Skylark

by Dezso Kosztolányi

  Ákos did not take part in the debate. What did he care for either Kálmán Széll or Ferenc Kossuth? Weightier concerns and deeper questions played upon his mind.

  He sat immersed in his own thoughts, his morning dreams still swimming through his head, his face heavily shadowed by his own bad conscience. He glanced towards his wife, who was already eating.

  Seeing this, he appeared to reach a momentous decision. He frowned, put on his spectacles and plunged into a fastidious study of the menu.

  He couldn't see it too clearly because, in places, the ink of the hectograph had smudged and faded. He reached into his upper waistcoat pocket for the magnifying glass he normally reserved for deciphering litterae armales, and, the strength of his spectacles thus doubled, examined the menu in detail.

  Applying no less rigour and self-sacrificing passion to the study of this document than to the search for some sixteenth-century Vajkay of Bozsó whose descent remained uncertain, he scoured the family tree of noble dishes for the entry he had been dreaming of unceasingly since the day before. On this occasion it was between the stuffed sirloin and the pork chops that the name “goulash” humbly but meaningfully stood. No sooner had he hit upon it with his finger than the waiter set it down before him.

  “Smells delicious,” commented Feri Füzes.

  The comment annoyed Ákos. What had it to do with Feri Füzes how the goulash smelled? Ákos would decide for himself. And with that he lowered his gristly, pale, almost cadaverous nose towards the red liquid in the silver bowl, steeping himself in the dizzying delight of inhaling the goulash's fragrant vapours deep into his lungs. Feri Füzes was quite right, it really did smell superb. And as for the taste! It was simply indescribable.

  He devoured the goulash greedily, polishing his plate with squares of bread, just as Weisz and Partner had done the day before.

  “Ilonka,” the Panthers called out, “over here! More rolls, more croissants.”

  And along came Ilonka, the owner's fifteen-year-old daughter, who filled the empty wicker baskets with rolls and pastries. She sauntered around her father's establishment, her head filled with hopeless theatrical dreams. She wanted to be an actress and tread the boards of Sárszeg's Kisfaludy Theatre. She spoke to no one of her secret ambition, only gazed incessantly at Imre Zányi, longingly, silently, unhappily, sighing as she passed him on her way to the next table. She was as pale as a damp bread roll.

  “What'll you drink?” asked Környey.

  “Forgive me,” said Ákos, “but not a drop has passed my lips in fifteen years.”

  Szunyogh pricked up his ears.

  “But a dish like that,” the commander in chief urged, “cries out for lubrication. Come on, old chap, just the one glass.”

  “Perhaps a sip of beer,” said Vajkay, casting a quizzical glance at Gál, his family physician. “Less alcohol. I'll have a glass of beer,” he called to the wine steward. Then, as an afterthought: “The smallest glass you have.”

  Ákos took a couple of temperate sips, the white foam clinging to his grey moustache. This he sucked into his mouth and swallowed.

  Then he ordered breast of veal, followed by vanilla noodles, which, luckily for him, were still on the menu, and were excellent. Then he ordered cheese–Emmenthal–and two apples to finish.

  “Won't it disagree with you, Father?” his wife interrupted at one point with a smiling reproach. She was still being entertained by the actor and the pharmacist.

  “Of course not,” the others replied, including Dr Gál.

  “Another glass of beer,” they proposed with gusto.

  “That was plenty,” Ákos protested. “A veritable Lucullan luncheon,” he added with a chuckle and felt that his meagre stomach was now quite bloated.

  From his inside pocket, Bálint Környey took out a silver cigar case with an elegant engraving of a gun dog adorning its lid. He pulled down the leather flap separating the two rows of cigars and, without a word, set the case down before Ákos.

  Ákos took a splendid dark Tisza cigar, tore off the band and, without waiting for the comedian to hand him his pocket knife, bit off the end. Szolyvay at once supplied him with a light.

  Observing this, his wife's jaw dropped a little, but even Dr Gál seemed reluctant to dampen Ákos's spirits and, without the slightest protestation, continued talking to his friends.

