Skylark (20 page)

At last she opened her eyes. Darkness hovered around her, a dense and charitable blackness. At the touch of the cool air, or perhaps of the darkness itself, in which she couldn't see a thing, her eyes suddenly filled with tears. Warm, living tears flooded her pillow as if the glass of water on her bedside table had tumbled down upon it. And now she was sobbing out loud. But she lay on her stomach and pressed her mouth to the pillow so that her parents shouldn't hear. It was an exercise she had perfected through many years of practice.

Father had still not switched off the light.

“Skylark,” he faltered, pointing to the door and beaming contentedly at his wife.

“She's flown back home,” said Mother.

“Our little bird,” added Father, “has finally flown home.”

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Published by The New York Review of Books

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Translation copyright © 1993 by Richard Aczel Introduction copyright © 1993 by Péter Esterházy All rights reserved.

First published in Hungarian as
Pacsirta
, 1924

Cover image: Paula Modersohn-Becker,
Self-Portrait
, 1898
Cover design: Katy Homans

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-publication

Kosztolányi, Dezso, 1885–1936.

[Pacsirta. English]

Skylark / by Dezso Kosztolányi ; introduction by Péter Esterházy ; translated by Richard Aczel.

p. cm.—(New York Review Books classics)

I. Title.

PH3281.K85P313 2010

894́.51133—dc22

2009035693

eISBN 978-1-59017-402-9
v1.0

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