The Adventures of Sindbad (New York Review Books Classics)

by Gyula Krudy

  ‘I like the sound of this town. How nice to find myself here at last,’ Sindbad murmured under his breath and let the musician go on his way. A violin passed him on invisible legs. When they buried the musician they had propped the violin next to his coffin.

  One of the women was called Mitzi, the other Eugenia. (Eugenia was particularly insistent that gentlemen should pronounce every letter of her name, and preferably with a slight sing-song pursing of the lips — Mitzi, after all, was just a common shop-girl’s kind of name.) So, after the daylight hours which he spent in the cemetery dicing with dead mercenary soldiers, occasionally laughing out loud to himself, as soon as it grew dark, Sindbad set out to find the women. It was Eugenia who had made him swear to forsake all forms of gambling, from cards through to the roulette table, as she rifled her father’s safe for old gold ornaments from whose shining surfaces kings in full-bottomed wigs and ancient queens with lily-white necks glanced anxiously at Sindbad galloping off to the smoky French Room of the ‘Star of St Leopold’, where a fat barber and a cardsharp in a white waistcoat dealt the deck for a round of faro.

  It was spring in the town then and it was as if Sindbad had brought his gospel of flowery phrases, instant promises and complex lies expressly to these naïve, pure-hearted young women. (Soon enough autumn would arrive with all its sadness, its huddlings by barely burning fires, its rain streaming down the windows like women’s tears, a time for consoling abandoned ladies and reading appropriate passages from books of verse, for sitting together, listening to the strange sounds of the wind.) Eugenia was in the big room with a wealthy admirer whom she dismissed, saying, ‘I need to discuss the rent with Mr Sindbad.’ Moneybags, a red-eyed, unmannerly man with an over-confident belly and rather tight-fitting clothes, took full stock of Sindbad while waiting for his hat. ‘I’ll give you a sound thrashing for that,’ thought the traveller who had been known to brawl with tough coach-drivers at the Blue Cat in his youth.

  ‘Sindbad!’ cried Eugenia, as if she had only become aware of his presence after her admirer’s departure. ‘Where on earth have you been? What delightful places have you travelled to? Have you had many lovers? Have you returned with the gorgeous flame of youth when you loved only me?’

  The traveller ran his eye over the lady, taking in every detail. Her nose seemed to have grown a little since the days he used to watch tiny white clouds break across her narrow forehead while making love to her. It had not been quite straight even then. Her eyes now dissimulated those emotions which had once been genuine: devotion, humility and entreaty. Her nostrils seemed blacker now that she applied copious amounts of rice-powder to her face. And what had happened to that innocent mouth with its unselfconscious smile which used to look as if some wandering apostle who had spent the night on her floor had taken his leave by kissing her lightly on those childish lips while she was sleeping? That saintly man would have travelled on wrapped in his blue cloak until he found his final resting place on the church wall of some pious village, but the smile would have remained on the virgin’s mouth right through dawn into the day — a smile for whose sake Sindbad was once prepared to rob and even murder. Ah, but nowadays that twitching of the mouth, the occasional moistening of those extraordinary deceivers, the corners of the lips, the treacherous sparkling of the eyes, just like children playing with a signalling mirror on a fine summer afternoon, the self-conscious arching of the neck and the curious rolling of the letter ‘r’ — these were part of the repertoire of any lady who knows perfectly well that in a sunlit corner of a small garden, there where the shadows begin, the light material of her dress becomes transparent and that men are so infinitely stupid that one blazing ring on a white hand or a pink garter tied with a heart-shaped May Day favour or the sudden raising of an eye, until then firmly fixed on the ground, accompanied by a slightly whorish movement of the arms is enough to occupy them in their loneliness.

  ‘There has been a lot of lying here before me,’ thought Sindbad.

  ‘And of all your lovely plans, which have come to fruition, my dear friend?’ spoke the woman and moved her legs as if to draw attention to her green stockings. ‘Your brothers and sisters — what became of them? Your little sister of whom you used to speak with such tenderness? Your sweet old mother, who I wanted to meet, so that I might kneel before her, kiss her hand and ask her for her blessing?’

