Dezso Kosztolanyi - Skylark

Her eyes filled with tears.

Her first feeling must have been one of alarm, for she suddenly raised a hand to her eyes as if to avert suspicion and to deceive her fellow passengers, surprised and horrified to find that what she had feared most of all, had counted on coming only later — when she arrived on the plain perhaps, or later still — had already begun. So many tears. In all the world she had never thought there could be so many tears.

She didn't reach for her handkerchief. It would have been to no avail. She wept openly in front of the two men, still on her feet, flaunting her torment almost indecently, heaving her interminable curse with a mixture of indifference and ostentation. A thick membrane of fathomless tears clouded her eyes. She saw no one, and didn't care who saw her.

Then all her nerves and muscles began to jerk and twitch, convulsions seized her throat, rasping and scratching like some unbearably bitter poison chasing down a mouthful of sweet wine.

The two men witnessed in silence the timeless process of weeping. Lungs billowing with a single sigh, twitching lips snatching desperately for air, a few more gasps and spasms, then the winding-down, which also hurt, even if it signalled the death of pain.

Skylark leaned back against the door of the compartment to spread the heavy burden of her labour. There was hardly a grimace, hardly a sign of physical pain on her face. Only that flood of boiling tears flowing through the channels of her eyes, nose and mouth, shaking her otherwise unaffected body from the knees to the shoulder blades, a force invisible to anyone but her, the rising presence of a shapeless memory, a half-formed thought, an image of torment, no less acute for being inexpressible.

She sat down in her place. Her broad face warmed in the sunshine, stains of hot lymph making her nose glow red. In that feathered hat of hers, poor thing, she really did look quite grotesque.

The young man — a handsome but gormless sort — who had been reading until now, set his book down on his knees and stared at the quietly sobbing girl. An offer of assistance kept finding itself on the tip of his tongue, but never passed his lips. He simply couldn't imagine what had happened. Perhaps she had fallen ill, or suffered the kind of “blow” they wrote about in the cheap paperback novels he read.

Skylark paid him no attention whatsoever. She stared resolutely, almost malevolently above his head. He was no different from all the other young men who avoided her gaze and registered her approach with the same spiteful, studied coldness. This was her only form of self-defence.

The boy understood this instinctively. He withdrew his inquisitive gaze and buried it in his book. Skylark changed places. She sat down facing the priest, who all this time behaved as if he had noticed nothing. He was reading from a breviary printed in red letters, resting his head against the inner window of the corridor. The protruding cheekbones of his somewhat sickly face betrayed a kind of inner peace.

He wore a threadbare cassock with a button missing and a crumpled celluloid collar. This slight, humble soldier of the cross, who had returned to his village to grow old, engulfed by love and goodness, knew exactly what was going on. But out of tact he said nothing, and out of sympathy showed not the slightest sign of interest. He knew the world was a vale of tears.

Only now did he cast a glance at the girl, his keen, blue eyes intense from regular encounters with the Lord; a steadfast glance that caused Skylark no offence, and almost seemed to cool her burning face. She looked back gratefully, as if to thank him for his kind attention.

She still had tears in her eyes, but no longer shook or sobbed. Before long she had completely calmed down. She gazed at the passing countryside and, from time to time, at the worn and haggard priest, who, past sixty and already nearing the grave, radiated a certain serene simplicity, reassuring and consoling her without words. Throughout the journey they did not speak at all.

Some thirty minutes later the young man got to his feet, slung his double-barrelled shotgun over his shoulder, picked up his hunting hat and left the compartment. Skylark nodded a silent goodbye.

At Tarkő the priest helped her down with her baggage. Uncle Béla stood waiting by his chaise, his friendly, dumpy face, discoloured by the healthy air of the plains, shining as he beckoned. As always, a cigarette burned between his teeth.

Skylark smiled. Her uncle's beard was yellow-red, just like the Persian tobacco he always smoked. His familial kiss reeked of the same tobacco.

And someone else was waiting for her, too. Tiger, the hunting dog. She ran alongside the chaise when they set off, and was still beside them when they reached the farmstead.

in which we learn a thing or two about Mother and Father's first day alone

Ákos Vajkay, formerly of Kisvajka and Kőröshegy, retired county archivist, and his wife Antónia Vajkay, née Bozsó, of Kecfalva, gazed after the train as it panted out of the station and dwindled to a smoky black dot on the horizon.

They stared dumbly into space like the speechless victims of some sudden loss, their eyes still hankering after the spot where they had last seen her. They couldn't bring themselves to walk away.

When people go away they vanish, turn to nothing, stop being. They live only in memories, haunting the imagination. We know they go on being somewhere else, but no longer see them, just as we no longer see those who have already passed away. Skylark had never left them like that before. At most she had been away for a day, when she travelled to Cegléd, or for half a day, on an excursion to Tarliget. And even then they had hardly been able to wait for her return. It was very hard to imagine that she would not be coming home with them today.

Such thoughts tormented the elderly couple. They hung their heads and stared at the gravel on the track as mournfully as at an unexpectedly and hastily filled grave.

They could already feel their loneliness. Swelling painfully, it hovered around them in the silence the departing train had left behind.

A rangy railway official came towards them, wearing a red armband and the insignia of a winged wheel on his sleeve. He had been standing between the rails when the train pulled out and was now shuffling hesitantly towards the office.

His face was pale, but on his narrow brow, beneath the peak of his railway cap, his summer pimples bloomed brightly like ripe cherries. His uniform hung loosely about his chest.

He snorted and snuffled, continually plagued by colds. Even in this fine, sunny weather his left nostril was constantly blocked. To dignify his wheezing he would let out the odd sigh. He even coughed now and then, although he had no need to cough at all.

They spotted him at once. Géza Cifra.

The woman nudged her husband. Ákos had already seen him, but hadn't wanted to speak. They wondered what to do.

They turned away, not wanting to face the boy.

They had known Géza Cifra for some nine years.

In the days when he was first stationed in Sárszeg, he had often visited their home, where Ákos would receive him with his customary affability. They'd invite him to tea, sometimes even to dinner. Géza Cifra would accept their invitations; out of awkwardness, mainly, for he couldn't say no to anyone. He praised the tea and extolled the dinner. At the Catholic Ladies’ Club ball he danced the second quadrille with Skylark. He took her out rowing with friends on the lake at Tarliget and was generally attentive to her — in so far as he knew how to be attentive to a woman. But then, without cause or foundation, rumours began to spread in town that he would ask for Skylark's hand. At this he suddenly began to stay away.