Csardas (2 page)

“Quick, Malie, we’re here. Oh, look! See what Uncle Alfred has done to the trees! Oh, Malie, did you ever see anything so magical? So like a fairy tale?”

Uncle Alfred’s house was one of the oldest and grandest in the town. Small baroque balconies ran along beneath the first-floor windows. Every window was lit and the curtains were not yet drawn; a blur of colour and costume shifted across the glass. But what had inspired Eva to joy were the trees that lined the street outside the house. Each one was hung with a multitude of varicoloured lanterns.

The wooden doors leading into the courtyard were pushed well back, but Uncle Sandor didn’t try to turn the coach. The archway was too narrow in such an old house and he stopped outside and climbed down from the box. In the courtyard a gypsy violinist was playing to welcome the guests. Uncle Alfred had employed him
and
a full group of players for the dancing upstairs. The gypsy scraped and sawed, encouraged by the promise of a bottle of
barack
to warm him when the cold spring night made his hands too numb to play.

The lights in the trees, the gypsy, the glimpses of the party seen through the windows turned the evening into a night of breathless excitement, a magic night when anything could happen. For a moment Eva was completely overwhelmed by the unprecedented splendour of her cousin’s party.

“How incredible! Fancy wasting all this on poor Cousin Kati!” she said, slightly awed. Amalia giggled, then remembered she was the elder and should set a good example.

“That’s a cruel, unkind thing to say,” she reproved.

Eva looked abashed. “Oh, well, I suppose it isn’t a waste really. Uncle Alfred has no one else to spend his money on so he might as well give Kati a good party.”

Uncle Sandor opened the coach door and they waited for him to put down the steps. Breathless, excited, they remembered who they were—the Ferenc girls—and how they had come—unchaperoned—and they arched their necks like young racehorses, stepped demurely down from the coach and through the archway, and turned towards the door leading to the house.

They were late. The altercation in the bedroom and Mama’s indecision about whether or not to come had resulted in their arriving when there was no one to receive them at the foot of the stairs. From the big drawing-room above came the sound of music and the shuffle and thump of dancers. Their eyes met. Eva bit her lower lip guiltily, then shrugged. “They’ll forgive us,” she said loftily. “We’re the Ferenc girls! They’ll be so pleased we’ve come they’ll forget that we were late.”

The music was exciting—a mazurka—and their bodies began moving, heads nodding, eyes shining bright at the thought of all the young men who were waiting to dance with them.

“Hurry!” said Eva, leading the way out of the hall and up the stairs to Cousin Kati’s bedroom. They thought it would be empty, but when they hustled in they found Kati—poor Cousin Kati—in a white satin dress waiting for them. She was hunched into an awkward, miserable shape at the foot of the bed, but as soon as she saw them she jumped up and hurried forward.

“You’ve come,” she said anxiously. “I thought you weren’t ever going to come. Why are you so late? I wanted you to help me when everyone came. You know how I hate receiving on my own. I asked you to come early. I especially wanted you early!”

Amalia put her arms round Cousin Kati and kissed her. “Happy birthday,” she said gently. “We’re sorry, very sorry, but we’re here now—and we have a lovely gift for you.”

She had wrapped the package beautifully—violet ribbons on pale gray paper. Kati, slightly mollified, unwrapped it, and her face changed immediately from nervous anxiety to gratified pleasure. “It’s beautiful, Malie! A fan—real ivory! It is real ivory, isn’t it?”

“Mama brought it back from Vienna especially for you.”

Kati gazed at the fan, and then the mention of their mama made her ask, “Where is Aunt Marta?”

“Playing cards,” said Eva airily. She too leaned forward and kissed poor Cousin Kati. “Happy birthday, Kati.”

Kati smelled of soap and attar of roses. The dress smelled the way new satin always does smell, papery and dry. Eva wrinkled her nose and Amalia said quickly, “You look so pretty, Kati. The dress is most becoming.”

“Do you really think so?”

Kati’s need for reassurance was genuine—not just a demand for a compliment as Eva’s had been—and Eva, who could be kind enough on the rare occasions when she stopped to think about other people’s feelings, added quickly, “Oh, yes. You look very pretty.”

