It was a proper group portrait, comprising all the summer guests at Tarkő.
In the foreground, arm in arm, stood the two corsetless Thurzó girls, Zelma and Klári, with hairstyles à la Secession and tennis rackets in their hands. Beside Zelma stood a polished but rather irresolute-looking Feri Olcsvay, who, poor fellow, still didn't know whether he belonged to the Kisvárad or Nagyvárad branch of his family.
Next to Klári knelt cousin Berci on one knee in a mock-heroic lover's pose, leaving a visible snigger on the faces of the two girls, who were hardly able to suppress their giggles.
In the background, also arm in arm, stood Skylark and Aunt Etelka.
“It's a very good photograph,” said Mother. “Those must be the Thurzó girls.”
“Yes.”
“The big one doesn't look very nice. The little one's a bonny creature, but her face is so expressionless.”
Ákos asked to see the photograph. He only looked at his daughter.
She stood by the door of the barn, which was propped open by a wooden rake. With one arm clinging to Aunt Etelka and the other planted against the wall of the barn, she appeared to be reaching out for protection from something that frightened her. She seemed so alone among the others, even among her relatives, her own flesh and blood. Only this gesture of hers was visible, this gesture of desperate escape, which was, in its own way, quite beautiful. Otherwise her face could hardly be seen, for, as always, she hung her head and showed the camera only her hair.
“Well, what do you think?'
“You look nice,” Father replied. “Splendid.”
Skylark had finished hanging her clothes in the wardrobe and was just shutting the door when she suddenly said:
“Oh yes, did you get my letter?'
“Indeed we did,” said Father, quick to reassure her.
“Was it frightfully painful, my poor dear, that beastly tooth of yours?” asked Mother.
“Of course not. It went away in no time. It was nothing.”
“Which one was it?'
“This one.”
Skylark stood beneath the chandelier, her mouth wide open so that her mother could see, obligingly thrusting her forefinger deep inside to point out a decayed, brown tooth, half of which was missing. The other teeth at the front were like tiny grains of rice, set a little far apart, but white and whole.
“Dear me,” said her mother, stretching up on tiptoe, for her daughter was a good deal taller than she. “You'll have to see the dentist. You can't leave it like that.”
Ákos didn't look.
He couldn't bear to witness any form of physical suffering, illness or wound.
He only stared at his daughter's face as she opened her mouth. And there, in the electric lamplight, beneath the chandelier, he could see, still more clearly than when she had gone away a week before, that a soft but indelible ashen haze had descended over her skin, like a thin, hardly visible but none the less durable cobweb. It was age, indifferent and irreparable, which he had finally accepted on his daughter's behalf, and which no longer caused him any pain. As the three of them stood there together, they really did seem quite alike.
“So, how is everyone?” asked Mother.
“They're all very well, thank you.”
“Aunt Etelka?'
“She's fine.”
“Uncle Béla?'
“Likewise.”
“So they're all well.”
In Tarkő it had been exactly the same.
“So, how is everyone?'
“They're all very well, thank you.”
“Your mother?'
“She's fine.”
“Your father?'
“Likewise.”
“So they're all well,” they had said.
But Skylark made no mention of this. All she added was:
“They send their kindest regards.”
And, unbuttoning her blouse, she began to get ready for bed.
“So you enjoyed yourself?'
“Tremendously.”
“I can't even begin to tell you tonight,” she added. “But tomorrow. I'll speak of nothing else all week.”
“At least you had a good rest.”
“Yes.”
“And you?” Skylark began, raising her voice a little in mild self-reproach. “And you, my poor things? I can imagine how awful it must have been. The food at the King of Hungary.”
“Awful,” Ákos replied with a dismissive wave of his hand.
“Actually,” said Mother, playfully affecting pride, “your father was wined and dined by the Lord Lieutenant.”
“Really?'
Skylark cast a penetrating glance at her father.
“There's something not quite right about Father. Something I don't like. Come over here, my sweet. Let me have a good look at you.”
Father went over to her obediently. He didn't dare look his daughter in the eyes. He was frightened.
“How pale you are,” said Skylark, lowering her voice. “And how thin! Your little hands too, how thin they've grown!'
Skylark placed her bony but none the less pleasantly feminine hands on her father's and stroked his aged wrists as if they were a child's. Then she kissed them tenderly.
“Now you're in my hands,” she said in an almost manly voice. “Father dear, you have to put on weight. Do you understand? I'll cook for you.”
“That's true,” Mother brooded. “What shall we cook tomorrow?'
“Something light. I've had all I can take of fatty country cooking. A caraway soup, perhaps, and meat with rice. Perhaps a little semolina. And there's the cake, too.”
“And then there's washing day to think of,” Mother mumbled. “Next week.”
Father said good night and withdrew into his bedroom, shutting behind him the door that separated it from his daughter's room. He could hear Mother discussing all the niggling details of housekeeping with his daughter, who was already in bed. Then the conversation turned to the washerwoman and Biri Szilkuthy, who had split up with her husband.
Ákos lit the nightlight. But as its feeble glow flickered across the tray on which it stood, he suddenly turned pale and shrank back as if he had seen a ghost.
There on the edge of the tray lay a slip of paper that somehow had not been hidden away in the confusion. It was the torn, pink stub of a theatre ticket for a two-seater box in the stalls, which they had brought home by mistake and kept.
He glanced towards the door, then, after crumpling the incriminating document in the palm of his hand, tore it into tiny pieces. He went over to the white tiled stove and scattered the pieces inside. When they lit the stove for the first time — in the autumn, at the end of September or the beginning of October — it would burn to a crisp along with all the twigs and logs and other lumber they had been throwing inside all summer long.
Then he got undressed. Mother came in too, on tiptoe, quietly closing the door that separated them from Skylark.
They spoke in whispers.
“Well, have you calmed down at last?” said Mother to Father, who lay flat as a board in bed, his head on a low pillow.
“Is she asleep?'
“Yes.”
“Poor thing. The journey tired her out.”
Mother looked at her daughter's bedroom door. Her woman's heart knew all too well that her daughter wasn't sleeping.
Skylark had just switched off the electric lamp and now lay in complete darkness. She breathed a deep sigh, as she often did, many times a day, and shut her eyes. It was the end, she felt, the end of everything.
Nothing had happened, once again, nothing. As always she had only lied and smiled and tried to please everyone. But during her week away, far from her parents, something had changed inside her, something she only became aware of now that she no longer saw the folk of Tarkő before her, nor heard the rattle of the train.