Skylark - Dezso Kosztolanyi [68]
“Aquam vitae, aquam vitae.”
By now he could speak only Latin, above all through quotations from the classics. At times like these he'd rattle off whole pages of Virgil and Horace. The alcohol set his sharp wits alight and he didn't appear drunk in the least. He sat erect, his blue eyes sparkling brightly, and seemed the most sober of them all. His thick, red nose, which had bled that afternoon, was stuffed with yellow cotton wool he had been given for this purpose by the chemist.
After the third glass of schnapps, Priboczay could not resist performing his ancient party trick. He lit a match and carefully held it in front of Szunyogh's lips.
“Look out,” said several of the Panthers at once. “He'll explode. He'll go up in flames.”
Completely unruffled, Szunyogh stared calmly into space.
“Castigat ridendo mores,” he muttered.
Those versed in Latin shouted back at him:
“Vino Veritas, old boy, vino Veritas.”
The prank delighted Feri Füzes in particular.
He was Szunyogh's former pupil and had often come a cropper with his appalling Latin. He always leaped at any opportunity to pique the old man, as if in repayment of a long-standing debt. For want of a better idea of his own–Feri Füzes could never count to two in his ideas, and the one idea he could count to was usually someone else's–he too lit a match and, in the hope that what had worked once would work twice, lifted it to Szunyogh's mouth.
Szunyogh, however, blew out the match with a single breath and knocked it from his hand.
Everyone applauded. Everyone except Feri Füzes.
“Excuse me,” he said sharply.
“Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses.”
“I beg your pardon?” asked Feri Füzes attempting to affect a certain gentlemanly sang-froid, but unable to disguise the embarrassment of a poor pupil.
He looked his former teacher contemptuously up and down, then drew closer towards him.
“Silentium,” Szunyogh cried, raising a trembling finger and staring straight through this small-time cavalier with unspeakable contempt. “Silentium,” he repeated, now only to himself as he sank enraptured into that deep and peaceful stillness which he would soon inhabit for good. “Silentium.”
Feri Füzes sat back down and debated whether or not to send his seconds to the old drunkard the following day.
The day had passed, for the Panthers, much like any other Friday. Most of the day they spent lying stretched out on their couches, fully clothed, recovering from the night before. The wives sat at home, nursing their patients. For lunch they prepared cabbage broth and caviar puree with lemon and onion. They opened bottle after bottle of mineral water and beer, the latter, as is well known, being the perfect antidote to alcohol poisoning.
Only at around eleven in the morning would the men pay a brief call on Priboczay, who, as a fellow reveller and time-honoured Panther, prepared expert cures for their various complaints in the St Mary Pharmacy. According to the individual taste and ailment of each patient, he mixed medicines from a whole range of ingredients. He took down the Tinctura China, Tinctura Amara and Tinctura Gentiana, and poured them into handsome cut-glass beakers, stirring in the odd drop of Spiritus Mentha and more volatile oils from smaller vials, before baptising the whole concoction with a final dash of ether. This final touch was never to be skimped.
Szunyogh received an extra dose of unadulterated ether, and much good it did him.
The others stood in a circle, chinked their glasses and knocked back the bitter potions. Screwing up their mouths and wrinkling their noses, they all emitted a single, simultaneous Brr. In an instant they were as right as rain.
Now Környey sonorously requested leave to speak.
He had much to report: who had collapsed and when; who had arrived home at what hour and in what manner–on foot, in a carriage, alone or aided by the Samaritan committee whose charge it was to transport the more paralytic Panthers to their beds like corpses; then who had been drinking wine, champagne or schnapps, and how much of each had been consumed by whom; and finally