by Gyula Krudy
‘I arranged things with Albert,’ he told her as he settled himself in her room. The woman squeezed his hand in gratitude.
‘My saviour! I was really frightened of that wild young man.’
‘I have found him a post,’ Sindbad went on. ‘He won’t trouble you again.’
Mrs Boldogfalvi stroked his cheek. ‘Milord,’ she trembled.
Sindbad shrugged. ‘Madam, if you wish to enrol me among your worshipful admirers would you please invent some new name for me.’
Polly put her finger on her lip and nodded in agreement.
‘My poor Albert,’ Mrs Boldogfalvi said later. ‘I wonder if he thinks of me.’
‘I shouldn’t think so,’ answered Sindbad coldly. ‘I have arranged a very nice house for him.’
‘You are a wicked man, a devil!’ cried Polly, frowning. ‘And that is what I shall call you from now on.’
The Red Ox
The inn had a gate at the back which opened on to a winding side street where starving stray dogs waded through knee-high mud, sniffing at the rubbish. The gate seemed to be made expressly so that gypsy bands might cart their double basses and dulcimers through it at night, or so that penniless tramps could sneak through under cover of a winter fog at twilight and find somewhere to sleep beneath the straw in the stable. No one would have believed that this suspicious-looking gate, which, like many rural gates, was covered in red and white graffiti advertising the name of the second fiddle, and an incised heart commemorating the love of the stable lad for the barmaid, should serve as an entrance for women a little lower than princesses in rank, raising the dreamy frills of their skirts above their delicate shoes, clutching their hands to their hearts at the grotesque circumstances, their lips trembling under their veils as they passed the lamp-post where any night they might find some poor man stabbed through the heart, his lifeblood leaking away, all this so they could take a final farewell of Sindbad.
In those days Sindbad spent all his time at The Red Ox inn. He had gained some notoriety in town on account of a divorce which was settled amicably enough, and of one young lady, who had been determined to commit suicide on his account, then being despatched to a convent, though within a few years she had given birth to half a dozen beautiful children.
Having died and grown wise, he revisited The Red Ox in ghostly form, and found the vaulted room in which he had once hidden away utterly unchanged. The cupboard in the wall opened no more easily than it did then; some murdered tradesman might have been gripping it fast from within. A long shoehorn peeped out from under the bed like a watchful lapdog. The lamp hanging from the vaulted ceiling threw a sad light across the floor just as it did when it used to shine in the face of sleepless over-excited men counting the raindrops on the roof or warming a revolver under the pillow. Once upon a time lovers’ eyes might have been drawn to the circle of light reflected on the limewashed wall; someone has left a window open in the house and the night wind is banging it bitterly against its jamb. The lock might have been stolen from a cell of the local monastery and down the cool brick-lined hallway one can already hear the uncertain approach of delicate feet. The kiss tastes of salt and tears and perfume, it is possibly the first yielded by some foreign princess to the man inside, the meeting at this mutually convenient staging post having been arranged in a correspondence comprised of long letters. Then they travelled on, by mail coach or by boat, one to the north, the other to the south, leaving nothing behind at The Red Ox except a forgotten hairpin which would later be found by another sleepless traveller who would turn it between his fingers and wonder about the history that lay behind it.
‘Do you hear the wind moaning?’ Sindbad asked himself one Sunday afternoon in winter as he settled in the room. The logs made such a row in the stove it seemed as if a troop of frozen wandering spirits had come to life in the snow-covered bark of the pine and were beating their fists against its walls.
The hall was haunted by the familiar smell of beer barrels and yesterday’s paprika stew, a fact that did not go unremarked by hungry frost-bitten travellers as they trooped into breakfast, where they would stab at the meat with their pocket knives in evident gastronomic delight. Horses shook their bells in the yard as if preparing to set out for some Christmas Eve party a long way off; an old grey-haired, upper-class woman in a man’s overcoat slurped at her spiced wine; and, as the unfamiliar bells of the church of the unfamiliar town rang for noon, the green walls of its storeyed tower glinted coquettishly in the sunlight, still competing for attention in its mad old age. The ringing usually began once the horn of the mail coach was heard, and the large yellow vehicle boomed and rattled over the stone bridge, down the snow-covered street with its tiny shops, whose owners rubbed their hands in the hope that the coach just now arriving might hold not merely the village schoolmistress or the notary in his green hat worn at a jaunty angle and his frock coat, together with other local officers in whose honour, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, The Red Ox provided freshly opened kegs of beer, but some long-desired, rich, potential customer.
