by Gyula Krudy
‘You’ll make the new year, father. The new year will bring good luck.’
The invalid opened his sad and hopeless eyes. ‘You think so?’ he asked and shook his head.
Sindbad suddenly wished him a quick death, so that his father should not have to suffer any more. There’d be no more groans and cries of pain …
‘My estate, doctor. If only I could live another week …’
Yes, those were the words. He had died prematurely. Now Sindbad seemed to hear one light bulb repeat those words to the other.
One more woman’s body, or simply part of her body, flashed before him: full, white, a globe of alabaster. And he could see the blue-black shadow creep across that globe, and was aware of a variety of delicious, well-remembered perfumes wafting about his head.
Soon Monkey arrived and tenderly closed Sindbad’s eyes for him.
Sindbad became a sprig of mistletoe. A sprig of mistletoe in the rose garland an elderly nun wore about her waist. For a while, he had a rather boring time of it. He regretted he had not chosen some other occupation when he had had the opportunity to do so at the bureau where men are allotted tasks in their life after death. Having run his eye down all the posts available there were three he particularly fancied, where he thought he might be able to spend his days in silence and idleness. One was as a toy soldier, better still a toy soldier lost in some dim attic. What more could a man longing for retirement want? Sindbad had all but signed up to this when a grey-bearded goldsmith appeared at the bureau with an agonised expression on his face and a gaping hole in his temple where the bullet had entered. He had killed himself on account of certain women, for whose sake he had given away the contents of his shop. Sindbad’s heart was moved at the sight of the woeful-looking little man; he thought of the men whom women had cheated, stolen from and discarded, men whom women had watched with interest, wondering when they would put a bullet through their brains — so he gave up the idea of being a soldier allowing the goldsmith to take precedence in the choice.
In considering his subsequent career he was equally tempted by the thought of becoming an ornamental comb. But how was one to know where one would wind up? The woman might be dirty. Sindbad had decided he might as well stay alive, and this is how he became a sprig of mistletoe in a rose garland. Not too many risks there: it was hard to get into scrapes in such a situation, he would still feel the touch of women’s hands and some people enjoy this long after they are dead. Unfortunately the nun into whose possession he came, who wore him about her waist, was a little too old for him: she ground him between her fingers as she muttered her prayers but these, alas, were of little interest to him. It was a fairly dull set of pleas and prayers that pulsed through his body. There was a prayer for sound digestion, one for deep sleep, another for protection from the severity of the Mother Superior, and only once something that referred, somewhat obscurely, to a certain Brother Francis. Sindbad pricked up his ears. It couldn’t be, could it? thought the sprig. No, unfortunately the Francis referred to was just a saintly old man who had caught a bad chill at midnight mass and was lying on his sickbed in the rectory. Sindbad grew very bored of this constant diet of virtue and sanctity and reflected painfully on the fact that he was not made for a high moral existence and, if things went on like this, he’d never reach the happy state of having purged his sins. He began to regret ever more intensely that he hadn’t chosen to be a toy soldier. Who knows what adventures he might have had? But he’d just as happily have been an ornamental comb on the head of a whore: it was the present state of grace he couldn’t tolerate.
One day the nun and the sprig went on a journey. They rattled through the convent gates in a wide leather-topped carriage drawn by stout horses, and consequently transferred to a train — travelling in the women’s compartment, of course — where the nun made the acquaintance of two elderly ladies who were full of stories of railway disasters. The conversation only became interesting when one of the old women happened to mention that she couldn’t be a nun because she couldn’t live without men … ‘My old man is a real gem,’ said she, blushing but proud. The nun cast her eyes down but later asked the woman her husband’s age, enquiring about his looks and habits and so on. Of her answers Sindbad noted only those relating to her husband’s habits: once he’d had a glass or two he would even go up to the attic for her and fetch the clothes she had hung out to dry there the previous week.
Before the other old lady could interject an account of the heroic deeds of her late husband the train reached the station, they got off, and Sindbad suddenly became aware that he was no longer attached to the pious nun’s skirts which he, being a sprig of mistletoe, had practically worn through by continuous friction. A happy accident had separated them. Sindbad had fallen between the rails: trains passed over him, firemen threw fiery ashes over him and a piece of greaseproof paper landed in his vicinity, containing the remnants of a well-chewed leg of duck. This unpleasant neighbour attempted to strike up some kind of relationship with him but Sindbad pretended to be asleep until night came, then succeeded in escaping without being observed, leaving the rails behind and drifting into the town which he immediately recognised.
