Skylark - Dezso Kosztolanyi [23]
“Strike,” said Ákos. “An English word. Pronounced strahyk. The workers don't want to work.”
“Why not?'
“Because they don't want to.”
“Why don't they make them?'
Ákos shrugged.
“Goodness, Mother,” he said in a low voice, adjusting his spectacles on the bridge of his nose, “five thousand workers are on strike in Brazil. ‘The employers have adamantly refused to meet their demands.’”
“Poor things,” said Mother, not really knowing whom she pitied, the workers or the employers.
Anyway, as the papers reported every month, they had discovered a new and infallible cure for tuberculosis. Which only went to show there was progress after all.
“Phew,” Ákos sighed. “Here, too.‘Shameless agitators among our people.’ ‘Peasants promised half an acre in the name of the prime minister.’ They're calling it ‘communism.’ They want to redistribute the land.”
“Who do?'
Enough of politics. They were more interested in tragedies and disasters.
“‘In the state of Ohio,’ ” Father read, “‘a train plunged from a railway bridge. Two dead and thirty severely injured.’ ’’
“Dreadful,” said Mother, who gave a sudden shudder and came close to tears.
“And how are all those poor injured people?” she asked.
They both took a closer look at the paper, but found nothing.
“Doesn't say,” Father mumbled.
At all events, they came alive in this flood of common human hopes and fears. It revived them, dispersing the stifling dullness that had eaten into their bodies, their clothes and all their furniture.
They both stared into space.
“How are you feeling, Mother?” asked Ákos.
“I'm coping, Father,” the woman replied. “And you?'
“Me too.”
Ákos went over to his wife and softly kissed her forehead.
When it was time to light the nightlight they couldn't find the matches. They always kept them on the old cabinet, beside the carriage clock. But now they weren't in their proper place. The woman searched every nook and cranny. At last she found them in the kitchen. She had taken them with her in the morning to make tea, and had forgotten to return them to the cabinet. She hurried back to the bedroom and handed the matches to her husband.
Then they looked at each other as if something had suddenly occurred to them
But they didn't say a word.
V
in which Ákos Vajkay of Kisvajka and Kőröshegy eats goulash soup, breast of veal and vanilla noodles, and lights a cigar
Sárszeg is a tiny dot on the map. Apart from a small conservatoire and a third-rate public library, it boasts of no curiosities at all. Most people have either never heard of it, or mention it with disdain. But every Sunday morning, in the clear blue sky before the church of St Stephen, the good Lord hovers above the town, invisible and merciful, righteous and terrible, ever present and everywhere the same, be it in Sárszeg or in Budapest, in Paris or New York.
Low Mass begins at half past eleven.
It is attended by the upper crust of Sárszeg society: county dignitaries, senior civil servants and other well-to-do citizens who have distinguished themselves from their fellow mortals. They are accompanied by their wives and nubile daughters, who in turn are followed by spruce young men, secret suitors who converge behind the pillars in the background and gather around the font. The girls sit beside their mothers, casting the occasional glance at their prayer books, leaning back in their seats, eyes to heaven, sighing at every sounding of the carillon. They dab their eyes with tiny handkerchiefs as if in tears. Pungent perfumes bolt through the air, one answering the other. A veritable concert of fragrances. Which is why they often called it “scented Mass.” It wasn't merely a matter of spiritual elevation; it was a social event.
The Vajkays’ absence from church did not pass unnoticed. Their customary place, at the end of the second bench on the right, remained unoccupied.
In his damp, courtyard-facing study, Ákos lay on the Turkish rug which covered his couch. It was an uncomfortable couch, short and narrow, like all their furniture. It couldn't