Until Broad Daylight by Zsigmond Móricz

Kivilágos kivirradtig angol fordítás

First published in 1926

English translation by András Tokaji

Chapters:

1

The large, double-decker house was lying in the corner of the huge courtyard like a big Komondor dog ^[1] cleaning itself of fleas.

It was a bright winter; the wide fields, the straw stacks and the well-sweep were covered by snow but the sun was shining sparkling in the early afternoon. A certain kind of pure light without warmth and heat at all. Not any snowflakes were melted; they were just glittering softly like feather.

As if fleas were moving around on the veranda of the house: several people are walking around, in and out among the bare wild vine twigs. The Chief Flea, an old, big-bellied, hard-featured and sun-tanned gentleman with a big pipe is standing on the top of the stairs and looking around the courtyard with slow blinking eyes. His name was Mr. István Doby. At the same time, two small black ants are approaching slowly from the street merrily talking in the ankle-high snow: the notary and the legate. One wonders: what the hell can ants and fleas talk about?

The two ants are turning into the gate and crawling slowly along on their tiny legs farther in. Tiny white beasts are running forward. Minute biting creatures with a restraining collar, which is hitting their tootsies. They are flashing their sharp teeth, which apparently is troubling the two small black things, which are, in turn, trying to win the favour of the little critters, which seem to be, in comparison to them, rather dangerous, with some funny movements.

But the Chief Flea with the pipe upstairs makes a move now, whereupon the dogs calm down, and run to the back of the courtyard, making a big semicircle disturbing some black crows, which have perched on the horse-droppings…

“How are you, dears?” the Chief Flea cries with the pipe in his mouth, on the veranda, stretching forth his bulky paw for handshake.

“Fine, thanks, daddy. And you?” cries the village notary, who married the Chief Flea’s eldest daughter, Franci, who was, in fact, not the Chief Flea’s own daughter but that of his wife from her first marriage, and she had brought her along with her. Franci has always been a bit an outsider in the family just like the son-in-law, the notary of the village; hence the Chief Flea regarded him not as his real son-in-law but rather a friend and a mate.

“This is Mr. István Kádár legate,” the notary introduced the weakling and modest little flea, who put his lank hand into the paw of the Chief Flea, bashfully amd rubbing shoulders.

“Hello, young chap! But then, you’re another namesake of mine! Well, at least the two of us will back each other today,” said the Chief Flea, the farm-bailiff of the Counts’ of Nyír, laughing. “Well, a little help’s needed here because the carousel will be rotating here until the dark has gone… The Count of Nyír’s coming as well.’

“The Count of Nyír?” cried the notary. “The Younger of Nyír?” he asked, meditating.

“Sure, of course.”

“But then there’ll be three Istváns here!” the notary said and burst in laugh.

“Sure enough,” said the Chief Flea, and laughed, because the name István had been given out of caressing love and joke to the younger of Nyír, who was originally named József just like his father, the right hand of Kálmán Tisza and his grandfather, the famous governor. ^[2] “The three of us will be Istváns here today!… Excuse me, my son, what was your name again?”

“István Kádár,” said the Little flea.

“István, where are you from?”

“My father’s Sámuel Kádár, the rural dean of Hódcsopak.

“Samu Kádár?…” cried the Chief Flea, “Who used to be a Little Bludgeon Boy in Debreczin. And I was a Big Bludgeon Boy in the same place!” ^[3] And, with that, he embraced the little flea in a bone-cracking bear hug. This is 1898. It’s just thirty-eight years since your father and I were taking up a collection for the Protestant Church in Transdanubia… I’m just waiting for the sleigh so as to send it to bring the Honourable Count here!”

“Is he coming for sure?” the notary asked.

The old man gave a snort at that, and left them then and there on the veranda without a further word. He went downstairs into the snow, and started to shout from the lower step of the stair. “What the hell are you tarrying there at the back for? Mihók! Mihók!”

A skinny flea started croaking, a man-of-all-work shovelling snow,

“Yessir, I’m already doing it! I’m just given them to drink, so I’m harnessing already!”

The Chief Flea was listening to the words with cruel dignity and remained there refilling his pipe without giving a look back at the village notary.

The latter did not grieve much at it but went in with the legate. In the room, everything was upside down; the girls were just setting the table, and a little, pretty, black-eyed flea popped up to offer her little face for a kiss.

“How are you doing, my little son-in-law, how about Francis?”

“Fine, thanks, she’s putting on her dress, coming right now but they have so much trouble with the children,” said the notary, laughing, and spreading his brown moustache across his wide and flat face.

“This is Mr. István Kádár legate,” he introduced the clumsy and modest Little flea, who, at the sight of the young lady of the house, neither saw nor heard; all blood rushed to his head, his eyes were throwing out sparks. No wonder, the master of the house’s last and most beautiful daughter was surely a charming little flea, by name Annus; as his father called her: ‘my dear daughter, Panna!’

“Good evening, Mr. Kádár,” said Miss Doby, in the sweetest voice possible. In her voice there was some particular, very particular tone, which made it irresistible and breath-taking even if she pronounced the simplest words like ‘thrush’.

“What about Imre? Is Imre coming?” the notary whispered, and the little flea pouted her sweet, beautiful, swollen lips. “And how about Pista, the younger of Nyír?” he asked, but the girl turned round so sharply, that in the next moment, she was in the next room and was showing a fig from there.

Now there came an elderly old lady flea slowly into the room. She was the mom in a black lace dress, with a waxy, pale and unhealthy-looking complexion; her black eyes were scrutinizing intensely now her daughter, now her son-in-law, now the legate.

“I kiss your hand, dear,” said the notary, and, in fact, did so. “Well, is that true that the younger of Nyír is coming here?”

“Sure,” said the old lady, as if the mere raising of the question were an improper thing. Why, it’s a matter of course that the younger of Nyír is happy and glad to be present at an István’s name day ^[4] evening party given by the old farm-bailiff,’ she meant to suggest.

Thus the notary cooled off a bit, as if he was given a cold shower, and humped up his shoulders.

“Frici shall be here soon as well; she’s busy with the children until she tidies them up; you know how fussy she is… Miss Annus, shall we have fine wine with the evening dinner?”

Taste it, please”, cried the Little flea, the girl-flea freshly from the farther part of the big room, “that’s the least you can do.”

“And so I’ll do it,” he said and, at the same time, he was already pouring some of the wine into two wine glasses.

“I’m afraid, I don’t drink,” the legate said, humbly.

“The devil!” remarked the notary, “who the hell has ever seen such a legate!”

The legate overlooked the benevolent remark with proper modesty.

“Shall there be many here?” asked the notary.

“No,” said the old Lady Flea, airily and coldly, “only two families, the Dániel Ráczs and the Péter Szalays.

“After all, there is no need for many people; all the less because our counts tend to get bored soon,” the notary added.

“Why, there’ll be twenty to twenty-five of us,” the old lady said.

The notary pondered, “Anyway, it’s very kind of Pista, the younger of Nyír to come here; it’s a great satisfaction.”

“Why, it’s a natural thing,” said the old lady, “people talk a lot, but you mustn’t care a straw for it.”

“It’s a great satisfaction,” repeated the notary, “I can’t tell how much I am happy with it; and Frici most of all! Ah, well, she’ll be happy like a child fall in a candy box when she learns that Pista, the younger of Nyír will be here; and if Mr. Imre Pagan’s matter’s in order, which seems to be the only pending thing, then mom’s work shall be wonderfully finished… But take it from me, mom; you’ve crowned your life’s work with today’s evening,” and he drunk up the other glass of wine, too, “That’s fine, I say! Great! Capital! Pista, the younger of Nyír will be here and a formal proposal of marriage to that! Dr. Imre Pagan! A six hundred-acre model farm! She can be congratulated for that!”

The mother did not like this ill-mannered, peasant-like flea-cough at all; plain and simple words made her ill.

“You mustn’t speak like this, my son! Where are your manners? I don’t see any problem with it. It’s not the first time that a count comes to me for evening dinner, and, as for the marriage, we also need to talk a lot about it…”

“Yeah, dear… there’s a fly in the ointment. But, for me, the word ‘Jew’ doesn’t mean anything…”

“Oh, what an impolite man you are.”

“There’re no racial differences. Only characteristic features. And, what’s more, they’re better husbands. How much he will honour Annus, mama!”

The old lady almost fainted.

To unveil the matter in the presence of a strange boy in a way like this!

But the alien little flea, the legate didn’t understand a word from it; he only was staring at the blushing fiancée.

With a throbbing heart.

2

At this very moment, there was a loud noise outside, amidst alien voices. The old lady, on having heard them, turned pale and, without stopping to think, rushed out onto the veranda.

At first they saw nothing strange outside. The gentleman’s sleigh has just reached the veranda from the direction of the stalls with loud jingling and clanking, and the old gentleman harshly shouted at the coachman, “Walk the horses in the courtyard, and then unharness them again.”

This was rather baffling since this sleigh should have gone to meet the younger of Nyír at the railway station.

“Oh, God Almighty!” yelled the old lady, “What’s happened?”

It was only now that she caught the sight of Mr. Faragó, farm bailiff, the evil spirit, who had made so much trouble in the past, standing beside the old gentleman. Look, he’s just arrived from the station in a britzka; he must’ve broken some bad news. And this is the case now again… Ay, how much she hated his sneaky mug!

However, the old man did not say a word; he was only looking out into the courtyard, with his cheeks blue with a hot flush.

Mr. Faragó, farm bailiff, humbly walked up to the matriarch, and greeted her with good manners, “I kiss your hand, Madame”.

The old lady walked to her husband. “Come in, dear.”

The old gentleman did not make a move, he was merely staring ahead.

“Oh, God! Send for a doctor!” cried the old lady, “For a doctor, otherwise he’ll have a seizure.”

At that, the old gentleman made a move at last. “Do stop bemoaning…I’m given the sack.”

They were silent for a moment as if there were a bolt from the blue.

Is that possible? Just now, in the pappy hours of the István’s name day party… When they are expecting the younger of Nyír… Being fired…A spectre having been looming for ten years, which they have managed to hold off so far… But just now and today, and so terribly unexpected …

The old lady looked at the messenger, Mr. Faragó, farm bailiff, and only God saved him from her cursing him. Mr. Faragó had always been a looming danger of breaking some Job’s news.

“Is he saying that? … Oh, my God!” But she failed to continue. She decided to restrain herself, and continued with honeyed words, “Well, come in, my dear ones, come in, my darling, we’ll discuss the matter.”

It was a long time before they managed to get the old gentleman in motion; he was trudging slowly as if his body was paralysed.

He sat down onto the clamped, iron-banded armchair beside the big table and, as if he was seriously ill, everybody was bustling about; one put a cushion on the chair, the other another behind his back; the notary was filling his chibouk, and his wife was also running up and down, wringing her hands, reiterating over and over again, “Oh, my God, oh, my God; if only your father wouldn’t have a seizure.”

Finally, they all calmed down enough to come to Mr. Faragó, farm bailiff.

He was sitting close to the tile stove, putting on the fire; he was shoving thick and gnarled oak logs into the stove, which was glowing red; its side was already in danger of melting.

When they turned to him, he turned back clumsily and, at the same time, readily enough. Looking sad like an aggrieved gipsy, as if it would have been he who had suffered a terrible blow, commenced as follows,

“Under the orders of you, respectable farm bailiff, I brought the piglet to the Right Honourable Count plus the flour and all the products from the pig sticking; also suffered a harassment, for those rascals, I beg to say to you, had had my sacks stolen. Just because I say, I went there by train from Cegléd for I was left behind by the cart; ay, those guys were careless all along the road to Szentlõrinc, though I gave orders for them that Suta Balog should sit behind but he sat to the coachman on the dickey but he didn’t dare to tell him go back for fear that the other, being his chum, would get angry with him… Well, in one word, when the cart was on the way to Kispest from Szentlõrinc, it was a dark night, and some kind of depraved ragamuffins cut off the rear suck. They’d believed there was something in it but there were only some empty sucks in it, so, all in all, I say to you, I suffered such harassment.”

They were listening to it without saying a word, immersed in it, as if they were swimming in water in a swimming bath; they listened to the boring speech up to the end, which no one was interested in; but it was suitable to gain some time before hearing the staggering news they all were so much afraid of. And that was why they did not dare to urge the land-steward, who himself was speaking first about outsiders’ troubles in order to gather some strength.

“Well, the old Excellency was not at home because of politics; he made a reporting speech at Halas, from where, naturally, he didn’t come back to Budapest but travelled directly further to Fonalas; he’s going to celebrate Christmas and the New Year there but they said he’s in good health for the moment, he’s not tormented by his fits so much.”

They were silent; nobody said a word; maybe they did not even pay attention. They were sitting despondently. The old gentleman was like a sorrowful buffalo; the pipe in his mouth had already gone out; his lower lip was hanging down loosely. The old lady in a black worsted wool dress lowered her arms in front of her, showing likeness to St. Catherine of Alexandria, who had been burned at the stake; ‘my dear daughter, Panna’ was leaning on the table with her elbows waiting for the dreadful news open-mouthed and with her eyes wide open; the notary was huddling cautiously in the corner so as not to interfere with the family business in any way, and the legate was similar to a little mouse, eagerly watching, and very happy that he, once had not been sent away from there, could follow a village tragedy to the end.

“The younger of Nyír was at home,” went on the land steward, and got a big sniff with his nose. His cheek bones became angular, his eyes became hollow; he made everything possible to conceal his malicious joy that that puffed-up farm-bailiff family now had become ruined. “But if only he hadn’t been at home. I told him the message from you, Sir, and handed over the letters along with the presents. The Right Honourable Count said he thanked you very much but it didn’t worth the trouble: he didn’t hold with this Hungarian custom. He wouldn’t be able to come to the István’s name day evening party since he has to give a toast with Széchenyi’s Memorial Cup at the National Club that very evening but he wishes Miss Annus and Mr. Imre Pagan a very happy life in the future …”

Miss Annus suddenly sit up, and felt the presence of the young, big boned, awkwardly-moving count’s piercing, gimlet eyes and his torrid glance fixed on her; she instantly became aware of the fact that she was not in love with him, and felt ashamed of her own naivety. Of course, a little flirting would have been nice, but she paid a huge price for it… She turned her eyes away, looked out through the window, but saw hardly anything due to the winter frost thereon. And she suddenly became taller, her eyes turned dark, her short, snobbish nose became offensive; all her face, in its entirety, turned angry, and her curly locks looked like startled birds above her unwrinkled forehead.

“Toasts with Széchenyi’s Memorial Cup are given not at the National Club,” the old lady said proficiently.

“That’s right,” yelled the notary, “the whole stuff’s just like Pista. Since it isn’t held at Christmas Eve. Somewhere in the middle of the carnival time. Come now! I’ve always said that…”

“Did he talk a lot?” asked the old lady haughtily.

“No, he didn’t; in the contrary, he was rather short”, said Mr. Faragó, farm bailiff, “as early as next year, steam-ploughs are coming, and they’ll break up all the land of Bakalja …”

“They can do it, if they really want to, but there’s no point ploughing on that alkaline soil,” said the notary instead of the land steward.

But the land steward did not allow himself to be disturbed.

“He’s planning to have a fish-pond made on three thousand four hundred acres and to have the water drained off from the Tisza into the pond; but he’s already provided for a post for you, Sir. You’re going to go to Szeged Lowland Savings Bank; your annual salary is also already provided for, then a due post…

“What nonsense this man is talking about?” shouted the old lady, startled, as if waking from a dream. “This man’s gone mad! You harbinger of death!… You, you’ve always been our Judas!”

The land steward stood up.

“Milady… I can’t help about it.”

“Clear out from here! I can’t stand the sight of you! I’ll show you that Mr. farm-bailiff still has enough power left to wring the neck of anyone like this.”

The land steward wanted to say something, but the words wouldn’t come out; instead he began to stutter, then took his hat.

Nobody spoke to him any more and neither did he; he suddenly got moving, and left the room.

When he opened the door, the wind swept into the room, taking snow along with it, which flew as far as the table.

As if it blew snow over the past; merriness and happiness, which, though seeming to be so permanent, are merely a dream.

There fell a deep silence over all the room.

At this point, Malvin came in, a humpbacked and lame spinster, the younger sister of the old lady, who was keeping the entire house, saying,

“Please, walk into the other room so as not to disturb setting the table here.”

As if an order was given, suddenly everyone got going at the same time, and stood up docilely.

Malvin said happily, “I don’t mind how many come today; I won’t be afraid even of thirty guests; Mr. Soltész has made a wonderful job with the cooker. It’s a gorgeous sight to see how well everything roasts on it.”

The old lady walked after the gentlemen into the room looking to the road with a tear-drop in her eyes, sighing, and said,

“It’ll be roasting in Szeged next year … It would be good if we are able at least to roast marrow.”

3

They could not even speak. They were only drooping sadly. It was cold. ‘If only the guests froze to death on the way!’ they might have said to themselves.

”Heat up the flat properly”, the mother said, putting a shawl over her shoulders, “there’s fire wood enough.”

All of a sudden, coming events cast their shadows before: the necessity of sparing on fuel had never ever crossed her mind before. ‘By heavens!’ she thought, ‘There’re so many trees in the forest in the domain: entire trains used to be filled with the wood; had the old man not been such an honourable madman, he would’ve had his own forest… There’re plenty of trees here, leisured workers merely loafing about the courtyard; there’re men enough for cutting the trees down…But how about next year?’

“Your pipe has gone out again,” the notary said, trying to cheer up a bit the gloomy mood, but nobody responded.

All of a sudden, there are screams and women’s voices outside,

“Woe to us! Oh, the poor young gentleman! Help! Help! The young gentleman’s being killed!”

Upon hearing that, everybody first gets petrified, then jumps up and runs out to see a crowd forming on the courtyard, all wringing their hands,

“Woe to you, Respectable Lady! The young gentleman’s being killed!”

The mother gives forth a loud shriek and, belatedly, runs out into the snow as she is, only with a shawl.

“Hold on! Hold on! Take your mother back!” shouts the old gentleman, going after her, having regained his strength by the new misfortune.

At this moment the maid servant, beside herself with excitement, runs up to him saying, “As Mihók had harnessed, I kiss your hand, Respectable Sir, the young gentleman went into the Mihóks’ house, I kiss your hand, Respectable Sir, but as Mihók didn’t go to the station, he tied the horses into the stall, but no sooner he finished, Respectable Sir, he ran home with a pitchfork and caught the young gentleman philandering there… the young gentleman’s already coming over there …”

The young gentleman, a twenty-two-year-old youngster in boots and a jacket was coming staggering and giddily from the direction of the cattle-shed, badly knocked about, with a bare and bloody head, and wiping the blood from himself…

There was general consternation, and, as a second thought, ‘At least, he is alive’.

The young gentleman was spitting the snow, the blood and the mud all clotted on his entire face; the jealous coachman had hammered his face into the mud and snow; it was a narrow escape from death…

The young gentleman kept grumbling and cursing; he seemed drunk at the same time. It was also known that it was he to watch over the wine drawing in the cellar; he had sampled a lot, which is the worst thing of all.

“Péterke, my son!”

The mother fainted, and became like a dead body, as yellow as wax. Her heart could hardly stand excitement of that kind. Her daughter and son-in-law had to carry her in their arms in the house, already being grieved less because of the ne’er-do-well than because of her. They laid her down on her back, undid her clothes, rubbed her heart, and the air in the room was full of the smell of vinegar within a minute.

The old gentleman did not comment on the young Mr. Doby’s affair, neither her wife’s swoon; the wise men had gone through a lot in his long life; everybody who can look back on his young years, knows such is life; sometimes you receive a punch, sometimes you give one…

At last he belched in his gruff buffalo-voice,

“Then the blackguard didn’t even walk the horses!”

This made him angry.

“Overseer, go to tell the blackguard to take the horses instantly, and walk them! I’ll teach you a lesson, confound it!”

The old overseer ran towards the farm labourers’ dwellings with his bad, bowed legs to execute the order. Although he was called, “come in, daddy, or else you’ll catch cold!” the old gentleman did remain on the veranda, and murmured to himself, ‘I wish I got frozen on this spot’.

They washed off his son, and his wife came to. Seeing that the coachman had started walking the horses, and he himself had eventually bored of the cold evening and the dog-barking, the old gentleman went in after them. The old lady was already sitting in the big easy-chair in the small room, because the table-setting was in progress… ’Oh, God! The guests are arriving very soon,’ she thought.

“Alas! Alas!” the old gentleman sighed loudly and heavily, standing in front of the tile stove, burning his back until he was getting red.

“So many a blow, so many a blow on one day,” the mother was lamenting, her eyes streaming with tears. Everyone kept silent with a sinking heart; everyone was dreading that the guests would come to find them like this.

The young Mr. Doby dared to come in surprisingly soon; he pretended as if nothing had happened, and, in turn, nobody mentioned the incident. They new very well how he had been chasing the beautiful wife of Mihók all summer long; that Mihók was a savage husband similar to a bloodhound, and that his wife was not to be approached even for a minute. What is more, he gave in his notice to quit because of the young gentleman, saying he would leave the courtyard for the detached farmstead of the Count of Cservienszk for the next year to be a liveried coachman. Of course, it is a good bargain to entice a reliable, skilled farmhand…

“God has sent a punishment upon us both because of the older count and the younger count,” declared the mom, which threw light on the affair for all. ‘Naturally, had Pista, that is, Józsi, the younger of Nyír arrived, the sleigh would’ve met him at the station, and Péterke wouldn’t have come off badly,’ they said to themselves…

“Oh, the damned dog,” said the mother, “I say, every man’s a dog. A dog, a dog, a dog…”

They were silent again; it was still not wise to speak about it. They remembered, ‘Count Józsi was here in the summer, and how he was flirting with Panna!… Once he was even watched in the apple-orchard. The sacked vine-dresser’s wife blazed him out, but they didn’t venture to bring an action against him for libel, for kissing her; but, then, something must’ve happened between them, because the Count left the place and, as a consequence, the withdrawal has come to pass’.

But Péterke hearkened. He whispered towards the notary,

“What did the younger Count do? What did he do?”

His voice was hoarse and stifled.

Nobody answered. On this day, he was unworthy of receiving an answer. A son that brings such a trouble upon his suffering family! A son like this is a bad son!

However, as mothers are the most tender-hearted members in all families, it was she who decided to restore the poor kid’s dignity so that his heart was not broken by disregard, by the fact that his family was not confidential with him. ‘After all, he could not help about it, he gets it all from his father’s blood,’ she thought…

“He chucked your father out… We must move the house before the New Year … Just like the most inferior, useless swineherd!”

Lifting both lean hands high in the air, towards God, she even gave a yell calling God to bear witness.

The young Mr. Doby turned even paler. He took after his mother: he was hot-tempered and resolute with a face pallid and scabbed over. He stood in front of his father and declared pertly and vehemently, with full of his passion,

“Dear father… I’ll challenge him to a duel…”

4

Upon hearing the young Mr. Doby’s grotesque and fantastic offer, all of them gazed up. The father and the mother waved their hands peevishly. The notary smiled.

“You’d better arrange another affair. Go and talk Frici to come here.”

“Why, what’s happened to Frici?” asked the mother.

The notary remained silent; he rubbed the root of his moustache in a bad humour.

“The devil knows it; she has her usual fit of madness.”

“But why?” The notary was in no mood to make a declaration. Upon a repeated prompting, he turned his head away, and cast his eyes in the direction of the ceiling, where nothing could be seen at all, except some flashes of light coming out of the stove in the darkness.

“She wants to kill herself for being pregnant with a new child.”

Words and breaths were caught. The mother started from her easy-chair, clasped her hands again and again, and cried out as if in a convulsive pain,

“I swear to God, how much I hate you all!… Leave the room, please.”

Her latter words were addressed to Miss Doby, who, nevertheless, stopped.

“Go and attend to the table-setting, the topics under consideration here are not for girls. Oh, despicable husbands!”

She was looking at her son-in-law with disgust, detestation and hatred.

Seeing that the topic on the tapis was really not for a girl, Miss Doby slowly walked out.

The legate, forgotten among them, was still there. ‘Why not, he is a vicar, after all, who must be present at the bedside of dying people,’ they thought. Nevertheless, he felt himself terribly uneasy. He had had a strong feeling for a long time that he was not at the right place but could not find any excuse to withdraw himself from the party. Now he stood up.

“Something…” he moaned, but no sentence of any kind resulted from it. So he, as if being chased, simply scampered away. Once outside, he started looking around where he could find an excuse…

At that very moment, the avalanche started, the storm broke.

“You’re the meanest man in the world,” started the mom, “you’re killing my daughter…Hasn’t been three enough for you for the last five years?”

She looked at the notary with hatred.

“Go and fetch Frici,” she spoke to her son unexpected, smelling that he was sharing her opinion to full extent, in so far as he had hated the notary son-in-law in all his life. “Tell Frici to come over instantly! I insist! Don’t try to pick a quarrel with me… Your father’s been given the gate like a whipped cur, and you count your blessings like this!… I want Frici here within a minute…”

The young Mr. Doby began looking for his hat but then it came to his mind that it was laying, like it or not, somewhere around the haystacks, where Mihók coachman had knocked it from his head… So he, without a word, went out of the room to look for his short fur-lined overcoat, and put a high lambskin cap on his head, covering his unlucky blue-and-black forehead down to the ears. He was making a hissing sound while pulling it over his head. After all, wounds got in fights over women are usually a bit painful…

“Once you’ve spoken your mind,” told the notary to his mother-in-law, “let me give my version. I’d have you know that your daughter’s as lazy as a toad… the biggest slacker I know.

“How dare you speak of my daughter, you mean, stupid notary? Three children for five years, oh, my heavens, and now the fourth, and maybe… “

“A lazy dog, I say!” the notary continued fussing about, “I’ve never seen such a thing before. If she sits down on the sofa in the morning, she won’t rise again before the evening! She is fully capable of sitting there all day long. If she were like you, no matter how lean you are… I admit, Mom, you’re the only person in the whole family to work, you’ve deserved all honour and respect for tormenting your little shoddy body − but how about your daughter?… I say, she hardly washes herself three times a winter!… And the filth in the house! Even a farm hand’s house is cleaner! I’m feeling so depressed about life that I’m always looking forward to leave the house…

He was unstoppable; he didn’t even bother that his mother-in-law was also fussing about at the same time; just kept saying that wanted to break from him. Hence they were speaking simultaneously without understanding one another.

“You’re to blame because she cannot lead her own life beside you, there was nothing left for her, only the children, one after the other, without any release, you’re a blockhead, you don’t understand that a woman’s not only for… but for… I’ve been fool enough to lay down my whole life for my husband, and lo, there you are, here’s the result; I have to go to Szeged without a penny in my old age! What on earth I’m doing in Szeged, I’ve never been to in my life, how will I get accustomed to having to buy even the vegetables in the market?”

And so on. When both got tired of fussing about at the same time, a little silence set in.

“Mom, you’d better put away some money,” said the notary, “other farm-bailiffs have their own estate; by the time they retire, they’ve become men of substance and property.”

At that an avalanche of words crashed down.

She was speaking more and more fiercely, seeing that the old gentleman did not seem to comment on it… (But if she had dared to speak like this when they were alone! Even the walls would have tumbled down about them. On one occasion he turned the big dining table, the one-hundred year old, worm-eaten piece of furniture, weighing four hundredweight, along with all the dinner-service, on his wife’s head. Luckily, the woman had always been like a lizard, able to hide even among the stones: there was nothing wrong with her; she was happily taken out from among the legs of the chairs and the table.)

“Beside my husband? Here you have to cook for thirty persons just like today, and it’s been always going like this. I’m not a magician to have always the upper hand with the banquets, the repasts, the drunken revelries, the chums, the mouth-wiping vagabonds, who won’t be of any good to you. Why not, we’re gentlemen, after all! A request like ‘You should hold your horses a little!’ is something out of question.”

But he was just sitting there…Was all up with him in an instant? Did not he feel himself a man any more? Neither the Master? Nor a Buffalo? Has made the very first word, casting his faults in his face, him a land surveyor and valuer?

Miss Doby opened the door. “Mommy, my dear, the Szalays are coming; I can already hear their bells…”

Her voice was so begging; it sounded so sweet, so glass-like; it could move even a rock to tears, but her mother redoubled her zeal,

“Shut up! You’re to be blamed for everything! Now you’re going to stay a spinster to be a stone round my neck.” “Mammy, mammy,” said ‘my dear daughter, Panna’ on the verge of bursting into tears. She approached her mother timidly, who railed against her all the more furiously.

It seemed as though nothing would stop the catastrophe today.

“Yeah, yeah,” hissed the mother, “I know you well; I know your blood very well! You’re not my daughter; you’re not my flash and blood… Why did you have to make advances to Count Józsi?”

“But Mom!” said Miss Doby, raising her head loftily.

“Shut up! It’s always the woman who takes the initiative… Without that, no man has ever chased a woman… Why was I not chased by anybody? Because I was cold like ice. Once my younger brother said, ‘Beside Ágnes even the most passionate man will be frozen’. But beside you, even stone will melt. Why do you smarten yourself up, why do you keep jumping around, why do you giggle so much, why do you look at people as heartily as if who-knows-what secret things were hidden in your heart? Now we’ll have to pay the piper for your beauty and for your flirtation. Your father’s been fired like a good-for-nothing farmhand even without a term of notice. It’s Christmas Day today, and lo! The office must be surrendered to the new manager… The counts act as if they could find another damn fool who would move into this old, worn-out, tumble-down house. This flat isn’t for humans; it’s a pigsty. I was begging them for ten years to have at least a new veranda built, a glazed veranda so as to prevent the wind carrying the snow into every corner of the room in winters, but I fell short of it because I’ve shouted myself out of breath in vain all my life, he’s never listened to me, now you all have to pay the piper!”

She burst out into a flood of tears sobbing her heart out, seeming without an end; her daughter ran to her, in her usual thoughtless, harum-scarum way, kissed and embraced her, knelt in front of her, weeping along with her,

“Mommy, my dear Mommy, oh, my God, you’re the best and holiest mother…”

5

A strange sleigh pulled up on the courtyard. Te horses were rattling about on the frosty ground, bells were sounding and men’s shouts could be heard.

“Oh Jesus, the guests! Brother-in-law, light a chandelier.”

The notary felt for a match, and nervously lit up the big pendant; it was just then that it could be seen how sorry a sight they were. The old gentleman was sitting apathetically with the cold pipe in the armchair, gazing into the air in front of him; the mom was shedding tears resembling a spring welling forth from the rock, whose gurgling flow, once having started, would not want to stop for ten thousand years. The desperate-looking girl with her face covered with red splotches resembled one of Niobe’s daughters, who is embracing her mother with a praying gesture towards the merciless deity. The notary thought he himself might have looked sad and miserable but had will power enough to leave the mourning family alone. He put on his high cap, and walked out into the big dining room, where the table was already set, and a big spirit lamp was also lit up, lending fairy luminosity to the room. From there he went on to the veranda in just-in-time since the guests were stamping their feet outside already, and making a happy noise.

“What the hell’s going on? I wonder, is this an abandoned fortified castle?” shouted Mr. Péter Szalay, giving the heavy coachman’s fur coat a shakeout, and passing it to the servant maid running forth, “Put it to a good place, my dear; however old it is, it’s still good …”

“Welcome, dear Uncle Péter, let me kiss your hand, Milady,” the notary greeted the old man and woman.

“Oh, God, we almost suffered a mishap,” the guest woman turned to the notary, saying, “Imagine, Sir, just as we were coming at the Priesthole to the village, Goddamn your village and all the dogs, they rushed on us like wolves already far from the village, the horses bolted and headed straight for the Priesthole…”

“Did your coach turn up with you, Milady?”

“By no means, Mr. Szalay said, laughing, “but my treasure wife cannot sit neither on a cart nor on a sleigh without having fear; it’s a pretty familiar thing to us.”

“But Mr. Szalay, don’t speak like this; after all, you had a narrow escape from the jaws of death!”

“Woe, woe,” Mr. Szalay said with some peculiar tenderness characteristic of elderly gentlemen, “the jaws of death, the jaws of a vise, jawing women; well, my dearest heart got frightened. But I didn’t get frightened, because we’ve been sitting on carts together for thirty-two years but not without at least as much fright as that, haven’t we, lovey-dovey? My only consolation is that gypsies shall never reign!”

“Even less shall they snow!” said the notary, who was familiar with the wordplay. “They shan’t reign even when snowing, shall they, Uncle Péter?”

“Certainly not; they’re always gypsies, anyway.”

They laughed and stepped into the dining-room.

Mr. and Mrs. Szalay were two pieces of well-fed people. Their countenances were so cheerful, and their looks were so joyful that they could have served as a model even for mankind.

