The tiny grains of sand are inescapably tumbling in my hourglass. A futile, blind and molelike lifetime’s ashes are heaping up on the bottom of the glass. Perhaps I could have been master of ceremonies at your May-time picnics, or else your estate’s undertaker, sheriff, or overseer; but the hell with it, I had no ambition to become anything. If you honor my memory by listening to my glee club’s songs at my graveside, I shall have accomplished all that I aimed for in life.
Staff in hand, I am ready to depart, and so I must not make the otherworldy carriage wait, nor can I let my sinful eyes caress one last time your figure’s lilylike lines, your chignon, that solace of my lifetime, your heartening visage, your precious glance. My eyes have seen much that was never seen by other men. Love, separated from murder by the narrowest of margins, I have always beheld as a miracle. I was always astonished when love appeared on my life’s way. I know love backwards and forwards, as I do my local road master; I recognize love’s footfall in the night, under my window, and do not mistake it for anyone else, such as the watchman. Yes, I have seen love seated up in a tree, carefree, swinging her legs. And I have met her in the roadside ditch, in back of gardens, along the fence, where pictures cut out of old magazines decorated the planks.
I have always known more than others, for women and men told me everything, as to a father confessor. I have heard of the loves of serving girls and the passion of brother for sister, fathers’ infatuation with their daughters…Secrets, voices from the cellars of the soul, in the unsteady light of the confessional’s guttering oil lamp. I was a wise man, for I always listened and never told tales, no matter what women had confided to me at a weak moment, in an unguarded mood. I shall never forget seeing men in their solemn Sunday best, coming and going like earnest churchwardens, when only a little while earlier their wives had testified to me about their hidden passions, the strange histories of bedtime. In the same way, men had trusted me with everything about their wives over a cup of wine, disciplining the soul, absorbed in conversation that delved into the most labyrinthine tunnels of life. Oh, these gingerbread hussars! — But I heard them out, and only when I got home, alone with my glass of wine, did I smile to myself, for I have always despised tattletales, backstabbers, malicious gossips. Pistoli had always been a chivalrous gentleman; in fact, an honorable man. I shall have it inscribed on my tombstone: Here lies an honest man who had exposed only one woman, to another one whom he loved as he loved life itself in his youth, when life was worth living.
And so, the woman I am about to expose, my Queen, happens to be your bosom friend Miss Maszkerádi. You two still face the long vista of your young lives; mine has declined like a wilting rosebush. Why should you be bitterly, irremediably disappointed in your best friend, the one who knows all your secrets? This lady has abused your confidence by carrying on a clandestine affair with your fiancé, who was my guest. Leave it to old Pistoli, he knows what went on. There is no possibility of a mistake here, nor any uncertainty. They have had an affair, and will continue — those two were made for each other. You, my Queen, are an innocent lamb next to this pair of bloodthirsty wolves. They are audacious and ready for anything; you are not — probably not even ready to give credence to everything in this final letter of mine. But I am confident that I will rest in peace under the poplar that I have designated for this purpose.
Queen of my heart, one who secretly loved you the most sends his farewell, his greetings toward your window, and reminds you that there is only one decent man in the whole county, and his name is Andor Álmos-Dreamer.
Please accept all that a dying man can give: his blessing.
Your humble servant,
Pistoli
Pistoli, having looked around in vain to find a suitable personage to notarize his documents, went up to the county seat at Nagykálló, where he used to run loose as often as he could, back in his days as a madman.
He found his three deranged wives together in the asylum garden, for they always kept each other’s company and never fought; Mishlik was digging a pit and the other two watched attentively.
For a while Pistoli observed his mad wives from the cover of the garden shrubbery, nodding repeatedly.
“Ah, so the poor things are already digging my grave. Alas, they will not be able to come to my funeral.”
