Gyula Krúdy - Life Is A Dream

This time Finedwell did not have to invent the usual family disaster to request an advance from his employer. An advance has a way of reconciling a journalist with both life and death.

Having received the advance, the journalist lost no time leaving Elderberry Street, where for years he had struggled at a recalcitrant desk with cheap pens and watery ink, in ever more refractory attempts at producing copy that always refused to materialize just when Finedwell intended to write his finest articles. With the advance in his pocket, he decided he would die like a gentleman. Let’s see how Finedwell, facing imminent death, went about transforming himself into a gentleman.

First of all the journalist had to obtain a proper hat, for the one he wore throughout his nocturnal way of life (when no one sees your hat anyway) was getting to look like the hats left behind at coffee houses in lieu of payment. Long after the patron has fled, the hat is still waiting there, and grows a beard. Very few patrons actually return for a hat left behind when they stepped out pretending to ‘go next door’. All of Finedwell’s hats, umbrellas and walking sticks had been acquired at a café — by no means fraudulently! — thanks to Olga, the lady at the cash register of the café where Finedwell was a nightly regular. We must not presuppose anything improper about Olga and Finedwell’s friendship. The journalist would simply stop and chat at the cash till — as so many other nighthawks did who pass their lives in cafés. He stood and talked to Olga about all sorts of things heard at the editorial offices. From these disquisitions Olga could have learned all there was to know about the world of politics and literature. But Olga never showed any sign of special interest in anyone featured in Finedwell’s lengthy narratives. Nor was she ever surprised when, in certain inevitable situations, she was asked to extend credit to one or another journalist (including Finedwell) for orders to be served by the head waiter, who had an imperial-style beard; orders such as scrambled eggs, ham on the bone, bologna sausage with oil and vinegar, sardines, frankfurters with horseradish, sliced salami, bread and butter, pickled herring with onion, lean bacon, or smoked sausages — the sorts of food that impecunious journalists generally like to consume.

And so Olga was not the least bit surprised when Finedwell, pale, spindly and solemn as a martyr, announced, with hat clutched under his arm, that he could no longer evade his doom: he had to die young and full of promise, without being able to complete the great work that he, in the manner of old-style journalists, had always dreamed of in the midst of his tribulations and counted on for the betterment of his lot — a magnum opus he had not even begun, although he had spread rumours about working on it each day at dawn. There stood Finedwell by Olga’s throne, his face unshaven, lips blue as plums, a glazed look in his eyes, expecting some miracle from her, a drowning man clutching at a straw. Olga, however, remained quite indifferent, safe in the knowledge that her Paisley shawl, cape and hat were as always within reach, in case she had to run from a drunken patron. Yet on other occasions, whenever some trivial sum was needed to get home or to buy cigarettes, she had been extraordinarily friendly! Still, after giving some thought to the situation — Titusz Finedwell’s fatal situation — she was unable to suppress a wry little smile, which was at the same time a bitter comment on her own fate as well.

‘We all have to die some day,’ she said.

‘But not in a crummy hat like this!’ remonstrated the man sentenced to death.

Olga possessed a southern temperament, capable of quick changes of mood. After inspecting Finedwell’s hat her natural benevolence soon gained the upper hand. ‘You’re right, this hat has seen better days! It’s beyond redemption!’ she said, handling the hat delicately with a woman’s touch. Then, descending from her throne she went to a small closet where the café staff stored a variety of objects.

Olga emerged from the closet with a green Tyrolean hunter’s hat and a so-called ‘umbrella-cane’. First she dusted off the hat. It was decorated with an eagle claw and a tuft of chamois-beard.

‘This was left behind by a customer who swore he was going to jump in the Danube. Try it on!’

Finedwell put on the hat and spent some time contemplating his image in the mirror. He checked himself out from all angles. He liked the hat but hated to admit it in front of Olga, so he spoke as follows: ‘Strange how this hat reminds me of the small town where I lived for a while in my childhood. This kind of hat was worn by men in green trousers, with all sorts of loops and wires and knives dangling from their belts. They usually worked in pairs. The sight and scent of these men made all the dogs bark like mad — they sensed the blood of animals on these men.’

‘Ah, the swine-gelders!’ — exclaimed Olga, taking a more mirthful look at the hat, for as a country gal she was familiar with those itinerant men who professionally altered the sex of domestic animals. ‘Titusz, I guarantee that none of your colleagues has a hat like that. They’ll be green with envy when they see you wearing it. The editor of The Concord had asked for it but I wouldn’t give it to him. I have been saving it for some gifted new poet, but there are no gifted new poets nowadays.’

Finedwell kept the hat on because he thought it made him look like one of the landed gentry. He stood there somewhat cheered, as if suddenly the pressure over his heart had vanished, a choking pressure he had been feeling for several hours.

Next, Olga thrust the umbrella-cane at him. ‘Tell me, Titusz, is there a scribbler in Budapest who has an umbrella like this, an umbrella that’s a cane at the same time?’

Finedwell was indeed amazed by the strange walking stick that turned into an umbrella with a turn in the weather. He immediately opened the umbrella and held it over his hat. ‘Veteran accountants used to receive things like this as souvenirs for their twenty-fifth jubilee …’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ said Olga.

‘Or else those middle-class husbands who in the course of their long married lives have received just about every type of gift from their wives on their birthdays and name days and anniversaries until they have everything they could ever want, including tobacco pouches. My vest pockets are of course full of tobacco shreds.’

Titusz could not quite hide his excitement as he turned the rare object in his hands. Although his face was still overcast, a new hope glimmered in his eyes, for it occurred to him that he might accidentally survive the duel and live to rise in the world, as the owner of the umbrella-cane and the big green hat.

Olga is a fine woman, after all, thought Titusz as he exited from the Ferenci Café, without the least intention whatever of heading for the editorial offices in Elderberry Street, even though his new accessories would have created quite a sensation there. But that would have exposed him to the likelihood of a cantankerous editor assigning him, on the very eve of his death, the task of collating the latest news dispatches. He would rather die than see another news bulletin tonight! Lose his job, rather than work like a dog on the night he came into possession of a new hat and umbrella-cane! How degrading it would be to sit even on this night in that ill-smelling editorial office, milling about in a swarm of reporters begging for work, for something to make himself useful at any cost! Leave that to ninnies and novices without the least experience of life, not to mention a duel fought with pistols — which in their case would most likely take place somewhere around here on the Danube embankment, where the bullet would end up in the river, ‘if the pistols were loaded’ — as old-time duelling seconds like to say.