“Is it your heel?” asked Stony Dinka.
“Right there.”
“Yes, that’s where all those witches went and hid. So tell me, you old rascal,” murmured Stony Dinka, taking in her lap Pistoli’s ailing foot, and starting to rub it with a gentle hand, “how many women’s heavenly salvation have you got weighing on your conscience?”
Formerly Pistoli would have laughed at this: he would have reeled off a list of the women who went mad on his account, and spent the rest of their lives dancing or rending their hair. But now he felt as melancholy as if the end were near. His enormous intake of alcohol during the three days’ bender, combined with the events recently transpired, suddenly unhinged him. He burst into such choking sobs that he could hardly catch his breath. He sobbed spasmodically, almost joyfully, copious tears easing his heart’s burden, like a woman beating her forehead against the stones. Of course he could not find his handkerchief, so that, childlike, he had to reach for Stony Dinka’s skirt, to wipe his tear-soaked face. There followed a few more hiccups and shooting stabs of pain, much as the rattle of a cart recedes on the highway as it carries the bride far away from her true love. At last he recovered his ability to speak:
“Stony Dinka, you’re the only love I ever had in this whole wide world. Oh, if only my mother were still alive, how happy you would have made her! You’ve been my mother’s kind of woman all your life. Your oven-baked biscuits, the leeches you applied to my side when I had pneumonia, your barbecues and your Gypsy superstitions, your smoked sausages and your downy bed, your early springtime vegetables, your life-restoring chicken soups, the unforgettable aroma of your wieners and Eastertime baked hams, your faith-healing incantations and the way you turned me over in my sleep, your nocturnal bathings, your bread-kneading, your economies, your coat-ironing, your very nature always benevolent and faithful; your desire that I should always be free of care by your side, even when business went poorly for you; the pride you took in always seeing me off rejuvenated, cleaned up, ironed out, ‘fresh from the wash’ when I took my leave, even when I’d come to you straight from the gutter besmirched with blood and mud…
“Everything around your white feet in this house, your friendly watchdog, the stork nesting on your chimney, the dried walnuts in the attic and your aged nanny, all, all proclaim that you are the one, the woman I ought to have married. Not to mention my heart, which was ever yours. There were times when I looked at your concerned, serious face and felt as moved as I’d been in front of the bishop the day I was confirmed…I could always feel secure by your side — let the dogs bark outdoors, but in here, under these rafters no danger could penetrate, for your determination, your extraordinary feminine toughness would make sure that no harm came to me at your place. In my dream you were the tall chestnut mare whose neck I clasped to escape the flood. I saw your wonderful eyes looking at me through that mare’s glance.”
“Oh, you old scoundrel…” giggled Stony Dinka, and took off all of Mr. Pistoli’s clothes. Next, she slapped and pounded the bedding into place. The quilts went flying like geese in the meadow. Pre-warmed bricks and platters lined up in a row. Vinegar water awaited its uses. Pistoli sank into the bed so deep that not even the tip of his mustache could be seen.
“Good night, sweet song of youth!” whispered Stony Dinka, and timidly caressed Mr. Pistoli’s gleaming, pale forehead.
Stony Dinka was indeed a peculiar woman: she loved Mr. Pistoli best when he, like a tusked beast, like some prehistoric creature, rooted about and wallowed in the field of dreams, snoring in three or four different tones. Had she lived in that distant era when primitive humans fought dragons in caves, Stony Dinka would surely have been the lover of the dragon that lurked about the settlement. She loved to stare at circus strongmen, lanky vagabonds, stalwart shepherds and bandit-faced tramps. But she did this unobtrusively, for she was a woman…Yes, she would have loved to be married to a giant, whereas fate had assigned as her lawful husband a man who was small of stature, with an apelike gait. Around the tavern the poplars, all stairways to heaven, roared in the wind, long-legged herons strutted in the wetlands, while Dinka took delight in Pistoli’s enormous muscles. In the sleeping man’s presence she no longer felt modesty’s girdle constraining her waist.
Pistoli woke with a start, as one returning from kingdom come.
“What did you do with the amulet I hung around your neck? The one that was consecrated twice at the Pócs chapel, and I even had an old Jew bless it for me?”
“I gave it away…” replied an embarrassed Pistoli. “That is, it was stolen, charmed, wheedled away from its rightful place over my heart. But I’m going to get it back, because ever since then I’ve had the worst luck.”
“Oh, those worthless hussies,” lamented Stony Dinka, with the profound scorn of one who alone understood the female sex. “How many decent men’s lives have they wrecked and made miserable? Why can’t every cracked-heeled hussy be driven out of Hungary, so that good men can have some peace again in this country.”
When Pistoli said his farewells, he realized Stony Dinka’s forehead was just as clear as Eveline’s. The two women did resemble each other, after all they were natives of the same region, had bathed in the flower-strewn waters of the Tisza River, shared the same long-dead ancestors, and seeds germinating in the same soil had nurtured both of them. Their eyes had followed the turning of the same windmills on the horizon, their ears had listened to the cry of the same wild birds, as girls they had danced the same dances at harvest time and at feather-plucking bees. They had the same slightly Slavic way of pronouncing certain vowels, and they had grown up hearing the same folk songs. The same April showers had washed away the springtime freckles from their faces, and lumps of earth in this corner of The Birches were equally well acquainted with the bare heels of both Stony Dinka and her ladyship Eveline Nyirjes. Ah, how alike women appear when you consider their heels! In the summer, when even young ladies went about barefoot in The Birches, the soil did not make any distinction between the soles of peasant lass and young miss. — Why shouldn’t Eveline and Stony Dinka resemble each other, when the geranium happened to be the favorite flower of both! Mr. Pistoli felt a tremendous sense of relief.
“Not even Eveline’s foot could be whiter,” he thought, as he took his place in Quitt’s cart.
He called Stony Dinka over to the cart’s side, and, as if confiding a secret, whispered the following in her ear:
“I’m going now, and it’s unlikely we’ll ever meet again, my heart. I won’t hold you to be faithful to me when I’m in the other world. Nor will I return to haunt you, for I’ve played the white-shrouded ghost enough times already in my life, whenever I had to frighten off superstitious women or cowardly husbands. I want you to go about your business as calmly as ever. Don’t forget to take your mares to the Nyíregyháza stud; and I know you won’t neglect to dilute last year’s wine…Alas, I have too little time left to help you with that. By the way, you should dismiss your serving girl Fruzsinka, for I caught her wearing one of your shirts. Don’t ever let your little daughter, who’s being brought up by your Szatmár aunts, visit this region. It would be best if she found a job at the post office when she grows up. Preferably far away, somewhere in Transylvania, where no one knows her mother. And take care of yourself. Your feet still have their snowy white looks, and I can’t detect any signs of those unappetizing varicose veins on your legs.