Skylark

by Dezso Kosztolányi

  “You order. I can't even bring myself to look.”

  “What would you like?'

  “Whatever,” Ákos mumbled, “Whatever you want. It makes no difference to me.”

  He looked around him. It wasn't an entirely unpleasant place. Certainly not as bad as he had imagined.

  By now nearly all the tables were full. He recognised no one, and no one recognised him. They lived in such seclusion that they almost counted as strangers. And they felt like strangers too; as if they had stumbled into the restaurant of some altogether unfamiliar town.

  Then Ákos did spot one acquaintance. Opposite, all on his own, sat Weisz and Partner. Old Mr Weisz went everywhere alone, without his partner, whom few had ever seen. But everyone called him Weisz and Partner all the same.

  Looking up from the cloud of tepid steam that rose from the silver bowl before him and misted up his pince-nez, Weisz and Partner greeted Ákos with an absent-minded nod of the head. He was utterly engrossed in the serious business of eating. He stared wide-eyed at the neatly diced red meat of his goulash soup as he ladled it into a porcelain bowl printed with the curlicued monogram KH. Using the back of his soup spoon, he mashed his perfect egg-shaped potatoes into a smooth puree. He ate quickly and with great relish. The remaining, wonderfully oily liquid he mopped up with morsels of bread roll pinned to his fork.

  The waiter arrived at the Vajkays’ table and poured a clear consommé into their plates. Small pea-shaped croutons, made of pancake mix tossed in fat, swam on its glistening surface. They ordered chicken risotto, which they often made at home, followed by bread-and-butter pudding. Ákos ate with a healthy appetite and was not slow to clean his plate.

  “How was it?” asked his wife, who felt herself unqualified to judge in such matters. She was the lightest of eaters, and would only nibble from the tip of her fork.

  “Passable,” the old man replied. “Actually quite...” For a moment his voice became higher, more enthusiastic, then he seemed to change his mind. “Quite passable,” he concluded, correcting himself in time.

  After paying the bill, they sat at their table for a while looking sombre and a little bemused.

  The silvery clattering of cutlery resounded all around. The diners dug into their meals with great conviction, aware that they were carrying out a most important task. Lonely men sat jealously guarding their dishes; whole families made themselves thoroughly at home, tying napkins around the necks of their little boys and girls.

  Ákos repeatedly leaned over to his wife:

  “Who's that?'

  “Don't know.”

  “And him?'

  “Don't know him either.”

  Beside them sat a group of army officers, recently returned from the garrison at Bilek.

  The dashing young men munched crusty rolls between their strong white teeth and lifted anchovies with their toothpicks from the oily depths of narrow tins. Ákos observed them gloomily. As soon as they began to laugh, he lowered his gaze. Their glances offended him. They belonged to a world of happy households, eligible daughters and handsome dowries; a world so very different from his own. To disguise the discomfort he felt whenever they turned his way, he picked up the menu and read it wearily from top to bottom.

  In a far corner of the restaurant, beside a potted palm tree and beneath a portrait of Franz Josef dressed in Hungarian military garb, sat a larger gathering, who lunched here every day at noon. The waiters swarmed around them, bowing and scraping eagerly. Chewing at spicy sausages and knuckles of pork, they knocked back one mug of beer after another. Here Ákos recognised two more acquaintances. One was their family physician, Dr Gál, a short-sighted man who divided his time, in the most fashionable of circles, between the Café, the restaurant and the theatre. Exactly when he found time to see his patients remained a mystery. The other was Priboczay, the quiet, convivial pharmacist, who took his place at table as the Panthers’ deputy president. He sat passively nodding his head, whose thinning fair hair had lost its lustre years before but still refused to go grey and shone a pale lilac colour as if it were dyed.

  But the cream of Sárszeg society were also present.

  Papa Fehér, manager of the local branch of the Agricultural Bank; Prosecutor Galló, who had already delivered his stern indictment speech against the heinous Swabian highwayman; and many others.

