Sunflower by Gyula Krudy Read Free Book Online Page B

windowpane-shattering report of a firearm.
    Eveline, trembling from head to foot, opened her shutters and called out.
    â€œIs that you, Mr. Álmos-Dreamer?”
    â€œYes, it’s me,” his hoarse voice replied. “You can sleep without fear, my angel. The ghost is laid to rest.”
    â€œGive me your hand, my good sir.”
    Andor reached in through the cast-iron bars of the window.
    Eveline slowly pulled off the fur glove and bestowed a lingering fervent kiss on his hand.
    â€œI thank you,” she whispered.
    The warmth emanating from her nightgown, the gentle nestling caress of her kiss, the fervid grasp of her hand, the fragrance of the night befuddled the middle-aged knight errant. Leaning from his saddle, he regarded the young woman with shining eyes.
    â€œMy angel,” he mumbled, blushing, and caressed the girl’s exposed neck.
    Uttering a quick oath, he snatched back his hand and spurred his long-maned little horse. Enormous wolfhounds mutely sped through the swirling snow in his wake like the hounds of night.
    Eveline’s insomnia proved to be of long duration.
    If you are sleepless in the big city you may gain some consolation from street noises that tell you there are others who find no relief in the night. But in the village the midnight hours can drive you to distraction, their slow passage as sluggish as the creaking of the deathwatch beetle. You may well imagine yourself a portrait of an antique ancestor hanging on the wall, whose wide-open eyes must contemplate one generation after another. The years whiz by with the wind and the rain, the rumbling storms, the migrating birds, the unctuous words of the priest and the mourners’ bent heads by the open grave, stallions collapsing in a heap and fine old watchdogs laid low to rest, serving maids who were once young and fair, and tumbledown fences, desolate wishing wells and overgrown gardens... One after another, the years whoosh by. Only the insomniac looks on with open eyes, like a cadaver who forgot to die. A fine dust descends from the moldering ceiling to cover everything: bright faces and haymaking hips, merry neighbors, springtime smiles, flashing white teeth. Transience squats by the foot of the bed like a moribund, faithful old servitor. And the hand reaches less often for the thirst-quenching goblet.
    At last the roosters began to crow.
    And night shatters like a worn-out curse. At the call of that crazy bird, the sluggish, motionless curtain of darkness begins to stir. Other sounds filter from the far distances. Perhaps it is the wild geese passing high overhead, following their obscure paths, obeying a mysterious command to cross night’s vast gulf like wandering souls conversing in otherworldly tongues.
    But cock’s crow signals the arrival of those never-glimpsed vagabonds who stand stock still under your window in the dead of night, with murder in their hearts, guilt and terror in their eyes. Come morning, they regain their original shapes and turn into solitary trees at crossroads or hat-waving, curly-haired young travelers with small knapsacks and large staffs, humming a merry tune and marching bright-eyed toward distant lands to bring glad tidings, fun and games, new songs and youthful flaring passions to small houses that somnolently await them. There they sit down at the kitchen table, earn their dinner by telling glorious tall tales, help pour the wine, chop the wood, nab the fattened pig by the ear; they also repair the grandfather clock that had not chimed in forty years and leave in the middle of the night, taking along the young miss’s heart as well as her innocence. How enviably cheerful the lives of these vagabonds who pass your house at cock’s crow after a night of sleeplessness...As if their knee-deep pockets contained some seed they drop in front of the window, to sprout into a yellow-crowned sunflower; no sooner are they gone than it is already tall enough to peek through the