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by the seven daggers of maternal pain. In days long since gone by she had listened to Skylark's childish prayers, just as the prostrate Jesus heard those of her parents. For a second she flung out her arms towards the image in a gesture of passion which, however, she immediately suppressed. Patience. Patience. There are those who suffer so much more.

Her eyes still tightly shut, she lay on her cold and barren girlhood bed, where nothing, save sleep and illness, had ever happened. She pressed the full weight of her body downwards, like a corpse into its bier. The bed was softer and wider than the divan at Tarkő, and she could spread out more comfortably, soberly reflecting on the daily round that now awaited her.

The following morning she'd rise before seven and start cooking. Risotto, without pepper or other spices, and semolina so that her poor, dear father should put on weight. In the afternoon she'd go on crocheting the yellow tablecloth, which still wasn't finished, because her relatives had refused to let her work and she had succumbed to their persuasions. And then next week was washing day.

At last she opened her eyes. Darkness hovered around her, a dense and charitable blackness. At the touch of the cool air, or perhaps of the darkness itself, in which she couldn't see a thing, her eyes suddenly filled with tears. Warm, living tears flooded her pillow as if the glass of water on her bedside table had tumbled down upon it. And now she was sobbing out loud. But she lay on her stomach and pressed her mouth to the pillow so that her parents shouldn't hear. It was an exercise she had perfected through many years of practice.

Father had still not switched off the light.

“Skylark,” he faltered, pointing to the door and beaming contentedly at his wife.

“She's flown back home,” said Mother.

“Our little bird,” added Father, “has finally flown home.”

This is a New York Review Book

Published by The New York Review of Books

435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

www.nyrb.com

Translation copyright © 1993 by Richard Aczel Introduction copyright © 1993 by Péter Esterházy All rights reserved.

First published in Hungarian asPacsirta, 1924

Cover image: Paula Modersohn-Becker, Self-Portrait, 1898

Cover design: Katy Homans

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-publication

Kosztolányi, Dezso, 1885–1936.

[Pacsirta. English]

Skylark / by Dezso Kosztolányi ; introduction by Péter Esterházy ; translated by Richard Aczel.

p. cm.—(New York Review Books classics)

I. Title.

PH3281.K85P313 2010

894́.51133—dc22

2009035693

eISBN 978-1-59017-402-9

v1.0

For a complete list of books in the NYRB Classics series, visit www.nyrb.com or write to:

Catalog Requests, NYRB, 435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

Table of Contents

Cover

Biographical Notes

Title Page

Contents

Introduction

Skylark

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

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