Sindbad’s parents, let it be known, were punctilious in paying his fees to the monastery and on more than one occasion sent barrels of wine as a contribution to Holy Communion, over which Sindbad officiated, wearing his red surplice and rattling off the Confiteor at the speed of light, before ceremoniously and becomingly ringing his bell, as if the novices in the rear pews were only waiting for this word of command before they could get down on their knees. It was in this office one Sunday, while wearing his red surplice, that he succeeded in seducing Anna Kacskó, who had come to mass along with a few friends of hers. How did all this happen?
One reason why Sindbad neglected to thank the prince in an appropriately humble fashion was because he was a boarding student at the Kacskó residence. Old man Kacskó was a chief magistrate — one of the ‘old school’ you used to be able to find in little hillside towns. In his youth he might have been no more than a magistrate’s runner, then a magistrate’s clerk; but as time went on he grew a beard and learned the ropes simply by being there. And as his beard grew so did his belly, until, in the end, he became chief magistrate. There is nothing in the highland magistrates of that rakish quality typical of the lowland sort; they are solid upright men who have big families and do their bit at home cutting up wood and making candles, rarely losing their tempers unless the cook burns the soup. Old man Kacskó brought his heavy fist down on the table.
‘I am chief magistrate!’ he thundered.
Minka, his gentle, glum, neatly combed wife answered as was her wont, ‘Yes, but not when you’re at home.’
‘How dare you talk like that to me in front of my daughters?’ shouted old man Kacskó, and put his hand to his ear as if trying to catch the words of some Slovakian plaintiff at a hearing.
‘They are my daughters,’ Minka sighed. ‘The chief magistrate shows little interest in the fact that they should be married one day.’
After this there was little left for Gyula Kacskó, chief magistrate, to do but escape to his office. He sent one of his clerks home to fetch his favourite pipe.
It was true that no one seemed to care much whether the Kacskó girls married or not. There were three of them, three maidens, brought up to be pretty, healthy and strapping, and they lived, as did Sindbad, on the upper floors of the house. They took weekly turns to do the cooking: Magda excelled at mutton, Anna at cabbage and Róza at sweet pastries. In the afternoon or the evening, when Sindbad had, for his own good reasons, to leave the downstairs sitting room (if only so that old man Kacskó and mother Minka should be able to have a proper row without the chief magistrate escaping to his office), the young ladies took turns to escort Sindbad, who was frightened of being alone and was not too fond of study, to his room, to sit at his desk, engage in a little handiwork and read endless novels. Magda and Anna were usually so absorbed in their novels that Sindbad could fall asleep over his homework without them noticing. But Róza, who was just sixteen, and was not as likely as the others to look condescendingly on the adolescent Sindbad, would often reach over, grab a hank of the student’s thick dark hair in her fair hands, and give it a sound, good-humoured tug. The boy yelped in pain. Róza blushed all the deeper and tugged even harder.
‘Study!’ she cried, her eyes sparkling, ‘or else, as God is my witness, Lubomirski will fail you.’
Sindbad quickly bent over his book again, till one day on the deserted upper floor, where bags of oats lay like dead men in the empty rooms, a sudden wind sprung up. Róza was frightened and shut her eyes listening to its roar, then, perhaps because the fear grew stronger in her, she gave a little shiver and leant against the boy, pale and distraught, letting her head drop onto his shoulder and putting her arm about his neck.
As for Sindbad, the wind gave him such a fright he didn’t dare turn the page of his book though he had learned all that was to be learned from the one that lay open before him.
So, back in the days when George Lubomirski watched over the progress of the pupils of Podolin, grasping, in his buffalo skin gloves, the hilt of his sword on which representations of the currently popular saints were clearly to be seen — in the days when Róza Kacskó good-humouredly, energetically and somewhat tenderly tugged Sindbad’s hair, then leaned her head upon his shoulder once the punishment had been duly administered, there was a boy who was second to none in his study of theology, of the sacraments and of the piety due to icons, who for one reason or other was referred to as Pope Gregory by the novices of the ancient monastery. Pope Gregory was a hunchbacked little boy with features as delicate as the holy wafer he received once a week. Though Sindbad often took the opportunity of punching Pope Gregory, he nevertheless made friends with him, and what’s more, one afternoon, just when Róza was due to be sitting at his desk at the Kacskós’, supervising his studies, he invited the little hunchback up. It could only have been to show off Róza, to demonstrate her friendship, her lovely eyes and fair hands.
This is how the visit of Pope Gregory went: Róza remained serious and silent the whole time, behaved condescendingly to both boys and was not at all willing to tug Sindbad’s hair, though she had never wasted an opportunity to do so in the past.
And far from resting her head on Sindbad’s shoulders, or putting her arms about his neck, she railed at him violently. ‘I wonder that Lubomirski tolerates such a hopeless student at the monastery!’
Poor hunchbacked Pope Gregory gawped as if bewitched by the sight of the jerkin tightening on Róza’s naked arms and the pearly buttons heaving silently on her rounded bosom.
But Róza mocked him and slapped him on the back, crying, ‘Just look at this boy. He has a hump like a camel.’
Pope Gregory blinked, his face quietly reddened and he left the upper floor with tears in his eyes.
Sindbad felt a certain bitterness that evening when Róza affectionately rumpled his hair, laid her ashen face against his, grasped his shoulder firmly and swung on the chair. He kept seeing the hunchback’s tearful face and concentrated as firmly as he could on his studies, if only to annoy Róza.
‘Really, what do you see in that toad?’ Róza asked, annoyed when Sindbad refused to take his eyes from the book.
He stretched, stood up and stepped lazily over to the window. The evening — a mild June evening — brought to his ear the mingled noises of travellers on the road snaking up the little hill. The first stars were peering over the distant mountains like children playing at hide-and-seek.
‘From now on you can study with the hunchbacked toad,’ said Róza later, quite solemnly. ‘Teach yourself Latin, if you like him so much.’
This mild cloud was the reason that Sindbad went bathing with Pope Gregory in the River Poprád the following afternoon, behaving as if they were the best of friends. The Poprád wound between timber barriers under the ancient monastery, dark and silent as a lake. Further out, in the middle of the current, the waves danced and frothed as merrily as if they had learned the art of cheerful travelling from merchants trafficking up and down the hills, whistling, singing, tippling their way from country to country.
Naturally, the boys bathed in the deep still water, holding on to the iron staples in the timber, dangling their legs in the bottomless pool. The little hunchback felt absolutely safe in the company of the brave and admirable Sindbad. Suddenly he gave a triumphant cry, ‘Hey, I can feel the river bed here!’ He extended his thin legs. His inky fingers let go of the metal bar and the water silently closed over him. For a brief second Sindbad could still see the curious hump on his back under the surface of the river, then the water, the shore and the tall limes nearby grew unaccountably quiet as if the monastery had touched them with a magic wand and they had died on the spot, as in The Thousand and One Nights.