Csardas (19 page)

“Old friend!”

Karoly was disappointed. It was just Adam, stocky, square-faced, quiet. He was a little thinner, as were they all, but there was no outward sign of the curious courage that had disturbed Karoly’s thoughts for so many weeks. The green eyes were gentle and quiet, the smile welcoming, but Adam did not, as Stefan Tilsky had done, run forward tearfully to embrace his friend.

“Ah! They have given you a new horse! Of course. They must; what is a cavalryman without a horse?” He nodded wryly. “And what is an artillery man without a gun? I am still waiting for a new gun, but in the meantime we manage.”

He lifted a blanket over the opening of what was their emplacement and beckoned Karoly inside. The gunners had built a most curious construction. To a small hut had been added a fabrication of branches and canvas sheeting spread over a large dugout. On the side facing the river a few men crouched apathetically, holding rifles to holes in the wall.

“This is our gun site. But we have no gun so we are using whatever we have been able to steal from the infantry. It appears to deter Brusilov’s men on the other side. They shell us if they see fire or smoke, but otherwise we are left alone.”

“We too.”

“I suspect, my friend, that they are as unhappy as we are. I hear they have no food. We have food, but no guns. Perhaps we should come to some arrangement.”

“Are you—are you well, Adam? Since we parted, in the retreat, I have been concerned....” He wanted to ask so many things: how Adam had managed his escape, if the man Marton was indeed a blood relative, if he had had nightmares about shooting him. But something in Adam’s manner, in his withdrawal from intimacy, dissuaded Karoly from probing further.

“Well? Of course. We are all well. We wait for the
gulaschkanone
so that we may eat. We wait for our letters from home so that we may read. We wait for our relief watch so that we may go back and sit by a fire. Yes, we are well. We are alive, so we are well.”

“You have letters from home?”

Adam’s cool green eyes stared impassively into Karoly’s. “Yes indeed. From my mother, naturally, and from Amalia Ferenc.”

He stiffened a little at that. “From Malie? Malie is writing to you?”

Adam smiled. “She writes because Eva does not. They are letters, just letters.”

They were both silent.

Then Adam said reflectively, “No one has raised my beet crop. The women tried, but it was left too late. The ground is hard and the first snow has fallen. It is wasted now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It is going to matter. Very soon it is going to be important, my sugar crop and the land.”

All this time he had been obsessed with the remembrance of Adam. In his mind the artillery man had become a giant figure, a colossus of strength able to bear the war with fortitude. He had forgotten just how dull Adam Kaldy was, how lacking in vision and imagination. Of course, he was not a soldier. He was a farmer, and he could not see the future of war in the way of a soldier.

“Have you spoken to any of the men of the Second army?” Adam asked dolefully.

Karoly was—unreasonably—irritated. “Yes.”

“They have beaten us out of Serbia. We are lucky they have advanced no farther than they have. And to the south of us, I am told, the Russians are at the foot of the Carpathians; in the spring they will try to force the passes and enter into our farming lands.” He gazed through the opening in the wall at the bleak, ruined, war-scarred countryside. “Our land too will be ravaged,” he murmured.

“Rubbish!” Now Karoly was annoyed beyond measure. The army, the administration, was outdated, true, but they had seen what ineptitude and lack of progress had done. Now things would be different. Now the high command would understand. It was going to be hard but they would manage somehow. Men of skill and vision would rise and save the Empire.

“Rubbish?” Adam considered; then his face broke into a grin. “Well, perhaps you are right, old friend. Perhaps we shall win the war and I shall return to my farm and try, once more, to grow and harvest sugar beet on my land.” He chuckled, laughing at himself, and Karoly’s irritation vanished, to be replaced by a wave of patronizing affection for his unimaginative companion. The war would end, and Adam would sleep on his farm and let the great events of the times sweep over him.

Karoly stood, wrapped his cape round him, and lifted the blanket. “I must go. God be with you, Adam Kaldy.”

Adam smiled and lifted a hand in gentle salutation. Then he turned his gaze back to the ruined farmlands of the Dunajec valley.

