Nevertheless, that day when forebodings of his own death surprised Sindbad, when he wanted to take his leave of all those women he still respected, he immediately thought of Monkey. The other women, the dark ones, fair ones, the young, the mature, the plump and the skinny, who had all planted their fatal loves in his heart, after whom he had run out of breath, sad, puzzled and perfectly willing to sacrifice his own life a hundred times over on their unresponsive behalf — all were neglected this day. He did not despise them but the thought of them no longer stirred his blood; the memory of their lips which still clung to his lips, the memory of their hands, their feet, their eyes and their voices which, not so long ago, had goaded him to repeat precisely the patterns of his youth in the latter days of his life so that he might kiss those lips and clutch those hands once more, and search the whole world over, to put a girdle about the earth, if need be, seventy-seven times or more in search of his former darlings and their former embraces — all these had vanished.
Vanished: though the train still carried him twenty-four hours a day back to those old side streets, where, once upon a time on a spring morning he saw a young woman in a window, leaning on the ledge in her white night-gown, her hair still a little wild, her eyes still sleepy, one cheek still red from resting on the pillow, and Sindbad made friendly conversation with her before impulsively slipping in to join her, this strange woman in an unknown town. The adventure ended happily enough and twenty years later, on his next visit to the town, he saw a dark-haired young man in the window, learning his lessons. ‘He could well be a younger version of me,’ thought Sindbad.
But now, this early autumn day, they were all gone from his mind, and only the serious, firm-minded Monkey remained, she who had never wanted anything from him but to love him steadfastly, from a distance.
Ages ago, Monkey lived in a lonely house in the outer suburbs of Buda, near the excise post where the tram ran as fast as the express, clattering and humming through the night, so that a sleepless man might occupy himself listening to it.
The janitor put down the boots he was mending, licked his fingers copiously, leafed through the registration book, found his glasses and concluded that Monkey had moved to another district.
‘How could she bear to leave these ancient sumach trees* behind?’ asked Sindbad.
‘Dunno,’ answered the janitor and slammed the book shut.
The sumachs were whispering in the autumn breeze, ‘Heavens, it’s Mr Sindbad’, for there were nights when they had sighed to him.
The janitor picked up the boots and pushed his glasses up on to his forehead. ‘Heavens, it’s Mr Sindbad!’ he cried, for there were nights when he had brought wine or beer from the nearby coffee-house for him when Monkey still lived there.
‘What happened?’ asked Sindbad.
‘It was like this. One day she gave me her cat. She said she was bored of it. Then she threw her old preserving jars on the rubbish heap. She threw away her old velvet hat too. The hat bored her. She was bored with everything here. So she moved away.’
The janitor pinned a price on the boots he had mended. The boots crackled. ‘I haven’t opened the doors at night for anyone since Mr Sindbad stopped visiting.’
Sindbad strolled, preoccupied, from the distant single-storey house, where the well stood in the middle of the courtyard surrounded by sweet-scented sumach trees. He poked a few fallen autumn twigs with his stick.
‘Could Monkey have changed?’ he asked himself.
And he set off to follow the footprints of Monkey’s black low-heeled shoes.
Monkey — sought by Sindbad throughout the length and breadth of Buda and Pest — sat in the window in her pink night-gown, leaning on the ledge and reading a novel by Paul de Kock, just as she had been twenty years ago. Seeing Sindbad trundling down Cat Street, she formed a trumpet with her hands and like a cheerful cabby bellowed from the fourth floor, ‘Here, boy!’
Sindbad immediately recognised Monkey’s voice, for in the whole of Hungary there was only one woman with a voice like that — half hunting horn, half child’s rattle. He looked up and waited for Monkey to give him a graceful wave. The coast was clear. He ran up three steps at a time, arriving exhausted and breathless on the fourth floor.
Monkey was standing in the doorway of the hall, a little cigarillo in her mouth as usual. ‘You had better go easy on those old pins,’ she said, indicating Sindbad’s legs. ‘What the devil were you doing in Cat Street?’
‘Looking for your ladyship!’ answered Sindbad, throwing himself into a chair in the hall.
Monkey refused to believe him as usual. ‘Some little floozie of yours lives down this way, I bet. I’ll find out, you know, and give her a poke in the ribs. I don’t like being cheated right before my eyes, Sindbad.’
Sindbad raised his hand as if taking an oath. ‘It’s you I’m looking for, Monkey. It’s such a long time since I saw you. Last night or the night before I dreamt of you and have been looking for you since. You haven’t forgotten me, have you?’
Monkey took the cigar from her mouth. ‘No, my dear,’ she answered a little downcast. ‘It’s not my way to forget people so quickly. Even though it’s been three whole years since I even saw you, and now I am reading Paul de Kock once again. My only sins are the imaginary ones in my book. But come in, let me get a closer look at you.’
She led Sindbad from the dark hall into the room overlooking the street. There was the old furniture and the portrait of her ancient father who long ago had become merely an all-seeing image; there was the portrait of the dead child to whom Monkey had at one time been an aunt; and there was the sampler framed behind glass as a memorial to the same dead little girl. There was the silent old canary in the window. And there, thrown untidily on the armchair, was the same knitted scarf that had lain on it last time Sindbad came to visit her at her previous address. The woman raised Sindbad’s chin to the light of the window and closely examined his face and his eyes, gently stroking his hair.
‘You know, Sindbad,’ she said after a short silence, ‘sometimes I love you so much, I feel less like your lover — your discarded, abandoned and forgotten lover — than like your mother. I know you so well. It is as if I had given birth to you.’
Sindbad sat down in the armchair and waited while Monkey carefully turned down the page in her book, and put it back in the cupboard.
‘It was you who bought me these Paul de Kock novels, remember? You wanted me to read them at home, alone. I have read nothing else since then.’
Sindbad hummed a little tune as he watched her: she hadn’t changed in ten years. She was a healthy, strong, dark-blonde woman, between thirty and forty years of age, who went early to bed, rose early, and hadn’t worn make-up for a very long time. She liked wearing slippers and cooking tasty meals. In her late teens she used to like riding in carriages with amusing men for company, enjoyed champagne to the sound of gypsy bands and flinging her silk skirt about when dancing. But she got bored with such things because, as she said, there were so many flighty and downright wicked women in Pest that she was ashamed to be seen with them. Wearing slippers was preferable.
‘I thought you’d never leave those sumach trees in the Buda house,’ Sindbad said, gently. ‘I can’t think why you moved back into Cat Street — which you left in disgust in your youth to move to quiet Buda. As far as I know this remains the area where dancers, singers and cabaret performers live. You haven’t gone back to your old profession, have you, Monkey?’