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

I

in which the reader is introduced to an elderly couple and their daughter, the apple of their eye, and hears of complicated preparations for a trip to the plains

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.