Sunflower by Gyula Krudy

alone, flanked by two candles in that great, grim hall that has ever since accommodated the occupant’s gloomier moods. The torments caused by this remarkable woman were easier to suffer when she was not in sight. He read the French Encyclopaedists, the history of England, and Fanny’s Posthumous Papers . These tomes still remain as he left them, the pages folded where the suffering man stopped reading. He fondled the loaded pistol and spent hours staring at the barrel. Later—during the second winter—he started to drink. At first, it was humble local wines that produced a light-headedness resembling early autumn’s feathery clouds, with undercurrents of melancholy like mist floating above a thinning stand of gorse. Later came the gold inlay of Tokay vintages that buried life’s unbearable torments within the triple coffins of Attila’s funeral—and this made him see ghosts. He turned into a well-known Hungarian type: the village squire who is drunk day and night.
    And so Ákos Álmos-Dreamer lived a life as melancholy as the jack of spades. He could never forget his wife’s past. The many men who had figured in her life now stood like waxworks figures in the corners of the dour hall where Mr. Ákos doused with wine the fires of his body, the headless dragon thrashing in his soul.
    He was stumped; he could not find the secret of winning his wife’s love, even though in his time, in the salad days of his dashing, nonchalant, resilient youth, when rain and snow and frost had been no obstacle, he had made a whole slew of women cry. Yes, he had kicked about their hearts, trampled upon their fragile innocence. Enjoying women’s gracious favors, he cavorted like a deaf hog in a field of corn, as the saying goes. He got tired of their embraces, their natural desires, their sonnet voices, their miseries. He would give his mustache a twirl, and one glance from him was enough to penetrate to the core of many a female’s fancy, although these white-stockinged village women lived in daily fear of damnation and hellfire. When he spoke, his voice went straight to the heart. His caresses were like rare silk. Those passionate kisses of his, impossible to forget. And now every night he strode, bent, aimless and totally disillusioned, back and forth past the portrait of Eveline he had had an itinerant artist paint on the sly—for the woman was so determined not to serve him she refused to pose for her portrait in oils. And he moaned and groaned like an epileptic:
    â€œWhy can’t you love me, my wife, my sweet angel?”
    He paced under that framed face like a moon-sick child until one night it spoke up—the portrait did, or else its original had slithered into the room full of wine fumes:
    â€œI’ll love you when you’re ready to die for me,” the voice cooed in answer to Ákos Álmos-Dreamer’s laments.
    Subsequent nights advised Álmos-Dreamer about how to execute his suicide.
    The island that sheltered from men’s eyes his beloved wife (like stolen treasure) was surrounded by the Tisza floodlands. In the distance lay The Birches, monotonous sandy hills barren of all thought, darkling furze thickets asleep on the horizon like so many trembling widows, the wild geese departing from this region under night’s dark tapestry like fleeing spirits honking their farewells in weird voices from the sad heights, as if summoning every unhappy person below.
    â€œGhee-gaw!” cry these enigmatic birds of other worlds and other shores.
    That’s what these voices sound like to the marshdwelling fisherman in his lair, but one who loves life’s wonders will find all sorts of meaning in the voices emanating from the dark. Ákos Álmos-Dreamer awaited the wild geese to summon him into the blue yonder. He would depart from here like a drenched, dark, frost-winged wild goose and go far, far away... And once the gander is gone from the nest the