by Gyula Krudy
‘We have a little church whose foundation I have decided to endow in my will, the church where everyone has learned to pray. Do not forget this foundation, Sindbad, for since I have met you I have changed my will. Everything is yours, and it is a pretty sum.’
Sindbad turned his head away and thought how nice it would be to present that pretty sum to the other, to deposit the whole amount in an envelope and slip it into her hand then run away.
‘Together we will visit the grave of my poor uncle,’ said Mrs Bánatvári as she sat on the trunk. ‘You are fond of the old gentleman, aren’t you? He has such a kind and gentle face in those old pictures. And how fond he was of me! He forgave me everything and never pulled my hair but stroked it instead.’
‘I am very fond of the old gentleman,’ trembled Sindbad and felt as though he was choking. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’
He quietly slid from the room. At the door he cast a timid glance back. Mrs Bánatvári stood in the middle of the room in her travelling coat and little veiled hat, her eyes wide with an expression of terror, her arm half raised as if seeking the hand of an angel above her. Her nose had reddened like a tearful child’s and a strange sobbing welled from deep in her breast.
Sindbad ran down the stairs. Once in the street he broke into a crazy laugh. He escaped people’s attention by sheltering in a dark doorway. He leaned his head against the wall and repeated loudly and often, ‘Fanny!’
Escape from Death
One night he found Fanny under a lamp-post in a square in Buda. She was wandering aimlessly, her head bowed, a heavy veil drawn over her face. She was wearing an expensive dress and carrying an aristocratic parasol in her hand. A mild-faced policeman with a blond moustache was treading warily beside her, speaking quietly and respectfully to her.
‘Please, your ladyship, don’t do it … People who try suicide invariably regret it. In any case the fishermen will soon pull you out, stretch you out on the bank, and the next day the papers will report it and all your innocent relatives will feel humiliated. Dear lady, I beg you, come with me and I will escort you to your house keeping a respectable distance.’
It was as if Fanny had not heard him at all. She continued on her way, her eyes fixed on the ground, seeking the Danube perhaps, or the railway cuttings; possibly she was not even thinking of death.
Sindbad touched her arm. ‘Where are you going, Fanny?’
The woman raised her head, startled, then began to laugh loudly, strangely, with a touch of madness. ‘I knew I would find you!’ she said with the fanatical conviction of which women are capable.
‘Look, it’s my husband, my friend, my lover,’ she turned to the policeman, speaking so loudly the windows shook in the sleeping, long silent square. ‘You can put your mind at rest now, constable. I am not going to jump into the Danube.’
The policeman gestured discreetly to Sindbad that it would be best to keep an eye on the lady because something wasn’t right, then he watched as the couple walked off arm in arm.
‘Why are you on the street in the middle of the night?’ asked Sindbad at the third crossing.
The woman gripped his arm very tightly as if fearing to lose him again. ‘No …’ she said, as if in answer to some private thought. ‘It was all a misunderstanding. We shall never leave each other again. That’s right, isn’t it? We shall never leave each other again?’
Her tears flowed like warm rain on a freshly ploughed field. They almost sang, as sometimes one hears the dawn rain sing in a lonely house, knowing that trees, bushes and roofs will soon be putting on their clothes of freshness and light.
‘We shall never part again,’ answered Sindbad. ‘I have thought of nothing but you.’
‘You know what I did?’ the woman laughed. ‘I stared at your picture, I dandled it on my knee as if you were my child and I talked to you, played with you; I laughed and cried as I did that first winter after my little son died. You were in the graveyard too, weren’t you, and that’s where you’ve come back from because I had need of you?’
‘I’ve been on a long journey,’ Sindbad answered quietly. ‘Sometimes I thought I would never return.’
