Now the Vajkays’ panic reached fever pitch.
In a state of excitement, things that normally pass unnoticed can seem pregnant with significance. At such times even inanimate objects — a lamppost, a gravel path, a bush — can take on a life of their own, primordial, reticent and hostile, stinging our hearts with their indifference and making us recoil with a start. And the very sight of people at such times, blindly pursuing their lonely, selfish ends, can suddenly remind us of our own irrevocable solitude, a single word or gesture petrifying in our souls into an eternal symbol of the utter arbitrariness of life.
Such was the effect of the laughing chef on the elderly couple.
As soon as they saw him, they not only suspected, but knew for certain that they were waiting in vain and that the night would pass without their ever seeing their daughter. They were now convinced she would never arrive.
And it wasn't only they who were waiting now. Everyone and everything around them became a personification of waiting itself.
Objects stood still. People came and went.
Towards the west, billowing, ink-black clouds engulfed the sky.
Among those who admired, from beginning to end, the arrival and departure of the Budapest express was Bálint Környey. He greeted Ákos with a roar of laughter.
“You gave us the slip,” he said reproachfully. “You wily old Panther, you left us in the lurch. What time did you get home?'
“Around three.”
“So you got a good night's sleep,” said Környey, yawning into his gloved hand. “We upped sticks about nine in the morning.”
He pointed at the milk.
“I see you've fallen back into depravity.”
“I have a headache,” said Ákos.
“Take my advice,” said the old sinner with a wink. “Waiter, a tankard of beer. Well, old boy, what do you say?'
“No, I daren't. Not a drop. Never again.”
No sooner had the tankard arrived than Környey gulped down the sparkling, cool beer into the bottomless pit of his stomach.
Naturally the Panthers followed on behind him, some ten of them who had come straight from the club, where, at six that afternoon, they'd had pork marrow and pickled cucumbers with a bottle or two of red wine. They joined Környey at the Vajkays’ table to drink beer. Priboczay and good old Máté Gaszner, Imre Zányi in his top hat and Szolyvay, who wore an old-fashioned cape against the cold. Feri Füzes was there too, with his sickly smile, along with Judge Doba, who sat smoking a Virginia and didn't say a word.
The most valiant among them was Szunyogh, who hadn't even been to bed at all. He had passed out for a couple of minutes at dawn, but, in accordance with ancient custom, they had stretched him out on the table with two candles at his head and sung the “Circumdederunt.” At this he had come to his senses. Since then he had marched from one inn to the next drinking nothing but schnapps.
Now, too, he dismissively pushed aside the tankard of beer that stood before him.
“Etiam si omnes, ego non.”
And he ordered schnapps instead.
“Aquam vitae, aquam vitae.”
By now he could speak only Latin, above all through quotations from the classics. At times like these he'd rattle off whole pages of Virgil and Horace. The alcohol set his sharp wits alight and he didn't appear drunk in the least. He sat erect, his blue eyes sparkling brightly, and seemed the most sober of them all. His thick, red nose, which had bled that afternoon, was stuffed with yellow cotton wool he had been given for this purpose by the chemist.
After the third glass of schnapps, Priboczay could not resist performing his ancient party trick. He lit a match and carefully held it in front of Szunyogh's lips.
“Look out,” said several of the Panthers at once. “He'll explode. He'll go up in flames.”
Completely unruffled, Szunyogh stared calmly into space.
“Castigat ridendo mores,” he muttered.
Those versed in Latin shouted back at him:
“Vino Veritas, old boy, vino Veritas.”
The prank delighted Feri Füzes in particular.
He was Szunyogh's former pupil and had often come a cropper with his appalling Latin. He always leaped at any opportunity to pique the old man, as if in repayment of a long-standing debt. For want of a better idea of his own — Feri Füzes could never count to two in his ideas, and the one idea he could count to was usually someone else's — he too lit a match and, in the hope that what had worked once would work twice, lifted it to Szunyogh's mouth.
Szunyogh, however, blew out the match with a single breath and knocked it from his hand.
Everyone applauded. Everyone except Feri Füzes.
“Excuse me,” he said sharply.
“Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses.”
“I beg your pardon?” asked Feri Füzes attempting to affect a certain gentlemanly sang-froid, but unable to disguise the embarrassment of a poor pupil.
He looked his former teacher contemptuously up and down, then drew closer towards him.
“Silentium,” Szunyogh cried, raising a trembling finger and staring straight through this small-time cavalier with unspeakable contempt. “Silentium,” he repeated, now only to himself as he sank enraptured into that deep and peaceful stillness which he would soon inhabit for good. “Silentium.”
Feri Füzes sat back down and debated whether or not to send his seconds to the old drunkard the following day.
The day had passed, for the Panthers, much like any other Friday. Most of the day they spent lying stretched out on their couches, fully clothed, recovering from the night before. The wives sat at home, nursing their patients. For lunch they prepared cabbage broth and caviar puree with lemon and onion. They opened bottle after bottle of mineral water and beer, the latter, as is well known, being the perfect antidote to alcohol poisoning.
Only at around eleven in the morning would the men pay a brief call on Priboczay, who, as a fellow reveller and time-honoured Panther, prepared expert cures for their various complaints in the St Mary Pharmacy. According to the individual taste and ailment of each patient, he mixed medicines from a whole range of ingredients. He took down the Tinctura China, Tinctura Amara and Tinctura Gentiana, and poured them into handsome cut-glass beakers, stirring in the odd drop of Spiritus Mentha and more volatile oils from smaller vials, before baptising the whole concoction with a final dash of ether. This final touch was never to be skimped.
Szunyogh received an extra dose of unadulterated ether, and much good it did him.
The others stood in a circle, chinked their glasses and knocked back the bitter potions. Screwing up their mouths and wrinkling their noses, they all emitted a single, simultaneous Brr. In an instant they were as right as rain.
Now Környey sonorously requested leave to speak.
He had much to report: who had collapsed and when; who had arrived home at what hour and in what manner — on foot, in a carriage, alone or aided by the Samaritan committee whose charge it was to transport the more paralytic Panthers to their beds like corpses; then who had been drinking wine, champagne or schnapps, and how much of each had been consumed by whom; and finally who had been sick and how many times. For in Sárszeg this served as the surest measure of a good time. Those who were sick twice had had a better time than those who were sick only once. Yesterday some had even been sick three times. These had enjoyed an exceptionally good night.