Skylark (7 page)

The Panthers were expected to drink daily and diligently, whether they could hold their drink or not. Ákos had been a member once himself, at the very beginning, when the Table was first founded. But he had suddenly grown old, “soured,” as the others complained, and no longer paid them any attention. Many more had fallen by the wayside, collapsing from chronic alcohol poisoning and cirrhosis of the liver, which was how most men in Sárszeg met their end. Every year the Table laid wreaths at their graves. During Környey's touching speeches the younger Panther cubs would come close to tears, as did those veterans who, in spite of their snowy hair, still stood their ground and were Panthers to the last.

Bálint Környey sat down among them. He had a friendly word for everyone. Then suddenly, as he was about to raise his tankard to his lips, he spotted Ákos, the dear old friend and companion of his youth. He broke into a smile, then fell back into his seat. Of all the...He gave Ákos a hearty wave and then, in good country fashion, bellowed over to his table:

“Greetings! Greetings, old chap!'

They no longer had much to do with each other these days. At most, Környey would send Ákos a brace of pheasant or partridge when he had been out hunting on his estate.

But they were both clearly pleased to see each other now.

At Környey's greeting the Panthers quietened down a little. They leaned towards their beloved president, who was explaining something to his neighbours, clearly about the character he had just greeted. The Panthers glanced respectfully, if perhaps a little sadly, at the Vajkays’ lonely table. Then Bálint Környey rose to his feet.

“My dear old Ákos! Welcome!” he called out before reaching the table and bending down to kiss the hand of his friend's good lady. Then he shook hands with Ákos himself. “This is a turn-up for the books,” he said with a chuckle. “What brings you here?'

“Lunch,” Ákos stuttered. “We came for lunch.” After this he began to hum and haw.

“You wicked old Panther,” Környey interrupted, shaking a huge finger at Ákos, “you've been unfaithful to us. Why don't you look in at the Club some time?'

“Forgive me, my friend, but I no longer drink, nor smoke, nor play cards. And what is more–” here Ákos paused momentarily for thought–“I've grown old.”

The two friends nodded in silence, showing each other the monkish tonsures that parted their thinning hair.

For a while they reminisced about old times, legendary evenings and long-lost friends. Környey, however, was soon called back to his table. He humbly begged their pardon. The Vajkays had anyway been about to leave.

They wandered out into the street.

Somewhere in the north it had been raining and the oppressive heat had abated. Everything was flooded in a soft and pleasant light. Ákos straightened his back and breathed the air deep into his lungs. A sudden warmth spread through his limbs as his digestive system set to work. The food he had eaten was already filtering its fortifying goodness into his circulation.

The interest that had met the couple in the restaurant followed them out into the street. Strangers turned to look at them as they passed. Not that there was anything unusual about their appearance. People simply weren't accustomed to seeing them there in the street, like old couches that belong in the living room and look so strange when, once or twice a year, they're put outside to air.

They didn't hurry. They strolled sedately on the swept asphalt, criss-crossed with clinker bricks, returning the greetings of afternoon strollers who seemed to have become more amicable with the passing of the dreadful heat. They gave themselves up to the easy afternoon atmosphere.

The bells were ringing. Ding-dong, the bells rang constantly in Sárszeg. At morning Mass, at vespers, at funerals...so many funerals. There were three coffin-makers in Széchenyi Street, one after the other, and two stonemason's yards. Hearing the endless peal of deafening bells and seeing all these funeral concerns, the unsuspecting visitor might have imagined that people didn't live in Sárszeg at all, but only died there. Meanwhile the dealers sat inside their shops, among the coffins and tombstones, with the blind faith, shared by all in their profession, that it was precisely their wares everybody needed. And secure in this blithe conviction, they made their handsome fortunes, brought up their broods of children and kept their families in considerable style. Ákos peered through the open door of one such concern. Bronze coffins catering for every shape and size, from the tallest adult to the smallest child, stood upended in a tidy row. The shopkeeper was smoking a cigar, his wife reading a newspaper, while their angora cat sat preening itself inside an open wooden coffin. It wasn't such a terrible sight.

