“You'll burn the bedclothes,” Mother wailed. “You'll set the whole house on fire.”
“What if I do?” Ákos growled. “At least it would burn down. And we'd be rid of that too. Who cares?” he said sadly. “Who cares?'
“Really, Ákos,” his wife interrupted, brushing the glowing ash from the quilt and pillows.
Somehow she managed to lift her husband to his feet. Again he had the cigar in his mouth and puffed vigorously as she hauled him over to the table. She slipped a chair beneath him and he sank into it.
“Honestly,” said the woman as she sat him down. “What on earth's the matter?'
“With me?” asked Ákos with a shrug. “What's the matter with me?'
“Yes, with you.”
“The matter with me,” he began, wiping away the ash that had fallen into his moustache, “the matter with me,” he repeated in a deep and resolute voice, “is that I'm a swine.”
“You?'
“Yes, me.” He nodded.
“What are you talking about?” the woman whined. “You of all people, the sweetest—'
“Shut up!” the old man shouted. “Hold your tongue. I'm a swine. A useless, miserable swine. That's what I am.”
The woman took pity on her husband and went over to embrace him. Ákos pushed her away.
“Leave me alone.”
“Nonsense,” said the woman, deep in thought. “You a swine? Why on earth should you be a swine?'
“Because,” said Ákos, spitting out his second cigar, which had pinched his tongue with its caustic poison, “because I am,” he repeated wearily.
Only now did his head really begin to spin. In this closed room, where yesterday's stagnant heat stood trapped, his drunkenness hit him with full force. His head fell to one side and he seemed to be nodding off. But his face grew increasingly pale. It made a picture of such frailty that his wife asked uneasily:
“Shall I make some tea?'
Ákos nodded.
The woman snatched up her crocheted shawl and ran as she was, barefoot, in her nightdress, into the kitchen, where, after clattering with pots and pans, she lit the stove. She boiled the kettle for tea.
Ákos sat in the armchair, almost motionless. He clasped the velvet armrests with both hands, for he felt the chair was rising slightly into the air. Only a couple of inches at first, but then higher, floating, foot by foot, all the way up to the ceiling and back, gaining speed as it went. Then it began to spin. It wasn't actually unpleasant, this spinning. Ákos found it quite amusing. He stared at the objects that hurtled past, the dancing mirror, the bow-legged doors, reeling all together in a tipsy waltz. He continually lost and regained consciousness.
In one such moment he managed to pull himself together. He stood up to get undressed. He pulled off his jacket and trousers, and tore off his necktie, whose clasp got caught on a button of his shirt. Drunk as he was, he still folded his clothes together neatly, with all the fussiness of old age, when the mind is increasingly preoccupied by ever more trivial details. He placed his watch, signet ring and keys in his wallet so that he'd be able to find them again in the morning and slip them back into his pockets, as he had done throughout the thirty-six years of his marriage.
His wife came in with the teapot, a mug and some rum.
“Drink this,” she said to her husband, who was already sitting on the bed undressed. “You'll feel better in no time.”
Ákos filled the mug with rum, then splashed a drop of tea on top and stirred it in. The woman climbed into bed, shivering with cold from the kitchen.
The old man could only manage a few sips.
“Now come to bed,” said the woman.
And he would have done so, too, had he not been struck by the thought that always occurred to him before going to bed: that he should search the whole house for the hidden burglar he never found. In his shirt and underpants he tottered about in the dining room.
The chandeliers still burned. For a moment he didn't know where he was. It was so light everywhere, out in the hall and in his daughter's bedroom too. He stubbornly staggered on to the drawing room.
Here he was greeted by still brighter light. At either end of the piano the two lamps, which mother had left on, still glowed, illuminating the keyboard, the open lid and the open scores strewn over the music rest.
Ákos burst out laughing, so heartily that his laughter echoed through the hollow house and all the way to the bedroom, where his wife, with knitted brows, tried to follow what was going on. Her husband soon returned.
“What happened here, then?” he asked in the same coarse tone he had used when he first came home. Once again he stood in the middle of the bedroom. “What kind of nonsense have you been up to? Been having a ball, have we?” and he laughed so loud that he coughed, choking on his words.
“What are you laughing at?'
“You've been having a ball, haven't you?” Ákos repeated. “A ball in this house? Have you been raising the roof, Mother?'
“I was waiting for you,” said the woman plainly. “And I played the piano.”
“I bet you did,” said Ákos accusingly. “You've been having a ball.” Then, accusingly, “A ball.”
But he had hardly finished uttering these words when a sudden spasm seized his throat and he collapsed into the armchair, sobbing.
His dry sobs shook his whole body as he howled, without tears. He slumped forward across the table.
“Poor thing,” he moaned, “poor thing. It's her I pity.”
He could see Skylark standing before him, just as in his dream. From behind a fence she stared at him like one possessed, begging him to help her. She was almost braying with grief.
“God, how I pity her, oh, God!'
“Why do you pity her?” asked the woman.
His wife wanted no part in this performance, even though she had the easier role to play. Though dazed by the unaccustomed lateness of the hour, she still had all her wits about her. She had neither witnessed her husband's dream nor read her daughter's letter, which had left such a deep impression on Ákos.
“You must never pity her,” said the woman, trying to placate her husband with cool, calm words. “You've no reason to. She's been away. And she'll come back. She has to enjoy herself too, you know. Don't be so selfish.”
“How lonely she is,” Ákos whispered, gazing into space. “How absolutely alone!'
“She'll be home tomorrow,” said Mother, affecting indifference. “She'll be here tomorrow evening. And then she won't be alone, will she? Now come to bed.”
“Don't you understand?” the old man retorted heatedly. “That's not what I'm talking about.”
“Then what are you talking about?'
“About what hurts right here,” and he beat his fist against his heart. “About what's in here. Inside. About everything.”
“Come and get some sleep.”
“No,” Ákos replied bullishly, “I refuse to sleep. I want to talk at last.”
“Then talk.”
“We don't love her.”
“Who doesn't?'
“We don't.”
“How can you say such a thing?'
“It's true,” Ákos cried, striking the table with his palms as before. “We hate her. We detest her.”
“Have you gone mad?” the woman shouted, still lying in bed.
As if to provoke his wife still further, Ákos raised his voice, which already rasped and faltered.
“We'd much rather she wasn't here. Like now. And right now we wouldn't even mind if she, poor thing, were…”
He could not pronounce the terrible word. But this way it was yet more terrible than if he had.
The woman sprang out of bed and stood before him to put a stop to this enormity. She turned a deathly white. She wanted to make some reply, but the words stuck in her throat. For in spite of her frenzied indignation, she couldn't help wondering if her husband's outrageous suggestion might be true. She gaped at him, utterly astounded.