Gyula Krudy - Sunflower

Libinyei’s murderous fist smashed the window.

In the last flicker of the guttering candles he could see the pilgrim-faced musician leap to his feet in the corner, raise his gleaming instrument and deal Maszkerádi’s skull a deadly blow, fully meaning to dispatch him to the other world, this time once and for all. Indeed, the libertine collapsed like a whirling mass of dry leaves, when the autumn wind suddenly withdraws behind a tombstone in the municipal park to overhear the conversation of two lovers. The reveler with the bushy, overgrown eyebrows and black evening wear vanished into the flagstones of the floor. For years, the inhabitants of the house would search for him in the cellar, whenever they heard a wine cask creak, but it was only the new wine fermenting in the silence of the night.

By the time Libinyei made his way into the house he had grabbed an iron bar and was savoring glorious visions of murder as his sole road to salvation. However, both women (each in her own bedchamber) appeared to be as sound asleep as if there were no tomorrow. The itinerant musician had slipped away like a mendicant friar. Libinyei spent the night in his brother’s wife’s room, and attempted to convince Lotti that her dead husband lying under the window would arise and presently enter the house bleeding and gasping, to hold ordeal by fire over her. In a whisper Lotti confessed her mortal sins to her brother-in-law: she alone had laid Maszkerádi to waste, by means of the iron nail and the knitting needle, thereby earning the gratitude of every Josephstadt mother. Above all, Lotti had been outraged by the balding libertine’s latest schemes to seduce the youngest girls awaiting confirmation.

“Oh, you witch,” the blue-dyer stammered, sobbing and in love, “I’m going to take care of you from now on. And I’ll skin you alive if you ever conjure up Maszkerádi from the beyond to come for dinner again.”

Lotti solemnly swore, and at dawn they brought the corpse in from the sidewalk, where the itinerant musician had been guarding it as tenaciously as a ratter.

Such were the circumstances surrounding Malvina’s birth.

Lotti died in childbirth; the attending doctors delivered the child of a mother who was more dead than alive. For the first fifteen years of her life she never heard a word spoken about her parents. She was raised by a black-clad, thin-lipped, dagger-tongued woman (Helen) to whom Libinyei, the girl’s stepfather, never said a word. This woman spent her nights in a separate apartment of the house, with the taciturn itinerant musician on her doorstep, performing all sorts of hocus-pocus to keep the ghosts away. Libinyei, at times, addressed the girlchild as Miss Maszkerádi. (Later, after she had left her boarding school, Malvina used the pen name “Countess Maszkerádi” in her correspondence with classmates.) One day the monkish itinerant reported that Helen was in her last hour, whereupon his mysterious presence vanished forever from the household. By that time Libinyei had amassed such a fortune that he barely grieved over the death of his neglected wife. His possessions included mansions, land in the country, and real estate in Buda.

Good fortune and wealth did their best to console him. After Helen’s death all kinds of relatives came to stay at the townhouse, but none of them won Libinyei’s approval. Springtime visits to spas, quack remedies, barbers and doctors all failed to rejuvenate him. Soon enough he followed Helen, Lotti, and Maszkerádi into the great beyond. Malvina became the wealthiest heiress in Budapest: somber, frosty, intrepid, and miserable.

Malvina Maszkerádi was Eveline’s best and only friend, entrusted with all of the girl’s secrets, like a private diary.

A few days after the Tarot reading Miss Maszkerádi arrived at Bujdos-Hideaway.

“I sensed that you are in some kind of danger,” said the solemn girl, her eyes downcast. “I wanted to be by your side.”

Miss Maszkerádi had stayed at Bujdos before. She knew by name each dog, each horse and rooster. The migrating swallow and the stork nesting on the chimney of the servants’ quarters both greeted the melancholy maiden. The servants dared not look her in the eye, but stared after her as they would at a creature from another world.

Eveline both loved and worried about her strange friend. But her vernal insomnia immediately passed as soon as Miss Maszkerádi joined the Hideaway household. Like one preparing for the grave, Eveline related her recent experiences in the minutest detail, including Andor Álmos-Dreamer’s enigmatic demise and resurrection.

“He’s crazy, but honest. This village Don Juan’s going to be your downfall yet,” observed Miss Maszkerádi. “And what about your gambler?” she inquired. “Show me the gambler’s letters.”

Eveline shook her head.

“He’s afraid to write me. Sometimes in the morning I stand by the window and watch the mailman trudging along on the road far away. That gray old man always comes the same way, sad as autumn and just as hopeless. If he were to deliver a letter from Pest one day…But I don’t even know if I’d like to receive a letter…”

“Your gambler’s crazy, too…He thinks you’re some other-wordly creature,” Miss Maszkerádi replied scornfully. “I assume every man to be insane, and usually the events prove me right. Oh, there’s the ass who believes you are a demon, an angel of death, and who wants to escape into death when he feels he’s lost his freedom. Meanwhile another inane male will worship you like a saint or a holy icon, and expect you to perform miracles. Only I know you exactly as you really are: a scatterbrained, bored, orphaned young miss. Why, by now you should have married a first lieutenant or some young gent with a duck’s ass haircut. But you believe life is more interesting this way. Well, one fine day some maniac will snag you by the throat like a fox taking a goose.”

“Please calm down,” implored Eveline. “Haven’t you ever been in love?”

“Oh yes, with a dog…or a horse…or a wooden cross at the old Buda military cemetery over the grave of a young officer whose fiancée’d run off to work the cash register at a nightclub. Men stink. If I were to find one guy whose mouth had a pleasing aroma, maybe I’d let him kiss me. Or rather I wouldn’t wait but kiss him myself. If, God forbid, I should find a man I like, I’d pick him like a roadside poppy. If I could only live…If it were really worthwhile to be alive, I’d show you how to live life. But I’m not in good health, and I’m not old enough to enjoy being in poor health.”

“Just simmer down,” Eveline repeated. “Can’t you hear someone lurking around the house? Every night I hear him and my heart almost bursts…”

It was a spring night.

“Nah, it’s just the unusual weather we’re having,” Miss Maszkerádi replied, unmoved. “It’s all that meteoric crap — ashes and dust from burnt-out stars — the winds sweep into the atmosphere…It’s only the night, plucking an old mandolin string in the attic that’s been lying silent for years. No need to go mushroom-crazy, like some fungus that suddenly pops up, so glad to be among us.”

“But I tell you, someone goes past my window every night. I tell myself, perhaps it’s Kálmán, and my heart nearly screams out like a bird that’s caught. Perhaps it’s Álmos-Dreamer, and my tears soak the pillow…Or it’s the night watchman, so I just sigh — but the candle still burns till dawn, I simply can’t get resigned to living this way. But how else should I live?”

Sitting on the edge of the bed, listening to her friend, Miss Maszkerádi folded her arms.

“In old Russian novels people asked such questions, behaving like cardboard characters…But today it’s totally different. Novels only show you how to die. I don’t even know who my father was. One thing for sure, he never thought of me. My mother had no way of knowing, either, that I would be here some day. I came into being and grew like an icicle under the eaves. This is why I’ll never have a child. I just can’t recommend this lifestyle for you, Eveline, although I know you want me to. Well, each to her own…suit on suit, heart to heart,” mocked Miss Maszkerádi.