Csardas (33 page)

“Madame Kaldy... Luiza!”

She resented the familiarity but supposed it justified from someone with whom she had once danced.

“It is so enjoyable to see you here. Some refreshment—?”

God, how she would have loved a glass of tea, the good tea that one got before the war. There was almost no tea in the country now and what there was had to be bought on the black market. But she straightened her back, tweaked her skirt, shook her head.

“‘No refreshment, Alfred. This is not a social visit. I have come here to see you on a matter of business.”

He was polite but puzzled. “What business can we have, Luiza? No one is doing business at the moment. It is too dangerous for people like us. It is better to stay quiet and hope that the masses—the proletariat they call them—do not notice us.”

“Business,” she repeated firmly. “Rumour has it that you are still the richest man in the district, that the war has not entirely crippled you, that your interests, some of them, were cleverly invested outside the country.”

Alfred looked slightly uncomfortable. “Ah, well, my brother-in-law, Ferenc, he is a banker; his advice—”

“From all accounts he has not done himself any good,” she countered dryly. “Rumour has it that Zsigmond Ferenc is in financial difficulties at the moment.”

Alfred floundered and hemmed and looked anywhere but straight at her.

“And in any case, Alfred Racs-Rassay, it is not Zsigmond Ferenc I am asking to lend me money. It is you.”

“You want to borrow money?” He gasped, not from the shock of being asked but because it was Luiza Kaldy—proud, untouchable, autocratic Luiza Kaldy—who was asking.

“I have just been to see the Erdei family,” she stated flatly. “For a sum of money—which I do not have—they are prepared to sell me back my manor house and the forest that was part of my land.”

Alfred’s mouth dropped open and his pale blue eyes bulged. “You are mad!” he cried rudely. “You are utterly mad!”

“What is so mad about buying back my land and house?”

“You—my God!” He began to splutter. “Where have you been for the past few months? Don’t you know what has happened? We have a socialist government! At any moment we—you, I, people like us—will, be removed from our property, our land will be taken away. And you—you choose this time to go and buy back your house!”

“And my land.”

Alfred blew his cheeks out and let the air escape in a hiss of irritation. “What on earth are you doing, Luiza Kaldy, buying something you may only have for a day!”

“You think Erdei doesn’t know that? He thinks I am mad too. A private transaction, I suggested. A private one with the papers kept secret, and finally he was happy to agree!” She paused, glared at Alfred, and said, “Do you think, in normal times, he would ever have accepted the figure I offered? He would have asked for six—seven times as much! But he thought he could swindle a mad old woman, take her money and sign away a house that would belong to neither of us for long.”

“What would you expect him to do? You offer him a gift, a sum of money for something neither of you may keep, and—”

“How do you know we may not keep it? Are you so sure, Alfred Racs-Rassay? Are you absolutely, completely sure that we will not keep our land? If you are so sure of this, why are you and your family still sitting here, waiting in your big house, instead of going to Switzerland where your money is?”

“Well, of course,” Alfred blustered, “we shall not move one inch until the law actually comes to pass. But the government’s intentions have been made plain. And staying on one’s own property is one thing; buying more land is another. None of us would invest in land that we almost certainly are going to lose.”

“I am prepared to invest,” she said bluntly. “I am prepared to invest—with your money!”

She thought Alfred was going to explode. He coughed, shouted, and raged and finally, when he did calm a little, he spent several minutes explaining why she was mad and why he wouldn’t let her be mad with his money. At last he quietened, talking himself into rationality, and then he began to treat her not as though she were wilfully mad but just senile.

“Luiza,” he said with great patience, “you are in trouble, great trouble. I know, because you are a proud woman, that you would not come here asking me for money if it was not that you had some great need. Now, my dear”—he patted her shoulder and she bore the pat with fortitude—“if it is food, or your passage to another country if times make it necessary, then you must tell me. Together we will solve your problem. I will speak to Adam, and we shall see that you are provided for—”

“Don’t be more of a fool than you can help, Alfred!”

