A few weeks ago, while tossing and turning in a fit of insomnia, I knocked over a glass of water resting on my bedside table. The first items on the table I jolted up to preserve were my cell phone, watch and He-Man figurine, who stands sentinel during the night hours. Taking the worst of this nocturnal deluge was the book buried at the bottom of my ever-growing 'to read' list. For the last several months, this bottom-of-the-totem-pole position, the depths from which few books ever ascend, I learned with paper towel in hand, was occupied by Gyula Krudy's somewhat unheralded treasure Sunflower. But who had placed it there? I certainly didn't. Of all the Classics I've resolved to read, this obscure piece of Hungarian literature would never have had real estate in my 'to read' stack. So how had it infiltrated this pile? And more importantly, how had it orchestrated it's unfolding escape from the dungeon? There were at least 15 more well-respected tomes ahead of it, all waiting to plead their case.
Before I could answer these questions, I was on page 17, and the whole affair seemed ordained. Perhaps it's because the days were cruelly beginning to shorten, and because the book's many melancholy figures lambaste the effrontery of not only the fall, but of all seasons for their various transgressions, that less than a week later Sunflower had found itself a new home my 'recently read' bookshelf.
Still, the words of the incredulous Hungarian spinster from one of my new favorite NYRB Classics linger:
"Spring!" thought Miss Maszkeradi. "You are an idiot. I just don't believe in you!"
And yet she must have believed in it a tiny little bit, for she searched out the tree she had been in love with for years.
It was a dwarf willow up on the bank of a stream gone dry, highly solemn, determined to hold its ground like some watchman. Its twigs had long ago gone with the wind, like unfaithful, flighty women from an old man's side. But the ancient tree maintained a virile, calm, patriarchal equanimity. This was one somber, manly male who never showed any hurt, rejoiced not at Eastertime, nor did it celebrate the coming and going of evanescent life all around.
Miss Maszkeradi had sought precisely such a gruff, ancient tree-like male all her life, to whom she could have been as faithful as to this rooted, bark-bound, impassive trunk that had a face, as in fabled forests of old, hands in pockets, and a waist aslant, in a bored pose. At times she fancied the tree as an aging vagabond who had weathered many a hardship in his wifeless life, tramped about aimless as a muddy dog, the kept lover of man-hungry females; he despised love's joys and woes, had plucked his share of triumph and hopelessness, taken quiet delight in success, had women on their knees to kiss his hand; passionless, not even pretending a semblance of emotion, he seduced the women in his path, then sent them packing, so many used-up playmates; they had loved and hated him, caressed him with trembling hands, then flung curses at his head, the way chambermaids in Pest toss trash out of a window. . . This manly one stayed calm and collected by living the inward life, thinking his own thoughts and always doing whatever felt good. He never kept a flower, a lock of hair, or remembrance of a kiss. He dealt with women as they deserved. Never did he wander with aching heart on moonlit nights, under anyone's window, no matter how much awaited . . .He might prowl about for a week or two like a dog in springtime, then, all skin and bones and weary of the world, he would return from his wanderings and never recall what happened to him, what women had said, what they smelled and tasted like . . .
The old rogue pretended not to notice last year's lover, Miss Maszkeradi. Indifferent and cool, he stood his ground by the vanished creek whose bed had perhaps drained off his very life, never to return, flighty foam, playful wavelet, rainbow spray.
"Here I am, grandpa," Maszkeradi whispered, sliding from her saddle.
She beheld the ancient tree's inward-glancing eye, compressed, cold mouth, thick-skinned, impassive waist, and pocketed hands.
"I am here and I am yours," she went on, after embracing the tree as an idol is embraced by some wild tribeswoman who can no longer find a mate that's man enough in her own nation. The old willow's knotted gnarls and stumps, like so many hands, palpated all over Miss Maszkeradi's steel-spring body. The mossy beard stuck to the frost-nipped girl-cheek already quite cool to start with. Who knows, the old willow might even have reciprocated her embrace.
"I know you can keep a secret," she mumbled. "Please don't tell anyone I love you."
She hugged that tree as she had never dared to hug a man. Her arms and legs wound around the trunk, her incandescent forehead pressed against the ancient idol, this offshoot of Roman Priapus that had escaped being daubed in cinnabar by womenfolk.
"As long as I'm around, I'll visit you, old partner in crime," she said.
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