Gyula Krudy - Sunflower

“Let me cook dinner, I know our dear departed’s favorite dishes,” offered Stony Dinka.

“And Kakuk should bring the Gypsies,” added Fanny Late. “Let’em play once more my good man’s favorite songs.”

The two women warmed up to the idea of their bereavement, achieving a kind of Christmastime mood. All of life should be a feast. Even a death may have its beneficial as well as its harmful aspects. Many a wake has turned into a dance.

Back in a corner of the yard stood the village poor, who had claimed only an hour or two in Pistoli’s crowded life. Old peasant women dabbed kerchiefs at the corner of their eyes, and tradeswomen clad in black gossiped about the gentlefolk. The usual audience of village funerals was awaiting the performance.

At last the members of the glee club Pistoli had presided over made their entrance. Men in threadbare black suits, walrus mustaches, some lanky, some stout, and all of them flustered. There were six songsters in all, and all of them wore over their shoulders the national colors muffled with black. Their entrance was somewhat timid and uncertain, for they lacked Mr. Pistoli’s self-confident figure at the head of their company, leading them into battle. So they stumbled and stepped on each other’s heel, and it took a considerable effort on the part of Gerzsábek, the director of funerary affairs and the sender of death notices, to settle them down on the left of the coffin. It was rather miraculous that Pistoli had lain motionless in the box all this time. When the glee club was at last installed in place, the members’ necks started craning toward the open gate. For they were still without their famous basso profundo, who, in order to fortify his singing voice, had dropped in somewhere on the way for a pint. And Mayer, it appeared, was still fortifying his voice.

Meanwhile other problems had arisen.

The Catholic priest sent the sexton with a message that he would not undertake Mr. Pistoli’s funeral service, for the good gentleman had been an atheist from way back, having lapsed from the faith decades ago.

So what had been Pistoli’s religion?

Nobody knew. Only the deceased could have told now whether he had believed in God, and if so, according to what rite he had praised the Lord. No one seemed to recall ever seeing him in church.

So the funeral would have to be held without the priest.

Eveline’s sensibilities were excessively offended by the abstention of the Church.

“I’m leaving,” she told Maszkerádi, and could hardly hold back her sobs.

“Stay,” her friend whispered. “Gerzsábek’s already sent for the vicar. A Calvinist clergyman won’t refuse to bury the old reprobate.”

“I am a Catholic,” Eveline insisted. “I respect my religion. I cannot participate in the funeral of a heretic.”

“Then go,” snapped Maszkerádi. “But I’m staying to the end, even if the dogcatcher comes to bury him. Go on, I can walk home.”

Eveline, shamefaced, slipped out of the yard. Her example was followed by others. Some of the old women sidled away from the coffin, as if it carried contagion. Once outside the gate, they hung around to keep an eye on the proceedings from the safe distance of the far side of the street.

But the general mood turned agitated after Gerzsábek returned empty-handed. Apparently the Calvinist preacher had gone to the next village for a funeral, and would not be back before nightfall. There was no other man of the cloth in the area.

Maszkerádi had to adjust the veil over her face so that no one would notice her smile.

Now Fanny Late stepped up. Timid at first, she gathered her pluck and surveyed the scene.

“Ladies and gentlemen, why don’t we say the Lord’s Prayer. That should be enough for a soul’s salvation.”

“And what about the glee club?” Kakuk argued.

“Ah, the hell with’em,” replied Fanny Late. “So who can recite the Lord’s Prayer here without a mistake?”

Again it was Kakuk who stepped forth, determined to save some of the dignity of the occasion, as if he had been specifically instructed to do so by Mr. Pistoli.

He crossed himself and began to recite the Lord’s Prayer in a loud voice.

But in vain did Kakuk pilfer Pistoli’s pants and jacket. The assembled company was well aware that the man leading the prayer was nothing but a common tramp. In ones and twos, women and men began to slip away. Maszkerádi and the two tavern keepers were the last to remain. At last Fanny Late venomously hissed at the young lady:

“And what about you, pretty mask?! Why don’t you, too, beat it?”

Maszkerádi shuddered. She gave the flushed woman a withering glance, then hurried out of the courtyard.

Quitt drove up the hearse, and now the coffin had to be hoisted. They tried levering the black wooden box with poles, but it was as heavy as lead. The two hefty females and the two older men had a sweaty time of hoisting Mr. Pistoli up for his last carriage ride. Stony Dinka quite forgot herself and let out a couple of oaths, sotto voce.

“Oh, I always knew my darling carried his weight well. But I had no idea he was this heavy. He must have drunk a lot of water.”

It was now around three in the afternoon.

The cloudless sky was as clear as a conscience with nothing to hide. The May sun stood high up above the earth, indifferent to the fact that a funeral was about to take place down here. But just as Quitt’s cart pulled out of Pistoli’s gate, a tiny little cloud appeared on the western edge of the sky. In shape it resembled a black dog cavorting on the horizon.

The cemetery was quite far from the manor. People who live in these parts prefer not to keep the dead in everyday sight. They are enough trouble showing up in your dreams, when you are defenseless. They enter the atrium, sit around at length in front of the cold fireplace, drink up the leftover wine on the dinner table, rest their head on their arm and their expression contains such pain that the dreamer wakes next day to ponder: what sort of mortal sin could weigh upon the dearly beloved departed one? And all the useless lottery numbers they give! Plus they spout tales about one’s jealously guarded women! They divulge one’s most painful secrets…Yes, better keep the dead far apart from the living. No one can thrive on the friendship of the dead.

So the cemetery was quite far, tucked away in a valley from where no evil waters from the malicious dead could descend upon the village, no seepage from old crones to affect the new wine. Let their tears flow into each other’s graves. Most of the people lying here were related, anyway. One lived ninety years, another only thirty; no matter, they were all the same flesh and blood. Former lovers must surely get together here, regardless of what obstacles life had raised between them. Grandmothers can sneak off at night to join their quondam beaux, no one would notice that their beds are empty. Even if the lawful husband does occupy the neighboring grave (for old people like that sort of thing), the aged husband would never think of asking his better half what she did in the adjacent pit all night long until cock’s crow. Yes, it is a fine world, underground.

Everyone can live it up with their mate. — Why, many was the time Mr. Pistoli had passed the cemetery in the course of his journeys. The trees of quietude: cypresses, willows, locusts full of crows’ nests, bushes humming with bees all knew him well, since the old cemetery was a most suitable place for conducting amorous trysts. The neglected grave mounds had been long ago abandoned by the old women who visit graveyards for no reason at all. Atop Darabos (lived 80 years) or over the widow Fitkonidesz (lived 76 years, and in the meantime helped bring Mr. Pistoli into the world, being a midwife) it felt oh so good to stretch out in the company of some sweet young thing, on those grave mounds where the knobby toes and skinny arms had long ago turned into larkspur. No wonder Mr. P. loved to sing the song that went: “In the graveyard, that’s where I first saw your face…” On his way back from a wake (having said goodbye to the dead man), from Phtrügy (where he’d gone to taste the fresh horseradish), from a wedding (where he kept hugging the bride), or hearing Gyula Benczi play old Hungarian songs — Pistoli never failed to tip his hat and raise the wineskin in front of the cemetery’s old inhabitants. “Here’s to you, old buddy!” he shouted at the ancient headstones and crosses. At other times, usually in his cups, wrapped in his cloak he crossed the entire cemetery at midnight, curious to see if the dead would snag his coat, as they did the proverbial shoemaker’s. Yes, Pistoli was quite well known here. Maybe one or two old drinking companions and a few bored women were already lying in wait for him.