It wasn’t true. Kati—poor Cousin Kati—had never looked pretty in her life. If the Ferenc girls were known as the loveliest in the town, then Kati could claim the distinction of being the plainest. She had a large shapeless face and a large shapeless nose that overshadowed everything else. Her hair and eyes were nondescript, her teeth badly spaced and irregularly formed. All this could have been overcome if she had only had some style of carriage and manner, but Kati had nothing, nothing at all, to redeem her drawbacks. She was small in stature, diffident in speech, and completely lacking in presence of any kind. Amalia had once overheard Mama saying to Papa in her thoughtless Bogozy way, “I find it quite impossible to understand why your sister had such an incredibly ugly child. Gizi was a very pretty girl, and Alfred was considered handsome in his time, but poor Kati! It’s as well that she’s the richest girl in the town, for certainly she’s the plainest.” Papa had been very angry and hadn’t spoken to Mama for two days, but even Zsigmond Ferenc, when he looked at his own daughters and then at Kati, was forced to notice the difference.

Amalia, in addition to feeling sorry for Kati, also rather liked her. Kati was completely without envy, and she never once referred to the fortune awaiting her on her parents’ death. She should—and could—have been extremely jealous of her two beautiful cousins who completely obliterated her at every gathering, even her own. But Kati’s delight on meeting Amalia and Eva at a ball or supper was always genuine and seemed at times to be tempered with relief, as though in the company of the Ferenc sisters she need not even try to be what she was not.

“Is Felix here, Felix Kaldy?” Eva asked, and Kati for some unaccountable reason flushed.

“Of course. Both Felix and his brother, Felix and Adam, both here....”

Her voice trailed away as Eva removed her wrap and Kati saw the extent to which Eva had goaded the dressmaker in the matter of the neckline.

“Oh...” she faltered. “Oh, Eva!”

Eva had not forgotten Amalia’s disapproval and was instantly defensive. “Oh, Eva, what?” she asked aggressively.

Kati blinked. “How... how
moderne
you look!” she answered with unfeigned admiration.

Eva was pleased. “I designed the entire dress myself,” she said complacently. “Every flounce and rose was placed at my instruction!”

Kati stared, worshipping, adoring, but without envy. As though obeying a silent word of command the three girls turned and stared into the mirror. Kati’s ugliness was emphasized because her dress, like Eva’s, was white. Eva, with her tiny but curved, provocative figure and her thick mass of black curls piled high on her head, made Kati look like a peasant woman dressed up in her mistress’s clothes. Hastily Amalia turned away from the mirror. “I think we all look very nice,” she said firmly. “And if we don’t go in soon there won’t be any partners left for us.” With a final flutter, a plucking of skirts and a smoothing of hair, they moved towards the door, two white dresses and one of pale rose, drawn by the pulsing, sentimental strains of a gypsy orchestra.

Uncle Alfred had done his best for Kati. After considerable pressure from his wife and with only a little protest he had consented to the outlay of a sum of money that would provide his ugly daughter with a party more suited to the aristocracy than to a middle-class landowner (albeit he was related to the minor nobility). His wife had explained the situation to him, patiently and repetitively, and he had been forced to concede that as he was the richest man in the town, and as Kati was his only child, it behoved him to launch her in a style that ensured a reasonable chance of her securing a husband. His wife, he considered, fussed too much about Kati. There had been dancing lessons, deportment lessons, painting lessons (the only item in an expensive education for which poor Kati had shown any aptitude), visits to Budapest dentists, hairdressers, and beauticians, visits to spas renowned for their effect on the complexion, expensive dresses from Vienna, and at the end Kati had emerged the same shapeless lump as when she began. It seemed to provoke in his wife a frustrated, impotent rage, and he could only attribute it to the fact that poor Gizi felt guilty because she had borne him only the one child and that child a daughter. The fact that he had no son did not bother him at all, any more than the fact that Kati was so plain. Uncle Alfred was very happy with his lot. He had a smart, efficient wife who managed his houses, his land, and his factories with far more perspicacity than he could ever have aspired to. He had his friends, his café circles of mild intellectuals, his penchant for artistic liberalism, and the money to indulge himself in these same stylish hobbies. He was not burning with any dynastic desire to carry on his particular branch of the family, and by and large he was contented as long as he was left alone and not bothered too much.

