Sunflower (23 page)

“Have you nothing to say to me?” Kálmán burst out and gave her hand a mighty shake.

Eveline sighed.

“Where am I going to put you up? You can't stay at my house!” She sighed again.

“So, you would have preferred never to see me again...You like living here among the village beasts of burden, where there isn't one knowing eye to observe flirtations and couplings. I can well understand why you wouldn't want my presence here. I have a wicked, but honest nature. I don't hide the truth from you. I'm not one of your half-witted devotees you can send out to stroll on the street while inside, in the booth of the fashion boutique you are having a tête-à-tête with some other gent. I happen to be your good friend and I bite; I'm always ready to split open the skull of anyone who would spread evil rumors about you. But I'm not afraid to tell you to your face what I think of you. One thing you can be sure of: I would have walked all the way here, even if there hadn't been a train to this godforsaken place.”

Eveline closed her eyes, listening to this tongue-lashing. In her heart of hearts she was gratified by the harsh tone, as an adulteress is by the beating she receives at home. She felt she was doing penance for this afternoon, for basking in the torrential downpour of Mr. Álmos-Dreamer's ardent words.

“I have a friend in the neighborhood, you can stay with him,” she said, fluttery.

“You know I don't think much of Mr. Álmos-Dreamer, that total lunatic,” Kálmán scornfully replied. “Sooner or later I'm going to drown him in the river.”

Eveline was taken aback.

“You are crazy...I would so much like the two of you to be friends.”

Mr. Kálmán wrinkled up his eyebrows severely and stood tall.

“Listen, Missie, I have more than once warned you not to make me play a role from some French novel. I am a beast, and will kill any rival, with tooth and nail if I must, instead of carrying on intrigues. So get those novels out of your head.”

“Please forgive me,” Eveline faltered, as if she were on her knees in front of him. “I didn't mean any harm.”

Just then she thought of Mr. Pistoli who lived within rifle-shot from here, right off the highway, in his solitary badger's den.

“Get up!” she commanded and made room for Kálmán on the coach box. She firmly grasped the reins, like one setting out on serious business, and the dapple grays, after some consternation, went into a loping trot.

Evening had fallen.

The candles went out in vagabonds' hearts; the lights went on in solitary houses. The moon surveyed the scene over the marshes, like a sheriff who decides to leave the outlaws in peace tonight.

Mr. Pistoli spent his days perfecting his ennui. Being the wise and crafty male that he was, he thought it expedient for a while to hang up in the attic his amatory game bag, from the loops of which he had in his time dangled so many silly starlings and timorous water hens. He could truly confirm that, for bagging women, all you needed was plenty of time on your hands, and persistent, patient lying in wait. Yes, he had lain hidden under bushes watching the daughters of the soil, their faces bathed in sunshine, flexing their limbs in the breeze, bending their waists in their labors around the haystack; foxlike he sidled in the neighborhood of spinning rooms, husking bees, feather-plucking fests, wherever girls' songs rang out with amorous yearning; he had observed stealthily and steadfastly the young washerwomen on the riverbank; on highways he would keep company with market women heading for a fair, and chatted them up, sampling their goods; and it was seemingly without ulterior motives that he chanted the hymns and litanies alongside female pilgrims, when on Our Lady's Feast the simple folk of the land wended their way to Pócs.—When he grew tired of simple-minded serving wenches, fed up with their naive benevolence that wanted to make him hale again in all his sickness and indolent lollygagging, he would cast a bored look at the newborn babe and mumble through gritted teeth: “He'll grow up to be a bandit, no doubt.” And he would drag himself to his feet like an ancient reaper and move on to another scene and other women, without ever looking back. He squeezed his way into dance classes for girls apprenticed in the trades, who were still learning how to apply makeup, and on his way out trampled the compacts of ladies' maids; he gave midnight serenades for actresses of the traveling troupe, offered his arm to accompany widows returning home from the cemetery; attended coffee-klatsches where ladies lamented men's infidelities; he sized up feminine gullibility as precisely as a grocer weighing out saffron. Like most rustic Hungarian males, he was not choosy in amatory matters; and, if asked to give an accounting on his deathbed, would not have recalled a single female. Possibly his only recollection would be that the choral society of X had elected him its president and at his funeral their deep basses and nimble tenors would perform the song “Why So Gloomy Now?”

