by Gyula Krudy
This was why elderly gentlemen referred to Risoulette as “Our Lady’s Fountain”: for she had given drink to multitudes of thirsty men.
But Risoulette always returned to her Captain’s side, and ex-lovers saw her again only in their dreams.
The Captain received their guest with hearty hospitality, and right away inquired about his gout, for by now he socialized solely on this basis.
“Does it still reside in your heel? If I recall correctly, you used to have a touch of gout in your waist as well as your knee...”
“There’s no getting rid of it,” replied Álmos-Dreamer in the resigned tones of times past, when he had regaled the Captain with tales of his own affliction.
“Springtime is the most critical time of year. It’s that inbetween time—neither winter nor summer. A dangerous season. I don’t even dare stick my nose outside, but the rascal has a way of sneaking in through the cracks, every time the silly maid opens the door. I tell you, my limbs feel like they’re made of glass. No wonder the crazy English turn the onset of gout into a family event. Truth is, it does keep you endlessly occupied. But don’t let me detain you—I know you’re a fellow sufferer.”
With that, the Captain took his seat in the easy chair of his own design, nestling amidst shawls and fur coats of a peculiar cut. His mustache twirled to a point, his face coppery red, there he sat, the local weatherman, his voice rasping on:
“Go, talk to my wife, poor thing’s always bored because of my malady. Please, be gentle and chivalrous with her. Not many women have suffered as much as my poor wife. She’s an angel sent from heaven. Alas, her hand is not as delicate as it used to be. All things grow old in this world, Andor. My gout is getting to be twenty years old soon. Say, is it true some German’s found a cure for gout?...But I better let you go. Anyway, what on earth would I do if I were cured? I’d have to start everything all over, whereas I no longer want to change anything. Change is for others, the folks who’ll come after us. That’s why I prefer to read only ten-year-old newspapers: I surround myself with people and events, all dead and gone. I just don’t understand this newfangled world.”
The Captain proudly sat back in his chair, stiff as a statue. By now he had grown fond of his affliction, maybe because it prevented him from rashly setting out on a new life.
“Everyone’s a Socialist nowadays. Only me and my gout are left over from the old dispensation,” he said, and once more he shook Álmos-Dreamer’s hand, as if this handshake were his farewell to everything that was pleasant and desirable in life. His head, topped by an otter hat, sank a little lower. Next he struck up a conversation with his own foot, evidence that he had not renounced social life for good.
The only change in Risoulette was that now she wore a white scarf around her neck. Perhaps she did so on account of the wrinkles that had sneaked up on her through the chimney one fine day. Her eyes, her maddening, silky soft, humbly smiling, gently entreating visage, always beaming such utter surrender at her man that he felt like some superior being—her eyes seemed to hover hesitantly, aimed at some distant point. Could she have glimpsed a cloud that no one else had noticed? Her features assumed an expectant expression, similar to those women who stand around at stations endlessly waiting for the train bringing the long-awaited traveler.
“Is it really you?...” she faltered, getting over her surprise. But she quickly recovered. “I recognized your footfall at once. Your steps have a way of approaching from room to room, so that I find it impossible to sit still. They bring the promise of something extraordinary, something grand—like a feast day on the calendar. Where have you been all this time?”
“I’ve come for your advice regarding Eveline.”
“Your great love?” replied Risoulette without any surprise, just as the best nurses never seem surprised by the patient’s wishes. “All right, I’ll invite her over...Right away...The two of you can meet here undisturbed. No one ever visits us any more.”
Eager to please, as if she had been waiting for years just for this errand, Risoulette (a subdued, compliant smile on her lips, like a grandmother eavesdropping on her frustrated, grown-up daughter’s ecstatic tryst next door), set out her pen and stationery. Using violet ink, and the spiky handwriting taught to upper-crust young ladies in convents, she penned a letter to Eveline, inviting her over for a cup of tea and a little chat. Her delicate fingers, their ruby and emerald rings not as flashy as before, used to write quite another kind of missive in days not so long ago: lengthy, delirious, sophisticated letters, any one of which would have made some man happy to wear it next to his heart all his life. But men are so fickle...Sealing the letter she softly laughed at Andor.