As the mail coach passed the inn on its way down the clean street with its smell of monkshood, Sindbad glimpsed a tinder-coloured bonnet through the frost-scarred window, accompanied by the usual long wolfskin coat, grey officer’s gloves and short boots. This was she, Francesca, who in her youth had danced through the winter balls with such conspicuous grace, and with whom Sindbad had spent so many delightful days staying in Number Seven, the corner room, whenever they came into town from the nearby village, when the snow came up to one’s waist and the sounds of music rose up from under the balcony. Long ago, one winter night when the smell of hot punch blended with the scent of ball-dresses in the cold hall, when the girls’ hair had come undone and was blowing like long grass in the wind and everyone was gently humming along with the bitter-sweet waltzes being played by the band, Francesca had been far kinder to Sindbad than the voyager deserved. She laid permanent claim to him that night during a brief absence from the hall, and an hour later, in the course of the quadrille, while Sindbad, who seemed to have reverted to adolescence, was still blethering on about eternal love, she stared at him coldly, angrily, almost malevolently. ‘Leave me alone. Be off with you. I’m not in a good mood,’ she said. Sindbad departed at dawn, his hot, aching head leaning against the darkest corner of the coach, leaving the music of the ball ever further behind him. A day or two later the wind would sweep one or two vestiges of that heavenly music into his memory. It was like being on a hilltop and hearing music in the brightly lit castle across the valley. Three knocks echoed from the room next door. At the sound of this prearranged signal Sindbad felt a mixture of anticipation and shyness, something he had always felt throughout his long life whenever he set out for a rendezvous.
‘How white your hair is now!’ exclaimed Francesca after she had taken full stock of Sindbad. ‘There are long boring nights in the village when I put my feet up in front of the fire and try to conjure up a picture of you, but I can only manage your voice. There has only been one man since then with a voice like yours, a horse-dealer who tried to steal my cross-bred mare from me.’
Sindbad smiled sadly. ‘I have never completely forgotten you.’
‘You really should have given up lying by now, especially since I hear that liars are put in irons in your present abode in the afterlife.’
Her voice had become sharper and harder, and her look more commanding than it had been in her girlhood. Sooty-faced robbers might have broken in on her at night and she would calmly have shot them. The horses of her carriage might have bolted, throwing the driver, and she would have taken over the reins. Her children might have died in an epidemic and she would have cradled the head of a little corpse in her lap throughout the night.
Sindbad put the little flute he had been prepared to play for her back into its satchel. He addressed Francesca in a cold interrogatory manner. ‘Did you never feel sick of life? Have you been happy or unhappy?’
‘I have been both. Anyone
who tries to arrange his life in one mode only is simply an ass. I have been in love, have loved and been loved, have given and received. I have done my crying. I woke to find it was morning, and was delighted to find cold fresh water in my bowl. The dew dripping from leaves helped me forget I had spent the night in the muck and sweat of a ball, that trembling hands had touched my waist and lustful kisses fluttered on the nape of my neck and that, like a fool, I had believed I had the finest head of hair in all Hungary. I have always loved cold water and cleanliness. I made my own soap as I made my own bed. That may be why I did not succumb to either melancholy or to happiness. I have all my own teeth, Sindbad. In fact, a new tooth appeared not so long ago. But you, you look as scruffy as a scarecrow in the snow,’ said Francesca and stroked Sindbad’s cheek. ‘But I was never really angry … Only in a gentle, old womanish sort of way, when I couldn’t remember what you looked like, however hard I tried.’
