Such were Mr. Pistoli’s thoughts, musing alone at home. By now, Ossuary was gone from the garden cottage, having left behind his discarded cigarette butts and his women, who went off on pilgrimages. In the afternoons Pistoli withdrew into a brown study, where he caught alternating whiffs of Miss Maszkerádi and of the precious Eveline.
“Sic transit…” he mumbled.
One day a ragamuffin showed up, bringing a message.
“My father couldn’t come,” the boy reported, pulling a letter from his straw hat.
“And who may your father be?”
“Old Kakuk. We sacked our old lady. She yelled at us once too often. So we sent her packing, as my Da’ would put it. The old man brought home a new woman. Now she’s moved in with us. That’s why my Da’ couldn’t come.”
“May you grow up to be as wise as your father,” Pistoli said to Kakuk, Junior, and squeezed a penny into the boy’s palm.
The letter was written on fine watermarked paper not commonly used in this region. Women in these parts write their correspondence on their children’s notebook pages, or else they use the backs of old promissory notes. The exclusive stationery carried the following note penned in lilac ink:
“Someone implores you to hold your nasty mouth. Someone is coming to visit you, to make up. M.”
Pistoli peered at the note with an acerbic smile. “Young miss, you should have come yesterday or the day before,” he muttered.
Face propped on his elbows, Pistoli contemplated the letter. He was not as well-versed in graphology as most provincial young ladies, but he did have some experience with mysterious anonymous letters, having written dozens in his time: to women who had not received his advances too kindly, and to men who had rudely turned their backs on him. After most country club balls, when assault or dueling was out of the question, Pistoli’s hands reeked of sealing wax from all the anonymous letters he had penned; addressing women, he would fling in their faces even their mothers’ dirty underwear. (Poor Pistoli was, after all, just like any other man. He liked people to greet him in advance and with respect.)
This is how Pistoli interpreted the letter:
“Mademoiselle M. happens to be in the interesting condition that makes women want to eat chalk, possibly even crave the white stucco off the wall. In other words, a condition that brings great joy to a childless household. But does Miss M. necessarily rejoice over her condition? In the present case I am to be the bit of chalk the little miss craves. But I am too old to serve as chalk for anyone.”
Such were Mr. Pistoli’s thoughts in his solitude and, since he was as vain as an aging actress, he resolved to avoid the meeting. There are in any human life a number of such inexplicable things, mysterious phenomena that have no apparent meaning, and yet deep down a solution certainly exists. Perhaps the noble Pistoli was merely acting out the offended, humiliated male rearing up to take his revenge on Miss M. for the beating she had given him. Whereas, had he been more of an ordinary soul, he would have elected the jolly path of reconciliation. But he was still smarting from that whiplash…And Pistoli was accustomed to women kissing his hands whenever he was kind, condescending, emotional and passionate toward them. Village women are not spoiled by an overabundance of amorous proposals. As a rule they will be astonished to hear any man’s declaration of love. The most worn-out compliment is a novelty for their ears. They cast their eyes down when they hear their hands or feet praised. And when they are alone again, they will stare at length into the mirror at the tresses some babbling man had praised with such strange extravagance. In this part of the country women are still naive, gullible, and well-meaning. The village primadonna never drives her beaux to suicide. Take Risoulette: she had gone out of her way to be nice to many a man who was barely better looking than the devil himself! (They say even the most pockmarked, puny man will find a lover.) Therefore Pistoli’s huffiness in holding out against the society miss’s summons is quite understandable. In fact, he remembered he still had to say good-bye to his deranged wives.
He had already donned his cape, and pulled the broad-brimmed hat over his eyes, the hat that had made him unrecognizable at Nagykálló (where he had perpetrated so many pranks) — when something suddenly occurred to him. — What if the young lady who wanted to visit him in fact had not ingested chalk? What if this visit was merely a cunning stunt on Miss M.’s part, to oblige Mr. Pistoli never to betray her secret to Eveline, to hold his peace forever about matters glimpsed around the garden cottage during Kálmán Ossuary’s sojourn there? Girlfriends will grow sentimental at times, and will not shrink from the greatest sacrifice just to maintain their intimate bonds. Perhaps Miss M. had merely wanted to prevent his betraying those potentially painful and damaging escapades of hers, amorous escapades which would certainly stab Eveline to the core of her heart if she heard about them? “So, you would shove me underground, while you go on fornicating?” Pistoli muttered, gritting his teeth. “I’m going to queer this deal for you.”
He worked himself into a coarse, cruel, malevolent mood, as he sat down with a sheet of Diósgyo´´r foolscap to write down all about Miss Maszkerádi and Ossuary: everything he knew, and things he did not know…For the moment he did not consider that his treachery would also be a fatal blow for his beloved Eveline, whose consecrated love for Ossuary he had witnessed with his own eyes. He persisted in scraping away with his goose quill, as if he were a liverish judge writing out a death sentence. When he was finished with his business, he sealed the letter and placed it in a double envelope. On the inner one he wrote: “To be opened after my death.” The outer one he addressed to Her Ladyship, Miss Eveline Nyírjes. Pocketing the letter, he cheerfully set out for Kálló, to visit the madwomen.
The letter hiding in Mr. Pistoli’s cape went as follows:
Pistoli Residence, May 18—
My Queen!
When for the final time I confess to you all those tender respects, my heart’s wild roses, floating moods, my bygone life’s aerial smoke rings, song-filled reveries, the butterflies hovering around my head; bellowing woes, deathwatch beetle — like, gnawing torments and ethereal fluttery humors that rose and fell during my days like two lovers on a swing — I wish to report to you something that may very well be a matter of indifference to you: that I take your memory with me to the other world as a hunter takes the cherished edelweiss in his hatband. You were the Fairy Queen in the apple tree of my life, singing invisibly, seated in a blossom’s calyx. You were my sunrise — the virginal veil over my world; and you were the sunset as well, an old man’s singsong humming prompted by memories of bygone happy loves. For your love I would have turned comedian or gendarme, a Hail-Mary friar or night watchman in your village, although you, alas, never desired that I assume any role in your life.