The New Hungarian Quarterly, 1963 (4. évfolyam, 9. szám)

A Selection of Short Stories - Gyula Krúdy: Hand Stand

88 T H E N E W H U N G A R IA N QUARTERLY Finally they began to wheel the little trolley outwards. The old man was about to open the door again. “Just wait another little bit,” the other asked him. “Only once more!” Again he got down to it. And he gave the corpse one more resounding slap on the face. “Let’s get going then,” he stammered, for even his face was red with the great excitement. After handing over the corpse, they ambled back silently to the dissect­ing room. A little while later, Vanya spoke up. “You know, Uncle Nikolai, if I had not done this now I’d have been sorry all my life. Just think—such an opportunity! May God’s mercy fore­sake me if I wasn’t right to do it.” “You were right,” replied the old man gravely. When Vanya went to bed that night, he rubbed his hands together and thought that once his son grew up, whom his wife was now expect­ing, he would tell him what he had done today, and the lad would be ter­ribly proud of his father. It would be a great moment. The boy would stare at him with his big black eyes and worship him as a demi-god. But he had not much time to think about it, for soon he was asleep, breathing deeply the way healthy people do. THE HAND-STAND by GYULA KRÚDY (1878—1933) In the neighbourhood of Museum Garden, where governesses are as pleasant as countesses and feel an urge to act out every trashy German and French novel as, under trees with heart-shaped leaves, they languidly let the book fall onto their lap and, in default of crown princes in disguise, have to make do with ordnance officers—in this neighbourhood, in a seem­ingly somnolent back-street where storks and cranes standing on one leg slumber on white-lace curtains: the ladies behind the locked doors of the houses spend their day with music-making, needlework or light reading, and porters, looking like prize-fighters and “tigers” in hunting jackets, their hair made sleek with the aid of wet brushes, are idling about outside the doors. Wenckheim Palace stands lost in majestic reverie, seeming con­

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