Skylark Read Online Free Page B

they set off, and was still beside them when they reached the farmstead.

III
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.
    He got in with an altogether different crowd, a handful of junior clerks, shady office boys, well below even his social station although close to him in spirit. Consequently, he felt ashamed of his friends, rather as a man who knows he has married beneath himself might feel ashamed of his wife. They met secretly in their lodgings, scoffing at everything, disparaging everyone, especially one another. An amber-tipped cigarette holder or a silver cigarette case could fill them with such unspeakable envy, and the good fortune of one of their number with such loathing, that they would immediately conspire against him and (remaining within the bounds of friendship, of course) contemplate causing him fatal injury, denouncing him in an anonymous letter or simply wringing his neck.
    Géza Cifra, who was not naturally inclined to such malevolence, occasionally felt disgusted by his companions. But not