Skylark - Dezso Kosztolanyi [72]
They ambled slowly on between rows of poplars.
Skylark walked in the middle, Mother and Father on either side. Father carried the flask, in which water still slopped to and fro, and the white striped woollen blanket. He gazed at the ground, lost in thought, and didn't hear a word his wife and daughter said. Again he tugged nervously at his left shoulder, carrying his invisible burden, of which he had spoken for the first time the day before. His face was affable, all the same, and he was visibly pleased by the reunion.
“So, what news?” Skylark asked her mother.
“Oh, nothing really. We were waiting for you, that's all. We missed you very much.”
They arrived at Széchenyi Square, whose usually dusty air had been swept clean by the rain. The houses stood side by side in speechless rows, curtains drawn, shutters and windows closed, looking more dwarfish than ever in the dwarfish night.
By now everyone was fast asleep. Bálint Környey slept, Priboczay slept, along with his plump wife and four exuberant rosebud daughters; Szunyogh slept, as did Mályvády, Zányi and Szolyvay; Judge Doba slept, in silence beside his lean, dark, wicked wife; Feri Füzes slept, still the perfect gentleman, smiling sweetly in his dreams, and all the other Panthers and good citizens of Sárszeg slept, including Mr Weisz, in a comfortable brass bed, and perhaps his partner too, albeit in a rather less comfortable brass bed, to be sure.
The Gentlemen's Club, whose first-floor windows would otherwise glow like banners of fire throughout the Sárszeg night, stood in mourning after the exploits of a Thursday night. Only from one window came a pale glimmer of light.
Here Sárcsevits, Sárszeg's guardian spirit, kept vigil beside an electric light, reading Le Figaro and advancing with the cultivated West, the enlightened peoples of Europe, on the relentless road to progress.
And someone else was still awake, too: Miklós Ijas, assistant editor of the Sárszeg Gazette.
After the theatre he had accompanied Margit Lator to her door, the actress to whom he was bound by such ephemeral ties as may properly bind a young, provincial poet to his muse. Sometimes he'd rest his head in her lap as she showered his chestnut mane with kisses before turning to his brow and lips. Now they had just had tea in the “mystical half-light” cast by the little blue lamp in the soubrette's single room, which she rented for five forints a month. Both of them dreamed endlessly of Budapest, and this drew them together. On such evenings as these, Ijas would rehearse the material of his reviews, praising Margit Lator's outstanding vocal range and maligning Olga Orosz. The woman–who, incidentally, was Papa Fehér's mistress, or rather the mistress of the Sárszeg Agricultural Bank–for her part listened patiently to Ijas's unpublished poems, which would remain in manuscript for many years to come. In a word, she appreciated him.
After this session, Ijas called in at the Széchenyi Café, where, since there was no music tonight, they were already putting out the lamps. He sat down at one of the dimly lit marble tables near the counter. As usual he ordered rum with his black coffee and smoked one cigarette after another. From the waiter's hand he snatched the latest number of József Kiss's fashionable literary journal, The Week, and thumbed it from cover to cover in search of the poem he had sent in months before, but always sought in vain. In his mind he dramatised this minor literary disappointment into a more general and deeply rooted fin-de-siècle melancholy, and, with an expression that said as much, he gazed out on the street. It was then he saw the Vajkays strolling past in a threesome, the station porter struggling on ahead.
He rose slowly and, carefully avoiding being seen, watched them with a knitted, darkening brow from behind the liqueur bottles on the counter. He even stooped a little to follow them with his gaze until they finally disappeared from view.