Then my wife asked me: "Have you been thinking of me also all this time?"
And if I had not been able to answer, "Always of thee!" and if, while saying this, I had not been able to look her honestly in the face, she would have been amply justified in tearing the passport to pieces and flinging the fragments in my face.
CHAPTER XV
MARVELS NOT TO BE SEEN FOR MONEY
It was now four years since I had made friends with the beech woods. For two years I was "Sajó," but after that I was again able to practise the art of letters in my own name.
My wife and I saw nobody, and nobody came to see us. We had both of us quite enough to do without paying visits. My wife was an actress, and I an author. And let nobody suppose that actresses and authors live in the land of Cockaigne.[88] Both have very hard work to do, and rest is their dearest recreation.
[88] Lit., a sky full of fiddles.
Unfortunately I was engaged in publishing and editing. Nominally, indeed, the director of the National Theatre was the responsible editor and publisher of the belle-lettristic and artistic journal Délibab, for my name was still under police supervision; but, in reality, I wrote and edited the whole paper, corrected the proofs, and folded up, directed, and despatched the copies of it to the subscribers—and got into trouble for it besides.
My only assistant was a worthy, semi-rustic, very pronounced Hungarian lad, called Coloman Iglódi, who had served as lieutenant under the banner of the red-capped Honveds in our Utopian days.[89] At the battle of Tarczal he had received three bullets, one in the face, the second in the arm, and the third in the leg, and these wounds he had to thank for his dismissal as a genuine invalid. So he joined me as messenger, secretary, and door-keeper, and a worthy, honest fellow he was.