  The old man sucked at his cigar with all the voraciousness of a baby at the breast, the succulent, bitter teat glistening with his spittle. The smoke caressed his long-chastened palate, the familiar fragrance tickling his nose, overpowering his brain, soothing his ancient, torpid blood and stirring long-forgotten sensations within him. What did he care for the chatter that surrounded him? For constitutional law, for Viennese intrigues, for Dreyfus or Labori? He leaned back into his chair and began digesting.

  Later, however, he too ventured the odd remark. He spoke mostly to wise old Szunyogh, who, like a deep-sea diver, brought to the conversation a wealth of treasures from the depths of his enormous erudition, which by now lay long submerged beneath a sea of wine and schnapps, including a few choice remarks on the medieval Latin of royal letters of donation, which interested Ákos. Enveloped in a cloud of smoke, the gathering huddled warmly together. The restaurant was now all but empty. Only they entertained no thoughts of going home.

  It was half past three when a middle-aged man in a grubby, soft-blue shirt and a worn, smoke-coloured overcoat appeared, who didn't belong to this gentlemanly gathering.

  “Your most humble servant,” he whined by way of greeting, bowing like a Gypsy.

  The others addressed him in the familiar form and immediately invited him to sit down.

  He was Arácsy, director of the Kisfaludy Theatre. He clasped an umbrella in his hand, which, even on fine days like these, he always carried with him, perhaps to inspire pity, perhaps to evoke the trusty staffs with which the nation's journeymen, the actors, beat the highway on their endless travels. He constantly complained of gloom and doom, and his voice, which had once declaimed the tribulations of stage heroes, was now no more than a plaintive whimper. Who would have thought he owned a pretty little house in Sárszeg and a pretty little vineyard out of town? Not to mention a tidy sum in the Agricultural Bank.

  A half-hour visit to the King of Hungary after lunch and a friendly chat with the good gentlemen of Sárszeg formed part of his daily round. Noticing Ákos, he immediately set to work on the new acquaintance.

  Assuming the most modest and friendly of smiles, he expressed his amazement at having as yet been denied the honour of seeing Ákos at the theatre.

  “I'm afraid we lead a rather quiet life,” said Ákos, turning to stare into space, “in our humble home.”

  “But I sincerely hope you will now do us the honour,” said the theatre director, placing a pink theatre ticket on the table before Ákos.

  It was for a box in the stalls.

  “I don't know,” said Ákos, glancing at his wife.

  The table fell silent. Husband and wife conferred.

  “You see,” said the woman blushing, “we don't usually go to the theatre,” and she gave a peculiar shrug of her shoulders.

  At this Imre Zányi piped up:

  “We'd be honoured, my dear lady.”

  “When is it for?” asked Mrs Vajkay.

  “Tomorrow evening,” the leading man was quick to reply. “What is it we're playing?'

  “The Geisha,” said Szolyvay, who played the part of Wun-Hi to rapturous applause.

  “A splendid piece,” Kornyey roared. “Superb music. Haven't you seen it?'

  “No.”

  “Much better than The Blue Lady or that fashionable new operetta, Shulamit.”

  “The Jewish operetta?” asked Feri Füzes with a sneer.

  “That's the one,” said Környey with a nod of the head. “I'll be there myself.”

  “Surely you won't turn me down?” said the director, blinking affectedly at the woman and turning out his palms in ham despair.


  “Let's go, Father.”

  “I'm yours to command,” Ákos said with a jocularity that did not suit him and was thoroughly alien to his nature. The others were amused. With a theatrical sweep of the hand he snatched up the ticket and stuffed it in his pocket.

  “Devil take it, we'll go. Thank you kindly.”

  In the street, they did not discuss the day's events. Not the lunch, nor the beer, nor the cigar. Their thoughts were preoccupied with the theatrical performance they were to witness the following evening.

  At one corner they came across a playbill in a wooden frame, hanging from the wall on a length of rusty wire. Here they came to a halt.

  They studied the playbill carefully:

  THE GEISHA

  or the tale of a Japanese tearoom

  Musical Comedy in Three Acts

  Libretto: Owen Hall. Music: Sidney Jones

  Translated by Béla Fáy and Emil Makkai

  Commences: 7.30 p.m. Ends: after 10.

  Zányi wasn't among the cast, which disappointed them. Only Szolyvay. The other actors they did not know.

  VI

  in which the Vajkays attend the Sárszeg performance of The Geisha

  On Monday afternoon they were talking.

  “But you really must have a haircut, Father.”

  “Why?'

  “You can't go to the theatre like that. Look how matted it is–at the back and at the sides.”

  Ákos's hair was thinning only on top. At the sides his hoary curls sprang thick and wild. He had last visited the barber in the spring. Since then his hair had grown tousled and unkempt. Dandruff dusted the lapels of his jacket.

  “Come into town with me,” said the woman. “I have to call on Weisz and Partner anyway. I want to buy a handbag. I've nowhere to put my opera glasses.”

  Ákos accompanied his wife to the leather-goods store. Mr Weisz served them in person.

  Before them on the counter he lined up his splendid wares, recently arrived from England. They inspected the brand-new suitcases, marvelling at how easily they opened and closed. They could certainly do with new suitcases themselves, but for now they had only come about the crocodile handbag in the window.

  Mr Weisz gestured to a sickly, sorry figure who sat buried among trade catalogues in a glass cage lit by butterfly lamps. He emerged, scurried over to the window display, fetched the handbag, and then, after climbing a ladder to lift down more new bags, made some inaudible comment in his plaintive, nasal voice. He was the Partner, the unsung, neglected talent whose name nobody knew. The signs of some incurable gastric disorder were written all over his sour face. Clearly he didn't eat the same goulash as Mr Weisz.

  They spent a long time haggling over the leather handbag. It was expensive, nine forints, and they only managed to reduce it to 8.50. But it was worth the money. The woman hurried it home at once.

  Ákos turned into Gombkötő Street, to the barber's.

  The barber gave Ákos the full treatment. He wrapped him in a towel and lathered his face with tepid foam. With the bib around his chest, Ákos looked like a little boy treated to cakes at a patisserie, his face smeared thick with whipped cream.

  When his assistant had finished the shaving, the barber set about the old man's hair, shaping it on top with electric clippers, scraping away any leftover stubble behind the ears with an open blade, then trimming, raking, combing and smoothing the sides. He carefully snipped the grey tufts of hair from Ákos's ears and spread his moustache with fine twirling wax. This had just arrived from Tiszaújlak and, at seven kreuzers a tub, possessed the singular property of bonding even the most stubborn of Magyar moustaches. Finally, when he had swept away any remaining strands of fallen hair, he dusted Ákos's temples with a soft brush and pressed his hair into shape with a net.

  When net and towel were finally removed, Ákos replaced the copy of Saucy Simon in which he had read many mischievous stories from the pen of some amateur scribbler, and looked into the mirror. His face darkened a little.

  He hardly recognised himself.

  A new man sat on the velvet cushions of the barber's swivel chair. His hair, although it had just been cut, seemed more bounteous than before. His moustache curled into a sharp and utterly unfamiliar fork, blackened by the Tiszaújlak wax, and as bright and stiff as if hammered from cast iron. His chin, on the other hand, was smooth, fresh and velvety. Every pore seemed younger. But different, too, and this unsettled him.

  He examined himself mistrustfully with his small watery eyes. He simply couldn't get used to the unfamiliar expression his face now wore.

  The barber noticed this.

  “Will that be all?'

  “Yes, that's fine,” Ákos mumbled in a voice that seemed to say the opposite.

  He paid, took his cane and looked once more into the mirror. And now he saw that his face was red, too, and even a little fatter. Yes, decidedly redder and fatter.

  His wife was well satisfied.

  She too was doing her hair, and had just lit the spirit lamp on her dressing table where she placed her curling irons. She crimped the thin strands of hair on her forehead, more out of etiquette than vanity; that was simply what one did. She powdered her face but, her eyesight being weak, she had difficulty applying the powder evenly from the chamois. Here and there small floury patches remained on her skin. Into her hands, chapped from needlework, she rubbed a drop or two of glycerine. Then she went to look out her one and only festive dress.

  This hung from the last hanger in her wardrobe, covered with a sheet. She would take it out only once or twice a year, for Easter, Corpus Christi or some similar occasion. Thus, in spite of having been made so many years before, the dress still looked as good as new.

  It was made of lilac silk with black lace trimmings and white lace frills at the neck. It had leg of mutton sleeves and skirts that reached the ground. With it went a pair of elbow-length gloves. She pinned a gold brooch to her breast and hung diamond earrings from her ears–the family jewellery she had inherited from her mother. Into her new crocodile handbag she slipped her mother-of-pearl opera glasses and a lorgnette she had once bought as a present for Skylark, but which they always shared.

  Ákos dressed ponderously. With him, dressing was always a trial. His wife had laid out his clothes for him, but still, to his vexation, he couldn't find this or that. He had trouble fastening his collar, then two buttons broke one after the other on his starched shirt front and he couldn't find his tie. At first he found his frock coat too loose, then too tight, and he longed to be back in his mouse-grey jacket. When he was finally dressed, however, and stood beside his wife, he was not displeased with his appearance. His silver wedding came to mind, when they had both set off to the photographer's. He looked fresh, refined and gentlemanly. Only his somewhat disrespectful expression troubled him, which he had already noticed at the barber's. In vain had he washed and brushed his hair, it simply wouldn't go away. His moustache seemed to rear higher and higher. If he pressed it down, it immediately sprang up again.

  The Kisfaludy Theatre was housed in one of the tallest buildings in Sárszeg, at least half of which was occupied by the Széchenyi Inn and Café, with a ballroom upstairs. The rest belonged to the theatre, one entrance of which opened out on to a small side street.

  Here the Vajkays slipped into the foyer to escape unnecessary attention, and from there to their two-seater box in the stalls. The usher opened the door for them and pressed a programme into their hands.

  The woman sat down at the front. She opened the programme, which was hardly bigger than a lady's handkerchief, and skimmed through it. For a while Ákos hovered in the background, observing the musicians as they leafed through their scores and tuned their instruments in the orchestra pit, which receded into the cellar directly beneath him. The lamplight struck the white forehead of the flautist. The violinists were chatting in German. A Czech tuba player with an apoplectic red face and a minuscule nose, who was known to perform at funeral processions, was just raising his serp
entine instrument to his neck as if struggling in a fit of suffocation with a golden octopus.

  Although the audience was still sparse, a stifling atmosphere already hung over the auditorium. On Sunday there had been two performances, a matinee and an evening show, and the steamy vapours of their passing storm lingered thick and oppressive in the air. The dark recesses of the boxes were still strewn with discarded tickets, scattered sweet wrappers and scraps of hardening orange peel. The theatre had been neither swept nor aired. Furthermore, to the eternal shame of Sárszeg's only theatre–and in spite of countless impassioned pleas in the local press–electric lighting had still not been introduced in the auditorium, and the old oil lamps continued to emit their layers of heavy smoke and a certain melancholy odour, referred to by the locals as “stage stench.”

  It was above all for this reason that Skylark never went to the theatre. As soon as she inhaled this air, felt its heat strike her face, and saw the unfamiliar sight of seething crowds before and beneath her, her head would spin and she'd be overcome by a sort of nausea that resembled seasickness. On the one occasion when they had booked three seats in the stalls, they were forced to go home in the middle of the first act. Since then they hadn't been to the theatre at all. Their daughter said she'd rather stay at home with her needlework.

  Gradually the auditorium came to life.

  Opposite, in a circle box, sat the Priboczays–the mother a good-natured, fair-haired creature, the father an exemplary paterfamilias, and their four daughters who all wore their hair in exactly the same fashion, parted neatly in the middle, and all wore the same pink dresses. Like four pink roses in varying stages of bloom.

  Beside them sat Judge Doba with his wife, a lean, dark-haired, flirtatious woman who simply lived for the theatre, or rather for the actors. She always dragged her husband along with her, who would sit with his prematurely bald head buried miserably and wearily in his hands.