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Commences: 7.30 p.m. Ends: after 10.

Zányi wasn't among the cast, which disappointed them. Only Szolyvay. The other actors they did not know.

VI

in which the Vajkays attend the Sárszeg performance of The Geisha

On Monday afternoon they were talking.

“But you really must have a haircut, Father.”

“Why?'

“You can't go to the theatre like that. Look how matted it is — at the back and at the sides.”

Ákos's hair was thinning only on top. At the sides his hoary curls sprang thick and wild. He had last visited the barber in the spring. Since then his hair had grown tousled and unkempt. Dandruff dusted the lapels of his jacket.

“Come into town with me,” said the woman. “I have to call on Weisz and Partner anyway. I want to buy a handbag. I've nowhere to put my opera glasses.”

Ákos accompanied his wife to the leather-goods store. Mr Weisz served them in person.

Before them on the counter he lined up his splendid wares, recently arrived from England. They inspected the brand-new suitcases, marvelling at how easily they opened and closed. They could certainly do with new suitcases themselves, but for now they had only come about the crocodile handbag in the window.

Mr Weisz gestured to a sickly, sorry figure who sat buried among trade catalogues in a glass cage lit by butterfly lamps. He emerged, scurried over to the window display, fetched the handbag, and then, after climbing a ladder to lift down more new bags, made some inaudible comment in his plaintive, nasal voice. He was the Partner, the unsung, neglected talent whose name nobody knew. The signs of some incurable gastric disorder were written all over his sour face. Clearly he didn't eat the same goulash as Mr Weisz.

They spent a long time haggling over the leather handbag. It was expensive, nine forints, and they only managed to reduce it to 8.50. But it was worth the money. The woman hurried it home at once.

Ákos turned into Gombkötő Street, to the barber's.

The barber gave Ákos the full treatment. He wrapped him in a towel and lathered his face with tepid foam. With the bib around his chest, Ákos looked like a little boy treated to cakes at a patisserie, his face smeared thick with whipped cream.

When his assistant had finished the shaving, the barber set about the old man's hair, shaping it on top with electric clippers, scraping away any leftover stubble behind the ears with an open blade, then trimming, raking, combing and smoothing the sides. He carefully snipped the grey tufts of hair from Ákos's ears and spread his moustache with fine twirling wax. This had just arrived from Tiszaújlak and, at seven kreuzers a tub, possessed the singular property of bonding even the most stubborn of Magyar moustaches. Finally, when he had swept away any remaining strands of fallen hair, he dusted Ákos's temples with a soft brush and pressed his hair into shape with a net.

When net and towel were finally removed, Ákos replaced the copy of Saucy Simon in which he had read many mischievous stories from the pen of some amateur scribbler, and looked into the mirror. His face darkened a little.

He hardly recognised himself.

A new man sat on the velvet cushions of the barber's swivel chair. His hair, although it had just been cut, seemed more bounteous than before. His moustache curled into a sharp and utterly unfamiliar fork, blackened by the Tiszaújlak wax, and as bright and stiff as if hammered from cast iron. His chin, on the other hand, was smooth, fresh and velvety. Every pore seemed younger. But different, too, and this unsettled him.

He examined himself mistrustfully with his small watery eyes. He simply couldn't get used to the unfamiliar expression his face now wore.

The barber noticed this.

“Will that be all?'

“Yes, that's fine,” Ákos mumbled in a voice that seemed to say the opposite.

He paid, took his cane and looked once more into the mirror. And now he saw that his face was red, too, and even a little fatter. Yes, decidedly redder and fatter.

His wife was well satisfied.

She too was doing her hair, and had just lit the spirit lamp on her dressing table where she placed her curling irons. She crimped the thin strands of hair on her forehead, more out of etiquette than vanity; that was simply what one did. She powdered her face but, her eyesight being weak, she had difficulty applying the powder evenly from the chamois. Here and there small floury patches remained on her skin. Into her hands, chapped from needlework, she rubbed a drop or two of glycerine. Then she went to look out her one and only festive dress.

This hung from the last hanger in her wardrobe, covered with a sheet. She would take it out only once or twice a year, for Easter, Corpus Christi or some similar occasion. Thus, in spite of having been made so many years before, the dress still looked as good as new.

It was made of lilac silk with black lace trimmings and white lace frills at the neck. It had leg of mutton sleeves and skirts that reached the ground. With it went a pair of elbow-length gloves. She pinned a gold brooch to her breast and hung diamond earrings from her ears — the family jewellery she had inherited from her mother. Into her new crocodile handbag she slipped her mother-of-pearl opera glasses and a lorgnette she had once bought as a present for Skylark, but which they always shared.

Ákos dressed ponderously. With him, dressing was always a trial. His wife had laid out his clothes for him, but still, to his vexation, he couldn't find this or that. He had trouble fastening his collar, then two buttons broke one after the other on his starched shirt front and he couldn't find his tie. At first he found his frock coat too loose, then too tight, and he longed to be back in his mouse-grey jacket. When he was finally dressed, however, and stood beside his wife, he was not displeased with his appearance. His silver wedding came to mind, when they had both set off to the photographer's. He looked fresh, refined and gentlemanly. Only his somewhat disrespectful expression troubled him, which he had already noticed at the barber's. In vain had he washed and brushed his hair, it simply wouldn't go away. His moustache seemed to rear higher and higher. If he pressed it down, it immediately sprang up again.

The Kisfaludy Theatre was housed in one of the tallest buildings in Sárszeg, at least half of which was occupied by the Széchenyi Inn and Café, with a ballroom upstairs. The rest belonged to the theatre, one entrance of which opened out on to a small side street.

Here the Vajkays slipped into the foyer to escape unnecessary attention, and from there to their two-seater box in the stalls. The usher opened the door for them and pressed a programme into their hands.

The woman sat down at the front. She opened the programme, which was hardly bigger than a lady's handkerchief, and skimmed through it. For a while Ákos hovered in the background, observing the musicians as they leafed through their scores and tuned their instruments in the orchestra pit, which receded into the cellar directly beneath him. The lamplight struck the white forehead of the flautist. The violinists were chatting in German. A Czech tuba player with an apoplectic red face and a minuscule nose, who was known to perform at funeral processions, was just raising his serpentine instrument to his neck as if struggling in a fit of suffocation with a golden octopus.

Although the audience was still sparse, a stifling atmosphere already hung over the auditorium. On Sunday there had been two performances, a matinee and an evening show, and the steamy vapours of their passing storm lingered thick and oppressive in the air. The dark recesses of the boxes were still strewn with discarded tickets, scattered sweet wrappers and scraps of hardening orange peel. The theatre had been neither swept nor aired. Furthermore, to the eternal shame of Sárszeg's only theatre — and in spite of countless impassioned pleas in the local press — electric lighting had still not been introduced in the auditorium, and the old oil lamps continued to emit their layers of heavy smoke and a certain melancholy odour, referred to by the locals as “stage stench.”