Good heavens! Wasn’t this the town he had visited just before his death? Why didn’t he notice the tunnel they passed through just before the station? It was a small mountain town full of cheerful gold miners. During the day the entire population spent its time searching for gold in the valleys while dwarfs left their windows open for ventilation, revealing their hoards of hidden gold. Here was the mayor, the priest, the school teacher. But once night fell the town was lit up and everyone was having a good time. We shall never die, they say to themselves, there’s enough gold in those mountains. There was singing of songs, playing of instruments, the clinking of glasses and the sound of women laughing as though someone were tickling them. Sindbad had an acquaintance here who married a gold miner. The story of this acquaintance, a certain Paula, originated from the time the gold miner came up to Pest and asked her parents for her hand in marriage. Paula kissed Sindbad when no one was looking and whispered into his ear that when she was an old woman and bored with her husband, and if he still considered her attractive, he could find her and visit her. That’s how Sindbad found himself in the mining town: and the miner’s wife showed him her jewels, her expensive fur and her coach and four. I beg your pardon, said Sindbad. I have come too early. He left, and with a chalk drew a cross on the gate so he should not forget the house when he came that way again. But in the meantime he died … and became a sprig of mistletoe. Nevertheless he soon found the gate and shortly afterwards was to be found in her room.
The gold miner’s wife sat in front of the mirror, combing her hair. She had long golden hair and the comb ran lightly through it like a boat gliding across the water. Up and down moved the comb — at that moment it was the proudest utensil in the whole house, not surprisingly, since in its previous life it had been a mere dancing master in one of the outer suburbs of Pest. ‘I too could have been a comb,’ thought Sindbad, but tried to remain unobserved.
The comb glowed brighter and brighter with pride, to the great envy of the mirrored wardrobe and the silk-covered bed. The bed linen was of silk such as you find only in the beds of kings and gold miners. Delicious perfumes mingled together in her bedroom. Sindbad stretched out — in so far as a sprig of mistletoe can stretch — and thought what an ass he was not to have escaped from his former mistress earlier.
After combing her hair the woman took off all her clothes. She was like a dream of snow. She moved about the room, stroked a silk skirt that was thrown across the back of a chair, gave a sigh, then disappeared into the silken bed. Then she turned off the light.
By the Danube
Sindbad once spent a melancholy time in a small village by the Danube, trying to heal his sick mind and troubled heart. He was staying with strangers and there was only a shadowy veranda where he could stretch his legs out. (He practically had to get down on all fours
in order to enter the peasant cabin.) This was where he lived, forgotten by everyone, watching from the veranda as the great Danube, wide as a lake at this particular stretch, flowed by in front of him. In the evening a lamp burned on the opposite bank sending rays of light across the black water. During the day sooty tugs made their way downriver, stopping now and then to drop anchor, their little red and white pennants seeming to wave directly at Sindbad as if the boats had hesitated by the village expressly to greet him. (On these occasions Sindbad would imagine a taciturn walrus-moustached steersman, puffing his pipe somewhere in the stern of the noisy tug while his wife washed his shirt in the lifeboat.) In the afternoon the pot-bellied Vienna packet sliced through the waves, floundering on, graceless as a fat priest. Its paddles solemnly shoved water aside and the deck above was set with white-covered tables off which portly foreigners ate cold ham and sipped at chilled beer while women and girls in brightly coloured dresses leaned on the rails wearing wide straw hats and waved their handkerchiefs at Sindbad. (At such times Sindbad would have liked to have been a ship’s officer in white trousers and gold braided cap. He would be wearing white shoes and dreamily pacing the deck, casting winning glances at the large-eyed Romanian women in their raw silk gowns.) Then the Vienna packet disappeared round the bend and Sindbad was left with the distant ruins on the hills opposite. Once there were kings living among those hills and the trees had not quite obscured the road along which the kings drove to the castle, wearing velvet cloaks and great clinking spurs, their ladies beside them. The ladies’ dresses had high waists and gold-embroidered satin skirts. They wore boots, since they frequently went riding and would gallop along the flat shore with curly-headed youths in their wake. Though the Danube washed the very foot of the hills the women tended not to bathe there as it was not fashionable at the time. (Sindbad also wanted to be a friar confessor in the castle chapel, and hear the ladies’ confessions while blindfolded with a white scarf. He was sure that confessions could be trusted in those days — not like now. Hell, after all, was far closer then. The friar had only to mutter the word and the devil himself would appear at the door. Sindbad particularly wanted to grant absolution to the wife of King Louis the Great, at the castle chapel, preferably during Passion Week … )