“I—”

“I know exactly what I am doing. I am risking all on a throw of the dice. Something I have never done before: gambled. My late husband”—her lip curled in a derisive smile—“it was something he did many times. He rarely won. But I am gambling just once, and I may win—if you will give me the money.”

“Give, now, is it?” screamed Alfred, his control snapping again. “Now it is ‘give me the money.’ A short while ago it was ‘lend.’ And my answer is still the same. I am not mad, even if you are. I will neither give nor lend you my money to throw away on a hare-brained scheme! Nothing will make me give you the money!”

“Not even as a dowry for your daughter?”

Fleeting expressions chased across his face. He was slow-witted, Alfred Racs-Rassay, for all his intellectual pretensions, slow and dull when it came to grasping a point. Fury, bewilderment, conjecture, doubt flew over his face and he did not answer.

“You have a daughter, Alfred. You wife has been trying to find a husband for Kati for four years. You know, and I know, that Felix was once a very favoured suitor.”

“Kati—”

“Kati is the richest girl in this area. Even now, with the war and the troubles that threaten us, Kati is still, will still be, a wealthy bride, a catch for any young man—or she would have been.”

“Would have been?”

“The young men are all gone now, Alfred. They are dead, or maimed, or lost forever in Russia. The few who have come back are very precious. They can pick their brides as they wish. Your wife was always aware that Felix was the most suitable husband for Kati. Yes, Kati is the richest girl in the country, but Felix”—her voice softened—“Felix is a gentleman, a Kaldy, an aristocrat! We are of the old stock, Alfred. You know it. Why, my father was once concerned because you danced with me too often at a ball! He was worried that I would fall in love with you... and he considered you, a Racs-Rassay, unsuitable as a husband.”

Alfred flushed. He resented the reminder, but the old laws of caste and strata were imbedded as deeply in him as in her, and what she said was the truth.

“My father even now, if he were alive, would spit at me if he knew I were contemplating allowing my son to match with your daughter—my son, Felix Kaldy, to wed with the little Racs-Rassay girl—and remember, Alfred, Kati’s antecedents are not too desirable on her mother’s side.”

He was bewildered and helpless. Somehow he was convinced he was being tricked but he could not see where.

“If—if these things are true,” he faltered, “if I admit these things are true, if I say that Kati’s marriage with a Kaldy would bring great credit to her—if I admit these things were so before the war, I cannot admit them now. What difference would it make to Kati now, married to a Kaldy, when neither of them will have any land or money?”

She had trapped him! A surging of confidence pumped blood through her body at a speed that set her heart fluttering again. She had won. A few more points and she had won.

“But if they
do
have the land, Alfred, then Kati has made a brilliant match!”

Alfred looked puzzled and unhappy again.

“A bargain, Alfred. Give me the money to buy my house back, and even as that transaction is private, so shall the engagement between Felix and Kati be private. We need not even tell them too definitely. If we win our gamble—if the dice fall our way—then I have the Kaldy estate, complete as it used to be, and Kati will be married to the head of that estate and will bear a noble and honourable name.”

“And if we all lose our land?” he muttered unhappily. “If the government takes it away from us?”

“Then I have lost my house, you have lost your money—but only a little of your money—and Kati is still free to make a more suitable match.” Her lip curled again. “To a Swiss watch manufacturer, perhaps. Or even a socialist if they are to be Hungary’s new lords.”

Alfred was trying to follow, trying to see where the snags lay.

“You see, Alfred,” she explained patiently, “you are spending some money on a chance. If you lose, you have only lost your money. If you win, your daughter is mistress of an estate and will bear the name of Kaldy. Her... antecedents... will be forgotten. She will be a Kaldy who was once a Racs-Rassay. And your grandsons will be the inheritors of the old lands.”

He was floundering, helpless, puzzled, but dazzled by the logic of it all.

“I will call Gizi,” he muttered at last. “These things are for Gizi to decide.”

