Eveline grasped her friend’s bony hand:
“Too often you’ve let me go like a child sent off to a distant land. Will you please not do that again? Who knows if I’d ever come back…”
Andor Álmos-Dreamer caressed the girl’s hair.
“You are a dear creature, and I know you haven’t a mean bone in your body. I’ve always felt easy about you even when I didn’t see you for a long time. Your heart is noble because you never had to deal with demeaning, low things. Your soul is pristine because you were never troubled by woeful need, dream-depriving cares, or sinful thoughts whispered by poverty in your ear. You are gracious and peaceable, like a young woman who at eveningtime kneels in front of the fireplace and sinks into reverie lulled by the swirl of snowflakes. But those dream chevaliers, lovers mounted on steeds, soaring over rooftops on swallows’ wings, they all vanish without a trace when the lamps are lit. The morning and daylight are sober, serene and delightful like fresh water. The winter sky hereabouts is mostly gray, just like our lives. But it also happens to be as warm as rabbit fur. I’m not worried about you, my sweet angel. You’ll always come back here because this is where you find everything worth living for. Your home, your grave, your sky and the land that nurtures you. Eveline, you are a village miss at heart, home-grown rosemary, even if you like to think of yourself as a cosmopolitan lady. Your world is really made of falling snow, autumn leaves in the wind blowing free and springtime greens on the river bank. In the depressing city you are only a hotel guest, rather bored by the hustle and bustle of humanity, and spend your time yawning in the monotony of your room although even its musty air seemed exciting on first arrival. What would you want from those total strangers?”
“I don’t really like them and yet they fascinate me like travel descriptions of distant continents. For me to be alive means coming across ever new acquaintances, new voices, new names, new faces. Even each handshake can be so different. And people’s lies make the most beautiful fairy tales. Everybody tells such lies.” Meanwhile the bachelor made himself at home in her dining room. He opened the cupboard, found the bottle of plum brandy, cut himself a slice of ham, sniffed the aroma of the bread loaf, and proceeded to have himself a leisurely and self-indulgent snack.
“Men aren’t worth a pipeful of tobacco, mark my words. You are twenty-two now. You love travel and travelers, fair-grounds and market women, stylish overcoats and flashy lights. You’ll go back a few more times for a taste of that sorry masked ball. You’ll need life’s disappointments and storms to find the path to happiness. Yes, go on and step out, have a good time and laugh a lot, dazzle and dance on. Sooner or later you’ll have your fill of the masquerade. I’ll be here waiting for you, I won’t go anywhere. But bear in mind that if you decided not to come back one year…I’d be very sad ever after.” So spoke Andor Álmos-Dreamer.
He said his good-byes and set out. The horseman’s snow-laden figure soon disappeared into the white night.
Three days later on his island he received a letter from Eveline, requesting Mr. Álmos-Dreamer’s presence at once, for she had important things to tell him. And so the recluse again abandoned his tame otters to find Eveline sitting by her stove, as pale as one afflicted with an ailment of the heart.
“I seem to have become quite a coward. At night I keep hearing footsteps around the house. I wake up and stare at the door as if somebody were here, who won’t let me sleep. I fear the bell-jar silence of the winter night, the noiseless dying of the embers, the shadows of antique furniture, this treacherous provincial house with its lazy hounds and indolent servants. I could be murdered in my sleep, for all they care.”
Andor Álmos-Dreamer growled in response.
“You’ll get used to the quiet. Soon you won’t mind the moaning of the wind. Part of you is still in the big city.”
“Mademoiselle Montmorency, my paid companion, sleeps as soundly as an aged nun, while my aunt enjoys happy dreams about the gallants of her youth. My maids scribble love letters to Budapest. The bailiff gets drunk every night. I am all alone here, and I am afraid. Someone is lurking around my house. Maybe a vagabond or a highwayman, or else a…”
Mr. Álmos-Dreamer smiled. “A lover…Just leave it to me, I’ll take care of it. I’ll come back at night and patrol the neighborhood on horseback.”
That night the moon shone as radiant as a carnival clown. The snow-covered landscape sparkled with built-in stars. The groves stood immobile in their shrouds. It was a blessed winter night, the crowing of the rooster still a long way off. Time to die a hundred deaths until then. A mounted figure resembling a highwayman passed in front of the house and surveyed the moonlit landscape. His horse snorted smoky clouds into the bitter cold air. There came the windowpane-shattering report of a firearm.
Eveline, trembling from head to foot, opened her shutters and called out.
“Is that you, Mr. Álmos-Dreamer?”
“Yes, it’s me,” his hoarse voice replied. “You can sleep without fear, my angel. The ghost is laid to rest.”
“Give me your hand, my good sir.”
Andor reached in through the cast-iron bars of the window.
Eveline slowly pulled off the fur glove and bestowed a lingering fervent kiss on his hand.
“I thank you,” she whispered.
The warmth emanating from her nightgown, the gentle nestling caress of her kiss, the fervid grasp of her hand, the fragrance of the night befuddled the middle-aged knight errant. Leaning from his saddle, he regarded the young woman with shining eyes.
“My angel,” he mumbled, blushing, and caressed the girl’s exposed neck.
Uttering a quick oath, he snatched back his hand and spurred his long-maned little horse. Enormous wolfhounds mutely sped through the swirling snow in his wake like the hounds of night.
Eveline’s insomnia proved to be of long duration.
If you are sleepless in the big city you may gain some consolation from street noises that tell you there are others who find no relief in the night. But in the village the midnight hours can drive you to distraction, their slow passage as sluggish as the creaking of the deathwatch beetle. You may well imagine yourself a portrait of an antique ancestor hanging on the wall, whose wide-open eyes must contemplate one generation after another. The years whiz by with the wind and the rain, the rumbling storms, the migrating birds, the unctuous words of the priest and the mourners’ bent heads by the open grave, stallions collapsing in a heap and fine old watchdogs laid low to rest, serving maids who were once young and fair, and tumbledown fences, desolate wishing wells and overgrown gardens… One after another, the years whoosh by. Only the insomniac looks on with open eyes, like a cadaver who forgot to die. A fine dust descends from the moldering ceiling to cover everything: bright faces and haymaking hips, merry neighbors, springtime smiles, flashing white teeth. Transience squats by the foot of the bed like a moribund, faithful old servitor. And the hand reaches less often for the thirst-quenching goblet.
At last the roosters began to crow.
And night shatters like a worn-out curse. At the call of that crazy bird, the sluggish, motionless curtain of darkness begins to stir. Other sounds filter from the far distances. Perhaps it is the wild geese passing high overhead, following their obscure paths, obeying a mysterious command to cross night’s vast gulf like wandering souls conversing in otherworldly tongues.