The poor creatures were not the least bit surprised to see Pistoli suddenly in their midst. Since they usually talked mostly about him, the appearance of the man they so often mentioned seemed natural. The two older women merely nodded in greeting, but Mishlik, who had not yet abandoned all hope, vehemently grasped Pistoli’s arm:
“Ah, good to see you here, marquis. Perhaps you could intercede on our behalf. They won’t let us bury our petticoats here. But what use could we still have for a chemise, don’t you agree?”
“I’ll make sure to talk to the director,” said Pistoli, glad to comply.
“Why, only those women need petticoats who still have a husband or lover,” continued Mishlik, producing a lively variety of facial expressions. “But our lord and husband has vanished like smoke…like smoke…Is it possible to bury smoke? When it’s gone, it’s gone…”
Alarmed, they stared at Pistoli, but he kept his calm. He caressed their faces one after the other.
“Still, you had it pretty good, for each of you received one third of your husband’s affections. Other women get only a quarter share. For a man’s love is like moonlight: it has four quarters. The woman who gets the last quarter is happiest, for that’s the longest lasting. But Pistoli’s moon was divided into only three parts. One-two-three. There was no fourth. And there never will be one. So why should you bury your petticoats?”
After this, Pistoli soon had to make his escape from the garden, for the three women crowded about very close to him. Their careworn, grieving, cemetery-flower faces surrounded the moribund man. The first carried her worries like cobwebs from a cellar. The second one displayed images of woe seen on antique funeral monuments…The third one presented a frost-bitten autumnal pallor, acrid as sumac blossoms. In the autumn of life the eyes withdraw into their orbits like a shepherd into his hut when the nights are getting cooler. Above the thinning crop of hair the moon passes on, as over a field, where once upon a time it was impossible not to linger among the lush, wild growth of young curls. The fields grow rusty red, and so does the aging woman’s hair, like outdated furs.
“Alas, no matter how smart I am, I won’t have the good fortune of dying in the lap of a fifteen-year-old girl,” thought Pistoli, ambling in the direction of a roadside tavern to review his adventures for the final time.
It was as if he were sobering up after a twenty-year drunk. He sat high up on the ramparts of a fort, with a long-distance view over life’s meandering gray and empty highways. He had danced with wild mercenaries and pink-flashing girls of easy virtue till daybreak, hitting the very rafters, trampling on top of the coffin and the cradle. But at sunrise he sobered. Now he could see how futile all that sweaty running, tramping, and hastening toward distant, beckoning towers had been. He saw only life’s monotonous span, here and there a hump of land that rose for no particular reason; and valleys where only the solitary frog croaked. Along the empty highways he saw the capsized carts that would never reach their unknown destination. The wind whistled over the horizon like an invisible player’s fingers over a silent piano. Yes, Mr. Pistoli was sober at last — having believed for a quarter century that drunkenness lay always in wine and women, and not in his freakish head. How much imbecility he had witnessed while loitering around life’s fairgrounds, nosing about barbecue stands and white-footed females! Where were they now, those ebony and russet female pelts he had once been ready to die for? Where were they now, women thirsting for revenge, the savor of kisses, the fragrance of their bodies, soft touch of their palms, flash of their eyes, carillon of their voices, their honeyed whispers, the stupefying fume of their sighs, their high-strung legs, the thrill of their groans and precious moans, virgins’ frenzied, abandoned oaths, and the wine-tasting apples of untouched maidens? The roads are empty everywhere, no matter how wide his eyes scan, shaded by his palm; all is laid to rest, like a bird fallen on dry leaves; the arrow no longer quivers in the deep wound it had struck; the inflated balloon pops under the clown’s tailcoat, and life, daubed with pancake makeup, stands gaping at the source of the sound. No, it had not been all that wonderful…Nor very surprising…Not even all that interesting. It was merely like a dog panting under a hawthorn bush. At times the flag flew from life’s pinnacle. Then the rain drenched the flag and the parade was over…Only the insane and the imbecilic imagine that life has not raced past them.