Skylark (2 page)

Kosztolányi simplified the Hungarian sentence, made it shorter, purer. The nineteenth-century sentence was long-winded, the meaning wandering through long periodic structures, and in any case the Hungarian long sentence is a dubious formation because the words do not have genders and the subordinate clauses are more uncertainly connected to the main clauses than in the reassuring rigour of a
Satzbau
(German sentence construction). Such sentences totter along, uncertain even of themselves, stammer a little; in short, are extremely lovable.

These are our internal affairs, important internal affairs; let's look at what lies beyond the sentence.

First of all, in the spirit of Kosztolányi, we might say: nothing. Beyond language there is nothing. There are only words, and from these words the poet builds up everything, not just his books, his works, but ultimately he assembles himself and his own fate through words–his feelings, his father, his lovers. This is, of course, an exaggeration, even if it happens to be true. It is true because a writer–in the opinion of this present writer–should not have something to say, and an exaggeration because it would not be a good thing if his books didn't have anything to say either. If the writer speaks, that's pedantry; if the book keeps silent–then what's the point?

Kosztolányi's books, let's be precise here, speak about death, about play and about Kakania, or rather about the interweaving of all three, sometimes about their identity, about the confusion of twentieth-century man for whom life is a game, the whole world is a game, and this world is: death. But even this is not certain.

He writes in his diary:

I have always really been interested in just one thing: death. Nothing else. I became a human being when, at the age of ten, I saw my grandfather dead, whom at that time I probably loved more than anyone else.

It is only since then that I have been a poet, an artist, a thinker. The vast difference which divides the living from the dead, the silence of death, made me realise that I had to do something. I began to write poetry. [...] For me, the only thing I have to say, however small an object I am able to grasp, is that I am dying. I have nothing but disdain for those writers who also have something else to say: about social problems, the relationship between men and women, the struggle between races, etc., etc. It sickens my stomach to think of their narrow-mindedness. What superficial work they do, poor things, and how proud they are of it.

Kosztolányi is stoical, but oddly so, one might even say insincerely so. His is the stoicism of a young man. Kosztolányi's every reflex is that of a young man. (He grew old hard, found it hard to grow old, like a beautiful woman.) He believed in nothing except style. Yet he wasn't a man of principle. He is characterised at once by a love of life and a terror of life. He has no magic potions, he says, nothing helps–but why should one be disappointed because of this? He raises the questions of a man of today, but not the questions of a disillusioned man. We hear the dignity, at times the desire to show off, of a man in the shadow of death.

He sets to work on
Skylark
in the spring of 1923. Szabadka already belongs to another country, our mothers and fathers belong to another country, they are just in the process of learning Serbian; everything is alien, once again our own past is disappearing. Kosztolányi looks back at a world he knew well, where he knew his way around as if at home, but without nostalgia. He knows how the story ends; he sits there in his own nothingness.

The time of the novel is 1899, the eternal present moment, a Faustian moment: in miniature, in a provincial setting. Kosztolányi shows us the margins of a world whose centre we know from Musil. We are in the borderlands of Kakania.

Kosztolányi's character as a prose writer does not, however, stand close to that of Musil, rather to that of Chekhov. He shares that same helpless fascination for the banal and trivial, for a drama-of-being which can be unravelled from a remote gesture, a twitch of the mouth, a dismissive wave of the hand, from lamplight and ugliness. A spider's web over a mine.

Skylark's ugliness is not a symbol. This ugliness is the unnameable anxiety which we would dearly love to forget, to dispel, but it is not possible, it always comes back, is always with us, relentless, just like a daughter with her father. Skylark's hideousness, her soft puffiness, dullness, aggressive goodness is: us. It is our lives that are so stiff, so predictable, so impersonal, so Hungarian. Skylark is eternal. There's no deliverance. Our little bird always flies home.

Kosztolányi's prose is quiet and sharp. Today our books are noisier and perhaps more blurred.