  Sindbad calmly let his eyes rest on her silk dress. He nodded without taking up any of these matters.

  ‘Ah, this town is so boring — you can’t imagine how boring it is, Sindbad,’ the woman continued. ‘Every day the same people, the compliments of the chemist, the jokes of the vet! … The blazing eyes of the young men at Sunday Mass and when they stop going to church they never even notice me. Oh, ageing is terrible for women who were once surrounded by eager admirers who followed them everywhere with their eyes, the whole town apparently populated by wandering actors, a thousand Romeos, my dear sir — and then to find those glances cooling, and even the captain of the fire brigade only comes to dinner when I cook him his favourite meal.’

  Sindbad nodded sadly.

  ‘It’s just not good enough!’ cried Eugenia in a sudden fury, then cast her eyes down and smiled. ‘At least you should see my children.’

  In a few minutes three little girls stood before Sindbad. Their hair was cut straight — they looked like three pretty little lapdogs. Their mother rewarded them with a sweet each.

  ‘Heavens, if only I had children,’ sighed Sindbad plaintively, ‘I’d be forever carrying them on my shoulders, playing with them in the garden and mending their shirts … I’d stare into their pretty little souls like a dreamy traveller gazing into a mountain tarn. I would talk only to them because I would hate to waste my words on anyone else.’

  ‘They are pretty, aren’t they?’ muttered Eugenia, lost in thought. ‘But I would like to see you again, Sindbad. When I’m alone I often start crying and I don’t even know why. Perhaps I’m weeping for you. I want to see you. So that you can talk to me about my children, since up till now people have only complimented me on my legs and these poor feet squeezed into these tiny shoes. I let the shoes hurt so that wandering actors should find me attractive. Oh, I’m so ashamed of myself.’

  ‘The children’s eyes might bring me this way again,’ the traveller answered quietly.

  Mine

  Mitzi was a childless woman and would look away distractedly when the ladies of the town started talking of their children and discussing their thousand upon thousand accomplishments and particularities in her presence. For mothers, sons are an inflated embodiment of characteristics they used to dream of, dwell on and guess at in men, and daughters are repositories of those beauties and talents they had once hoped to discover in themselves. In provincial towns, where the fashion magazines are delivered once a fortnight, where wandering actresses do not dance nightly at the sign of the Linden and where seducers are eventually known for what they are, children assume an overwhelming importance in women’s lives. Women behave well, give birth often and it is not unusual for them to blossom suddenly at fifty, to find their second spring when late buds appear on the apple tree they thought only fit for firewood in the domestic hearth. Once more they stroll arm in arm with their husbands with an air of happy abandon, and tip their heads dreamily to one side as they did when they were brides and maids. So Mitzi, who was highly conscious of her position as leading lady of this town where stone effigies of stern-eyed bearded men gazed down from the church walls while women went to confession, would have been glad to discover at her knee one day a child or two whom she could dress in white stockings and little sailor suits. When she was alone — providing no one could see her daydreaming, lost in a serious trance, watching and blowing away the smoke of her slim cigarette as the French novel slid from her hand — she could see a little ragamuffin dressed in a shirt, standing in the corner, waving a thick-handled riding crop. Mitzi stretched her hand out to the child but there was only a rocking horse by the wall.
A young merchant had brought it to her once, having purchased it at some market on the shores of the distant Volga. The tail of the horse formed a flute that could actually be played. On these occasions Mitzi would give a loud sigh and rub the illusion from her eyes. (Mitzi’s husband, Matthew, was a hollow old beech-tree, who only felt happy when he was in a wood. He was a wood merchant come rain or shine and was more interested in what lay under a tree’s bark than in his wife’s dreams. ‘I must buy her a ruby ring,’ he thought whenever he remembered her in the course of his travels.)