A slanting shaft of sunlight tumbled through the thick glass jars of the St Mary Pharmacy. On the painted signboard outside, the name of Priboczay shone in thick gold letters. Beneath it stood an image of Mary, the pharmacy's patron saint, trampling a snake underfoot, with the pagan Aesculapius close by. Everything glistened.

Every imaginable monstrosity. Even the display of surgical instruments sparkled: glittering silver forceps, shiny rubber gloves, gleaming collapsible operating tables. An anatomical dummy, with twinkling amethyst glass eyes in its trephined skull, proudly displayed its bloody heart, its bistre liver and green gall bladder, and the twisting intestines of its lacerated stomach. The Vajkays had never dared look at all this before. But now they did look. And it was horrible. Horrible, yet interesting.

Then the other window displays–how enticing they all seemed! So many messages and promises beaming out towards them. What can I do for you, sir; at your service, madam; all life's paraphernalia, take your pick. Brand-new goods, never been touched, to replace the old and worn. Silk purses, exquisite velvets and first-class fabrics in tasteful piles, handkerchiefs and walking sticks, perfume bottles tied with satin ribbon bows, meerschaum pipes and humidors, scrunchy cigars and gold-tipped cigarettes.

They stopped in front of Weisz and Partner's, admiring a pigskin suitcase with an English press-stud lock, so different from the shabby old canvas cases they had at home. And then that crocodile-skin hand-bag. The woman simply couldn't tear herself away. How splendid, how absolutely charming! Ákos drew his wife gently by the arm; it was time to move on.

Among the notepads and pencil cases in the window of Mr Vajna's stationery store stood rows of books whose covers had already faded in the blistering sun. These literary novelties from Budapest came as quite a shock to the old man, who had long grown used to the arid, antiquated style of his noble records, deeds and documents. Fierce and fashionable volumes of poetry glared back at him with diabolical, sneering faces; naked male bodies and delirious women with their hair down and their staring eyes wide open.

Ákos read their phoney, pseudo-modern titles over and over again:
Deathrun
–
In the Night of Life, Aspasia Mine: I Want You!
The woman nudged her husband with a smile. But Ákos only shrugged. Yes, such things existed. He found them strange, but couldn't conceal a certain curiosity.

At home they put on their slippers, caught their breath and rested. So much had happened in one day.

The sun was still shining. They opened a window and a tepid current of air streamed through the house, leaving columns of golden dust in its wake. One of Veres's ragged, grimy brats loafed around in the yard outside. He was gnawing at a slice of dry bread, down which the thick sunlight trickled like honey. The boy seemed to be catching the drips with his tongue. In the distance, the sound of a Gypsy band.

The two of them listened together.

“Music,” said Mother.

“Yes,” Father replied. “Someone's living it up.”

“Hear it?‘If I had a little farm...’ '

When it began to grow dark, Ákos fetched the Budapest newspaper from the letterbox.

They took only one paper; Ákos's father had ordered it long ago, and it had become a kind of family tradition ever since. In those days it still stood for the values and interests of the Hungarian nobility. But much water had run under the bridge since then, and the paper had switched direction several times. It was hardly recognisable now, and preached the opposite of its original convictions. This fact, however, had escaped the old man's attention.

He spoke of the paper with inveterate deference, and when he opened the wrapper with his penknife an expression of pious rapture spread across his face. He reverently immersed himself in the odd article, and if by chance he found his social class disparaged, he convinced himself he hadn't fully understood, and went on nodding as he read, blithely turning the pages, reluctant to dissent. In truth, he had grown a little indifferent to the news. He no longer read the paper from cover to cover, only skimmed over the headlines to the marriage and death columns at the back. After a while he wearied of this too, and wouldn't touch the paper for weeks on end. Countless issues lay strewn over the table, unopened.

Today, however, he had risen late and, in spite of all his comings and goings, was still not tired. He slowly browsed his way through the entire paper.

