Bearing all this in mind it is understandable that the unhappy young man should have taken his own life. His desires were incapable of fulfilment. It was of no consolation to him that one hundred and seven women had reciprocated his love, women who, he imagined, had dandled him into a haze of nostalgia; one hundred and seven women, each of whom had brought something new, irrational but wholly unforgettable into his life: a voice, a gesture, a scent, a strange word, a sigh … After all, there were more than one hundred and seven women remaining who still haunted his dreams, over one hundred and seven apparitions ringed in red, all of whom he would love to have loved. All of whom he fell in love with at first sight, feeling he had only to extend his hand in order to touch them. When in town, he gazed at women passionately and adoringly, the blood in his temples racing — there were pale flowers on the point of fading, tea-roses ranged along the balconies who looked through him with careless self-conceit, all glowing ears, sweet-scented necks, soft hands and oriental decadence, tight buds and meadow flowers whose fresh lips emitted soft streams of laughter as if they were springs and bubbling brooks, and actresses who had loved often and long. He moaned with the sheer joy of living, his heart in his mouth, every time spring and summer came round and he could watch them parading their new clothes. The white blouses of women about town, the traveller’s green skirt and the secretary’s cheap shoes; the hairdresser’s black apron, the feathers in the hat of the forty-year-old grand dame, the nurse’s white uniform, the black scarf of the impoverished aristocrat from Buda, the actress’s loose pantaloons, the hand clad in mother-of-pearl gloves holding opera-glasses in the private box, the leg braced on the high step of the carriage in the process of alighting, the cooing and cackling of Jewish women and the white necks prayerfully bent in Buda churches; these had occupied Sindbad’s imagination throughout his life … women without their clothes were all the same, they never interested him.
What is more, after his death, whenever the snow flew fast or the wind whistled, and he had occasion to escape from his crypt, he inclined to frequent places which retained some memory of a neatly tied garter or a sweetly sloping shoulder. And his very favourite haunts were those ruined forts, river banks and silent gardens where, enchanted and dizzied by love, he had committed suicide for one or other woman’s sake.
In many of his dreams a certain Irma appeared and called to him — she was a woman who lived in a village Sindbad the voyager had once found himself in, in Pest county. The weathercock on the roof had just stopped turning when she saw him step through her narrow gate. The guard dogs had started barking furiously at the moon, and the woman in the inner room had woken up and was listening attentively, her head propped on her elbow.
As Sindbad took a couple of turns about the courtyard it was as if the man in the moon had taken a puff of his long-stemmed pipe and blown a little white cloud of smoke into the moonlit yard. Irma sat up uneasily in her bed and called her old maid who was sleeping in the corner. ‘Nana,’ said the lady. ‘Look out in the yard and see why the dogs are so restless.’
The ancient peasant bumbled over to the window and turned her myopic eyes up to the moon. ‘That young man is here again, the one who came before. He’s standing by the fence.’
‘It’s Mr Sindbad, surely,’ cried the woman. ‘I knew he’d return … after all, why should he leave me here for ever?’
The maid grunted and sought her bed in the dark. ‘He’s dead and daren’t come in,’ she muttered. ‘We didn’t treat him very well the last time …’
‘It was vintage time, wasn’t it?’ the woman exclaimed. ‘The village was full of the scent of ripe grapes and drunken bees were humming about the terrace. A white-haired gypsy in red breeches was plucking his dulcimer and the roof was dark. The chimney at the end of our house was the only one smoking and there was a great fire in the kitchen. Perhaps the servants were roasting an ox. Mr Sindbad couldn’t sleep and was resting his head on the dulcimer, and his strange friend, Joco — we only knew his first name — kept singing one song over and over again in that harsh wine-stained voice of his, like thin ice cracking round a well one winter’s day when there’s roast pig on the spit and you’re chewing a crisp bit of cabbage between your teeth. Like sour wine trickling down an old man’s throat, that’s what Joco’s singing was like, and he had been singing ever since dinner. The weather was really rather mild, it was that lovely time of autumn when the nights are still warm and I was reading poems by Kisfaludy* under the branches of the huge chestnut tree: I was in love with Sindbad. Do you remember, Nana?’
‘He was a handsome young man,’ the old servant answered with a satisfied grunt.
‘The night wore on and on and still they did not move from the terrace. The servant brought more wine: I was tossing and turning in my bed. I heard carnival noises and that voice like broken snow crackling under the sleighs of a wedding party, like the smell of cabbage soup and the taste of bacon hanging in smoky rings, continually singing for Mr Sindbad’s entertainment, with the occasional heavy plucking of those thick dulcimer strings. I slipped on my house-shoes and an underskirt and knocked on the window overlooking the corridor. “Stop this noise now.“ But since Joco had done me the favour of introducing me to Sindbad he was not bound to obey me. He simply raised the bottle of wine in my direction. “What are you so cross about, you little sack of poison?“ he mocked me. “After all, I’ve brought you the man you love.“ I was so angry I rushed out on to the terrace and knocked the dulcimer over — the whole house vibrated — and I boxed the musician’s ear a few times too, but Joco eluded me. I took Sindbad’s hand and dragged him off to bed.’
‘That’s how it was, all right,’ sighed the maid.
‘It was wonderful!’ the woman answered abstractedly and laid her head on her pillow. ‘The old dulcimer player has long since died and followed Joco and Sindbad, his partners in festivities, to the grave. Oh, if only I could hear that dulcimer once more and listen to that old song reeking of the beer-hall out on the terrace! If only Sindbad could rest that lovely melancholy head of his in my lap again! If only I could be young once more! And this time I wouldn’t box the ears of any musician who was entertaining my darling.’
Far off in the village, the clock in the tower struck twelve, the old count emerged from the church walls, set out for his nightly constitutional and everything began to move: portraits of pig-tailed ancestors and broad-bosomed matrons, thin-lipped women clutching white handkerchiefs; all of them shifted and leaned forward curiously. In the distance one could faintly hear the sound of a dulcimer approaching. Already it was in the neighbouring street and the extraordinary hoarse voice the whole country knew as Joco’s sounded as though it were practically next door. People were coming and going under the window, the gates creaked, and suddenly the dulcimer was right there on the terrace among the clusters of wild grapes.
The old maid, lying on her bed, said, ‘I have brought them to you, madam. While you were sleeping I slipped out to the cemetery and brought over Mr Sindbad’s companions.’
The lady slipped on her house-shoes and crept over to the window. The moonlight had already slid behind the house. The vaulted terrace was dark.