Csardas (45 page)

Mr. Adam called them together and told them how it was to be arranged. Some must go early and return early to care for the animals. When the first party came back, the second could leave. He divided them into two shifts and Janos’s father was in the first. He must go early but return in the afternoon.

When the day came his mother could not go at all—her legs were so swollen she had to hoe sitting on the ground—and so his father set out alone, looking clean and cheerful. The farm was quiet when he had gone. The baby had stopped crying and the silence from the Boros room was incredible and unusual; even that noisy brood had been affected by the brilliance and unprecedented generosity of their employers.

Grandmother had gone to look after the children of the Ladi family, and Janos sat with his mother, worrying about her tired white face and stroking her hand. After a while she began to talk, mostly about his going to school, about how she was trying to save the egg money so that he could stay on into the fifth and sixth class. She told him about her own schooling, years ago, and then she made him get the stick and write in the earth whatever letters he could remember. He could remember them all—since the affair with the Boros boys he had been practising the letters for just such an occasion—and now, when he saw her gratified face and hopeful eyes, he wanted to burst with endeavour and success, to show her that he would be able to read quicker than anyone else in the school.

She was worried by four o’clock. His father hadn’t come home. All Saints’ Eve was approaching, when the staff would be re-employed or dismissed, and now—so near the fateful day of reappointment—was not the time to disobey the master’s orders. At half past four she was twisting her hands with nervous anxiety and finally she asked Janos if he thought he could find the way to the Racs-Rassay villa on his own.

“Of course,” he said stoutly. He knew roughly what path to go on, and because his mother trusted him he didn’t doubt he could find the place.

“Listen now,” she said, her voice high-pitched with worry. “Listen while I tell exactly how to get there.”

He listened carefully, then repeated it to her, and she put her hand on his shoulder and pushed him gently out the door.

“Run as much as you can,” she cried. “Not all the way, but as much as you can,” and because he was both proud and hurt for her he began to run at once, puffing his way between the fields and then down into the woods, stopping when his breathing was beginning to hurt, then on again when his wind had returned.

It was a long way, longer than the walk to the village. His legs began to feel wobbly and his head began to float, as though he were standing up high somewhere watching himself running along the track. He stopped at the river, drank, and bathed his sweating face and hands in the cool water. He longed to bathe his feet too but there wasn’t time.

Finally he heard the wedding, violins and voices, a long long way off but at least he was not lost. He began to walk, growing nervous because now he must enter an estate not his own, and far grander than the Kaldy farm, or so he had been told.

There were iron railings round the grounds, and big double gates. He was afraid but he followed the railings and gradually the music grew louder and louder and finally he came out into the yard. In the distance he could see the house—a palace!—but he had no time to be awed because he was immediately frozen into horror at the sight that awaited him.

His father was lying on the ground, apparently dead, and the boy who had waved from the car was screaming and kicking at his body. Janos was petrified. Thoughts flashed through his mind with the speed of an ox whip. How could he tell his mother that his father was dead? Where would they go to live? Was this the punishment meted out by Mr. Adam to those who had not returned at the specified time? Panic, confusion, nearly choked him. He looked for familiar faces to help but even though he knew the men they all looked different; they were bloated and red and mad-looking. He clenched his fists by his sides, fighting the desire to turn and run, and then his father moved and groaned and was sick. Relief, and then a strange burning sensation filled him, a fury, a white anger that snapped, a hate for the beautifully dressed boy who was kicking his father. He flung himself forward, not caring, just angry, wanting to kill and hurt. He shouted at the boy; he didn’t know what he said and later he couldn’t remember if he had hit him or just wanted to. The anger faded, a little, and was replaced by a terrible anxiety. Somehow he had to get his father away. He had to pull him from his vomit because his mother would be so ashamed if she knew.

He tugged and heaved and finally felt panic again, panic that grew when the mad boy suddenly offered to help him. He could hardly understand what the boy was saying, his accent was so unlike anything he had heard before.

And then they were gone, all gone, and he followed Uncle Pal and Uncle Andras when they carried his father to a pile of straw and dropped him. He stayed with him, and later the boy came back with his brother and Mr. Adam. He was frightened because now he knew Mr. Adam would punish them all, would evict them from their home and dismiss his father on All Saints’ Eve. There was nothing more he could do. He had failed his mother and he began to cry. His feet hurt and he was tired.... Tired.