“My Pannuska! My little angel!” Mrs. Szalay cried opening both her arms, and, still being wrapped in her large shawl, embraced Annuska, who was hurrying forward with a beaming complexion.

“I kiss your hand, Madame,” Miss Doby’s voice was chirping like that of a sweet little bird, and, in fact, did so, which extremely enchanted the old lady, who, in the recent past, already started complaining about her becoming very withdrawn from her.

“Dear Aunt Irma, had you a nice journey? Why don’t you undo this magnificent fur coat?”

“Daughter, we’ve just come back from the edge of the grave; had a narrow escape from the jaws of death in the Priesthole.”

Miss Doby was laughing, and, in order to take up Mrs. Szalay’s time, began to undress the lady, who was wrapped in so many layers of clothes, kerchiefs and other protective stuffs that hardly anybody was able to make head or tail of them.

“We’re certainly not going to die before dinner,” Mr. Szalay said joyfully, and patted Miss Doby on the back, warming up his cold hand jocularly here and there upon her body saying,

“Wow, how hot it is!… I wonder what’s heating it.”

“I beg your pardon, uncle Péter.”

“Well, time will show it by tomorrow early in the morning! Isn’t that Mr. Imre Pagan here?”

Under other circumstances, Miss Doby, on hearing these words, would have run out of the room, but now it was impossible because the mom had not come out yet, and she had to be the hostess for the time being.

But now she came out, and greeted the guests with sweet words,

“You’re welcome, my dears!” and, without further ado, fell on Mrs. Szalay’s neck, and her tears started shedding like autumn rain.

“Oh, God!” said the madam, “What about you, dears?”

“He’s warned away,” she said, sobbing.

“What d’you mean?” But they grasped the point at once, because they had been expecting and discussing it for years, and had been under some apprehension that the counts might pension off the master of the house any time. The guest, the most confidential friend, asked, in a very low voice and only after a very long silence, “István”?

There was a nod.

“Humph, humph.”

“Come in; but quietly because the old man’s broken down very much.”

Quietly, as if approaching a dying person, they walked into the next room to find the old man sitting there in the armchair in front of the fire in very low spirits; he did not even rise to pay his respect to them, just let them hold and stroke his hand, and was looking in an impassive but friendly way. No one could tell what was deep inside.

“Sit down, my dears. Mr. Farago, land steward, God damn’im, was who brought the letter; just imagine, making a decision like this, to warn somebody away on the third day of Christmas in order to relieve the position for the new man… What a pagan man… what a pagan…“

It was so shocking they were staring without saying a word. But, after all, they were not affected by the matter.

“Has the younger Count done it?”

“Of course, my dear, of course, but God will punish him for it, I’m sure!”

“But, milady, you mustn’t take it to heart so much!” Mr. Szalay consoled her receiving the glass from the notary’s hand, and continued,

“The only ultimate disaster that can befall a Hungarian man is losing his good humour… for everything else in life is mere accidentalness. The foundation is good humour. As long as it’s in order, everything: money, property and other people’s goodwill is mere contingency. And while Hungarian good humour’s alive, my dear, don’t yield to despair…”

And he was holding and squeezing the old lady’s hand with his own palm with extraordinary tenderness, then held it out in front of the notary again.

It was a fine glass, and the notary poured slowly some fine grape-brandy into it.

“Aunt Irma, my dear, how about some sweet?” flattered Miss Doby.

“Well, I don’t mind, my dear… Certainly, after the big scare it’ll do well, just imagine, Ágnes, we almost died in the Priesthole.”

“But it was Péterke, who almost died in it,” the mom said. Once you are in them, you must tell your friends all your troubles so they would not come to know about them from other people. “Just imagine, this little stallion had a tussle with the coachmen, and the poor… Woe, our times, they don’t respect even God any more.”

“That loathsome servant folk…oh, God.”

“Nobody knew what happened. Only loud screaming and noise.”

“Which coachman?” Mr. Szalay asked.

“Mihók, the blackguard, he’s going to be away for a year, so he gave himself airs.”

“Mihók? Is he the one who has that beautiful wife?”

Mr. Szalay broke into a smile and winked with the eyes. What more, he gave his beard a scratch.

The Mom, embarrassed, stopped short in her speech.

They all felt uneasy.

“It’s nothing to speak of,” Mr. Szalay said, “the nature of a real Hungarian man is this: he shows his oats when he’s young. Because then he’s like good wine; it ripens, gets bouquet, there’ll be aromatic savour, fire and strength in it. Principally, there’re two kinds of the Hungarian men. But either when young or when old, they must give way to their overflow.”

They did not laugh. Mr. Szalay, being a first-rate orator and a man of firm frame of mind, decided not to leave it at that; he wanted to comfort them in some way or another.

“It’s much better in this way, my dear Auntie Ágnes, than when someone who used to be a momma’s boy, hinds behind his wife’s skirt rotting at home until the age of forty. Because troubles will really begin when, once after all, he has the escapade, which happens later or earlier. Lo and behold, the Bible itself says, ‘Prove all things”.

“One must go on a spree!”

“Of course, one must.”

“Men are meant to.”

“As a matter of fact, I’m not afraid for the women either: they taste this and that what’s good.”

“How well you know, how well you know it, Péter,” said the old lady softly, giving vent to her sorrow, uttering a sigh. She felt the company’s comforting effect already. More eyes see more than two; more mouths chatter more than two; at least they distract your attention from your our sorrow.

Mr. Szalay started to talk sense with the kindness of a healthy-minded man, like a school-teacher.

“My dear Aunt, I inherited this knowledge of mine from my father. As for him, he was of that third nature, that wonderful, full-blooded, heroic Hungarian nature, who never gives in; neither when young, nor when old. Humph, where are those one-time valorous Hungarians? This is all fiddlesticks, I say; whether young or old: a real Hungarian man’s full-blooded until death!

One day my father carried ten quintal of wheat, twelve quintal of rye, six steers and two horses to the Debreczin winter-market from Nagykálló to sell… Just to share a good story about him… My poor mother, the good soul, was happy about it because they needed the money. Accordingly, she packed up white clothes and some provender for his husband since we hadn’t train yet here, we had to use farm-wagons to get here; and inculcated upon him, ‘Gábris, my dear, most important, be clever and make a good bargain; mind your money and your health; don’t get cold, don’t come to harm.’ How good, angel-souled women were those old-time noble-ladies!”

He knocked the ashes off his cigar, and went on with his face beaming with joy; so they, in spite of everything, even listened to him a little bit.

“Well, the bargain was over. My father sold all the wheat, all the rye, also the steers and the horses. Then he remained in Debreczin for a fortnight; finally went home to Nagykálló, to his dear family.

On his arriving home, my mother’s receiving him:

‘Are you back, my dear Gábris?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Thanks God, my dear.’

She made a good dinner for my dear father; it was melting mutton, early lambkin, of which my father was so fond, with tarragon sauce. God rest his soul!… In one word, it was mutton soup with tarragon and corn-cakes, fresh, stiffened with sweet milk… How good dishes we used to have in our childhood!”

The lady of the house budged. Both her move and posture expressed her well-known womanly disagreement. Because no woman can endure anybody else’s laudation at her expense, let it be that of the flower that faded as long as one hundred years before. Because they only feel well when they are being lauded… But she did not feel like saying a word now. It is terrible for a mother to endure that her son sets his eye on another woman … That is, on other women! Her good little boy, who until that time, had been laughing, playing and fooling about there in front of his mother’s feet. ‘No, men’s full-bloodedness cannot be understood; they are rushing to their destruction, and when it comes over them, they act without any respect for God or man or honesty,’ she thought. ‘And, beside all that, is it all over already? All the sorrow, the disaster? Can other things be already spoken about? Old anecdotes?’…

But Mr. Szalay did not let her reflect thereon. He took pains to speak in an easy, fast manner, because on occasions like this, political wisdom is needed in order to smooth away the sorrow quickly, bring up new topics, set aside the trouble for the next day; o, heavens, the others are now coming, by that time all the souls here must be calmed down. He must prevent them from keeping a burial feast here. All the more, wounds are being healed even at burial feasts by anecdotes and laughs; those left behind will find time enough to grieve while the litigation is being processed… So he went on with, and took his job seriously.

“At the end of the dinner, my poor good mother put her hand upon my poor good father’s hand in the way only those old-time noble-ladies and good wives could do, and said,

‘Gábris, my dear, the bargain’s been made, hasn’t it?’

‘Yes, it has,’ says my father. ‘It’s been made.’

‘Did you sell the wheat?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘And what price did you sell it for?’

‘For a very good price, my dear. For six forint ten fillér.’

‘Really? For so good a price?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the rye?’

‘Sold it well also. Above five forint.’

‘You cannot say it was a bad bargain.’

‘No, I can’t.’

‘And what price did you sell the steers for?’

‘I sold them very well, too. The two bigger ones for one hundred twenty all in all.’

‘I’m dying with happiness right now! We were at the point of selling them for eighty forint each, weren’t we, my dear?’

‘Yes, but the market was good!… The cattle were being taken to Poland… I sold the smaller ones also well, for ninety to one hundred a pair.’

‘And how about the horses? Did they sell well?’

‘My dear, they sold the best. I got one hundred seventy for Murza.’

‘Oh, God! One hundred seventy!’

‘Kesely couldn’t be sold as well as that. I had to give him for one hundred sixteen.’

‘Well, it’s a pity… However, never mind, you know, my dear, which how much is worth.’

‘He was spavined.’

‘No, he wasn’t spavined yet. Otherwise, it makes no difference; I’m glad that the bargain was so good in general.’

And she patted the old man’s brave, honest hand, and all of us were rejoicing.

The only trouble was that yet the delicate question rose,

‘Well then, my dear, Gábris, where’s the money?’

My poor father looked up, surprised:

‘Money?’

‘Money, my dearest, money. Asking how much money have you brought back with you…’

‘I haven’t brought any money, my dear.’

The sky became overcast at that instant; dark clouds engulfed my dear mother’s lovely face.

But now it was my father’s turn to put his hand across the table, take my dear mother’s arm in his hand quietly and say,

‘I haven’t brought any money back, my dearest love, but don’t be downcast, because I’ve brought a new song with me, it’s worth it!”

And in his beautiful baritone voice, he starts singing it into his beloved wife’s ears − though I were hearing it now for the first time as follows,

I have nothing else on me, else on me, else upon meBut a short coat, overcoat, overcoat, a coat on me.You have nothing else but a long chemise on, a long chemise! Take it off too for my sake; take it off, oh, for my sake. You also have nothing else but a skirt on, nothing else,
Please, don’t wear it, take it off too, take it off, whip it off, just to please me!

They gave a smile.

Because nobody could laugh. However, this smile was already something in this fathomless sorrow.

“This is why Hungary’s going to ruin,” the lady of the house said bitterly.

“Is this why?” said Mr. Szalay, “Is this why? … And what if I sang the other stanza, my dear Aunt Ágnes, the hot one? For there’s a hot one as well, kind of fire-hot, like the bursting Hungarian blood; that one’s worth not only several bushels of rye, or one or two steers but the old Hungarian world along with all its condominiums … It would be a good thing, indeed, Aunt Ágnes, to live orderly and quietly like a machine… but it would be too boring… (singing)

You also have nothing else but a skirt on…

“Now then! Why don’t we have a drink? …I kiss your hand, Milady…”

And clinked a glass.

6

“Uncle Lajos’s here,” Miss Doby shouted into the room.

“Mr. Lajos Péchy?” Mr. Szalay said, startled, and it could be felt in his voice that he was very happy that finally a man as healthy as that would drop in this condemned cell. On the other hand, the lady of the house turned even paler and, completely embarrassed, could not find the words. ‘And even this!’ she said to herself, “Mr. Lajos Péchy will be informed immediately!”…

From in the next room, Mr. Péchy’s sing song could already be heard. Stretching himself widely, comfortably, Mr. Szalay walked out to meet him. “Hello, my dear Lajoska!”

They shook hands. They grasped each other’s hands so strong, so warm as if they had met ages ago. But it was merely a kind of joy characteristic of Hungarians: why should not rejoice two Hungarian men, as brave and healthy as that, in each other?

“How’re things going?” asked Mr. Szalay.

Mr. Péchy cooed in his odd, humming voice kindly, quietly and melodiously for he said the most indifferent things in a manner as if he was singing a folksong,

“Thanks God, badly, thanks God, badly.”

They had both a good laugh, the answer sounding as a rather altruist statement by a district physician.

The notary stepped between them and pumped hands with them and, as a first thing, showed them to wine.

“Oh, kitten whiskers! They aren’t doing badly here,” Mr. Szalay said, “are they, my dear fellow?”

The notary knew that Mr. Szalay had signed a number of bills of exchange for his father-in-law, and would not be very happy about the sensation. So he preferred to change the subject.

“Uncle Lajos, wouldn’t you rather have the red wine? In such a cold weather one shall get stomach cramps from the white wine.”

“Oh, no! Let’s stave off the red wine for a while: it’ll be suitable for familiarisation.”

However, Mr. Szalay turned to the notary,

“I wonder if there’s any from that three-year-aged wine left.”

“We prepared that while we know that you’re fond of it.”

“Once it’s so, bring me some.”

The notary walked into the other room to fetch some wine; meanwhile, Mr. Szalay lost no time in breaking the news to Mr. Péchy. After all, a best friend is someone to whom you can pour out the contents of your heart without hesitation.

“The count’s not coming!…”

A look of astonishment came over Mr. Péchy’s face. “He’s not coming?” The deuce! Just let him come! Let him come!…”

“He won’t come,” Mr. Szalay said, “Poor István’s been kicked behind.”

“Has he been given the warning?”

“Even the flat must be transferred to the new steward by the New Year.”

Mr. Péchy was staring with petrified face into Mr. Szalay’s good, hard, bony, bearded and moustached face resembling that of a courageous and fortitudinous Kuruts captain, ^[5]

“What a rabid horde! Have they gone out of their minds?”

The notary was already returning with the red wine, and, while he was pouring it into his glass, he was pondering whether Mr. Szalay was rowdy enough to tell Uncle Lajos the fresh information.

By the time he lifted the full glass holding it up to the light to boast of the neatness of the wine, he had found out for sure from Uncle Lajos’ whistling to himself that it had already been done.

He was looking at the wine in his glass for some more minutes, and while he was looking through it examining the purple-red bars of light, the blood rushed to his head, and he felt he would rather throw the glass, entirely, as it was, into Mr. Szalay’s face.

He asked himself, ‘Isn’t it a blatant caddishness from a good old friend like this to reveal to this poor doctor on the very first occasion that he has been reduced to beggary? For however true it is that his father-in-law signed as many bills of exchange for Uncle Lajos as Uncle Lajos did for him, it remains still true that he is going to lose his house, his land and his daughter’s caution-money by this funny story. Could Mr. Szalay really not choose but spoil Uncle Lajos’ pleasure at the very start of the party?’

But then he waved his hand, and a few drops of wine even spilled out of the glass. ‘Once the ordeal has begun, it makes no difference whether it happens an hour earlier or later,’ he thought.

So he turned to the old men with a laughing face, saying,

“There’s one thing I can’t understand. How is it that one and the same wine-stock that’s grown, dressed, hoed, and sprayed in the same way every year produces different kinds of vine every year?”

“Well, dear fellow,” Mr. Szalay said, “pen-drivers like you don’t know it at all. Because remember, grape vine cultivation’s the greatest science of all. There’s only one thing greater than that: handling of wine.“

The notary was looking at him attentively and slightly mockingly. He was pondering why God gives such a beautiful Roman nose and such a twirled, pert moustache to an old child like this.

The mom came out of the next room. “My dear Lajoska…”

She started it in a very kind, ravishing tone of voice but, upon seeing the shock on Mr. Péchy’s face, she got on the verge of bursting into tears, and the words stuck in her throat. Thus she did not even say a word. Her tears started to shed anew, and fell on Mr. Péchy’s strong, large breast: ‘Oh, heavens, how wretched is a woman’s fate! It’s not enough that she has to hide, to conceal all the misfortunes or to lie in order to disguise them constantly in the course of a long life. But, once the trouble has already ensued, whether it is a small or a big one, it’s again the poor, weak woman to suffer the first blow and all the lashes given by the fate’, she thought.

Mr.Péchy was holding the woman in a languid embrace with an eternal smile frozen on his lips. His face, which had been blotchy and hilly, and on which his smile had been dwelling so cheerfully and so homely despite the age of sixty before, was now like the autumn field, devastated; white clouds were looming over it afar; some bluish meadows were already noticeable, and the cadaveric lividities forewarn the approaching winter. He even was more formidable than the old gentleman himself. The latter was sitting in his armchair in the other room, broken down and inert, but without any change visible. On the other hand, Mr. Péchy, as if struck by a lightning, seemed to begin to decompose instantly.

Even Mr. Szalay was surprised: he himself did not expect to knock down this big, fat and high-spirited bull to the ground. So he immediately felt guilty and, trying to consol him, started to dance attendance on him.

“Who will give a chair to Uncle Lajos?” and, having said that, he grasped a good, strong chair, and put it under Mr. Péchy in the belief that the man would not be able to leave his standing place.

But now Mr. Péchy raised his head, and looked round upon them, as if he had just woken up from some kind of nightmare.

Everybody felt relief to see him smiling. The smile brought back the sweet old memories upon the old man’s face.

He was looking and blinking for a time, then said, “Where’s Pista?”

The mom grasped at the question, and said with overdone despair,

“He’s done for; it’s all up with my poor old man.”

Mr. Péchy stood up and toddled in to the master of the house. The old lady thought bitterly to herself, ‘Yeah, all men are the same: six of one and half a dozen of the other, none of them has a soul… They neither can feel sorrow, nor can be shaken…’

Now the men went into the silence-room, and the women gathered here.

“And Mr. Pagan?” Mrs. Szalay asked, “What do you intend to do with Mr. Pagan ?”

The mom remained silent for a minute, then said, “We’re having the engagement party today …that is…” And, after a short hesitation, she replied, “Well, we shall see.”

“Do they love each other?” Mrs. Szalay asked earnestly.

“Well, my dear, that’s not the trouble here. If that flaw of Mr. Imre Pagan was not present, there would’ve been nothing wrong in the matter. Why? A nice, perfect estate, good equipment, a very brave, healthy young man… Well, we’ll see… Panni’s in love, but it doesn’t matter at all because she’s always in love; this girl’s completely lacking in seriousness. In our days, girls were different; these ones trifle with young men as if they were puppy dogs; I don’t know what this world’s coming to…”

“Dear Ágnes, we must put up with it. Today we’re living in another world, my dear and, supposing we don’t accept today’s world, what should we do? Should we melt into thin air? What I say is, if my daughter got into this state, I wouldn’t hesitate a moment. The Happy Valley belongs to Mr. Imre Pagan at present: today Mr. Imre Pagan’s the master; Jew or not Jew, it does all the same; if he proposes marriage to her, allow her to marry him, without hesitation…”

The mom was ill at ease, drew the shawl around her more closely because it was not too warm; in addition, there was a strong, nasty draught in the corner.

“What a shame, what a shame, my dear,” said Mr. Szalay, having stepped into the room by chance in that moment, “you’re dwelling on that stupid question again… One shouldn’t pronounce it in the homeland of a Lajos Kossuth ^[6] and a Sir József Eötvös ^[7]… I say, this is a historical matter! Medieval superstition! What does the word Jew mean?… In the obscure Middle Ages, they were simply regarded as pagans, and were hated for crucifying Christ! In those days, nothing of the kind was said about either social or economic or racial questions; damn it, there were no races – there were religions! Everybody who didn’t share the religious beliefs, was hated and pursued, no matter he was a Jew or a Hussite. The Lutherans were hated more than the Jews. Whether the Sicilian Vespers and the Massacre of St. Bartholomew were schemed against the Jews? Christians engineered them against Christians. And the Holy Inquisition! Also the Thirty Years’ War, as a result of which the whole Germany was in ruins for one hundred and fifty years; and it was the Jews who gained by the Christians killing each other like that.”

“Of course, they were the ones who gained the profit by it!” her wife snapped at it sharply.

“Here we are! Antisemitism isn’t logic but psychology! People don’t like the one who is not part of their herd. They don’t like even the one who is part of it, and even less the one who is outside of it… When in Venice with my daughter, the little one spoke suddenly, ‘Father, these children are dumb.’ Do you understand what it is? The childish mind didn’t regard the Italian children’s ‘croaking’ as a speech but rather as the whining noise of the deaf and dumb people… Do you know how big a deal this is? How ancient and how illuminating it is?… Once, when in Vienna, I told this story to a very famous European linguist, and he was astonished at that! “Sir,” he said, “every old people used to call the aliens ‘dumb’! They understood only their own language. They were of the opinion that he who speaks another language that doesn’t speak but barks… But will this go forever like this? Confound it! Let’s acquire each other’s language at last!… Oh, God, if only a brave, honest Jewish boy happened to propose to my daughter!…

“That’s what I’m saying”, Mrs. Szalay shouted, “Jew or not Jew, he has sixty acres of classy land: Panni should be allowed to be married to him.”

The hosts were embarrassed and silent; their faces were burning. ‘What a shame, to discuss a delicate matter like this in a way like this. No matter how much they love each other. No matter how much they’ve accommodated themselves to each other,’ they thought.

Mrs. Szalay tapped the hostess’s lean hand, and added in her straightforward manner,

„I wish he proposed to her, my darling! I wish!”

Just this instant, the door opened, and Mrs. Péchy came in, without the young gentleman, Péter.

7

“My Frici!” the woman guest shouted, opening her arms wide.

Frici was a big, plump, red-faced young woman. Her head was so small and all the other parts of her body so big as though they did not belong together.

“Dear Aunt Irma,” she shouted, and her tiny, wonderful teeth were shining. Her freshly washed, entire face was gleaming as if she had just stepped out from the bath, and she was beaming with light heartedness and contentment.

After the kissing and all the trifles had finished, her mother, who had been watching with stern attention what the notary had told about her not long before, drew her aside,

“My dear, your husband’s told everything.”

Frici looked at her mother gaily and in simple-minded amazement,

“Mom, you know that one mustn’t attach much importance to what Mr. Péchy says.”

Saying that, she turned to Mrs. Szalay anew to tell her all the horrors of the sleigh overturn.

“Guests’re coming, guest’re coming!” Miss Doby shouted in through the door.

“How late is it?” asked the mother.

“It’s already half past six.”

There was loud stamping of the feet, knocking the snow off the boots, conversation in front of the door; an entire company. The postmaster’s family arrived. Five or six of them lined up into the spacious dining room, bringing piercing cold with them. The heavy coats and the fur coats were taken through the backdoor into one of the small rear rooms, designated as a cloakroom, by the servant maids, who remained there hunching up their shoulders and rubbing their hands. All the others hurried to occupy a position by the big tile stove.

“Damn cold outside,” said the young school master, who came with his wife. They came from the city, both he and his unusually beautiful and even more unusually silent wife; the school master tried to hawk and move in a rustic way.

“Wolves do roar in these days,” the notary said, and rubbed against the school master’s beautiful wife, “this world’s not for a Budapest woman, like this one!”, and clasped her hip amusingly.

The school master’s wife laughed; she pulled apart her most beautiful lips, which were like the ones of Aphrodite, and her complexion was shining softly and smoothly in the lamplight, ‘Oh, how good would it be to feel them as well’, the notary thought.

The schoolmaster, having already been married for five years, felt no jealous; he crept into the warmth of the tile stove, and breathed in the hot air.

The young Mr. Doby had just entered. As a farmerman, he was always busy somewhere, especially on that day! And he was hiding something on his swollen forehead under his hair combed forward; he was always out in the vicinity of the ox-stall to give out orders (however, that day he was holding himself aloof from the stable)… As he entered the room, the beautiful female post-office clerk looked at the young gentleman of the house with eyes agleam, but he brushed her away like a fly. He disliked women that day.

“Gee, what’s the matter with you?”

“With me…,” the young Mr. Doby said, and suddenly clutched his forehead with two or three bumps, each the size of a nut, “yeah, the horse kicked me. Nothing.”

“O, Jesus!” cried the nursery school mistress, and immediately lifted her hand to stroke it. By doing so, she made an unwitting mistake. The girls attribute healing power to their touch, while the boys are aware that any painful part or their body will even more hurt if being pressed. Hence the young man ducked his head, at which the inattentive nursery school mistress turned red.

The young gentleman had to tell in detail how the horse kicked him.

Some groups formed in the room. One of them was partly sitting, partly standing by the tiled stove, another in the corner where the glass-cupboard stood; the women, following village customs, separated from the men instantly like oil from water, and withdrew into the next room.

“Milady, I’d like to introduce you a dear friend of mine, Mr. Forgács… Mr. Forgács, this is Mrs. Ágnes Dobi,” the postmaster ceremoniously introduced the unfamiliar guest to the lady of the house.

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Forgács,” the other said, with the same formality.

Seeing that, the stranger started to laugh laudly,

“Don’t you recognise me? Don’t you really? You don’t remember Karcsi Schöller?”

“By gum! The agent of estate’s son?”

“Yes, I am, Yes, I am.”

“Well, I never! What a change! Frici, come here and look: this is Mr. Karcsi Schöller.”

Mrs. Péchy came up, and, having looked at the stranger for a while with a dropped jaw, gave a yell, “Mr. Schöller, is that you?”

“I kiss your hand, Honourable Milady,” and kissed her hand ever so warm… He even tickled her palm with a finger unnoticed by anybody else, as a consequence of which her face started turning red, her eyes shining, which she could hardly conceal; all at once, she felt warmth enter her entire body; oh, God, meeting again your first boyfriend after fifteen years past, with whom you saw the awakening of spring…

“Oh, dear Mr. Schöller,” she said, and was only looking, looking and blushing, and was like a fine, big fat lamb, “Come, come! My God! My God!” was all she could say.

The Schöllers’ boy grew a big, blonde moustache a nice, brushed William moustache and was tall with a big nose. Certainly, had they not had that shared past together, she hardly could have seen any beauty in him. But you also need to know that the two families, the Dobys and the Schöllers had always been on very good terms on the ranch before. Of course, the Schöllers have always lived in the village. Nevertheless, they used to spend all their time out there, on the ranch. But also to know that the woman was a very joyful German woman, who was very good at needle-work and singing songs, and wanted to be a professional singer.

“Well, what d’you do, dear Mr. Schöller?” asked the lady.

“How come you don’t call me thee and thou any more, Milady?… I’m a post-office clerk in Budapest. I visited the premises in the vicinity, at Bokod because there were some irregularities at the local post office, and some revision had to be done; that was my feast! Well, I was certainly working like blazes for two days so as to be able to come here by this evening… if you don’t brush me off.”

“How about the mom?”

“At your service, she’s alive.”

“Is she well? Healthy?”

“Thank you for your asking.”

“Hasn’t she grown old?”

“So, so.”

“What a wonderful and elegant woman she was.”

“Yes, yes, my pleasure. It’s nice to see that you’re still enjoying your former state. I feel like I flew back into the past with the help of some witchcraft. I can even remember this clock… How beautiful these roses were on it!… Does it still go?”

“Yes, it does.”

“Oh, God, how beautiful, how wonderful, how lovely you are, dear Fricike, I could weep for joy. Can you remember the hammer dulcimer in the corner?”

Mrs. Péchy turned red. It was there, at the dulcimer, where Mr. Schöller kissed her for the first time, on the sly, from behind; jumped upon her, and soiled her face. At the beginning, she felt as if a big dog had slobbered her over; it was only at night, before falling asleep, that she realized that it had been a kiss. The good something, about which she had already read and heard so much: Love…

Now she was laughing loudly.

And, the way the three of them were looking at each other, was a picture of three happy faces that only good Lord can paint. And each kept his or her own secret. Mr. Schöller that her mother had fled their home and was living somewhere in Vienna as the lowest whore, and that he himself was unable to get married because of the two children he had fathered with the mistress of the house… Mrs. Péchy that she was so happy that day because she had heard a good advice about how to procure an abortion and it would be a piece of cake… And the mom did not spoiled Karcsi’s happiness either informing him that it was the very last day when this world could be regarded as firm as a rock and perennial in the future, too… And, like an unhealed wound, which tends to ‘cry out’ to any touch, even because of a breath of air, the mom’s heart was ‘listening’ in alarm through the open door into the next room, where the Jewish question was being discussed again. Among the men, without the women present.

“Once I heard a good idea about the Jewish question,” Mr. Szalay said, “that antisemitism’s the problem of the men of fortune. Not the Jewishness is opposed to Christianity but the wealthy Jews are opposed to the wealthy Christians.”

“Well, certainly there is something we should learn from the Jews,” said the doctor. “We should acquire their shrewdness and diligence. Their ability to make money! If we were skilled in it, there wouldn’t be a Jewish question.

“That’s true. On the one hand, we have a huge advantage over them. After all, everything belongs to us: the country and the power, and we still cannot make a use of them. On the other hand, even though wherever they turn, they only come across enemies, and yet they defeat us in our own world. What do they defeat us with? With their brains.”

“Nuts! With not knowing what honour is.”

“Honour! There is no honour in business.”

“All who do business are alike,” said the old gentleman, the master of the house, “the old Mr. Soltész is worse than a Jew.”

They all burst out laughing at that.

“And what about the Americans?” asked Mr. Szalay, “From the moment that it’s about business, they become Jews at once, no matter they’re baptised.”

“Mind you, I’ll tell only one,” Mr. Péchy said. “For six thousand years, there have been a lot of peoples extirpated. Now, let’s look at the most moral people, the English people. Well, their each generation kills a country. What do they do to the Boers, the Irish people, the Celts, the New Zealanders, the Maoris, the Indians or the Australians? They hunted them like beasts, shot them to death, and obliterated them like a rain forest. Yet in spite of all this, they’re the chief standard bearers of Christianity. They’re the missionaries, they distribute the New Testament in millions and millions of copies, and you can read it even on the copies thereof kept by local village schools that ‘Published by the British Bible Society’… But which people did the Jews extirpate?”

“They’re going to extirpate us anyway. They’ll shoot us to death not with rifles but silver crowns and golden Napoleons.”

“With bills of exchanges,” said the master of the house.

They burst out laughing again; if there is anyone that may say rightly so, it is he, although all of them have made a good headway in being in debt head over ears.

“What the deuce? That’s all the more reason to marry them into the family! And, if Panni stands his smell, you must be happy about it.”

The lady could not stand it any more. She got up from her seat, and explouded into the room like a cock,

“After all, what you’re doing here is simply unheard-of! Shame, what a shame!”

Mr. Szalay, got scared, apologized,

“My dear Aunt, this is only words; nobody here means any harm. Do you know how many times I’ve been attacked and asked what I was doing among those stinking Jews? I answered, ‘My dear friend, I’ve already got used to their smell so much, you know, that I don’t like anywhere else anymore’. All my true friends are Jews, so I cannot be expected to offend them. On the other hand, they mustn’t be sensitive towards me, because our friendship entitles me to act a bit evil.”

They burst out laughing. Mr. Szalay was so friendly; meaning no offense at all.

“And let’s drop the matter,” he said, waiving his hand while looking at all the others, “I really feel ashamed… you needn’t to be angry about it, my dear mother-in-law, it’s not a blemish, I beg to say to you, but a virtue; a big virtue for a son-in-law with brilliant, successful prospects… After all, I’d much rather allow my daughter to marry somebody with a fine future than to a nobody with a fine past…”

8

At that moment there came some new guests; the noise was so loud that nobody could hear the sleigh pulling up in front of the house. Mr. Dánel Rácz, the big reveller came with his wife and a beautiful widow, Mrs. Babay, who, as a kinswoman of theirs, lives with them. There was repeated tumult, a maelstrom of further handshakes, newer noisy sounds, and merry chattering again. Where so many people are together, there is complete freedom from worries and cares.

“Hi, nice to see you again after a long time,” said Mrs. Doby, covering with kisses the blonde German-born woman, who used to be, in fact, governess in the house of the Count of Cservienszk for whom Mr. Dániel Rácz was doing the job of a land steward. ‘Marry this Fräulein’, he had been told, ‘you won’t regret it for she is so frugal, that a bar of chocolate lasts to her for a fortnight.’ He did marry her; they’ve been living together for fourteen years, the woman has already bought one of the old manor houses of the Count of Cservienszky, and furnished it most beautifully, but her husband fails to spend more than three days in a week at their beautiful, gentleman-like residence. Everybody knows that about them. Yet, however surprising may it seem, no one would state that they’re not a symbol of happiness. What’s more, Mrs. Babay backs them up.

Miss Doby was stirring about there before the eyes of the guests but nobody broached the question. However, everybody was curiously looking forward to the evening. The news got round within a minute: the count is not coming, and has given in the notice. But what will happen to the fiancé? Miss Doby was aware of that, and became even more vehement and harum-scarum than usual… And lo, the door opened and Mr. Imre Pagan came in.

