Sindbad puffed at his cigar, pondered a while, then asked quietly: ‘Your wife wasn’t an actress by any chance?’
Kápolnai shook his head. ‘Not precisely, only in a manner of speaking. Her parents were foolish, ambitious folk and sent her to study acting. They thought she’d find a husband all the sooner if she were on the stage. But as it turned out, I met her at the May fair. I’d never seen her on stage.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘For a long time she kept turning me down because she was so attached to the theatre. I persisted of course. They led her on. They told her she had talent. That she would become a world-famous actress.’
‘Nevertheless she married you?’
‘Yes, because I promised her that should it happen that she no longer wanted to be my wife, that day she could go back on the stage again. I wouldn’t prevent her.’
Sindbad drew deeply on his cigar. He glanced around the cottage which was just beginning to give itself up to the mild summer night. The wind crept silently under the vine leaves in the yard. ‘I wouldn’t advise you to put her to the test. Stay at home tomorrow.’
Kápolnai shrugged. ‘Too late now. I’ve promised her.’
Next night Sindbad was so generous with the wine that the choir-master made his own way home. It was midnight and his hosts had still not returned. Sindbad sat preoccupied on the veranda. He knew the theatre in town was performing Rip van Winkle that night. In his boredom he recalled the whole operetta and all the actresses he had gaped at in the spotlight while clutching Lisbeth’s tarlatan* skirt. Once more he saw the fine ankles and smiling eyes. From far away the melody of the chorus rose out of the night, and brushed past his ear like a moth: ‘By cliff-verged paths — the trail leads on …’ they sang.
He heard the noise of trap wheels approaching rapidly down the road: Kápolnai and his wife returning from the theatre.
His host was undoubtedly in a foul mood, but Etelka’s face was glowing and her eyes were so bright Sindbad almost took a step backwards in surprise when she looked at him. She kissed her husband two or three times before retiring to her room.
‘Thank you. Thank you,’ she kept repeating in her gratitude.
Kápolnai bitterly drained a glass of wine. ‘You were right,’ he said, clearing his throat. ‘The test came a little too soon. We’ve only been married two years.’
‘Well, how did she take it?’
‘In the strangest possible way. Once we were in the theatre she immediately discovered old acquaintances, actors and actresses sitting in the auditorium. First she gathered them in one of the boxes, then she went backstage to meet the leading lady. A down-at-heel comedian, old before his time, reminded her what wonderful times they had had at drama school. The squinting pot-bellied manager, the liar, had the nerve to tell her that her old contract was still stored away in his desk. I ordered him to give it back at once. The rogue laughed at me and said, who knows, she might need it sometime. An actor! You know what that word means? It means everything that is low, frivolous and rotten. And she, my wife, felt happy there, in that company of actors.’
Sindbad hummed a few sympathetic noises and fairly soon bid the man goodnight. It was no surprise to him to see the two of them sitting and frowning at each other the next morning. That afternoon he heard the sounds of a furious row in progress.
A couple of days later he was walking in the fields for most of the day and returned late in the evening. He found Kápolnai on the veranda, his face in his hands. ‘Etelka has left me to become an actress,’ he said, in a low strangled voice.
This is how it came about that Sindbad was travelling by night in a hired coach (Etelka had gone off in the family trap), seeking the woman in an attempt to persuade her to return.
He tried to defend himself from the cold night wind by entertaining himself with all kinds of foolish thoughts. Among other things he considered the option of the love-lorn Kápolnai himself taking to the stage in competition with his wife, should she prove impervious to argument. He’d look good in patent leather boots and cockade. He could start in the chorus and watch his wife from there, eyes burning, while she flirted with the audience.
It was morning by the time they arrived at a tiny provincial town. The houses were still half asleep and uncombed women stood in doorways regaling each other with their dreams. The coach lumbered down a long street: the road was thick with mud but, under the mud, sly stones crept under the carriage wheels. It was as if the citizens had placed the stones there expressly for the reception of their country cousins. A school-teacherly figure was ambling towards the school, his arms folded, then a baker’s apprentice went by with a piercing whistle, the whole street resounding to his call. The tower at the end of the long road seemed to be waking up, its head still enveloped in mist, vaguely blinking. Vegetables shone, green and fresh, in the gardens. Only the poplars stood bitter and unmoving on the pavement, indifferent to the world around them. They dropped a leaf or two into Sindbad’s carriage as he passed.
The inn was called The Golden Elephant and it looked as dark and sombre as something from an old English novel. The innkeeper, a suspicious, bearded Jew, examined Sindbad from head to toe. Sindbad asked him about the missing woman.
‘Is the gentleman a traveller?’ asked the innkeeper.
‘No.’
‘I only ask,’ the proprietor of The Golden Elephant warned him, ‘because there would have been no point in telling me he was. He has no luggage. No luggage, no reduction in room tariff.’
Sindbad enquired again about the woman.
‘No women of any kind in my place,’ the innkeeper answered and led him upstairs by a dangerous rickety set of steps. The room was low-ceilinged and damp, and Sindbad looked at the bed with trepidation. On the wall he discovered a picture. It showed various members of the royal family. Communing silently with them, Sindbad eventually closed his tired eyes.
When he went out in the afternoon there was a brilliant scarlet poster nailed to the prison-like walls of The Golden Elephant. The company had arrived in town and would give a performance that night in the Elephant’s banqueting hall. The worthy townspeople are hereby invited thereto by Dummy Dunai, director of the theatre.
‘That’s it!’ cried Sindbad. ‘Here’s Etelka.’
He spent some time in the coffee-house watching the comings and goings, but eventually the constant smoking and spitting of the guests annoyed him and he left. He wandered about town, glancing at shop displays ancient enough to have tempted him in his childhood. He admired the likeness of the chief of the fire brigade in the photographer’s window. Behind the mallow-coloured curtains of the café he noted a dark-haired, doe-eyed young woman with a faint moustache. She was wearing a white pinafore and arranging cream cakes on a tray. He ducked into the lemon-and-vanilla-scented shop and made strenuous efforts to get acquainted with the brown-haired girl who was at first rather frightened of such a complete stranger. Later she confessed her name was Irma … but just as they got to this point Sindbad remembered the fugitive Mrs Kápolnai, quickly paid the bill and was gone, though he would happily have stayed in the café. He ambled aimlessly about town while country women and young girls giggled into their handkerchiefs at him then hastened on. An old officious-looking man examined Sindbad’s patent leather boots with clear distaste. Then the ginger-moustached proprietor of the barber shop made a loud approving remark to his customers on the subject of Sindbad’s neatly styled hair.
Eventually it was evening. Sindbad took his place in the front row and, not without a certain excitement, waited for the curtains to rise. Slowly the auditorium filled up …