“And what about the glee club?” Kakuk argued.
“Ah, the hell with’em,” replied Fanny Late. “So who can recite the Lord’s Prayer here without a mistake?”
Again it was Kakuk who stepped forth, determined to save some of the dignity of the occasion, as if he had been specifically instructed to do so by Mr. Pistoli.
He crossed himself and began to recite the Lord’s Prayer in a loud voice.
But in vain did Kakuk pilfer Pistoli’s pants and jacket. The assembled company was well aware that the man leading the prayer was nothing but a common tramp. In ones and twos, women and men began to slip away. Maszkerádi and the two tavern keepers were the last to remain. At last Fanny Late venomously hissed at the young lady:
“And what about you, pretty mask?! Why don’t you, too, beat it?”
Maszkerádi shuddered. She gave the flushed woman a withering glance, then hurried out of the courtyard.
Quitt drove up the hearse, and now the coffin had to be hoisted. They tried levering the black wooden box with poles, but it was as heavy as lead. The two hefty females and the two older men had a sweaty time of hoisting Mr. Pistoli up for his last carriage ride. Stony Dinka quite forgot herself and let out a couple of oaths, sotto voce.
“Oh, I always knew my darling carried his weight well. But I had no idea he was this heavy. He must have drunk a lot of water.”
It was now around three in the afternoon.
The cloudless sky was as clear as a conscience with nothing to hide. The May sun stood high up above the earth, indifferent to the fact that a funeral was about to take place down here. But just as Quitt’s cart pulled out of Pistoli’s gate, a tiny little cloud appeared on the western edge of the sky. In shape it resembled a black dog cavorting on the horizon.
The cemetery was quite far from the manor. People who live in these parts prefer not to keep the dead in everyday sight. They are enough trouble showing up in your dreams, when you are defenseless. They enter the atrium, sit around at length in front of the cold fireplace, drink up the leftover wine on the dinner table, rest their head on their arm and their expression contains such pain that the dreamer wakes next day to ponder: what sort of mortal sin could weigh upon the dearly beloved departed one? And all the useless lottery numbers they give! Plus they spout tales about one’s jealously guarded women! They divulge one’s most painful secrets…Yes, better keep the dead far apart from the living. No one can thrive on the friendship of the dead.
So the cemetery was quite far, tucked away in a valley from where no evil waters from the malicious dead could descend upon the village, no seepage from old crones to affect the new wine. Let their tears flow into each other’s graves. Most of the people lying here were related, anyway. One lived ninety years, another only thirty; no matter, they were all the same flesh and blood. Former lovers must surely get together here, regardless of what obstacles life had raised between them. Grandmothers can sneak off at night to join their quondam beaux, no one would notice that their beds are empty. Even if the lawful husband does occupy the neighboring grave (for old people like that sort of thing), the aged husband would never think of asking his better half what she did in the adjacent pit all night long until cock’s crow. Yes, it is a fine world, underground.
Everyone can live it up with their mate. — Why, many was the time Mr. Pistoli had passed the cemetery in the course of his journeys. The trees of quietude: cypresses, willows, locusts full of crows’ nests, bushes humming with bees all knew him well, since the old cemetery was a most suitable place for conducting amorous trysts. The neglected grave mounds had been long ago abandoned by the old women who visit graveyards for no reason at all. Atop Darabos (lived 80 years) or over the widow Fitkonidesz (lived 76 years, and in the meantime helped bring Mr. Pistoli into the world, being a midwife) it felt oh so good to stretch out in the company of some sweet young thing, on those grave mounds where the knobby toes and skinny arms had long ago turned into larkspur. No wonder Mr. P. loved to sing the song that went: “In the graveyard, that’s where I first saw your face…” On his way back from a wake (having said goodbye to the dead man), from Phtrügy (where he’d gone to taste the fresh horseradish), from a wedding (where he kept hugging the bride), or hearing Gyula Benczi play old Hungarian songs — Pistoli never failed to tip his hat and raise the wineskin in front of the cemetery’s old inhabitants. “Here’s to you, old buddy!” he shouted at the ancient headstones and crosses. At other times, usually in his cups, wrapped in his cloak he crossed the entire cemetery at midnight, curious to see if the dead would snag his coat, as they did the proverbial shoemaker’s. Yes, Pistoli was quite well known here. Maybe one or two old drinking companions and a few bored women were already lying in wait for him.
And so they trudged onward, carting Mr. Pistoli to the cemetery, to a remote corner where the solitary poplar stood, designated by the deceased as his final resting place. That’s where he wanted to repose, where the wind blows the hardest, out at the far edge, all alone, as if he required something out of the ordinary even six feet under. Only crows and peregrine falcons ever perched on the swaying branches of that lonesome poplar. Though in the nighttime witches riding brooms might have landed there.
By the time the funeral procession reached the highway, that black dog had leaped up from the horizon into the middle of the sky. And it shed its coat. First it turned into a bear, then into a lion, and finally into a monster with hindquarters somewhere south of Debrecen, and its head way up near Miskolc in the north. Thunder rolled all along the vast upstairs, a rumbling giant was approaching; the wind, like some bandit, blew a sharp whistle in the fields, and hunched-over assassins rushed behind bushes and fences. The atmosphere was ominous and oppressive; the last few stragglers were hurtled like dust balls back toward the village.
The carter Quitt had not taken his pipe out of his mouth all this time. His two little horses ambled along, heads hung low.
By the time they reached the grave in the cemetery’s corner, the grave diggers were gone. They had run off seeking shelter from the storm. But there rose the eternal mound by the open grave, the last stop for all of us under the sun. Last stop for rich and poor, where the loud wails ring out one last time, and the priest prays while the grave diggers solemnly hold the ropes. The sandy loam was yellow here and the pit profound. Kakuk, on peering into it, gave a terrified yelp. They say he saw Mr. Pistoli standing down there, shrouded in white head to toe, exactly as he had been when laid into his coffin. Still, there he stood, his face chalk white, his hair in his eyes, his hand groping for help.
After that, no one dared approach the grave pit. The sky crashed like kingdom come. The clouds howled. Kind heaven now screamed raving mad. The last escort of the dead man at last turned taiclass="underline" abandoning the coffin by the open grave, they flew headlong toward the shelter of distant trees. Only the thief Kakuk could still hear behind his back Mr. Pistoli’s thunderous, clattering voice…Even Quitt drove off in a hurry, as if he had suddenly lost his mind.
There was a tremendous crash.
The two women looked back from the distance. The poplar in the cemetery’s corner was one flaming torch. The fire flew and blew sparks, as if souls from hell were hopping around in the flames. It was blue and yellow and ghostly, that flame.
Run, run, from this place of horror…
Soon after the storm broke and raged until next morning.
The next day not a trace remained of poplar, coffin, grave. Just black cinders, mixed in with the wasteland clods. Pistoli was nowhere to be seen. Only the spider spun its web in the cemetery’s corner, accompanied by an occasional song blowing in the wind.