It was so unexpected, that the moment she saw him, she almost screamed out loud, and abruptly turned her head pretending not to have seen him.

It took only a second, but Mr. Pagan noticed, and between one moment and the next, a deep stern look appeared and disappeared on his face. Miss Doby’s next movement was to turn back and, with the ease which is characteristic of the girls only, ventured a smile, and proffered herself with warmth, with affection, almost requesting.

And Mr. Pagan, yet knowing nothing about the matter, did accept it. He did so happily so much the more because the girl had always been cool with him and had always treated him as a stranger before. And he was especially impressionable on that day because he had fought a heavy battle with his parents.

“Well, how are you today, Miss Anna…?”

“So-so, thank you,” answered the girl. “Did you come on horseback?”

“Yes, I did. “

It was only that time that he took her hand.

But now the whole party was looking curiously at them which scared Miss Doby so much that she fled like a startled bird.

A ‘Hurray!’ was heard from somewhere, and Mr. Pagan saluted to that direction jauntily and dashingly, imitating bragging Hungarian youngsters.

“What a nice boy he is! Who would’ve thought it of him?” Mrs. Szalay said.

Mrs. Péchy was laughing, lovingly, “Yes, especially in the evening.”

“Why? His freckles cannot be seen.“

“There are no freckles in winter.”

“Neither racial characteristics.”

“In the country, there’re no racial characteristics.”

“Especially on six hundred acres.”

Mr. Pagan shook hands with all the gentlemen one after the other; clasped the hand of every man and shook them so hard as though to show who he actually was. Than he mingled in the company, immediately got a drink. The room was just like a hive full of swarming bees. But now Malvina came in, and gave the order,

“Dear Ágneska, everybody’s here, aren’t they? It’s time for dinner.”

Suddenly, the old lady got scared.

“Did you say dinner is ready?”

“Yeah, sure it’s completely ready.”

The old lady looked at Malvin, at her little withered face ruddied by the fire and into her glittering blue eyes as though she had come from a dream. This girl doesn’t know anything yet. Oh, God, this poor thing. When she learns it, her life will be over. Last year, when grandfather died, they inherited together that small land that still had remained. At that time Malvin announced that she would go back to the old house, and run a farm because they succeeded in having the old gentleman legally declared non compos mentis and, on the ground thereof, having his will set aside, according to which he had left all his fortune to his housekeeper. The old maid servant, who had not been skilful enough to force marriage from the old gentleman, is a water carrier in the village now, and Malvin could not move into the estate either for the inheritance had arrived on time to save the farm-bailiff’s family from ruin. Malvin, naturally, had always been kept in the dark about the family matters; she only was expected to bake exquisite curd cheese turnover pies spiced with dill, and if she happened to hear anything about financial difficulties now and then, she was convinced that it was kind of idle talk, believing that it was nonsense to speak about financial difficulties of a man who is running a five hundred-acre farm, to whom seventy servants and three hundred harvestmen obey, and his wheat is carried to the ferry on the Tisza by a long string of four-ox carts from his granaries. Notwithstanding, she was also tired already of the endless servants’ work. What fell to her share of the entertainments of the guests was only the kitchen, nothing else; and, fortunately, she was so busy that she did not become aware of that something in her soul that could hope, daydream and pain.

“Yes, my dear, yes, my beloved,” she said.

Hearing that made Malvin’s heart feel warm and happy: when they are alone together, her elder sister is dull and cool to her, but she sometimes happens to be so good to her that her goodness itself is worth to live.

The old lady looked round the company, but had not the heart or rather the strength enough to tell it to them. There were tiny groups; everybody was talking loud; there was muttering similar to the one in a waiting room. She was sure that everyone was talking about the big news. Well, let them talk about it however much they want. She opened her mouth even twice, without saying a word, then leant over to Malvin, and kissed her. She was so weak that she could not take any initiative.

“We’ll wait for five more minutes; the Aradis aren’t here yet.”

“A fat chance you have! They’re always late. And all the cuts of meats are perfectly fried and fresh…”

“Only for five minutes,” the old lady said with bagging eyes.

“Anyway, I’m waiting not a minute longer,” railed Malvin.

The old lady rebuked her nervously,

“Who gives the orders here, you or me?”

Malvin gave it up. She fell silent and left. And the old lady triumphantly stated that she had always been doing her job well, having the girl within grasp in all her life, never ever allowing her to make a motion without her permission. Otherwise, Malvin would at once dominate her. ‘Just look at that cripple! Let she be satisfied with being alive,’ she thought.

‘Now she could feel safe for the future,’ she went on. ‘What can a crippled sister like this want of her; is not it enough for her that she has lived well, free from care in her all life, doing the cooking as she liked it? If she happens to try to reproach me, I’ll rebuff her.’

‘And as for all the others here, who are also more or less in debt, am I God to create from nothing?’ she continued to talk to herself. ‘They’ve stuffed their faces, drunk themselves drunk ever so many times here; this has been a real El Dorado, where roast turkeys have been flying upon the table, constantly, during thirty years.’

‘What a sinful world! It’s easy to stay innocent for he who just wipes his mouth and gets up from the table. The guilty will be he who stays there and pays the bill.’

9

The guests were talking cautiously; only the postmaster was an innocent and chaste mind, from the face of whom anyone could tell tha the never engages in gossiping.

Mr. Filep, the brave postmaster, a lean and tall man, was fondling his fiddle. He took it out from its case and from a big cloth, in which he kept the instrument wrapped, being of the opinion that fiddles might catch cold and it is not allowed to take them out of the heated room in winter. However, upon invited, he could not say no. Besides, he would rather have left his wife than his fiddle at home. Apart from that, his wife failed to come with him for they were in bad terms with the land steward’s family because she had rumoured that Mr. Doby had never been a land steward, and would never become one but a farm bailiff; she also had been blabbing that he, being a handsome young man, used to be the favourite coachman of the old, ugly countess, who had put him off with this title. And the gossip had got back, word by word, and the land steward’s wife had been hurt so much that she had refused to return the greeting of the post master’s wife; moreover, had sent an answer back to her asking her to send her turkey back to her. That is to say, a long time, twenty years before, they had quarrelled with each other over some bill of exchange, which they had paid so as to prevent the post master’s wife talking about it. However, not long after, she had recognised a turkey in the flock of the post master’s wife, and since that time she had deemed that woman a thief. Apart from this, the post master was a wonderful man; plaid the violin admittedly well, and they have made peace with him since then but they are still on bad terms with the wife.

There were groups here and there, telling anecdotes one after the other and, having had the first appetizing snort of pálinka, ^[8] they were looking forward to the feast ahead completely well-tuned.

“Then let’s not drink too much,” Mr. Szalay said, “so as not to come off badly like the old peasant.” ^[9]

„Why, what happened to the old peasant?” asked the postmaster.

„Well,” commenced Mr. Szalay, „one day the old peasant got drunk as a lord in the inn. As he tottered out through the door, he bumped into a woman, who promptly boxed his ears. The boozed man said to himself amazedly, ‘Wow, how quickly I am back home!’

There was a big laugh. Mr. Filep also offered a joke with his dry humour.

„One day, as the old man’s taking the hay into the barn, he looks up to see that some big people are approaching him.

‘I wonder whether you would give your consent for us to lay railroad trucks across your bar?’ they ask him.

At which the old man answers, ‘Come back tomorrow, I want to think it over.’

They come back again the next day, and ask him,

‘Well, how did you decide?’

‘I say no’.

‘But why?’

‘Because I won’t open the barn gate whenever the train comes.’”

The anecdotes were flowing in this way, one after the other, abundantly, so they all were already looking forward to the sitting to the table in an exuberant mood.

Now all of them saw as Mr. Imre Pagan was hunting after Miss Doby. They changed significant smiles and glances.

“Religion is a private affair,” said Mr. Szalay, smiling.

They all understood it, and were laughing with him.

“I would say, he’s a quite normal Hungarian man.”

“He can become one.”

“In particular if he gets a good Hungarian little wife.”

“And the society accepts him.”

On that they all agreed.

“And it shall come to that end, anyway,” said Mr. Péchy, “the Jews are, among the Germans, as good Germans as the Junkers; among the French, as a nationalist and, among the English, as Puritan moralists. Poor they, they cannot do anything else. They lack their own language, their own society. They have their own range of emotions but, in the outer world, they cannot but choose to assimilate to the state of which they are a member.”

“They must be converted to the Christian faith.”

“Nobody can be forced to do that.”

“But yes, they must turn to Christianity! That’s a must just like wearing a tail coat at an elite-ball.”

“If he wants to be a member of the exclusive society.”

“This Jewish question, as a whole, is narrow-mindedness.”

At the moment, they settled the matter in this way, as they saw that the couple matched well.

That is to say, Mr. Imre Pagan caught hold of Miss Doby. Which was an easy task, for it was the girl who wanted to take the hook. Namely, while she was in the kitchen, overheard Mr. Pagan giving the horse to Mihók. Now she got worried that he might have learned Péterke’s affair. So she came back into the room to bustle about in a way so as to give an opportunity to Mr. Pagan to speak to her.

“Tell me, Miss Doby, is the count coming?”

The girl glanced at him with a pure, innocent look to find out whether he knew anything or not.

“The count?” she said, and looked round the company. On second thought, her look became a bit dim: after all, there was nothing to do about it, everyone in the house knew about it. But then an encouraging thought came into her mind that they must have not let it out to the stranger.

“Why should he be here?”

“Why?” said Mr. Pagan, “Your father himself told my father that he would be here.”

Anna lowered her eyelids.

“Nah, why should he be here? I didn’t want him to be here.”

Mr. Pagan laughed. There was a strong satisfaction in his laugh.

“Well, you see, that’s nice of you,” he said, and continued to himself, ‘It would be better if the contract did not succeed than succeeded too well.’ Then, to the girl,

“Miss Doby, we don’t care about the contract, do we?”

The girl, as one who knows nothing about anything, looked innocently at him.

“About what contract?”

Mr. Imre Pagan was silent. He changed his mind: if this is the case, he will not speak about it either. At that moment, Miss Doby was so bonny, so immaculate and so sweet that his heart was leaping with happiness. At his father’s command, he announced that he could not marry Miss Doby without a wedding dower. At which the old gentleman answered with artless sincerity, ‘In this case, my dear, you may go if you like because I’m unable to give a dower on your marriage. But I’ll tell you something else. The count wants to lease the land in the Midwife’s Nook outskirts. Well, I’ll guarantee that it’ll be you who’ll get the one-thousand seven hundred acre land on lease.’ They examined the pros and the cons of the matter, and the old folks said that the bargain would be suitable regardless of the conditions. Nevertheless, in their eyes, the old farm-bailiff’s word could not be trusted any more. Therefore they wanted the old count to guarantee the contract and, when it is done, the engagement can take place immediately. The old gentleman organised today’s István feast for this purpose. He planned with a lurking thought and a pinch of cunning that he will drive the stripling brat into the corner one way or other to make some kind of promise. ‘It’ll be somehow,’ he thought. As he was accustomed to the fact that plans do not fulfil themselves as they were conceived, he did not make an elaborate plan. However, it would be a very nice outcome; after all, let it be enough that he had been working for them for forty years and, even if he was indebted as much as he was, he had never had a penny unpaid liability to the domain. The least assistance that can be expected from the count is to promote the marriage in this way.

“About no contract of any sort,” said Mr. Imre Pagan, turning serious, and patted Miss Doby’s hand. This time, it was he who left the girl alone with her innocent look.

But Miss Doby did not accept leaving her alone this way, and, all of a sudden, she became cold like ice.

“A contract is a very important thing, isn’t it?” asked she pretending innocence.

Mr. Pagan blushed a bit.

“Love is important, my pleasure.”

But he did not comprehend her look; it seemed to be painful. For she knew everything well. Nobody had informed her about it but her father and mother did not ever discuss anything in private; on the contrary, they always talked to each other so loud that it could be heard far and wide. And now, she understood Mr. Imre Pagan’s turning serious; the lost of the contract was painful.

“If it hurts, let it hurt. Yet a folk song about useless sorrow crossed her mind, and left him with a light-headed, trilling laugh.

Mr. Pagan looked after the girl. He felt some acerbity in his mouth. He was watching her as kind of a piece of sweet fruit, which disappears from before him from moment to moment, again and again… He started to whistle.

“What’s wrong, brother?” slapped the notary him on the shoulder, and laughed violently into his eyes. “Is the girl saucy?”

He could not answer because Mr. Szalay’s voice drowned their conversation.

“That our tongue is white from eating a lot?” he said in a declamatory voice. “My dear fellow, Hungary will be happy as long as our tongue’s white. Because we’ll have enough food as long as that. But not whatever kind of food just to survive but the kind that is so sorted, so exquisite and delicious that even the dead can’t resist them! And we live to maintain this sort of white tongue, my dear friends!”

They laughed, and everyone started to watch Mr. Szalay. Having arrested their attention, he did not let it go.

He was standing there, leaning against the already set table, in the sweet expectant mood raised by the approaching evening meal, when the Hungarian gentlemen’s society sharpen their appetite with the help of one or two schnapps, one or two pieces of bread salted and seasoned with red pepper and a fine, tasteful conversation.

“For it, itself, is a religion,” he said in a raised voice, “as the Hungarian man sits to the table laid with a nice, white tablecloth, and eats with devotion that delicious, yellow hen soup with that heavenly-tasting, shall-shaped pastry, then that magnificent stuffed cabbage of Kolozsvár style and that rose-red Angel Wings fry cookies, drinks that fine, chalky wine from Szilágyság, ^[10] sucks and then puffs out the savoury tobacco smoke from the superb meerschaum pipe, and lets out big belches.”

“Well, I’d willingly abandon belching”, said the ladyhost, who herself forgot about the troubles for a minute.

As for the faint, weakling and fragile-souled females, yes,” retorted Mr.Szalay, but in our case, in the case of the heavily-built, real he-men, never! I can only repeat it: that’s also kind of religion, but only if you have faith in it! Great and holy faith! Faith in the fact that this is the Good and the Beautiful, and this is the Divine Commandment of life.

“Yeah, Jesus was also present at the Wedding at Cana.

“That’s right!” shouted Mr. Szalay, “And he became a deity because he was a man!… He broke the bread, and he gave it to the disciples. Then he took a cup, and gave it to them, saying, ‘Take, eat; this is my body and this is my blood.’ Yes, he was present at the Wedding at Cana, where he diluted wine to the greatest joy of the people, and that was, my dear friend, a great divine act.”

And, as everybody was already paying attention to him, he raised his glass, and started speaking as follows:

10

“I’m sixty-three years old, dear fellows, I’ve lived sixty-three years,” he said, sounding a bit resigned, “…and what a sixty-three years! My dear fellows! I’ve been living at daylight, of course, but at night I’ve been living a hundred times finer life because as they say pumpkin flowers near sunset! ^[11] I say, daylight! Honestly, what’s daylight? Just look at the Hungarian man at daylight! You would easily think he is a stooping figure, a wearied man. What a sad life! How many cares, how much trouble he has!… But in the evening, when after a few glasses of wine, and when the music has started to sound, he becomes a brave man, and gets in such a wonderful mood, which no other nation in the world can boast of!”

All of them were laughing and applauding. Now, having had a taste of speaking, Mr. Szalay poured out his fine words with such an ardour that everyone was listening to him gaping with admiration:

“What beauty Hungarian life holds comes into flower only in the evening. All funny, jocular and good humoured things will show themselves only in the evening. What evenings you can spend from spring to autumn, beside the bubbling porridge in the fields under the stars, then, from autumn to spring, sipping weak wine round the squat oak tables in Hungary! At daylight, the Hungarians are ordinary, quiet and taciturn sod busters; in the evening, they’re shining with huge, brilliant ingeniousness. They beget even their children at night and, besides, the world’s most talented generations!

A hearty laughter shattered the walls. All the guests swarmed round him, “Dear Uncle Péter, you look like joking about again!”

The old gentleman himself was laughing and, filled with self-conceit, acknowledged in a homely way,

“There’s no getting away from it, I sometimes make lovable remarks. The other day somebody told me, it was about a contract, that he pretends himself to be stupid in order to trick the secret from the other. ‘You didn’t need to make an extra effort to do it, did you, Jani, did you?’ But when I’m at such a party, which I’m fond of, and where the people understand me, I’m wholly and truly in royal spirits! Nothing shall be lost; every word shall be to the point; it’s only worth your while to speak under such circumstances. But he who has nothing to say keep his mouth shut! Behold, this is cut out for the Hungarians, for the Hungarian peasants: ^[12]

Behold the old peasant, look at his big quiet. When he speaks, he’s off-hand, when cautious, keeps silence …

They were mad about him; they felt that the old man was especially in his element that day.

“I live still under a Kirghiz tent enjoying the scent of latakia tobacco and ambergris waiting for the plums to fall into my mouth,” said Mr. Szalay. “I repeat what once Mr. Sándor Fejér said. ‘What shall become the world in the future?’ I asked him. And he responded, ‘I don’t know, Milord. What I only say is, it was last year like this year, and we still survived winter.’”

They all understood at once. The old nodded approval.

“The Hungarians are wise.”

“A God-like wisdom,” they say here and there, and they all felt some kind of exceptional vital tranquillity behind the word.

“The Hungarians are wise,” said Mr. Szalay, “but the wisest man I’ve ever known is Uncle Szűcs. I’ve considered him the cleverest, calmest and wisest man I’ve ever known in all my life. Terence’s saying, Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto ^[13] proved to be true with Uncle Szűcs.

“Please, tell us some more about him”, urged him even the women.

“This man was a personal serf, who served as a redcap ^[14] in the War of Independence of eighteen hundred and forty nine under the command of captains Ernest Kiss and Damjanovich. ^[15] All the others used to call them Ernő Kiss and Damjanics but he used to call them Erneszt Kiss and Damjanovich as he himself used to hear their names on the spot pronounced!

How well, how cleverly he told how it was when they had won the battle, and the goulash was bubbling in the cauldron there under the Jankovác ramparts in the evening, Ernest Kiss and Damjanovich went to them saying,

‘Yeh, gallant soldiers, give us a bit to eat!’

‘God chose me to give them my water-bottle’, he said, ‘and they drank it up. Never mind. If only it helped them to keep them alive still today… But they, in fact, have died. Oh, how we were singing that time,

Now look at my red beaver I am living in clover; There’s a bouquet beside it, My little brunette has tied it.’” ^[16]

And, as Mr. Szalay started singing the song, the others immediately took it up in chorus, and the song flew from the lips of the old sitting around the tables and the young standing embracing each other in groups just like a flock of birds fly up from the furrow.

But Mr. Szalay, as he had something in store, beckoned them to desist, and they all fell silent so as to hang on the lines of his words in clusters like rooks out on the branches of the trees, and he began to spread out the embroidered hand-woven of his speech through the length and breadth as follows,

“I’ve never seen so much knowledge, a man with as much knowledge as that of Uncle Szûcs. Taking my example, I’ve achieved a maturity certificate with a ‘very good’ mark, graduated in political science and law with distinction to have knowledge enough for a life without a hoe and a scythe and, when I was ready, I had to see that I knew nothing compared to Uncle Szűcs…

For instance, we had a small vineyard. But what could I do with it?

Not so Uncle Szűcs! He knew how to open the stocks covered with earth, how to layer, how to dress, how to hoe the vine…

I had a small garden as well; for aught I cared, it might’ve lain fallow.

No so Uncle Szűcs! You could find a better gardener neither at vegetable nor at fruit gardening…

How about bee-keeping? He had it all at his fingertips! If I call our then house a court, he used to be our Court Councillor.

How about vine-harvest? All I knew about it was that it’s fun. That we used to have porridge with mutton chops, which I’m fond of very much. And were trying the dipping must…

And he? He knew everything about harvest, every trick of it! How to pick, how to press, how to preserve and nurse grapes. He was the only expert in it!

Meanwhile, winter and the time of cabbage trampling came on. Who trampled the cabbage? Only Uncle Szűcs! What a trampling he performed in the tub! And with bigger expertise than with which today’s dancers dance. He knew everything from in how many liquids the legs must be washed to how the cabbage should be stamped so that it first becomes slushy, and then turns into a hard mass, he simply knew everything. And how he could shout it with joy,

Whether or not I have my mate
I am dancing my way!

Also, Uncle Szűcs was convinced that cabbage is not worth a straw if it was trampled not by a man. It tastes only when it’s trampled by a man! If trampled by a woman, it’s not worth a straw, not even with mutton; cabbage is cabbage only if it’s trampled by a man, especially by him.

And then came vine drawing.At such times Uncle Szűcs was in his element. Today, there’s a cellarman’s course in Budapest but I don’t know where Uncle Szűcs acquired the trick of vine drawing. The only thing I know is that I’ve never seen a better cellarman than Uncle Szűcs in this world.

And then came this winter along. The bride’s down feather topper was torn. The first snow fell and the first frost came, there was crunching cold outside, and the idea cropped up that it would be good to get a piglet for its fat. Again, Uncle Szűcs’s knowledge was put to use.

Was it about to go to the pig market? Well, that was where I looked on Uncle Szûcs’s knowledge in wonder. I was watching at it just like a shepherd boy would do at the Budapest Bourse… if he would be let in at all. There were lean and fat, black and white pigs, barrows and sows, no limit of kinds.

Uncle Szûcs looked simply round and said,

Look, little brother, that’ll be good for us!’

‘Why?’

‘For it’s moving well! For the point in this matter is that its movement must be good. That its spine would twitch! And its butt would sway aside! That’s the mature piglet…

At the very moment, he asked a villager carrying a satchel, ‘How is it going?’

The other tossed an answer over his shoulder, ‘The one this way, the other that way.’

‘Thanks,’ said Uncle Szűcs, who was already fully informed. That’s to say, ‘The one this way, the other that way’ means that there’s no settle price; they leave the offer to the people’s expertness, and adjust themselves to it. He who was an expert, made a good bargain, who not, suffered a loss. Having got to the mature piglet, Uncle Szűcs stopped and called,

‘What’s your price?’

‘Thirty-five’, was the curt answer.

‘How much will be the knock off?’

‘Twenty-five.’

I became a pillar of salt; I didn’t understand a word of it. Well, the meaning was that one kilo of the pig cost thirty-five Kreutzer, and there would be a twenty-five kilogram knock off of the total weight taking into account the entrails.

‘How much do you charge for that alive?’

‘It’s price is thirty Pengoes.’

‘Twenty-five will be enough.’

‘No way.’

Uncle Szűcs extended his arm and shook hands with the seller.

I was a bit worried, youk now. I said to myself, ‘How can anyone buy as carelessly as that? We’d better have it weighed because better safe than sorry’.

‘Not a decagram of it will be missing, little brother,’ he said.

I paid for it. We drove home. We weighed it. It was one hundred and twenty-five kilo. Which means, the weight was full with mathematical precision.

And then, later, I made use of this knowledge; it helped me to cover myself with glory. In my life, over such a long time, all kinds of things’ve happened to me, for example at one time I had to go to the Rudas bath in Budapest to cure my rheumatic fever. On one occasion, the weighing scales went wrong, and a gentleman quarrelled about it, saying he did want to know how many kilos he weighed. I said to him,

‘There’s no need of quarrelling, you’re seventy-six kilos.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I come from Debreczin; I can tell how many kilos anybody weighs.’

Not long after that, the bath-attendant turned up, set right the scales, and the gentleman was weighed: he weighed exactly seventy-six kilos.

There was a big astonishment, how could I tell it and so correctly at that. ‘Gentlemen, Uncle Szűcs and I’d been going to the Debreczin market for ten years. There’s not a pig I cannot tell how much it weighs alive or without the knock off,’” Mr.Szalay said.

Of course, the company, which was imbibing Mr. Szalay’s speech like nectar, was laughing heartily.

“You can say you’d been studying diligently at Uncle Szûcs’s Academy,” commented Mr.Rácz, raising his own glass for a touch of glasses.

Having had a good drink, Mr. Szalay went on.

“Was a butcher needed? To prepare it? Uncle Szűcs was at hand! He got the hog down, stuck and singed it; I was standing by the side of him just like a village child waiting for a tit-bit. He drew it, and asked jovially,

‘Of which do you want more, Milady, sausage or bacon?’”

“My wife has always wanted more of the sausage,” the host remarked with a silent smile.

“There’s nothing better for women than a good sausage,” approved Mr. Szalay, raising a joyful horse-laugh, and then meditated on as follows, “I hardly could understand that the most gorgeous sausage will be cut out from the boneless meat intended for bacon. But I was watching as he was cutting it, in this way, using two knives, into as tiny pieces as dewdrops. Besides, there were two types of sausage that time, the ordinary sausage made of meat cut to smithereens, and the one which was made of bigger pieces of meat; he pressed them using a finger into the sausage, it was my father’s favourite, this was called thrust sausage…

I was just standing astounded in front of Uncle Szűcs’s vast knowledge, bowed my uninstructed head in awe, and I’m looking back over his colossal, unsurpassable swine knowledge with amazed respect even today.

At this point, since the guests thought it had been finished, also a ‘Hurrah’ could be heard. Maybe, they did not know that Mr. Szalay, once having commenced a harangue, usually stuck to his at least one and a half hours. His speeches were as thoroughgoing as an academic dictionary; a real monograph, giving close attention to each detail of his topic. But this time, it was different. Miss Malvin, who was already all agog to serve the food, according to her habit, was squabbling so persistently that, in the last minute, he had to yield.

“Well, lest you should think that all this was only idle talk, Péter, my son, go and call in Uncle Szűcs!

The young ones, who had been in the belief that the hero of the story was a man who had died a long time before, jumped up to set up a deputation and fetch the old man.

And to whom else could the horses been trusted in a perilous, cold weather like this? Only to Uncle Szűcs! That’s why I say that my wife keeps screaming in the sleigh for no reason at all: with Uncle Szűcs sitting in the coachbox you have nothing to fear of!

Meanwhile, Uncle Szűcs was being taken into the room; he had already been in the kitchen, the small coachman stayed with the horses in the stall.

11

A stooping, silent, withered and shifty eyed old man stopped in front of the table. His hoary hair was floating around his white skull showing that the sun had never reached this bold head, which was always covered with either a lambskin cap or a thick and greasy hat. His face was as black and bluish-scarlet from time and age, as white his bald skull was. He had a big, rather bulky, hooked nose, and a sinewy countenance. But his blue eyes were looking mischievously as he glanced repeatedly over the company.

Would you like to drink a glass of wine with us, Uncle Szűcs? Mr. Szalay asked.

Well, milord, I would; that’s old man’s milk,” said the old lad.

Mr. Pagan made room beside him, and drew aside to let the greybeard take a seat. However, the other took the chair and drew it a bit away. Having drained his glass to the dregs and having wiped his mouth, the old man sat down, a bit farther back from the row of the ones sitting at the table not caring about being watched. He really had a superb head with the floating white treads of hair and, as the huddled man was bowing before himself, the view of ‘the witness of great times’ called for a painter.

Mr. Szalay continued his addres sabout Uncle Szûcs.

“It happened they sent a rabbit to us. ‘What shall I do with it?’ I asked myself. Just let Uncle Szűcs come! He skinned and larded it well with bacon fat ‘so as that its lean-flanked skeleton should be dripping with fat…’ ^[17] In summer, I gave a stare to his art of cookery. Nobody could flavour or savour a goulash or a stew or a noodle porridge or a potatoe soup with pastry as well as Uncle Szűcs could. And, when our jaws were already tired of the delight of the good meals and all the glasses have already clunk, uncle Szűcs stroke up, singing… How was that, uncle Szűcs, starting with the words ‘On the poplar’?” ^[18]

“Let’s listen to uncle Szűcs!” asked the whole company.

And uncle Szűcs stood up, and took up the full glass given to him, but it was not trembling in his otherwise trembling hand any more; neither his voice, which was only crackling with age, when he began, singing,

On the poplar, on the tree gableA raven is sitting all black!His mourning dress better fits meFor my darling, lovey-doveyDoes not like me, does not love me any more.

Everybody was laughing and applauding. The tremulous voice implied so much delight in life, so much impishness, kindness and loving goodness!

But the old man waved with his glass once more, and there fell silence. And he, with his head tilted to one side, and squinting with his eyes God knows in which direction, mischievously hummed,

I do not go hastilyI walk only languidly,My eyes don’t stop oh, looking

But stop on my true honey.

They all doted upon the old man; the girls were shrieking with laughter and kissing each other. Everybody came out of the next troom, and was scrambling to watch the gentle old peasant.

Hoverer, Mr. Szalay, taking his share, the word, said, giving a winkle to the old man,

“Also, we’ve learnt from Uncle Szűcs, among others, what true love is. ‘My dear younger brother, Péter’, as you told me, Uncle Szűcs, in the olden days, do you remember? ‘I say, my younger brother, Péter, I’d never known any other woman before I married than my lovely old wife…’“

There was spine-tingling laughter all around; the old man took the oration with a serious face like someone accustomed to it.

“I was a newly married husband,” continued Mr. Szalay, “Uncle Szűcs and I were sitting face to face at the round stonetable with my precious sweetheart next to me under the big nut tree in front of the press shed,” and he winked with his eyes almost in tears to the stout aunt Irma, who was listening to her husband’s grandiose speech, as usual, very carefully. She’d heard him thousand times before but now that he was so successful with it, she was watching her Péter, the orator, and uncle Szűcs was sitting also beside his faithful mate, whom he called ‘my old wife’… I embraced my precious sweetheart’s neck − at this point a small, low-toned chuckle could be heard but Mrs. Szalay’s serious countenance silenced the mirth immediately, − and kissed her fresh-as-dawn complexion, but Uncle Szűcs rebuffed me,

’Dear young brother, Péter, mind its redness; it’ll be worn off!’

At which that certain redness became even redder!

“Should that mean you never kiss your wife?”

“Yes, I do,” answered Uncle Szűcs − is that true? Did you really say so? − though we’ve been married for fifty years now and, with that, he was about to embrace his old mate, who, as a reaction, pushed him gently away with both hands, ‘Get along with you, leave me alone!’ And even the earlobes of the old woman became flaming red.

At this very moment, I felt inclined to kiss with love every bit both of uncle Szűcs and those of his old partner in life! Oh, this neverending love springing from the pure, sweet Hungarian heart, about which Petőfi ^[19] said,

I don’t want to have a good timeWith you, Honey, time after time,Either winter or summertimeBut in all my immortal life!

Did it happen like that, uncle Szűcs? Did you used to do it like that?”

Now the old peasant lifted head, and looked at Mr. Szalay, who was standing in the strong light with his shining face and said,

“My dear younger brother, Péter, one does things like this but doesn’t talk about them!”

A thunderous horselaugh burst out; the whole “electrified” company was overjoyed by every word of the old man.

But Mr. Szalay did not give in either:

“My dear uncle Szűcs! He who’s lived long, knows a lot and is allowed a lot; and what’s most allowed: to teach. Tell us, please…Do behold how many wonderful flowers can be seen around here like gillyflowers, mignonettes and red roses in this heavy winter…When is love sweeter: when ones’s young or when old?”

Chickle!… There could be heard bursts of cackling laughter and screaming gaiety from every direction, and they were waiting for the old man’s words with bated breath.

And he lifted his eighty-four-year-old head, and said,“My dear younger brother, Péter, when you’re young, love’s like sparrow; it flies now here, now there. But as time passes, the more your forelock sweats by doing it, the sweeter it is!”

It was indescribable how the people fell on each other’s necks. Even the old were holding their sides with laughter until they got a stitch in them.

“Well, break into a prankish song at it, uncle Szűcs!” shouted Mr. Szalay, still standing, and lifting his glass high, “Where’s that first-class wine?”

The old man did not need telling twice but piped up,

What I have earned in all my life, all my lifeI have spent on my sweet wife, my sweet wife.I have bought her two or three skirts, pleated skirts.I’ve turned it up repeatedly in due course…Lie on your spine readily, my sweet wife!

The laughter grew stormy and brawling. Chairs were turned up, plates were being clunk, and the sound of handclapping became similar to running fire. However, as it was to be feared that the old man would go on like this without realizing what more than enough was, Mr. Szalay interrupted the tumultuous laugh scene in stentorian voice,

“But, to return to the cauldron, what I also admired about uncle Szűcs was his knowledge of physics! Because when the stew had been cooked in the cauldron with live coals under it and with the hot, smoking redliquid therein, uncle Szűcs unhooked the cauldron from the pot-hanger saying to me,

‚Well, my dear younger brother, Péter, grab the cauldron at the bottom, and put it on the table.’

‚I won’t do such nonsense,’ I protested, ‚since, from beneath, it had been heated by the fire; from above, by the hot liquid; surely, I won’t let my hand burn.’