They all talked, and then they went away and he was left with his father, his father whom he did not like but who had suddenly, for the first time,
become
his father, someone who belonged to him, who was his in the same way that his mother was his.

Presently Uncle Pal and Uncle Andras threw a bucket of water over his father and when he had roused they staggered away, the three of them, back down the track towards the woods that led to home. Numb with exhaustion the boy Janos dragged behind.

They were not evicted. His father was not dismissed. The men who had failed to return on time from the wedding party—which meant all of them—were called together the following morning. When they returned they were subdued and crushed but no more was said about dismissal and for a while all the men were quiet and behaved kindly to their wives and children.

The following week he went to school to receive an education from Mr. Feher.

It was one of those amusing little family reflections—the kind of cosy domestic comment women especially like to make—that Malie, who was the last of the three cousins to be married, should be the first to have children. When Aunt Gizi remarked on it her comments were slightly acid. “Quite extraordinary!” she said to Mama, smiling. “Amalia, married only three years and already the mother of two sons—and with a middle-aged husband too.”

Mama, who had almost recovered from the shock of David Klein’s becoming her son-in-law (the rise in their financial circumstances had done much to reconcile her) smiled winsomely back. “I’m sure it won’t be long, Gizi, before you have a grandchild. Kati and Felix—they have so much to give a child, do they not? The manor house, and all the land, and the Kaldy name, of course. I’m sure it will happen very, very soon.”

“I hope so.” Aunt Gizi spoke with a commanding note in her voice. Kati had been so obedient until now, doing exactly as she had been told, marrying Felix and settling unobtrusively into a life regulated by her mother-in-law. But after five years of marriage she and Felix should have produced some kind of offspring. It worried Gizi considerably. She was always slightly aware that Madame Kaldy felt she had reneged on the bargain. After all, what was the point of saving the Kaldy estate if there was no heir to inherit it?

“I wonder,” she mused reflectively. “I wonder if I should take Kati to Lake Balaton. A holiday by the water, some swimming and healthy walks... perhaps she is anaemic.”

“Perhaps she is bored,” said Mama, yawning. “What does she do with herself, your little Kati? Girls, especially married girls, can get bored so easily and Kati—Kati never
enjoys
things very much.”

“What do you mean?” snapped Gizi defensively.

“Well, Eva goes out and drinks coffee and dances and buys clothes. And now she is married she has parties at home and buys new furniture. And Amalia runs her home—beautifully, quite beautifully!—but Kati doesn’t do any of those things, does she?”

Gizi stared, angry but concerned.

“I mean,” Mama continued delicately. “If you don’t enjoy doing anything—well, you don’t enjoy doing
anything
...
if you understand me, Gizi?”

Gizi was aware, only too aware, of the imperfections of her daughter, but nonetheless she was a mother and she swung feebly to Kati’s defence.

“She has her painting,” she said quickly. “She was always good at her little flower pictures, Marta, you remember? And Madame Kaldy has given her the summer house at the end of the garden to keep her paints and pictures in.”

Mama sniffed. “It doesn’t sound very... vibrant, Gizi. I think you should try to make her lively, take her to Budapest and buy her some pretty clothes, or let her go on her own. Yes, that would be far better!”

“It would be most improper.”

“She can stay with Malie and David.” Mama clapped her hands. “Oh, what a delightful idea! Kati adores Malie. You know very well, Gizi, that Kati would be most happy to go and stay with Malie in Budapest.”

Gizi didn’t answer, but the idea took root. Even while she was thinking that perhaps a visit to Amalia with her two small sons would be quite a good idea, she was also wishing that her sister-in-law didn’t behave quite so girlishly. Marta Bogozy was nearly fifty, and still using the mannerisms of a girl in a pre-war ballroom. She was too old to clap her hands and giggle.

“And perhaps,” continued Mama excitedly, “perhaps Eva could go up as well. My poor Eva so hates it in the country during the winter; she should never have married a farmer, poor darling. But if she went too, then our three lovely girls could have a little holiday together! Just like they used to; do everything together the way they always did!”

