Skylark - Dezso Kosztolanyi [56]
When she had gone, the woman went into her daughter's room to do some sewing, spreading shirts and blouses over Skylark's unmade bed. She nervously popped a cube of sugar into her mouth, and sucked on it slowly. She looked at the pictures on the walls which she had seen so many times before. Dobozy and his betrothed, Batthyány, and the first Hungarian cabinet. Then she turned to the bronze-clasped photograph albums and leafed through three generations of Vajkays and Bozsós, ending with images of Skylark herself, at ten, at fourteen, with a doll, with a balloon, or sitting dreamily on a rock. But nothing could put her mind at rest.
She got up and went into the dining room, crossing the zigzag pattern of the machine-woven carpet, then hurried out into the hall and paced the full length of the coarse floor runner, which stretched all the way to the front door.
Here she was suddenly seized with fear. She flung open the doors of all the rooms, so that they all flowed into one. Then she switched on all the lights, even in the hall. A strong current of light flooded through the deserted house.
But in this light the silence seemed greater than ever. Nothing stirred. She waited to hear the rattle of a key in the lock. Silence. She listened for noises in the street. All was quiet. Only the creaking of floorboards as she paced to and fro. Then she stopped still.
She headed towards the bedroom. From the drawer of her husband's bedside table she took a key and hurried back through the gleaming house to the last room, the unused drawing room they kept for guests. It was there that the dusty, black piano stood. The old Bösendorfer had been a wedding present from her parents, a faithful piece of family furniture that had already served two generations, and had weathered many storms and charming soirees.
She sat down on the piano stool, rested her hands in her lap and meditated.
How long had it been since she last played? A long, long time. She had loved the piano once. She had even tried teaching Skylark, but, poor thing, she never got very far, simply didn't have the feel for it. When she was eighteen they had shut the lid, locking it with a little key to keep the room nice and tidy. And it had remained shut ever since. Even she had hardly touched it after that.
To while away the time she lifted the lid, which opened with a crack, and ran her stiff fingers down the keyboard. The keys were covered with a layer of cracked bone, not that much older than her own.
She knew only one tune by heart, a song from her girlhood, “Upon the wavy Balaton...” And this she played now, somewhat feebly and desultorily, stopping every now and then. All the same it was soon over.
Then she sifted through the music books until she came across some Beethoven sonatas. She had a go at the first, whose daring, leaping shifts of tempo brought pangs of remembrance from the distant past. She had often played it in her twenties, on fine summer mornings. Now at first it didn't go too well. She put on her glasses to see the notes more clearly and repeated the piece until her fingers began to spin and the steely, untuned piano resounded in melodic melancholy. She made a proper practice session of it, a veritable campaign. Over and over again, getting better and better each time. On her face, which she held up close to the music between two brightly burning lamps, beamed an expression of strenuous concentration and wonder.
It must have been about three o'clock when she finally felt exhausted. Without shutting the piano or tidying away the music, she went straight to the bedroom. She didn't even put out the lights. Deciding to wait no longer for her husband, she got into bed.
She had just pulled the quilt up over her shoulders when she heard Gypsy music in the street nearby, followed by the barking of dogs. Soon she was sure she could hear the clatter of the gate, a sound she had already imagined so many times that evening. This time, however, she was not deceived. She