Uncle Szűcs was just smiling good-heartedly, then put his hand under the cauldron, lifted it up, and put it on the table. I was watching him in horror.

‘Uncle Szűcs! God bless you! Your hand will be full of blisters!’

‘On what account?’

‚Well, due to the hot cauldron.’

’It’s cold. Grab it, my dear younger brother, Péter.’

I did so. It was cold.”

There was a general astonishment. The question could be heard from here and there,

“Was that true?”

“Yes, it was.”

“How is it possible?”“Well, the fact is, mate, that it was cold! It was demonstrated in the physics classrooms, when the teacher was boiling water inside of a paperbag over an open flame before our eyes. The water came to boil, and the paper didn’t burn over the flame, it was cold…It’s a law of physics… But it’s a complete mystery where uncle Szűcs learnt physics. I looked at this smart Hungarian head full of knowledge of every kind in wonder. And, Ladies and Gentlemen, great scientists and discoverers! I’m paying great respect to you but I’m giving thanks only to this brave and honest Hungarian working-by-the-day physical worker, who…”

“…who, in spite of all his knowledge, has remained a destitute day-wageman, and shall be until his death,” cut in a voice.

But at the time of this scene, the world-destroying socialism had not been heard of yet, and Mr. Szalay ended his train of thought as follows,

“…who has acquired the simple but greatest human truths at the University of Life. May live long this type of the Hungarian nation from whom I’ve acquired the following wisdom, I think, the deepest wisdom ever known,

I want to be like salt; a pinch of salt,Which melts to flavour and be unbeknown,Failing which your foods tasteless to a fault,But sees being not as being on its own.

God bless our uncle Szűcs with good health, who proved that the Hungarian peasants are the best in all over the world.

Now they all clinked their glasses together, and went to uncle Szűcs, who was wise enough to overhear the former rude interrupter, although he would have been satisfied with a small house and a patch of ground even without socialism. But, after all, he was paid nicely with the glass of wine and the mass homage paid to him…

12

”Everybody sit down, sit down!” Malvinka was coming in with the first tureen.

”Everybody sit down, sit down!” the whole company was shouting, having forgotten uncle Szűcs at once, and bottomless hunger rushed at each of them.

They hurriedly found a seat.

In the room, there stood a giant oak table offering comfortable seating for sixteen people. Additionally, a separate table was put to it crosswise, and they settled down in a way that the old gentleman as host was sitting at the middle of the long table and, facing him, Mr. Imre Pagan was sitting as potential groom candidate. At the upper end of the table was sitting the hostess, who seated her two friends, Mrs. Szalay and Mrs. Rácz next to her. According to a village custom, all the women crowded together into one group so that the gentlemen could feel with less restraint, only the young Mr. Doby and Miss Doby were sitting at the lower end of the table because she was to run to and fro; it was she who exercised control for her mother over the dishing up. In the middle of the inner side of the shorter table was sitting the legate. Next to him, to the right, was sitting Mr. Faragó, farm bailiff and, to the left, the postmaster. The young reverend candidate was able to look all along the table; he was eagerly watching all the faces.

This young man was a very interesting lad from two points of view. First, having been involved a bit in the family’s tragedy, he felt deep sympathy to the unfortunate people of the house; second, he was the only person who was continuously watching Miss Doby’s movements even during Mr. Szalay’s oration hardly perceiving anything thereof. Having sniffed out how things between Miss Doby and Mr. Pagan were going, he made up his mind to keep his eyes on the happy act of the proposal of marriage. Miss Anna touched his innocent student’s heart very much; his eyes were nailed on the girl sitting on his right side and facing him obliquely until he noticed that the girl had felt his fixed stare.

The starter was millet with goose-giblets. ‘How hungry they are!’ thought the legate as he saw in amazement how big heaps of it the guests had piled up on their platters. ‘Where will this end?’ On the top of the millet, beside the goose-giblets, the liver itself could be seen, cut up into pieces. Instantly, the room was full of a magnificent, appetizing smell and, before this food was eaten up, nobody had uttered a word, just as if they were assisting at the first act of a solemn ceremony.

Faragó, land steward was sitting next to him. The legate was looking at the black-haired, thick-set man with a family hostility that he had got from the brave, sincere and respectable hostess as a gift.

They were still at the height of the goose millet, when the economic trainee, who, besides, was seated along with a few young men and women at a table in the small rear room, and, visibly, was ordered to serve the wine, appeared and poured nice white wine into the glasses.

“Now, the toasts are coming up,” said to himself the legate. But nobody got up; they only tossed their glasses. He was focusing his attention on the old man, the bride’s father, whom he was watching with a special respect paid generally to a chieftain. It was beyond his understanding how that magnificent Cumanian man could, after as many blows as he had received during the day, ply a good knife and fork. There was no lack of hunger. But surely, no goose millet could be found in the vicinity like that, if not on the table of the steward over the neighbouring dominion. There arose a big discourse about it; the guests told laudatory essays on the meal and, in general, the problems of culinary art.

Following that, even fattier and richer smells were approaching. Sausages and puddings came on large porcelain platters. Five or six platters were heaped with puddings; one stick as large as a bread-basket. They were superb puddings. Blood and liver puddings with a lot of red beets, steamed cabbage with cucumbers around them. Without taking it off, the land steward seized a pudding stick with his hand on the platter, sliced a piece of it off and pushed the platter, as it was, farther to the post master, who made another slice. The legate, at first, did not want to touch the pudding with a naked hand but, as a second thought, King Mátyás ^[20] and the justice of the Hungarians ^[21] came into his mind, and thus he grabbed happily the pudding stick left for him, with his naked hand, and cut into it in a way like all the others.

Well, the pudding was delicious but so hot with black pepper that as he put his teeth into it, it burnt the inside of his mouth and his eyes started to water. Also, he was already sated. He was ashamed of it; all the more he new it very well that he would be a target for making fun of for the rest of the day; all the more, he even could not drink. And indeed, having felt the lad’s amazed rapture, Annuska had discovered him for herself, and started to encourage him, “Mr. Kádár, why did you take so little?”

“O, thanks, I’ve taken a lot.” Looking round over the table, he saw that, as a matter of fact, everybody was eating the pudding decently; the guests sang the prises especially of the ones seasoned with marjoram from every direction.

“Mr. Faragó, you aren’t eating?” the legate asked his wordless neighbour at the table.

“Well, to be sure, I don’t eat much meat,” the land steward said.

The legate looked at the man. “Why, have you a weak stomach?”

“Not at all, I beg to say to you, my stomach is as strong as iron. But I consider animals my friends. I fed this pig on milk because it was farrowed in winter, and its mother gobbled up all the rest; I could save this only piglet, and bred it up in wadding. It was a very good pig, and so clever that when I was going to the servant’s houses, it recognised me and ran to meet me like a puppy does.“

He spoke about the pig with such intimacy as if he spoke about a man, and the legate fell silent in astonishment. He was still very young; he had never reflected about the fact that puddings are made of pigs. But now, somehow he became conscious of his own bowels in his body, which could be filled with rice mixed with his own blood as he used to see it being made by his own mother when she was making the delicious black pudding, and he tasted the rice moulded together with the fresh blood, as it was, to see whether there was enough salt, black pepper, ginger, saffron in it; God knows what types of tastes are used to prepare pudding; with one word, whether it was perfect or not. A chill of horror ran down his spine. He was watching these fat pigs on the spot, around the table, and it seemed to him that they were not different in any way from those boars and sows that were wont to grunt for the pig-wash in the pigsties. “I beg to say to you, Mr. Faragó,” he said, “what you’ve said is terrible,” and put down the fork.

He even turned pale, and felt like vomiting.

“And had you known the goose we’ve just eaten up?” The farm bailiff answered earnestly,

“Well, I’d known it but I haven’t been on such friendly terms with them as with this boar I had. Gees are farther from me.”

“Do you know every animal on the ranch?”

“Sure. I know especially the ones which were ill and those that misfortune’s befell.”

“You love animals that much?”

“Well, I beg to say to you, you can love them. Animals don’t harm anybody.”

“Animals don’t harm anybody,” echoed the legate. “And how about wolves?”

“Wolves don’t hurt anybody either. Wolves must also keep alive and Nature is arranged in a way that everything is necessary in it even the wolves. In Nature, there are neither useful nor harmful animals. Ottó Herman ^[22] is wrong in listing useful and harmful birds separately because, I think, any animal shall become harmful the moment that there’s more of it than necessary in the household of Nature. For example, young men, especially poets, like pigeons very much because they find them beautiful and their cooing a very nice sound. But come to think of it, if there were not ten to twenty pigeon families on a ranch but, suppose, we let them proliferate and there were, let’s say again, ten to twenty thousand pigeons in one or two years, then, I beg to say to you, our whole crop would be gone. Besides, the poets’ two most favourite birds, the pigeon and the swallow, are the world’s two dirtiest birds. They’re the only two birds to make a mess in their nests and befoul their own young. In spring, when swallows feed, the swallow nestlings would drop out of the nests with wings and feathers stuck together, and the cats would collect them.

“Is falcon also a useful animal?”

“As I said, every animal is useful as far as there’re as many as necessary of them. Of course, if they proliferate, they’ll become harmful. But if there were no falcons, what would become of my standing corn? The countless field-mice would eat it up. Everything in Nature’s arranged very wisely. You may’ve experienced yourself that some years see a huge invasion of locusts; then the next, nothing… Where are they? Nature has its counter measures; there come the birds of pray and the rapacious bacilli.”

“That’s a wonderful idea, Mr. Faragó.”

“Well, that’s how I’ve experienced it in the course of my long life. “

The legate started to look more favourably on the farm bailiff especially when he looked round the company again and again, seeing that they had already began to work on the next course. It was filled veal cutlets with boiled plums plus dried apples and pears, which everybody helped himself heartily to.

“And is that so with the humans, too?”

“Sure. Let’s take as an example: the Jews. In so far as there are only one or two Jewish families in a village, it’s good. Because they’re our tradesmen. Because in the times before them, for centuries, the Greek and the Armenian had been the shopkeepers. Never a Hungarian. God knows whether we are stupid for that. We can’t deal with money. We’re here in the middle of the Fortune and we’re all beggars. We’re dying of hunger in a Canaan, in an El Dorado. We’re like a herd, and the Jews are our disturbers. They disquiet us. As for them, they’ve been living for two thousand years on their own, disseminated, outlawed, in ghettos, but keep alive. They’ve learnt how to survive. They disregard the nicknames like ‘dog-hole’ and Pityi’, ^[23] and the even ruder ones, and regain their composure when they close the door behind them, and the family members are among themselves at Christmas Eve… It’s a big wonder…For them Shabbat evening is like having returned to their calm, sweet home after the weekday’s persecution. It’s quite understandable that they’re so devoted to their religion. Whenever they step out the door, everything and everyone’s attacking them. As they look around the world, they’re also attacking everything and everyone. This is their critical spirit… It comes from that that they underestimate everything that belongs to others, other races, and overestimate everything that belongs to them. O, God, as soon as he steps out the fence door, someone’s dog set on him will snap at his pants’ leg and as soon as he arrives home and lights the Shabbat candle, he’ll feel like home in Jerusalem. I beg to say to you, this is a big wonder: on the whole world, every Saturday evening, every Jew knows that they are living with the same feeling in the same town; it’s just that the other Jewish family is living not in the neighbouring house but in the next village, in the next country or in the next continent… Now do you see, Mr. Kádár, what a big deal it is? Sometimes I have to make a trip with the Right Honourable Count, and then carry this and that. The other day, I was in Vienna and learnt that two hundred thousand Hungarians live in Vienna itself. Oh, God, two hundred thousand Hungarians! The number of the inhabitants of Debreczin, Szeged and Szolnok in total doesn’t touch the number of two hundred thousand. And of how great importance these three cities are to the life of Hungary! Do you know what I mean? If a fairy magician flew the inhabitants of them, let’s say, to London, and scattered them there like sand to continue living there as inhabitants… how big loss for Hungary it would be… if there remained only pastures on the place of these cities! By how little acreage we would have more pastures!… And what would we gain by that two hundred thousand Hungarians in an alien land? That much that the two hundred thousands in Vienna, the other two hundred thousands anywhere else and the millions in America … Nothing. The old people still chit-chat in Hungarian among themselves but their children all are attending alien schools, and shall be children of an alien nation… We’ve lost them… But the Jews haven’t been lost in the sea of the people for two thousand years, and are still Jews to such a degree as in the past or more than ever, and are more than they used to be in Judea or in Israel… There’s nothing left to do: hats off to them, that’s what I say.

13

At this moment, the economic trainee lent over to the farm bailiff, and whispered into his ear, “Mr. Rácz, please go out into the stalls because something is wrong. Mihók is being beaten.”

The farm bailiff was sitting still a little bit longer, without as much as a wink and when the economic trainee had left, said to the legate,

“Mr. Kádár, would you be good enough to… I want to ask you for something. You’re a brave and earnest young man; I’ll give you a letter. Give this letter to Miss Doby as son as you see her alone. But give it to her unnoticed by anyone.”

After a couple of minutes, he handed the letter to the legate, who took it over, and slipped it into his side pocket.

At this point, the farm bailiff got up and left his seat in an unspectacular way and, one minute later, a young man sat down on his seat; it was the one who had come from the small table in the next room and with whom the legate had made himself acquainted not long before. This young man was family tutor for the count’s family and, being a sickly man, they had sent him to the ranch for a couple of weeks.

At this time, they were at the next course. It was cabbage with splendid stuffing, filled with peaces of fresh pork. A dish from which even a half-dead man could not have resisted to eat, even if he had been perfectly sated.

As early as that time, the company already was highly charged up. Clinking of glasses became more and more frequent; the fat dishes had to be ‘sprinkled’ with the inebriating wine, which already began to get into their heads.

Now there came newer tureens heaped with roasts, namely the friends and girlfriends of Mr. Faragó, farm bailiff, namely the geese, whose livers had already been eaten up, and who offered all their limbs to the Human Kind. Neither the ducks, nor the pullets were quacking or tweeting about in love, happily in Being any more but were lolling and sprawling about nicely in their own fat, showing their own red skin to the greediest animal, the most perilous beast of prey: Man.

The legate started to speak about the humans’ carnivorous savagery to the count’s family tutor, who was a cynical guy, and made an interesting remark on pork-chop:

“Once I visited my brother-in-law’s house, and they had a wild boar piglet; it was a very ferocious animal, it would eat up chickens, cats, and everything else, and my elder sister ran into the house in alarm that it had been a narrow escape of the child from the jaws of the animal.”

The legate was horrified at the idea, ‘what if, once the animals got the upper hand. Death must be dreadful between the jaws of wolves in the woods,’ he said to himself.

“They lamented about how fierce that boar was but I objected, ‘I wonder what he might’ve thought of us, humankind; as far as I know, so far it has been we, men, who have eaten up pigs and boars and not the other way round.”

At first, having not comprehended the meaning of the words, the legate was just gazing at the bad teethed young man, who was repeating it with a strange earnestness,

“Yeah, well, up to the present, every pig has been eaten up by the humans; why are they, humans so frightened that once they also feel like to eat at least one child?”

‘Indeed, it’s terrible that people generally eat like a horse,’ the legate thought, and his side nearly split with laughter.

Yet there was no escape from here: eating was a must.

It was going like this for almost two hours, and by about ten o’clock, the mood was so high that everybody was rolling with laughter on the chairs like so many a gas cylinder almost about to burst into pieces.

The faces were red and the eyes were fiery; anecdotes were chasing each other. “So why aren’t you drinking, Mr. Kádár?” the notary said across to the young man. “Thanks, Mr. Péchy.” “You’d better drink it up instead of giving thanks for it. Or do you share the opinion of the trustee, who likes only the new one? Last Tuesday, we visited the vicar’s house on Christmas pig slaughter. The trustee was there, too − now the whole table was paying attention to the young notary, who was speaking so freely and in such a loud voice that you could tell he would become a very good teller of anecdotes some time in the future − there were good young and old, bottled wines there…

The vicar’s offering it, ‘Please, Mr. Trustee, take this vintage wine, that’s the good one.’

The trustee answers, ‘Thanks, I’m afraid, I just stick to this one’.

‘Why? Vintage wines are much better!’

‘I don’t believe it.’

We were perplexed.

The vicar asks, ‘But why? Why don’t you agree?’

The trustee answers, ‘If it had been good, it would’ve been drunk up when it was still young!”’

An uproarious laughter burst out.

“This is quite a nice village, for it is not a Calvinistic village for nothing,” continued the notary, in order to draw a lesson. “However much wine the vine stocks of this place bring forth, it comes to an end when it is still young. Last winter, a German gentleman was staying here at the place of the chief justice; he was studying the Hungarian vine-district; wanted to know from where good, preservable and transportable wines could be imported. He asks the judge,

‘And is there any wine being produced here?’

‘Yes, there is, I beg to say to you.’

‘Is the wine produced here good?’

‘Yes, it’s good, I beg to say to you.’

‘And is being produced a lot?’

‘A lot, I beg to say to you.’

‘And does it keep over?’

‘We haven’t tried that yet, I beg to say to you.’”

After a good laugh, the notary stated, “That’s why I’m saying, this village is a clean small village like Szovát. When the Catholic bishop of Debreczin, Wolafka visited it, they received him, well, with great Calvinistic courtesy; even rang the bell in his honour. Wolafka liked it all very much.

He willingly shook hand with the judge, ‘And are there any Catholics here, Mr. Judge?’

The judge replies, ‘No, there aren’t any, milord; this is a clean small village.’’’

They were laughing harshly, in a way in which only Calvinistic Hungarians can do. Who has never heard it, will never know what ‘stiff-necked’ means. ^[24]

Even Mr. Rácz, who, being a wordless man, had not let out a groan or a moan during the whole time so far, moved now.

“I underwent an operation, a trepanation, and the Debreczin professor’s pocket-knife bent on my head. ‘This is a hard skull still!’ he says. ‘A Calvinistic skull!’ I added.’

“It’s been a good long while since I’ve heard a better one!’ shouted the Budapest guest. God bless you, dear brother. Cheeriooo!”

They clinked, drank, and now came the cottage cheese bundles. Fresh from the oven, as hot and savoury as they were. Hell yeah, Jesus, help me, please, where is there any more room for it, how should it be got down after the others?

But Miss Doby was untiring in helping and running to and fro, and it seemed to the legate that Mr. Imre Pagan had got an extra portion every time, and he had consumed almost nothing from them. Notwithstanding, he was very noisy. He was the noisiest in the house. He was using the nicest Hungarian exclaiming phrases like ‘I kiss your hand, those sweet, precious little hand!’ or ‘Well, I’m jiggered! The fingernails of the one who made these cakes should be set in gold!’ and some more to the same effect.

Everybody was watching Mr. Imre Pagan with extraordinary warm-heartedness. The legate perceived that they greatly favoured his noisy and overbearing behaviour, rejoicing and bouts of whooping, even he himself. Mr. Pagan was the hero of the evening; everybody was caring for him at every moment; even when no one spoke to him, he was, so to say, surrounded by an electric field.

The tutor spoke, “That’s the most magnificent thing in the Jews. A Jew is able to transform a negative into a positive instantly. While the Budapest Christian gentlewomen use abusive language excessively about the Jews, the Lowland Jew women speak beautiful Hungarian.

“Why is everybody here speaking about the Jews?’ the legate asked himself. He still has not disclosed Mr. Imre Pagan’s secret. Naturally, if he knew it, also his thoughts would have been dominated by the Jewish question.

“Is it so important whether or not somebody is a Jew?’ the legate asked, reflecting.

The tutor laughed. “It’s rather important because the spirit world depends on the economic world. The Jews are dealing only with the economic one and, by doing so, very cleverly, purchase the spiritual one. The fact itself is already frightening that a general dealer’s son can rise to among the owners of a thousand-acre estate. And, when you come to think of the fact that they simply purchase public taste, science, literature and the arts, you cannot be surprised at all that these sinister Turanian skulls are worried and instinctively dread servitude.

“And why don’t we do the same?”

“We can’t do it. Why don’t lambs fly? They’d like to… especially in the latest time… The young Jews are not submissive any more, like their fathers used to be; they are provocative… My college, Dr. Asztalos asked me the other day, ‘What d’you mean, Hungarian? Any Hungarian citizen is Hungarian, aren’t they?’ I think I don’t think so.”

“Not at all,’ said the legate, fired with his collegiate worldview, “because what makes Hungarians Hungarian? Our common past, the memory of a thousand year’s suffering. “

“The common temperament, the common ideology and the common phraseology,’ said the tutor. “But the thing is that they only prevail within the borders of Hungary. As soon as we step on the European level, it comes to an end. You cannot get along with the spicy remarks of the noble mansions on the market of the nations just as a dame cannot appear in a homespun shirt at a ball in the Redout. And you encounter the next peculiarity that the son of the Jewish innkeeper from Reszegepiskolt adapts himself easily to the international society, where the son of the landlord of Reszegepiskolt will be a backward villager and behave clumsily. We neither speak foreign languages nor are familiar with the cosmopolitan ideas. Our thousand-year-old past is our thousand-year-old shackles, which rattle about at every our step. Their two-thousand-year-long exile lent wings to them, while our thousand-year-long boundness to the soil prevented us from improving our sense of development. In one word, we’re stupid like cattle in the stock-yard while they’re smart like free foxes in the woods.’

They could not continue to talk because there there was a commotion, and the women had stood up.

14

They rose and cleared the table. All the women walked into the inner rooms because the gentlemen were too loud and they knew that the men wanted to be out of their hearing so as not to feel uneasy.

When the women had left, the gentlemen drew a bit closer together, and stared in the air over the table in a state when their intoxicated heads could be held up only with an extra effort, and everybody was speaking. Nobody was silent; everybody had something extremely interesting in store to speak out just into the air. Whoopee! Shoobie doobie doo! “I say, my dear friends, hares have their own tracks,” shouted Mr. Dániel Rácz in a stentorian voice. A good example of this happened to me last winter. I was out in the fields without a dog. Well, suddenly, a brown hare jumped up in front of me. I shot and hit it. I went there − the hare was nowhere to be found. “By the devil!” I said to myself. “I myself saw it clearly tumbling head over heels!” I followed the track farther like a dog; I have to say, sweat was already pouring from me and I’d gone round the hill three times until I finally found the hare. Where do you think I found it? In her warren, my dear friend; she was lying dead beside her two little ones. Well, I beg to say, this damned hare made a fool of me with greater success than the one with which any government party Member of Parliament could’ve lead his voters by the nose. Half-dead, she made me go the hill round three times. She didn’t want to show me her small ones; the villain simply went home to die in her own burrow.

He looked round the company with an elevated, beaming face. Mr. Faragó, farm bailiff came into the legate’s mind, and his heart sank for the small bunnies, which, by all means, this chubby, greasy faced man put into his game-bag and carried home for the children to play with or which, who knows, he might have beaten to death with the stock of rifle. Alfer all, there are many kinds of wild animals all over the world but the most merciless beast is Man, he thought.

“Dear me!” cried Mrs. Szalay, and clutched at her eyes.

“What is it? What is it, honey?” asked the women in dismay.

“Do you know whom I’ve just seen? Mr. Arady in the snow.”

Everybody began to laugh at that.

“Well, that’s very likely!” said her husband.

“Yeah,” the woman insisted,”I saw him alone under a snow hill pattering with his feet like a souslik looking for the way.”

“O, God, maybe they’ve lost their way,” said the hostess, in her usual despair.

“Come now, it means, they’re coming for certain, said the notary.

The legate stood up, and slank from this group to the women’s group. They were there in the two smaller rooms, and in one of the corners was the notary’s wife sitting, who his landlady was because he was staying with them. The woman motioned him to go to her so that he is not so alone. She told him a few merry, indifferent words, and then left him alone, again. He was looking at the woman in wonder; the woman, who had been so tired and dispirited at home earlier that day; the woman, who had been quarrelling so vehemently both with her husband and the maid, and who was so brilliant then and there… Next to her was sitting Mr. Filep, the Budapest post-office clerk, Mr. Forgács and Mr. Schöller, who was buoyant and full of fire, whispering God knows what jocosities into the woman’s ear because she burst out laughing every moment.

He felt there was no need for him there. He started feeling very sleepy because he had had no sleep last night and the night before, and felt lonely in the company. He did not feel like joining the younger ones since he did not drink; neither could he converse with the girls so he went out to take an airing.

Out of doors there was some strange bustling about. He wrapped himself into his coat and, hazarding that the dogs would maul him under the window, walked among the loitering and whispering servants.

“He won’t survive, won’t survive,” more of them said.

He was watching as they were bringing a man on their shoulders towards the kitchen. Then he gathered from their discourse that the ox men had rushed at the liveried coachman, Mihók, and beaten him to death.

Suddenly, it occurred to him that the joung Mr. Doby, when coming back with his aunt from the notary’s home, failed to come into the room, and somebody told that he had been to the ox stable. He was frozen to ice with horror of being sure that the wicked boy had incited the farm workers, he might have bribed them and, as he believed, it had been the young gentleman to have Mihók beaten up.

Horribly frightened, and being unable even to pay attention to the incident, he went with the group into the kitchen.

Miss Malvin was there in the kitchen, and when they laid the bloody man on a bench, she had water brought in buckets into a wash-basin with short, energetic orders, and got down to wash blood away from the man with the utmost care and without the slightest disquiet. The death-pale legate with his mouth wide open was watching the scene, which, apparently, did not affect Miss Malvin in any way. When the old girl caught the sight of the legate, motioned him to her and said to him in a low voice,

“Please, go in and ask the doctor to come out. But make sure that nobody knows what was happening.”

The legate was rushing as swift as an arrow from the kitchen through the other rooms into the dining-room. In the smaller dining room, the company of the young people was just playing a parlour game, and when he stepped among them, his fright might have been visible to such an extent that everybody was instantly overcome by fear. In his sorry condition, his complexion was livid; his feet were trembling, he tried in vain to smile, and he could not pronounce a word. All he could do was turn to the count’s tutor asking him to go into the big dining room and tell the doctor, Mr. Péchy to go out into the kitchen because Miss Malvinka had sprained her ankle.

The tutor pulled a grimace, and announced right there that Miss Malvinka had sprained her ankle. A joyful laugh burst out immediately from the thought that it had been that why the legate had been scared so much. They promptly associated Miss Malvinka with the upcoming dancing, and there was no end to joking and raillery at her expense. Notwithstanding, the legate urged the tutor to go because Miss Malvinka was, so to say, in bad pains.

Not long after, the doctor, in cheerful mood, came across the room shaking his head,

“Well, that Miss Malvinka! Don’t worry about it; she’ll dance with me the Kálla’s pas de deux tonight.”

As he felt poor among the cheerful young people, the legate went inside to the women. Upon crossing the room, the host, who had been watching him with the suspicion of a father from the very start, this time found him worthy of attention, and spoke, “Behold the legate; he’s strolling just like a giddy sheep.”

15

The legate, upon hearing that, was overcome with shame. ‘Here, this very evening, the most unusual things are going on, and nobody wants to take notice thereof,’ he thought. ‘Really, what’s my business here among these people?’ What he wanted most was to disappear and lay on a bed somewhere.

In their deep bass voices, the gentlemen laughed him to score, and he walked back to the women. The post-office clerk was still courting to Mrs. Péchy. They were cuddled up wonderfully to each other, and as he stopped behind them, overheard a line of a song, which the post-office clerk had brought from Budapest, ‘No wedding is needed for a happy marriage’.

The blood rushed to the legate’s head like a rocket. His face was burning; the former sight of the half-dead man did not frighten him as much as the crooning of such a filthy, obscene song in the presence of a beautiful, honest woman.

He slunk away like a thief so as not to be noticed, and walked back to the men’s company. He joined the group by the tile stove where the notary, the tutor and two young men from the other company were standing put their heads together. They were laughing at something. Mr. Imre Pagan told a joke, which made the others laugh frantically, albeit there was nothing humorous in it at all except a lot of rude words.

He was examining Mr. Pagan’s face, and started to find it very suspicious. His face was so soft, and there was such unusual disquietude on it… He tried to express it for himself but words failed him yet. Notwithstanding, he felt that some kind of particularly harsh indecency was pouring from that man; bawdiness, which the others were drinking thirstily but which, at the same time, their drier, harder and simpler temperament repelled as something alien to them. Suddenly, the legate clutched at his pocket; the letter came back to him. Looked around for Miss Doby, but she was not in the rooms.

‘Perhaps she is out in the kitchen,’ he thought, and started looking again. As he was going, some wicked impulse flared up in him, and decided to read the letter. But there was nowhere to do it. All the rooms were crowded with people. Wanting not to be seen, he went into the room rearranged into a store-room, where a small lamp was lighting. When within, he put out the letter, and examined it. There was not an address on the letter but it was sealed down. Now he remembered his memorable last summer adventure, which had a bigger effect on him than all the school subjects that he had completed with top marks: the maturity examination, when they stole the exam questions kept in sealed envelopes from the headmaster’s room and opened them with the back of a knife, then copied the questions, fastened the envelopes down again, and stole them back to their original place. Instantly clapped his hand for his pocket-knife, and noticed at once that the letter was fastened very poorly. So he simply put his fingers under the top flap, and the envelope came apart immediately. He found a sheet of paper in the envelope with these lines thereon,

Oh, my only beloved! Oh, my adored one!… Do not take it out on me! You are my Man… my big, strong man! If you leave me, it will all up with me… Oh, let me not become a prey… Why did you come to my house, why did I see you, why did I hear you, you big, you strong, my King, you God!… I am so grateful that I have learnt happiness… You are the Man, you are my One and Only… Remember, you showed me a bird’s nest in the lucerne-field… And now you have forgotten the one who shall die, oh, you saint, you great and powerful, only God!

There was no signature at all. The handwriting was that of a girl’s: longish, high letters as if a child tried to imitate an adult’s characteristic handwriting.

The legate examined the letter once again in frightened amazement, then put it into the envelope, licked the glue and, pressing the envelope onto the door, carefully fastened it.

He inspected the sealed letter once more; there was nothing on it to be seen; it was just like before. How frivolously people treat their own best kept secrets, and how evil even the most innocent boy is!

He patted his own face, and felt it burning. As he left the chamber, all his body was trembling. He could not help going out into the courtyard in order to somewhat regain control of himself in the cold.

There was a profound silence outside, deep silence like on the frozen sea, the infinite stillness of the wintry night on the Lowland.

At this moment, the dogs started howling like mad as if they were predicting some kind of catastrophe.

In a few minutes later, a bow-legged coachman was approaching moving with difficulty. Though he was flourishing a stick, and swearing hideously, the dogs kept accompanying him as far as the veranda all the way yapping infernally.

The man almost fell over the veranda steps, and slammed the dining-room door open, where he stopped oddly, grotesquely in the parching heat with his complexion black from the wind’s sharp bite and with his moustache frozen into icicles.

The hubbub stopped, and everybody stared in astonishment at him.

“Milord, we are lost in the snow.”

Somebody recognized him as Mr. Aradys’s coachman.

“We set out, I beg to say, from home as early as nightfall. And we’re still at the dike.”

“Have you all lost your mind or something?” cried out Mr. Szalay.

He turned with his chair to face the coachman. They all were looking at him with their eyes starting from their heads.

“Yes, milord, it can be as late as eight o’clock.”

“Fiddlesticks! It’s nearly midnight.”

The coachman winked in amazement.

“Nearly midnight,” he hummed to himself, shaking his head. “Well then, please be so kind as to send a change of horses… but quickly, otherwise the respectable gentleman and his family shall be frozen there.”

As he was standing there beginning already steaming; he was such a strange, grotesque symbol of the strange, grotesque Hungarian life, which is full of austere and tragic gaps under the smooth everyday surface as opposed to the boisterous and riotous company.

16

The gentlemen hastily snatched up their hats and fur coats or thronged out onto the veranda clothed just as they were, and looked into the star-lit night. The sky was entirely covered with tiny, shining stars like plough-lands with grains of wheat in spring, as though a slipshod seeds man scattered the sky with ‘grains’ of light sowing them here thicker there rarer. But there was a curious fog laying low over the surface of the ground, which removed the farm labourers’ dwellings, the barns and the snow-covered trees at a huge distance. Surely a foul weather, they kept saying to each other, and were never tired of enquiring and talking about the misfortune of the guests waited in vain.

“We almost died in the Priesthole as well,” said Mr. Szalay, “my wife was wailing not for no reason. My poor thing doesn’t know in what a trouble we were, and I wish she never knew! This is Hungarian fate, my dear friends, we’re having a good time here, and our dear buddies are gasping for breath in the fog… What if suddenly an earthquake shakes this thin egg-shell, the earth’s crust? And the house collapses on us? For you should know that the entire Lowland is a volcanic area. Have you seen the natural gas public lighting at Püspökladány? The natural gas is coming up along with the hot water! If they drilled even deeper, fire would come up!”

