Gyula Krudy - Sunflower

In the neighboring room the ivory ball was already spinning in the wheel.

For the time being Mr. Zöld manned the roulette wheel, with the expertise of a veteran Monte Carlo croupier. (Should the wheel perform poorly, the Madame was ready to spell him; her ring-studded plump hands turned up numbers that made the players curse.)

Neither Diamant nor Kálmán had the wherewithal for a stake — not even a five-crown piece — to try their luck. Therefore they had a leisurely, heartfelt chat in the salon, while the players’ chaotic hubbub and the jingle of gold and silver filtered toward them like sounds from a distant, exotic province.

“I’d love to be a tenant leaseholder on some village estate…” continued Diamant, signaling the footman for another bottle of complimentary bubbly. “I’d keep young maidservants who’d give me a hand adulterating the wine. Ah, my wife would have money to stuff her straw mattresses with. As for the outlaws, I’d either be pals with them, or else take potshots at them from behind barred windows. I’d have my horses, cattle, children and freedom. Wear a blue housecoat and marry a young girl when I’m a hundred. Yes, I’d grow a beard like my father’s and be lord and master of my house like an Oriental potentate. Now I am just a bum in the big city. A village cur lost in the metropolis, because he ate the folks out of house and home. And who do you think you are, my young friend, Kálmán Ossuary?”

Kálmán calmly waved his hand.

“I won’t challenge you to a duel, Mr. Diamant, no matter what you toss in my face.”

“I know: you’ll give that satisfaction only to gentlemen! But do you know who are the ones lording it in Hungary these days?”

Before Diamant could continue, a dreadful howl of rage rang out in the gaming room. A man roared as if he had caught his wife in flagrante. A drowning, raucous howl of murderous intent.

Kálmán jumped to his feet.

His stout friend tranquilly restrained his arm.

“Let’em be. Only scoundrels and idiots get into fights.”

In the roulette room Kálmán witnessed the following edifying scene:

A gentleman in tails, his eyes reduced to red circles by alcohol and rage, clutched an empty champagne bottle, and threatened at the top of his voice to crack the croupier’s bald skull. The dramatic intermezzo caused only a brief interruption in the progress of the play. The croupier’s cronies, who hovered like executioner’s assistants behind Mr. Zöld, and cheered the house’s winnings with spasmodic gesticulations and inarticulate shouts and turned cadaverous, livid faces upon less profitable runs of the ball, now saw the time ripe to demonstrate their usefulness and servility. In a trice they surrounded the fuming player. One set about convincing the man of the impropriety of his conduct, another protested in a rapid patter that Zöld’s play was unimpeachable, while a third shook his knobby butcher-boy knuckles at the tipsy gentleman’s nose.

“You’re disturbing the game!” squawked others who sat hunched over the green baize tabletop clutching pocket notebooks or slips of paper, dead serious about recording the run of numbers.

Shouts of “Throw him out!” echoed, like some cabbalistic formula, incanted by a potbellied, hedgehog-eyed, swine-dealer sort who had just collected sizeable winnings by staking on zero.

“Take it easy, Colonel,” bleated others, trying to appease him, while, wrinkling their brows, they took advantage of the fortuitous pause to appraise winnings and losses.

“I was under the impression I’m among gentlemen,” bellowed the personage addressed as Colonel, whereupon one or two of the players started to tug at their shirtcuffs, and one sneering, bald fop with a face just begging to be slapped screwed in his monocle.

“How amusing,” he lisped. “The Colonel was under the impression…Most amusing.”

But his comment proved ill-timed. The enraged Colonel, unable to reach the croupier, vented his pent-up fury by slamming his fist into the monocled face, and sent the man sprawling under the table.

That fine gentleman emerged deathly pale (sans monocle) from below and produced a revolver as big as a hambone from a back pocket.

“That’s all we needed!” exclaimed Guszti, the cheerful hostess, almost gladly. And without so much as straining her biceps she hustled the gun-toting dandy into the adjoining room.

Mr. Zöld seized the ensuing pause to remove his monocle, and assuming a rather innocent and even pained expression (perhaps regretting the fop’s malheur ) he rose, radiating empathy.

“Gentlemen, we’re not playing for beans here. I believe it’s in everyone’s interest that we continue playing fair and square.”

“The police ought to be told about what’s going on here,” the Colonel persisted, grinding his teeth.

Mr. Zöld gestured unctuously:

“These gentlemen are my daily guests,” quoth he, deferentially looking around as if the company assembled around the roulette wheel were the very cream of the nation’s paladins and standard-bearing knighthood. “They will testify that the play in these rooms is strictly above the board. And anyway, in roulette the croupier is a mere intermediary handling the players’ bets,” he added, as an edifying afterthought.

“The person who brought me here assured me zero wouldn’t count,” the Colonel bellowed.

Mr. Zöld raised a palm to his ear, as if unsure he had heard the Colonel’s words right — although for the past fifteen minutes the debate had been over this very point. Mr. Zöld merely shook his incredulous head, and asked in tones of deepest injury:

“What could the Colonel mean by that? And anyway, who was the idiot who duped him into believing such nonsense?”

“It was Jalopy!” the Colonel sullenly replied.

“Jalopy,” Mr. Zöld echoed, and emitted a gentle peal of laughter. “What a rascal.”

“Jalopy!” shouted the other players, amidst ironic and derisive guffaws, upon hearing such an absurdity.

Mr. Zöld, pleased as Punch, resumed his seat, and the Colonel, muttering, sucked on his cigar, with only an occasional glance of his bloodshot eyes around the table. Meanwhile in the next room the much-derided Jalopy was the recipient of a cold compress applied by Madame Guszti’s ring-laden fingers. Ah, the glitter of those rubies, emeralds and turquoises on this woman’s marvelously white hands! What a manicured, soft and delightful female hand — Jalopy could have spent all day admiring it. He resolved that, were he to marry, his wife’s fingers would be lavish with rings — even if he’d have to beg, borrow or steal.

Diamant, having crept unnoticed into the card room, now stood, hands in pocket, behind Kálmán. The older man thoroughly despised these whiny, jittery, loud and insolent cardplayers who were incapable of concealing their jubilation or disappointment. Why, back in his days as a celebrated player, he and his confrères would wager entire fortunes without batting an eyelid, and lose without complaint! Yes, back in those days the women left at home started to pray the instant their men stepped out of the house…

Diamant watched the game’s progress in silence, with a disdainful smile, the unlucky gambler’s bitter, scornful expression, observing the sizeable stakes swept away by the croupier. Some of the gentlemen’s faces had already developed a deathly pallor; trembling hands fingered coins after repeated losses; others clutched charms, lucky pennies, as if already fondling the barrel of a revolver, shoulders hunched, like hills crushed by ice, faces stiff in craven prayer to Fortuna, like fire victims before a burnt-out hovel; frenzied groans emerged from throats as players whimpered at unfavorable turns of the ball; one lip-biting, twitching gentleman uttered shouts of “But my dear Géza!” as if that was all he could remember; eyes practically rolled out of their sockets following the thalers and guilders like the rear wheels of a cart, or else they cast hopeful glances toward the croupier’s pile of winnings, as if expecting the soiled banknotes to turn into a white dove that would ascend with a flutter of wings.