‘No, my dear,’ answered the woman solemnly. ‘I have my fine dresses, my expensive hats, but I only put them on when we go out together. For ten years you have been promising to take me to the circus. And for ten years I have not visited the circus, though I have never been so poor as to dispose of my finest dress and my best hat …’
Sindbad knew from previous experience where such conversations tended to lead, so he quickly interrupted her. ‘No accusations now, Monkey. You visited the circus often enough in your youth. The circus is very much like the music hall. There are clowns in both. And loud women.’
‘But the horses …’
‘Horses, horses! I’ve seen enough of horses to last me the rest of my life. I really don’t understand how a serious, retiring, decent woman like you can spend day and night thinking about circuses.’
‘But Sindbad,’ she argued, her face solemn, ‘it’s been ten years since you promised me the circus. Your back was aching and you couldn’t sleep unless I stroked it. You said that when you got better you would take me to the circus and you’ve not done it. I go nowhere by myself nowadays, my dear. There isn’t anybody else. Only you.’
Sindbad leant forward and stroked Monkey’s hand. ‘We’ve had enough fun in our lives, you and I, Monkey.
You yourself once danced in the chorus line … Let me suggest something else. When spring comes, let’s wait for a fine sunny afternoon, pack a picnic, and wander the Buda hills. We’ll take a horse-drawn coach across the Danube and the bridge will echo to the horses drumming. The coachman will sound his horn and there will be a provincial couple sitting opposite us, continually asking if it’s far to the Kaiser Baths.* The horses will canter on and the coach will roll cheerfully along the rails. There will be children kicking a ball in Széna Square and someone playing an accordion in one of those old wattle and daub inns. But we won’t alight there, no, we’ll keep going and the coachman will give his horn another toot and the provincial couple will ask about the Kaiser Baths again. The fragrance of the Buda hills will already be filling the coach, and we will sit beside each other like a happily married couple. I will be a retired civil servant and you my wife of twenty years. We’ll have a respectable amount of money in the Serbian Bank in Buda, and will have long had our eyes on a house in St Lorincz, a place with a small garden where you can keep ducks and hens …’
‘You rascal!’ cried Monkey, laughing and crying at the same time, and happily throwing her arms about Sindbad’s neck.
‘Well, isn’t that a lot better than going to the circus?’ asked a satisfied Sindbad.
‘A hundred times better,’ answered Monkey and her eyes shone as bright as a child’s at Christmas. ‘So it’s off to the hills in the spring and we’ll lie in the grass.’
‘Yes, Monkey. And now tell me, what have you been doing since I last saw you?’
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Nothing. That’s what I’m used to doing … Do you remember my dark handsome brother who sang ballads so beautifully at the music hall and worked for the railways? Do you remember him? The poor boy got into trouble of some sort and went to America, but no one knew because I baled him out. But, it cost me all I had.’
‘The bonds too?’
‘I just kept them in the cupboard and never used them.’
‘Your jewels?’
‘Heavens! since when have I cared tuppence for jewellery? That’s all in my foolish past.’
Sindbad shook his head and pondered. ‘A pity your brother had to sing so much,’ he grumbled.
‘It’s all the same now. I moved back into Cat Street, back into the house where I once owned the entire first floor and where Mitrovics the driver hung about the street all day waiting for me. And lords and earls would come and I would gad about with them, because I was young then. I’m back because I still have acquaintances here. Dancers from the clubs drop in for lunch with me. And I make a modest living out of that. If some little lordling should turn up now, I would kick him down the stairs.’
Sindbad quietly blew out smoke. ‘Yes,’ he muttered, ‘you’ve always liked cooking.’
How did the story go?
Once Sindbad was dining with Monkey. There were six people around the table, with only one other man beside Sindbad in the company — the old gentleman in a skull cap and neatly arranged necktie who watched from the wall and hadn’t opened his mouth in years. He was, after all, stuck in his gilded frame.
The ladies around the table, who all lived in the house in Cat Street, were, for the most part, wearing long housecoats. They had pulled these housecoats on over their underclothes, for they were not in the habit of dressing till the evening, when the big drum sounded and the band signalled the beginning of the next performance. Their hair, which would be beautifully coiffeured by clever hairdressers by the time evening came, was now brushed any old how, cascading over their foreheads and into their eyes. At first they regarded Sindbad with a certain interest, and the odd one even stuck her elegant and finely shod dancer’s leg out from beneath her housecoat, but when it became apparent (over soup this was — a chicken soup with vegetables, just as Sindbad liked it) not only that Sindbad was unavailable, but that he was eating his soup under Monkey’s jealous eye, the dancers took no more notice of him and consumed the rest of their dinner without recourse to cutlery. All artistes, in the privacy of these four walls they smacked their lips, licked their fingers and thoroughly enjoyed their food, as if knives and forks, like girdles and mascara, were merely reminders of their sad lives, their gay and melancholy profession. It was day now, noon, and the evening lay in the distant future; they took great pleasure in their eating. One of them, a soft-featured, reddish-haired woman, started to sing a peasant ditty she had heard back in the village. It was a song sung by army recruits: ‘If only my mother could see me in the city …’ The women listened attentively to her passionate rendering, one or two with tears in their eyes. Who knows what they were thinking?
There was only one of them, a small-boned, flirtatious-eyed girl with a strange smile, who wouldn’t let Sindbad alone. She kept rubbing her foot against his leg under the table, and on one occasion whispered to him, ‘Come down to the music hall tonight.’
Monkey spotted this immediately, of course, and hissed at her, ‘You snake. You serpent. Careful I don’t poison you.’
The girl ran off, and not long after the others gathered themselves together, having toyed with the breadcrumbs and rolled them into little balls with their delicate fingers. Yawning and sleepy-eyed, hands in pockets, they dispersed to various corners of the house in Cat Street only to emerge in the evening — when the big drum thuds at the heart of the band — in great feathered hats and expensive dresses, decked out in jewels. There was to be no more eating with fingers, nor singing to their heart’s content. They were on company time now. It was only at Monkey’s dinners they could relax and be themselves.
‘I see these trollops still hold a peculiar charm for you!’ Monkey started up once she was alone with Sindbad. ‘This lunch was intended as a test. I was curious whether you would retain your sang-froid, your composure, your indifference, in the company of four or five women, for so you ought by now, you ancient old roué. You were practically beside yourself with joy when that nasty piece of work started prodding your leg. Well, my dear, I told her where to get off. Because, as I said, this lunch was a test. I’m a poor unfortunate woman. You’ll never change.’
Sindbad shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t understand your ladyship,’ he grumbled. ‘You bring on the dancing girls then complain when I’m not rude to them.’