Csardas (41 page)

“You don’t understand. You don’t know what it’s like to be so unhappy. No one knows except me!”

“Oh, Eva, Eva!” He shook her reprovingly. “You are drunk, and so I will not be too hard with you. But you are a selfish, ungrateful girl! Have you forgotten your sister? Have you forgotten Karoly who died? Have you forgotten all the young men who died? All the girls who will never have husbands?”

“It would have been better if he had died,” she wept. “At least he would have been mine!”

Even while she said it, shame was creeping into her heart. Adam didn’t let her fall again, although she half expected him to. He stared with his penetrating green eyes deep into her face, and the shame and guilt grew.

“I didn’t mean it,” she cried, looking away from him. “I’m wicked to say that. I didn’t mean it. And I know about Malie, how dreadful it was for her. I think I know. I hated it too when Karoly was killed. I’m sorry.... Oh, but I’m so unhappy! I’m so unhappy I don’t know what I’m going to do!”

“I think the best thing you can do is marry me.”

She heard him, and vaguely it made sense. She leaned against his chest and he was strong and comforting; her eyes closed and she felt that she could sleep and the pain would go away.

“You can come and live in my farmhouse, and we can get drunk together, and I will be saved the inconvenience of getting in girls from the village to sleep with me.”

She felt another brief surge of anger at his lack of respect, but she was weary and her tears had left her drained of fight. His arms round her were warm. She felt safe and relaxed. One good thing about Adam was that she didn’t have to make any effort. He was so ordinary anything was good enough for him.

“Why should I marry you?” she asked lazily.

“Because I love you more than anyone else is likely to love you. And because I’ll put up with you: your tempers and your extravagance and your selfishness; your cruelty too. Yes, you are cruel sometimes, Eva. You have been cruel to me many times but I have not minded; your brothers and sister are used to you, I suppose, and I have forgiven you that. Kati. That nearly made me turn away from you; Kati has so little and you so much. You could have been kinder to Kati. But I came to see it was thoughtlessness more than cruelty, and I forgave you for Kati as well.”

“How pompous you are, Adam Kaldy!” She pulled away from him.

“Yes, I’m pompous. But if you think about it when you are sober, you will see that marrying me is a sound and sensible idea. Who else can you marry?”

Even in the midst of her months of misery, the idea had once or twice crossed her mind. Whom could she marry? Where were all the wonderful young men from before the war? One or two had come back, but they weren’t the same young men any more. They were all quiet, old. Adam was quiet and old too, but then he had always been that way.

“I could marry Mr. Klein!”

Adam began to laugh, a gentle, affectionate laugh, and she began to giggle too. “Mr. Klein wouldn’t consider asking you to be his wife,” he said, and abruptly she stopped giggling. “You think Mr. Klein, a man in his forties, would be willing to bear with your capriciousness, your whims and fancies, your bad manners in public, your moods and tempers? Good gracious, Eva. He is an intellectual, a cosmopolitan, a man of culture. He doesn’t have the patience to cope with a fractious child.”

She began to cry again. Now he was insulting her. First he had been vulgar; now he was being deliberately unkind. “If that is what you think of me, why do you want to marry me?” she wept.

“I love you.”

It was said in a flat, bored, expressionless voice. He was quite still, utterly controlled; no movement of hand or face showed any emotion whatsoever. There was something tense, unnatural, about his stillness. Oh, how differently Felix would have said it! How warm and exciting a proposal from Felix would have been! But Felix hadn’t proposed—not to her—and again a wave of lonely misery swept over her.

“How could he do it!” she sobbed. “He told me I was the only person who could help him. When he came back from the war—he was so ill and I was the one who made him better—he said I was the only person who understood, who was dear to him. How could he! How could he do this to me?”

“Felix doesn’t think he has done anything to you,” Adam answered slowly. “You don’t understand Felix, Eva. He is not emotional, not in the way the rest of us are emotional. I think the only person he really loves is Mama. And she would never have allowed you to marry Felix. She will not allow you to marry me. But you will, just the same.”

