“I leaned out the window. I bathed my buzzing head in the fresh air. The peonies of daybreak were opening on the ashen sky. Before me lay a cream-scented little village. At the station a peasant and a couple of women in headscarves were waiting. The guard spoke to them in Bulgarian, as he had done to me, but with more effect, because the travelers understood him at once and made for the third-class coaches at the end.
“A few minutes later the guard was back at my side — the smile had not yet cooled on his lips — and was chuckling as he continued. Shortly, out came the punch line that he had promised. He roared with laughter. He laughed so much that his belly shook. Goodness, what a man, he was a terrific character. He was still shaking with laughter as he reached into his coat pocket and took out a thin notebook, held together by an elastic band, and from that a creased, soiled letter which probably played a vital role in the story — it might have been the decisive element — and put it into my hand for me to read and comment on. Good Lord, what was I to say? I could see penciled, smudged Cyrillic letters, which — alas — I couldn’t read. I devoted myself to attentive perusal of the letter. Meanwhile he stood a little apart and watched to see the effect. ‘Yes,’ I murmured, ‘yes, yes,’ now statement, now denial, now question. From time to time I shook my head as if to say ‘typical’ or ‘never heard the like’ or ‘such is life.’ That can be used for anything. No situation has yet occurred in life for which ‘such is life’ isn’t appropriate. If somebody dies, even then we just say ‘such is life.’ I tapped the letter, I snif ed it — it had a slight odor of mold — and as there was nothing else that I could do, I gave it back to him.
“There were all sorts of other things in his notebook. He took out a photograph which — to my considerable surprise — was of a dog. I pursed my lips as I looked at it, like a keen dog fancier. I noticed, however, that the guard didn’t approve of that. I got the feeling that he was simply angry with that dog, so I too became serious and tut-tutted at it. My astonishment reached its peak, however, when he took from the canvas holder of the notebook a mysterious object wrapped in tissue paper and asked me to unwrap it myself. I did so. All there was inside were two large green buttons, two bone buttons like those from a man’s coat. I shook them together playfully, as if I were altogether a particular lover of buttons, but the guard then snatched them out of my hand and quickly, so that I should never so much as see them again, crammed them into his notebook. Then he took a couple of paces and leaned against the side of the carriage.
“I didn’t understand what was happening. I moved quickly to his side. I saw something that made my blood run cold. His eyes were filled with tears. That big, fat man was weeping. At first he wept in manly fashion, concealing his tears, but then he wept so much that his mouth twitched and his shoulders heaved.
“To be perfectly frank I was completely taken aback by the profound, insoluble chaos of life. What was all this? How were all those words connected to laughter and weeping? What had one thing to do with another — the letter with the photograph of the dog, the photograph with the two green bone buttons, and all of them with the guard? Was it madness, or precisely the opposite, the healthy, human bursting-out of feeling? And had the whole business any meaning, in Bulgarian or anything else? Despair was all around me.
“I took a firm grip on the guard’s shoulders to instill some spirit into him, and I shouted into his ear three times, in Bulgarian, ‘No, no, no.’ Choking in his tears, he stammered another monosyllable which could have meant, ‘Thank you for being so kind,’ but also, perhaps, ‘You revolting phony, you cheating swine.’
“Slowly he recovered himself. His gasps became quieter. He wiped his wet face with his handkerchief. He spoke. Now, however, his voice was quite different. He addressed short, sharp questions to me. Such as, I imagine, ‘If you said “yes” in the first place, why did you say “no” straight afterwards? Why did you correct what you’d approved? Let’s have an end to this dubious game. Make your choice: yes or no?’ He rapped out questions like a machine gun, faster and faster, more and more determinedly, poking me in the chest. There was no way that I could evade them.
“It seemed as if I was caught and that my luck had deserted me. But my superiority came to my rescue. I stood up straight and looked the guard up and down with cutting frigidity, and like one that considered it beneath his dignity to reply, turned on my heel and strode into my compartment.
“There I laid my head on my pillow. I went to sleep with the speed of a man dropping dead from a heart attack. I woke about noon to blazing sunshine. Somebody tapped at the window of my compartment. The guard came in. He advised me that I was to get of at the next station. But he didn’t move. He just stood there faithfully at my side like a dog. Once more he spoke — quietly, continuously, unstoppably. Perhaps he was offering an apology, perhaps accusing me over the painful nocturnal scene, I don’t know, but his face showed profound distress, heartbreak. I behaved coolly. I just let him pick up my bags and take them out into the corridor.
“At the last moment, however, I took pity on him. When he had given my bags to the porter and I was getting down, I glanced at him wordlessly as if to say ‘What you did wasn’t nice, but to err is human, and this once I forgive you.’ And I said in Bulgarian only, ‘Yes.’
“That word had a magical effect. The guard softened, cheered up, became his old self. A smile of gratitude stole onto his face. He saluted me, standing stif y at attention. He remained there at the window, rigid with happiness, until the train moved of and he vanished forever from my sight.”
X
In which Zsuzsika, daughter of a wealthy Bácska* peasant, jumps into the well and gets married.
KORNÉL ESTI ARRIVED HOME FROM PORTUGAL. HE HAD BEEN over to the Iberian peninsula just for a month, to have a rest. This rest had consisted of speaking exclusively to the natives during that time, and in Portuguese, the “language of flowers.”
It was late at night when he appeared at my door, dusty and travel-stained, on his way from the station. The Lisbon breeze was still on his raincoat, the gravel of the Tagus on his shoes.
He dragged me out to a bar in Buda. I thought that he was going to give me a lengthy account of his experiences on the journey, but he wasn’t disposed to talk about them. The conversation turned to affairs in Hungary, our native town, our student years, people and events of prewar days.
That night I came to know a new side of him. I admit that previously I had often thought of him as just a kind of dyspeptic international globetrotter, a half-baked literary freak. Now I saw that he was a man from head to foot, and from my part of the world. How typical of the Bácska was his every breath, his still irresponsible tomfoolery, and his breezy boastfulness. The Bácska is the Gascony of Hungary. There is a provincial quality in all eccentric behavior.
He guzzled wine. He began with Badacsony, moved on to Csopak, then turned to a heavy, perfumed golden nectar which had reached the age of thirty on the racks of the cellars of the priests of Arács.* He stayed with that.
Toward dawn, when empty bottles of kéknyelű† and sundry other varieties were ranged in serried ranks on our table and we still had things to talk about, because by that time we had killed of most of our living friends and resurrected those who had died, he asked me:
“Now, do you remember little Zsuzsa? You know, Zsuzsa Szücs. The daughter of that peasant, that rich peasant. He used to live by the fire station, in a tumbledown cottage like any other peasant. But he had pots of money.