So, for the sake of peace, he paid uncomplainingly for Kati’s party (two lots of musicians and specially printed dance cards!) and, on the orders of his wife, saw that some of the young officers from the garrison were commanded to attend. He stood at the top of the rather gloomy staircase and smiled a greeting at several little girls who all seemed to be dressed in white, at several matrons whom, no doubt, the girls in white would one day resemble, and at a variety of young officers and sons of the town’s gentry and middle-class families. He danced his few duty dances with amiable sufferance and then, feeling his obligations as a father finished, he rounded up his cronies (whom he had had the foresight to invite) and headed for the library, his cigars, and several bottles of good Hungarian brandy. There he prepared to enjoy himself in a flow of rhetoric. There was much to be discussed: politics, land reform (he would have been horrified if his views had ever been translated into practice but it was very pleasant to shock his friends with liberal ideas), the relationship between Prussia—or Germany, as she must now be called—and the invincible empire of Austria-Hungary, the position of the Jews in Hungary (this was a delicate subject for Alfred’s friends as they had to remember that Alfred’s wife, although now a Christian, was Jewish by birth), and a whole range of important social and economic questions that became more and more easy to cope with as the intake of brandy progressed. A Magyar servant moved silently round the room, filling glasses and sliding logs into the stove whenever he could manage to get past Alfred, who was conducting his forum from just in front of the source of heat.

“Consider the minorities,” he declaimed, waving his glass in the air. “Consider what would happen if a war were to come. Just consider, I beg you, consider.”

The company considered. They were mostly of their host’s age or older. There was the judge, the editor of the local newspaper, one or two middle-ranking officers from the garrison, the owner of the local ironworks, and, on the far side of the room, standing stiff and uncomfortable, a young officer in the dress uniform of the hussars. The oldest of the men was General Matthias, who had been pensioned from the army and found time lay heavy. He enjoyed the air of masculine camaraderie found at Alfred’s house, even though he was frequently shocked and irritated by Alfred’s views. Now he held his glass up to be refilled and said, in answer to Alfred’s dramatic question, “Well, my dear Alfred, and what would happen?”

“What would happen, General, is that the minorities—the Slovaks, the Serbs, the Romanians—would rise up like serpents within our frontiers and destroy us!”

“Nonsense.”

Secretly Alfred thought it was nonsense too, but it was great fun to hold a different opinion from everyone else.

“I tell you,” he went on, “if war comes—as well it could if Serbia decides to test her strength again and Russia backs her—when it comes, what guarantee have we that we can control the minorities? What would happen if they united and rose within our sacred frontiers to take arms against us?”

General Matthias, who was over seventy and remembered the Prussian wars, roused himself. “What would happen, my dear Alfred, is that the King and Emperor would crush the peasants,” he said firmly. “We’ve seen revolts before and may do so again, though I doubt it. The Serbs and Bosnians and Romanians—pah!—they are like unruly children. They should be kept disciplined; then they will be happy and we shall be safe. What would you have us do, give the minorities equal rights as citizens of the Empire? Allow them to govern themselves? Nonsense!”

The judge had been gently dozing but General Matthias’s voice woke him and he mumbled an enthusiastic, “I agree, General, I quite agree!” and drank another glass of brandy.

“But if there
was
a war,” insisted Alfred rather tediously. “Let us suppose we were fighting the Russians to the east and the Italians to the west. Have you thought, has anyone thought, what a life blow it could be if the minorities rose against us?”

“There won’t be a war,” replied the old gentleman testily. “Trouble with you, Alfred, is that you’ve been influenced by Vazsonyi, or even Karolyi and all that bunch of hotheads. You see trouble where no trouble is. The Empire is at peace, and the King and Emperor controls that peace. While he lives nothing can happen to us.”

There was a slow, complacent rumbling throughout the library. It came from warmth, good brandy, and the knowledge that the dual monarchy was safe and omnipotent. Everyone, even the revolutionary Alfred, suddenly felt happy because God was in his heaven and Franz Josef was on the throne. The Empire was safe. The friends in the library—all old friends—were bonded in one of those swift moments of intimacy that comes with familiarity and affection. The air in the room was somnolent and everyone was ready to drift into a pleasant coma-like doze.