  This was the broad picture Sindbad obtained of Mitzi’s life after consultation with a drunken old Pole who used to walk up and down the town in his choirmaster’s velvet coat, entertaining his students with wicked gossip, regaling them with embellished versions of local love affairs. That is until the brandy in him finally caught fire and burned him out, which event was greeted with a hearty ‘Thank Heaven!’ from the young (but also mature) women, into whose hands the choir-master-cum-knight errant had smuggled notes from young landowners, traders fresh from market, or indeed from anyone prepared to cross his own palm with coin of a certain reassuring weight.

  Ever since then he was to be found sitting at the cemetery gates dangling his stockinged and slippered feet and grinning ironically at the little town spread out along the hillside. ‘And who was your sweetheart? Who did you love, sir? Whose favours did you enjoy?’ the ghost asked Sindbad when the latter turned up on pretence of humbly requesting that he should be allowed to sing a motet or two in his spare time. Old brandy-breath looked him up and down. ‘I see from your appearance you are neither a travelling merchant nor a bored hunter fresh from court, so why should I lie to you? This wounded little pigeon arranged her affairs so cleverly I could never quite keep track of her — though, as you know sir, I can’t vouch for everyone. A half-crazy flautist hung around town for a while making a nuisance of himself, until I eventually drove him out. He had a collection of old sheet music out of which he compiled a romance that he dedicated to Madam Mitzi.’

  In other words Sindbad knew practically nothing of his old love, one of the two sisters who had adopted him the last time he was in town. He attended on them and they sewed him a Polish-style felt coat to keep him warm in winter, lining it with the black lambswool they had borrowed from their father’s fur travelling outfit. He slipped past the pretty chambermaid who walked across the snow-white rugs covering the floor in bare feet, as was the custom. Naturally, he couldn’t help touching her as he went and she cursed the apparently over-familiar black cat nearby who, she assumed, had rubbed himself against her.

  The woman was leaning on the windowsill, half kneeling on a well-padded chair, and as she was wearing only a light nightdress, Sindbad could take proper stock of her figure. She seemed quite slender in the waist — ‘even as a girl she used to order girdles from Vienna,’ he remembered — yet there was something plump about her, as there is about many bored women who from quite early in the afternoon like to nibble chocolates or preserved fruit while lolling on the bed, promising themselves that the next day they really will go out and weed the garden, but who somehow always end up munching an apple; they bring ice-cream home in cool, green-painted tin dishes, and later in the evening, once guests are no longer expected, they like to gnaw at a stick of garlic-flavoured dry wurst … Her white stocking had a very pleasant scent, the frill at the hem of her skirt was sparkling white, and the bow on her slipper was like the ribbon in the hair of some cheerful convent girl. Her gown was embroidered with a pattern of oriental flowers in honour of the long silent musical clock that no longer amused her with Mozart’s ‘Rondo alla turca’ but which might just spring to life, just as the ringlets on her neck might go some way to conjuring up the merry month of May with its scented grasses growing on dewy white hillsides. Her ear lobes were as translucent as the marble out of which the figure of Venus had been carved, her breasts the kind that novice monks must dream of. There was the palest of shadows above her upper lip, a down of youth such as you see on young boys wrestling in the grass. Her brow bore the habitual wistfulness of women deserted by their lovers.

  ‘Maria,’ cried Sindbad, moved by the sight of her, and he seized her in his arms, just as he used to do when he was a student set on conquest at all costs.

  Mitzi stiffened and coiled like steel. With a single movement she sprang from Sindbad’s embrace. ‘I knew only you could be so presumptuous,’ she responded coldly. ‘I heard you had been seen about town, and would have been extremely surprised if you hadn’t called. Has Eugenia invited you for supper tonight? What an easy life she has, her husband home and her children persuaded to stand guard at her side. Sadly I am always alone, my husband is always buying and selling tracts of woodland. I am amazed I didn’t hear your footsteps, particularly as I happened to be thinking of you.’

  ‘I have been dead for years,’ Sindbad answered, ‘and the door only opens before me if someone urgently desires me to call. You called, so here I am. My dear, my sweet Maria. What do you want to tell me?’