They laughed and pondered a bit.

Also, the fresh air did them good; their dizziness dissipated a little. As for the legate, he remained in the room to hand the letter over to the miss hostess.

But in the meantime, Mr. Imre Pagan availed the opportunity to catch hold of Miss Doby, whom he drove into a corner to have a talk with her. So the legate had to wait until they finish.

“Miss Annuska… you fail to ask anything… Aren’t you curious about anything?” asked Mr. Pagan the girl.

“What should I be curious about?” the girl asked back as meek as a little angel. “I’m not a curious nature.”

Mr. Pagan jerked his whole body to the side perkily as peasant boys do, when pluck up courage to make some major decision.

“I’ve done with my father.”

Miss Doby gave a queer, wondering glance at him, and did not say a word.

“For me, this is a great day, this very day, Miss Annuska… My hat! I surely have had a crush on you!”

“If you regret it…”

Mr. Pagan looked at her with defiance.

“I beg to say, I must’ve wanted to do it, or I wouldn’t have done it. I don’t regret it. I only wish that you don’t regret it later… I’ve reckoned with everything.”

The girl turned her eyes slowly from him, and looked up with a little quiet smile in a way girls make themselves mysterious when taking pains to prevent somebody from penetrating into their thought.

Mr. Pagan softly, as if he was talking to himself, said, “Don’t think this to be a small thing. It’s a big thing, I beg to say that, Miss Annuska, because my father’s the best man in the world… But, of course, he cannot get over prejudices. He’s too old for that… Where do you think is that Christian father to grant an estate of six hundred acres acquired by the sweat of his brow, continued effort and monstrous self-restraint to his son? Well, I beg to say, he did do it. Even now, after having done with me once for all and for good, he didn’t pronounce a word about material things, just said, ‘My son, you know what you’re doing. I don’t understand you but you go on your way. I wish you be happy but if you regret it at some future time…’”

At this point he fell silent and, as if he repressed an emotion, some kind of passion, maybe a drop of tear, pertly threw up his head.

Miss Doby looked at him strictly, almost in a hostile manner. As it were, she already feared of the severe consequences of the kind.

“And what if you regret?”

“But I won’t regret… Do you believe that, Miss Annuska?”

He looked into the girl’s eyes beseeching, and took her hand.

The girl let her hand being hold but shut her eyes; she had never felt so close to this young man before. She had always been thinking of him as a distant El Dorado, a distant gold-field, where freedom from cares and welfare prevails, where she could have everything that she wishes: travels, nice dresses and a sweet gentleman’s life. The only fly in the ointment was the expectant husband himself. In this moment, behind her closed eyes appeared the young count’s picture; the bulky, strong-boned, dry and hard man, who grabbed her with a sweet and a bit awkward roughness last summer and forgot her to her great disappointment… Oh, for him it was merely an idyll among the poppies on the field of rye, a half an hour, which vanished without leaving a trace…The little steward’s daughter, the village innocence, a nest in the lucerne-field…

All of a sudden, she opened her eyes, and gazed at the young man’s face, which, by then, was quite near to her, and shuddered. Mr. Imre Pagan’s eyes were glowing, his face was soft and shining; she saw his nose, his mouth and his sallow freckles… But she regained her common sense instantly, and while pulling out of the young man’s embrace, winked back to him with a childish and tempting look, which always stands by in the eyes of a little scheming cat-girl. She looked around for help and, on seeing the legate, fled to him at once.

“Mr. Kádár, Mr. Kádár!” she cried gurgling with a merry and chiming laughter, “Aren’t you sleepy any more?”

The legate blushed head to toe. He knew more than he was permitted to by the law, and now saw more than he was allowed to.

“My pleasure, I wasn’t sleepy, anyway.”

Mr. Imre Pagan lost his courage for a moment and, as the little gold fish had slipped from before him, his heart was stricken with grief. He thought of his poor, old father, who was now sitting and praying at home. ‘What a good luck that my mother’s not alive to see it, what a good luck…’ he said to himself, ‘I say it’s good luck, indeed,’ and, with that, he started singing a song in a low voice to himself just to stifle his tears.

The gentlemen flocked inside from the veranda, and loud noise broke the silence in the room.

17

But the notary kept back the postmaster,

“Well, my old chap, I’m afraid, we haven’t examined the aspect of planets yet!”

The postmaster gave a dry laugh, and said,

“True.”

“Any attempt would be a waste,” said the notary, and stopped under the eves.

The postmaster was staring in front of him as sad as the one whose life is not worth a groat.

“Alas! Alas! The women!” spoke the notary, “They’ll eat us; everybody’s eaten by the women.”

The postmaster did not say a word; he was just gazing in front of him.

The notary also practiced the Hungarian Noble Act, then burst in a big laugh, and said,

“I don’t understand it, I really don’t. You fall in love with somebody, get entangled in it, and you’ll end up just like a dog fallen into a wolf-trap. It’s not in vain that we say, ‘you fell in love’, is it? Anyway, this even makes sense in those cases when the wolf happens to fell into it. But not the dog, my dear friend! The dog isn’t destined to perish in a wolf-trap; however, he can blunder into it… Things’ve advanced so far that there’s nothing else left to do but hanging himself…”

He did not dare to speak in first person singular but he was so vexed and grieved in his heart that he couldn’t choose but tell somebody. ‘This postmaster’s a very honest man; he won’t spread it around,’ he told to himself, ‘he himself can have his own troubles because his wife’s such a loathful creature; you cannot understand how he’s been able to live a life with her.’

“She’s crazy, whatever I want, she wants the opposite, and all my needs are ridden over.”

He felt that his head was dizzy because he had drunk a lot of wine, his tongue was staggering. And his heart was sinking so much with the realization that his wife could be so kind to a strange man while being so harsh on him and so full of hatred against him. He could not help pouring out his rage but, as he could not speak about it, he started to tell some stories filled with some even more embarrassing moments tittering over them as if they were just trifles. “The other day, the chief justice and a small company was here, and I say to them, ‘You’re welcome, let’s have a good glass of beer!’ I send a word to make preparations for a small afternoon party, and I arrive with the gentlemen home to find and see her… oh, God bless her, dirty, filthy just like the lowest gipsy woman standing in the doorway. In the morning, when I had left home, everything had been still in order but right now the whole house was in a mess; who the hell knows what an idea had entered her mind; she was doing the big cleaning. The gentlemen stop in the courtyard, and I go ahead by way of precaution starting with “My sweet soul..,” at which she begins the skirmish, “Sweet soul?” she echoes. “Don’t give me that. What am I? Am I an innkeeper’s wife, whom you can just give orders to follow?” I thought, ‘O dear, that’ll never come to an end,’ and said, “My dear, could you speak a bit softer, please?” At which she went on even louder, I almost died for shame, even not knowing whether to go out or to stay in. Or should I just grab an axe from the corner and throw it at her? God damn the place where a woman is to be found!… What have I done to deserve this?… Well, I came out of the house, and told the chief justice, “I’m awfully sorry, Sir, but there’s a big cleaning in our house now; let’s go to the pub!” We went there; I paid for twelve bottles of beer and scrambled eggs made from some thirty eggs… Why couldn’t we do it at home? It would’ve been cheaper and better… We were four, so we needed four bottles of beer and there were eggs at home… How can it be explained that women are so unable to govern their temper?

“My dear friend,” spoke the postmaster, “there’s no need to tell your story, as if I were hearing the story of my life. By my greatest bad luck, I’ve been married for twenty eight years now but I haven’t had a nice day with my wife yet. She’s economical. But it’s not economy but mania. She doesn’t leave the house or the courtyard for years; she’s always labouring, doing the cleaning chores; she’s unceasingly sparing; makes constantly the most inferior meals possible, and she’s always moody… I admit, her labour was not without success, today the post office is in our own house, and I spare the rent, the heating, the lighting, the attendants, but why should the whole house be spoilt by the office premises? The office had to be built in a manner that both from the sitting room and the dining room a French door opens into the office. Why?…

“Why?” echoed the notary and burst out in a loud cachinnation. “So as to make it possible for herself to look in through the window any time! Just like my wife… My office cannot be in my house; it’s in the Parish Hall, which brought to ruin half of her life. She keeps looking at the watch, and if I’m not at home by the moment when it strikes twelve, she’s already in the gate checking if I’m coming already… And the showers of talks like ‘You’re just sitting in the office all they, you’re feeling well there only, you’re like a mad dog at home, that’s the only place you can romp about. Of course, with the little peasant wives’… She doesn’t care who, how many were there in the room; the miserable thing thinks if a woman comes into your office to see you, she won’t leave the premises as a virgin; her imagination is simply terrific.”

“I don’t drink or smoke,” said the postmaster, “but sometimes, once a year, when I feel like to, I taste some wine, and it happens to taste good. Not too long ago, two of my brother-in-laws and their wives visited us, and after midnight, I started drinking a little more… ‘Oh, God, I’ve been working and working all my life,’ I thought, and ‘I have no joy whatever in life’… Well, I acknowledge, I enjoyed wine very much that night… I sent to the inn for one more litre of wine. It should be noted that my brother-in-laws, that is my wife’s younger brothers, are all very good drinkers… You’re not going to believe what my better half did. Just imagine, she poured the whole litre of wine into the pig-bucket! I felt, of course ashamed for what she had done, and had three bottles of wine brought over.”

The notary laughed loudly. “Very good, and fun. And?”

“And she started crying, I said to myself, ‘Go to hell! You can cry, for aught I care’. Then she called in her children, and shouted, ‘Behold your father, this old drunkard! Is that a man? No! He’s a dog! For he doesn’t need it; he only drinks in order to make his wife upset! Spit on him!’”

“God, that’s ghastly,” the notary said, laughing.

“’And now what should I do?’ I asked myself. ‘Shall I slap her on the face? Or shoot myself to death like a dog? My rage hurt me, I was so desperate… congestion of the brain… I went into the next room and lay down, and, with tears in my eyes, threw myself into the bed, where I had to experience her ensuing meanness, her coming in and saying, ‘And now you’re lazing about in bed instead of entertaining your guests…’ My dear friend, if a woman goes mad, it’s worse than living hell.”

“And when she has a fit of jealousy… Take today’s wedding, Miss Beliczy’s wedding; they’re distinguished gentlemen… I cannot help it; after all, I’m the registrar, am I not? I was to wed them to each other… So, to make it short, my wife had not spoken to me for a week, I knew what the trouble was but I didn’t believe the moment would come when she declares, ‘As for you, you’re not going to go to your mistress! I’ll show you that you won’t! Here’s the office for that! If it’s convenient for other honourable people to have their names registered there, then Mrs. Beliczy should send her daughter there!’ ‘I beg your pardon, my dear, but I’m not the boss in this matter. The Lord Lieutenant and the deputy-lieutenant of the county will be here; should I cite them to the Registration Office, they would cite me to the County Hall the following day. Mind you, I’d risk my livelihood!’ At last, after a three-day never-ceasing fight, she understood but now she demanded me to wear that coat at the wedding, practically my house-coat full of stains, which I use in the office to save the better one. And the like, my friend… Well, when I prevented it somehow, her last wish was to turn and come back with the books from the wedding the moment it was finished. But she admonished me, saying if I happened to fail to come at once, she would come for me… Well, my friend, I did do so and it was good that I did so because as I was coming out of the manor house, she was already coming in her dressing gown dirty and messy from the opposite direction; she would’ve made a scandal in the middle of the courtyard, that’s sure… Tell me, friend, how so much passion in a woman can be?”

“I’m a non-smoker but, you know, there were times when, now and then, I used to light a cigar,” spoke the postmaster, “I used to say, that was how my foster-father used to light a cigar. And God knows I enjoyed, and the taste left in my mouth. From that time on, from time to time, I used to smoke a cigar… One day it happened that we flared up against each other over something… She prohibited it. Her father and her brothers are all heavy smokers; their wives fill hundreds of cigarettes, which she didn’t want to take cognizance of. I turned it into a Men’s Issue, and she turned it into a Women’s Issue. Well, she won… But, I can tell you, my dear friend that this life that I’m living now is more hateable for me than sleeping with a mangy dog in one bed…”

“At first I said that that was love; that that passion was fuelled by love,” said the notary, “but I found out that not!”

“Oh, love!… There had been love until we had one another….”

The notary did not allow him to speak. He cut in, “I’ve been living in a marriage only for five years; I believed well-grounded that it was a love match but, this very evening, we made such a scandalous scene that I broke the mirror into pieces for I cannot put an end to it unless picking up an ewer of water and throwing it against the wall; this will bring her to reason… She should be beaten up but I’m a feeble person to do so, I can’t hit her, especially when she’s pregnant, which is the case now too, should I pound her or what? Still, I’m convinced that you cannot control women unless by reducing to discipline… But listen to the continuation. I left home like mad, and wasn’t quite sure if I was heading for the ice-bound river Tisza and diving nicely into an ice hole… Well, I beg to say, she came back one or one and a half hours later, and I was astonished: she’s like a fairy, shining with soap and water, dressed up to the nines, smartened up, cheerful and rose-cheeked; it should be observed that she’s started painting her face recently; whoever may look upon her wouldn’t guess what’s happened between us at home… And now, I beg to say, an elegant dandy appears in the scene, some Károly Forgács or other, a childhood friend! They’re cuddling together; they’re whispering and laughing about! And she’s blooming like an oleander! ‘Sdeath! Is that my loving wife, who’s keeping me in prison? And is she allowed to do so? I’m not jealous; if they fled from here by the grace of God tonight, I’d willingly tie up my whole pension in the hope they leave; I’d pay all their travelling expenses in the hope that he takes her with him; I’d pay even a sleeping car for them in the hope of never seeing her any more…”

“But what would I do the next morning“ the postmaster said, “with the children at home crying for their mother?”

“What would I do? I swear you, I’d bring them up without her ten times easier. I would! Why, do the children make any profit from her dealing with them in the same way? She slaps them on the face, kicks and scolds them with rude words, just like me… She says to the boy, ‘You’re a dog like your father, your blod is that of a dog’… to the girl, ‘You learn that every man is a blackguard… Ah, forget about it… “

“It’s cold here,” said the postmaster suddenly shivering.

“I didn’t notice,” said the notary, and laughed. “Well, let’s go inside.”

They went back into the house. They were frozen so much that their teeth were chattering even after several minutes.

18

The legate was standing beside them between the second two columns of the veranda and, frozen to the marrow with cold and with a frozen soul, was overhearing their conversation because they were talking so loudly as if only the two of them were existing all over the world. But he was glad to hear it. ‘It’s a great learning experience,’ he said to himself, ‘I’ve learnt much now; now I know what marriage is’. He recalled his parents’ life, and understood a lot of things. His mother was a big, stout woman with a soft, beautiful complexion; his father, who used to be a Little Bludgeon Boy at the college, was, already in his life, a small and lean, even haggard, toothless and deathly man. He was enervated and cheerless just as much as she was strong, rose-cheeked and noisy. Oh, my God, what a sorrowful life it was! The old man was always sitting at home, and now it flashed upon him how happy he was when he, now and then, as a rural dean, could set out on a visitation of his dioceses… At home, he was always like a martyr, and he would take along his martyrdom for his way… He was, unlike these ones, an honourable man; his father never cheated his mother, he is a saint man.

There came tears into his eyes. He was moved. He has adored his mother in the first place; now he felt deep compassion for his father. Being imprisoned in another person’s love for a lifetime… Now he could understand, somehow, why his sickly father was always silent; it was his mother, who put the food on his plate and, in spite of his protestations, he had to eat it… It was his mother, who bought his clothes; who dressed him like a child, who put his cloak on him, who even tied the ribbon in his neck… Only now did he realize what it really was, and how innocently the poor pale thing was tolerating her inexhaustible fondness, and how exhausted he was… And the wife is playing with him just like with a doll; with an expensive, precious ‘talking’ doll: she would not let anybody touch him. Not for the wide world: he belongs to her! She is dealing with him, talking about him all the time. Whenever strange people come to the house, she starts immediately saying, ‘Oh, my husband… How well he can write!… The only problem is that he is such a severe self critic that he lacks courage to let out a line; the other day he had to write about an episode in the history of the church for the Debreczin Protestant News. Three times he tore what he had written, and at that point I told him…’ and the legate seemed to hear her snapping, powerful voice, and he thought he could see her as she was folding her immense arms on her massive breasts − how wonderful a woman she is, even today! − ‘I told him, «I hope you won’t tear it again, otherwise I’ll swallow you!» I took it from him and read it! I said to myself, hopefully, I’m intelligent enough to judge a writing whether it is good or not, interesting or not if I read it. I can assure you, it was a pleasure to read it… I told him, ‘You’ll sent it in!’ And he did. Of course, they in Debreczin were crazy about it! And they wrote to him, ‘Dear friend, that’s a masterpiece, why don’t you keep writing? You’d become another Sándor Baksay for us!’”

That was how his mother had been speaking before strange guests two days before; his father was doing nothing but smiling, with his mouth a bit open and with his head a bit tilted to the side like a sick man in fever, and it was only now for him to come to understand what it really was… ‘That’s horror! Well, such is marriage. That’s a happy marriage! I guess what an unhappy one looks like,’ he thought.

He got rather cold and was already about to go into the house, when, from the back door, three or four young men were coming clamorously on the veranda, and stopped next to him. They were smoking cigarettes, and he stayed there for some more minutes.

“I say, he wears sidelocks,” said the economic trainee.

“Hell, no.”

“Of course, he is,” the others fell upon the contradictor.

“Every Jew wears them.”

“No, not every does. Jews are to be recognized not by them but do you know by what?”

“By what?”

“My father always used to say that the neck of every Jew, even if he is such a potentate like Rotschild, is dirty.”

They laughed.

“But he does wear sidelocks, you understand, one centimetre of his side-whiskers is left intact behind his ears to indicate sidelocks.”

Now the contradictor stopped speaking, too.

“Do take a good look at them. The’re cut short but, if you take a close look, you’ll see they’re curled, you know, he takes some hairs, however short they are, with his fingers, and twirls them just like rabbinical students do.”

“Jews are Jews, my friend.”

They put their heads together resembling some dogs chasing a stranger beside the fence.

One of them said in a low voice, “Sidelocks”.

The other cried it in a raised voice, “Sidelocks”.

And now, this time all the four of them stroke up in chorus, “Sidelocks, sidelocks, sidelocks”.

At this point, the young master, Péter Dobi came out of the house to hear the “concert”, and the legate experienced something surprising and novel. He was not fully aware of the situation, who were they talking about, who they were mocking at, who was the Jew; all he saw was that the young Mr. Dobi flung himself at the boys.

They chuckled and tittered, then fell silent. But suddenly the thickest voice could be heard, “Sidelocks”.

At the same moment, he was already flying, and fell flat like a sack of potatoes in the snow.

That was to the legate’s taste; the fact that even a savage boy like this exhibited such unambiguous enlightenment. It was beyond words how uneasy the derision of the Jew made him. The feeling of being humiliated, the violation of his own human dignity made him tremble.

The boys settled the matter among them with some swear-words but he, frozen to the marrow, withdrew into the house thinking of the fact that now he had been witness of a heroic deed. He perceived the tutor standing among the dancing girls, motioned him to himself, and told him the incident.

The man looked upon him wonderingly, and smiled with his bad teeth and purple gum.

“The Jew?” he said, “It’s no wonder that such opinions are held by many because nobody knows them. Jewish people, still today, live in complete separation, and have merely economical dealings with us. We don’t take any glasses together, nor dance or have any talks with each other. They don’t even take part in the village public administration. Besides, they cannot go inside. By the law, of course, they’re allowed to but, for an innkeeper, it would be absurd for him to go into the parish hall, sit down among the peasants, and say something like ‘I’m afraid, my dear uncle, this year we’ve got too many ravens… I think some destruction would be needed…” Still, people there are making decisions… without them. From the point of view of national policy, they’re indifferent… In the intimate circle of their family, they speak German… At the time of the elections, they work for the gentleman candidate; that’s all… ‘Pitch into the Jews!’ that’s the only policy here.

“Notwithstanding, they beat not the Jew,” objected the legate, “but each other − because of the Jews!”

The family tutor glanced at him, had a good laugh and said, “My dear fellow, you don’t know anything about that.”

19

The women were horrified upon hearing that the Aradis had been stuck in the snow. Naturally, they also discussed the topic in detail.

“O, God! To think that I had to spend all my life here, in this miserable village,” said the hostess, “and, on top of it all, without any result… It’s easy for the townspeople. They get everything ready, I’m just watching my sister-in-law there in Budapest, but who is she compared to me, who has always been a lazy, good-for-nothing creature, grabs up her bag, goes down into the street and choses among the goods. They get everything ready-made. My lettuce bolts and turns bitter; the cabbage lettuces look just like roses on her table. We’re exposed to the weather and the ill-will of the silly servants. In her house, all she has to do is tell what must be made for dinner. In the evenings − theatre, parties, piano; she can have her children trained.”

“I went once to Szeged,” spoke Mrs. Szalay, having no intentions whatsoever because the town crossed her mind unexpectedly. “It was a summer morning, we stayed with our two small daughters at the Hotel Kas, there’s a wonderful grove there on the shore of the Tisza, as wonderful as in a fairy tale. There were beautiful statues in it, and a palace of culture at that; it was a real museum. Well, as we were walking towards the bridge, I beg to say, you cannot describe it, there were at least one thousand wagons standing, loaded with every possible goods. Watermelons, honeydew melons, tomatoes, apples, cucumbers, I don’t know who ate all those cucumbers, a great, big market, as large as far the sheep enclosure is from here, and filled to overflowing to such an extent that one could hardly pass among the peasant wagons. And what nice wagons there are in Szeged. I beg to say, even the poorest peasant wagon is like a britzska. The ironwork on it is wonderful, the horses’re nice and good, and the peasants’re orderly dressed, not like our ones. When we looked out through the window, there was a string of wagons under the window as long as from the upper end to the lower end of our village, which is, though rather long, nothing compared to this one. And, I don’t know how they managed to do it but the waggons were standing so close to each other like boxes. Backed nicely to the pavement. There was no disturbance whatever. Neither jostling nor fighting, save for a small incident, some poor man wanted to walk off with a pair of melons, asserting that he had already paid for it. On the other hand, the farmer insisted that he hadn’t paid for it. Needless to say, the people there gathered in a stunning throng. For the townspeople are quite different from the village people. Turning up in our village, how a bagman put it last year? ‘We townspeople’re always in a hurry. We’re always in a hurry, I beg to say, we haven’t time enough to think.’ What a good laugh we had at it.”

Just like that time, she was heartily laughing at it. Even repeated it several times, “Townspeople’re always in a hurry. They haven’t time enough; they’re always in a hurry. And where do they hurry? After the women. That’s the gentlemen’s most important concern in the towns and cities. If you really get to Szeged, uncle Pista will have a little bit something to hurry after.”

The Lady was not in the mood to take anything easy. She also took this remark to heart.

“Uncle Pista has never hurried in his life; in some way or other, has been finding the women,” she said and tears came into her eyes. “If only at least that hadn’t been. But I suffered disappointment first in my life when I, as a young wife, happened to notice that my Pista wasn’t leading a righteous and upright life… But, after all, what could do about it a hapless wife? When a girl, I used to keep asking my mother why didn’t she divorce his husband, I wouldn’t allow anybody to treat me that way for a day. Although my poor father was innocent in this respect, he was only very rough. To be sure, my husband’s never been rough because I’ve never answered back, but he’s had dirty businesses quite enough. What should’ve I done? I had three chindren on my hands, and I was told it was the call of his blood, to say the truth, his father wasn’t more decent then he is, but at least, if he was left alone, he didn’t nag me… Needless to say, my angelic patience was required to turn a blind eye to this and that.”

This was how the conversation went among the women all through the evening.

Mr. Szalay came in with rosy cheeks. As the men were preparing themselves for playing cards in the inner room, he had to go through this one, where the women flocked together, and stopped for a moment.

“What’re you talking about, my dears, my dear gossips?”

“We’re chiding this bad life. It’s full of troubles.”

“Just wait a minute! I’ll tell you what women’re talking about.”

He lifted up his forefinger and laughed; the others were laughing with him, and waited for the anecdote.

“A little old woman goes to the vicar to make a confession. And she’s doing so by saying,

“I’ve cheated my husband!” (She was so old that she hadn’t a tooth at all.)

“Come now, come now,” said the old pastor. “How old’re you?”

“Seventy-seven.”

“And when the event took place?”

“Fifty years ago.”

The vicar’s stricken by wonder.

“And why did you want to confess it?”

“Well, I just like speaking about it.”

There is roaring laughter in the background, the gentlemen are laughing. All the less women; it is at their cost.

“You’re a cunning old codger,” they say, petting his shoulder.

“Well, women like talking about that.”

“Men like talking about that!” spoke Mrs. Péchy, the notary’s wife.

“How curious, how gossipy you are.”

“The serious, mighty gentlemen assemble to talk about insignificant women. They never do anything else; they spend teir lives doing that.”

“And how about work? Uncle Péter! Is that our duty?” the notary remarked upon the words of his wife.

“I work as hard as a horse.”

“Do I not work?” asked Mrs. Szalay.

“At what?”

They bursted into laugh.

“What… as if we didn’t work! There’s just no need for us!” clamoured the young wives.

“You’re needed,” said Mr. Rácz, “that’s sure.”

The dark, spunky man spoke so rarely that his single word raised all the bigger laugh. All the more when taking into consideration, how much he needs his wife! This fat, beautiful woman, who works like a land-steward, who has already put his life nicely in order, who has purchased the Szilas manor-house along with the large garden and all the furniture in it, who leases hundreds of acres of land, buys horses fitting into the stall of any count, who is presently having the large Rákóczy manor-house cotaining sixteen rooms rebuilt, having the half thereof pulled down, and outhouses built therefrom. The other half thereof is quite sufficient for him, so much that she gets elegant, well-paying guests from Budapest, and, what is more, she has meals prepared for them. One simply does not know from where she got her energy. Still her husband laconically says, “They’re needed, that’s sure.”

I should rather think so! Anyway, it was a good thing, that the gentlemen had gone to play cards and they would continue talking and laughing there.

However, the notary was merry now; it made him good that he had eased a bit up. He stepped to his wife, and laid his hand on her naked shoulder.

“Now you’re standing there,” said Mrs. Rácz, ”just as if before taking a photograph. The happy couple!”

They laughed because after midnight any word makes one laugh. On the other hand, both are pretty fat and healthy and they are having a good time smarten up in a good company after having eaten and drunk well! And nobody would suppose that the Ráczs see each other only once a weak because whenever Mr. Rácz leaves home, nobody can tell when he will be back home.

The notary sat down next to his wife on the edge of the easy chair, and was playing with her blond hair, wrapping it around his finger.

“Well, what is it?” asked the woman. She knew the notary well; she knew that he could not keep a secret, he wanted to tell her something, whether a gossip or an obscenity. Mr. Schöller discreetly drew away from the husband, and went into the adjoining room, watched the players for a while, so the married couple was left alone for a short amount of time in the corner.

“You see,” said the notary, “you always take this poor postmaster out on me. But you know them very little. He’s always been the model husband for me.”

“Yes, he has,” said the woman, indignantly. “You can only learn from him.”

“That’s just that I’ve done,” the notary cut in sharply, insultingly, “Do you know that he hates his wife?”

“Nonsense.”

“There’s no room for doubt; it cannot be denied.”

“He never leaves home for a minute.”

“Because the wratched man is not allowed to. Even the house is built so the office is next to the dining room, and there’s a French door so his wife can have a look inside any time so as he cannot flirt with the clients in any way.”

The woman fell silent. Although she no longer cared for her husband’s words, what she had heard sounded to be plausible. It was something the husband could not make up anyway.

“Was it he who said that?”

“Do you really think I’ve made the whole thing up?”

“Tell him that he’s an impudent husband. He fell into discredit with me; he’s just like any other husband.”

The notary got very scared that his wife may do some foolish thing because of his gossiping.

“Well, well, you needn’t shout,” he said scared and added, just because of his male authority, roughly − but only a little roughly − “I didn’t tell it to you so that you instantly advertise the fact!”

“Where did he tell you that?”

“Right here under the window. We were standing next to each other.”

The woman scanned him with her eyes,

“That’s men for you!” she said in a raised voice, and all the other women started to pay attention to her, “They should be left alone for only two minutes, and!… Shame upon them!… They mustn’t be let out even under the eves. I’ve lost my infatuation for my last ideal!”

“For whom?”

“One husband is as mean as the other! Who thinks it’s normal that all the men run away from home to the office, to a party…wherever! As for the women, they must sit at home alone, and if they go out for a little gossip, they condemn them for it, though they’re only women! They’re not expected to do anything. They’re born for gossiping. And if they spend a few minutes together, they’ll set each other against the women. But they do go out enjoying themselves, passing the time always with new things and with new people, while we can prepare the dinner, wash and darn the holey socks. And how they fancy themselves up! Simply ridiculous! And if the women do the same, they’ll harass them. He must go to the county-town, to the city, he truly believes if he didn’t go into the Korona restaurant once a week, it would be the end of the world for him; and the train comes back only at night, and yet it’s he who complains; how sorry I am! The poor creature must enjoy himself in the city, and his wife can bottle fruit at home in the meantime.

“That’s true, Frici, whenever they come together, they’re always slandering us,” said Mrs. Szalay.

“They have no other thought,” the notary’s wife said, as the anger accumulated in the course of the whole week flew out of her more and more passionately, “their only concern is how they can their wives subjugate, I wish them farther… and you read the same in every book how the men complain about and heap insults on women; how it would look like if, at long last, a woman herself wrote her laments because nobody else but she knows her complaints!

“All right, no more of that,” said the notary, infuriated, and made a move to leave.

But his wife did not allow him to, and held him back with the poison of harsh words,

“What an impertinent, base man! Why do you abuse the other people? The women? Just look into the mirror!”

All the bystanders laughed at the young wife’s exaggerated outburst; nobody new what might have triggered her sudden, unexpected impulse.

“They’re coward, impertinent scoundrels! They cheat, steal and break into houses! So as to get money for their wives because they’re afraid of them! And they’re speaking as if their wives forced them to do so!”

“We work and you live in idleness!” his husband made an insolent answer.

“That’s not idleness but illness! Let them set their hand to it, I wonder which man can wash and clean the child from the morning until the evening, and, in addition, the entire house, especially when you’re an emotional wreck from your husband! And the wife of such a husband is idle.

“Don’t start it from the beginning, will you?”

“Why the hell should it be started from the beginning… But he cannot stand it for two months, then he’s dissimulating, flattering, he wants to escape and stay at the same time, oh, how much I hate it, still he always brings his dirty drawers back so that his wife washes them, and if it’s done by the hotel chambermaid, she’s a woman, too, isn’t she? When all is said and done, can they live without women?… The only difference is that they don’t dare to speak about them in the way they speak about their wives. There they keep their mouths shut.”

“The notary did not want to leave. He sat back beside her wife, and tried to mitigate her. He stroked her, and smiled to the right and to the left trying to gain some silent sympathy for the swift-tongued woman.

“But she doesn’t offend me by keeping me constantly on fetters just like falcons’re restrained by a chain, and not wanting to let me free?”

“If you feel offended by my making inquiries about every moment of yours, you can leave for ever. If my thoughts were wandering out in the world, I cannot imagine that you weren’t also inquiring about my triflingest thoughts. Really, they should always be kept on a rope, and not be allowed to go as far as the porch lest they bore a grudge against their wives.”

“Oh, at least, don’t cry.”

“Why?”

“Because your crying is so smelly that the room wants to be aired out.”

„O, you impudent man! Get out of here! O, get out of here now, go playing the cards, I’d better not see you.”

The notary kissed his wife’s hair but she shook him off, and the man, with his tail between his legs like a Kuvasz dog, edged towards the door and went into the next room. There, he put his hand on Mr. Schöller’s shoulder, and said,

„Well, mate, hurry up, the women’re waiting for you!”

Mr. Schöller, assuming that the notary believed that he had been courting to the notary’s wife, gave him a flat look wondering whether he was only lying and kind of kidding. Or acting as an agent provocateur.

“Haven’t you a wife?” the notary asked him.

“Unfortunatelly, not.”

“A happy man.”

And he almost added, ‘You should elope with mine; I give her to you along with all her nastyness… with the children and everything…’ But he only pulled a long face instead because, of course, he would not have given neither the children nor the woman to him for he considered her beautiful and kind and, after all, a hard worker; the only thing was that he found the iron discipline she exercised over him dreadful. Also, he himself knew well that her laziness resulted from the fact that she was unprecedentedly jealous − maybe she had rather inhaled and kept him in her constantly, all day and night.