‘But you see! I knew. I knew you would come back,’ she laughed, raising her head as a little bird might. ‘My pillows told me so at night, the trees under my window whispered it, as did my own lips when I prayed … And tonight, when I was alone, walking up and down aimlessly, my hands linked, I stopped before the picture of my dead parents and my dear mother was suddenly speaking to me so clearly anyone might have heard her, saying, “You will see him!“ I fell to my knees and wept before her picture. When everyone had abandoned me, when I was as low as I had ever been and thought my life was over, all laughter, all love, all my beauty done with, my mother stretched her hand out to me. “You will see him!“ her voice rang out and suddenly my heart was full of lilacs bursting forth as they do at the feet of saints in country churches. I decided to put on my finest dress, the finest and most expensive, the one I had made for me when I first met you. I so wanted to look beautiful. I wanted to be the most beautiful woman you had ever seen, the most graceful, the most desirable. My maid was away so I dressed alone, skilfully, feeling an extraordinary happiness. Then I pricked my finger on a pin. My blood bubbled up and I would have been happy to bleed to death thinking I was dressing myself for you.’
‘Child,’ mumbled Sindbad, though, unquestionably, he felt rather flattered by her madness.
‘And when I was dressed, when I stood before my mirrors to check that everything was as it should be, I left the house, stealthily as if escaping from something. Perhaps I would never go back — if I failed to find you and talk to you, if you didn’t exhort me to live on for your sake, for your heart’s sake, for your delight in me, your love of me … if I did not hear in your voice the scent of leaves at first light, if I did not feel in your hand the gripping power of dreams, if I did not see in your eyes the rising sun as it sends brilliant white gulls scuttling into the heavy clouds that drift above the cold, austere waves of the lake at night.
‘I set out as if I knew for certain my way would lead to you. I wondered through the twilit streets without any thought of where I was going, as I did when my child died and those kind passers-by dragged him from under the wheels of the carriage. I could see my own feet walking as if I were following myself in the failing light and people were asking themselves who was this poor woman with the bowed head and where was she going? A bright-eyed woman stared at me from a shop window, her face flushed as if in theatrical limelight. It’s summer, she must have been thinking, the opera season is over, where is this strange woman going in full evening dress?
‘Forgive me, Sindbad, for dwelling so long on externals. We women, all of us from the cleverest to the most stupid, are equally preoccupied with our appearance. You have no idea how ashamed I was that I could be thinking of the plume in my hat at the same time as my whole wonderful life, with all its youth, femininity, ambition and hopes was set to collapse or resurrect in front of me, then as I left to find you, wherever and however far I had to go.
‘I walked down unfamiliar streets, passing houses I had never seen before, assailed by unfamiliar smells. Strange women dawdled past me, with wicked, calculating looks in their eyes.
‘Some instinct drove me towards the Danube and I felt lighter at heart. I came to the bridge and crossed it perfectly calmly, thinking of nothing, nothing at all. I never imagined strange men might accost me — a person is not accosted if they behave reasonably — or that I might be attacked by some thief such as you read about in the papers — if they did I would simply hand over my jewels and walk on.
‘How long did I continue walking? I no longer remember when I set out, the minutes are all mixed up like grains of sand. I saw a little inn with a green fence and a garden and a lantern hung on a post in the middle of it as in the penny dreadfuls, and dark-faced men were leaning together, pointing at me. I was not frightened, I did not tremble, and it was only some stup
id sense of embarrassment that prevented me from going into the inn and ordering a glass of beer like cabmen do. Perhaps I thought they might not want to serve a woman alone, so I went on, heavy-hearted.
‘Suddenly someone spoke to me. He coughed respectfully, speaking in a low voice. It was a policeman who asked me not to kill myself because I could lead a very happy life … “Happy, happy, happy!“ my heart leapt, because I could sense you approaching, somewhere I heard your footsteps as I had heard them so often on quiet nights under my window; your face, with its bold open gaze, emerges from the shadows and I hear your fastidious voice …’
Sindbad had never before listened so intently to a woman as he did then to Fanny. This black-haired, black-eyed, long-legged woman had filled his life and occupied his heart for more than a year and a half. And in that year and a half he would love to have caught her at some lie. He felt that somehow, in some way, Fanny wasn’t telling him the truth, only he didn’t know where the simple meadow of truth stopped and the brightly coloured field of lies began. ‘Ah, but women are always lying,’ he thought as he kissed away her tears and felt her fingers running through his hair, aware of the perfume lingering on his moustache as they walked home. He clung to the lamp-posts and stared into the air in front of him. Where precisely did the lies start?