However, he couldn't see too well. The Vajkays’ chandelier hung close to the ceiling, high above the dining-room table. They had taken out three of the four light bulbs to save on electricity. In other matters the couple were less frugal, but on this one saving they rigorously insisted. And so they groped around in perpetual semi-darkness.

“I can't see,” Ákos complained.

“Perhaps you should put in the other bulbs.”

Ákos climbed up on the table and steadied the chandelier. Suddenly all four bulbs were shining brightly. A warm even light flooded the dining room.

“How cosy,” the woman cried.

“Indeed,” replied Father. “Now we can read.”

The old man put on his spectacles and began to read aloud to his wife.

The Dreyfus affair. Second hearing before the military tribunal at Rennes. That notorious French captain. Handed secret documents over to the Germans. Accused of high treason. To answer for his crimes before the court. Talk of the death sentence.

The woman wasn't interested.

“Kaiser Wilhelm in Alsace-Lorraine.”

“The German Kaiser?'

“The very same. Says the territory always was and always would be German.”

“Alsace-Lorraine?'

“Alsace-Lorraine, Mother, which they took back from the French in 1871. Goodness, we were young then. I was forty.”

Ákos smiled. The woman smiled too. She rested her palm lightly on the old man's hand.

“There won't be another war, will there?” The woman sighed.

“The French and the Germans,” Ákos explained, “have never cared much for each other. But they seem to have settled their differences this time.”

Foreign news items flashed up before them, charging the air they breathed with a buzz of electricity, connecting the couple to the burning, bitter, but not entirely ignominious or worthless, affairs of the outside world. They didn't understand much of what they read, but felt none the less that they were not entirely alone. Millions struggled just like them. And it was here that all those struggles found a common meeting place.

“Strike,” said Ákos. “An English word. Pronounced
strahyk
. The workers don't want to work.”

“Why not?'

“Because they don't want to.”

“Why don't they make them?'

Ákos shrugged.

“Goodness, Mother,” he said in a low voice, adjusting his spectacles on the bridge of his nose, “five thousand workers are on strike in Brazil. ‘The employers have adamantly refused to meet their demands.’”

“Poor things,” said Mother, not really knowing whom she pitied, the workers or the employers.

Anyway, as the papers reported every month, they had discovered a new and infallible cure for tuberculosis. Which only went to show there was progress after all.

“Phew,” Ákos sighed. “Here, too.‘Shameless agitators among our people.’ ‘Peasants promised half an acre in the name of the prime minister.’ They're calling it ‘communism.’ They want to redistribute the land.”

“Who do?'

Enough of politics. They were more interested in tragedies and disasters.

“‘In the state of Ohio,’ ” Father read, “‘a train plunged from a railway bridge. Two dead and thirty severely injured.’ ’’

“Dreadful,” said Mother, who gave a sudden shudder and came close to tears.

“And how
are
all those poor injured people?” she asked.

They both took a closer look at the paper, but found nothing.

“Doesn't say,” Father mumbled.

At all events, they came alive in this flood of common human hopes and fears. It revived them, dispersing the stifling dullness that had eaten into their bodies, their clothes and all their furniture.

They both stared into space.

“How are you feeling, Mother?” asked Ákos.

“I'm coping, Father,” the woman replied. “And you?'

“Me too.”

Ákos went over to his wife and softly kissed her forehead.

When it was time to light the nightlight they couldn't find the matches. They always kept them on the old cabinet, beside the carriage clock. But now they weren't in their proper place. The woman searched every nook and cranny. At last she found them in the kitchen. She had taken them with her in the morning to make tea, and had forgotten to return them to the cabinet. She hurried back to the bedroom and handed the matches to her husband.

Then they looked at each other as if something had suddenly occurred to them

But they didn't say a word.

Sárszeg is a tiny dot on the map. Apart from a small conservatoire and a third-rate public library, it boasts of no curiosities at all. Most people have either never heard of it, or mention it with disdain. But every Sunday morning, in the clear blue sky before the church of St Stephen, the good Lord hovers above the town, invisible and merciful, righteous and terrible, ever present and everywhere the same, be it in Sárszeg or in Budapest, in Paris or New York.