Then, looking crestfallen, he lit a cigar, and was morosely thickening the smoke, which had become so dense in the room that it was almost cuttable. He was not watching just looking at the card-players, apathetically, awfully apathetically.

20

The smell of the family squabble might have filtered through the door, and the card-players got excited just like predators do by the smell of blood.

“I don’t think so, my dear younger brother,” said Mr. Szalay quietly. He got up and went with the notary into the alcove. The brandy bottles were there. He filled his glass, then the notary’s. “I’m just listening to all this talk but I have only one single principle: You mustn’t argue with wives. Why? Because the wife is right anyway. Whatever long a quarrel is, it ends with the fact that it’s the wife who’s right. Why not to meet the trouble halfway? What’s the use of all the talk? Crying bitter tears? Mind you, the wife argues not to convince the other or to let herself convinced but to win… With the wife, all kinds of contradiction is emotion… And she’s right not because she argues with her head but because she argues with her heart. The husband makes a mistake easily but the heart never does… Hence try to find out what’s the matter with the wife, and help about it…”

“Ah, well, if I paid attention to that… Why should I pay attention to that?” the young man answered, “I know very well what’s wrong with her: the trouble with her is that she doesn’t want to give up her stranglehold on me for a moment. She’s caught me, she owns me, now it’s that she wants to treat me just like her pet. She takes me for a cat, even not for her dog but for her kitty, which is hanging on her sleeve to be at her service any time… She’s doing her own work without being aware of what I’m doing, whether I’m living or dying or just bored but expects me to watch her every move with eyes wide open, and taking delight in her whether she’s filthy or angry or is just lazing about; she always wishes to feel that a pair of eyes are shining on her, that her husband’s taking delight in her in rapture and amazement. Which can’t be, and if it can’t be, it can not be. And, in that case, all is over.”

“My dear friend, your truth is as pure as the one of Holy Scripture. As the one of the items of the two stone tablets. And yet, look, I remember an episode of my life… I’ve never told it to anyone before. I, my dear friend, once cheated my wife… I was just like you… I got tired of her caprises, whims, her forced contradictions, and I couldn’t help myself, I flew into a rage, I was young, I wanted to take revenge… You know, I not really wanted it… not really wanted anyone… But I wanted to prove for myself that she was an insignificant nobody… that she didn’t matter to me… You know what I mean… That there’re so many women, so many wretched women, who sell cheap what wives overcharge… So I cursed and swore to myself, clapped on my hat, and left home… Where to? To the Café, for the affair happened in Debreczin, I went to the Royal Café; I was drinking and carousing all night, and was cheating on my poor wife all night like crazy.”

He sat down in the chair, and starred in front of him. He gulped down one more glass, and went on,

“In the late morning light, I came out with the woman arm-in-arm talking and singing about to see a big bellied woman in the middle of the street, my dear friend, half covered with snow, standing like a column, and the woman was my wife!… Pregnant with my third son.”

Down he fell, dumb, and flicked the ash from his cigar.

Both subsided into a long, deep silence. The notary was gazing before him with knitted brows. ‘Yeah, that’s it, one feels that, feels that it’s a very heavy and difficult thing… But, but…’ he said to himself.

“She was just standing there all night! Until morning! Waited until I came out again! And, as she saw me, turned round, and walked quietly home.”

At this moment, the two men were sitting in the loud uproar of the reveling house like two Kirghizes in front of the tent in the steppe, where there’s nothing but wind, whistling about, and now and then a neighing can be heard from the stud of horses. They were sitting motionless, looking down at their feet.

“She’s a holy woman. A martyr − as perfect as only a woman can be. Only a woman in love… My dear friend, I punched my night partner so hard in the face that she became dizzy and fell headlong into the snow, and I made after my wife…

There was anger, of course. The poor thing was angry. Why not? Why should she do me the kindness not to be angry? After all, she wasn’t standing there all night not to be angry!

But she had a right to be. I went home with her, and, as soon as at home, she started to moan; the birth-pangs were beginning.

‘Quick, get the doctor!’ I thought.

I can still remember clearly how I was running along the street like a bloody fool, muddle-headed and cold sober, at the same time, but I felt as if my legs were winged; there were wings tied to my shoes, my dear friend, and brought the good and kind Mrs. Réder back home… Upon getting back in the flat, we were met by profound silence… and by those horrible moans: ‘My dear… my sweetheart… be a good boy’… And I wanted to disappear out of consideration…

But, at that moment, she grasped my hand and said, ‘No!’

She didn’t let me go, I had to watch the horrible agony, which accompanies the greatest act of existence, from the beginning to the end.

Oh, as her nails cut into my palm, and she was looking at me with those meek, innocent eyes, in bitter agony, like a dying calf, I felt that even now, in the utmost unconsciousness, she was happy knowing that she had her darling with her, that her ‘man’ will save her, the only one, for whom she lives, for whom it is worth living… “

He took a deep breath to prevent tears coming into his eyes from falling, and stood up.

“Well, let’s go playing cards…”

They had already been missed in the cardroom. The notary did not play, only stood there to look at the cards a bit. At the second or third distribution, Mr. Szalay turned back and looked up at him warmly, and said,

“You can’t argue with wives, my dear friend. They’re ahead of us: they give birth to children…”

21

The dance was at its peak in the big dining room. The postmaster was playing the violin, and the youth were shaking their legs with the wild eagerness of the young.

The legate did not dance. Despite prodded from the right and the left, he planted himself modestly in the corner where the tile stove was situated, and was watching the dancers. The count’s tutor stood next to him, in whom he found a comrade in refusing to dance.

“What’s this young count like?” the legate unexpectedly asked the tutor.

The tutor laughed uproariously. This boy seemed to be frightening sometimes. He was a chain-smoker bloodless young man with white gums. In his pale eyes there was something strange; sometimes one was inclined to think that he was mad.

“As for me, he and every other count be blowed and throwed!” he said. “I’ve been with them for two years now, and hopefully I’ll stand one more year. Fortunatelly, I have no need of them. And I tell them a few home truths. These people give themselves up to ceremonial things. Commoners treat everybody who is not a count with an equal degree of contempt. But I give them slaps in the face, you know, which hard for them to put up with. By breakfast time, I’m as hungry as a wolf. They start spreading the toasted roll with a very, very thin layer of butter, and I make nasty remarks to them like this, ‘I’m afraid, Milord, it must be admitted that magnates are, as a matter of course, ignorant.’

He gave a big laugh, with a head tilted back and an open mouth.

“At first they were shocked, but then, I think, they decided I was a fool, but now readily accept my statements like this. But, I beg to say, look into the case. Think it over, it’s an awfully simple thing. A count kid is brought up to be an honorable gentleman from the age of a baby. Because these people, and that’s an amazing thing, I beg you pardon, pay excessive respect to each other’s rank. The count respects her own wife for being a countess, the countess respects her own husband for being a count, and both respect their own child as the would-be owner of the majorat. And the child, as early as in his early childhood, learns to respect the superior authority in his father and mother just like a common soldier does in the general. And how vulgar their conversation is among them! I don’t mean as if they used indecent words or obscenities or the like. But they use illiterate, in the strict meaning of the word, clumsy expressions, which an educated man like us couldn’t do even if he tried to. This is a skill possessed only by lady cooks, chambermaids and all sorts of tradesmen, who know notning whatever. In other words, they neither have culture nor care about it. They start with learning three or four languages at the same time, and read in every of them; hence, naturally, they have no idea, of course, of the immanent historic evolution of this small Hungarian language island. At any rate, they have possibility to look into highbrow Western culture. Yet don’t believe that they read Anatole France or, speaking in general terms, the great writers. By no means, they don’t read anything else but romances for servants. And they boast that they read them in English. However, it’s well known that the English literature is of the lowest kind. I say, belles lettres there is ruled by rigid morality which is, in fact, immorality. Of course, some good writers can be found there, too, but while there are two or three thousand copies of a genuine literary work printed even in London, fifty thousand or five hundred thousand copies are sold from a trashy detective novel, or, even worse, from a slipslop, a hideous love-story. That’s why there are many woman writers there. And why? Because the English don’t need originality. They’re, I say, a ruling race, and one can rule only by way of stereotypes.”

“But I asked about the young Pista Count,” cut in the legate.

“The young Count of Nyír? Well, for me, he’s the best example. By the way, this count is called ‘Pista’ only because when, last summer, he was here, the name ‘Pista’ somehow stuck to him. But it fits him very well because while, on the one hand, Pali, the other nickname for István ^[25], involves that the bearer of the name is a dupe; on the other hand, the nickname Pista suggests that he is a harum-scarum fellow. The young count is an awkward, hefty fellow, full of high reaching ambitions; I don’t know where he has got it from because his father, the old count is the coolest and calmest aristocrat in the world. But this young count is a nasty fellow. How shall I put it, he’s like a literature teacher at a comprehensive school, who’s blown up with pride at the thought that nobody else in the town knows what he knows. As for Pista count, he’s a qualified economist, sociologist and knows double-entry bookkeeping. In general, he knows as much about these things as a Jew boy, who finished business college. Or even less. However, beside him, nobody in his circles has any idea about these topics. In this way he, in his very young age, became a kind of aristicratis private scholar. I hear, he’s going to make the festal address with Széchenyi’s Memorial Cup at the National Club on the first of January. Oh, you poor address, you poor cup, you poor Stefi Széchenyi. ^[26] “

He guffawed loudly. But not so the legate. He was indoctrinated by the college with the idea that one should only speak about the noblemen with deep respect, even with religious reverence of some kind because his teachers were idolizing the counts throughout history, only them and always them; all the ancient founders and benefactors of the school were lords; hence he felt now as if unmerciful hands unveiled a topic of great nicety.

“You mean to say the count is an idiot?”

The tutor gave a big laugh again like a silly turkeycock.

“He isn’t an idiot, I say, but a stupid fellow. If he comes across a stupid idea that inspires him, he tends to be obsessed with it. I wouldn’t like to be in the shoes of Hungary, when this man is the Prime Minister of it.”

“But do you really think that he’ll ever become a Prime Minister?”

“Yes, of course, I say, because he was born to be. In truth, when his grandfather started to court to his grandmother, the goal was, even then, that Hungary would have a good Prime Minister sometime,” and he laughed hideously. “They began to breed this kind of people, I say, a long time ago.”

And now, as if intoxicated by his own bravery, he went on,

“And, however strange, this is the point where the Jews get involved into the Hungarian political life. Namely, the Jews don’t take part neither in the village nor in the county public administration. How could they get there?… Albeit in recent times, Jewish lawyers go to make speeches in town halls. At the county call perhaps hardly yet, but there up above all the more frequently… The counts felt that, as a matter of fact, their real enemy were the Jews. Recently, in the Hungaria Hotel, a young magnate stood up at midnight, put out his revolver, and shouted out, ‘Jews, out!’… They were not many there; seated at only two or three tables. They stood up. They looked into each other’s eyes steadily for a little while, and left… Indeed, this is based on a deeper principle. Because the Jews cannot but choose to aim at the supreme power. They’re unable to break through the front. If they want to survive, they must take over the helm. As for the class of the magnates, they regard them as a strong rival because they draw fresh energy from the depth. Moreover, the great mass of the people come off well with them because they are, even involuntarily, propagators and spreaders of general culture. The Jewish capital brings ‘hygiene’ into the factories and the ranches, if only because they execute the law upon them. And however surprising, it brings social reforms of itself to make the masses forget its own unsympathetic origin. They bring cheap newspapers, brave voice and general culture. Further, they nurture business skills and creates a market for the commodities produced. Cheap clothes, furniture and better taste. And, God knows, self-esteem. In contrast to the magnates, whose interest is that the people must be humble, religious and abiding superiority, they wish that the people keep their eyes open, are brave and able to tell a heron from an egret.”

The legate remained silent and was shuddering. He was scared of the words that he had heard like a blind from the light, ^[27] which he understood and did not understand.

“Of course, this is an ugly war. On one hand, the historical class wants to keep their property and power but refuses to work or to make any sacrifice; on the other hand, the Jews want to get hold of the wealth, and, by doing so, the power, with fire and sward, by the law and against the law. The Hungarian conservative culture stifles the new voice, which, in contrast, the Jews clamour for. In the time of János Arany, Hungarian public opinion praised Mihály Vörösmarty above all other poets ^[28] but today the ideal is Arany, and it wants to let nobody else into the curriculum. In the olden times, at the country-seats, well educated people’s most favourite author was Horace, today it’s impossible… True enough, magnates never read Horace nor Vörösmarty nor Arany or even Balzac or Hauptmann. Magnates’s libraries date from 1790; since then, no new books have got into them. The libraries of the nobility are only represented by some old folios in the apiaries. ^[29] New books or periodicals cannot be found in the houses of the Hungarian noblemen. Except maybe some trade books and papers, as long as they’re young. On the contrary, the Jewish intellectuals read every new book indiscriminately. We are not in the danger that the Western intellectual revolutions spread over here. ‘Anyway, that’s good,’ say the magnates, and keep hunting happily in the wonderful forests. It reminds me of a funny event. One of our leading politicians said, I had it from his own mouth the other day, while at the Csop railway station, and the count explained me that when he is in Switzerland, he can have a good conversation with anybody, no matter he’s a cabman or a town alderman because the atmosphere is different there, he’s a democrat there. And while he was relating all that, there were standing two men behind him: two stud grooms, two apprentices, the junior clerk, the secretary and the farm bailiff; and all stiff at attention, and without even batting an eye. And it’s even more embarrassing when a Jew leaseholder demands something like that of his employees. But he doesn’t demand it for it would be in vain, he wouldn’t manage… You know, Hungarian life seems to be similar to a candle, which is lit at both ends. One’s the magnate’s world, the other’s the Jews. And I don’t know whose smoke is more unpleasant.

22

The legate suddenly was overcame with shame, literally got scared by the daring, even blasphemous statements, and, without saying a word, turned his back to the tutor. He walked across the room behind the dancers. The tutor noticed it, snapped his fingers, and laughed at him.

‘Beggar’s morals…’ he said to himself cynically, ‘It hurts even this rambling kid to hear that somebody doesn’t treat his ideal leniently.’

He looked round on the company, and, with some kind of laugh frozen on his face, he was sneeringly and grotesquely staring at the jumping young trainee, who was sweating, shaking his legs with the female post-office clerk forcing the physical exercise, named dance, and the notary, who, with his balding head, was standing next to them and watching the female post-office clerk with his obviously hungry eyes, and the others, who, as if obsessed by the grotesque St. Vitus’s dance, were wringgling and hopping to the endlessly repeated tones of the music.

The legate drew towards Miss Anna, and was very, very sorry for the beautiful, fresh and young girl, whose letter was returned by the merciless and impolite younger count without any accompanying words. As if a tragedy was being enacted before his eyes. ‘Never will this girl forget the ringing of that summer bell for however long she will live. What could’ve happened by the bird-nest in the lucerne-field; what could’ve told the count filled with socialist ideas to the bailiff’s Miss, I mean, the farm-bailiff’s daughter? And how the poor thing could’ve suffered while, by all means, under parental coercion, she let herself be outwitted, and be kind of a prey, and was preparing herself for today’s engagement… What kind of emotions would’ve made her write her broken short letter to the count; the letter, in which her scary heart was struggling in dispair, and then what kind of emotions would’ve made her slip it into her cleavage! She must’ve hidden it there upon seeing the sorrowful an unprecedently cruel refusal!’ he thought.

Miss Doby, however, did not seem either awed or touched by discord or dismay of any kind at all. On the contrary, it was now as if she had come to herself again. She danced so brilliantly and enthusiastically with Mr. Imre Pagan.

Mr. Pagan, playing more and more passionately the role of a Lowland dandy, was always singing about. He was singing specific, fairly odd artificial folk songs, which were lacking but affecting originality, and were grown in the Budapest cafés chantants:

On Lord’s day night I came back home, word sent my babe to me.

She did let me know that she takes me in marriage next week,

But I made a reply to that:

Rosette!

Withraw to hell! Will you please delete my name?

I am not a collar to be changed week by week, every week.

The others found it strange, but Mr. Pagan’s abrupt joviality got round them.

“This is like any thing that the Jews pick up and adjust to their own temperament,” said the tutor, who took down the text in shorthand. It’s exaggerated and stupid. It says, ‘word sent my babe to me,’ which means, rather, that my babe was sent to me… Then, instead of ‘she wants to marry me’, it says, ‘she takes me in marriage.’ How can anybody take me in marriage? It’s only me who can take her in marriage! She’ll be able to take me in marriage if she becomes a man… And the term ‘withraw to hell!’ is tasteless. Truth is truth, we use abusive language like this and even worse maybe accompanied with a string of more colourful expletives often enough but such a thing has never occurred in a Hungarian folk song, not even in a humorous one. A Hungarian lyrics like this can be written only by a Jew town author, who doesn’t know about any other kind of shirt than the one he himself wears, that is, the shirt with a starched collar, which is usually cleaned by a laundry service. Peasants still wear a sewed-on collar; all that is just a Jewish young gentleman’s boasting, who is playing the dandy.”

The public opinion was sharply against dr. Pagan’s success. Nobody envied Miss Doby for getting his land. The only problem was his personality…

But he did not notice it, and praised her exuberantly, “Hey, Annuska, my sweet little Miss Annuska, if you knew how glad I am now!”

“Oh, are you?”

“I’m unspeakably happy; my heart’s bubbling over with joy. You know, Miss Annuska, it’s only now that I’ve started to feel relieved. I feel as if my shackles fell off me, you know like that proud stallion that, having torn up its harness, dashes into the plain at full speed, where he, I kiss your hand, Miss Annuska, gets among every kind of fierce horses, meets a very kind colt of fairy-like beauty, and they neigh to each other, wildly, in the sound of the plains, I kiss your hand.“

“Do you feel among such fierce people?”

Mr. Pagan was captured by a euphoria mood of sincerity, which is only characteristic of young men who think that their beloved girlfriend is identical to him mentally, who feels and thinks the same way as he does, loves and hates the same that he does and wants the same that he wants.

“Yes, among people like those, I kiss your hand, Annuska… You shouldn’t misunderstand it but just look round here. You can see, for instance, the brave uncle Szalay… I grant you that he’s educated at least to some extent, he’s also made several trips, visited Vienna, Rome and Berlin. He speaks very well, he’s a good orator. It’s a wonder that he didn’t become a politician. But, I say to you, he has a land of two hundred and thirty acres, which scarcely yields enough somehow to live on with his family. I can tell you, Miss Annuska, a German farmer produces, believe me, more on five acres than Mr. Szalay on his two hundred and thirty acres.”

He was inflated with great pride and exaltation; he believed that he would warm Miss Dolby’s heart by telling her these words.

“Or let’s take for another example, this dear, good uncle Péchy. He’s graduated from university, earned a doctoral degree, which is a great thing, considering the fact that he’s son of a smallholder noble. And, as soon as he put his diploma into his pocket, came back to the village, and he hasn’t read a book since then. Well, put yourself in the place of the unfortunate patient who consults him. What can do this kind-hearted, brave uncle Lajos with him? I’m most amazed at the fact that he still can make out a receipt. I’ll ask the pharmacist how many kinds of medicines this uncle Lajos prescribes. I’m sure that the whole choice of the medicines prescribed by him year by year consists of no more than ten or, let’s say, twelve medicines only. But he sure can drink! And tell anecdotes. Sure enough, he’s a good man. And a very rude man. He became famous like the miraculous healer of Miskolc for his rudeness. When the peasant steps into his reception room, he shouts at him; if the peasant is so ill that he doesn’t even shout at him, the time has come to take him home happily and wrap him in an eiderdown quilt. His wife will say, ‘Oh, my dear father, let’s send for the priest so he can administer Holy Communion to you because even Péchy doctor fails to shout at you. But if things are like this, thanks God, it’s all up with you this time. And the sick peasant will really die or recover.

Miss Doby was smiling but her heart started aching. She asked herself, by what right dares this alien man to speak about her acquaintances in such a tone? About the people who used to rock her on their knees, throw her in the air for fun like a doll, and cover her with their kisses just not long ago? She does not feel the smell neither of the pipe smoke nor of the marcbrandy on their lips when kissing her but only kind-heartedness, fondness and love for her.

However, Mr. Pagan took Miss Doby’s muteness for encouragement, and continued his critical remarks more vehemently. He moved on to all the others irrespective of whether they were present or absent. While he was awere of the fact that his detaching himself from his own parents, siblings and all the relatives by blood and his whole past was a huge sacrifice, which he had had to make against his will, and maybe out of revenge for all that, he thought he had the right to hurt the feelings of the family, his new people that he himself, despite all his critical observations, had chosen as his would-be friends, relatives, siblings and parents only for sake of this girl.

And he went ahead, making bold remarks on Miss Dolby’s parents, saying, “This your dear, good and wise father, before whom one needs to kneel down and kiss his hand, who’s such a pure and holy man, who’s never taken away or appropriated unlawfully or alienated to himself a straw from this mainor having been managed by him with full authority for twenty or thirty years now, well, you see, Miss Annuska, this your saintly father couldn’t produce as much on five thousand acres for thirty years that…”

At this point Miss Dolby cried out, “Malvinka, Malvinka! Wait with the wine soup until the Aradis arrive!”

With that, she left Mr. Pagan there. She was trembling all over with rage that a fiancé candidate dared to speak like that in front of her.

23

The dance raged on. The postmaster, just like a music machine, was playing the violine, accurately and untiringly; the dancers were dancing, the card players were playing the cards, and the women were chatting. Nobody noticed that the two young souls had parted like two planets that come nearer and nearer to each other until they come under each other’s magic spell, and scatter in different directions to continue rovering in the universe.

The legate, frightened, turned away, thinking that Miss Doby had noticed him watching the scene with the eyes of a lynx, and started to watch the dancers. He gradually started to recognize those present. The short, fat and blotchy-faced nursery school mistress, with her strange, soft and chubby body was dancing with the economic scribe, who was wearing gaiters, and was slapping his legs, now one, now the other. It could be seen that the nursery school mistress was very happy now. Oh, God, it is a peculiar thing, when a young woman is endlessly nursing, and nursing, taking care for a roomful children, nurturing from morning to evening throughout a whole year, and then comes an opportunity like this, when, at a nice István-night like this, she can dance with her whole body to the music of the postmaster’s violine with the lean build economic scribe, who points his mustaches, and draws himself up with such a big self-respect that dancing with him is not only a pleasure but an honor. The forester, a tall German boy, was dancing with the tutor’s wife. This governess is presently employed by a local Jewish family, and now is pretending as if she were an illustrious guest. By doing so, she wants to compensate the fact that she is, in fact, only an invited guest. Apart from that, they make a rather nice couple: they both are blond, and so stiff as a board; they are dancing chardash ^[30] in a rather peculiar way, as if they were doing a certain physical exercise, which needs extraordinary patience. On the contrary of them, the trainee is jumping much better. He is like a bullock, who had got a worthy partner in the beautiful nursery school mistress. They are the leaders of the dance. Quite sure, they do not regard dancing as joy or love but a bravura. The trainee whirls his partner around and around taking her beautiful, small hand with one finger held up high, from time to time; they break away from each other to dance separately around the whole room looking at each other intertwining with each other by keeping eye contact in the meantime, and when they meet again, they are suddenly taken with a fit of dance extasy again. The notary keeps philandering with the post master’s wife. The legate peeps into the other room to find the notary’s wife on the corner of the same divan miming ‘whispering into each others ears’ with the post clerk from Budapest in fantastic happiness. The blood rushes to his face at the thought that the man is entertaining the young wife, in all probability, with frightfully smutty jokes. She obviously doesn’t wish to dance − and he knows well why not.

“At the time when the holders of lands of many thousand acres hadn’t a single book,” says the count’s family tutor to him, “my grandfather used to subscribe to every newspaper. They had the name ‘Consoling’, and who knows what other names, and were kept bound nicely on the loft. When a child, I used to live there on the loft with the smell of mouse, where we stored the maize, and used to turn over their pages. A priest would frequent our house; he wheedled them out of us, and took them all away.”

The legate stared at the tutor wonderingly, and tried to find out how the thought entered his mind to speak about this at the moment.

“He had an old apiary, too. What a wonderful flower bed was placed in front of it! Just flowers, from which bees could collect honey. There, I would lie down on my stomach on the straw bed, and read old books. For in the apiary, there were books, of which my grandfather seemingly thought nothing any more. Who knows from which period of time; they were perhaps from the time of reformation. They were bound in dog skin, and worm-eaten. However, our family was a very bad one. We never knew how to live. We’ve always been exhausting our brains, and have been, without exception, scraggy, sickly and weak-stomached people. They’ve also perished. Besides, my father was a priest, and of such a rebellious nature that he was perpetually summoned before the consistory until he got tired of it, kicked the butt of the priesthood and became farm bailiff. But he was all the less fitted for that. We’ve always been deprived people like this. Our whole family has fallen into decay. My mother had a younger brother. When about eighteen, he left home, and since that time, nobody has seen him at all.”

He guffawed loudly, showing his large and white gums. He was such a bitter and sad figure here, in this company, which was bursting with strength and health.

“The women’re putting their heads together, the men’re chatting politics, just look at it, you won’t see none of the husbands with their wives. Haven’t you realized it yet?”

The legate was amazed at the unexpected ideas of the boy, whose speech was jumping randomly from one topic to the other. ‘Hmm, what’s the use of a guy like this in the Lowland?’ he thought.

“Each woman’s seeking another man, even doesn’t say a word to her husband. Every young man that a girl can angle for a husband is precious. It’s of consequence whether he’s bold or backward, young girls will marry him even if he’s a dodderer. And when she marries him, she’ll be bored of him.”

“A witty countess once said at a party that, in the royal and princely marriages, the couples usually don’t understand each other. Whereas, among the country folk, they’re kept together by their mutual good will, the jointly conducted work and family life. While in the aristocratic cirles, they are only polite to each other, and nothing else, in the deeper layers of society, they help each other. They need each other’s good will and work. In a final analysis, hardships in marriage come from the fact that people’re unable to get accustomed to each other’s failures. On the other hand, the rich are not forced to tolerate each other unlike the poor. However, surely I think there aren’t any good marriages or rather strong family feelings anywhere any more. At this moment, here, among these people, a family is disintegrating. The husbands and the wifes are suffering from each other as if from some disease … Maybe, the peasants still enjoy patriarchal feeling and happiness… But genuine familiar intimacy is only shared by the Jews. This is where their power lies. Or doesn’t? And we envy them because we don’t know them. What we don’t know that we heate or wish.”

The legate laughed at it. He still had not life experience much. Also, he was tired very much. He was tired of the many fascinating impressions that rushed over him but there was no hope there to go to bed. So he had to surrender to the fact that his head was swimming.

24

In the meanwhile, the tutor was smoking madly. He had a silver tobacco case with the worst three Kreutzer ^[31] coarse tobacco in it. He was rolling thin cigarettes ceaselessly from it, which was enough for just a few whiffs.

His eyes were searching for the female post-office clerk. He did not dance, but she was being passed from hand to hand. When she happened to be alone, he sidled up to her.

“Do you know that you’re very beautiful?” he asked her.

The girl did not answer; she was smiling faintly.

“Do you know why you are so beautiful? There’s some kind of innocence about you.”

The girl still did not answer. From her face no one could tell what she was thinking. ‘I am not likely to make advances to this tutor,’ she said to herself. He seemed insignificant to her or at least by no means a person with whom one can be on familiar terms or on whom one can build on. But the word that he pronounced was the only flattering word that the Warrior of Lost Innocence could not resist.

“Your mouth’s wonderful, and your eyes are as pure as a newly opened small flower.”

The girl was alive to the fact that she was hardly made up so that dancing and sweat did not cause any trouble for her.

“I suppose you are not of amorous disposition, are you?” asked the tutor.

She still kept silent, and it seemed as if she was wearing a mask or the words did not penetrate her consciousness… But she was over-heated by dancing, it was after midnight, and she had already drunken a puny wine. She suddenly started to speak, although did not deem this thin guy from Budapest, who had neither any money nor good manners and whom she was not likely to need in the future, worthy of a respond at all. ‘I have absolutely nothing to do with him,’ she thought.

“Yes, I do, ^[32]” she said with a thought coming across her mind: ‘Maybe…’

“Haven’t you a steady?”

The girl paused for a while, failed to respond. Then she shook a bit her head, meaning that she had not… ‘What does he want to?’ she thought.

“Every one is indifferent to you here.”

She smiled contemptuously up at him and looked at the tutor’s liverish face, which was rather odd, and the words made her speak,

“Sure.”

“But you like dancing, don’t you?… or rather, you like only dancing and it’s just the same with whom.”

The girl winked with the eyes, and looked at him in this way.

“Oh, I do like tanzen,” she said, stressing the word, and now it became clear for the tutor for the first time why she was so alien-looking with her blond hair, her finely carved, short nose, with her lips embedded in the soft skin of her face following the taste of the wax doll makers, with her dimpled chin, her curvy neck and with some kind of weariness, even debauchedness and some slight marks of aging on her countenance…

“Where d’you come from?”

“Ya, I’m German.”

“You speak good Hungarian.”

“Ya, I’m grown up in Szeged.”

“You have a most charming face. There is no other word for it. Do you know what the meaning of the word ‘charming’ is?”

“Ya, I do.”

“Where did you go to school?”

“I went in Szeged to school.”

“And what schools have you finished?”

For a moment, the girl gave a searching and repelling and, for a very short while, a hostile glance at him; then said with excessive candor, “An elementary school”.

The tutor was taken aback. The girl’s whole appearance and bearing were proofs of an outstanding intelligence which was somehow wasted. Notwithstanding, he was impressed by the fact that she admitted it.

“The elementary? And have you finished it all?”

The girl smiled very slightly and gently.

“I thought you’re higher educated because your nature is so gentle and soft, you’re just like some rare plant, some alien flower, in this company; you look like a bird of paradise, which has just flown among the ravens and the jackdaws… One is certain, you were taught of good manners at home, in your house, and it must’ve been much better… life must’ve been much better… “

“Ya, that’s right,”

The tutor was looking at her.

‘She must be a very experienced woman that she can keep quiet. What’s the meaning of it?’ he asked himself. ‘Does she look down on me? Does she think me unworthy of her confidence? Or has she some past upon which no light can be thrown?’

“What did your father do for a living?”

“He was a militar tailor.”

On hearing that, he was taken aback again, and he was disillonisioned.

“And do you live alone here?”

“Ya, I do.”

“You might be not very happy.”

Finally, the girl made an effort, and said,

“It’s alles the same. I had expected a lot from life, now I don’t expect anything anymore. So it’s alles the same for mich.”

“No, it’s not all the same. A beautiful woman’s created for happiness…”

Ah, I don’t wait on happiness any more. I’m accustomed that I’m always stricken by troubles and unluck. Sorrows.

“You cannot be hit by sorrow for there’s only one real sorrow in the world, when your affection isn’t returned by someone whom you adore…”

“Oh, yes, I am. There’re many unlucks, inconveniences but I’m accustomed to them.”

The tutor looked upon her. He thought he was also accustomed to them. Who lives in a milieu, into which he or she has walked like this, will only be stricken by sorrow and bad luck. But he, not wanting to make such a long excursion, repeated it,

“This is all nothing; the only sorrow is the unreturned love.”

“I’m no in love,” said the German girl very softly and with an easy manner though with a superior air and even vital calmness, “perhaps because I’ve never been so much in love.”

“Who falls in love many times is unable to love deeply.”

“That’s right. My loves last no long.”

Under the influence of some memory, the boy’s eyes flashed.

“You mean ‘I usually kick them out after two weeks have passed’”?

“Well, no,” said the girl,” not two weeks; I never do it. When someone’s in my thoughts, it lasts for a year or one and a half year. But when something happens that makes me disappointed, you know, which is not convenient to me… If a man can adopt himself to me, he is good for me for a long time… But when I notice something that’s not my taste…”

“If you are disappointed in the character…”

“Then I immediately… it’s over. Then I can pretend him for a while… as if I was nice to him because I feel pity for the sufferers but I despise and look down on him, and I cannot love him any more. But at such times, somebody else comes up. You know who deserves trust and love.”

“Yes, because, you know, you’re an honest and true man. You don’t lie.”

“I can’t lie.”

“Your mouth proves that, it’s quite childish, your eyes are quite clear, also your forehead; only there’s some problem with your hair.”

“What kind of problem?”

“It’s a bit wild.”

“What’s wild?”

“It’s tousled, fiery and wild. You shake your mane saying, I don’t care a straw for you. But do you know why so early a new comes up to replace the old one? Because when you love, you’re close.”

“Ya.”