Suddenly she knew she would marry him. It was strange and not at all what she had ever expected. He was dreary, boring, and she didn’t love him. But he was safe, comforting. When she was miserable she wouldn’t have to pretend to be gay and bright with Adam. She wouldn’t have to bother to be charming, to flirt and laugh. She could just let him take care of her, console her. The thick, muzzy feeling in her head was still there and she leaned forward and placed her head on Adam’s chest. How nice it would be to go to sleep.

“All right, Adam.”

“You’ll marry me?”

“Mmm.”

He lifted her face with one hand and kissed her. It was not unpleasant, but it disturbed her lethargy a little.

“Shall we go and tell them now, Adam? Shall we go in and make an announcement?”

“No.”

“Oh, yes! Let’s tell everyone now! It will be such a surprise!” And such a way of convincing everyone that she didn’t care, of making them all crowd round her, smiling, congratulating, paying her compliments.

“No, Eva. We shall wait until we have told your father and my mother.”

“Oh, Adam!” She pouted. “Don’t be so stuffy and dreary. I want to tell everyone now. Come on!”

The hand on her arm was like a vice. She could feel his hard farmer’s fingers bruising her tender flesh.

“Adam! You’re hurting me!”

“Eva, you will not go in there and tell everyone. Do you hear me? This is Kati’s day, as much as any day can be Kati’s. In a smaller way it is also my mother’s day. You can do what you like tomorrow, but today you will behave as a guest at my brother’s wedding should behave.”

“I—”

“If you insist on running in there, with your face swollen from crying and your dress crumpled and dirty where you have been lying on the ground, if you insist on going in like that to tell them of our marriage, I shall deny it.”

She was about to flare back at him when she became aware of a queasy sensation in her stomach. The ground tilted upwards and the queasiness became a violent pain. “Oh, Adam!” she groaned, and quickly he bent her forward, holding her head over the grass while she retched.

Later, feeling slightly ashamed, she consoled herself with the thought that if there was one man in the world she didn’t mind seeing her vomit, it was Adam Kaldy.

In the yard outside the house and gardens there was more than one being sick. Leo and Jozsef, who had left the sedate party inside the house as quickly as they could, watched fascinated as one by one the farmhands passed out or were carried away on the shoulders of more sober friends.

As the afternoon wore on, the scene in the yard became less and less orderly. The food on the trestle tables had vanished (some of it under the aprons of peasant wives and daughters who knew there wasn’t very much at home) and the violinist, although still playing with verve and passion, was swaying with both his eyes closed. There was a fight, going on in the far corner where the gate led into the orchard: a carter from the Kaldy estate quarrelling with a carter from the Racs-Rassay land. Here and there bodies—male—lay scattered across the ground. All the women had left, vanished discreetly long since to the sobriety of their own cottages.

“Look,” said Leo, fascinated. At one end of the trestle the wine tap had been left open. A thin trickle poured directly into the open mouth of a snoring figure lying on the ground. At frequent intervals the peasant would gurgle and spew back some liquid that collected in a puddle by the side of his head. Once or twice, nearly choking, the man would heave, stir, then swallow and relapse comatose again. It seemed impossible for a man to go on absorbing wine while unconscious, and the two boys stared in awed disbelief.

In the centre of the yard a large group of men, arms round each other’s shoulders, circled in a sedate dance—sedate because none of them could move too quickly. Someone’s hat fell off and was crushed by the progression of booted feet.

Leo suddenly froze.

The man without a hat broke away from the circle, cursed at his fellows, fell on the ground, and grovelled for his hat.

“That’s him.”

“That’s who, Leo?”

“Him.”

The man was unable to rise. Dancing, supported by his friends, he had remained upright. But once on the ground he stayed there, trampled by the careless steps of the dancers.

“He killed Uncle Sandor.”

“Are you sure, Leo?”

“That’s him!”

All the times he had thought he recognized the killer it had been when men were marching, moving, standing. So often had he glimpsed a figure that resembled the murderer, and always the figure had moved and he wasn’t sure. But now he could see him. The body rolled over; the man was sick, then insensible; and the more Leo looked, the more certain he was that he had found the killer. Fury welled up inside him. Uncle Sandor was dead, and his murderer danced and drank and ate the food provided by Aunt Gizi and Uncle Alfred. Hatred began to choke him, hatred and renewed grief. Uncle Sandor! Uncle Sandor!