“Not even the most exclusive dame is immune to the eternal feminine wiles. In our old age we take pleasure in bringing men and women together. My husband would readily hear out the case histories of every gout-sufferer in the world. As for me, I could never have my fill of attending to lovers’ petty everyday affairs...It was all so beautiful...Alas, I had no one to give me advice. That’s why things didn’t always go as well as they might have. I’m just a frail, sentimental creature. My heart is filled with all kinds of fantasies, like the ones itinerant musicians play under one’s window...And I get to thinking. The truth is: I’m getting old. But I still love you, just as the groom’s best man loves the first locust blossoms. I have always loved you, for I dream of you, and with you, often. I dream of keys, roosters, beds, bathwater, and you...In the dream you go far away, and then you return. Forgive me for being so superstitious. Fortune-telling is my only amusement. But Eveline will be here soon, and I’ll retire to take care of my old man. My hands know how to soothe his aches, as if I really were a witch, like rumor has it about me.”
Andor Álmos-Dreamer kept turning his hat in his hand, like a troubled client at a faith healer’s. He cast only a cursory glance around the old room where in former times he had sat so often, showered with caresses, or else knelt on the light green rug, his heart as full of bliss as a pilgrim’s. His old friends, the tin soldiers on the antique grandfather clock, were still there, leaning against their mediaeval town gate, in the manner of bored mercenaries. Up on the walls the hawk-nosed, priestly-looking, apoplectic ancestors, and ancestresses about whom the only feminine thing was their costume (for their faces were shaven and their jowls were broad, as if they had always been pressed against their men’s chest)—these portraits could have told many a tale about Mr. Álmos-Dreamer’s doings. These mute, immobile elders had witnessed all those eternal vows, pledges and professions of faithfulness that, although completely unasked for, are still uttered by men in the course of their interminable blubberings, when they reach a point where no other words can be found than those of the vow that binds unto death and keeps the nether world at bay, words that clank like everlasting manacles.
Yes, Andor Álmos-Dreamer had knelt there, in front of this humble-eyed, blushing woman clad in white, her face always transfigured by happiness and pleasure, who raised her white hands as if to fend off her lover’s confessions. “Please... don’t...You know I don’t deserve such a bounty, all this happiness. It’s enough that you put up with me, that you think of me at times, as long as I can see you every now and then...You should save your heart’s ardor, the hot lava of your emotions for worthier women. I’m only a roadside tree in your life, here to fan your face with a cooling breeze while you stop for a snooze in my shade.” Risoulette might have uttered these words...Or maybe she said nothing. Her two hands merely stopped the flood of words gushing from the young man’s mouth, although it meant the fountain of life for her...“Anyway, one day you’ll abandon me like an aimless vagabond does a fille de joie. And you’ll recede into the distance, like a memory of one’s youth. Hush now, don’t explain, for my heart will break yearning for you...” But we have yet to see the man who will hold his peace when about to deliver a declaration of love. Next to ornate toasts, amorous declarations offer the greatest relief for men’s need to talk. The feminine hand rais
es the floodgates holding the swollen river, and there comes a rush of words, from east and west, from fairy tales and dreams, like a colorful caravan that assembles at the caravansary from the four corners of the world. It’s no use, trying to prevent men from knocking their foreheads against the ground when this gives them the greatest pleasure! Only make sure to send all crusty old men out of the room when the moment of a lover’s confession has arrived. Their know-it-all, unlotioned, leaden, otherworldly complexion does not belong on the stage of gorgeous declarations. At the most, a superstitious ancient nanny might be allowed to huddle in a nook, to note the words and to parrot them later when the rainy days arrive.—Lovers’ confessions! The happy hour, that always gets omitted from funerary orations by the graveside. Whereas that is all we should ask of the departed: hasn’t he forgotten to declare his love during his days on earth?
