Skylark - Dezso Kosztolanyi [67]
This was of no interest to Ákos and his wife.
They scrutinised the alighting passengers, as if the one they sought could possibly be among them.
Haughty Budapesters arrived wrapped in splendid shawls and carrying pigskin suitcases. A porter from the King of Hungary relieved them of their luggage with a bow, before escorting them to the restaurant's own bright, glass-encased berlin, in which they were transported to where a hot meal and a clean room awaited them.
Those who were continuing their journeys did not look out upon the insignificant station for long. At most they opened a tiny gap in the curtains, which they immediately shut again with a sneer. By one window a foreign-looking lady stood in the electric light, furnished with every imaginable European comfort and a scarf around her neck, gazing at the rusty pump well and the geraniums in the station manager's window. What a godforsaken hole, her expression seemed to suggest. In the kitchen of the dining car the red-faced chef briefly appeared before the window in a white cap, laughing heartily at some joke.
Now the Vajkays’ panic reached fever pitch.
In a state of excitement, things that normally pass unnoticed can seem pregnant with significance. At such times even inanimate objects–a lamppost, a gravel path, a bush–can take on a life of their own, primordial, reticent and hostile, stinging our hearts with their indifference and making us recoil with a start. And the very sight of people at such times, blindly pursuing their lonely, selfish ends, can suddenly remind us of our own irrevocable solitude, a single word or gesture petrifying in our souls into an eternal symbol of the utter arbitrariness of life.
Such was the effect of the laughing chef on the elderly couple.
As soon as they saw him, they not only suspected, but knew for certain that they were waiting in vain and that the night would pass without their ever seeing their daughter. They were now convinced she would never arrive.
And it wasn't only they who were waiting now. Everyone and everything around them became a personification of waiting itself.
Objects stood still. People came and went.
Towards the west, billowing, ink-black clouds engulfed the sky.
Among those who admired, from beginning to end, the arrival and departure of the Budapest express was Bálint Környey. He greeted Ákos with a roar of laughter.
“You gave us the slip,” he said reproachfully. “You wily old Panther, you left us in the lurch. What time did you get home?'
“Around three.”
“So you got a good night's sleep,” said Környey, yawning into his gloved hand. “We upped sticks about nine in the morning.”
He pointed at the milk.
“I see you've fallen back into depravity.”
“I have a headache,” said Ákos.
“Take my advice,” said the old sinner with a wink. “Waiter, a tankard of beer. Well, old boy, what do you say?'
“No, I daren't. Not a drop. Never again.”
No sooner had the tankard arrived than Környey gulped down the sparkling, cool beer into the bottomless pit of his stomach.
Naturally the Panthers followed on behind him, some ten of them who had come straight from the club, where, at six that afternoon, they'd had pork marrow and pickled cucumbers with a bottle or two of red wine. They joined Környey at the Vajkays’ table to drink beer. Priboczay and good old Máté Gaszner, Imre Zányi in his top hat and Szolyvay, who wore an old-fashioned cape against the cold. Feri Füzes was there too, with his sickly smile, along with Judge Doba, who sat smoking a Virginia and didn't say a word.
The most valiant among them was Szunyogh, who hadn't even been to bed at all. He had passed out for a couple of minutes at dawn, but, in accordance with ancient custom, they had stretched him out on the table with two candles at his head and sung the “Circumdederunt.” At this he had come to his senses. Since then he had marched from one inn to the next drinking nothing but schnapps.
Now, too, he dismissively pushed aside the tankard of beer that stood before him.
“Etiam si omnes, ego non.”
And he ordered schnapps instead.