There were shadows perceptible in the faint light of the corridor. Sindbad was resting his head against the dulcimer and Joco, a big-bellied, sharp-moustached, curly-headed old man, was raising a glass of red wine to her. Having greeted her he resumed his singing. The gypsy in red breeches was strumming the instrument with invisible hands. Sindbad bowed his head.
Irma stood at the window, her heart racing. It was only when the ancient cockerel began to crow that she woke from her trance. The shadows were gone from the corridor and the sound of the dulcimer sounded faintly from the graveyard.
Sumach Trees in Blossom
This story begins with Sindbad still a young man — young in so far as his legs were steady but where his heart should have been he wore an antique red-gold amulet rather than a black hole. His eyes sparkled like the winter sun on frosty pines and his ankles were so slender and lithe he might have worn dancing shoes like the professional dancers at The Green Devil. He gazed mockingly into women’s eyes because he imagined each of them to be a potential murderer, while all the time his mouth spoke the required words with such refinement and courtesy he might have been an abbé addressing an innocent elderly lady who was thinking of leaving her jewellery to the monastic foundation. He pretty well knew all there was to know about women’s tears, their sighs and inviting looks, but retained a respect for the sincere hate and fury they felt when abandoned. Being a wise man, however, he never imagined that there was a single woman in the world who spent sleepless nights dreaming passionately of him. Women were always thinking of something else when they were alone! At this time, though, he was inclined to believe that he might deserve a lady’s attention.
Here we are thinking of the affair of the goldsmith’s wife, who occupied Sindbad’s thoughts for some years. Not that he failed to notice that other women possessed neat ankles, fine heads of hair, lovely eyes and attractive voices. Nevertheless, whenever he walked alone under the poplars or idled time away at a small inn in Buda (in the Tabán district* particularly, in those smoke-filled vaulted rooms with large wine glasses where a blind musician wheedled away in a corner accompanying a faded ballad singer and the innkeeper peered so suspiciously out from under his otter-fur cap that he looked as if he were sizing up his chances of passing a bit of counterfeit money) Sindbad carried on dreaming, calculating, setting traps, and contemplating romantic plans for seducing housemaids and countesses. And whenever he was busily planning out his future in this way Sindbad’s thoughts invariably centred on the goldsmith’s wife: he imagined her in her small château with red windows, its roofs swimming in mist, or saw her riding in a four-horse carriage. In the midst of his reveries, he would often write her name on the table with his finger dipped in wine. The table before him now was covered in large versions of the letter F. The letters together added up to the word Fanny, and that word, whether in the smoky, dreamy distance, or in the tops of the poplars or on the yellow walls of the vaulted inn in the Tabán, inevitably conjured the figure of the goldsmith’s wife in a wide-collared mantle with a crown on her head like one of those raven-haired Madonnas in some monastery in Holy Russia. The golden amulet Fanny had given him to wear next to his heart showed the Virgin as she might have appeared to pious medieval engravers. Sindbad would often press the relic to his lips when he found himself alone.
Since the goldsmith’s wife was very well known in Pest, Sindbad’s meetings with her had to be conducted in the most mysterious and exciting secrecy. They met in churches, at balls, at boat races or on the less frequented paths in the sanatorium gardens; in the evening the carriage would wait with curtains drawn in some silent street and the goldsmith’s wife would emerge from an alley and on quick delicate feet find the carriage door open and step in; at other times they would exchange stolen kisses on the dark spiral stairs that led to the lame seamstress’s shop; or Sindbad would leap on to the streetcar as it entered the tunnel just so that he might secretly squeeze the beloved object’s hand for a minute or so; or he would suddenly grasp her arm in the twilit square under the Matthias Church just as the choir was singing the Hungarian ‘Hymn to Mary’ in the tower.
The happiest times, though, were those they spent in the district through which water used to be drawn up to the castle from the river below, the place still known as Víziváros or Watertown, where the goldsmith’s wife had herself been born in a Renaissance-style house. There was a restaurant there which opened in the summer, with sumach trees in the courtyard. These trees changed into a most beautiful red colour as autumn advanced and a red-combed cockerel stood and mused on the unused tables. Red was the wine which the apronned waiter placed before them on the mild end-of-October afternoon when the wild vine was no longer fruiting on the nitrous walls.
Fanny pointed to the rusty iron-grille marking the floor above them. ‘That’s where I was born, Sindbad, thirty years ago. My mother died not long after my birth and her polished coffin was carried down the stairs by retired soldiers. My father collected antique boxes and liked to walk about in slippers, and in the evening, once he had finished with his boxes, he’d stand and ponder with his hands thrust into his pockets. My childhood was rather sad on the whole. My best friends were the naked shepherds, the goddesses and the swans, those violinists in powdered wigs and breeches and the enamelled mail coaches which decorated the lids of my father’s boxes. Later my father brought home a little old snuff-coloured gentleman who was always reading the fables of La Fontaine. He had a high white waistcoat. I can no longer remember his name but whenever he looked up from the old French book I found I was staring into the most extraordinary, unforgettable pair of eyes I had ever seen. They were sad and blue, all-forgiving, all-comprehending, wise and gentle. They contained everything the house meant to me: patient attention to the tiny joys of life, immediate and tacit forgiveness, good behaviour and the ability to dream quietly. The old Frenchman’s eyes taught me to live so quietly as to forget the hustle and bustle of life, that it should be no more than the sound of a small violin being played in a silent street; he taught me that towers may not be known because they are always enveloped in mist, that it is best to suffer unnoticed, that my shoes and gloves should always be clean and that I should comb my brown hair off my neck with a wet comb … When I was first unhappy — many years ago — my instincts led me back to the old house. It was autumn and I sat down at one of these tables and ate cherries and cream. Our old Frenchman was still alive then and he watched me for a while from the corner without my noticing. Ever since then, whenever I’m in trouble, I come here in case the old man is still alive.’
For the first time Sindbad took some trouble to examine the house containing the little summer restaurant which went under the name of The Golden Goose and sported an ancient coat of royal arms above the gate. He noted the red-combed cockerel and the silent gallery above him where the woman he now regarded as his wife used to run about as a child.
One day, after his death, he returned to the house in quiet Víziváros — it was as if he had only left yesterday. The cockerel stood guard in the usual place and the sumach trees waited patiently in their red garments like so many court officials. The elderly royal couple they were waiting for would soon be passing by, their heads bowed, passing by and passing on.
Sindbad didn’t have to wait long. He heard light faint footsteps under the arch of the gate. A rusted lock was moaning in the wind, grumbling that though the guard dog was gone human feet were still shuffling, stumbling, struggling and striding down the worn cobbles outside, feet which imagined they were conveying kings, generals, poets and a hundred varieties of happiness home after a night of drinking.