  Feri Füzes had settled the conditions for the duel, and very grave they were, too. Gentleman that he was, he spoke of this to no one–apart from Dr Gál, whom he drew to one side at the corner of the long table, where, grinning more broadly than ever, he announced that two gentlemen would be crossing swords at dawn, at the accustomed spot in Sárszeg forest, and that the good doctor might care to stand by with his surgical instruments at the ready. To the finish, naturally, to the finish.

  The door swung open every five minutes, and the new arrival would disappear into this billowing gathering of men.

  Just after one o'clock, when school had finished, the teachers began to arrive: Mályvády, the maths and physics master, and Szunyogh, the Latin teacher.

  Dr Gál instructed the latter to sit down beside him at once. Without uttering a word he clasped Szunyogh's wrist between his forefinger and thumb, and, holding his gold pocket watch in his left hand, began earnestly taking the teacher's pulse.

  Poor Szunyogh was already in a wretched state. Some two years earlier he had begun to exhibit the unmistakable symptoms of delirium tremens, and his family had carted him off to a sanatorium. There he made a slight recovery, but as soon as he was out again he slumped back into his old illness.

  There was a time when he had shown prodigious talent, but in Sárszeg he had surrendered himself to the bottle and become a notorious alcoholic. His students whispered that he kept a hip flask in his pocket and would dash out into the corridor during lessons to take a swig or two. For months now he had been unable to sleep; he could never get warm and, even throughout the summer, wore a thick overcoat and lined his shoes with cotton wool so his feet wouldn't freeze. His puffy cheeks and double chin glowed brick red, and his baby-blue eyes swam with tears. He was always drunk well before noon.

  His ice-cold wrist trembled in the doctor's warm hand. He sat there in the restaurant, the collar of his winter coat turned up, gazing as sheepishly at the doctor as his students gazed at him.

  Dr Gál pressed the lid of his pocket watch shut with a quiet, golden click. He looked Szunyogh in the eye. As always he appealed to the teacher's better self. One by one he extolled the beauties of life, reminding Szunyogh of his wife and charming daughter. He spoke of the teacher's former ambition, of the articles he had once published in the Philological Review. And he did nothing to disguise the horrid fate that would soon await his friend if he failed to change his ways. Szunyogh listened attentively, his blond eyelashes blinking, his torso swaying to and fro, and his emaciated legs shivering beneath the table. Accepting the physician's sound advice, he ordered himself a modest glass of table wine.

  The Vajkays were just about to leave when Bálint Környey strode in, accompanied by two other gentlemen.

  One was Szolyvay, the popular comedian. The other was a tall and smartly dressed actor in an elegant top hat. He was Imre Zányi, the celebrated leading man, the idol of every woman and girl in Sárszeg.

  Until then the gathering had been growing increasingly spirited; but now the general din soared to new heights. Környey was greeted with a thundering roar of laughter, properly befitting the arrival of the Table's honoured president. For his part, Környey stood before his companions, hands behind his back, as if inspecting his Panther troops.

  “Greetings, gentlemen.”

  The Panthers’ Table had been formed some twenty years before, with the not unworthy aim of popularising the consumption of alcohol and promoting gentlemanly friendship.

  The Panthers were expected to drink daily and diligently, whether they could hold their drink or not. Ákos had been a member once himself, at the very beginning, when the Table was first
founded. But he had suddenly grown old, “soured,” as the others complained, and no longer paid them any attention. Many more had fallen by the wayside, collapsing from chronic alcohol poisoning and cirrhosis of the liver, which was how most men in Sárszeg met their end. Every year the Table laid wreaths at their graves. During Környey's touching speeches the younger Panther cubs would come close to tears, as did those veterans who, in spite of their snowy hair, still stood their ground and were Panthers to the last.

  Bálint Környey sat down among them. He had a friendly word for everyone. Then suddenly, as he was about to raise his tankard to his lips, he spotted Ákos, the dear old friend and companion of his youth. He broke into a smile, then fell back into his seat. Of all the...He gave Ákos a hearty wave and then, in good country fashion, bellowed over to his table:

  “Greetings! Greetings, old chap!'