Every morning at breakfast Papa read out the war news to them. Positions were being maintained; along all fronts the gallant troops were holding back the Russians and the Serbians from Hungarian territory, and relations between the German and Austro-Hungarian armies were comradely and courageous. The wounded—those fit to be seen—were received as heroes; there was a picture of a major receiving the Silver Medal for Valour from the Archduke Karl. Sometimes Papa made little jokes about the war—patriotic ones, of course. He was often affable and teased Amalia and Eva about the number of their suitors at the various fronts.

“Now let me see,” he joked heavily when the iron window balustrades had been taken, along with the copper and brass from the bathroom, to be used for the war effort. “I wonder which of Eva’s admirers will be firing from the bathroom geyser? And who will be riding along on the iron balustrades from the Ferenc sisters’ bedroom window?”

They all laughed, perhaps a little longer and louder than was necessary. It was such a relief to have Papa in a good temper, and the war, with all its many ramifications, appeared to both absorb and entertain him.

There was further enforced jollity when Marie brought in the coffee and also the morning post. The pink postcards from the front were easily identifiable, and Eva and Amalia, one or the other, received such a missive on most mornings.

“I hear that the Military Post Office have formed a special unit to sort the correspondence for two young ladies with the surname of Ferenc!”

Laughter again, strained and ingratiating. Sometimes Leo became hysterical; the opportunity to laugh in front of Papa was too much for him and he was unable to control it. On those occasions Papa’s mirth could swiftly turn to irritation and a stern rebuke would result in tears and Leo’s removal from the room. Jozsef, who had been attending school since September, was better able to cope. The hours spent at school released him from the oppressive presence of Papa and he had developed a certain detachment, a second life away from home in which he could take refuge.

After the jokes came the gentle inquiries—“And what is happening on the Russian front, Eva? Or is it from Serbia?”—and another attempt at humour. “Your father has to rely on military communiques and reports in the papers. He does not have a network of informants set all round the Empire!”

It was a respectful but nonetheless authoritative command for the postcard to be read aloud or passed to Papa for silent perusal. Most of the cards, from the cheerful young men who used to call at the Ferenc house, were strangely uncommunicative. The censor cast a blight over everything but, more than that, the things that were happening in Galicia and Serbia served to separate Janos and Pali and George and the others from the charming, gracious life they had previously known. Sometimes Amalia wondered why they bothered to send the postcards at all, there was so little on them, but still they came, a silent cry for assurance that the old world still existed, a world of pretty girls and picnics and courteous rituals and formality.

Letters came too, and then the jokes from Papa grew even more laboured, a result of his uneasiness and suspicion. Eva soon discovered that if she read her letters aloud with smooth, unfaltering confidence Papa accepted the sentences without query or demands to read them himself. She became adept at assessing the contents of the page before she started and sliding quickly, without any break at all, over the parts she did not wish to be heard. Alas, only rarely was there need for such subterfuge. She received letters from both Felix and Adam Kaldy. Adam’s were strange and made her feel at first uncomfortable, then bored. He told her little of the war or of how much he was missing her, but he wrote at great length about his men, of their humour, of his feelings and reflections on the countryside and rivers and snow, of what it was like to stand on an icy slope and watch dawn breaking over the Galicia plain, of how he longed to be home on his farm. There was nothing in the letters at all that she had to brush over hurriedly because of Papa, and finally, because she really couldn’t be bothered to toil all the way through Adam’s tedious pages, she would say, “Oh, it’s just another one from Adam Kaldy, Papa,” and pass it straight over without reading it herself.

Unfortunately the letters from Felix were even more impersonal and were concerned almost entirely with society news from the capital. For some reason Felix had gone no farther than Budapest, where he was attached to Army HQ. The letters, beginning with
Dear Eva
and progressing through accounts of military balls, recruiting campaigns, parades, and parties, to the final
Please give my fondest wishes to your mama, to Amalia, Leo, and Jozsef, and my sincere respects to your papa,
were insultingly harmless. As soon as breakfast was over, Eva would hurry to her room and scrutinize them carefully, searching for hidden intimacy in the bland and chatty sentences. Once there was reference to the watch, a sentence she slid over quickly without reading aloud to Papa. “My dear Eva! I hope you are taking great care of my watch. Sometimes it is inconvenient not to have it when my day’s programme is full of appointments and meetings. I think I must ask you to forward it to me, if you would be so kind. It will be all the more welcome as it comes from such safe hands, and indeed such pretty ones.”