Sindbad nodded. ‘If you had loved me I would have appeared. It doesn’t matter now. Is there anything I can do for you? I have many good friends among the dead. Your house hasn’t been troubled by unhappy wandering spirits?’
‘The dead don’t scare me, neither do the living. I am forty years old and for years now my greatest delight has been to see my pet animals frisking in the spring.’
‘You used to like dancing and were moved by music. Tell me, don’t you ever hear wind chimes in abandoned gardens?’
Francesca laughed softly. ‘I enjoy a good stew with foaming light ale to accompany it. I like the strong red of crushed paprika, and wayside innkeepers tell me their troubles because I have a friendly face. Let’s go out for dinner. It’ll soon be evening and I’d like to be home in the village before dark.’
‘Life,’ thought Sindbad. ‘Frivolous, holy, holy and wearisome life! How nice it would be to start again!’
Marabou
In the course of his long life Sindbad had spent many summers and winters in the company of that sad and noble gentlewoman, Irén Váraljai, and he tended to retreat to her friendly home in the village whenever he suffered some injury or disappointment, thinking in his bitterness to take farewell of Irén before committing suicide, for he had respected and honoured her for a decade and a half, so much so that he felt almost ridiculous that he should, after all that had happened, hold any woman in such high regard.
In her youth, Irén had danced in the first foursome of the Wiener Waltz at the opera. Her father — a retired Captain of Horse like an eccentric character from an English novel — would wait for her at the stage entrance and had credit with all the butchers along the usual route from home, even in the Krisztina district of Buda where they lived in a house with a sumach tree in the yard that was the first to hear the noonday peal of the nearby tower.
It was pure luck that Váraljai, who owned some village plots, a few provincial shares and a lot of old family pictures, found himself at the Pest opera one day and through the opera glasses he had inherited from his mother (the glass was missing from one tube) spotted Irén. Váraljai, the country landowner, might have been anything in the whirl of that strange Balkan capital — a horse-dealer, a cardsharp, a city slicker, or a terminally bankrupt petty nobleman from the sticks, spending his days watching old tradesmen playing cards in a café in one of the outer suburbs. But he was born under a lucky star — Sindbad adopted him as a friend as soon as he saw his passion for Irén. ‘Why not make this ignorant and provincial young man happy, not to mention the sweet young lady whose ankles have been so appreciated by elders old enough to have spied on Susanna in the Bible?’
Soon enough an opportunity was found to introduce Váraljai to the Captain of Horse, and after performances the three of them would escort Irén home to her house in the sleepy Krisztina district, and returning at night Sindbad would invariably stop his friend from the country on Chain Bridge above the faintly murmuring river. Here, while the wandering scholar of heaven drew his yellow cloak across the waves, he would educate him in the arts of dreaming, chivalry and sensibility.
‘Women are the only thing worth living for,’ said Sindbad shortly before the churches of Buda tolled for midnight. ‘A pity I am too old to begin my life anew.’
The retired Captain of Horse did not have to be taught to redouble his vigilance at the stage door and the innocent tulle skirt of the ballerina spun ever faster, ever more entrancingly. From behind the mysterious wings miraculous blinding lights flooded the auditorium and the loud orchestra cast nets of golden melody over the audience. Sindbad persuaded Váraljai to replace the missing lens in his opera glasses. One day, when wild chestnuts were blossoming in the Buda gardens, Váraljai felt an irresistible urge to confess his feelings.
The Captain’s blond moustache bristled. ‘Minor nobility from the sticks. Of course, I couldn’t wish anything better for my daughter.’
Sindbad nodded in response and tried to pacify the old gentleman. ‘The main thing, sir, is that your daughter should be happy. In marriage it is of no account whether a man hails from the country or the town. In any case we are all provincials.’
Soon enough two apparently happy people passed through the customs house of the capital after their marriage ceremonies were over. The retired Captain of Horse was apprehensive as he questioned Sindbad. ‘What is there left for me to do? I have no one now. I am an orphan.’
‘We shall sit and play dominoes in the coffee-house like all the other aged gentlemen,’ answered the traveller and the Captain never saw him again.
