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fingers of a hand on which the hard, calciferous veins stood out blue and swollen, he'd point to the appropriate columns and figures, indicating to his family that all was in order.
    Now, pacing along the asphalt, he no longer carried the white striped woollen blanket or water flask he had prepared for his daughter's journey. Yet he seemed to shoulder a far greater burden. His wife walked frailly beside him as if seeking refuge in the shadow of the walls.
    School children scurried through the streets, returning from the First of September Book Fair. They had been to exchange their old school books for new ones and were now chattering and laughing about their teachers, especially the two strictest, Mályvády, the maths and physics master, and Szunyogh, the old drunkard. Classes had not yet begun. Today was the first day of term.
    It took the elderly couple the best part of half an hour to trudge back to Petőfi Street where the asphalt came to an end and open ditches, overrun with weeds, gaped on either side of the road. Mihály Veres, their stalwart neighbour, sat out in the street, awl and paring knife in his hands. Veres was a cobbler, a struggling grey-haired craftsman who toiled slowly and moodily from dawn till dusk in his dank subterranean workshop, reached by three brick steps down from the pavement. The musty smell of size wafted out into the street and would even infiltrate the Vajkays’ house. The cobbler's horde of rowdy children ran riot in the broad and dirty yard between the pigsties and the empty sheds.
    The Vajkay house stood opposite.
    This spruce, whitewashed building now slumbered in silence. The five front windows stood shut, the cream lace of the drawn curtains draped over the window cushions which, even in the heat of summer, were never removed.
    Ákos rummaged in his pocket for the string of keys he always carried with him and opened the black lattice gate. They passed inside.
    He closed the living-room door behind him and carefully replaced the thick wall hanging that was draped, winter and summer, to keep out the draught, from two brass nails on the back of the door.
    A hollow interior received them. It was only then they spoke.
    “How will we bear it?” said the woman in the narrow hallway, tears already welling in her eyes.
    “We'll manage,” Father replied.
    “Friday, Saturday, Sunday,” the woman mumbled, as if telling her beads, “then Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday–” here she paused to sigh–“then Friday. A week. A whole week, Father. Whatever will we do without her?'
    Ákos made no reply. He never spoke much, but felt and thought all the more.
    As the woman went on crying, however, he felt obliged to break his silence.
    “Come on now, let's not cry. Today's Friday. Friday's tears are Sunday's laughter. And we'll laugh too, Mother, just you see,” he said without a trace of conviction, and disappeared into the dining room.
    There stood the table in the bright afternoon sunlight, still covered with the greasy plates, glasses and crumbs left over from lunch. At any other time Skylark would have smartly swept the crumbs away with her little dustpan and brush. But even now, how considerate she had been. Before leaving she had straightened the chairs in the drawing room, made the beds, placed two glasses of water on her parents’ bedside table and set nightlight and matches on the old cabinet beside the gold carriage clock for them to light when it got dark.
    Mother began tidying her daughter's bedroom. Ákos, unable to settle, gazed vacantly in through the door.
    The room had once looked like a chapel, chaste and white.
    But the paintwork had faded with time and the silk cushions had grown soiled and a little grey. In the cupboard stood empty cosmetic jars, prayer books from which the lace trimmings of devotional pictures protruded with German inscriptions, velvet-bound, ornamental keepsake albums, fans scribbled thick with names, ball programmes, perfume sachets and