Gyula Krúdy - Life Is A Dream

So, like some long-awaited Christmas package, Szindbad arrived at Terka’s once again and settled in next to the roast apple-scented stove, just like an older man who plans to spend his remaining years sitting by the fireside. Granted, at times the stove resounded with the crackling and whooshing of acacia trees that stand by the meandering roadside, sounds that remind the listener of travellers’ songs in the distance. And yes, the rustic afternoon somnolence was at times underscored for Szindbad by the music of jingling bells from sleighs heading to some fair or wedding, the drivers’ souls warmed by wine and their flanks by the hefty wife. Frost seals women’s mouths so nobody knows what they’re thinking about when they glimpse a snow-covered wayside crucifix or the manly hat of some scarecrow jutting up through the snowy blanket of the fields.

Although Szindbad was still deeply interested in the thoughts of womenfolk, no matter how lowly their station in life, for once he paid no attention to anything but the patter of Terka’s slippered feet. Sounding like Christmas buskers in the village, those slippers pitter-pattered during the first hours after his arrival, scurrying, like a woodpecker on a shingled roof, up to the attic to select the choicest winter pears and apples for Szindbad, or down to the root cellar for the kohlrabi and carrots Szindbad had to have in his soup ever since he had learned he was suffering from arteriosclerosis. Yes, those slippers rushed down the warm-in-winter steps into the dank murk of the cellar to tap a cask of the unpretentious local wine favoured by Szindbad, while the candle atop the neighbouring barrel (that was the deacon’s) guttered in peaceful complicity … Those same slippers clickety-clacked to make the eiderdown bed in case Szindbad felt like lying down after his journey — but for now he preferred to sit by the stove (for which reason a serving maid whose bare feet were turning blue received two quick slaps out in the courtyard). After that the busy slippers slowed down, and came to a standstill on the threshold.

‘Tell me, why won’t you lie down? What’s the hurry? Is your wife waiting up for you?’

Szindbad waved a sad hand. ‘It’s been a long time since my wife waited up for me.’

‘If you love her so much, why do you still come to see me?’

Szindbad tried to dismiss this with a laugh: ‘I can’t die without saying goodbye to you first.’

When Szindbad let this jest slip out he did not realize that truer words had never been spoken.

Round about twilight time Terka, sitting by the fire, launched into her usual fairytales, fables of times when Szindbad had loved her and her alone, legends of woodlands the two had roamed together, and the time when, sitting on an anthill, red ants swarmed over her legs. Now her words warbled of tulle-drape mirrors where their eyes had met once as if posing as a twosome at the photographer’s studio in town, on a day when this lady, with the fate of a wind-blown leaf, would be called ‘Sweetheart’ by Szindbad. Tears welled in her eyes as she spoke of the room they had once shared at the Hotel Kuria in Vac on a market day, when they registered as husband and wife. Her voice assumed an otherworldly air recalling the Mariabesnyo shrine where Szindbad had recognized her, Terka! among a thousand pilgrims simply by her legs and her walk. This is where Szindbad began to nod off like a man in his cups who by far prefers dream visions to tales told by a mortal.

‘Don’t tell me you came here to sleep!’ cried Terka, changing her tone of voice, for at her age she still appreciated manliness and courtesy in a paramour.

‘Stop preaching!’ riposted Szindbad as if shooing away a fly, or reacting to his wife at home.

‘You know one kind word from you is enough to get me to do anything, why are you so rude?’ said Terka teary-eyed, her hands grasping the pipe stem Szindbad held on his knee.

Now Szindbad committed the gravest affront of his life. He spoke as in a waking dream ‘What a lousy village! Not even a decent inn where a man can have a good time!’

The woman reared up, as she had in her youth, when her first husband would give her a hard time. ‘Why, you big lummox!’ (This, in a voice that would have made anyone but Szindbad sink into the ground in shame.) ‘Are you still dreaming of tavern maids with cracked heels? If you don’t want me, why don’t you go back to your lawful wedded wife, that old hag Cezarina, just waiting to scratch out your eyes. At least I won’t get to die of shame watching you drink a toast out of some bar girl’s low-cut shoes.’

And she slapped Szindbad in the face. ‘Off to bed with you now, go and get your sleep.’ Terka, in her emotional state, utterly failed to wonder why Szindbad did not knee her in the belly, as he always used to, in former scuffles … Instead, to demonstrate her love she wrapped her arms, muscular from kneading bread, around her man and tried to drag him off to bed, but to her amazement failed to budge the dead man.

And yet Szindbad was perfectly aware of everything happening around him.

He could see anger flooding the woman’s face, as if she had just discovered her favourite rooster lying dead in the henhouse, then he saw her start to sniffle like a little girl whose doll had broken. Next she sent up a groaning sob and clapped her hands together repeatedly, as if trying to escape some nightmarish dream that kept hounding her even after she had woken … The howl that left her throat now came from the gut, and was comparable to the screams of uterine spasm or giving birth — their authenticity beyond doubt since midwives can be as notoriously heartless as the dead. This howl of anguish frightened the grey and white speckled hen, kept in the kitchen, into inquiring with frantic clucks what was happening in the house. Next a cow started lowing in the stable; cows have had an interest in domestic events ever since New Testament times. Outdoors in the snow the dog ambled to the middle of the yard to watch the soul in its flight towards the sparkling stars, and howled her own canine funeral rite.

Terka, hearing these signs of sympathy from her domestic animals, gradually eased up her howls, eyeing the dead man dreamily, hoping he might still be swayed from his stubborn determination and come back from the other world, back to this familiar eiderdown bedding, back to the company of Terka who smelled of fresh ham, bacon and sausages at a pig-sticking feast, and help her solve the secrets of lucky or ill-omened dreams in the silence of the night, and scrawl lottery numbers with charcoal on the wall — even though the Temesvar lottery had been discontinued long ago … Could his promise really have come true, that one fine day he would fall asleep and never come back from that other world one mostly visits in dreams? … Men are so weird — you can’t believe them even when they’re dead… And who knows, perhaps Szindbad up and died just to be free of Terka.

‘At least you could have waited till morning, then it would have made more sense,’ she muttered, and her face already clearly indicated that she wished the dead man out of her house.

‘Now what is she going to do?’ wily Szindbad wondered, for he loved to second-guess women, just as he loved to predict the lowest prices at the market.

Terka went outside as flustered as on laundry day, ready to distribute the required number of slaps. She kicked the backside of the dog howling in the yard, and looked into the henhouse to see if her rooster was cock-a-doodling out of sincere mourning for Szindbad or merely to announce a weasel’s presence.

Szindbad used to get around without a coachman, on a two-wheeled cart well known to the landladies at taverns far and wide. The rickety old cart creaked and rattled out its own song; most of the time it was ‘I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead, You Rascal You …’ — the very tune those landladies liked to hum into the driver’s ear.