Then evening fell. Hills, forests, castles and red-roofed peasant houses faded in the descending gloom, but a rowing boat glimmered faintly on the silvery Danube, and in that boat sat a number of women in white, their white veils fluttering above the water. Then the jetty lamplighter appeared in the darkness on the far shore and silence settled on the great river. Silent and unseen the ripples ran on carrying news of Sindbad to distant seas, telling of his melancholy as he sat on the rickety veranda in the small village. (If those ripples travel far enough, thought Sindbad, they should arrive at a remote province of some foreign country where a buxom dark-eyed oriental woman is certain to be washing her round white knees in the waves of the Danube. And those cool ripples will suddenly give way to a warm current which will embrace those white legs. These would be the waves on which Sindbad’s eyes had lingered so desirously, there between the tall hills.) Then it was night, and at last Sindbad’s friends, the trains, appeared and rushed along the high embankments.
The veranda from which Sindbad looked out in his seclusion, offered a fine view of the embankment which ran plumb through the middle of the village, the embankment down which one hundred and fifty carriages thundered each and every day. In the daytime the engines provided entertainment for Sindbad: the huge black contraptions rolling along at an enormous rate presented themselves in his imagination as living beings. They were great, proud irritable creatures who only visited the region because they had to. The monstrous American-style express trains blasted the small village with one or two puffs of smoke before disappearing. The little top hats raced beyond the tops of the trees, the big wheels turned so fast you’d have thought it was their last day on earth and the iron bridge gave a respectful shudder as if greeting a well-known but highly respected visitor for whom it was unnecessary to lay on a more ceremonious welcome. ‘Eee-egh,’ muttered the iron bridge and the Buffalo engine was already flying beyond the town, so that within a few minutes only the hills still echoed its rapid panting. Lanky telegraph poles stared frightened, almost bewildered, at the row of carriages with well-bred ladies and gentlemen at the windows, at the white tablecloths and wine flasks flashing by inside the dining car where the cook in his chef’s hat gazed out, and at the sooty contemplative fireman frowning on the footplate. The long carriages hurried towards their destination and in the gangway of the very last one a man and a woman were holding hands. (Naturally, Sindbad imagined himself on his honeymoon, seated on a green davenport, gazing intently into the eyes of some young girl, as if for the first time, while the white-coated porter interrupted them with a knock at the door to inform them that dinner was being served …)
By now the train sounds no more than a distant coughing and the rattling is a long way off. The wide funnel hoves briefly into sight as it rounds a bend, and thick black smoke is pouring out and settling on the landscape. Ho-ho-ho … cries the engine as it rolls across the iron bridge and the engine driver in his blue jerkin and his sooty hat is absorbed in the prospect of the rails before him as he leans out of the window. The white steam hisses and darts past the wheels, and the engine flue is like a tax office clerk’s hat when he goes to pay his respects to his boss on the first day of the year. The faded and dusty passenger cars follow each other with apparent indifference but in the train, behind the windows, life in all its variety is in progress: round-eyed children gawp at the village; plump mothers have removed their stays and sprawl comfortably on the leather seats, nibbling at ham bones spread out on serviettes; men in shirt-sleeves laugh loudly, joking with the women; and one bald man is carefully drawing the curtains closed while strains of cheerful singing emanate from the end of the train. A choir of young peasant girls in the third-class carriage join in a tune, young lads wave their hats in the middle of the compartment. The conductors are bright-eyed young men with fine twisted moustaches bellowing out the name of each station, saluting military fashion to a plump widow in a black dress and white stockings, who slowly descends the steep steps wearing a complacent smile. The girls with the wind-tousled hair — they might be teachers or governesses with newly earned diplomas making their way to some distant town — sport white blouses, and lean out of the departing train’s window, their arms exposed, casting a few flirtatious glances at the figure of Sindbad loitering on the platform. A perspiring man in linen trousers leans across the soft-shouldered girls and a tall thin girl pinches his arm. The train draws away, a cheeky young peasant bride in the third class pulls her skirts up at Sindbad by way of greeting and the conductors swagger broad-chested on the steps. (Now Sindbad rather fancied being a railway conductor: he imagined stepping white-gloved into the ladies’ compartment where a blushing bride was sitting in déshabillé because of the heat, asking him complicated questions about the timetable, and having answered them the conductor would quietly close the door behind him.)
