Beware of Pity Read Online Free PDF

half-an-hour ago, he says, and he leads me into the salon, four windows curtained in red silk, the room sparkling with light from crystal chandeliers, fabulously elegant, I’ve never seen anywhere more splendid. But to my dismay it is deserted, and I clearly hear the cheerful clink of plates in the room next to it—how very annoying, I think at once, they’ve already started dinner!
    Well, I pull myself together, and as soon as the servant pushes the double door open ahead of me I step into the dining room, click my heels smartly, and bow. Everyone looks up, twenty, forty eyes, all of them the eyes of strangers, inspect the latecomer standing there by the doorpost feeling very unsure of himself. An elderly gentleman is already rising from his chair, undoubtedly the master of the house, quickly putting down his napkin. He comes towards me and welcomes me, offering me his hand. Herr von Kekesfalva does not look at all as I imagined him, not in the least like a landed nobleman, no flamboyant Magyar moustache, full cheeks, stout and red-faced from good wine. Instead, rather weary eyes with grey bags under them swim behind gold-rimmed glasses, he has something of a stoop, his voice is a whisper slightly impeded by coughing. With his thin, delicately featured face, ending in a sparse, pointed white beard, you would be more likely to take him for a scholar. The old man’s marked kindness is immensely reassuring to me in my uncertainty; no, no, he interrupts me at once, it is for him to apologise. He knows just how it is, anything can happen when you’re on army service, and it was particularly good of me to let him know; they had begun dinner only because they couldn’t be sure whether I would arrive at all. But now I must sit down at once. He will introduce me to all the company individually after dinner. Except that here—and he leads me to the table—this is his daughter. A girl in her teens, delicate, pale, as fragile as her father, looks up from a conversation, and two grey eyes shyly rest on me. But I see her thin, nervous face only in passing, I bow first to her, then right and left to the company in general, who are obviously glad not to have to lay down their knives and forks and have the meal interrupted by formal introductions.
    For the first two or three minutes I still feel very uncomfortable. There’s no one else from the regiment here, none of my comrades , no one I know, not even any of the more prominent citizens of the little town, all the guests are total strangers to me. Most of them seem to be the owners of nearby estates with their wives and daughters, some are civil servants. But they are all civilians; mine is the only uniform. My God, clumsy and shy as I am, how am I going to make conversation with these unknown people? Fortunately I’ve been well placed. Next to me sits that brown, high-spirited girl, the pretty niece, who seems to have noticed my admiring glance in the cake shop after all, for she gives me a friendly smile as if I were an old acquaintance. She has eyes like coffee beans, and indeed when she laughs it’s with a softly sizzling sound like coffee beans roasting. She has enchanting, translucent little ears under her thick black hair, ears like pink cyclamen flowers growing in dark moss, I think. Her bare arms are soft and smooth; they must feel like peaches.
    It does me good to be sitting next to such a pretty girl, and her Hungarian accent when she speaks almost has me falling in love with her. It does me good to eat at such an elegantly laid table in so bright and sparkling a room, with liveried servants behind me and the finest dishes in front of me. My neighbour on the left speaks with a slight Polish accent, and although she is built rather on the generous scale she too seems to me a very attractive sight. Or is that just the effect of the wine, pale gold, then dark red, and now the bubbles of champagne, poured unstintingly from silver carafes by the servants with their white