This primordial lifestyle went hand in hand with the ennui that would seize him from time to time, like somnolence the hounds, once springtime is past. He would hide out in his lair like a groundhog that had met with a mishap. He would chew on a tender new leaf and play the violin for his own pleasure. He took delight in prolonged yawns, hapless groans, spent hours in bed staring at his big toe, and finally rose only to set a billy goat capering, as aimlessly as a whittling man who fondles the sticks picked up on the road.

He received Kálmán Ossuary as impassively as he would a mendicant beggar.

“For Miss Eveline's sake I'm willing to sacrifice house and home,” he said, and at the lady's request he designated the garden cottage as Kálmán's abode.

This garden cottage, built on sturdy posts, stood near the riverbank. This was where Mr. Pistoli had kept his mad wives in his married days. But the cottage had also sheltered girls who ran away from home for Mr. Pistoli's sake, thereby causing that fine gent much aggravation in smoking them out once he had tired of their lamentations. The place had witnessed the crack of the dog whip as well as the melting, lilting tunes of Gypsies, depending on circumstances. These days it was mostly middle-aged women who had cause to recall the garden cottage, to curse or bless Mr. Pistoli, to the stout squire's total indifference. He had however a black mourning band sewn on his stiff black hat, even though he had had no bereavement in some thirty years.

“Mr. Pistoli, now that you're a widower, you won't be needing the cottage,” opined Eveline, who was well versed in local lore.

“I understand perfectly,” replied Mr. Pistoli, sage acquiescence personified. “You'd like to visit the young gentleman from time to time, without disturbing me. But I was never one to tattletale about women who confide in me. And just in case the wind should blow my way some wayward Gypsy gal, why, let'er camp out in the corn loft. In my youth I had no qualms about climbing into smoky hovels after' em...But you shouldn't take seriously everything you hear from old Pistoli.”

“Please take care of Kálmán,” Eveline implored the master of the house, before taking her leave. “Dear neighbor, you are a man of considerable experience. You know the ways of the world, how people are, the dangers...”

“Leave it to me. In any case I'll get rid of Blonde Maria, who visits me occasionally, still unwilling to accept that I've given up women for a while.”

“Thank you,” said Eveline, and, accompanied by Mr. Pistoli's solemn, pitying, empathetic nods, she drove off on the dirt road into the darkness, like the closing accord of a tragic concert.

“What's the beard for?” asked Mr. Pistoli on his first evening with Kálmán, eyeing the latter's semilunar side-whiskers.

(In a paunchy, smoky wine jug, from which highwaymen on death row might have sipped their last mournful drink, a vinegary local wine had been set on the table. Pistoli's frequent deep draughts from this vessel had the effect of making his mood more and more dour. He signalled with his eye, inviting Kálmán to follow his example.)

A dismissing flick of the wrist was Ossuary's answer to his host, who paced the room with hands linked behind his back.

“You should ask my barber. Probably this is the current fashion in the capital.”

“Me, I've never had a beard,” continued Pistoli in an insinuating tone. “Though I guess I could have had one. Yes, in my youth my beard grew reddish, like the Duke of Orléans's. Later it turned black and thicker. It would have grown together with my mustache, eyebrows, hair, just like Robert Le Diable's. But I never tolerated even the slightest little tuft under my lower lip, even though every gentleman worth his salt in this county used to have one.”

“It's not the beard that matters,” Kálmán replied appeasingly. “Not every woman likes a bearded man, anyway.”

But Pistoli resisted.

“In the Orient only slaves shave, free men all sport beards. Not your kind of half-beard, the significance of which I can barely comprehend, but full beards that cover the entire jaw and lend definite character to the face. I recommend you grow a full beard at the cottage.”

Kálmán shrugged. He did not feel like arguing with this village squire. But Pistoli, so long a loner, now grew voluble, hearing the sound of his own long-silent voice.