Whatever Andor Álmos-Dreamer knew of life and love, he had learned from Risoulette. At intimate moments, eating and drinking, during long walks, while the fever of love took a brief respite, Risoulette taught Andor all that was worthwhile and amusing in life. Her store of knowledge included not only what she had learned from her old aunts at Szatmár; she was familiar with the notorious Marquis’s book of recipes, as well. Her exterior was as wildflowery as a wandering Gypsy woman’s, and her eyes flashed at times like a knifeblade honed at night near a nomadic campfire; and although she sometimes cried out like a wild bird before surrendering herself to her mate, still, her lips exuded the fragrance of French perfume, her raven locks were redolent as Carmen’s on the operatic stage, and she groomed all parts of her body as well as a princely bride for her nuptials. She had mastered amorous enchantments of such sophistication that this petty nobleman of The Birches would have gladly split open his breast merely to have Risoulette dip her miraculously petite foot in his heart’s cascading blood. This woman was truly remarkable in every respect: her mobile, expressive nose, her dark eyelashes and noble nape, her sensitivity to cold, her gullibility. In her whimsical moods she was the lady sung by poets, who found her intoxicating. Like a taciturn magician, she had her secrets. Her tears, her laughter could have sent men to the gallows. But she was mild as a dove...And like springtime itself, you could never get enough of her. Her conversation was always worthy of attention, it was like leafing through the pages of a fascinating travelogue. She played with her voice like a child with a ball. She existed in order to put you in a good mood. She was joy personified.
Andor Álmos-Dreamer, glimpsing his graying head in the Venetian pier glass—in which they had stared at each other so often like provincial couples engaged to be married—now wondered, amazed, how could he have ever left this woman? Here he had been kept as spoiled as a pet hedgehog, and still, he had wandered away from this household. He had gone away, to chew pumpkin seeds in his solitude, like an obstinate child.
At last a light spider cart wheeled into the courtyard, as in some period piece where the gentry are always carousing and no one has time to live an ordinary life.
Next to the coachman, who wore a beribboned hat sat Eveline, dressed in a dove-gray outfit. The short-tailed gray dapples that had gaily trotted along, while her hands held the reins, were now shaking their jingling accoutrements, as if this had been their sole raison d’être.
Watching from behind the white-framed window, Mr. Álmos-Dreamer was moved to see the two women greet and kiss each other under the red awning of the verandah. Risoulette, solemn and deliberate, gently embraced the maiden as if coveting her innocence. She kissed Eveline on both sides of her face. Now that they met, they were no longer rivals. Side by side, the woman in her forties and the girl in her twenties banished the thought of competing for the same man. Eveline’s bearing was noble, refined, and condescending, rather in the manner of a lady of the haut monde being amiable toward an acquaintance who must spend her life in a provincial village.
The Captain slapped his legs as one does an unruly horse, and advanced to receive the young miss at the front entrance.
When the white door opened, Eveline’s eyes took in Mr. Álmos-Dreamer with equal portions of surprise and distraction, as if the last grains of fairy dust from solitary reveries were still dropping on her eyelashes. She turned around to look behind her. Risoulette, teary-eyed, nodded at her with boundless benevolence and made herself scarce.
“You wanted to see me?” Eveline asked.
She took off her deerskin glove and offered her hand like a flower to Mr. Álmos-Dreamer.
“Yes, I, too, should have thought of the Captain and his wife. But believe me, Andor, I’ve been as inactive as a lazy cat. Days go by and I hardly even have a thought. Life for me has receded into the far distance like the mountains on the horizon that I shall never get to. It doesn’t even occur to me that there are cities, humans, and other lives in this world. I’ve made myself cozy on a pile of ashes. And as long as it stays warm, I’ll be all right.”
