Gyula Krudy - Sunflower

“…Back then I was in love with an officer who spent an occasional evening with me.

“Did I say I was in love? No, Eveline, I must confess I’ve never been in love, just like that French princess. I simply happened to spend the winter and early spring in Egypt; went to lunch when the bell rang in the hotel, and had an affair with an officer of the local garrison. Simply because that was how things were done in the haut monde I frequented for entertainment, just like a servant girl who goes out to a masked ball.

“One night the officer — and I can’t for the life of me recall his face, or the camel driver’s, who took me out into the desert — well, the officer had had a little too much to drink, and he confessed that on days when I did not require his services he spent the night with the Frenchwoman, and he swore upon his honor that he could barely tell the two of us apart. To him, our voices, bodies, hair, and gestures appeared mirror images of each other. What’s more, while making love, the princess called him ‘sweet young master,’ the same term of endearment that I had picked up from a peasant woman here in Hungary. The princess, like me, begged to die at the moment of consummation. She loved the same feature of his face as I did, kissed his hand the same way as I, and watered him like a lady gardener her violets. And she, too, was supremely happy when this thirsty violet, parched by the Egyptian night, lapped up her blonde French vintage with loud slurps.

“The man was totally drunk, and insensitive to the fact that he was skinning me alive by ascribing my most intimate amorous behavior to another woman.

“I’m not going to go into what I felt and thought at the time. All I’m going to say is that on that night he lovingly implored me to let down my long auburn hair so that he could tie it in a knot around his neck. In vain. Like a naive little girl from the Josephstadt, I never really fathomed the purpose of this production at the time. Back then I had not yet visited prisons and madhouses. I only knew the life around me, worlds apart from the tragic depths, or the solemn mysteries — as far apart as our luxury liner and that Black Sea steamer full of howling slaves, that we passed near the African shore. Back then I still believed that no matter how I lived, acted, behaved and felt, I would still eventually await, clutching an old prayerbook, my heart at peace, the arrival of the Jesuit father to administer the last rites in my white-curtained Josephstadt house, with the consecrated pussy willow on the wall. Back then I still believed that from that tranquil island of happiness one could roam without hurt on wild sargasso seas, and that adventures and experience would not blind my eyes like droppings from a swallows’ nest.

“I’ll make this short. The next morning, after an anxious night, I thoroughly scrutinized my French princess, who until then I had found quietly repulsive, like most of the ‘culture vultures’ who spend every day of their lives in white ocean liners and hotels with gold trim.

“The princess undeniably resembled me. The saucy thing even imitated my style in clothes — or else I did hers. The only other thing I wanted to know was whether she had poor vision in her left eye, as I do. So I decided to test her. At lunch I sat immediately on her left and on my white lace fan I wrote in large, clear letters, ‘I hate you,’ in French. I’d already made sure that my left eye could not decipher the letters. During lunch we exchanged a few neutral words. Then I opened my fan and conspicuously waved it near her face several times. Had her left eye not been as poor as mine, she would have certainly noticed the inked inscription. But she merely smiled neutrally, bored and indifferent as a puma at the zoo. Her hair emanated the scent of Japanese gardens. She was as weird as an exotic bird. A ghastly chill ran through my soul when I considered that, under certain circumstances, I resembled her.

“After lunch I spoke briefly with the officer. I told him I wanted to rest that evening, so why didn’t he spend the night with my rival. ‘Besides, I’m curious to know what the princess thinks about this extraordinary similarity between us,’ I told him. His eyes flashed like a knife in a scuffle. ‘I’ll ask her!’ he said, licking his chops, the poor fool. Service in the colonies had degraded him, as it does most Europeans. Looking at him, I thought that once upon a time this blue-eyed young man had been a blond-haired little boy who went to school wearing a white collar, the taste of cake in his mouth and the trace of his mother’s kiss on his forehead.

“Next morning the officer was found strangled in the corridor outside the French princess’s room. My alter ego had committed the deed that would have been my lot. She had tied her hair in a knot around the show-off’s neck, and suffocated him.

“What happened to the murderous princess? That I can’t tell you, Eveline, because I left Cairo before the results of the inquest into the officer’s death were revealed. I arrived home in a state of nervous fever and hallucination. I don’t think I’ll leave this country for some time to come. After all, in this land we more or less know each other, men and women, and surprises are unlikely; our sins are of the usual sort, the modes of thought familiar. Sometimes I visit menageries, and the eyes of caged exotic predators remind me of looks I have encountered in my travels abroad. So I am a native of the Josephstadt, after all. Even though in make-believe I have rehearsed a happy and serene death scene — oh, I don’t think I’ll rest in peace when I kiss the crucifix for the last time. Although at times I still think that my alter ego, the unhappy French princess, has suffered and atoned on my behalf. She has done my penance, by living out the life that I should have lived, by rights. I am the shadow that remains after she has disappeared. For where do they go, the shadows of folks who have gone underground? They must live on, somehow. So maybe fate will deal me a merciful death.”

“Poor dear,” replied Eveline, and embraced her friend with a heart as pure as only a village girl’s can be. She smelled of old lavender and wore shirts of fine Upland linen. In cold weather she put on soft cotton flannel petticoats although she knew full well that this was no longer the fashion. She loved to linger in vaulted chambers, to dawdle in a May garden, and, come autumn, to sink into reveries wrapped in a Kashmir shawl. And she loved beautiful old novels.

“So who was your second alter ego?” Eveline asked.

“I’ll tell you when we’ve forgotten about Egypt,” replied Miss Maszkerádi, assuming the grave air of a schoolteacher. “Anyway, it’s getting dark, time to light the lamp.”

On this spring night the ladies of Bujdos found themselves serenaded.

It was in honor of the visitor, as always, whenever Malvina Maszkerádi sojourned at Hideaway.

When the moonlight rose above the canebrakes, where it had been brooding like an outlaw, it revealed, leaning against a linden tree, the figure of Mr. Pistoli, who had already gone through three wives, for he still hoped that he would conquer the Donna Maszkerádi, whom this incorrigible amoroso with the tinted mustache liked to dub the Dark Lady of the Sonnets, among other monickers.

Ah, Pistoli was a solemn and cruel-hearted man of the world except at Bujdos, where, the moment he set foot, he became a clown. He brought along a Gypsy band, and made sure to collect one half of the generous honorarium he bestowed on them from Andor Álmos-Dreamer the day after the night music — for Eveline, too, was a recipient of these moonlit melodies.

As soon as the two misses had turned in for the night, the huge watchdogs were let off their chains, the field guard discharged his shotgun and the spring night settled over the land like a maiden in her bed: here came the town fiacre on which Gypsies love to clamber as if it were Jacob’s ladder. Ah yes, Gypsies love to ride a fiacre! The contrabassist, like a grandfather at a wedding, conducted the procession from the coachbox, where he had shivered, hugging his partner in crime throughout the potholed ride. The cimbalom was tied to the forage rack, and its player, a youth with a bowler hat and a frilly bow tie, stood on the running board of the carriage, jealously watching his beloved. Inside the coach violins in sacks lurched along with the nonchalant, brandy-tippling cheer of a red-faced road inspector making the rounds of his home district.