  They no longer had much to do with each other these days. At most, Környey would send Ákos a brace of pheasant or partridge when he had been out hunting on his estate.

  But they were both clearly pleased to see each other now.

  At Környey's greeting the Panthers quietened down a little. They leaned towards their beloved president, who was explaining something to his neighbours, clearly about the character he had just greeted. The Panthers glanced respectfully, if perhaps a little sadly, at the Vajkays’ lonely table. Then Bálint Környey rose to his feet.

  “My dear old Ákos! Welcome!” he called out before reaching the table and bending down to kiss the hand of his friend's good lady. Then he shook hands with Ákos himself. “This is a turn-up for the books,” he said with a chuckle. “What brings you here?'

  “Lunch,” Ákos stuttered. “We came for lunch.” After this he began to hum and haw.

  “You wicked old Panther,” Környey interrupted, shaking a huge finger at Ákos, “you've been unfaithful to us. Why don't you look in at the Club some time?'

  “Forgive me, my friend, but I no longer drink, nor smoke, nor play cards. And what is more–” here Ákos paused momentarily for thought–“I've grown old.”

  The two friends nodded in silence, showing each other the monkish tonsures that parted their thinning hair.

  For a while they reminisced about old times, legendary evenings and long-lost friends. Környey, however, was soon called back to his table. He humbly begged their pardon. The Vajkays had anyway been about to leave.

  They wandered out into the street.

  Somewhere in the north it had been raining and the oppressive heat had abated. Everything was flooded in a soft and pleasant light. Ákos straightened his back and breathed the air deep into his lungs. A sudden warmth spread through his limbs as his digestive system set to work. The food he had eaten was already filtering its fortifying goodness into his circulation.

  The interest that had met the couple in the restaurant followed them out into the street. Strangers turned to look at them as they passed. Not that there was anything unusual about their appearance. People simply weren't accustomed to seeing them there in the street, like old couches that belong in the living room and look so strange when, once or twice a year, they're put outside to air.

  They didn't hurry. They strolled sedately on the swept asphalt, criss-crossed with clinker bricks, returning the greetings of afternoon strollers who seemed to have become more amicable with the passing of the dreadful heat. They gave themselves up to the easy afternoon atmosphere.

  The bells were ringing. Ding-dong, the bells rang constantly in Sárszeg. At morning Mass, at vespers, at funerals...so many funerals. There were three coffin-makers in Széchenyi Street, one after the other, and two stonemason's yards. Hearing the endless peal of deafening bells and seeing all these funeral concerns, the unsuspecting visitor might have imagined that people didn't live in Sárszeg at all, but only died there. Meanwhile the dealers sat inside their shops, among the coffins and tombstones, with the blind faith, shared by all in their profession, that it was precisely their wares everybody needed. And secure in this blithe conviction, they made their handsome fortunes, brought up their broods of children and kept their families in considerable style. Ákos peered through the open door of one such concern. Bronze coffins catering for every shape and size, from the tallest adult to the smallest child, stood upended in a tidy row. The shopkeeper was smoking a cigar, his wife reading a newspaper, while their angora cat sat preening itself inside an open wooden coffin. It wasn't such a terrible sight.

  A slanting shaft of sunlight tumbled through the thick glass jars of the St Mary Pharmacy. On the painted signboard outside, the name of Priboczay shone in thick gold letters. Beneath it stood an image of Mary, the pharmacy's patron saint, trampling a snake underfoot, with the pagan Aesculapius close by. Everything glistened.

  Every imaginable monstrosity. Even the display of surgical instruments sparkled: glittering silver forceps, shiny rubber gloves, gleaming collapsible operating tables. An anatomical dummy, with twinkling amethyst glass eyes in its trephined skull, proudly displayed its bloody heart, its bistre liver and green gall bladder, and the twisting intestines of its lacerated stomach. The Vajkays had never dared look at all this before. But now they did look. And it was horrible. Horrible, yet interesting.