Andor replied the way he had once spoken to Risoulette:
“I’m the kind of man it is easy to forget. But I had never wanted to attach any importance or significance to my person. So I live on, a man who is far prouder than he has any right to be. Life is a mere flick of the hand...It is not important. And not very interesting, either. Time goes by, meandering like an impassive wanderer who never sees new landscapes, different cities, fresh or hostile faces. I’m merely a watchman in the cornfield who observes, from under a hat pulled over his eyes, the passage of unknown and uninteresting strangers on the highway. They’re all marching toward distant destinations, their eyes on the far horizon, their thoughts on foreign marvels. One will be shipwrecked at the Cape of Good Hope, another will be garroted in a Hong Kong opium den, the third will circle like a hapless bird of passage over alien lands...Everyone is on the go, dying to live, see, feel, and run amuck; wanting to inhale new scents, touch the hair of unknown women, taste strange cuisines, to make love and forget like sailors...this is what most men want. I alone seem satisfied by sitting on my hovel’s threshold—haughty, frozen, stubborn like a rock in my voluntary and conceited renunciation—while over my little rooftop life flies past, insanely clattering, deranged and carefree. Could it be I am a gopher without a mate, or a melancholy blind crow at the forest’s edge? For a human being I am most certainly not, no, no, I don’t enjoy, I don’t want, I despise what most men do. Possibly I am one of the dead who can see and look on, amazed by nothing and detesting everything that the living do. Or else once I was a pipe-smoking Turk on a shopsign in Munkács, and now I’m off on vacation. Truth is, I want nothing, my worshipful lady.”
“But you did want to see me, no?” said Eveline, who blushed a little, lowered her eyes a little, and adjusted her skirt a little, as women are wont to do, when they are unsure of themselves.
“Oh you, perhaps, are the only one for whose sake, at whose memory, I sometimes feel like bursting into a drunken or crazy sob so loud that it would be sheer pleasure...You are the one I think of, lying in my bed, you with your birdlike sadness, your eyes reflecting an otherworldy light...you are beautiful and alien, you are a whole different world...You contain archipelagos, Spice Islands full of unknown scents, joyous frenzies tumble from your eyelashes, many-colored shadows chase each other on your forehead, and hemp bursts into flower at your feet...For me, you are a mystery, although at night I scream out that you are simply a woman...You are a disheveled terror opening the door a crack in the middle of my reveries, like a murderer clutching a knife...you are a dead woman, a pale wraith hugging the door and summoning me to the netherworld...You are death and you are life.”
“Poor man,” said Eveline, and caressed his forehead, as any woman will, truly touched by hearing a man cry.
Now Álmos-Dreamer again addressed his words to the absent Risoulette. It was the final exam in all she had once taught him.
“I know it is cowardly to confess to a lady what we think in our weak, vulnerable moments...I’ll have to drink enormous amounts of alcohol in my solitude to f
orget the things I’m saying now. I’ll have to commit foul deeds to rid myself of these agonizing memories. I’ll have to travel far, and in foreign cities buy myself brides at midnight from their cabdriver fathers... Have myself robbed in clandestine houses kept by procuresses with eyes like beasts of prey...But I have to tell you that I despise and hate you and still I cannot live without you. You are despicable, for I know you love another. He is probably some young Budapest cabby or gambler, or a carousel operator in fancy pants whom you, instead of some older woman, provide with spending money. I detest you for finding yourself a gigolo in your youth, when you are so fine that one night with you would cost a hundred sovereigns in Shanghai...And I abhor you, for you remind me of my grandmother—like a song that bubbles up from the throat—you kill me, you daze me, in my dream you suck my blood, you are a woman who has driven a man wild, a man who until then had only known the manly, spirited, self-sacrificing kind of love...You are ever new and foreign, and I cannot find you behind the skirt flounces of desirable women in the cities of the night. And yet I’ve looked for you so long that my feet went lame...Looked among whores and nuns.”