“Killer!” he screamed, and launched himself forward into the
melee of
drunken revellers. “Killer! Killer! You shot him! You shot Uncle Sandor!” He began to sob, to sob and kick at the sodden body. The men, still drunk and moving, laughed a little and then grew quiet, sensing that something was not right.

“You shot him! I saw you! I hate you, hate you!” His feet, in beautiful well-polished wedding shoes, pummelled the drunkard’s side. The man groaned and was sick again. His head was lying in a pool of vomit.

“Come away, Leo.” Jozsef was nervous. He was quite prepared to believe Leo but he was afraid of the drunken men and also a little afraid of Leo’s sudden unbridled wrath. “Come away.” He tried to pull his brother away from the body on the ground.

“No!” Leo jerked his arm away. “Go and tell someone, Jozsef! Get the
pandur!
Anyone! Tell Papa!” He began to kick again, screaming and sobbing with frustration because no one would help him. He felt Jozsef pulling at him again, pulling hard, then hitting him, and he looked and saw that it wasn’t Jozsef this time. It was a small, dirty, ragged child who seemed to be as agonized, as insane with fury, as he himself was.

“Stop!” screamed the child. His face was thin and filthy; blazing blue eyes glared from a peasant’s face.

Astonished, Leo stood still.

“You go away!” sobbed the child. “You! Do not kick him. This is my father. Go away!”

Everyone in the yard was silent now. Soberness had swiftly returned and with it fear. The peasant’s son had attacked the younger of the two young Ferenc gentlemen. Only a childhood game, perhaps, but it did not do for peasants’ children to attack the sons of gentlemen. They backed away, not wanting to be involved with the incident in case someone should decide to investigate and mete out punishment.

The small boy was standing defiantly over the body of his father. He wore no shoes and his feet were covered with scabs and sores. He was half the size of Leo, and now that the yard had suddenly become silent his sobs seemed too loud for such a puny body.

Leo’s anger abated, dispersed in surprise that anyone at all could want to protect the peasant who had killed Uncle Sandor.

“Your father is a murderer!” he said, but the child didn’t understand or even hear him.

“Go away!” He lifted one of his father’s feet and began to pull. Sweat broke out on the dirty face, but the insensible man was too heavy. The child dropped the foot and moved round and grasped the collar of his father’s shirt. It was wet and disgusting but he took no notice. He heaved and strained, trying to drag his father’s head away from the mess of stale food and wine. “I’ll get him away from you!” he gasped. “I’ll get him away.”

Leo wanted to cry—with despair because, though Uncle Sandor’s killer was found, no one would do anything to arrest him, but also because the child dragging his father away confused him and made him miserable. He stood helpless, watching, his emotions a tumbled mass of indecision. The small boy slipped and fell.

“I’ll help you,” he heard himself saying. “I’ll help you drag him away.” His words seemed to galvanize everyone to action. The child spat at him and several of the men came forward to lift the drunkard and carry him out of sight.

Jozsef pulled again at his arm. “Leave him, Leo. It is only a peasant! They are all only peasants!”

“He killed Uncle Sandor, Jozsef.”

“Are you sure? Are you quite sure?”

Was he sure? He had been mistaken many times before, but this time he
was
sure. Always before there had been doubt, but now he was sure.

“Yes. I shall tell Malie. She will know what to do. She will see that he is arrested.”

The yard had emptied save for those too sodden to move. The boys began to walk away.

“Did you see the boy’s feet, Jozsef? They were all bleeding,”

“No. I didn’t notice.”

“They were very bad.”

And then he was overwhelmed by everything, not least by his own emotion. He ran away from Jozsef, into the villa to tell Malie.

A wedding was no place to investigate a murder, but Malie could see that Leo was disturbed enough to wreck the day if she didn’t do something quickly and quietly. He burst into the wedding chamber and began to shout at her, a story about Uncle Sandor’s killer and a boy with sore feet. She led him quickly back into the garden and there, with the help of Jozsef, pieced together a story of drunken brawling and high tempers.

“But darling,” she explained patiently, “how could you be sure it was the same man? You didn’t
really
see him that day. You didn’t really see him any more than the rest of us did. You saw a man firing a rifle, but you can’t say definitely which one it was, not after all this time!”