  With a movement that might have been interpreted as flirtatious, but could equally have been simply clumsy, Mitzi offered Sindbad a chair, as she did to the red-moustached council officer who tended to call when her husband was away. ‘Sit down, dear friend, you who were the foolishness of my youth, my sin, my amusement. Who is wearing the coat lined with black lamb’s wool now? Do the girls still go to Mass on an early December morning, while their darling kneels thoughtfully beside the altar in his red skirts and ceremoniously rings the bell? Eugenia and I stood in the choir and the tears flowed from our eyes. Rooks were whirling in the fog above the rooftops, the villagers were coming and going in the market like ghosts and always it was your scarlet skirts we saw. Do you still love me as you did then, when your prayers were addressed to me?’

  ‘If I were alive I would kiss your foot now in precisely the same mad devoted fashion,’ answered Sindbad.

  ‘It is because you are long dead that I dare speak of you like this, Sindbad. I want a child. A strong, dark-haired boy with a fine large head. A little bear cub I could no longer manage once he turned five years old — who would hang the cat with a length of string and set fire to my bed. A bad, spiteful little boy, that’s what I want, one I could tame and educate as I once did you when you wanted to break the door open at night, and stabbed my arm with a knife, who, when I knelt on the floor, bit my ankle. That’s the kind of boy I want.’

  The woman bent her head as if at the confessional, a penitent trying to recall whether there was anything else she should reveal to God’s anointed. She seized Sindbad’s hand. ‘One that is mine, mine alone!’

  The Woman Who Told Tales

  This story concerns Mrs Boldogfalvi, a high-living lady of years gone by, who excelled both at prayer and at lying to men. Many years had passed since the first happy lie which slipped from her lips in the florists in Servita Square as she was tucking a fresh spring buttonhole into the lapel of an elderly earl. French authors have long ago described the process whereby little flower girls become great ladies, a process which begins with arranging violets in the shadow of some ancient church and reading small advertisements in the daily press, distinguishing one male customer from another only by the scent of a waxed moustache. These moustaches always appeared at a proud height above the little flower girl’s head. A small trick of the eyes and the mouth and these proud male embellishments were enticed closer (at least such used to be the way poor women could devastate a man’s heart).

  Mrs Boldogfalvi’s magnificent lies, her startling good looks, and her modest accommodating manner, which seemed to approve everything men said to her, however idiotic, allowed the good creature to spend her life without too many cares, now delicately sparkling, other times withdrawing into silence, like a precious stone hidden in a deep wooden chest. She knew many men and succeeded in finding favour with every one of them. Those signs of weakness, vanity and all too frequent stupidity that a wise woman may detect in any m
an, she cultivated with an extraordinary selfless devotion. True that Mrs Boldogfalvi depended on ever more elaborate lies in order to hold the attention of her male acquaintances. By now she had consumed an entire library of novels and committed to memory countless fine phrases, figures of speech and apt comparisons culled from the works of passionate poets. And by the time the years really began to weigh heavily on her, Mrs Boldogfalvi was so caught up both in the life of the metropolis and of the country that she was eminently capable of entertaining guests without recourse to novels altogether.

  She succeeded in cultivating the perfectly appropriate lie, the lie that each particular ear was most pleased to hear. As every man seemed to demand his own specific legend or myth so Mrs Boldogfalvi kept a vast store of them. There was one for the earl, one for the student, one for the impoverished poet, and she told each his own, quietly, quaintly and with utter conviction, so that the listener began to recognise the circumstances and lineaments of his own life within it. This subtle woman could even gain access to the deepest recesses of the soul, those depths you reach only when you can’t sleep. Is it not the case that everyone would soonest hear the story he believes in his heart of hearts, the one where he dreams his own life? Mrs Boldogfalvi would fix her listener with sad eyes full of childlike sincerity. ‘Oh it’s not your life I’m talking about, I’ve no means of knowing that. I’m talking about someone else, a stranger. Interesting though, isn’t it?’