Skylark Read Online Free PDF Page A

enough to break free of them, for, while they were held together in petty wickedness by the iron clasp of passion, he was bound to them through plain lack of cultivation. He simply enjoyed their schoolboy pranks and nasty jokes.
    His friendship with the Vajkays gradually cooled. They would no more than exchange greetings and the odd polite word when, as now, their paths occasionally crossed.
    Skylark never mentioned Géza Cifra. There had, after all, been others like him. Her parents, however, had never forgotten the boy. Géza Cifra was the one person in all the world they could never forgive and would never cease to resent. What sin, what crime had he committed? None, to be sure. He had never laid a finger on their daughter, never led her on or deceived her, never made improper suggestions as others had.
    All that had happened, one fine March evening during the first year of their acquaintance some nine years before, was that Géza Cifra had bumped into Skylark in front of the King of Hungary restaurant and had, out of simple courtesy, escorted her as far as the Baross Café, talking on the way about the weather, good and bad, causing Skylark, to her parents’ complete surprise, to arrive five minutes late for supper, which began, as custom had it, at approximately eight o'clock.
    This the Vajkays could never forget. Years later they would still reflect on their daughter's mysterious evening promenade, and Géza Cifra became a kind of family legend, swelling inside them entirely unnourished by fact. At times they despised him, at times they accused him, and at times he was simply that spineless scoundrel, that shamefully unfeeling libertine, that wretched–if not altogether ill-intentioned–weakling of a young man, to whom between themselves they only ever referred as
him
. They never so much as uttered his name.
    He had at one time undoubtedly met with the Vajkays’ highest approval. They could never have wished their daughter a more appropriate suitor. They had always dreamed of a decent, homely type who'd wear unironed broadcloth trousers and a painfully knitted brow; who'd sweat a little and blush when he spoke.
    Géza Cifra was just such a man.
    He was always embarrassed and ill at ease. Uncomfortable in the company of people brighter than himself, he could not disguise his torment. It hurt to look at him.
    He was terrified of everyone and everything. Terrified of arriving too early or of leaving too late; terrified of talking too much or too little, of eating too much or too little. At dinner he would always refuse something twice before accepting it the third time round, his head tilted to one side, wearing a sheepish smile. Even now he did not know what to do.
    He could never have imagined what he meant to that poor old couple. All he could sense was that they were colder towards him now, and this he found quite natural. Should he approach them or not?
    He was tempted above all to disappear without seeming to notice them. Indeed he resolved to do so at once. Then, thinking how impolite that might seem, how scandalous and ungrateful, he grew alarmed by his own intentions and changed his mind. In the end, he did what he always did in such situations: the opposite of what he'd initially intended.
    He walked over to them.
    When Géza Cifra raised a gloved hand to his cap and greeted them, Ákos, still standing firm beside his wife, felt a shiver run down his spine.
    “Gone away?” asked Géza Cifra.
    “Away,” Father echoed hoarsely.
    At this point the conversation stalled. It was the moment Géza Cifra always dreaded.
    “Actually,” he began, without knowing how to continue. With that and similar words he tried to stop the gaps in the conversation, but to no avail. He smiled, then grimaced. He shivered hot and cold, then swallowed hard. He thought he had tarried long enough, then decided that he hadn't and it would still be improper to withdraw. His Adam's apple slid up and down his goitrous throat.
    He cast a