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By Root 519 0

himself to himself. Even Feri Füzes picked a quarrel with him and spoke ill of him to others. The Gentlemen's Club refused to grant him membership. Thus he spent his mornings in the Café behind a newspaper and his afternoons in his rented digs, writing. He was seen as something of an eccentric, an ardent devotee of the latest artistic fad, the Secession. The only reason he was out strolling now was that he carried a poem in his head. He had set out in the vain hope that it would take shape along the way, but the words spun in nebulous circles and remained worn, dull and vacant. He sauntered bareheaded in his English suit and slither of a lilac tie, a trilby in his hand. His thick chestnut hair plunged over his steep forehead, exuding eternal youth.

Glimpsing the Vajkays he looked up and hurried over towards Ákos. The day before he had found something deeply sympathetic about the old man's timid, wavering reticence. He stretched out his hand.

“Hello, Ákos.”

Vajkay shook his hand warmly, as if apologising, in everyone's name, for all that had happened.

“Hello, young man.”

Ijas faltered for a moment, then asked:

“Which way are you heading?'

“Home.”

And because he couldn't decide what else to do, and was weary of brooding over his poem, Miklós strung along with them.

“If you don't mind,” he said.

Ákos bowed, the woman lowered her gaze. Young men always made her feel awkward.

They ambled on through the mild evening air in which the houses of Sárszeg stood immobile with a certain false pathos, as if they were still waiting for something to happen.

“Have you much to do at the Gazette?” Ákos asked, simply making conversation.

“Enough.”

“I can well imagine. To write a newspaper every day. All those articles. In these hard times, with the world all upside down...that Dreyfus business...the strikes...”

“Five thousand are on strike in Brazil,” Mother ventured warily.

“Where?” asked Miklós.

“In Brazil,” Ákos repeated with conviction. “Why, only the other day we read about it in a Budapest daily.”

“Possible,” said Ijas. “Yes, I remember reading something,” he mumbled indifferently.

He breathed a deep sigh.

“I'm working on something else right now.”

He was thinking of his poem, which would appear in the Sunday edition of the Gazette, and he gave a twitch of his lips, affecting sensitivity, as he always did when alluding to his unrealised literary ambitions and seeking recognition.

But the allusion was wasted. Ákos had never read his poems. Mother might well have, but she never looked at the authors’ names. She didn't think it important.

They reached the corner of Petőfi Street, which stretched deserted, deep into the silence. Miklós stopped.

“What a miserable wilderness this is,” he said. “How can people bear to live here? If only I could get to Budapest. I was there last week...Ah, Budapest!'

To this he received no reply. All the same it seemed to him they had listened without ill will. And as his confidence in the elderly couple grew, he was overcome by an urge to open his heart to them.

“It was the first time I'd been to the capital,” he began, “since my father died.”

He had mentioned his father. The one person whose name no one dared to speak and whose death had lain silenced under a cloud of shame. This drew the Vajkays closer to the boy.

“Ah, yes, poor fellow,” they said together.

“You knew him, didn't you?” said Miklós, looking at Ákos.

“I did indeed. And liked him. And respected him. He was a very dear friend.”

Their pace slackened. Ákos knitted his brow. How children suffer for their parents, and parents for their children.

Then the woman spoke.

“Our families used to meet. They came to us, we went to them. You, Miklós, were only little then, six or seven. You and Jenő would play at soldiers. We'd sit out on the veranda. By that big, long table.”

“A damn good man,” Ákos interrupted.

“I can hardly remember his face,” said Ijas gravely.

The three of them had arrived beneath a gas lamp. Ákos stopped and looked at Ijas.

“He was about your height. Yes, about as tall. You're a lot like him. But your