And my daughter will be the odd one out, just as she always was, reflected Gizi bitterly. Not that it mattered now. They had all found husbands, and Kati had made the best match of them all. Except sometimes, in the middle of the night when Alfred’s snores from the next room woke her up, she would begin to worry about Kati. At first, just after the wedding, she had felt a sense of relief. Kati was married, a splendid marriage, a marriage that had all the security of money and name, land and possessions. There was no need to worry about Kati’s future any more. And then, only occasionally at first but more frequently of late, a faint sense of unease would overcome her. When she was watching Felix and Kati together she would feel that something was wrong. Oh, she didn’t expect an ecstatic or even a happy marriage—there wasn’t any such thing—but it seemed as though Kati was nothing to do with Felix or Madame Kaldy. It was as though she was living with them but they didn’t know she was there. And recently, in the night, at the bad time when one woke and thought about the pains in one’s stomach, wondering if it were cancer, she would also think, What will happen to Kati when I die, when Alfred dies? And she began to worry. Who would protect her daughter when she was dead?

“Yes,” she said slowly. “Yes, Marta. Perhaps it would be a good idea, if Amalia doesn’t mind.” For she had also begun to realize that when she and Alfred were dead the only ones who would care about her daughter were Marta Bogozy—irritating Marta—and her two daughters. Family. The only ones who really ever cared were family.

And—again in the night—she remembered the old man, her father. Two children he had had, herself and Zsigmond, and both of them had sacrificed their birthright to ambition. The old man had lost both his children, sucked into an alien culture, and yet he had sent for them when he was dying. Family.

“Wonderful!” twittered Marta, clapping her hands like a girl again. “I shall write to Malie at once. She will be thrilled.”

The pattern of their family life had changed. No longer did they gather in the town every winter and spring, exchanging invitations to parties and meeting each other nearly every day. Malie now lived in Budapest, Eva and Kati in the country (although during the winter months Eva visited her parents in town whenever she could). In the summer it was much more the way it had always been. Malie and David Klein stayed with Mama and Papa at the farm, and carriages and motors rolled continuously between it and the other three residences, the Racs-Rassay villa, the Kaldy manor house, and Adam’s farm. In the summer it was picnics, summer dances, tennis parties at the Kaldy manor and what seemed one long somnolent sun-drenched gathering of friends and family. The summers were glorious, especially for Eva, for she was now the undisputed centre of the family network.

Malie, married and busy with her children, had grown quieter, calmer, and somehow
older.
Kati didn’t count at all. Madame Kaldy, Mama, and Aunt Gizi were relegated—now that a generation of new young wives were present—to positions of gentle but disregarded authority. So Eva, Mrs. Adam Kaldy, was the undisputed queen of the district’s society. Marriage to Adam had brought many surprises. One was that although Felix and his mother in their renovated manor house were the most aristocratic figures in the area, Adam was considered the soundest and most progressive, the greatest authority on land and farming and finance. Adam was asked to sit on committees, to represent various bodies, to act as adviser on any number of local matters. And Eva, basking in Adam’s reflection, found that her role—smart, attractive,
moderne
—was very much to her liking. Time and time again, at a dinner or party at the Kaldy manor house, she was aware that she, not Kati or Madame Kaldy, was the leader of their social set. And always it was she and Felix with their gay smart talk who made everything so successful, who kept the parties lively and fun.

In the winter it wasn’t so good. With every year of her marriage she hated the winters more and more. Nearly all the entertaining people went back to the town. The manor house, which was the farthest away of all the dwellings, took longer to get to when the weather was bad and, in any case, Felix and his mother paid long visits to the town, sometimes taking Kati and sometimes not. She wondered—not very often, just occasionally—how Kati could bear the winter months up at the manor without company or parties and once or twice in a mood of high endeavour she had the coach brought round (Adam still wouldn’t buy a motorcar however much she asked) and made the cold winter journey to see her cousin. If Malie had become more mature since marriage, and Eva more vivacious and beautiful, Kati had become quieter and even more insignificant. She was never in the house when Eva called, even when the snow was thick and the mountain wind blew from the north. She was invariably to be found in the little summer-house at the end of the garden, wrapped in an old fur coat of her mother’s, her hands so cold she could hardly hold her crayons and brushes. But her pinched face would leap into animation when she saw her cousin and Eva always left feeling gratified and extremely magnanimous.