Gyula Krúdy - Life Is A Dream

Surveying the room, Galgóczi’s eyes moved past Jolan of the Green Ace without pausing to look at her, indifferent beyond indifference. (Jolan’s heart froze in that instant, while her eyes remained fixed straight ahead.)

Galgóczi just kept staring, his aspect growing desperate, as he received no response from anyone.

Seeing that folks instinctively began to back away from Galgóczi, Rimaszombati, just for old times’ sake, placed his hand on his friend’s shoulder: ‘We’re still waiting for you at the Green Ace! Why don’t you come?’ He might as well have asked a deaf man.

Listless, Galgóczi swung his droopy head, unable to reply.

At last Miss Brunszvik spoke up. She urged Galgóczi not to exhaust himself and, taking his arm in the manner of a practised nurse, led him from the room. At the threshold Galgóczi turned around once more as if still searching for Bitchkey and Botchkay in the assembled crowd. Jolan of the Green Ace stuck out her tongue at him, the only revenge she could think of in her sudden bereavement.

By now it had become obvious that Miss Brunszvik was holding in captivity the man formerly known as Galgóczi, the man who had aroused so much hope in the Tabán. It was still unknown whether Galgóczi had willingly entered or had been forcibly swept into his current situation.

Kuvik, vendor of popular songs, a penny a dozen, who sold broadsides of his love lyrics at fairs after crooning them in the voice of a fairground barker, and thus maintained certain contacts with feminine hearts in the Tabán (as well as other parts of town), dropped this casual comment between two songs: ‘Galgóczi’d be a goner without Miss Brunszvik’s support.’

But several off-duty chambermaids now arrived and Kuvik resumed singing a song he had written, in a voice as heart-rending as only he could produce. One had to wait for another pause before Kuvik could be questioned further: ‘Doesn’t Galgóczi have anyone else to care for him?’

‘No one gives a damn about a man when the liquor in him catches fire. He’s got to burn down by himself,’ replied Kuvik.

At the Green Ace, Galgóczi’s peculiar state was much discussed. It caused no surprise among the patrons to see Jolan circulating in a black skirt and black stockings, or to hear sobs coming from the room where the tavern-keeper’s daughter retired for quarters of an hour at a time. Only a woman who truly suffers can weep like that within the four walls of her room and then emerge to face humanity after having cried herself out. Mr Rimaszombati sat gloomily twirling a toothpick between his fingers while he waited for these fifteen-minute sessions to end. If the sobs lasted a few minutes longer, he was moved to approach her little bedchamber, listen at her door and rap softly. ‘Jolan, that’s enough for now. Leave some for later,’ he admonished, as if the amount Jolan was allowed to cry ‘at one sitting’ in memory of her lost love depended on this gentleman who so willingly busied himself with matters feminine.

Did Jolan take Rimaszombati’s advice? She did, for in the midst of major bereavement it feels good to know that someone cares about how much we can weep without hurting ourselves. She obeyed, if for no other reason than to give the lie to those who predicted that after Bitchkey and Botchkay the tavern-keeper’s daughter would be the next to hang herself. (In those simple days Tabán folk thought the only way of doing yourself in was hanging.) Jolan powdered her face and, using a brush sprinkled with water, did her hair up starting at the nape, the way depressed women are likely to, and emerged from her little room very pale in the face, circulating among the guests silent as a martyr resigned to her fate. Snippets of the song-peddler’s stanzas floated in from the outside: he was singing about a girl of good family who squandered her love on an unworthy man. Possibly Kuvik wrote this song with the present case in mind, but we cannot be entirely certain.

Not everyone mourned alongside Jolan of the Green Ace.

In the Tabán it was mostly the oldest matrons who dyed their single suit of clothes black, and only when they had abandoned all hope of wearing any other colour. Younger women liked to show off their flair for colour, for a simple girl without means can best show that she has taste by wearing colours that express her character and mood. The Tabán had its share of deep-blue fabrics, the finer kind that make you look so distinguished, provided the cut is right. Likewise the Tabán had its share of green and lilac outfits, springtime skirts worn in late autumn, as well as those russet fabrics skilfully tinted by the dyer’s art so that few can tell the original colour of the dress.

Jolan soon realized she had won no admirers with her black skirt, black stockings and black beret (which sometimes stayed on her head even in the restaurant). Men’s eyes, looking out the window, are more likely to be snagged by a yellow skirt (not to mention a red one) than a black dress. Not even Jolan could have wished the jackdaws on the tower of the nearby Serbian church cawing forever about her black apparel, even if a few men did praise her black stockings, chiefly Rimaszombati, who wouldn’t dream of a lady’s legs without the black stockings that so faithfully reveal their shapeliness. Jolan deliberated at length about what outfit to wear next. Should she appear in the long blue skirt with white polka dots, the one that those prankish gentlemen frequenting the Green Ace from the Pest side had already proposed to cut up and wear as neckties, or else the red one with white highlights that she had long ago promised to Mr Rimaszombati, who wanted it as a souvenir? In the end she opted for a fawn-coloured skirt with cute Tyrolean pockets to thrust her hands in when conversing with a man.

‘Hm. So this is how long we mourn for a fiancée?’ Mr Rimaszombati asked abruptly, after scrutinizing, through his spring-loaded pince-nez, Jolan’s mountain-climbing skirt and especially the green stockings that went with it.

‘I wasn’t aware that Galgóczi and I were engaged.’

‘But I know very well that you were,’ replied Rimaszombati. ‘How can you imagine that I would have helped bring about an unlawful liaison? How could anyone who knows me think that? I respect the law more than anyone else in this land. No one can say anything black or white about me and that’s the truth.’

Jolan was thunderstruck hearing the old man say this, for no matter how you cut it, the social order of the Tabán to this day still demands respect for the older generation.

‘You don’t like what I’m wearing?’ she asked, dropping the matter of the engagement, for truth to tell, she had on more than one occasion confessed to Mr Rimaszombati intimate details about long walks in the Buda Hills, visits to the Watertown cemetery, complete with fights and painful silences that occur all the time between young women and men. Jolan had time off from the Green Ace only on certain afternoons, the fate of all girls whose parents run a tavern, and those afternoons rarely went by without a lovers’ tiff. Jolan had a quick temper, while Galgóczi wasn’t one to abandon a notion once he got it inside his head — he would stubbornly insist on treating Jolan as his intended (to say the least), whenever their walks led to the more abandoned paths in the cemetery or the woods.

‘So you don’t like my outfit?’ Jolan asked a second time, no longer feeling inclined to thrust her hand in a skirt pocket while talking with Mr Rimaszombati.

‘You own an outrageous skirt that, when you wear it, creates a storm in the Tabán that tickles each and every beard and moustache, even those that are not even fit to be used as oakum … That skirt sets everyone’s boots a-creaking like whinnying steeds eager to take their master on the road. Why, even the most ancient hats are slapped on at a rakish angle when your little old self decides to wear that skirt,’ said Rimaszombati, pronouncing his words as precisely as a meteorologist would his weather report.