Csardas (10 page)

“Not all the dresses paid for either, I hear,” she countered dryly.

Again the atmosphere of the room was charged with disagreeable tension. Eva bit her lip and stared hard at her cup. Aunt Gizi appeared to be gratified. Adam made a slight move towards Eva, stopped, and stood rather lost and out of place holding a teacup in his hand.

Amalia, with her arm round Kati’s shoulders, was suddenly grateful for their own warm, careless, silly, indulgent mama. Aunt Gizi and Madame Kaldy, two successful, clever women who had the rare gift of making fortunes for their families, also had the gift of deliberately hurting those around them with their astringent tongues and sharp wits. Mama—so foolish, so constantly in debt, so selfish in a thoughtless casual way—would never have said the things that Aunt Gizi and Madame Kaldy had said this afternoon.

“I wondered... that is—” Adam coughed and began again. “Would Eva and Amalia... would they care to see the farm—the new crop and my seeding machine? The ground is dry and they could walk along the tracks with comfort.”

“Splendid!” Amalia jumped to her feet and buttoned her coat, relieved to get out of the house for a few moments. Eva immediately recovered from her bout with Madame Kaldy. She tilted her head towards Felix and gazed at him from beneath long dark lashes.

“Felix,” she commanded lightly, “I demand an instant tour of your estate. I want to see
everything.
I shall want a full description of every building and field on the farm.”

“Eva, my darling girl!” Both his mother and Aunt Gizi frowned. “I hate to lose your regard, but I don’t think I know what every building and field is for!”

“Then you must make it up,” said Eva gaily. She was on her feet and had somehow manoeuvred Felix to the door. As they left the room Aunt Gizi was propelling Kati after them. “It will do you good to walk, Kati. You have been sitting down all day.” Stubbornly Kati held back, pushing against her mother’s arm until Amalia came and joined her.

“Come, Kati,” she said quietly, hating Aunt Gizi and wanting to slap Eva for some inexplicable reason.

Outside they set off across the yard. Felix and Eva were in front, arm in arm, dancing lightly across the ground, bending their heads close and talking in silly affected tones interposed with paroxysms of laughter that echoed across the fields. Adam, with Amalia and Kati, one on each side, stumped solidly behind.

“They’re so beautiful together, aren’t they?” said Kati without envy. “Like two bright birds skimming over the fields. Do you think they know how beautiful they are?”

“I’m quite sure Eva does,” said Malie dryly, and then wondered if she was becoming as sour as the two middle-aged women she had just left behind.

They passed the stables and the granaries and then moved onto the track, the bright dresses of the girls giving life to the brown landscape, Eva’s rose dress most of all. Amalia noticed that Adam didn’t once take his eyes from Eva’s slim darting form, and she felt the same pity for him that she felt for Kati.

“Eva is... very young, Adam,” she said guardedly. “She is young, even for seventeen.” She was trying to warn him, tell him that Eva would never, not once, consider including him in the circle of gay young men who constantly surrounded her. Adam turned his face towards her and stared. Vaguely surprised, she noticed what fine eyes he had—she had never really looked at Adam, not properly—they were green, a deep hazel green, set well apart, intelligent, and in some strange way very soft and kind.

“Felix is not good for her,” he said, his tone almost disinterested. “Felix is not good for anyone. He is very gay, a splendid fellow to sit in the cafés with, but he is not good for Eva.”

Silence descended on the awkward trio, a silence that was emphasized because of the noisy hilarity of the pair in front. Amalia felt a pang of envy because Eva was enjoying herself with a man she adored. She suddenly felt tired of behaving and being grown-up and having to comfort Kati and rebuke Eva. She felt she would like to be walking along with a young man, laughing and flirting, just the way Eva was doing with Felix.

“Kati,” she said without thinking, “there was a young man at your party, a hussar from the garrison. Karoly Vilaghy, I think he was called. I never saw him before.” She had been unable to ask until now. She didn’t want Kati or Eva to share her idle interest. Kati would look longingly at her, dying to share her beautiful cousin’s innermost dreams, and Eva would want to giggle and plot. Amalia wasn’t sure quite what she thought about the young lieutenant, but whatever she thought—felt—it was private and not to be destroyed by the tongues of her relatives. But now, with Eva prancing along beside Felix and Adam gazing wistfully after her, her usual discretion deserted her. Kati’s reaction nearly ruined everything.