A year had passed and Mr and Mrs Váraljai invited Sindbad to visit them. The traveller discovered warm friends and a splendid welcoming home in their village house. The dancer of the first foursome turned out to be an outstanding housewife; often it was she who went to milk the temperamental cow and she had already learned the language village women spoke to their domestic animals.
‘I haven’t even used your wedding present, Sindbad,’ said Irén politely.
‘I hope you will never have occasion to use it,’ the traveller answered.
Sindbad had given Irén a marabou fan he had bought with an old countess’s legacy. It was an enormous ceremonial-looking thing, the marabou feathers stately holding their position with a firm grace as if permanently expecting compliments of that rare and refined sort admirers might whisper into the ear of the fortunate lady wielding them, the proud feathers anticipating the excitement of a snatched kiss in the shadowy recesses of a private box at the opera and the pretence of wrestling with one’s conscience before acquiescing, ‘Tomorrow, five o’clock …’ If an old marabou fan could speak it would have many confidences to betray, many ladies and gentlemen of days gone by to unmask. After all, it isn’t so long since ladies of discretion employed the language of fans, a language now fallen out of use.
In this house by the river, among gently sloping hills of the village, where the evening clouds still moved to the rhetorical cadences of Kisfaludy’s verse, Sindbad invariably found his corner room with its private entrance and its floor freshly scrubbed. A man might dream away a summer afternoon in the company of his sisters and mother here. Having narrowly escaped being ground under the heels of some heartless woman or avoiding some ill-fated meeting, he would pack his heart in his travelling bag and be on his way, while scheming women attempted to console him by recounting their own woes. ‘Oh, my dear friend, I myself often weep when I’m alone,’ they assured him. This house in the village was like a friend, selflessly waiting for Sindbad to appear. It was as if its affectionate atmosphere and quiet happiness represented his one worthy act, for the sake of which Sindbad’s other, less worthy acts, might yet be overlooked.
Here, the traveller’s eyes rested more readily on the leaves of the wild vine than on Irén’s open-necked blouse. Whole years went by without him showing any curiosity as to the colour of Irén’s slippers. And at supper he addressed himself to the gentle Váraljai rather than to her. ‘No,’ he said to the devil who on summer afternoons used to tempt him by parading in white sunlit
dresses. ‘I am not going to burden my conscience with this particular sin.’ There was only one occasion, when Irén prepared a little pillow with yellow ribbons for Sindbad’s special convenience and he discovered a long dark wisp of hair on it, and he could imagine that that afternoon, while he had been away, her head had rested and dreamt on it. In the deceptive light of dusk Sindbad thought he recognised it as Irén’s and because of this he shortly left the hospitable house and only returned after a certain time had elapsed.
But Váraljai, like many good, gentle, sterling fellows, died young. Irén was shaken by his unexpected death. Already one care-worn line had spread itself across her brow, and now it lengthened and settled like a halo. Her childlike smile grew grave as if she had spent long sleepless nights staring into the darkness. Her expression, which for Sindbad had conjured the fresh scent of plum trees in spring, now brought to mind long autumn rains, evenings wrapped in shawls on the cool terrace in fading light and the aimless rattling of fallen leaves. He is a child sitting on a low stool, apprehensively, almost fearfully watching the garden yawning with autumn. His great aunt keeps a little yellow skull in the laundry cupboard. He is saying a hasty goodbye to a woman crying in a highland village, the night dark and the rain mournfully beating on the carriage roof.
He paid a few more visits after that. Irén would be decently occupied in knitting and the guest room was no longer freshly scrubbed. There were mice in the house and he could hear them running about the attic among the dried chestnuts. The sweet-scented bed smelled of old newspapers still bound up with string as they were when the subscriber first received them and put them aside. And every night the dry branch of the poplar scraped against the window of the guest room since there was no one in the house to prune it.
‘Has another woman taken advantage of you?’ asked Irén, the former dancer, her voice a little heavy. Like many old women in the village, she wiped her mouth with her fingers before she spoke.