—PÉTER ESTERHÁZY
1993

1.
Subotica today belongs to Vojvodina, until 1990 an autonomous province of Serbia. It became part of the newly created state of Yugoslavia in 1918 at the end of the First World War. As a result of the postwar settlement (Treaty of Trianon, 1920), Hungary lost approximately two-thirds of its territory and one-third of its population to the new successor states.

2.
A term invented by Robert Musil to describe the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. It was coined from the abbreviation K. u. K. or K. K. (whence
Kaka
-nia), which stood for
Kaiserlich und Königlich
(imperial and royal) and was used in reference to all the monarchy's major institutions.

3.
A selection of Géza Csáth's short stories is available in English. See Géza Csáth,
Opium and other Stories
, selected with a biographical note by Marianna D. Birnbaum, translated by Jascha Kessler and Charlotte Rogers with an introduction by Angela Carter, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1983.

4.
In addition to
Skylark
, two other novels by Kosztolányi are available in English translation:
Nero, the Bloody Poet
, translated by George Szirtes as
Darker Muses, The Poet Nero
, Corvina, Budapest, 1990, and
Anna Édes
, translated by George Szirtes, Quartet Books, London, 1991.

Skylark

The dining-room
sofa was strewn with strands of red, white and green cord, clippings of packing twine, shreds of wrapping paper and the scattered, crumpled pages of the local daily, the same fat letters at the top of each page:
Sárszeg Gazette
,
1899
.

Beside the mirror on the wall, in a pool of bright sunlight, a calendar showed the day and the month: Friday I September.

And through the window of an elaborately carved wooden case, the sauntering brass hands of a grandfather clock, which sliced the seemingly endless day into tiny pieces, showed the time: half past twelve.

Mother and Father were busy packing.

They were wrestling with a worn, brown leather suitcase. When they had squeezed one last comb into the canvas pocket of the partition, they zipped it shut and lowered it to the floor.

There it stood, ready for the road, bursting at the seams, its bloated belly protruding on either side like that of a cat about to bear nine kittens.

The remaining bits and pieces they packed into a wicker travel basket: lace knickers, a blouse, a pair of felt slippers, a buttonhook and other oddments their daughter had carefully set aside.

“The toothbrush,” said Father.

“Heavens, the toothbrush!” nodded Mother. “We nearly forgot her toothbrush.”

Still shaking her head, she hurried out into the hall and from there to her daughter's room to fetch the toothbrush from the enamelled tin washbasin.

Father pressed down once more on his daughter's belongings, gently stroking them flat and smooth with his palm.

It was not the first time that his brother-in-law, Béla Bozsó, had invited them to spend the summer in Tarkő, to take a well-earned rest on his little plot.

His three-roomed “castle” stood among ramshackle farm buildings in the middle of a small plain, no more than 150 acres wide. And well they remembered the spacious guest room in the outer wing, its whitewashed walls hung with hunting rifles and antlers.

They hadn't visited for years, but Mother would often speak of her brother's “estate” and the little reedy brook that hid at the foot of the hill, where, as a child, she had launched her paper boats.

They kept postponing the trip.

But this year, every letter that arrived from the plain closed with the same entreaty: come and see us at last, come as soon as you can.

In May they had finally made up their minds to go. But summer came and went as usual, with preparations for winter, the cooking of preserves, the bottling of apples, pears and cherries.

By the end of August they wrote to say it was too late again. They were still stuck at home, too old to feel like moving. But they'd send their daughter instead. Just for a week. She worked so hard, a break would do her good.

Their relatives were overjoyed with the news.

The postman called every day. Uncle Béla wrote to the girl and so did his wife, Aunt Etelka. The girl wrote back, Mother wrote to her sister-in-law, Father to his brother-in-law, asking him to be sure to wait at the station in person with his chaise, for the farmstead was a good three-quarters of an hour on foot. Everything was agreed.

