else he would sit around in front of roadside taverns musing and admiring the red glow of wine in the sun, taking his delight in the birdlike song of the wench dipping water at the well. And he would go about wielding a crooked cherrywood staff on which he skewered fallen leaves like so many uncomprehending hearts. He would stop from time to time and laugh his horselaugh when he recalled some quaint oddity in his late drunken nights, on the back roads meandering toward taverns with names like The Linden Tree or Green Tree, or toward some girl’s room reeking of cheap patchouli.
For he even got to know the kinsfolk of these loose girls, some of whom had asked him to be godfather to their child. He acted as sagely as the roadside crucifix that absolves the highway wanderers’ every trespass. The music played at fairground barbecue stalls, the flutes at midnight serenades, a familiarity with feminine foibles, contempt for the world, which he shook off like rain fallen on his hat’s brim — all this had made him acquiescent and resigned to the way things were. Rarely did life whoop it up inside him; he mostly went about purring like a cat rubbing against your feet. When something pained him unbearably, he would run off, until like a lost dog, he picked up the right scent, the trail of wisdom.
He found Stony Dinka in the same place where he had left her ten years before. Nothing changes in these parts: women either look like Mrs. Blaha (“the nation’s nightingale”) or else like Queen Elisabeth. And hearts are as alike as inscriptions on headstones in the graveyard. (“One lived 72 years, another 83. Isn’t it all the same, where one spends that extra decade: in hopeless love or on death row?” mused Mr. Pistoli, skulking around recently widowed women in village graveyards.)
Stony Dinka owned an inn overrun with wild grapes out near the limits of a small town, the csárdá known as The Rubadub. In the past Pistoli had crossed the threshold both at cock’s crow and to the howling of dogs in the dead of night; he had arrived here to the thrumming of clangorous cimbalom music, ready to take Stony Dinka to a wedding — or else as cautiously as a construction worker climbing high up on a tower. At The Rubadub, Pistoli could always count on a hearty reception. “His heroics live on in memory,” as Pushkin sings of Zaretzky. He had especially distinguished himself in bowling — he was the best in the entire county — winning vast quantities of kegs from folks on outings from Nyíregyháza, tradesmen sporting Kossuth-style hats and bureaucrats of the county water regulation bureau, who affected checked pants. But he won Stony Dinka’s favors only after “beating out” Pista Puczér, editor of the weekly Awakening. Editor Puczér, a man of short stature with a big bushy beard, the peppery, fiery village prank master, had from times long past staked some claim to Stony Dinka’s heart. His rowdy behavior, his constant brandishing of the fokos (ax-headed staff), and his peacocklike screech had more than once turned what started out as a most promising May picnic into general mayhem. To Dinka’s reproaches all he said was: