Skylark - Dezso Kosztolanyi [22]
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.
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.
The Dreyfus affair. Second hearing before the military tribunal at Rennes. That notorious French captain. Handed secret documents over to the Germans. Accused of high treason. To answer for his crimes before the court. Talk of the death sentence.
The woman wasn't interested.
“Kaiser Wilhelm in Alsace-Lorraine.”
“The German Kaiser?'
“The very same. Says the territory always was and always would be German.”
“Alsace-Lorraine?'
“Alsace-Lorraine, Mother, which they took back from the French in 1871. Goodness, we were young then. I was forty.”
Ákos smiled. The woman smiled too. She rested her palm lightly on the old man's hand.
“There won't be another war, will there?” The woman sighed.
“The French and the Germans,” Ákos explained, “have never cared much for each other. But they seem to have settled their differences this time.”
Foreign news items flashed up before them, charging the air they breathed with a buzz of electricity, connecting the couple to the burning, bitter, but not entirely ignominious or worthless, affairs of the outside world. They didn't understand much of what they read, but felt none the less that they were not entirely alone. Millions struggled just like them. And it was here that