  Then the other window displays–how enticing they all seemed! So many messages and promises beaming out towards them. What can I do for you, sir; at your service, madam; all life's paraphernalia, take your pick. Brand-new goods, never been touched, to replace the old and worn. Silk purses, exquisite velvets and first-class fabrics in tasteful piles, handkerchiefs and walking sticks, perfume bottles tied with satin ribbon bows, meerschaum pipes and humidors, scrunchy cigars and gold-tipped cigarettes.

  They stopped in front of Weisz and Partner's, admiring a pigskin suitcase with an English press-stud lock, so different from the shabby old canvas cases they had at home. And then that crocodile-skin hand-bag. The woman simply couldn't tear herself away. How splendid, how absolutely charming! Ákos drew his wife gently by the arm; it was time to move on.

  Among the notepads and pencil cases in the window of Mr Vajna's stationery store stood rows of books whose covers had already faded in the blistering sun. These literary novelties from Budapest came as quite a shock to the old man, who had long grown used to the arid, antiquated style of his noble records, deeds and documents. Fierce and fashionable volumes of poetry glared back at him with diabolical, sneering faces; naked male bodies and delirious women with their hair down and their staring eyes wide open.

  Ákos read their phoney, pseudo-modern titles over and over again: Deathrun–In the Night of Life, Aspasia Mine: I Want You! The woman nudged her husband with a smile. But Ákos only shrugged. Yes, such things existed. He found them strange, but couldn't conceal a certain curiosity.

  At home they put on their slippers, caught their breath and rested. So much had happened in one day.

  The sun was still shining. They opened a window and a tepid current of air streamed through the house, leaving columns of golden dust in its wake. One of Veres's ragged, grimy brats loafed around in the yard outside. He was gnawing at a slice of dry bread, down which the thick sunlight trickled like honey. The boy seemed to be catching the drips with his tongue. In the distance, the sound of a Gypsy band.

  The two of them listened together.

  “Music,” said Mother.

  “Yes,” Father replied. “Someone's living it up.”

  “Hear it?‘If I had a little farm...’ '

  When it began to grow dark, Ákos fetched the Budapest newspaper from the letterbox.

  They took only one paper; Ákos's father had ordered it long ago, and it had become a kind of family tradition ever since. In those days it still stood for the values and interests of the Hungarian nobility. But much water had run under the bridge since then, and the paper had switched direction several times. It was hardly recognisable now, and preached the opposite of its original convictions. This fact, however, had escaped the old man's attention.

&
nbsp; He spoke of the paper with inveterate deference, and when he opened the wrapper with his penknife an expression of pious rapture spread across his face. He reverently immersed himself in the odd article, and if by chance he found his social class disparaged, he convinced himself he hadn't fully understood, and went on nodding as he read, blithely turning the pages, reluctant to dissent. In truth, he had grown a little indifferent to the news. He no longer read the paper from cover to cover, only skimmed over the headlines to the marriage and death columns at the back. After a while he wearied of this too, and wouldn't touch the paper for weeks on end. Countless issues lay strewn over the table, unopened.

  Today, however, he had risen late and, in spite of all his comings and goings, was still not tired. He slowly browsed his way through the entire paper.

  However, he couldn't see too well. The Vajkays’ chandelier hung close to the ceiling, high above the dining-room table. They had taken out three of the four light bulbs to save on electricity. In other matters the couple were less frugal, but on this one saving they rigorously insisted. And so they groped around in perpetual semi-darkness.

  “I can't see,” Ákos complained.

  “Perhaps you should put in the other bulbs.”

  Ákos climbed up on the table and steadied the chandelier. Suddenly all four bulbs were shining brightly. A warm even light flooded the dining room.

  “How cosy,” the woman cried.

  “Indeed,” replied Father. “Now we can read.”

  The old man put on his spectacles and began to read aloud to his wife.