“You’re faithful.”

“Ya.”

“You let nobody near you. However, when you, disappointed, let the old one to go, you open yourself again. You look round, and admit anybody who happens to come… An opened flower… While the petals of the flowers are closed up, the butterflies and the bees are visiting them without being able to get into them. As soon as the flower-cup opens, they’ll get in… and you’ll admit the first one.”

The girl understood everything, and nodded a bit. The young man had the feeling that he had not got as much from anybody else the whole evening as he had got from that girl, who was the lowest in this company and in this world; who was totally unsafe with the exception of her bare life… ‘I suppose, she’s a very honest, serious-minded, hard working and accurate girl, who is very reliable and so beautiful and exciting that, if fortune had favoured her, she would’ve become, for sure, a prostitute.”

He gave a big laugh at that, and asked,

“What’s your name?”

“Mary.”

“Pardon?”

“Mary Stein.”

The economic trainee arrived, and clicked his heels in front of Mary Stein.

“Ich küsse ihre hand, Madame!

Mary Stein got up and, without saying a word, went dancing. She was dancing with such passion that the young man said to himself, ‘she would be just as good for a wife. ‘Cause it’s all the same.’

25

The tutor continued watching the party, and stepped to the miss of the house.

“Do you like dancing?”

“Sure,” the girl answered, and glanced on him.

He was watching her face as she was looking ahead of her while turning from him.

“Which Greek goddess do you look like, Miss Annuska?”

The girl gave a merry laugh.

“I don’t think I look like either of them.”

“I think, you look like Venus, the goddess of Love. With the exception you would be blonder. Because peacefulness like this can only be found in Venus… Would you look astray? So… Like this… Right… You’re positively exciting even if you do nothing… Your chin is such a soft and comely hill… how perfect your white skin and your little double chin are…”

However, he was cautious not to say exaggerated expressions, not to have an infatuation because while he was speaking calmly, and was analysing the beauty of the girl, he felt he was close to throw himself down before her and kiss her shoes… ‘How strange it is… You tend to go mad near certain girls even if you aren’t in love,’ he thought.

The girl watched him with a queer, scrutinizing look on her face. Could she love a strange man like this, she wondered. ‘I don’t feel hostility or repugnance to him but it doesn’t mean anything… After all, he’s a man and handsome to that. Notwidhstanding, there’s some strangeness in him… By the way, what’s he talking about here?’ she pondered.

“How nice for you, your whole being is overwhelmed by some unusual peacefulness… Of course, you haven’t had nor troubles nor sorrows in your all life, and I think you are unable to be sad.”

The girl pouted contemptuously.

“Uhmm.”

And her eyes flushed. Right at this very moment, the girl’s true nature became clear to him. In fact, her nice and healthy features with an inclination to obesity are not made for sadness. He told her plainly what he thought,

“You know, there’re female countenances… Even if their owners are actually not sad, mourning emanates from them. The carriage of their head, their skin, their longish face, their cast of features is responsible for that… These are the so called Blessed Virgin Mary complexions. Do you know what I mean?”

Panna flickered her eye lids.

“You’re different. Now I know what you are capable of: being angry.”

The girl knit her heavy eyebrows for only a short moment, which was enough for the boy to see with satisfaction that his observation had been right.

“It would be a nice thing to have a fight with you!”

The girl gave a sharp and sweet laugh, and cast a bit more confident look at him.

“I think so,” she said.

“Have you ever had a fight?”

“Yes, of course.”

“With a man, of course.”

“Ya.”

And she related it without being asked:

“When I was preparing myself for the higher elementary school, for the fourth class, a Debreczin theologian came to our house to instruct me. He was my elder brother’s tutor but he also prepared me to take the exam… And he had very strange wishes… I told him I wouldn’t answer them. Then, one day, when it happened that nobody was at home but Malvinka in the rear part of the house, he came forward with arbitrary demands… I think he insisted on my conjugating a certain verb along with a certain voice that I didn’t want to. He demanded it, ‘My elder brother conjugates it as well.’ I retorted, ‘I’ll send my elder brother in and you make him conjugate it.’ He refused it, ‘No, only you!’ I told to myself, ‘But you won’t manage to get that!’ He became so crazy that he wanted to beat me… And I thought, ‘I’d like to see you try!’

And now she drew herself up to her full height, straightened up her wonderful body; her curvy, hard and naked arms tightened, her strong and big chest swelled out, her face became angled, and her black eyes cast lightning.

“Just let him beat me! But I’ll ram into his belly!”

The young man burst out in loud laughter; now he felt positively that he would beat up this girl. If he marries her, he will give her such a slap that one of her nice pillowy cheeks will be flushed red…

The girl’s delicately swollen lips sneered a bit. “He didn’t dare to!”

She burst into a victorious but silent smile, and continued,

“Then I opened the door, and went out, saying to him, ‘Now I lock the door upon you, and you’ll stay here, grounded, and if you don’t want to get in a scandal, the window’s over there, jump out, and go and attend to your affairs, and no stopping until you are at the Debreczin Theological College.”

The girl’s delivery was so enchanting and, in its depths, so determined and stout-hearted that the young man, while laughing, felt a shiver going down his spine.

There came a minute pause. Suddenly, there was nothing else to say to each other. The girl was sorry for having told her story; the boy was scared of its moral lesson.

They were immersed so deep in their thoughts that it was a bit embarrassing for the young man that when it came to his mind to ask for the end of the story, he was a bit late. However, he did so.

“And?”

”What?”

“Did he manage to escape?”

The girl only waved a bit with her head meaning ‘Sure did.’

“And so will I do,” thought the young man. And he was looking at the girl’s face, which was as calm, as simple and as innocent as a tarn in the spring sunlight.

“Are we leaving now?” asked the girl.

“Well, if we must,” replied the boy, who could’ve tumbled fatally into this tarn so easily.

But the girl walked forward. She was so cool and unattainable.

And the boy trailed after her. ‘Which is it?’ he asked himself. ‘Hasn’t this girl’s soul woken up yet? Or has already burnt something in her?’

He felt defeated, and knew that he wouldn’t make a declaration for the girl had gained the victory. ‘A Pyrrhus victory,’ he added to himself ironically.

‘Eh, I’ll never marry,’ he said to himself, as an afterthought, ‘especially with my feeble physique and impossible nature.’ And, as he was looking after the tutor’s wife, who was being taken to the dance by the pharmacist assistant, added, ‘Marriage is for these ones.’

26

The couples were dancing close. Now and then, they jostled against each other in the narrow room. Their faces were blushed and sweating, and they all were happy. The body odour was strong. Again and again, the men lifted high their hands, and gave a crow like young cocks do with closed eyes towards the sun. The music was tickling their senses so much that it was only the rhythm that stopped them from flying into the seventh heaven…

The pharmacist assistant had the impression that he did not inspire any respect in the girl; that he could not rise up to something that could captivate the tall and beautiful girl of distinction… According to that, he did not let her speak. It was he who was speaking all the time. He was blowing his own trumpet about the breeding of his family line, his educational progress, his friends and the rifle club, of which he could have been a member but was not because he would not hunt on principle. Also revealed that wherever he turned up, he was given an oration…

The tutor’s wife was listening to the boy with a smile on her face. She asked questions again and again because she really wanted to know everything about him. For a while, she absorbed the young man’s words like the thirsty earth soaks up the water but then, at a certain point, she found it more than enough…

“How marvelous your forehead is,” said the chemist, “I cannot find the words to describe… Whenever I catch the sight of you… At first, I didn’t dare to approach you, whenever I set my eyes on you, I get scared, I feel I’m unworthy of getting near you; this very evening, upon catching sight of you here, from a distance, my heart stopped beating for a moment, I don’t know whether others are the same way with this… as for me, I turn half-dead and languid when I glance at you…”

The girl bit her lip, dropped her eyes and gave a merry laugh.

As she lowered her head, she got even closer to the boy, who, while dancing, pressed her to himself − not too hard to be painful but so strong that his arm stiffened − and breathed hot words into her ear,

“Oh, your shining forehead, I adore your divine forehead, I adore your smart little nose, I adore your biting little mouth, I adore your swan-like neck, I adore… “ He glanced upon her exposed cleavage glowing pink and, although the girl was as red as possible after so much eating, drinking, dancing and courting, now her face turned even deeper red. ‘That’s enough,’ she said to herself with tickling laughter.

“And your eyes…” restarted the young man, “I’ve thought before that your eyes’re blue, but this evening, when I saw you, and you looked at me with your black eyes…”

The girl, whose eyes were cornflower blue, gave a loud, merry laugh.

“Maybe it was not me who you’re talking about…”

The boy only sighed and tried to dance beyond his power. Unfortunately, he was neither tall nor strong enough, so the girl had to lower herself a bit so that their eyes were on the same level, and he felt that this girl, if she straightened herself up, she would have needed a valiant knigt, a well-built man, on whose shoulder she could rest her head, and whom she could look up to. So he screwd up courage again and showed her what stuff he was made of…

“I live with my mother very much like a gentleman in the country… I have everything I need, more than enough money to be able to spend. I’m going to purchase a chemist’s shop in several years, be my own master and, from my mother’s heritage, I’ll be able to establish my life in a way that my family would be the most well-off family in the neighbourhood ever.”

But that seemed to be still not enough. For the girl knew well that he was living with his widow mother without a domestic, very quietly. Something must have impelled him to prove who he was in reality…

“This morning, a peasant aunt took a turkey into the chemist’s shop… ‘Thank you very much, dear aunt,’ I said, bought the turkey and made her take it to my house.”

“Yippee hey-day, We won’t die ever!” sang the dancers. Now they were transported into some extravagant gaiety; everybody was crying out loud and everybody was dancing like hell.

“At noon already, I ate turkey stew.”

In that highly increased and rowdy mood, the girl found these words so comical that abruptly stopped walking, and burst into merry laugh, saying,

“What did you eat?”

“Turkey stew.”

At that, the girl laughed even stronger with eyes completely shut and head tilted to the side.

“I’ve never heard a thing like that before.”

“What?”

“Do you know what you ate? It was calf, not turkey.”

The boy got totally embarrassed.

“I myself ate the neck of it,” he confirmed.

The girl was laughing even harder.

“Everybody knows that turkey necks are thrown into the ditch for the dogs!”

The boy blushed.

“They don’t throw them away at all,” he said, nervous, trying to recall the neck. Then remembered, and said, “No, not the neck itself but only the skin of it, you know, that purple pinch of skin…”

The girl was laughing marrily unstoppably, the situation was beyong saving. The other dancers who were very close to them and kept jostling them around in the heat of the dance, were watching her laugh and laughing along with her, and cried into his face now and again, “Yippee hey-day, We won’t die ever!”

“Then I drank two glasses of schnapps,” added the young man.

“It might’ve taken much time for you,” said the girl laughing, “to wash down the turkey stew”. But, in an effort to smooth things over, she added, “What kind of schnapps?”

“Mixtrum compositum. I have a peculiar schnapss, which contains everything, different liqueurs, rum, cognac, everything.”

“What?” the girl was burbling with laughter. “That’s something that really fits turkey stew.”

And, seeing that the young man had become gloomy, she added, in a very simple manner,

“Only the white flesh of turkey is eaten… you know?”

Cold water thrown on his enthusiasm, the boy started to bite his lips. He was terribly ashamed. ‘How could mother not know that?… She’s really ridiculous with her penny-pinching… with making me eat things like this…’ he thought.

The girl was laughing and laughing. ‘Oh, how good it is that I’ve finally won,’ she thought, ‘Honestly, it’s so good to feel relief by way of a merry, healthy laugh at last…’

“Well, you surely won’t get turkey stew at my house,” the girl said unintentionally, and breathed easily again.

In this moment, both of them felt a flush of electric current run through them.

The young man’s face became stiff with astonishment, then began to soften and ease out.

The girl wanted to go back on it. ‘After all, he’s a good boy… Although… There’re just so many things… Who knows what the future has in store?… And a lots of things may happen… Maybe there comes a better chance for me…’

“Well, you’re struck dumb…” she said to the chemist, “Are you offended at my laughing at the turkey stew?”

There was a deep emotion, the feeling of faithfulness and happiness in his eyes. He was watching and staring at her as if he wanted to engulf the beautiful big girl…

“Thank you,” he said, “Thank you very much… For the next autumn…”

And he felt his chest swelling with happiness: ‘It’ll be worth working for this girl, for this ever beautiful wife!… It’s going to be an exceedingly gentlemanlike life…’ he said to himself.

The girl did not say a word. She only turned her head aside, biting her lips… (How skillful the girls are! How skillfully they catch fish!..)

“For the next autumn, only your white flesh… Am I right? Your white flesh… “

Now the roaring, swirling and raging party fell apart. In the place of the old couples new pairs were formed, and everybody revealed his or her great secret, the personal tragedy of his or her life that they had carefully kept to themselves. Now the general fury stopped. The guests formed small isles, and they were biting into an other’s heart.

27

A widower’s pair will be a widow. Mr. Péchy found himself being alone with the little Mrs. Babay. Apart from that, Mr. Béla Babay was a doctor too, a colleague of the deceased, although they had met at Nagyvárad only once in their lives. He faintly remembered her husband, who used to be a tall and lean, black haired man wearing a pair of pince-nez eye-glasses.

“How did you first meet?” he asked the widow, who, on hearing the question, unfolded like a flower at once, and her snow-white complexion, shoulders, arms and neck got a bit rosy.

“Oh, it’s a very interesting story,” she said, and began it fortwith. She told the story happily, sweetly and vividly in a way that only a woman can boast with the only treasure of her life.

“Father was a hospital manager doctor in Szeged, and the three of us were siblings, and Iduska had already been to balls before more than once, but that time I was taken there for the first time, I was only sixteen that time, and you can imagine what a big deal it was for me. Oh, God, to the Hotel Kas, to the big hall, and how lustrous it was, well, of course, I felt like all the world was concerned with me, the young men were following me, I don’t know what to say, like beam the candle, and that’s when daddy came by and said,’Well, my dear, I’d like you to meet my new subordinate!’ And he introduced me a dark-haired and severe faced young man but I cared nothing for young men, let they care for me!… But this one was interesting and different because this one surely didn’t care about me at all. I only just shook hands with him but I had to see that he sat down next to my elder sister, which made me upset. I thought, ‘Iduska has already been to a ball many times; therefore, it’s a natural thing that everybody is obliged to entertain me!’ That’s the way I figured it… Oh, Lord, when you’re just sixteen… you think it’s a must that everybody importunes you with their love, and this gentleman didn’t importune, you know what I mean… Apart from that, he was so serious and wordless; I could see that his heart couldn’t be conquested… At about midnight, I realised that this new resident physician hadn’t danced with me yet. ‘Is he still sitting with Iduka?’ I asked myself. I went there and said, ‘Well, have you managed to make this geek doctor speak?’

And she started laughing laudly, gasping for breath. Her tini teeth were sound and immaculate and her mouth, as a whole, was desirable as if there were no grey hairs in her hair. Now she changed back into a bread and butter miss: small and buxom, amiable and beaming like a bud about to bloom.

“Just imagine how they were embarrassed, the geek doctor didn’t know what to answer, Iduka said later on, ‘my dear, this doctor isn’t wordless, he said there were too many around you.’ Around me! I was hurt very much ‘cause I didn’t care anyone, I felt quite alone! I’d never heard a statement like this in my life before, and I decided not to deign to speak to this impolite gentleman.”

Now she fell in deep silence, and slowly looked round the company as if she provided some more time to her memories to leak out from their deep and secret well into the pouring lip of her speech. Now no music was playing, everyone was sitting or standing, and all kinds of eyes were voluptuously intertwined. Oh, that is a very happy mood, and drifts into sincerity and self-devotion.

“Well, that was all for that day, but he gave notice of his visit on the next day’s afternoon, and he would’ve escaped my attention for ever so long if he didn’t fail to come… He failed to appear on time… It really hurt me… Of course, I didn’t know that father had sent him out to a severe patient in a village, for whom to a distant place somewhere a doctor was called. So the young man believed that my father would excuse him though that was the least of his cares, so what happened was that I was on the jump with the geek doctor.”

And she threw her head up like a dove; the whole missy was like a sweet, pouter pigeon.

“Well, by the time, on Friday instead of Monday, he had come, I’d been completely ripe. God knows, if all had gone smoothly, nothing would’ve come from it but, from the first second, our relation was dominated by quarrel and threatening of peril. You know, we were always bickering. I only became his wife to show him that… what exactly?… to show that it will be me to win. That I was right, in spite of everything. Poor thing, then there was no disagreement between us anymore, we were living then father and daughter, I was as confident with him and he with me… Look, it was not like other marriages, oh, God, I was seventeen, he thirty, I was a little harum-scarum girl full of pranks, he was a severe, extraordinarily severe man, but he hadn’t a thought that he didn’t share with me. How shall I put it? Please don’ t interpret that as meaning he was always talking and told you everything, not at all, for he wasn’t a talkative man, a chatterbox, good heavens, no, but made no secret of anything, and when he was speaking, I felt that I felt honoured that he told it to me. I felt uplifted like, you know, my breast was swollen, and I felt a bit like I grew wings, and my whole body grew lighter while he was speaking… “

Tears came into her eyes; she wiped them out, and smiled in order to stifle the tears. My poor husband became victim of his profession; he took too seriously his duty, became infected during an operation, and died of it… For a long time, I believed that I wouldn’t be able to laugh at all, and now you see…”

Mr. Péchy was silent. He was pondering on what absurd things might happen to us people… ‘Why this misfortune needed to be brought up just this very day? Why I needed to lose my all fortune because of my friend? If only it had been yesterday, when I still didn’t know that I would be reduced to a beggar… I’d take the hand of this pure and dear widow of good health… What unusual white and good hands she has!… The whole woman’s a delicious dish… hmm, and I cannot help myself…”

“I used to have such good conversations with my husband,” she said, “although he didn’t used to say a word… just like me that time. One day, dad says, ‘Look, they must’ve stricken root’, why don’t you go down into the cellar, and see how deep the roots went down.’”

She laughed so gently and softly. And she was so elegant in her black dress! A busty sweet dovelet. Like the remembrance of a fresh spring in autumn. You notice it, and by the time you have realized it, it is already gone…

28

They both leaned to the company sitting next to them and absorbed in the young schoolmistress’s speech. She was silent so far but now the holy desire for communication rose up in her, and said,

“If somebody has lived a really hard life it’s been me because when I was nine years old, I was left orphaned, and since then I’ve been living on strangers’ charity. My father used to be a sheriff for Tamási on the Transdanubia, my mother’s brother was the Lord Liuetenant for the county of Csongrád, and when my mother died, my father visited his brother-in-law’s house, where they had a good time together, and he made acquaintance with an actress by name Klári Dus, whom he brought back here. This woman became my stepmother because of whom my father threw me out of my home in the eve of Christmas.”

There was a general consternation. The women, whose ears otherwise are accustomed to hearing all kinds of monstrosities, were staring in fright at the schoolmistress, whose face turned red, and whose eyes were looking dreamily as if she was telling a sweet fairy tale.

“How did he throw you out, my dear?”

“Very simple, he told us, ‘Get out of here!’ Our stepmother incensed him against us, and he drove out us, his three children, from his house in the simplest manner.”

“You see, that is what actress-wives are like!”

“It’s a miracle that human kind puts up with this kind of race.

“It’s a miracle that they’re called women.”

“They are, of course, not women, they’re animals; they live for the minutes.”

“I’m afraid, they’re non compos mentis.”

“It can be no otherwise, how could a woman endure the influence of so many men? For she has something to do with all the men she meets in her life no matter how many. In their lives, what means as much as the greatest Holy Sacrament in a respectable woman’s life, means as much as a handshake with a gentleman.”

“This is the fate of children.”

“Yeah, do you think any man wouldn’t do it if his wife has died? He would marry the slut.”

The women were lamenting, and drew closer to the young woman.

“I had two elder siblings, my elder sister was fifteen years old that time, and my elder brother, who’s subordinate judge now, was thirteen, I nine, or rather ten… Well, the neighbour proposed to have my father declared incapable of managing his own affairs because of prodigalism. A craftsman, a joiner was living next door; he and my father were mortal enemies to each other, our hens would go over into their yard, and ate up their lettuce, and the joiner dared to slaughter one of them. From then on, my father was punishing him on a regular basis, cancelled the licence to carry on his trade, and the other laid information against my father with the police, the trial was in progress just then, and he was actually convicted because he had hundreds of affairs like this, he was summoned to a disciplinary tribunal, then was deprived from his Chief Constable’s Office on the ground of misuse of authority. Besides, he used to say, ‘offices aren’t places for gentlemen’, he took up farming, and during two years, they squandered all their money, then the actress abandoned him, and resumed acting on the stage.”

“And how were you grown up?”

“We were backed up by an uncle… That night, we escaped into the neighbour’s house but as soon as the day was dawning, our father had the constabulary search us…”

“He recovered his reason…”

“It was his consciousness… “

“Did he regret it?”

“Not at all. In order to take me back from his enemy, and to put us in an even worse place. But the joiner’s wife hired a waggon, took us to the railway station and thus saved us. Then my other uncle, one brother of my mother, himself a widower, and has no child, put us in a cloister, and that was where we were brought up, at Nagyvárad. From there, I went to work to Pécs, where I first met my husband, who was teacher trainee that time, a worthy man, we fell in love with each other, and I married him. My father only remarked, as kind of congratulation, ‘How could you marry a teacher?’”

The swhirling of the story was so fantastic; life was turning like a merry-go-round.

“But God’s good. Yet, eventually, it was us to support my father until his death. He lived in turns with us, one year with one of us, the other year with the other.”

“Also with you?”

“Yes, he was.”

“That time, was the teacher suitable?”

“Yes. But then my husband got tired of it, he said that he was unaccommodating, and maybe he’d better go back into his own world; we rented a flat for him with a garden so as he had something to potter with, and could go in his favourite club, among his old friends. And we did it, the three siblings united, and rented the same flat for him from which he had chased us out that time.”

“The ways of God.”

They were looking at the small young woman. They were deeply touched and now felt close to each other as if they all were siblings by blood.

“But the poor thing couldn’t calm down there either. In his grief, he took up with a maidservant; he was drinking heavily, once got a heavy congestion, and died.”

They all fell silent. In the family’s misfortunes, they all felt their own fate; the fate of the Hungarian gentry. As if Fate brandished her wings over their heads.

29

In every corner of the house, couples were sitting, and all of them were talking with exaggerated devotion. As if the Fairy of Midnight had unclosed their hearts using the magic words “Open Sesame!” You should have heard the souls, next to each other, hand in hand, open to create a Midnight Wilderness of Flowers; and the writer had to play synchronically the many secrets let off simultaneously by the stirring Hungarian Life, on the piano into the reeds of Midas. This is what music and dance, wine and food are for: to prepare the hearts for a great and odd post-midnight Common Confession to unburden the souls and remove them from all the tensions of the everyday life.

Again, the company could be seen champing and munching cold roast beef and wine soup as well as drinking hot tea at the table. Now everybody was occupied with their tiny own hearts and lives, nobody could think about anything but his or her Self. Therefore, a whole hour passed without mentioning the Jewish question. It was not yet in their souls… It had not got into either man or woman’s past…

At about three o’clock, a loud noise and sleigh bells ringing could be heard. The Aradis arrived.

When the small, black-bearded Mr. Aradi stepped in in his big, yellow fox fur coachman’s coat, with his long moustaches with icicles all over them in a hirsute state and bristling like a male-cat, all at once, the women rushed out of the neighbouring rooms and surrounded the belated guests.

“For God’s sake, what’s happened? Wow, that’s terrible and unheard-of! That’s horrible and scary!” they shouted. Especially Mrs. Szalay was screaming; she was a priory a bitter arch-enemy of sleigh journeys and turning-ups.

However, the small Mr. Aradi was just standing and standing there looking earnestly like a little mouse until his eyes started to smile. They were shining like black diamonds.

“Nothing, nothing,” he said, smiling about the panic, “it’s not such a big deal.”

At this moment, behind him, his wife tumbled in through the door like a half-dead. She was a head taller than her husband, a woman, whose face was frozen spotty, and who always looked like being pregnant. Completely exhausted, she just fell into the embracing arms of the the other women. Both her hands and legs were chilled to the bone. Being unable either to speak or to cry, she was just penting; let her being dragged onto a sofa, where she sat, practically fell down, and let the others pull off her clothes along with her felt boots.

“Your waggon’s flipped over, my dear,” cried Mrs. Szalay as if poor Mrs. Aradi went deaf out there in the cold. “The same happened to us! We almost tumbled into the Priesthole! Oh, I almost died of fright!”

“You’re talking nonsense, my sweet ducky,” shouted her husband, “we were almost drawn in it! You see, there was nothing wrong, even an earthquake cannot shake a Hungarian man out of his gentleman-like quiet. Even if that monstrous Leviathan, which is carrying us on its back, gets fed up with the Hungarians, and shakes its abdomen belching forth flames, we won’t give ourselves up to despair! As long as the Hungarians are in high spirits, there’s nothing wrong… As for me, I want to live a bright and happy life until the age of ninety-two, and I don’t bother…”

“We turned back three times!” cried Mrs. Aradi. “Good Lord, I was worried that we’d be eaten up by the wolves. Just imagine, suddenly we noticed that we’d left the road, and there was nowhere to go because there was such a dense fog that nothing could be seen, worst of all, my husband always wants to know everything better than anyone. I was begging him all the time not to urge the horses. The pale one foaled a week ago, it’s very restless; it shouldn’t have been harnessed yet. But he’s always had his own principles. You know, I always have to get up on the third day, too, the coachman got off, the coachman disappeared, then my husband got off again, I was left alone in the sleigh, I was on my own in the sleigh for at least three hours. I was about to get off, too, when the horses run away with me in the sleigh, and I was screaming, and the horses were carrying me on the sleigh screaming, and it was my luck that I was screaming for we caught up with the coachman, then it was he who shouted asking where my husband was. Now, I beg to say, our cart turned over again, this time into a deep pit… “

Unexpectedly, her narrative became so comical that everybody burst out in hilarious laughter. In fact, all that the poor woman had been through seemed so horrible that there, in the warm room, after her narrow escape, her melodramatical crying and desperate moans triggered popping giggle.

“From sunset to now, it takes just half an hour. My husband hurt himself very much when our cart first turned over, but he’s such an obstinate person that he insisted to get off with his painful left arm from the sleigh. But the problem is not that but the fact the lap robe that my husband hunted last week, a splendid lap robe, got lost, if it doesn’t come up, I’ll die from it. We had the fortune that he fell under and I fell over.”

Another laughter burst out from the whole company.

“Also, these two horses are thoroughbred, they cannot be tamed, they were running terribly fast like lightning for they were resting throughout the whole winter, and my husband feeds them, they don’t do anything, they’re as fat as carp. No coachman of God can stop them once they’ve become infuriated.”

“O, I do know that, very well, “cried Mrs. Szalay. “All that is because of the meanness of the men. For they all believe that they’re as strong as devils. And yet, if things go wrong, they’ll become real children.

“I saw that there was a pit there, and, at the same moment, bang! We were in the snow again. The coachman had disappeared, the horses had disappeared, my husband had disappeared, and I was in the middle of the snow. Well, you can imagine. But I don’t know how they could be so dumb that they couldn’t find their way around for this short distance. We fell in the same pit for three times.”

Now the merry laughter became frantic. The nursery school mistress run out of the room, and many followed her exemple because poor Mrs. Aradi was unbearably comical.

“I always hear about sleigh turnovers like this,” the Pest young woman spoke unexpectedly, “it’s an ancient thing. Things like this never happen to me. God doesn’t like me.”

After all that had been said, great atmosphere prevailed. Now the night sleighing along with its many turnovers, gave the impression as if the Aradis had been to a ball.

“Then they couldn’t find us with the relay mounts for the coachman wasn’t able to orient himself, and it was cruelly cold to that. All my clothes got soaking wet from the slush; the water run even underneath my shirt. I just itch all over my body.”

Everybody was laughing and screaming. No comedy would’ve made them laugh as much as the sorrow of Mrs. Aradi.

“We packed everything nicely into the lap rope, and laid back, thinking that we were going to arrive at the castle in a real gentleman’s manner, and hey, presto, we became wretched small potatoes. We were frozen in the snow, and the leather coat froze into pieces.

Mr. Aradi was listening to all that with affected seriousness and some peculiar smile on his face as if he accomplished some horrible, heroic deed, and, in his presence, a song of prais was being sung.

“Oh, no, come on; don’t cry so much as if you had to bear three childen on the journey.”

With that, the performance was over; the whole company almost split with laughter. They were just rolling about with laugter in this over-excited late after midnight mood. Some crouched down and wailed with laughter because nobody could bear the stitch on his or her side any longer. But Malvinka brought in the wine soup on a wooden tray. This produced a salutary effect on the nerves. Everybody was anxious to get a cup or a mug for himself or herself. Naturally, the Aradis were the first provided for, and Mr. Aradi, who was decorated with a pair of moustaches, which would’ve been a credit even to the Debreczin bishop but was as small as a well-grown child, was inflated with pride that he had uttered such brave words.

There came a minute’s silence, and the lady of the house spoke,

“By the way, why did Irma ask about the Aradis? Lo, she sensed it.”

“My wife’s a telepathist! It’s clairvoyance, telepathy,” shouted Mr. Szalay. “I’m quite serious.”

“Really, she said that she had seen the uncle and the aunt,” said Annuska with wide eyes.

“In sooth, she definitely stated”, many were humming.

“Well, I don’t think it was a big deal that we’d been there,” said Mr. Aradi with the cynism of the enlightened.

“But no, no!” they shouted in chorus, “she said positively that Mrs. Aradi was standing next to a snow hill and searching for the horse!”

On hearing that, Mr. Aradi also fell silent.

“The horse?”

An eerie feeling run down their spines, and the big, merry company became so silent that the buzzing of a fly could be heard − if there had existed a fly in this late Christmas night.

“Didn’t he say it? Yes he did!”

“Yes,” many stated.

“My wife has this ability, it wasn’t the first time,” Mr. Szalay said. “The other day, my son was to give a concert in Berlin, and I say, we were informed when the concert would start, we knew the exact time of the beginning. All of a sudden, my wife uttered an exclamation, ‘He’ll be late! He’ll be late!’ ‘Who’s going to be late, my dear?’ I asked. ‘Bélácska will be late for his concert.’ ‘How come?’ ‘He’s standing under a gate, and ther’re no cabs coming. Nothing. Oh, god, the boy’s so worried, and I’m worried, too.’ And she was running up and down in the room wringing her hands, vexing about where that was all going. And she couldn’t see him any more, and sat down at once, and wrote a letter, saying, ‘My dear Bélácska, please write me immediately what happened; it seemed to me you were standing under a gate, and it was raining hard there, and you were very frightened of being late, and I am still trembling from worrying of the thought of you might be late from the concert, my dear, my own little boy!’”

“Unheard of!” “Impossible!” several said, and everybody shivered, and, at the same time, looked at the fat and healthy lady, who was sitting among them. ‘If she were, at least, a lean hallucinator, at whom you daren’t look for fear that you become a soul, everything would be quite in order and correct,’ they might think.

“And the strangest thing of all was,” continued her husband, “that after a while, she stopped seeing him!… She saw only a flash!… She saw him under the gate but failed to see whather a cab came or not.”

“And did it really happen in this way?”

“Of course, it did! Bélácska was standing under the gate at the moment, and was frantically counting the remaining minutes seeing that the rain was pouring down, and he was in full evening dress and patent-leather shoes, and no cabs were coming. And then a porter came, Bélácska sent him for a cab, and he arrived late, he was so nervous that it was only in he podium when he calmed down, he wrote that the only interesting point was that his every limb was shaking, and when he stepped out onto the podium, it vanished entirely by that time, the stage fever muffled extinguished the other feeling…”

“Well, how was it there in the snow?” Mr. Aradi asked with a smile, quietly.

“I don’t know,” answered Mrs. Szalay, “it was basically nothing but it seemed to me for a moment that you were standing under a snowhill, you were looking for the horses, and you were frightened very much.”

“Didn’t you see me?” inquired Mrs. Aradi.

“No − for I was scared of seeing your husband alone in the snow.”

“Apart from that, this is my sweetheart’s weakness… She dreads turnovers with a passion,” said Mr. Szalay.

“Hmm,” pondered Mr. Aradi. “It’s very strange because I was just laughing at the whole adventure, I came to ignore it, but there was a moment when a thought came into my mind that ‘It’s not half as fun, we might freeze to death here.’ Since, as I’ve said before, the horses ran away leaving us there. Now I could see neither the coachman, nor the sleigh, nor my wife, and, in that strange fog, it was impossible to orient oneself or hear anything but wind blowing… Truly, my heart sank for a moment.”