Yet even in the last couple of days the telegrams went on crossing, clearing up the minutest of details. Now there was no going back.

Mother returned with the toothbrush. Father wrapped it carefully in tissue paper.

They made one last inspection of the room, then, satisfied that nothing had been overlooked, they pressed the lid down on the wicker basket.

But the key refused to turn and the lock kept springing open. Finally, they tied the basket shut with packing twine, father bearing down upon the lid with his hollow chest, the veins bulging on his forehead.

They had all risen with the dawn that day, setting about the task of packing at once, bustling to and fro in their unaccustomed excitement. They had hardly even stopped for lunch; one thing or another would always come to mind.

Now everything was ready.

They set the wicker basket down on the floor beside the suitcase. A luggage trolley rattled over the paved courtyard path that led all the way from Petőfi Street, across the garden and right up to the veranda.

A gangling youth strolled in and threw suitcase and basket indifferently on to the trolley before wheeling it out again and heading off towards the railway station.

Father wore a mouse-grey suit, the exact colour of his hair. Even his moustache was the same light shade of grey. Large bags of crumpled, worn, dry skin hung beneath his eyes.

Mother, as always, wore black. Her hair, which she slicked down with walnut oil, was not yet altogether white, and her face showed hardly a wrinkle. Only along her forehead ran two deep furrows.

Yet how alike they looked! The same trembling, startled light in their eyes, their gristly noses narrowing to the same fine point and their ears tinted with the same red glow.

They glanced at the grandfather clock. Father checked his pocket watch, which was a little more reliable. They went out on the veranda and called in unison:

“Skylark!'

A girl sat on a bench by the flowerbeds, beneath the horse-chestnut tree. She was crocheting a tablecloth from a ball of yellow cotton.

Only her black hair could be seen, casting–like the leaves of the horse-chestnut tree upon the ground below–a heavy shadow on about two-thirds of her face.

She did not move at once. Perhaps she hadn't heard.

In any case, she liked to sit like this, head bowed, peering at her work even when she had tired of it. The experience of many long years had taught her that this posture suited her best.

Perhaps she heard some sound, but still did not look up. She governed herself with all the discipline of an invalid.

This time they called louder:

“Skylark!'

Then louder still:

“
Skylark!
'

The girl raised her eyes to the veranda, where, on the top step, her mother and father stood waiting.

They had given her that name years ago, Skylark, many, many years ago, when she still sang. Somehow the name had stuck, and she still wore it like an outgrown childhood dress.

Skylark breathed a deep sigh–she always sighed thus deeply–wound up her ball of yellow cotton, dropped it in her work basket and set off towards the little arbour overgrown with vine leaves. So it was time, she thought; the train would soon be leaving; tonight she'd be sleeping at her uncle's on the Tarkő plain. She waddled along a little like a duck.

The elderly couple watched with fond smiles as she drew near. Then, when her face finally revealed itself between the leaves, the smiles paled slightly on their lips.

“It's time to go, my dear,” said Father, looking at the ground.

They passed beneath the row of poplars lining Sárszeg's only tarmacked street, Széchenyi Street, running in one straight line to the railway station. They might just have been taking one of their daily walks: Mother to the right, Father to the left and Skylark in between.

Mother talked about how she had packed the toothbrush only at the last minute, and explained where she had put this and that. Father carried a white striped woollen blanket and a flask he had filled with good well-water from home, for the journey.

Ákos Vajkay said nothing. He tramped along in silence, looking at his daughter.

She wore an enormous hat with outmoded dark-green feathers, a light dress and, to protect herself from the scorching sun, opened a pink parasol which sifted shards of light across her face.

Skylark was a good girl, Ákos would often say, to himself as much as anyone else. A very good girl, his only pride and joy.

He knew she was not pretty, poor thing, and for a long time this had cut him to the quick. Later he began to see her less clearly, her image gradually blurring in a dull and numbing fog. Without really thinking any more, he loved her as she was, loved her boundlessly.