She hugged that sentence to her for days. All the while she was packing up the watch and taking it to the post office, she gloated over the intimate compliment. He would hardly have written that if he wasn’t thinking of her with affection, longing to see her again. She decided to try and persuade Papa to take her to Budapest the next time he went on business. She discussed the whole problem with Malie, the possibility of going to the capital and the significance of Felix’s letters.

“He must like me, mustn’t he, Malie? To write every week, and to say that about me having pretty hands? It must mean that he is thinking of me almost constantly.”

“To write so often...” Malie answered slowly. “Yes, of course, darling, he must think of you as one of his dearest friends.”

‘“I write to him every day. I don’t post it every day because that would make me look too eager, but I write a little piece every day, like a diary, and then post it once a week. That’s good, isn’t it, Malie?”

“Why don’t you write to Adam too?”

“Oh!” Eva shrugged irritably. “Oh, Malie, you know how long and dreary his letters are. I sent him one some weeks ago, and a postcard. I cannot find anything to say to Adam; there is nothing at all to answer. His letters are so boring.”

Amalia received letters from Adam Kaldy too, long letters from a lonely young man whose world was disintegrating around him. Those letters also were read aloud to Papa.

It was not until the spring that Papa discovered about the other letters, the letters that were brought over by Kati and passed to Malie in the privacy of the girls’ bedroom. Kati, excited, enjoying vicariously with every fibre of her being the delight of Amalia’s love, took on a brief authority during the winter and spring of 1915 by becoming their official go-between. For the first time in her life she was performing a needed function for someone. Inevitably her new-found confidence led to her undoing. Aunt Gizi noticed her daughter’s bright eyes and flushed cheeks, her firmness of voice (sometimes saying things that verged on the impertinent), and she became alarmed. Her alarm intensified when she realized that the changes in her daughter coincided with the arrival of numerous and fat letters from Alfred’s young kinsman, Karoly Vilaghy. A brief inspection of her daughter’s room revealed a collection of very short notes which were no more than courteous accompaniments to enclosures. Twenty minutes reduced Kati to tears and a full confession. A further half hour was needed to persuade Alfred that it was his duty, not hers, to explain the situation to Zsigmond Ferenc. Alfred, with reluctant heart and heavy step, donned his coat and beaver hat and proceeded to walk (it took a long time, thus delaying the painful interview) to the home of his brother-in-law. His misery and discomfort was increased when for the last ten minutes of his journey he was joined by Amalia, returning home—radiant—from posting a letter.

“Hullo, Uncle Alfred! Are you coming to see us? Isn’t it a beautiful day?”

Alfred stared glumly at the narrow street full of melting snow. From the overhanging roofs dirty water dripped. A beggar shuffled through the slush, one sleeve of a ragged coat flapping empty in the wind, his eyes hopeful but not daring to ask. In the midst of the grey day Amalia was a bright and glowing promise of spring. Her soft hazel eyes smiled at him and, knowing what awful thing he was about to do, he looked quickly away.

“Here,” he said to the beggar, caring nothing for him but not wanting to talk to Amalia. “Take this and keep away from the thoroughfares of respectable citizens.” He pushed ten filler into the beggar’s hand and was suddenly appalled when the man lurched forward and pushed his face close to Alfred’s.

“It’s keep away now: ten filler and keep away from our streets and houses. It was different last August: flags and flowers for us then, wasn’t it?” He waved the flapping sleeve in Alfred’s face. “Czernowitz, master! Czernowitz! Thirty minutes trapped under a gun carriage, thirty minutes and a pulped arm. You know what I say, master? Let the Cossacks come! Let them force the passes and come! Then we’ll see who must keep off the streets, then we’ll see!” He spat into the melting snow and Alfred nervously drew back. “Go and fetch the gendarme!” he said shakily to Amalia, but Malie just stared at the man, at his mad face and flapping sleeve. She wore a grey sealskin coat and a fur hat, and against the soft fur her face was soft. The beggar stared back and some scrap of humanity in him, left over from the war, recognized her innocence. “You don’t understand,” he moaned. “You don’t know what it was like.” He stumbled away, disappeared through a narrow arch at the side of the street, leaving Alfred shaking but bombastic.