Gyula Krúdy - Life Is A Dream

The lady had for some time scrutinized Titusz’s hat and umbrella-cane before making up her mind to approach the journalist’s table. But Finedwell, befitting his genteel accessories, eager to assist the Grand Dame of the Orfeum in her role, stood up and stepped toward ‘Magnate’ Elza, respectfully taking off his hat while adjusting his stride as if he were still a student at the small-town dancing school he had once attended — he approached the lady on tiptoe, but with the right amount of manliness.

‘Would you honour me by joining me at my table?’ the journalist asked, as if it were someone else speaking, someone who had been, unbeknownst to him, hiding inside him all along. Obviously this could only have been Kornel Abranyi, Junior, whom the journalist had idolized in his youth. Or it could have been Gyula Deri, dubbed ‘LeDeri’ by his colleagues, famous for his gallant adventures with the fair sex, even though the statuesque man of letters had carried only silver coins, and those in the upper pocket of his vest to prevent theft.

‘Let’s have some bubbly, Mademoiselle!’ exclaimed Titusz, escorting this paragon of beauty to his table where he used his hat to sweep cigarette ashes from the marble surface.

The champagne soon arrived, just as in old music-hall ditties, as the lady looked on with a waxen smile, since she was used to witnessing this ritual night after night. But Finedwell pressed his advantage: ‘Tell me, my dear Elza, what do I need to do so that for once in your life you’ll cheer up enough to give me a kiss?’

The belle of the Orfeum answered clumsily: ‘First of all, Mr Editor, put your hat back on, before you catch a head cold.’ Thus spake the swansdown-wrapped, silvery, silky and supernaturally dumb angel of the Orfeum and helped to adjust the journalist’s hat at a rakish tilt. Then, with hands that idleness made as white as the flesh of a walnut, she turned the brim down, as fashion dictated it that season.

The journalist and the star of the Orfeum Café appeared to be on most intimate terms by the time Steepletippy and company returned from the café’s inner sanctum to join their friend in the outer area. Egged on by Finedwell, ‘Magnate’ Elza had already dropped one fragile champagne flute full of bubbly to the floor, so that the janitor had to be summoned. The stylish quality of their principal’s partying did not fail to impress the duelling seconds. A person carousing in the company of ‘Magnate’ Elza could not be a nonentity. It began to dawn on them that their principal was a man of some stature, after all.

‘So you are done with your business here?’ inquired Titusz in a loud voice. ‘I trust it was a matter of life and death?’

Hearing this, the stony-faced female idol smiled in acknowledgement at the two gentlemen, as if she had long known them for their indomitable courageousness and heroic acts. Having downed a few glasses of wine, the pockmarked painter once more felt like launching into one of his epic tales, but Steepletippy, the dwarf, cut him short.

‘We had better instruct our friend Finedwell in how to behave himself at the duel tomorrow. If only to keep him from putting us to shame!’

By now the outer area of the café was quite empty. The actors, horse dealers, and various vendors had given up and wandered off. Only one old man, a one-time stockbroker called Uncle Blau, was still sitting in a corner, waiting for some well-heeled passer-by whom he could initiate into the tricks of playing the market. Patti, the magician of card tricks who was said to be a hundred years old, had also ambled off, with his hairpiece and his pack of cards. This allowed the stenography professor, who was all worked up, to measure off thirty paces which he counted out leaning on his stiletto-bearing cane. ‘One, two, three … thirteen, twenty-three … thirty; and now you advance five more steps. Please, Loczi, give the command,’ the hunchback shouted from the far corner of the café.

The pockmarked artist now rose from his chair and grabbed Finedwell by the shoulder. ‘Come, take your place,’ he said and led Finedwell to a particular square of the parquet floor. ‘You stand here and wait for the words of command. First command: Attention! Second command: Ready! Third, I will count to ten, during which interval you must fire your pistol, standing sideways facing your opponent so that you provide the smallest target. So, it is Attention, Ready, one, two, three …’

At this point the crack of an actual pistol rent the curtain of softly playing music. The professor of stenography, standing at the far end of the café, had actually drawn his pistol and fired a shot. One lamp expired with a crash. ‘We must get this fellow used to the sound of firearms!’ said Steepletippy after a pause, for he had paled at the sound of the shot. No great harm was done. ‘Magnate’ Elza caressed the hand of the journalist, who had returned to his seat. But then the head waiter arrived bearing a silver tray with the bill, his look resembling a highway robber’s, and our Titusz suddenly realized that after paying the bill he would have at the most ten kreuzers to his name, enough to pay the janitor for letting him into his building — and even that only if he stinted on the waiter’s tip. ‘Magnate’ Elza glided off towards the ladies’ room. The two gentlemen got into their cab and shouted to the journalist from the window: ‘Four-thirty tomorrow afternoon at the Franz Josef barracks!’

Under the influence of all the champagne he had consumed, Finedwell was as yet unable to fully appreciate the fatal situation he had become mixed up in. Sauntering on Andrassy Avenue, he searched through his pockets in the hope of coming across monetary units he was in the habit of hiding away, as it were, from himself. He thought it likely that he would find a five-forint coin in some pocket, hidden there when he had received his advance, as he always did whenever the happy-go-lucky journalists would hold up a colleague in the office to shake him down for the contents of his pockets … ‘That’s the life of a bohemian!’ they would shout, on occasion stripping Titusz down to his ‘birthday suit’. But now the quest proved fruitless; even if he did have some money left in a secret pocket, it was so well hidden that it would be found only after his death by someone selling the trousers to a second-hand-clothes dealer, when the silver coin fell out in the course of bargaining. Therefore he turned his steps towards the Café Ferenci where he hoped to find a large company who were sure to be still up on this night to discuss his life and death.

But to his great disappointment the Ferenci was empty, the journalists were gone from the round table by the cash till where they usually sat, puffed up with a sense of their own importance or else deflated by the shadow of their penuriousness. Only Olga sat in her place, in melancholy languor and utterly devoid of hope, as always, whenever dawn was breaking and another night was gone without anything happening. Sobered up, the journalist stopped by the cashier lady’s throne and spoke: ‘My dear little Olga, sweetheart, here is the dawn of the last day on which you may still agree to become my bride.’

Olga, who had obviously heard this before from Finedwell, showed not the least surprise. Only her glance became more melancholy as the crocheting in her hands trembled.

‘My dear little Olga,’ Titusz went on enthusiastically, as if wishing to forget his wasted night and squandered money, as well as his penniless present, with these gurgled words that seemed to amuse himself above all. ‘My dear little Olga, I would die with a far better conscience knowing that my name lived on, even if only through a widowed woman. The widow Finedwell! Olga, that doesn’t sound half as bad as you think.’