And at night, when the express rushes almost silently across the high embankment, the engine seems to be flying on its well-oiled wheels, the lamps cast long beams of light along the rails and the carriages roll steadily along. When behind open windows striking women of foreign appearance are taking their clothes off in the sleeping compartments and men wearing military decorations are reading broadsheets in the dining car, and you pick up that blend of Havana and cologne even through the smell of coaldust, then Sindbad becomes a sleeping car attendant with a black moustache and a Henry VIII beard, in a gold braided hat, who calmly and elegantly steps into the sleeping compartments, approaches the lovely Romanian woman who is already dozing and asks, in a cool but delicate manner, ‘Is there anything else I could get you, madam?’ And the express rolls steadily down the rails while people dowse their candles in the little peasant houses rapidly disappearing behind them, and husband and wif
e quietly lie down together.
Somewhere, far off in the night, the faint lights of a melancholy freight train are blinking and the driver is sitting in his cabin, his cap drawn over his eyes, drawing deeply on his pipe.
No, Sindbad did not spend very much time thinking of that freight train the summer he spent by the Danube.
Sindbad and the Actress
It happened once that Sindbad was travelling by coach … It was late at night and the full moon was hiding behind raincoat-shaped clouds. Sindbad sat silently in the middle of the carriage gazing at the driver’s shoulders. Occasionally the wind whistled across the fields: it was getting towards autumn and Sindbad wondered how he had become involved in this present adventure. Why should he be speeding down the highway at night, across marshy ground in a damp wind when he could be sleeping soundly in his own bed? How had this come about?
Sindbad — who was a youth of merely a hundred years then — was going to spend some time with a friend in the country. He had always liked those old country cottages where the walls were covered with images of his father’s and grandfather’s contemporaries. Sitting beside those ancient fireplaces he remembered tales told to him by his grandmother while his beautiful sad-eyed mother sat at a delicate sewing table stitching canvas in the blush of twilight. It was as if the very servants were those who had busied themselves about him in his childhood. Isn’t that uncle János, the liveried old village clerk? Pity his name is actually Miska. Surely he must be some late descendant of uncle János: after all, these liveried clerks tend to succeed each other in dynasties.
The host is the jolly sort who likes a bit of entertainment, a certain Kápolnai by name. Goes riding in the morning, takes a turn around the estate, then sits down at noon to a hearty meal. And here’s the village choirmaster from his youth. He sits at the end of the table and once he gets a few glasses of wine down him he waxes lyrical, treating the assembled company to a homily full of fine rhetorical flourishes. There’s a stork’s nest on the chimney stack and the guard dog is called Tisza, after the river* … Sindbad would often sit down to consider how it was that an entire world, a world that was supposed to have disappeared some time ago, could so resurrect itself before him. It was as if Hungarian village life had remained unchanged over the centuries. The people had changed but they had been replaced by others precisely like them. As if birth, death and marriage were all part of some curious joke. Even now it was the ancestral dead sitting around the table. They reproduced themselves: women, children. The weather-cock spins, the wind and rain beat on the roof precisely as before, and neither the cloud approaching from the west nor the meadow stretching far into the distance appears to realise that the man sitting at the window is of this century not the last. Snow falls, logs from the forest crackle in the fire. The current host is rubbing his hands before the stove just as his ancestor used to do. It’s plain as plain could be that grandfather and great-grandfather, who stare down from the walls, are still very much here, and have never gone away. When spring comes round they’ll stand behind the host and whisper in his ear: time to sow rape seed in the meadow … and it will be done.