“This time there was a lot at stake. They had come home from a masked ball — the first to which her husband had taken Zsuzsa — and had argued so badly in the street that when they reached home Pista gave his wife two quick slaps in the face in the hall. Zsuzsa turned on her heel, and in her thin patent leather shoes and her Tündér Ilona costume, ran out into the street and went weeping through the freezing winter night to her father’s. Pista, who was by that time tired of all the arguments and reconciliations, and also of the ransoms which were more exorbitant every time, decided on a new tactic: he would ignore the whole thing, his wife would simply relent, get tired of sulking, and come back of her own accord. Days went by, weeks too. Three long weeks passed without any sign of life from his wife. He didn’t even know whether she had in fact gone home on that bitter night, or even whether she was alive or dead. One evening he took a walk past his father-in-law’s. The house was shut up, dark and gloomy as a castle.
“Pista drank until dawn. At dawn he returned with the gypsy band, to assault the fortress with violins. Until morning came he made them play his wife’s song—Hány csillagból áll a szemed, Zsuzsikám?*—under her window. Until morning came he sang it at the top of his voice toward the window, toward the snow clouds in the sky, toward the stars, as if expecting from somewhere an objective reply to that rhetorical question, that excusable poetic exaggeration. Nobody replied. Only the two kuvasz howled in opposition.
“The fourth week passed too. Now a whole month had gone by. Pista’s patience was exhausted. He engaged a lawyer to go and hold talks on his behalf. Zsuzsa told him that she absolutely wanted a divorce and asked her husband to agree to it peacefully. The lawyer continued talks for a further week. Then he brought the old man’s reply, that peace would cost a round twenty thousand koronas.
“Why drag the story out? Pista hurried to the bank, withdrew what remained of his dowry, nineteen thousand, seven hundred and sixty koronas — the rest he had to scrape together from his friends — and paid up. Then, after almost six weeks of absence, he brought his wife out in his arms, placed her triumphantly in the gig and drove home with her.
“I heard this from people who swear that, word for word, that’s exactly what happened. And I believe them. There’s just one thing that I don’t understand. Was she in league with the old miser, who had recouped his daughter’s dowry to the last krajcár? Possibly so. But it’s also possible that she was a mere tool in his hands, and that she only wanted her husband back but wanted to sell her love dear. That too is possible.
“Something else that’s odd — after that they never quarreled again. That’s strange. That I could not begin to explain. Perhaps you can.
“Yes, yes. As soon as they had nothing they were happy and content. But they were often hard up. True, they knew that they had mighty expectations when the old man closed his eyes. That could have happened any day. But he wouldn’t die. His financial success really galvanized him, he took a new lease on life. Once more he sat on the bench saying nothing.
“He lived for years, hale and hearty. Why is it that misers are all long-lived? Some say that meanness itself is an indication of an indomitable joie de vivre, and like every true passion, doesn’t kill but keeps one alive. Some say that this long-term, constant greed is what’s missing in puny individuals who die young. Some say that misers are steeled, filled with obstinacy, by the antipathy that surrounds them, it’s the burning hatred of their dependents that keeps them alive, just as the enthusiastic adoration of their children sustains the good. Finally, there are those who say that the earth keeps them here, won’t let them go, clasps them to its dirty, muddy bosom, because misers are dirty and muddy like their relative, the earth. These are theories, and nothing can be settled by theories. Everything, however, is settled by a severe brain hemorrhage in the night. That killed even the old man. Pista and his wife then inherited more than they had hoped for, almost half a million prewar gold koronas.
“Believe me, I would love to end this newfangled folk tale happily, to show in glowing colors how Zsuzsa and Pista finally obtained their reward and lived happily ever after. Unfortunately, I can’t. The old man died on the second of June 1914, and on the twenty-eighth — as I’m sure you’ve heard — war broke out. As a lieutenant in the reserve, Pista was called up into the First Honvéd Hussars. Before joining them he decided to invest all his money in war bonds. Zsuzsa, a peasant girl of limited outlook who clung to the soil, at first would not approve of this. She proposed that with part of it at least they should buy gold and land. She changed her mind only when her husband, who being a man had a better understanding of politics, explained that when the war was over they would get their money back with interest from the great syndicate which would have become a grateful posterity. Pista was never able to learn that this didn’t quite work out. The fault, it must be said, wasn’t his own. That is to say, in the first cavalry charge a shell so hit him that not so much as a kneecap or a brass button was left — even his horse vanished without a trace. It was as if the earth had swallowed the two of them up, or as if they had galloped up fully armed to the Milky Way, that golden roadway in the sky, and from there rushed into some wonderful and splendid military heaven. Young Zsuzsa waited for him for a while. She slowly used up what money she had. Then she languished on her war widow’s pension and eventually left town. The last time I went down there I heard that she’d found employment as a maid on a farm and had become a complete peasant, setting hens and fattening geese.
“So life has its ups and downs, doesn’t it? No, we really can’t complain. But let’s add that not only has it ups and downs, it also has deep meaning. Quite. Now, aren’t we ever going to have another drink?”
* Kosztolányi’s native area, a region of the Alföld southwest of Szeged, mostly now in Serbia.
* Badacsony and Csopak are celebrated white-wine regions on the north shore of Lake Balaton, as is (Balaton) Arács too. This latter is now joined to Balatonfüred and the monastery is no more.
† Kéknyelű, “blue-stemmed,” is a traditional Hungarian grape variety grown mostly in Badacsony.
‡ The guba is a cloaklike garment, often of rough woollen cloth; the pörge, “upturned,” hat is that traditionally worn by Hungarian shepherds, low-crowned with an upturned brim, somewhat similar to a bowler.
§ Banyakemence is a big, rick-shaped earthenware stove found in peasant houses. Suba is a sheepskin coat, worn with the fleece inside.
* “Saracen doughnut,” a doughnut coated with chocolate.
† “Perfumed Mass,” that attended by society ladies.
* “Silence!” A Romany word.
† “Quietly, just quietly” and “Waves of Balaton” are well-known folk songs.
* A style of frock coat popularized by Emperor Franz Josef.
* The honorific form of address, implying a certain distance.
* The gate, not the house door, because of the kuvasz. This is standard Hungarian practice.
* How many stars are your eyes made of, my Zsuzsika?
XI
In which is an account of the most excellent hotel in the world.
“ARE YOU AWARE OF THE RICH RANGE OF HOTELS?” KORNÉL Esti turned to us. “I could find a lot to say about it.
“There are family hotels, in which we feel more comfortable than at home, free from domestic tensions in addition to being independent. There are pleasant, intimate, nice hotels. There are dismal hotels, especially in the country, which have something in common with out-of-tune pianos, inducing melancholia with their dull mirrors and damp quilt covers, and then there are hotels that drive one to despair, accursed, deadly hotels, where on a November evening one might easily commit suicide. There are cheerful hotels, where even the taps laugh out loud. There are stif, ceremonious, silent hotels, chatty hotels, boozy hotels, cheeky hotels, showy, loud, worthless hotels, reliable, calm, lordly hotels, noble with the rust of the past, frivolous hotels, ponderous hotels, healthy hotels, in which the sun shines even from the drains, and sick hotels in which the table limps and the chair wobbles, the chest of drawers is on crutches, the sofa is consumptive, and the pillows lie on the bed breathing their last. So there are very many kinds of hotels.