Skylark - Dezso Kosztolanyi [36]
Pressing his opera glasses to his eyes, Ákos wondered what he would do if he ever met her. Turn away perhaps, or measure her with a scathing stare, or simply spit on the ground in front of her?
From these dark thoughts it was once again Wun-Hi who distracted him, dancing out on to the centre of the stage and this time really surpassing himself. Fanning his face with his long pigtail, he launched into the famous vaudeville song:
Chin Chin Chinaman
Muchee muchee sad!
He afraid allo trade
Wellee wellee bad!
Noee joke, brokee broke
Makee shutee shop!
Chin Chin Chinaman,
Chop, chop, chop!
The effect was so great that the show was held up for several minutes as the applause refused to abate.
It came from everywhere, from the boxes, the stalls and the gods. Leaning right out of his box and completely forgetting himself, Ákos was clapping too, melting, utterly bewitched, into this rapture of approval, and hammering out the rhythm of the ditty on the sill of his box. He no longer cared whose glasses were focused upon him. He was swept along by the fever of the crowd, as was his wife. They laughed so much that tears streamed down their faces.
“Chin Chin Chinaman...” the woman chortled.
“Chop, chop, chop,” Ákos echoed playfully, pointing back at her, slicing the air with his finger.
But there was more to come. Now it was time for the topical stanzas of the song, clumsily adapted to reflect the local political issues of the day. Sárszeg was also “wellee, wellee bad,” because it was a sea of mud, had no sewage system and its theatre ran without electricity. The audience roared.
The Lord Lieutenant, himself implicated by the joke, none the less tried to set an appropriate example by graciously condescending to beat his palms together to show that he appreciated the severe, but not unjust, criticism of the general state of affairs.
He only sprang to his feet–and then like a jack-in-the-box–when it was suggested that the Hentzi statue was also for the “chop, chop, chop.” At this he withdrew to the depths of his box. As the representative of the Hungarian government of the day there was, after all, little else he could do.
In this highly charged atmosphere the show came to a close. Ákos registered to his surprise that the curtain had fallen for the last time and the audience was already thronging towards the cloakroom.
For a few moments he remained in his seat studying the programme and rubbing the sweat from his palms. He took his neatly folded handkerchief from his frock-coat pocket and wiped his burning face. The woman searched under the box seats for her handbag.
By the time they reached the foyer, the crowd had thinned.
Arácsy, standing before the box office, gave Ákos a thoroughly unctuous greeting and squeezed his hand. Ákos expressed his enthusiasm for the performance and promised they would come again. But then the stage door opened and the prima donna came running over to the director.
Without even removing her make-up, she had merely slipped on a light silk gown and was ready to hurry off somewhere.
The old man looked at her hesitantly.
Arácsy introduced her.
Ákos bowed before the prima donna no less courteously than he had bowed before the Lord Lieutenant at the beginning of the evening.
The woman offered her hand and Ákos took it.
“Congratulations,” he stuttered, “You were magnificent.”
“Oh, I hardly think so,” replied the prima donna, feigning modesty.
“Truly, madam, truly you were. And I am not one for flattery. You were quite magnificent.”
“Really?” lisped Olga Orosz, letting out a husky chuckle.
An overpowering fragrance wafted about her, the