He paid, and wiped his slate with the little yellow sponge provided.
He lit a new cigar and even removed his spectacles. This was always a sure sign of his good spirits.
By now he was no different from the others. He could no longer see the party from the outside as he had on first entering the room. He didn't even notice the suffocating smell of smoke. He seemed entirely at ease, as if he had merely slept throughout his long years of absence and was now carrying on where he had left off. A brittle crust seemed to crumble and flake from his person, the top of his head began to sweat and his snowy hair seemed to melt on top of it. In his eyes, too, happy tears glistened. His ears glowed red, as old friendships revived and blossomed.
But now it was back to business, to the new game, and revenge. Ákos braced himself as the cards were being dealt, unfastening his shirt cuffs and drawing together all his strength. Then he threw himself at his adversaries with all his old confidence.
“Out with the eighteen!” he cried at once.
Where could it be, the coveted, happy eighteen? Who on earth could have it? For the moment, however, Ákos continued playing his hand.
Winking cunningly at the other players, he threw his remaining trumps on the table before them: ace, twenty-one, nineteen, and finally, after a calculated pause, he produced the missing eighteen himself.
“Ha!” the others shouted. “He had it!'
“He called his own hand!” they chuckled, unable to believe their eyes.
“He's impossible. The old Ákos, the one and only.” They embraced him one after the other. “You've got the devil in you, old boy,” they roared. “This calls for a drink.” And the thunder of their laughter shook the window panes.
One game spilled into another, with Ákos shrewdly holding his own, uncovering every plot and scheme, averting every ambush. It was a long, long game.
But not for Ákos or the other players. What did they know of time, since falling captive to the magic of the cards? For all card players enjoy the intoxication of complete forgetting, and enter a separate universe whose very contours are defined by the cards.
“Vole, bull, juggler.” Ákos's words flew through the smoky air. “Juggler, joker, final trick.” His opponents hissed and gasped in disbelief.
Ákos gave them all a thorough thrashing. Only then did he glance at the clock ticking away on the wall before him. It was already after half past nine. He was suddenly seized by an inexplicable melancholy.
For a moment he hung his head, crestfallen after his unaccustomed frivolity. He stared straight through his companions as if they were not there at all.
The waiters announced that dinner would be served.
They made their way into the library, where dinner was taken on Thursday evenings.
Sárcsevits had still not finished Le Figaro. He sat to one side, beneath an electric light by the wall, and went on studying every word. The others planted themselves down at the table, which was decorated with flowers.
It was a doughty Hungarian dinner: chicken stew, pasta with curd and bacon, noodles with ground poppy seed and walnut, and mouldy, smelly cheeses to follow, which went superbly with the mildly tart and musty wine.
The table was crammed full. They must have been fifty in all, for new guests had arrived for dinner. Máté Gaszner, assessor to the orphan's court, a lame and rather objectionable little man, who was popular all the same and was addressed as “my dear Mátéka” by everyone present. Kostyál, a retired teacher from the neighbouring town who was, as they said, a “regular trencherman.” Vereczkey, the Lord Lieutenant's private secretary, who had served in the Tyrol and knew a string of fine Italian songs. And of course Feri Füzes also put in an appearance, showing off his stupid smile, which he seemed to have polished specially for the occasion. Throughout dinner he kept repeating:
“I do adore society. I really am the most jolly of fellows.”
And Olivér Hartyányi came too, the “atheist.”
Poor Olivér had been suffering from degenerative syphilis for years. And that, by and large, was why poor Olivér was an atheist. Towards evening he'd have himself wheeled to the club, where two attendants carried him upstairs in the large cushioned chair in which he sat in his courtyard at home. His legs were covered with a thick, woollen blanket.
He appeared particularly lively this evening, having taken a larger than usual injection of morphine before setting out. His eyes gleamed and his dilated pupils sparkled, lending a certain sharpness to his haggard, olive-green face. His eyebrows curled like caterpillars as he spoke.
He ended up beside Feri Füzes. The two men loathed each other, but loved to argue all the same, and did so endlessly.
Feri Füzes insisted on the existence of God. Olivér Hartyányi disagreed. The debate had rambled on for years, without either participant surrendering an inch of ground. Now they once more rehearsed their familiar arguments in the name of idealism and materialism. Feri Füzes curled his lips sarcastically at the mention of Darwin, not because he didn't consider the fellow a gentleman, but because he held the same opinion of Darwin as of Lajos Kossuth. Darwin had his good and bad points like anyone else. Then it was time for Olivér to play his trump card. With bitter, derisive words he painted a picture of ubiquitous ruin and decay, the only things he believed in, complete and utter destruction, the rotting human body, teeming with grubs and maggots. He spoke out loud, the more to outrage his companions at table. But they paid not the slightest notice either to him or to Feri Füzes. They were equally weary of them both.
Besides, the Gypsies had already struck up. The famous János Csinos Band stood in position by the tall folding doors and the leader, an old friend of all present, was scraping and flourishing with all his soul. He never played more sweetly than on Thursday evenings. He turned devotedly — although still keeping a respectful distance — towards István Kárász, looking up at him now and then with a dreamy smile in which many shared memories seemed to slumber. He had played at Kárász's wedding and had fiddled many a thousand-forint banknote from the landowner's pocket. Kárász would invite him to his estate once a year. The previous year he had strung a whole ham around each Gypsy's neck and made them play on thus equipped till dawn.
István Kárász, who sat between Ákos and Ladányi, stopped eating. As soon as he heard the strains of the violin he sat back in his chair, hung his arms by his sides and, with a vein beginning to bulge on his forehead, listened with mooning eyes. He appeared to remain indifferent, but gave his heart entirely to the Gypsy: to nurse it, caress it and mine its very depths. He surrendered his soul with a certain leisurely, gentlemanly nonchalance, as others might offer their feet to the pedicurist. He had more faith in the Gypsy than in his doctor, Dr Gál.
The leader, for his part, left no heartstring unplucked. He stabbed and stung, tweaked and tormented, faithful servant that he was. Soon a fat teardrop swelled in the landowner's eye and rolled its way down his sunburnt cheek. Why did Kárász cry? All of Sárszeg belonged to him. He could no longer even count his stud horses, his herds of pigs and cattle. His children and grandchildren all prospered. Who could tell what ancient memories of wedding feasts and long-abandoned reveries the music stirred within him?
Galló glared stonily into space, as if still squinting at the accused in court, refusing to be moved, repelling every last appeal to sentiment. Doba was undoubtedly thinking of his wife, wandering, God knows where, in the night. He had sunk so deep into sorrow and self-torment that he himself seemed to take fright and, as if coming up from the depths for air, drew a deep breath. Ladányi was looking directly towards Vienna, on his face the patriotic grief of four hundred years of servility to the House of Habsburg. Priboczay melted, his eyes becoming two melancholy pools of tears. Feri Füzes crooned, Olivér Hartyányi growled, Szunyogh hung his heavy, drunken head, swinging it slowly to and fro like an elephant. Környey waxed bellicose; Mályvády, Sárszeg's great patron of the natural sciences, grew facetious; Kostyál became cantankerous; while Máté Gaszner seemed to have completely lost his mind.