They were passing the church in the High Street. ‘Would you like me to swear, here, on the steps of the church, that I will never leave you again?’ asked Sindbad, gazing into the woman’s eyes.
‘I know now that you will not desert me,’ she answered with peculiar certainty and smiled at Sindbad. ‘Tonight we shall die together.’
‘We shall die,’ Sindbad repeated mechanically.
‘When you were deeply in love with me, when I was everything to you, when you knelt at my feet and we spent whole days crying or laughing together, or walked hand in hand and knew each other’s thoughts without having to say them and gazed at each other happily, with unwearied love … when our time fled by free as a bird, when we invented wholly new words of endearment to make each other happy, when we exchanged kisses that seemed to go on for ever, and when, behaving perfectly conventionally, we believed we were the chosen, the only pair of lovers, children of God, souls born in the moon and the sun, that was when you promised me we should die together.’
‘Die together?’ asked Sindbad, more of himself than of Fanny. ‘I know death. Death is for women.’
‘Come back with me. I’ve sent the servants away and I want to take farewell of my mother’s picture. Calmly, with full premeditation, you will kill me, so that I can be looking at you as I die, until the moment I close my eyes and feel your lips on my brow, your hand holding my hand as we set out on the great journey. I am quite sure you will follow me, that you would not leave me alone in that vast unknown.’
‘I will follow you,’ Sindbad’s voice trembled.
‘If we were to stay alive we’d only part again. We’d weep and moan for each other, we would suffer exceedingly, and who knows whether we would love one another as deeply if we were to meet again.’
The man bowed his head. ‘Love,’ he sighed, like an exhausted gambler on his way home, having lost everything.
‘We shall die, Sindbad. Together, happily, our hearts filled to overflowing. Who cares whether the sun rises in the morning. We will no longer care about the dawn.’
‘It’s dawn now.’
The woman shuddered. Girls on their way home from the other world were trailing grey veils across the Danube. A seagull, like a wandering spirit, flew off bitterly in the direction of Pest having witnessed the last rites of darkness.
‘It’s dawn,’ the woman repeated sadly, ‘and once day comes I will no longer be able to die. The milkman is due, my husband will arrive by the first train, the servants will be up and ready to go to the market, the postman will deliver an invitation from a friend saying they intend to spend summer in the country and I shall go to hospital to visit my sick brother. Another time, Sindbad … Should we meet again another night …’
Fanny found a cab and waved Sindbad a resigned farewell. The cab slowly disappeared around the corner.
Sindbad took a deep breath. ‘Heavens,’ he thought, ‘Mrs Bánatvári is still sitting on her trunk waiting for me.’ He started to run and arrived at the doors of the house in Hat Street sweating and out of breath.
The woman was sitting on her trunk. ‘I knew you would come back to me,’ she said simply.
Sindbad collapsed onto the settee and before falling asleep smiled sweetly and gently, reflecting on how women were so sure of everything.
Notes
Who he was: the Lubomirskis were Polish princes and landowners whose property in Hungary included Podolin, which is itself now part of Slovakia. In the early seventeenth century Jerzy (George) Lubomirski set up various charitable foundations.
sumach trees: the sumach is a shrub or small tree of the genus Rhus. Certain kinds of sumach are indigenous to southern Europe and are used in the tanning process.
Kaiser Baths: the Császár fürdő. Many of the baths of Budapest are a legacy of the Ottoman occupation of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Kaiser Baths in Buda comprised Turkish baths and steam chambers. They are still open and in use today.
Fisherman’s Bastion: The Fisherman’s Bastion or Halászbástya is the mock-Romanesque fortress constructed betwen 1890–1905 on the hill top next to the Royal Palace overlooking the Danube. It provides romantic walks and panoramic views across the river.
the guard dog is called Tisza, after the river: the Tisza, ‘the slothful Hungarian Nile’ according to the nineteenth-century novelist Kálmán Mikszáth, is one of the two great rivers of Hungary. It runs through central and southern Hungary and joins the Danube between Novi Sad and Belgrade.
tarlatan: thin stiff muslin.
