Life Is A Dream by Gyula Krúdy

Author:Gyula Krúdy
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-14-195723-4
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2010-05-06T00:00:00+00:00

And yet Szindbad was perfectly aware of everything happening around him.

He could see anger flooding the woman’s face, as if she had just discovered her favourite rooster lying dead in the henhouse, then he saw her start to sniffle like a little girl whose doll had broken. Next she sent up a groaning sob and clapped her hands together repeatedly, as if trying to escape some nightmarish dream that kept hounding her even after she had woken … The howl that left her throat now came from the gut, and was comparable to the screams of uterine spasm or giving birth – their authenticity beyond doubt since midwives can be as notoriously heartless as the dead. This howl of anguish frightened the grey and white speckled hen, kept in the kitchen, into inquiring with frantic clucks what was happening in the house. Next a cow started lowing in the stable; cows have had an interest in domestic events ever since New Testament times. Outdoors in the snow the dog ambled to the middle of the yard to watch the soul in its flight towards the sparkling stars, and howled her own canine funeral rite.

Terka, hearing these signs of sympathy from her domestic animals, gradually eased up her howls, eyeing the dead man dreamily, hoping he might still be swayed from his stubborn determination and come back from the other world, back to this familiar eiderdown bedding, back to the company of Terka who smelled of fresh ham, bacon and sausages at a pig-sticking feast, and help her solve the secrets of lucky or ill-omened dreams in the silence of the night, and scrawl lottery numbers with charcoal on the wall – even though the Temesvar lottery had been discontinued long ago … Could his promise really have come true, that one fine day he would fall asleep and never come back from that other world one mostly visits in dreams? … Men are so weird – you can’t believe them even when they’re dead… And who knows, perhaps Szindbad up and died just to be free of Terka.

‘At least you could have waited till morning, then it would have made more sense,’ she muttered, and her face already clearly indicated that she wished the dead man out of her house.

‘Now what is she going to do?’ wily Szindbad wondered, for he loved to second-guess women, just as he loved to predict the lowest prices at the market.

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