“In the old days all over Hungary the fashionable thing for a man on attaining a certain age was to let the beard grow. An ancient tradition, this. Lad took a bride, and once married, he'd sprout a luxuriant beard. Why, a beardless county judge or deputy would have been unthinkable in those days. Women were expected to appreciate a man's beard. It's all a matter of custom.—Only itinerant actors and waiters shaved their faces back then. Nowadays most modern males forego facial hair. They imagine themselves more interesting and cleaner that way, and somehow even more intelligent than their fellow men sporting mustaches. It seems to be some kind of badge of freemasonry among contemporary males. But I despise modern men.”

“Take it easy, your honor.”

“Why does modern man look down on tradition? What gives him the right to think himself different, brighter, more enlightened? Especially here in Hungary, where the very survival of the nation seems to demand men to be conservative and old-fashioned. For I see no evidence of real virility in the younger generation. Women have no moral sense, and expose their nakedness, their physical and spiritual shamelessness just like their chic underskirts hung out to dry in the sun; young men are unreliable, weak, cowardly and spineless, though they act as cocky as if they had some special, hidden talent. But that's just it. The new generation is far shallower and feebler than the old. Nowadays you can hardly find a specimen of the steadfast-as-oak, ascetic, upstanding, straight-arrow Hungarians of old. Everyone's characterless, without convictions, and ready to switch allegiance...Anything for the promise of an easier life. I feel sorry for this country, watching it slip into the hands of scoundrels and men without character. Soon there won't be a single honorable man in the land. Only the blind can't see the demoralization of our society and public life. A nation of thieves, the home turf of pseudopatriots, brazen, selfish, cold-blooded liars. Why, honor was laid to rest here before the revolution of 1848. This is why the nation's downfall won't be such a great loss. Could this all be because Hungarians gave up their beards?”

“I repeat, the beard isn't everything, my good sir,” replied Ossuary, who although he was no great scholar, nonetheless read the occasional newspaper. “Life cannot stay put, it would soon stagnate. New men arrive, who don't want to stay on the beaten paths. Everyone carries in himself some concept he would like to realize. You mustn't be angry with men for striving toward new goals. The old stations in life have all been occupied by our elders, and they have littered the scene with their greasy papers. We can't stay put where we were, back in '48, when men still had such dreamy, otherworldy eyes, that you can't look at an old portrait without being moved. They barely ever smiled, they barely even lived, they were always suffering and sacrificing, for homeland, or for some woman. Since then we have discovered that neither is worth butting your head against the wall for.”

“But if this country should perish, if the Hungarian nation should die out, it will be this accursed generation's fault!” shouted Pistoli and slammed his fist on the tabletop.

Then he looked around and smiled like a dead man.

“I am an ass, for talking politics,” he said in a soft voice, and with hands linked behind his back retired to bed. Deep down he was probably convinced that the precious Miss Eveline would have been most satisfied with his performance. Not one obscenity had been uttered in the course of the night, although women's sexual habits usually formed Mr. Pistoli's favorite topic.

“So modern men don't drink?” asked Mr. Pistoli on the following night, when the young man again ignored the eyebrow's invitations to imbibe.

Ossuary flicked his wrist again:

“Our ancestors guzzled enough wine for generations to come. For centuries everybody's been wine-drunk in Hungary, for our hills have always been richly blessed. Why, at times wine had to be poured into pits for lack of barrels. Wine was drunk in the early morning and late at night. In the light of the foggy, red-bellied winter sun, rowdy or resigned, life went on. No one ever considered suicide, because wine was a compensation for everything. We'll have to see many a sober generation come and go, before all heads are properly aired out, and the last remnants of a race of drunkards die out...How could a nation accomplish anything when everyone was on a permanent drunk, even on their wedding night?”

“Hot diggety-dog,” grumbled Pistoli. “You, sir, have indeed been indoctrinated by the enemies of this nation. I would surely emigrate from here if your kind should become too numerous. Luckily there are still a few decent folks left who respect our ancient virtues.”