Eperjes: now Pre¿ov in Slovakia, but in Krúdy’s time it was the capital town of Sáros county in Hungary.
the Great Bercsényi inn: Count László Bercsényi (1689–1778), Marshal of France, was born in Eperjes. He founded the French Hussars. His father, Miklós, before him had been one of the most influential generals in Ferenc Rákóczi II’s army. Rákóczi (1676–1735), Prince of Transylvania, led ultimately unsuccessful wars of liberation against the Austrians. His grave has long been an object of pilgrimage for Hungarians.
Pancsova: a town in Greater Hungary, now part of Yugoslavia, some ten miles from Belgrade, scene of Austrian victory over the Turks in 1739, and over the Hungarians in 1849.
blue-dye man: blue-dyeing is a traditional peasant craft and provides the basic colour for skirts, headscarves and other items of clothing.
the White Woman of Lőcse: Mór Jókai’s novel, A lőcsei fehérasszony (`The White Woman of Lőcse’) appeared in 1885. It is about the end of the Rákóczi campaign (see note to p. 60) in 1711. The central character is based upon the historical figure of Julianna Géczy, who betrayed the town of Lőcse, now in Slovakia, to the Austrians, and was consequently tortured and beheaded. A painting of her as a woman dressed in white was displayed at the town gates.
half-crazed Jewesses: Krúdy himself married a Jewish woman (see Introduction), and he wrote a defence of Jews accused of blood crimes.
Kisfaludy: Károly Kisfaludy (1788–1830) was the younger brother of the poet Sándor Kisfaludy (1772–1844). He wrote melodramatic plays and comedies as well as short stories and lyric poetry. His short stories focus on romantic subjects, but incorporate satirical elements.
Liska: pet form of Julia or Juliska.
The body of St Ladislas being carried on a wagon: St Ladislas, King of Hungary from c. 1040–95, founded bishoprics and was a hero of the wars against the pagans. He was canonised in 1192.
the Matthias Church: the Church of the Blessed Virgin in Buda. One of Hungary’s most important and illustrious kings, King Matthias Corvinus (ruled 1458–90), was married here. In 1896 it was restored by Frigyes Schulek.
King Béla: King Béla III (1148–96) ruled H
ungary from 1172 to his death. His remains were brought to the Matthias Church in 1848.
Baron Miklós Jósika: Baron Miklós Jósika (1794–1865), Transylvanian author, was regarded as the founder of the historical novel in Hungary, also its foremost theorist.
Euphrosyne: Krúdy calls her Fruzsina, the Hungarian equivalent. The name was popular in the eighteenth century.
Kisfaludy: see note to p. 81. Could be either of the brothers, possibly the elder.
the Tabán district: The Tabán, now mostly demolished for reasons of hygiene, was one of the oldest districts on the Buda side of the Danube, full of inns and restaurants.
Aranykéz Street: Aranykéz utca, means literally ‘Goldenhand Street’. A street in Budapest.
Petőfi: Sándor Petőfi (1823–49) is Hungary’s national Romantic poet in much the same way as Burns is Scotland’s and was born at Kiskőrös in the Hungarian Lowlands. His songs, ballads, sketches of village life and revolutionary lyrics are central to the Hungarian consciousness. It was his recitation of the Nemzeti Dal (National Song) from the steps of the National Museum that is thought to have sparked the 1848 revolution. He is traditionally supposed to have been killed in battle against the Russians at Segesvár (now Sighisoara, Romania), but his body was never found and some think that he might have been captured by the Russians and died in exile in Siberia.
Aladár Benedek: poet and editor, born in 1843, made his name in the 1860s and 1870s. An oppositional figure, he was the subject of official criticism which eventually silenced him. He died in 1915.
Carthusian Meditations: Baron József Eötvös’s novel A Karthauzi (1839) (`The Carthusian’) is set in France. The disappointed hero joins the Carthusian order.