“Oh, Malie! Do you like him?”

Malie stiffened. “I don’t know him. How can I say if I like him? I just wondered who he was.”

Kati’s pale eyes fixed themselves onto Malie’s face. “He’s a cousin of Papa’s,” she said eagerly. “They’re very poor. Papa says they don’t even have enough to eat, and Karoly has nothing but his pay to live on. Their background isn’t all that good either, Mama says; some of the connections on Grandmother’s side are doubtful and the only reason Karoly got a commission was because he passed so high as a cadet. Papa feels sorry for him; he says he won’t achieve anything unless he marries well. Certainly his family would never be able to pay the army’s marriage fee if he married someone poor.”

“I see.” She stared straight ahead.

“Would you like me to ask Papa if he can come to the villa for the summer?”

“Of course not. Don’t be so stupid, Kati.”

Adam turned and stared at her again; this time the gentle green eyes were disapproving and surprised. She was startled—at herself, not him. How could she have spoken to Kati like that, poor, stupid, irritating Kati?

“Oh, Kati, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

“That’s all right,” said Kati stolidly, but she was hurt. Both Amalia and Adam could tell she was hurt.

Adam put his arm round her shoulders and hugged her.

“Come along, Kati,” he said gruffly. “Let me show you my splendid new seeder that is going to make the fortunes of us all. Felix isn’t interested, and Eva certainly won’t look at a machine when Felix is there. I shall have to hope that you will pretend to be enthusiastic about it.”

Kati’s face wreathed into a smile at the affection and attention. Kati-like she leaned into his shoulder. “I shan’t have to pretend, Adam,” she said stoutly. “I know I shall love it.” Still with his arm around her shoulder, they turned left, along a track that led to a vast expanse of field where two oxen were drawing a weird contraption of metal tubes and a large wooden box. Eva and Felix didn’t even notice the diversion. They were so absorbed in each other that they continued straight down the path towards the river. Disgruntled and annoyed, Amalia found herself excluded from both parties, left to follow whichever couple she wished.

“What a perfectly miserable day,” she muttered to herself as, after a moment’s consideration, she stumped after Kati and Adam. “What a horrible spring and summer it is going to be.”

There was a curious sense of unease at the garrison. Karoly, in referring to his comrades as irresponsible rakes, had in truth given a fairly accurate description of the young aristocrats who gambled, hunted, and acquired debts while in the service of the Austro-Hungarian army. But even the wildest and most dilettante of his brother officers seemed, during the spring of 1914, to be held under a pall of nervous anticipation, as though waiting for something.

There was no reason—no obvious reason—for the tenseness that possessed them all. Serbia had frightened the Empire over the past two years by daring to prove her strength as a soldier nation. She had succeeded in vanquishing what was left of the mighty Turkish empire and had, indeed, begun to look north and west for an extension of her territories. Karoly, together with his fellows, had been involved in the preparatory moves of the army to keep Serbia from carving out a piece of the Adriatic coastline for herself. It had been prevented, not without distress on the part of the Empire, but it had been prevented. It seemed at last as though everyone’s touchy tempers had been assuaged and possible war averted. There should be no further trouble.

And yet the sense of waiting continued. Karoly inspected men and horses, conducted manoeuvres, attended parades, and did more than his share of paperwork. And all the time he wondered what it was they were awaiting.

He had few friends in the regiment—friends meant drinking together, whoring together, hunting together, and he could not afford these pursuits. Neither could his colleagues, but they usually had a family to rescue them at the last moment from the usurers. Those who were not rescued either resigned their commissions or shot themselves. He was not prepared for either of those alternatives. With a few of his brother officers, the more intelligent and moderate ones, he exchanged a form of friendly acquaintanceship. With one, Count Stefan Tilsky, a Pole, he was slightly more intimate. They did not play together (for Stefan played very hard indeed), but their duties often brought them into contact and they worked well, and occasionally—when Stefan was recovering from a surfeit of wild living—they rode together for no more than the pleasure of riding in the open air on their excellent Lipizzan horses.

It was Stefan he asked about the Ferenc girls, tentatively, feigning a disinterest which didn’t for one moment delude the wily Pole.

“Ha!” shouted Stefan gleefully as they walked their mounts through a small oak wood on the outskirts of the town. “You too, Vilaghy. You too have fallen prey to the town’s chief antidote to boredom, the enchanting Ferenc sisters.”

