Biri Szilkuthy inquired after Skylark, with whom she had only recently grown friendly. The two of them would sit whispering for hours on the bench beneath the old horse chestnut tree.
Mother offered her a chocolate from the box Ákos had bought her at the theatre. They chatted and laughed, and by eight the box was empty.
When she had gone, the woman went into her daughter's room to do some sewing, spreading shirts and blouses over Skylark's unmade bed. She nervously popped a cube of sugar into her mouth, and sucked on it slowly. She looked at the pictures on the walls which she had seen so many times before. Dobozy and his betrothed, Batthyány, and the first Hungarian cabinet. Then she turned to the bronze-clasped photograph albums and leafed through three generations of Vajkays and Bozsós, ending with images of Skylark herself, at ten, at fourteen, with a doll, with a balloon, or sitting dreamily on a rock. But nothing could put her mind at rest.
She got up and went into the dining room, crossing the zigzag pattern of the machine-woven carpet, then hurried out into the hall and paced the full length of the coarse floor runner, which stretched all the way to the front door.
Here she was suddenly seized with fear. She flung open the doors of all the rooms, so that they all flowed into one. Then she switched on all the lights, even in the hall. A strong current of light flooded through the deserted house.
But in this light the silence seemed greater than ever. Nothing stirred. She waited to hear the rattle of a key in the lock. Silence. She listened for noises in the street. All was quiet. Only the creaking of floorboards as she paced to and fro. Then she stopped still.
She headed towards the bedroom. From the drawer of her husband's bedside table she took a key and hurried back through the gleaming house to the last room, the unused drawing room they kept for guests. It was there that the dusty, black piano stood. The old Bösendorfer had been a wedding present from her parents, a faithful piece of family furniture that had already served two generations, and had weathered many storms and charming soirees.
She sat down on the piano stool, rested her hands in her lap and meditated.
How long had it been since she last played? A long, long time. She had loved the piano once. She had even tried teaching Skylark, but, poor thing, she never got very far, simply didn't have the feel for it. When she was eighteen they had shut the lid, locking it with a little key to keep the room nice and tidy. And it had remained shut ever since. Even she had hardly touched it after that.
To while away the time she lifted the lid, which opened with a crack, and ran her stiff fingers down the keyboard. The keys were covered with a layer of cracked bone, not that much older than her own.
She knew only one tune by heart, a song from her girlhood, “Upon the wavy Balaton…” And this she played now, somewhat feebly and desultorily, stopping every now and then. All the same it was soon over.
Then she sifted through the music books until she came across some Beethoven sonatas. She had a go at the first, whose daring, leaping shifts of tempo brought pangs of remembrance from the distant past. She had often played it in her twenties, on fine summer mornings. Now at first it didn't go too well. She put on her glasses to see the notes more clearly and repeated the piece until her fingers began to spin and the steely, untuned piano resounded in melodic melancholy. She made a proper practice session of it, a veritable campaign. Over and over again, getting better and better each time. On her face, which she held up close to the music between two brightly burning lamps, beamed an expression of strenuous concentration and wonder.
It must have been about three o'clock when she finally felt exhausted. Without shutting the piano or tidying away the music, she went straight to the bedroom. She didn't even put out the lights. Deciding to wait no longer for her husband, she got into bed.
She had just pulled the quilt up over her shoulders when she heard Gypsy music in the street nearby, followed by the barking of dogs. Soon she was sure she could hear the clatter of the gate, a sound she had already imagined so many times that evening. This time, however, she was not deceived. She sat up in the electric lamplight.
Ákos came into the bedroom.
“Father,” she said quizzically, in a voice that mixed astonishment with reproach.
Her husband stood in the middle of the room. He didn't even remove his hat, which sat crooked and impertinent on his head. He no longer wore his glasses. He had lost them somewhere along the way.
“What is it?” his wife asked faintly.
Ákos said nothing. He glared at the woman, the smelly stump of a cigar still smouldering between his teeth. No matter how he chewed at it, he couldn't draw any smoke. He wore a surly scowl.
He's drunk, thought the woman suddenly. She was no less horrified by the thought, and by the apparition of the rigid, mysterious figure who stood before her, than if a complete stranger had broken into her bedroom in the dead of night.
She leaped out of bed. Without even reaching for her slippers, she ran over to prop her husband up.
“Sit down.”
“I'm not sitting down.”
“Then lie down.”
“I'm not lying down either.”
“What then?'
“I'm staying where I am,” Ákos stammered, leaning against the doorpost.
But then he did move.
He went as far as the table and slammed it hard with his palms.
“I'm staying where I am,” he growled menacingly. “Just for that,” he repeated, “I'm staying where I am.”
He was stubborn, like a child. His wife let him be.
“Fine, you stay where you are.”
“Matches!” he commanded.
The woman fetched the matches from the bedside table. Ákos lit up, sucking the flame into his crumbling cigar, which suddenly caught fire and singed his moustache. He spat left and right, ejecting the cigar from his mouth with his tongue and spitting once more after it on the floor.
Flecks of spittle sparkled white on the polished wooden floor.
“Cigar!” commanded Father.
His wife rummaged for his wallet in the breast pocket of his mouse-grey jacket and took out a cigar. Ákos bit off the end and lit up again.
Only now did she manage to coax the hat from his head and the cane from his hand. But still the man didn't move.
“You've had too much to drink,” said his wife with a conciliatory smile, as she tried to bring him to his senses. When she noticed that her husband had taken offence, she added softly, “You've had a bit of a tipple, haven't you?” and she gazed at the man who stood before her, dead drunk.
The old man plunged his hands into his trouser pockets and rummaged. Suddenly he turned out both pockets.
Gold, silver and copper coins tumbled out, clattering and jangling across the floor, hiding themselves away under the furniture.
“Here you are,” Ákos shouted. “Money!” He dug out another handful of coins. “For the two of you,” and he dashed the money to the floor.
The coins screeched as they hit the ground.
Mrs Vajkay almost shrieked herself.
There was something deeply sinister about this confusion in her own orderly home, although she could not say why. They both detested gambling and had nothing but contempt for “serious” card games.
The woman searched for the fallen coins which had rolled into dark corners and come to rest. All she asked was:
“Have you been playing cards?'
Ákos stared at her, then took a few deliberate and defiant steps forward to demonstrate how far he was from being drunk. He staggered all the way over to the bedside table. Here, however, he could keep his balance no longer and came to a complete standstill. With the cigar still burning in his mouth, he keeled over like a tree, landing face down on the bed.