‘Snake in the grass!’ cried Sindbad silently to himself. ‘Liar! You have forgotten me often enough!’ But still he liked Paula touching him, it satisfied something in his heart to see the laced shoes, the fresh floral band and the light stockings of the woman for whose sake he had once sailed down the Danube all the way to Pancsova.* The smell of her hair was as delicious as the scent of brushwood tucked into the folds of clean underwear and the almost invisible lines on her face, like the marks of tiny scuffling birds’ feet, made him feel sad and affectionate at the same time. It was as if she had spent sleepless nights lost in fantasies of which these faint rings round the eyes were the silent evidence. Sindbad could still see the trace left by his kiss on the fading velvet of her lips: amorous farm-girls’ bodies left just such marks among the meadow flowers, their contours still apparent on the crushed lawn. The white neck which craned so curiously from the black dress was like a bird’s neck twinkling under the black velvet ribbon, the pocket of her coat was warm and lined with cat fur and made a little nest into which Sindbad slid his hand to find hers.
‘I have a wonderful idea for this afternoon,’ said the actress, her shoulders brushing against Sindbad’s chest. ‘Come to the cellar with us. Kápolnai — an old local teacher — has invited members of the company into his cellars this afternoon. His wine is good and the cellar itself is very neatly arranged. I’ll make sure the old teacher invites you.’
‘I’ll be at the café this afternoon.’
‘Good, we’ll come for you there. Now please be good enough to escort me home. I live not far from here.’
Sindbad was still lost in thought behind the mallow-coloured curtains of the café, when the teacher, a grey-haired, red-cheeked, croaky-voiced old fellow, clattered in, embraced him, told Sindbad that he was to regard him as his best friend, and assured him of a choice pipe back in his cellar. ‘Hurry now! Quickly!’ he cried heartily. ‘There’s an awful lot of snow between here and the cellar.’
The company of players was waiting at the café door, mostly cheerful ragged juveniles and two women, Paula and the singer, a plumpish blonde who immediately fixed Sindbad with a searching look as if to say, I know what you’ve come here for. Pápai the prompter was puffing his pipe at the back of the group, reading a theatrical magazine as if this had nothing at all to do with him.
‘Come along, class!’ commanded the teacher good-humouredly and reached into his coat where the cellar keys were jangling. ‘It’s lovely to be together again.’
On leaving town and turning into a narrow winding lane which led up the hillside they suddenly came upon a huge snowdrift. But even from here they could see the soot-coloured entrance to the cellar and with a lot of cheering and shouting the young actors set out across the snow-covered meadow.
‘Hurry up!’ the old teacher encouraged them.
Happy and proud, Paula snuggled against Sindbad’s shoulder and clung to his arm. ‘Help me, Sindbad,’ she whispered.
Pápai brought up the rear and yelled out at them. ‘Can’t wait till dark, eh! There’s no softer mattress in the world than fresh fallen snow!’
‘The nerve of the man!’ Paula complained with a soft throaty laugh.
Sindbad saw the high, soft field of virginal snow and had to admit the old prompter was right.
The Secret Room
There once was a woman who kept Sindbad prisoner for almost a year and a half and afterwards he could never erase it from his mind. She was called Artemisia and she was the wife of a landowner whose estates consisted chiefly of forest in a district where bushy-bearded priests presided over Mass and the eyes of the baby Jesus were made of precious stones. A crow was perched on top of the snow-covered tower, perhaps the very same crow he saw through the high barred windows of the thick masonry wall when he was a prisoner of the lovely Artemisia. The secret room where Sindbad spent his year and half in the highlands was in an area where men had long ago raised walls and dug secret passages which extended through the house and the surrounding countryside: in the previous generation there had been another man imprisoned there, but then it was Artemisia’s mother who had held the keys. On the peeling wall above the settle a German poem was still visible. The previous inhabitant had written it in his boredom. The inside of the wardrobe door was covered with various other inscriptions that Sindbad’s predecessor had absent-mindedly scribbled while changing his shirt. An itinerant Romeo had lived here — in those days there were still such people about — and the constabulary was after him for dealing in false currency and cardsharping. Artemisia’s mother concealed the fugitive, persuaded herself that he was a patriot republican in hiding, and soon had the then master of the house, a man not in the first flush of youth, nodding with satisfaction that it was no longer he who had to occupy this secret room, which often remained without heating the whole of the winter thanks to the hard-heartedness of the aforementioned lady … Sindbad often had to bite his knuckles to prevent himself laughing when he thought of these strict and miserly women who beat their husbands while putting themselves at the service of equally vehement lovers, checking that their maidservants were safely tucked up in bed before tiptoeing through the garden gate, out into the night …
Who is living in the secret room now? wondered Sindbad one day when, like most prisoners, he felt like revisiting that place with strong towers and high walls where he himself had once been chained up … So Sindbad set out hoping that at last he might be able to gaze calmly into the eyes of the maid of whom he had been so frightened at one time that he hardly dared speak to her without clasping his hands in prayer. ‘How come I never once kicked her!’ thought Sindbad, grinding his teeth.
It was night and the snow shone as it usually did in those highland towns where you can see the bells in the belfry a long way off and can make out with surprising precision the shadowy figure who begins to toll them at midnight. Near the river the blue-dye man* was painting the snow ashen grey, apparently trying out a new colour for use on Slovakian girls’ skirts. Everyone in town was fast asleep, the snores of the bushy-bearded magistrate resounded right through the market-place, young women slept under Christmas trees together with their children, and the old ones dreamt of tales told during the evening, in which, on snowy nights, pitiless bands of men from far-off countries would overrun the little town and seize the women from right under the Christmas trees.
Naturally, Sindbad was familiar with their dreams, since the dead know everything, but he did not hesitate on his way to the brown gates built into the wall from which spiral stairs lead up to the first floor which remains dark, even by day, and the Christmas tree stands in the front room with its nuts and almonds and scent of gingerbread and the women are sleeping under it on home-made rugs. At the opposite corner a rust-coloured iron door protected the inner recesses of the house, a house with frozen eaves and frosted windows, which in the bright night looked like a house cut out of paper, the chimneys hovering pale blue against the sky and a white curtain trembled in one of the windows as Sindbad silently crept into the house. The night-watchman was just making his way through the deep snow down the high road — he seemed to be alarmed by the shadows of the houses — and caught a glimpse of a queer little patch of luminous fog before him, like light flashing off a helmet or a sword.
Artemisia was sitting before her mirror examining her reflection. This had become her usual practice at night since she had reached the age of forty some time ago and still could not get enough of the lies men told her. She bound her jaw firmly against wrinkles, as people do with the dead, and desperately brushed her hair and braided it without ever taking her eyes off the mirror in the hope of seeing there, just once, the face she used to see, her bygone beauty peeping out from under the mask of the present. One day, the melancholy, frowning, discontented shadow would vanish from those bright leaves of glass, and she, the White Woman of Löcse,* to whom eligible young men had told long streams of lies, would enter the fortress gate and move quietly forward to reassume her place. Sadly, the shadow remained unaltered, however much she braided her hair or rubbed colour into her cheeks with a rabbit’s foot. The wardrobe full of white garments reached to the ceiling and the locks clicked as solemnly as the fortress gates while Artemisia sought for her night-clothes in the drawer. A small mirror hung on the wardrobe door — someone had won it at a fair — looking in it now she discovered Sindbad standing at her shoulder.