Karoly smiled with good humour. “Ferenc?” he queried.

Stefan shrugged. “Parvenus, of course, but splendid if you are looking for a wealthy wife and not a pedigree. My father would burst an artery were I to suggest marrying one of them. The father is a Jew—banking, I believe. The mother was a Bogozy—good family but no money.”

He turned his head and looked at Karoly with narrowed eyes.

“Could do very well for you, my friend. They’re pretty girls, bright, too. Which one has taken your fancy, the little dark one who flirts or the tall one with the hazel eyes?”

Karoly smiled again, rather tightly, but determined not to behave foolishly over what was—after all—just a pretty, provincial, middle-class young woman. “I’m not even sure which is which,” he lied. “One is Eva, yes? The other I don’t know—not her name.”

“Eva’s the little one,” said Stefan jovially. “Great spirit and style, but I think could be something of a handful as a wife. For my money, if you want to treat the matter seriously, you’d take the other one—Amalia. Smiles a lot, but quieter, gentler. I say!” His face began to grow animated as he involved himself in Karoly’s domestic affairs. “Look here, my friend, it could well be the answer for you. Old man Ferenc—bit of a tyrant from all one hears—would need some handling, but he could afford to pay the marriage fee for you. Oh. Sorry!” He looked suddenly embarrassed at his lapse of manners in referring to Karoly’s financial difficulties. “But—well, I know how it is with you. It would help, wouldn’t it? And then you’ve a great advantage in getting to know the girls; you’ve a head start over the rest of us.”

“How?” He frowned.

Stefan guffawed, then patted his horse as the beast shied at the unexpected sound. “She’s a relative of yours, in a manner of speaking. Didn’t you say that Racs-Rassay was a distant cousin?” Karoly nodded. “The Ferenc girls are his nieces. Madame Racs-Rassay was a Ferenc before she married.” Again his eyes narrowed. “That’s another possibility for you, the ugly little Racs-Rassay girl. Excellent family on her father’s side, better than the Bogozys or the—”

He stopped, flushed very red indeed, and bent forward unncessarily to fumble with the girth, and Karoly knew, without any doubt, that his friend had been going to add the name Vilaghy to the list of families whose backgrounds were tinged with query.

“Perhaps not,” Stefan said when his embarrassment had subsided. “For all she’s the plainest and dullest creature I ever set eyes on, I imagine her papa will be expecting a good match. She’s something of an heiress. With all that money and the Racs-Rassay name, she has no need to worry about a Jewish mama.”

Karoly suddenly found Stefan’s conversation in bad taste. He was a kind enough fellow, but his cold-blooded assessment of Karoly’s marriage prospects was slightly offensive.

“Shall we race?” he asked coolly. “Twenty korona to the winner?”

A faint spasm of surprise crossed Stefan’s face; then he nodded, realizing why Karoly had felt the need to challenge him and stake money on the outcome. He counted to three, then touched his spurs to his horse. Karoly knew his friend would pay him the respect of not holding back. The race would be a true test of horsemanship.

When he received the invitation from Cousin Alfred to visit the villa up in the hills for the summer, he went straight to the commanding officer for leave of absence. He had taken no leave for two years and assumed it would be granted without question. He was unprepared for his colonel’s hesitancy.

“Not too happy,” the senior officer mumbled, picking slightly at his moustache. “Like to keep the garrison intact if possible. Never know what might happen.”

Karoly’s military instincts, born of years of sensing when a regimental move was imminent, were immediately aroused.

“Are there orders coming through, sir?” he asked respectfully.

The elder man shook his head. “No reason to stop you from going. Leave due, most certainly. But there’s a feeling.... Everything’s quiet at the moment—Serbia quiet, Russia quiet—but still, a feeling.”

“Yes, sir. I know.”

The old man looked at him sharply. “Do the men feel it, Vilaghy?”

“I think so, sir.”

“Hmm.” He fiddled with the pen and inkwell. “The General Staff are increasing the intake of recruits. Did you know that?”

“I had heard so, sir.”

The colonel grunted again and stared out of the window. A line of hussars were wheeling across the parade-ground in ceremonial display, rehearsing for the regiment’s summer celebrations. They looked smart and efficient; the horses were magnificent and the men in perfect control.