“So that I’d have a heart attack?” Pistoli asked, bantering.
“Yes,” was her solemn reply.
Pistoli leaned forward, fascinated, as if he were trying to peer into the water under the bridge.
“Perhaps you’ve heard that my ticker’s as weak as a junky old alarm clock? It skips, and beats unevenly, has choking fits, pants, and at times I must take enormous breaths just to keep going…Were you aware of that?”
“I know all about you, for I have loved you from the word go,” came her reply, as solemn as a deposition before a judge.
“Well, you did a real good job of hiding your love…” answered Pistoli sarcastically, thrilled and fluttery, making sure to hide his shaking hands under the table.
Miss Maszkerádi crossed her bare arms over her chest, like some martyr upon the stake.
“Please recall that night at Hideaway when you with your scary stories had so upset me: what did I do then? Didn’t I invite you into the silent, sleeping garden?”
“In order to strangle me.”
“But I would have kissed you first.”
Pistoli, red in the face, slammed his fist on the table:
“God, I’ve had enough of crazy women! Has everyone gone mad around here?”
Maszkerádi made a weary, melancholy gesture:
“At times I’m convinced I am not in my right mind.”
“Get out of here!” bawled Pistoli.
The young woman kept her determined eyes on his:
“Not tonight. Tonight, I’m staying. You can beat me up again, if you want to. After all, I deserve it for coming here. But it’s because of you. Why did you cross my path? Why couldn’t you leave me alone? Why did you persecute me? Why did you show up in all my dreams? Why did you entice me? Well, here I am. You can throw my corpse out into the highway.”
“Why, you rabid wildcat!” howled Pistoli. “I can sense that you want to go for my throat. But I won’t let you. Go on, you devil’s brood. I’m going to rouse the servants, wake the whole village, scourge you and send you packing without a stitch on! Get out before I do something we’d both regret!”
Maszkerádi remained calm.
“You have no servants, and therefore you’ll do nothing unworthy of a gentleman.”
“Ah, you all come up with that line,” Pistoli countered, plaintive. “You expect a man to be chivalrous, generous, honorable and self-sacrificing, while you yourselves are as vile as rats. But I have paid the dues for wearing the pants. I’ve done my share of playing the noble man. Actually, what do you want from me?”
Maszkerádi cast down her eyes and the smile that flashed across her face was like Saul’s vision of heaven. It was a smile full of secrets, lifelong playful thrills, sultry female dreams, desires stifled into the pillow.
“I would like you to dance the fox dance for me, for I’ve heard you are its greatest master in these parts.”
Pistoli shook his head in surprise:
“The fox dance?”
He started to laugh, and Maszkerádi’s laughter joined his with the tinkle of golden thalers:
“Yes, the fox dance…”
All of a sudden a madcap carnival atmosphere pervaded the gloomy manor house. As if a cheerful group of guests had pulled up unexpectedly on a sleigh in front of the house and were already on their way in.
The things that now befell Mr. Pistoli happen only in dreams. Maszkerádi draped herself over him like a swan and kissed him on the mouth so forcefully that the good squire began to choke.
“I love you,” the lady said, and the shadow of a black dog ran across the room. The dog instantly disappeared in a corner and was never seen again. Weeks later, Miss Maszkerádi realized that the black canine must have been Mr. Pistoli’s soul, for that noble gentleman’s face was never again seen in human company after that night.
The blessed May rain kept falling in the vast night, on grasses, trees, meadows, heaven’s waters descending to fertilize all things down here on earth. Each drop of rain swaddled a newborn that would grow up to man’s estate by summer’s end. One would become an ear of wheat, another a bunch of grapes, the third only a clunky-headed onion. A downpour, an infinite host of tiny newborns in the mysterious night. The patter of millions of little feet woke the tiller of the soil, who crossed himself gratefully lying on his cot. The fields, the shaggy trees, the sleeping and deeply respiring shrubs lay sprawled under the rain’s kisses, like dreaming women. To make sure the labor of fertilization goes on underground as well, was now the task of Mr. Pistoli and his companions, the ones who died this night in Hungary. They would all stoke the furnace down below, these old men turned to coal and fuel, who sacrificed their shanks, hipbones, and enlarged livers, so that up here all sorts of beautiful new flowers may bloom, trees may unfurl their foliage, and lovers tumble in the fuzzy hair of meadows. Those pockmarked old faces give rise to tea roses that blossom on the earth’s surface. Those sad old hands, weary limbs, aching backbones, knees long past their spring are the fuel that nurtures anemones in the graveyard.
The rain falls, but Pistoli’s gouty foot no longer bothers him, his eyes no longer cast resentful looks at the mud, at wenches’ feet treading in it; he no longer hears ghosts in the attic as the rain rattles on the roof. Motionless, at peace and forgiven, he lies sprawled on the floorboards of his house. Someone has pinned a slip of paper onto his chest:
HERE LIES
PISTOLI FALSTAFF
unhappy in life, dead at pleasure’s peak
STRANGER, LEAVE HIM A LEAF
Kakuk and his wife kept the wake by the dead man’s side on the following night, and the next day the talk had it that around midnight Mr. Pistoli began to hum one of his songs, on his way out: first in the coffin, then outside the window, and later on the highway. They could even hear his footsteps. That night there was a wedding somewhere in the neighborhood and the groaning contrabass could be heard from afar. Could it be that Pistoli had rushed off to the feast?
This is how the noble squire departed from The Birches.
10. Pistoli’s Funeral
Anyone who thinks that Miss Maszkerádi failed to attend Mr. Pistoli’s funeral simply does not know this remarkable young lady. Yessir, off she went, having persuaded Eveline that they must not omit to pay their final respects.
“With any luck, we’ll get to see every scoundrel and loose hussy in this county assembled around their gang leader’s coffin. The local Falstaff, Pistoli, is dead. What hobo, tramp or callusheeled servant girl could stay away?”
Thus spoke Maszkerádi, putting over her face a dark veil that had formerly sheltered her tender complexion on an ocean cruise. Behind that veil she was free to shed a tear or smile and turn serious. Why should these villagers get to see the private thoughts of such a fine lady at the funeral of the black sheep?
The coffin was walnut wood, and only one man was sitting next to it. It was Kakuk, who had for the occasion replenished his impoverished wardrobe by consulting Pistoli’s closet. The oversize jacket and trousers hung rather loosely on the self- appointed heir. He had to stuff paper into the hat to make it fit. The bootlegs stuck out. His hands had to stay in the pockets of the pants (cut tight along traditional Hungarian lines).
Out in the courtyard the villagers stood about in solemn silence — as if Mr. Pistoli’s death had not yet been quite verified. Who knows, maybe this whole thing was an elaborate prank. Any moment he might screech and thump inside his coffin.