“Well, that’s what I saw,” said Mrs. Szalay.

“Once, when she was my fiancée, we had a notable case when I noticed this mental gift of her for the first time. Well, it’s a natural thing that the fiancé and the fiancée see each other all the time or, at least, they pretend to see each other, they long for each other so much that it’s enough for them to close their eyes, and they’ll feel as if their object of desire was already present… Well, once I went to visit my fiancée, and she asked me, ‘Tell me, Péter, who was at your place this morning?’ ‘Nobody.’ ‘Yes, there were,’ she argued, and said that she’d seen my room, I have to say, as a matter of fact, she’d never been to my house, and she’d seen the corner in which the stove could be found, that I’d opened the door thereof, and threw some pieces of paper into the stove, that there’d been three in the room, and I’d been wearing a large checkered overcoat… Well, I say, I died of fright. Because I had, in fact, a large checkered overcoat, which was very old, and I never left the house in that coat, there was no such thing; I was vainer than doing so. But that afternoon, three friends were visiting me, with whom we were talking about that we should destroy all traces of the past, and I collected all the love letters, received by me when I hadn’t known my fiancée yet. Those letters were what I threw into the stove, and I am sure that in that moment, I was thinking of her very hard and was scared of her seeing them, and I was happy at the same time that in several minutes, all the betraying marks would be gone… And she did see the scene. How can this be explained?”

“Telepathy.”

“I can say, I became covered with goose flash from the thought, ‘Now, I’m in a fine mess with my wife seeing my every step…’”

There was a big laugh.

“However, there was nothing the matter, we’ve lived a thirty-year marriage, and she’s never caught me trying to keep a secret from her.”

There was an even bigger laugh at that because some knew well that he used to be an old rogue, who didn’t used to miss, even with his true love, any good opportunities…”

Now there was silence again. Then, while eating, Mr. Aradi spoke,

“Believe it or not, the manor will be let out from the first of the month… The Counts of Nyír will let out this whole manor of five thousand acres.

30

At the unexpected change, there was a sudden hush. And Mr. Aradi looked up proudly from the steaming white porcelain cup, which was mingled with the fragrance of his own body, and looked around at the scared company. They were shaken by Mr. Aradi’s remark so much that they did not even dare to put a question to him. The spirits needed some time to settle down.

“What about it? Shall we never drink again?”

But that was certain, good spirits had vanished. Everybody was overcome by some restlessness as if dogs were sneaking about around the house; maybe wolves, some kind of unknown beasts of whom you must be afraid.

They felt that some notable event was approaching them because the livelihood of them all was connected to the fate of the manor, and the word ‘lease’, in itself, meant for everybody that they would lose their living, their habitual affluence, and they were facing a situation, which was at least unknown to them.

It became so quiet that the sipping of the wine soup could be heard. With wide eyes and nostrils, the legate was paying attention at what he himself did not know; he was stalking the wraith, which kept stretching its claws in the vicinity.

But the youth were obsessed; they were frantic with joy. Now they were going hand in hand, creating a chain, from room to room with a roar of laughter. It was kind of an ancient game; it was rolling along so foolish and funny that it was like saturnalia.

Mr. Emeric Pagan was the leader. He directed loudly and, according his orders, everybody had now to kneel down, now to go on jumping on one leg, now to confess love, now to kiss the other’s shoes, now to embrace the hot stove, now to jump over a chair, now to stand on his or her head, and they had to keep kissing each other.

Gaiety was so great that everybody was intoxicated with merry laugh.

“What a great master of ceremony he is!”

“Seems like a nice boy”, “Definitely,” the women said about Mr. Pagan. “A gentry isn’t better than him, I say, anybody whose family he’ll get in may be happy.”

“Ah, my dear, fortunately, everybody reviles the other’s Jew but whom he knows that he doesn’t hurt.”

“The only concern is the elder ones; getting used to the kosher food won’t be easy, though,” whispered the teacher’s wife.

“The elder ones will die sooner or later, after all, they’re old, and Mr. Pagan isn’t that kind any more. Don’t be worry; he’ll fit in the National Club as well as anybody else.”

“Well, maybe, in the National one not but in the Szatmár Gentleman’s Club, by all means, yes.”

Loud jubilation broke in from the next room,

“Confess, confess! Give a complete confession!”

“Make a final testament! Sell cherries!”

“Annuska! Not the stove!”

There was roaring applause and merry laughter.

Even the old were laughing. ‘Oh, God! The merry days of youth!’ they thought.

Well, the new economic system is going to be established,” cried Mr. Aradi, unexpectedly, who joined the craze for the modern farming. He bought a threshing-machine, studied in mechanical engineering, and took much trouble over a broken part of the machine with a stoker all winter-long. Apart from that, he considered himself a modern farmer, while he was looked upon as a faddist, and nothing was thought of his words.

“Well, if it must be so, my dear friend, it’s a great satisfaction. The young count wants huge innovations.”

“Innovations?” asked Mr. Péchy.

“Surely, the greatest innovations. ‘Cause he decided to convert the two-thousand-acre saline field of Bábarét into a fishpond. Now they’re founding the share company, which is to build the dikes, the water will be gained from the Tisza, and it’ll be made in a way that in spring, they’ll replenish it, and, in winter, they’ll lower the pond water level.”

All of a sudden, everybody started to laugh.

Mr. Aradi was a rather funny man with his tiny figure, and big, black moustache. His shrill voice screamed, and you never could tell when he was serious or joking. At any rate, he pretended to take himself seriously but he had the special gift that as soon as he opened his mouth, people started to laugh immediately.

“We’ve heard a miracle like this before as well. And we’re still here, anyway,” said Mr. Péchy.

“Of course, we’re here, said Mr. Aradi, “and nobody will die from the fact that he became better off, plus the important thing is not whether we are here or not. The important thing is humankind, my dear friend. The important thing is that the soil should produce as much as possible. And we should put an end to the fact that a one acre land produces only two or three quintals. The present farming, as a whole, must be helped back to its feet, we must learn from the Germans.

“The potential of the land must be pumped out.”

“First the land must be fed, then, in turn, it’ll give the milk. What’s the use of those nice sized, forked horns on our big-boned, black-necked cows, when they don’t give milk enough? We should bring the Swiss cow, whose bent and blunt horns are small but her udders’re as large as a tub. The same stands for our land. We take delight in seeing how spacious, how flat and even it is. It’s poetry, my dear friend, but Petőfi sang already its praises pretty well, so we should make use of it, we can plough it up, plant it fully with trees, exploit it, cheer up; some day, there comes another Sándor Petőfi, and this will be to his taste. As for me, I prefer when my sacks and my granary are full.”

They laughed. Mr. Aradi seemed to be bold.

“My dear friends, this is what the people in this company are talking about. The last year of the century is going to commence in a week. But, I say the truth in Christ, I feel here like when, towards dawn, in the restaurant, I start feeling that certain unpleasant swimming in my head and say to myself, ‘Now, the headwaiter’s coming with the bill”.

They all laughed. Mr. Aradi, in his sharp, crackling voice, which had an irresistible tickling effect on his audience, continued it with a madly serious face, awakening, by doing so, a more and more louder and mordant, tickling giggle.

“Damn it, while you have money, you’re a fair and honourable character;” he said with a strange, sharp pronunciation, as if he was a Slowak from Gömör, “if you squander, you’re generous, if you’re niggardly, you’re a wise farmer… But what if you have no money? If you pay the bill off in full, they’ll ask you, where you stole the money from. If you fail to pay, they’ll say, ‘That’s right, that’s how the whole Hungarian folk are. The last year of the century has come, and they still don’t know what they want to do. Pay or not to pay? Well, in truth, it would be best to pay but, I beg your pardon, how?”

The gentlemen kept nodding, and were laughing more and more bitterly.

“I beg to say, the old nobility is gone. He who failed, has gone down in the world, and has become a peasant farmer or a craftsman. For living is a must. He, who survived, turned a county clerk, a claims adjuster, and his son works for the ministry. It’s only the hunter’s cap that has left for the gentries… How about their sons? The Istóks’ son has already sowed the highway with the new seeding machine up to Szatmár… It’s all the same, anyway… He’s right… It doesn’t worth to try to do anything about it… In all seriousness, it doesn’t worth to… It’s better to have a clear reckoning; it’s better to have nothing. Let come nothing. Then the child becomes a scullery man to begin from the very start… But here, you cannot do anything. All or nothing. You cannot just make a decision and then be a different kind of man from the next day on.”

They did not laugh any more. They lay back, and smoked pipes as well as cigars. Nobody dared to bring up the horrible fact that the manor was going to be leased. As if the small Mr. Aradi had made the reckoning of them all.

“Music is still being played, there’s still wine on the table. I’m not as crafty as not to amuse myself while everybody else is doing so. I’m not naughty to keep away from having fun, while everybody else is doing so. We’ll see tomorrow… I decided it’ll be more than enough for me to have hangover tomorrow morning, why should I pretend to have a headache today, when my head doesn’t hurt yet, though I know well that it’ll ache as if it was being split with an axe?”

His voice turned lower, and he bent nearer to his audience. Phooey on that tomorrow morning!… My dear friend… When the last penny has gone… I mean, when you realize that it’s been really the last one! That there’s no more, and there’s no hope of it either. That all the uncles have died, and there isn’t any suitable family to marry into… That your gallant life is all over… You were a cavalier and you’ve become a reveller fellow… An old, out-at-elbows, reveller fellow, who still feels his force and his power, and suddenly gets scared that he might be flung from the rake’s den… Then what next? Crime and immorality?”

There was an instant silence. They were staring into the Future mutely. The host saw, in his mind’s eye, the Future, the drinking sessions on the way while assessing hail damage. Dr. Péchy saw his house to be auctioned off, Mr. Szalay his never-to-be-admitted small grafts, from which he makes his living, the obstinate Mr. Rácz sensed that he would better drow under the warm shelter provided by his strong German wife, the notary was reluctant to do justice to him, though his peasant instinct agreed. After all, he could feel that the vortex of the cataclysm was going to sweep him away just like the others…

“My dear friend, the matter’s already a fait accompli: there’s not a happy marriage in the whole country. The women sense that they’ll be urgently needed soon because it’s always them who have to pay the piper. That’s why it’s them who stand their ground at once, and where the wife’s cleverer then the husband, there trouble arises… But what should be done?… What can be done?… Should the purse be filled? But with what?… With what it can be filled?… He who sits close to the fire will warm himself the best! He who gets by the fleshpots, will serve himself… My dear friend, there comes a time when the earth shakes, and our children don’t hesitate to do the coarsest and roughest things in order to save their status and wealth!”

“But why talk of that?” shouted the host, “in this country for one thousand years, everything has belonged to us. It’s been we who’ve fought here, it’s been we who’ve shed blood here, and therefore everything here belongs to us. Who dares to try to usurp our rights?”

“That’s right,” cried the others. “God shouldn’t be merciful to the one who dares to take what belongs to the Hungarians.”

“Believing in their alleged power, and aware of their right for everything, our sons won’t shrink back from taking the most adventurous steps.”

“When?”

“Soon! Very soon! We’ve ultimately run out of vital energy so much as we let ourselves being deprived of everything. But there are the ones who follow us: our children and grandchildren… We are no longer threatened by the danger of leaving the road of morality,” and Mr. Aradi’s voice was screaming, “but I won’t answer for our children.”

“What nonsense you are talking about here!” shouted Mr. Szalay, who, all of a sudden, got very tired and downhearted in that late hour of the night.

They fell silent. Wild outburst of fury could be heard from the other room. The young people were stamping madly on the floor, rhythmically, as if a mounted regiment was galloping. Mr. Pagan screamed hoarse voice, and there was silence and storming alternately.

“Somebody has a presentiment of disaster,” murmured Mr. Péchy.

They re-lit their extinguished cigars and pipes.

“If we lose, the Jews will do gain a victory.” Said Mr. Rácz.

“It’s going to be a bad thing;” Aradi’s voice was shreaking, “it’s going to be a nasty experience. When the sins of the Christians are examined by the Jews and the sins of the Jews are examined by the Cristians. Notwithstanding, both sins will be the same: it’ll be neither about honour nor the nation or even love but just about the money, the money and the money!… And it’ll be going smoothly while the disease is tormenting the poor only, the trouble will arise when the rich and the feudal leadership start to feel the knife on their throats… The flood’s looming, my dear friend, and I wish the Hungarian people survived and lived to see the water withraw, and the grass grow silently.”

“We hold the power! We mustn’t let it out of our hands.”

“And we won’t, goddammnit.”

“Why, what will you do? Will you try to keep the money in your possession by fraud, by theft or by forging banknotes?”

“I’m in my own house, I do here whatever I want to.”

The dispute turned into joking, and Mr. Rácz said in a cracking voice,

“Well, let’s go and look after what we live on.”

31

Mr. Aradi, as was his custom, blurted out the most important point unexpectedly,

“Besides, the young court’s going to get married.”

There was a sudden hush. Everyone was scared.

“Who?”

“The count.”

There was a general astonishment.

“He’s getting married?”

“Whom is he marrying?”

“The daughter of Marietta.”

There arose such a commotion that Mr. Szalay shouted into the other room,

“Irma, get over here a second!”

Mrs. Szalay popped her head in the door.

“The count’s getting married.

Mrs. Szalay clapped her hands.

“Whom is he marrying?”

The whole company of them was standing there just like the characters of a wax museum with the same feeling on their faces and bodies in its rigidity; kind of rigidity as soft as wax.

“The daughter of Marietta.”

“That chunky one?”

Mrs. Szalay run to the other women and shouted into their ears that the count was going to get married.

Miss Doby was standing on the doorstep. At these words, she turned back startled, and was watching with her body trembling.

In the next moment, she knew that that huge, strong man was going to marry Hedvig. She closed her eyes, and felt as if, God knows from what height, a gushing flood started to fall down inside her like a Niagara cataract into the depth.

She only became conscious of herself when a tender hand touched her gently. Startled, she opened her eyes to see Mr. Emeric Pagan looking into her eyes.

She was overpowered by some inexpressible terror. She thought she had to die, to scream out like an apparently dead man, who has awoken in his coffin. She took a deep breath, and, in the next moment, she had already collected herself, and let Mr. Pagan’s hand ride up to her neck, body and hair, and some fake smile appeared on her countenance as if she had put on a mask.

“Do you also marry for interest, Mr. Pagan?“ she asked him.

Mr. Pagan was staring at her, astonished and puzzled.

Miss Doby gave a Laugh.

“I mean, could you marry for interest?”

Mr. Pagan paused, then said in a husky voice,

“What do you mean by interest? Marrying without interest is the greatest sin of all.”

Mrs. Doby froze, then looked around with eyes wide open. The young man said to her,

“Because if someone doesn’t see it to be his only interest to own the girl whom he wishes to marry, he’s not a man. I marry for interest to get you, Miss Annuska, and it’s such an important, holy thing for me that I’m ready to part with my father, with my mother’s tomb, with my siblings, with my whole kinship, my race… What else do you want? How shall I prove the nature of my interest in this marriage?

But Miss Doby had abandoned to listen to the young man’s explanation already earlier. Now, she was standing next to him for several seconds, and all the people were looking at them. As there was a strange racket in the room, everybody in the next room thought that a marriage proposal had taken place. She was already threatened by the danger that they would be cheered and congratulated right away but she decided to prevent it. She jerked herself out of his arms, out of his proximity, and ran away, thoughtlessly, foolishly towards the kitchen, and locked herself in the room where the coats and furs were piled up; bolted the door, threw herself into the softness of the fur mountain, and burst out sobbing.

Meanwhile, the women flocked into the card room and interrogated Mr. Aradi about the details.

“Well, I’m telling you that the Comtesse Hedvig … he’s going to get the Farkaszug manor along with her.”

“Which is of four thousand and two hundred acres.”

“But half of it is worth more than the whole estate. There’s a little drifting sand there, too, but no saline-sodic soil. And the old Countess Mariette, in fact, it’s she who is in love with the Count Józsi, stipulated that they should till the soil of her property. She herself is to get an apartment in the palace on Csillag Street, and wishes to renounce the world so as to be able to live a life of ease at last. Since she had become a widow, she conceived a loathing for farming. She has no son, only four daughters. Edit is a nun, anyway. It’s made sure that she lives very nicely and well, becomes the Abbess, the Countess Gizella foundation lady of the Tiszalélek monastery. Mária has inherited her aunt, and is probably not going to get married for she’s a very gritty character, so the smallest one gets the property.”

“A nice small one like a two barrel cask!”

Mr. Aradi stated in a raised voice,

“Trust me, I’m not a worshiper of the counts. I have a lot of criticism against them, in general, I consider many things wrong with them but, in terms of priorizing and selecting races, you can find many clever things in their lives. In general, they follow proper political guidelines. We, small potatoes here, leading a life in this way, believe that it has no reason whatsoever. On the contrary, by arranging their lives, they put everything into a long-sighted perspective.”

“Selfishness reigns there, my dear friend.”

“Independently of every selfish wish, everyone is selfish but one thing is the selfishness of the individuals and the other is the selfishness of the families. And much more different is the selfishness of a regning family. Of course, their mentality stems from the fact that they’ve been governed by a settled property and a settled family policy since Róbert Károly ^[33] and Lajos Nagy ^[34]. The country, as a whole, wouldn’t have survived if our life hadn’t been governed by an aristocratic policy for the last half-thousand years. In this country, never has been anything certain but the destiny of the count estates. Nothing has been certain even about the dynasty issues because they’ve always been threatened by the revolt of the nation’s. On the other hand, estates’ve been a great and certain thing. They were respected even by the Turks, the Kaiser and the gentry. And, after all, they represented the Nation…”

“Look, this is a modern farmer who wants to turn everything upside down.”

“Yes, it is. Because I didn’t wanted to say that this must be going on like this but that we, little people must acquire this kind of policy − not to bring up our children to be majorescos and throw out younger children to be a swine herd, or even throw into the void but to control the fate of the Hungarian land somehow. Once the counts’ve been doing this job during the last five hundred years, now this job must be taken over by someone else.”

Everybody was silent, nobody listened. They were listening to the rustle of the wings of doom.

Mr. Aradi went on in a reaised voice,

“And I can say, that the young Count Józsi sets a good example to all of us. He doesn’t think foolishly, if he now leases the land out under a long term contract for twenty-two years. He’s now twenty-eight, and he’ll get it back in the age of fifty. But the conditions are very strict since he’s reserved the right of supervision. And the lessee is obliged to set up a model farm. As a first task, he’s bound to build a brewery because in our land, potatoes thrive as if sand is being transformed directly into potatoes, potatoes are just pouring out of the land. Now, beef cattle breed should be added to the brewery, molasses are free; besides, they cannot be converted into money in any other way, and the market is at hand; all he has to do is putting the finished cattle into waggons and transport them to Vienna. Then comes Merino sheep breeding on the sand, and a model pig farm. These three activities in themselves are sufficient for the lessee to bring up the rental amount and become rich on it. And a fish pond to that. If the fish pond fails the whole contract will be dissolved, and the count, after the costs of the construction and those of the permanent equippments’ve been reimbursed, will have the right to terminate the lease.”

Everybody was listening to it as if the death knell was ringing for the past.

“Who’s that famous lessee?” the host himself finally asked.

“Mr. Aradi took a long puff from his cigar, and, before speaking, suppressed a lurking smile. Then he said,

“Mr. Adolf and Mr. Ármin Lichtenstein, Viennese wine merchants.”

There was a minute silence. Everybody glanced at the host, who, as if he had just been hit by the stroke of despair, turned completely clay-coloured.

“Jews?”

Silence.

Nobody uttered a word. The word was scraping as if the court of arm was turned upside-down on the door of a crypt. Everybody looked at the old gentleman. He stood up, lifted his heavy Tuhutum ^[35] body, drowsily got to his feet, and tottering went towards the door.

They watched him go. The thought ‘What next?’ made their blood run cold.

He stopped on the doorstep, and looked with glassy eyes into the group of the dancers.

“Where’s my daughter? My Pannuska?”

They began to run and search for her. The dancing came to a halt, the line broke up, the girls ran towards the kitchen, and shouted Mrs. Doby’s name.

But he was just standing and looking in front of him, there was silence behind him, which rubbed off on the ones before him.

After a few awkward minutes, Mrs. Doby appeared in front of her father with tear-stained eyes but with her dazzling beauty. And, as if their hearts were beating at the same pace, the same rhythm, they rushed into each other’s arms. The old gentleman just opened his big, thick arms out to her, and pulled her daughter close into an embrace, who, with her head on his bosom, burst into convulsive sobbing, which she believed she had left behind among the mounts of fur coats smelling with leather and in the darkness of the small back room forever.

32

The old house, the whitewashed ceiling board, the old pictures on the wall, the old English engravings and the old furniture with its chipped varnish were all looking down at the scenery like all the people present. A deep mourning of the hearts descended upon the world. As if they were in the hour of the Cataclysm, everybody was tense and excited.

“No-no, no-no,” the old gentleman patted his daughter’s shoulder gently.

He could not pronounce a word; even his grim heart was moved.

“There’s no need to cry over that… Cheer up! Next year, you’ll dance in the Officers’s Club in Szeged!”

Miss Doby lifted her head and kissed his father’s sun-and windburnt, hard yet sweet complexion, rubbed her soft face into the grey beard stem, and was kissing and kissing him with warm, unspeakable love.

Mr. Pagan was watching but could not quite understand the point of the scene. So he stepped in front of them by saying,

“My good uncle, István,” but he stuck. The old gentleman was looking at the strange man in wonder and with a look of aversion as if from a long distance.

“There is no question here about anything, Mr. Pagan. ”Your relatives’re coming.”

Mr. Imre Pagan knew nothing but felt that everything was over. He threw back his dizzy head. The legate, who was watching him, stated that he was definitely good-looking now. Also, he was a bit tipsy. With his hair fallen into his eyes, he showed genuine bravery and jaunty pertness.

“You mean, my relatives, Mr. Doby?”

The old gentleman raised his large, bulky and heavy paw and placed it on the young man’s shoulder.

“Well, you’re all relatives… Lishchany… Haven’t you any relatives called Lishchany?… Lihtenshteyn…”

Mr. Pagan turned pale. Having realized that his Jewishness was attacked, defiantly raised his head.

“Yes, I have, my pleasure.”

The old gentleman kept smiling a bit.

“So there… They have a daughter, her hame’s Szálika, Rozika…”

He waved him like a young and slender sapling with his large palm forgotten on his shoulder, and said in a very kindly, very friendly voice,

“Certain Viennese wine merchants by name Mr. Adolf and Mr. Ármin Lichtenstein, have leased this demesne from Count Pista, and invite you with pleasure by me for Twelfth Night to their house, to this very apartment… That’s it!”

Mr. Pagan felt unbearably, uncomfortable in this situation. Everybody was staring at him, and he did not know what to do. Should he insult to the old man? Or, at least, rip himself out of his heavy hands? He felt that now all was lost.

The legate was gazing with eyes wide open. It was only now that he understood… It was now that some light was thrown on the secret in the darkness of that night… ‘How come I haven’t realized that Mr. Imre Pagan is a Jew before?’ he asked himself. And all of a sudden, he noticed the strange features of him: the small freckle, something specific, something more expressed in his features to which he had not paid attention before… His heart thumped violently in his chest. He had never experienced a moment as tragic as that. And he was watching uneasily Mr. Pagan, pale as death, step back and speak in a gentlemanlike manner and in a very quiet but sharp voice,

“Thank you very much… for your kind inquiry … I kiss your hands, Miss Doby.”

The girl’s body convulsed, and she failed to turn back to let her beautiful face be seen.

Mr. Imre Pagan once more bowed, turned on his heel and walked away.

His short overcoat with a wolf fur lining hung there beside the stove. When coming as a groom candidate, he had enjoyed the privilege of a gentleman. Now he just threw his overcoat over his shoulder and back, pulled his high fur cap over his head, bowed to the whole company once again, and went out through the door.

There was stiff silence in the room. Now everyone saw everything clearly, and there was terror in the heart of everyone. The postmaster began to put his violin into the green casing.

But the young Doby jumped in the middle of the room, and began to shout in a shrill voice,

“Strike up, may God bless your father’s soul! My dear uncle Lexi! The coast is clear!”

And he grasped the big, green flower pattern earthenware pitcher, half full of wine, seemingly with the intention of throwing it into the door through which the stranger had left.

But his father, the old gentleman, lifted a thick, brown finger, and said,

“It was … a guest…”

“Five or six people arrested the young Doby but could not stop him from giving a howl,

“Sidelocks!”

“Thereupon they all broke into a roar of laughter. The postmaster put out the violin from the green case again, asking,

“Well, shall we play on?”

“On and on!” the young Doby roared, “Yes, you shall. Shan’t they, my dear father? Until broad daylight ^[36]!”

At this point, all of them initiated a raging Czardas jerking the girls like rag. Everyone felt dizzy, and everyone was howling, trying to transform their tear-jerker rage into furious singing.

“Tonight’s the Black Sabbath!” said Mr. Aradi. “The Hungarians will never be anything.”

“Go to hell!” they shouted at him. “You’re a hireling of the Jews. A traitor of the country and the people.”

Mr. Aradi, turned pale, was comically blinking among the others.

The legate, grown dizzy and weary, dazed out upon the veranda for some fresh air. Outside, the dogs were howling like devil, and a rider was stomping across the yard from the stables.

It was Mr. Imre Pagan, who, in the early world of white snow, leaning on his horse’s neck and accompanied by a pack of howling hounds, was galloping out of the yard through the wide-open gate.

Inside, the music was played. The legate peered inside and fancied he was watching a circus show: the swarming critters – called humans – were spinning and turning around and around with arms around each other to the scraping of the violin… It was such a comic-grotesque sight… He does not like the flea that leaps off, and they are fond of each other.

− the End −

The ’notary’ in the novel was modeled on dr. Péter Balogh, contemporary of Móricz, notary public for Szakoly, a village in  Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county in Hungary. The memorable New Year’s Eve was celebrated in Szakoly in the house of his father-in-law, István Kádár from Kőáromszék-Halmágy landsteward. The ’Count’ mentioned in the novel was Count István Tisza (1861-1918), Prime Minister of Hungary (1913-1917), who had a large estate in Szakoly. He employed István Kádár, a friend, as landsteward. Zsigmond Móricz himself lived in Szakoly at the time when he was a legate.

Notes

1. “Kuvasz” (Hun. pron. [‘kuvɒs]) – an ancient Hungarian breed of a livestock dog having a long, matted and white coat, used for herding sheep and as a watchdog. ↑

2. Kálmán Tisza de Borosjenő (orig. Tisza Kálmán, 1830-1902) – a Hungarian Prime Minister between 1875 and 1890. ↑

3. “Big Bludgeon Boy” – a volunteer fire-fighter schoolboy, equipped with a bludgeon. “Little Bludgeon Boy Scout” – a young voluntary boy inspecting public school works. ↑

4. A “name day” is a tradition in many Countries in Europe that consists of celebrating the day of the year associated with one’s given name. ↑

5. „Kuruts” (Hung. pron. [ˈkuruts]) – a term used to denote the armed anti-Habsburg rebels in Royal Hungary between 1671 and 1711. ↑

6. “Lajos Kossuth” (orig. Kossuth Lajos, 1802, Hungary – 1894, Turin, Italy) – Hungarian lawyer, journalist, politician and Regent-President of the Kingdom of Hungary during the revolution of 1848–49. He became an emblem of civilian transition, liberalism tolerating internal disputes among different political currents and a policy committed to a free Hungary. ↑

7. “József Eötvös” (orig. Eötvös József, baron de Vásárosnamény, 1813 – 1871) – Hungarian writer and statesman. One of his first speeches (published in 1841) warmly advocated Jewish emancipation. ↑

8. „Pálinka” is a traditional fruit brandy in the countries of the Carpathian Basin. ↑

9. At this place in the novel there follows two anecdotes based upon play of words, which cannot be translated. In order to reduce the loss and maintain the air of the scene, the translator substituted them with other Hungarian anecdotes of the same period and character. (Translator) ↑

10. „Szilágyság” – Szilágy County (today in Romania; named Județul Sălaj) ↑

11. The first line of a Hungarian folksong (“Pumpkin flowers near sunset, / All the fair girls turn to strumpet. / Kites build a nest on the high trees, / All the fair girls turn to mistress”). The first line refers to the fact that women usually smarten themselves up in the evening. ↑

12. Andor Kozma (orig. Kozma Andor), The Hungarian peasant (Orig. A magyar paraszt, fragment) ↑

13. In Eng. “I am a man, I consider nothing that is human alien to me.” A citation from the play by Heauton Timorumenos Publius Terentius Afer (alias Terence). Móricz wrongly attributes the saying to Descartes. ↑

14. “The redcaps” – another name of the defensive soldiers in the Hungarian Defensive War of 1849. ↑

15. „János Damjanich” (in Hun. Damjanich János), born as Jovan Damjaniæ (1804-1849) – a Hungarian general and national hero of Serb origin. ↑

16. Ádám Balog’s song (Hun. Balog Ádám dala). Hungarian folk song. ↑

17. “It happened…” – a citation from the heroic poem Toldi (canto 2) by the Hungarian journalist, writer, poet, and translator, János Arany (1817 – 1882). ↑

18. “On the poplar” – a Hungarian wedding circle folk dance (orig. Jegenyefa tetejébe… ) ↑

19. “Sándor Petőfi” (Hun. Petőfi Sándor, 1823 – 1849) – a worldfamous Hungarian poet). ↑

20. “Mátyás Corvin” (orig. Hunyadi Mátyás, 1443 – 1490) – king of Hungary (1458 – 1490). The reference is aimed at the king’s age, when – according to the tradition –, the Hungarians used to eat without using cutlery. ↑

21. “the justice of the Hungarians” – a reference to the old Hungarian saying, “God is One and the Hungarian Justice is Three”, which is a hint to the mystic number 3, which is a basic motif in the Hungarian cultural heritage. ↑

22. “Ottó Herman” (orig. Herman Ottó, 1835 – 1914) – a Hungarian natural scientist, ornithologist, ethnographer, archaeologist and politician. He was regarded also the last Hungarian polyhistor. ↑

23. “Pityi” – an indication of a Hungarian folk tale hero. A tramp, Palkó Pityi, gets a small errand but, while indulging in daydreams of wealth, he fails to get even his several pence payment. ↑

24. ‘Stiff-necked’ – a hint at the collocation “stiff-necked Calvinist” meaning a professed, unyielding adherent of Calvinst orthodoxy. ↑

25. “Pali, the other nickname for István” – In fact, Pali (Paulie) is not a common nickname for the Christian name István but an occasional one in the present novel. A humorous effect by Mikszáth. ↑

26. “you poor Stefi Széchenyi” – The guilded youth of the big estate owners of the time used to give nick names to the noblemen; in this way Count István Széchenyi became Stefi, and the younger Count of Nyír Pista. ↑

27. “blind from the light” – perhaps an allusion to Plato’s statement, “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light,” which he never said or wrote. ↑

28. “Mihály Vörösmarty” (orig. Vörösmarty Mihály, 1800-1855) – important Hungarian poet and dramatist. ↑

29. “old folios in the apiaries” – an allusion to Dániel Berzsenyi (1776-1836), Hungarian poet, who used to read Horace and write his poems in the shed of hives of his Borjád mansion. ↑

30. “dancing chardash” (Hun. csárdás) – a lively Hungarian national dance. ↑

31. “Kreutzer” (Hun. krajcár) – penny, farthing. ↑

32. “Yes, I do.” – though speaking in Hungarian fluently, the girl of German origin sometimes makes language mistakes. ↑

33. “Róbert Károly” (orig. Károly Róbert, 1288 – 1342) magyar király (1307 – 1342). ↑

34. “Lajos Nagy” (orig. Nagy Lajos or Anjou Lajos, 1326-1382) – King of Hungary (1342 – 1382) and King of Poland (1370 – 1382) ↑

35. “Tuhutum” (Hun. Töhötöm, “Tühütüm”, “Tétény”) – one of the seven leaders of the conquering Hungarian tribes. ↑

36. “until broad daylight” – a hint to the famous trio of the operetta The Gypsy Princess (Hun. Csárdáskirálynő) by the Hungarian-born composer of operettas Imre Kálmán (Siófok, 1882 – Párizs, 1953) and the librettists Leo Stein and Béla Jenbach, first produced at the Johann Strauss Theatre, Vienna, 1915. – Lyrics (translation) : “Keep playing your fiddle, old chap, till broad daylight; / Keep playing until dark’s gone from my poor heart.”↑

The opening portrait photography of Zsigmond Móricz was recorded by Székely Aladár in the time around 1920. Source: Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository.

− the End –

SZTNH 010094