And then she knew it was all right. Gizi Racs-Rassay, whose “antecedents” she had been forced to dwell upon in order to press her point, was a woman of her own brand. Gizi knew exactly what she wanted, had always known. She wanted Felix for her daughter, and when money was the only stake she would be happy to spend it. Money was easy to make. She had created Alfred’s fortune for him, and now some of it was going to be spent on the things that were important.

The interview with Gizi was smooth, efficient, crisp—two clever women settling a bargain to their mutual advantage. There was only one moment of unease and it came when she was on her feet ready to leave.

“I have one point,” Gizi Racs-Rassay said softly, “and it is about your son.”

She stiffened. Had any rumours leaked back? Had the news of Felix’s... difficulties... during the war been made public? He had done something wrong; even she wasn’t too sure what it was except that he had apparently left the place he should have been in and gone somewhere else.

“Yes?” she said guardedly.

“All last summer, in the town and here in the country, it was observed that your son spent much time with my niece, the younger Ferenc girl. I think it would be most unwise for this... friendship to continue. The engagement is secret for the time being—I shall hint only lightly to Kati; she is foolish at times and might well confide in her cousins—but secret or not, Felix should not spend his leisure with Eva.”

Of course the woman was right. She would see that Felix was kept away from the Ferencs. And yet—the memory of Felix as he had been came to her mind—the zombie-like, catatonic creature who had lain on his bed unwashed. He had never really been cured until the little Ferenc trollop had taken a hand last summer. Whatever she had done, Felix was more human, more like the son she used to know. What would happen if she kept him away from Eva Ferenc? She felt the flutter round her heart again. She did not want Felix to be—ill—like that again. He was her pride, her hope, her firstborn. He was his father again, but his father with the deceit and fecklessness ground out.

But the land... the house... the bargain with the Racs-Rassay family....

“I will do my best,” she promised. “I will see that the friendship is... restricted.”

Gizi smiled. “I would prefer that it ceased altogether,” she said sweetly and the two women tensed, waiting to flare, each wanting to exert the ultimate authority over the other.

But the bargain meant too much to both of them. The moment passed and the demands were not emphasized. They said a careful farewell and then, at last, she was free to go back to the farmhouse and lie exhausted on the bed.

And now the real revolution broke over their heads in a red cataclysm of terror. This was no moderate socialism, as—they soon realized—Karolyi’s had been. This was the raw, brutal stuff born in the Soviets, bred in Siberian prison camps, and matured finally in the misery and despair of the Hungarian poor after four years of war. Count Karolyi, aristocrat and idealist, had tried to create Utopia out of a country broken by war. He had promised free elections and land reform and had been cheered in the streets of Budapest, but when his dream had not turned into an instant miracle, when he had failed to prevent the victors of the West from exacting their pound of flesh, the people’s hopes turned to Russia. If Karolyi’s republic could not save them, Bolshevism would. This was the triumph of Bela Kun, prisoner of war in Russia and a disciple of Lenin.

They were still in the country, where they had been all through the winter. Papa was in Budapest, a Budapest that was unstable and violent. Mama, who had at first been afraid but who was now bored, had written and asked if they could return to their house in town. Their own little country town was not like Budapest; it was quiet and calm and fairly settled. Felix had reported on his last visit to the country that, although there was no fuel, and little food in the restaurants, some attempt had been made to establish a social life. Mama couldn’t see why they should have to stay in the country where it was cold and miserable. She wanted to go home.

Papa’s reply had been swift and adamant: they were to stay where they were. And a postscript had added, “Also, my dear Marta, it is possible that the future may see the need for more serious economies. Opening the town house is an unnecessary expense at this time. On the farm you have fuel, food, and servants, and the company of Alfred and Gizi if you need it I wish you all to remain there.”

And so, when the revolution burst over their heads, they were alone on the farm.

The boys were the first to bring back news. Throughout the winter they had been receiving lessons from the schoolmaster in the village. It was unthinkable that they should attend classes with the peasant children, and so every day after school hours were over they went to the master’s house for rudimentary private tutoring. And the news they brought back was that a real revolution, like the Russian one, had broken out and that they were not to go for lessons any more.