Skylark - Dezso Kosztolanyi [73]
“Poor Skylark with her parents walking after midnight. Széchenyi Street. Porter.”
He put the notebook back into his pocket. But then he took it out again and stared long and hard at what he'd written, deep in thought.
Snatching up his pencil again, he added three thick exclamation marks.
The Vajkays were already passing the King of Hungary, from which the pungent smell of roast meat wafted. Skylark grimaced.
“Ugh, that awful restaurant smell!'
“We had our share of that,” said Mother with tactful contempt.
“Poor things.”
A horse and cart stood before the St Mary Pharmacy, a peasant with a large leather satchel sitting up on the box. He had driven in from his farm that afternoon to order some medication for his horse, and was waiting for the assistant pharmacist, who worked by candlelight, to finish mixing the three or four pounds of ointment in a marble mortar. Further on, the Baross Café tried in vain to attract the citizens of Sárszeg with its waterlogged, abandoned patio garden. János Csinos gave a first-rate rendition of the latest songs from The Geisha and Shulamit to empty tables and chairs.
“Did you have rain too?” asked Mother.
“Only this afternoon. The morning was lovely. We walked over to the church in Tarkő. For Mass.”
“Is today a high day?'
“Yes,” said Skylark, “the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin.”
On the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin the swallows gather and fly to warmer climes, to Africa. All that follows then is an indian summer.
They had reached the park. Their steps echoed on the asphalt. They looked through the fence.
In the middle of the lawn, dying roses with burnt-out pistils collapsed against whitewashed posts decorated with glass balls. A light breeze scurried down the dark pathways, rattling the odd dry leaf as it passed. The benches, among them the one on which Ákos had sunned himself that Tuesday afternoon, now dripped with moisture. The lawn was turning bald. The park was deserted. Only a policeman paced up and down before the fence, greeting Ákos with a stiff salute. It was the dead of night.
Ákos gathered his nut-brown coat about him, feeling the cold. He could hear something rustle overhead, way up above in the sky.
That's the autumn, he thought to himself.
How suddenly it had arrived! Without majesty, calamity or ceremony; without carpets of golden leaves or wreaths of mellow fruit. A small, quiet autumn; an insiduous, tenebrous Sárszeg autumn.
It crouched darkly in motionless bushes, above the trees, on the rooftops. At the other end of town a train whistled, then whistled no more. A desolate boredom settled over everything. The warm days were over.
And that was all.
“There could still be some good weather to come.”
“Maybe,” said Mother.
“Maybe,” repeated Father.
At the corner of Petőfi Street they quickened their step, anxious to reach the house. Skylark had found it hard to get used to life on the plain, and not a day had passed without her longing to be home again. And now she was glad to be back in the town, which, with all its comforts, allowed people to forget so much, and held a promise of real solitude to those who had to be alone.
She could hardly wait to walk through the front door.
XIII
in which, on the eighth of September 1899, the novel is concluded, without coming to an end
INSIDE, Mother clasped her daughter in a passionate embrace.
“And now,” she said, “I'm going to kiss my little girl to smithereens.”
Slip-slap-slop smacked the kisses.
“Stand over here,” Mother commanded, with a certain old-womanly, almost military authority. “Stand up straight. Let's have a good look at you. Why, you're in excellent colour.”
Skylark took off her rain hat and waterproof cape.
She had indeed put on weight from all the milk, sour cream and butter. Her mouth smelled of milk, her hair of sour cream, her clothes of butter.
But the extra pounds did nothing to enhance her appearance. She had spots on