Sunflower by Gyula Krudy

Author:Gyula Krudy
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781590174081
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

5. Our Lady’s Fountain

THE WILD duck quacked in the reeds.

It was springtime; day by day more of them returned to the land, more of those invisible beings from their far-flung wanderings, the ones who come again to teach the long-stemmed grass by the ditch to hum and sing, who play with insects that crawl forth from the soil, the creatures that swing on bare birch twigs and screech at the highway traveler.

It is these invisible hands that flap the white blouses women set out to dry in the meadow; they also dig quick runnels for spring freshets, squat in a ditch to teach frogs diverse cochonneries, grab ahold of the cows’ tails and flick a light fillip across the snoozing shepherd’s face under his tilted hat. They rip moss from the manor house’s eaves, ascend like so many bubbles in the ancient drainpipe’s dark bowels to emerge near the chimney, on which they plop down and sit, swinging their legs. They slap young wives on the back, pinch the rooster’s spur, feed the hounds baneful weeds to make them run around all day. They are mischievous kobolds, smoke rings, balls of air in sunlight; in a drizzle they flatten themselves under leaves, squeeze behind the bedstead, crouch on the threshold, hide in the back of the cart, tangle, like invisible bats, in the peasant’s matted hair, latch onto his wife’s chemise and tug his daughter’s pigtails. You might call them breezes that arise in the raspberry patch, or warm drops of rain beating against the windowpane so loudly that they wake the dreamer. They pick on the graybeard, press his head into the straw, and ride his neck with legs flung apart. And they chivy young men as if they were starlings.

In pouring rain or curtain-tugging sunshine life went on in its customary monotonous rounds at the old manor house of Hideaway. Eveline found a trunkful of old novels in the attic, books read by her grandmother in the last century. The faded green volumes exuded an air of romanticism dear to her heart. Jósika, Dumas, Sue, a Rocambole...Oh, why wasn’t it winter again, with the snap and crackle of large logs in the fireplace to accompany her reading! As for Miss Maszkerádi, she stopped at times by the carved gatepost and pensively surveyed the landscape. Had she caught a glimpse of Mr. Pistoli, that worthy joker would not have gotten away unpunished.

Andor Álmos-Dreamer, being the romantic bachelor that he was, had naturally stayed away from the Bujdos manor ever since Miss Maszkerádi had been in residence.

Each human life possesses certain sensitivities, dove-pecked injuries, that are never noted by the casual observer, like invisible cracks in amber.

Words uttered unthinkingly, absentminded glances, careless gestures on the part of our fellow humans, somehow manage to avoid the wise or cynical man, bouncing off his outer wrappings, whereas they seem to follow in the tracks of other people, seeking them out from afar, like cats do certain women. You may be in the

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