Skylark - Dezso Kosztolanyi [63]
To this Ákos said nothing. Not that he disagreed with his wife. He was a deeply religious man, especially since he had turned forty, a devout Catholic who went to confession every Easter and took the holy sacrament. But the men of Sárszeg hid their religious faith, as they hid their tears, behind a veil of pious modesty. Only the women displayed their piety, and were fully expected to do so.
Mother put out the light and got into bed. She too pulled the quilt up over her chin.
Nothing had been settled or resolved. But at least they had grown tired. And that was something.
For some minutes they were silent.
Then Ákos sat up in bed.
“You know what?” he said meaningfully. “I saw him again.”
The woman knew at once whom he meant.
“Did you?'
“Sitting in the Baross Café. He said hello.”
“And you?'
“Me too. So he wouldn't think anything. He'd been drinking.”
“So he drinks now, does he?” She pursed her lips.
“I always told you,” said Ákos, “that he'd end up rotten. He was in a bad way. He hasn't long to live.”
They'd been discussing Géza Cifra's lack of colour, haggardness and secret illnesses for years, always setting new dates for his imminent demise: come March, come October. But the little railway official still went on living, with his boorish friends, his eternal colds and incurable complaints. Ákos brooded.
“Though the mills of God grind slowly...” he added, and lay back down in bed.
Then he sat up again.
“There's a fire down below,” he said jovially.
His stomach burned, mercilessly, all the way up to his throat. He swallowed a spoonful of bicarbonate of soda, but so clumsily that it sprinkled over his nightshirt and dusted his chin. He chewed the white powder with his discoloured teeth.
They didn't light the nightlight. But even without it the room wasn't dark. Light filtered in through the chinks in the lowered shutters, casting bright, shimmering wavelets on the walls. From the street the rattle of peasant carts on their way to market could already be heard.
Dawn was breaking.
XI
in which there is mention of getting up late, of rain, and in which the Panthers reappear
THOSE rakish metropolitans, who live by night and sleep by day in carefree capitals, are used to waking in the dark and meeting once again the selfsame night from which they parted company the day before.
This is their black dawn. It doesn't frighten them or take them by surprise. They greet it with a stretch and a yawn, lighting the lamp with sleepy hands, hurrying into the bathroom to wash and shave, then dressing quickly in front of the wardrobe, before stepping out refreshed into the dimly lit street. The people who pass before them here are weary from their daily round. Many long hours are already behind them, endless discussions and disputes, a hastily snatched breakfast and a guzzled lunch. Now only dinner stands between them and their beds. They move more slowly, speak more softly, visibly disillusioned with the day now drawing to a close. A hackney carriage jolts past, pulled by an exhausted horse, which had still been able to gallop that morning. A baleful lethargy hovers in the air. But this does not dishearten the new arrivals, fresh from sleep. It makes them all the more conscious of their own high spirits and hopes. They pass among their fellow men with a spring in their step, leaving them way behind in unfair competition. They laugh at the electric light, remembering the bright sunshine on which they had turned their backs, they swagger with vitality, and effortlessly, blithely, almost maliciously turn into the marble-laden foyer of some garishly lit bar where, summoned either by passion or profession, they take up where they left off the day before.
But for those who have never lived like this, and have always risen early, somewhere in the country, such late awakenings bring nothing but anxiety, sadness and remorse.
As they look up at the