‘Where have you come from?’ asked the woman, her face quite white.
The last time Sindbad had passed this way his hair had just begun to grey at the temples, a process as delicate and timid as the uncertain snow that falls in late autumn. Many women had cradled that dear head of his against their bosoms, but it was all winter there now. The frock coat hugged him tightly: he might have been a provincial gentleman on his way to a meeting or to his own silver wedding … The pointed shoe creaked ceremoniously across the home-made rugs and the folded collar lent a certain dignity to his cleanly shaved chin. A tall cigar case protruded from his cigar pocket. The white waistcoat had probably been dried in the sunlight by careful feminine hands.
‘Where have you sprung from? I thought you were dead, I heard you were, but was I dreaming? Why can’t you find peace in the other world?’ she asked him, as Sindbad sat perfectly still in the soft pointy-legged armchair, having placed his tall hat and dog-skin gloves on the floor like some old dandy.
‘I wanted to see you once more, Euphrosyne,’* answered Sindbad, his voice compounded of leaves and shadows. ‘I want to talk to you about the bitter past, so full of waiting and hope, about those marvellous days when every morning found us at the window surveying the dawn snow or the brilliant icicles hanging from the eaves in the beautiful beams of the sun peeking over the wooden roofs, when we tried to guess what delights and pleasures the approaching day might hold by gazing at tiny patches of blue sky reflected in pools in the streets. And now I am long dead, I’d like to know how you spend your days, what you are thinking, what you dream of at night. I’ve come back in the hope that you might welcome a few words of encouragement, advice or reassurance.’
‘You’re very late,’ answered the woman.
Sindbad examined her carefully. Her brow and her eyes, the wavy dark hair swept off her face, the shadow under her long eyelashes: it was all as before. She used to be referred to in town as the Bountiful Mrs Kecsegi; did men still call her that? Only on her temples and in the pallor of her complexion could one detect traces of those sleepless nights and tears shed on the pillow. Many had passed from this house in hearses, to the accompaniment of weeping. Husband, children and lover had one by one left her. Poor woman, her life was an endless round of mourning. And prying, gossipy neighbours do nothing to lighten a widow’s load. Perhaps they were already drilling holes in the walls so as to observe the movements of this unattached woman. Who is visiting her in the evening? Who is that she is talking to? Is she really spending her time mourning the dear departed?
‘I should take a husband, Sindbad,’ the woman apologised and lowered her eyes. ‘Next door have drilled a hole in my bedroom wall. They want to pry even into my dreams. I dare not dream any more. I know that once I’m safely married they’ll leave me in peace.’
Sindbad reassured her. ‘No one can see me, I am only a spirit. Only you can see me, Euphrosyne. I speak to you as if I were a dream figure at your bedside.’
‘It’s true, when you died I dreamt most intensely of you,’ the woman continued, absorbed, as if picking up a long neglected train of thought. It was a persistent thought that accompanied her everywhere, which trailed her, which clung to her dress like some furry little monkey. Sometimes she turned around. Who is following me? ‘I dreamt your dead body was laid out on the wood chest in the kitchen and my servants were all dressed in mourning clothes. I picked you up with an enormous effort, and carried you on my shoulders. I almost collapsed under the weight. But I kept going. I took you to bed. I laid you out and kept looking at you to see if you were really dead. You were dead and I strewed the yellow silk eiderdown with flowers … Next day I was sure you were dead. Did I weep over you? I think I wept quietly at night, when no one was looking, when I myself hardly noticed it.’
Sindbad stroked her brow; she felt it like an autumn breeze. ‘Ah, you should think of something nicer. Have you revisited the places where we used to stroll arm in arm when no one could see us? Have you walked through those distant suburbs where the houses suddenly shrank so that we could touch their eaves? Have you walked with anyone through an old graveyard where the rain has washed the names off the gravestones and made all the dead anonymous? Have you visited the little pâtisseries where our feet used to touch under the table, or inns where we took shelter for the night, where the innkeeper was as ruddy-cheeked as English novels would have him be, where the windows gave on to a park and we could touch the red leaves of the vine that was growing wild? Have you taken a carriage through the autumn countryside as we used to do, holding hands the whole way, not knowing why? Has anyone told you since I left that your legs are shapelier than the legs of deer on reservations, your hands whiter than those of princesses who have long died and have nothing to do but rest their lovely hands on their heavy silk dresses, that the locks of hair curling on your neck give well-wined and dined young men plenty to think about, and that the rustling of your silk skirt is like the whispering of moss in the forest in June where both happy and unhappy lovers have kissed? Has anyone told you they would die for you and that life without you would be pointless and hopeless?’
The woman sighed and answered in a breaking childlike voice: ‘People have said a great deal since then … But they all lied. Only you told the truth, Sindbad. Oh, how I believed you. I trusted in you as in a god, as in my mother when I was a child. And I have never gone with any other man to those places we visited, where we were constantly telling each other how our love would never end. I have never seen another man’s face above my shoulders in the reflection of that lake where we used to row and I would have felt ashamed in front of the old man in the café if, one or two years later, I had waited, hopeful and excited, for an appointment with another man, there where since time immemorial women have waited for their lovers in secret. Will you let me be married again?’
‘You have behaved impeccably, so I will,’ the ghost answered, pulling his frock coat even closer about him, and ceremonially bending his knee, he gave a little bow and left her.
An Overnight Stay
What did Sindbad like?
He liked snowdrifts and women’s legs.
The provincial dance school and the little inn where he could sit like a stranger and whisper to the innkeeper’s wife, suggesting that they should run away together.
Leaves in the park in autumn, blotched as if with blood, and abandoned windmills where one day he might murder the woman he loved best.
Melancholy roads between the hills and the smile of the woman in charge of the horses at the travelling circus when she received his bouquet.
He liked the scent of graveyard flowers in tales told by old women as they knitted socks and remembered past loves, and the lies he told to novice nuns in the corridors of railway carriages.
He liked wooing complete strangers in highland towns, making up to innocent bourgeois women with many children then suddenly leaving — and peeking through the windows of houses in crooked deserted streets on snowy nights to see what was happening by candlelight.
He liked hands, hair, women’s names, voices and caresses. He liked to appear in young girls’ dreams, to court fallen women at masked balls as if they were princesses, and to recite poems to those with rough hands.
He liked lies, illusions, fictions and imagination — he would love to have swung from the high trapeze in a rose-pink vest or been an organist at a princely residence, or a confessor in a Jesuit church! A sought-after gynaecologist in Pest or a young tutor in a girls’ school! A night-light in the Sacré Coeur, an illuminated capital in the prayer-book when young women are interceding for their dear ones at the Franciscan church! A window pane through which lovers kissed, a tiny icon under the pillow, a silk-ribbon in a high girdle, or a poet in exile whose works were studied by young girls in secret.