Csardas (47 page)

“What do you mean?” breathed Eva.

Kati folded her arms round her thin rib cage, as though trying to protect herself from an unexpected blow.

“You know very well what I mean, Eva,” she replied evenly. “You were quite right. They married me, Felix and his mother, for my money. Felix dislikes me so much he has never even kissed me in private. His kisses are reserved as necessary public formalities, on my feast day and at Christmas. At first I was puzzled, then hurt. I don’t care any more. But I still don’t want Madame Kaldy to know.” Kati shuddered suddenly, looking small and afraid. “I would rather she thought me infertile than that—than that she should try to arrange that particular matter, the way she has arranged everything else.”

She sat down on the bed beside Eva, looking drawn and yellow. The narrow short dress she wore didn’t suit her any more than the old styles had done.

“So it is for you to provide the heir to the Kaldy wealth, Eva!” she said bitterly. “And I do not envy you when you have a son. She will requisition him, just as she has everything else.”

They were shocked, not so much because of Kati’s revelation as the fact that she had told them at all. Kati had always been a failure in whatever she did, but they had taken it for granted; even Kati had taken it for granted. Kati was silent, inconspicuous, and did not speak of her failures. And now Kati had not only announced that her marriage had never been consummated but had also told them her thoughts and wishes on the matter. They were both silent, not knowing what they could say to this new Kati who had developed a small skin of defiance.

“Kati, I—”

“You don’t have to be sad, Malie. I’m very happy at the moment. I couldn’t believe it when I first came here to stay with you. I was so happy I was frightened to believe it would work out right. Three months with you on my own, and then back to the country with you all for the summer! I was afraid to believe it. I kept thinking something would happen to make it go wrong. But I’m here, and I have all the spring and summer to look forward to. No Mama, no Madame Kaldy, no Felix. I’m free, aren’t I?”

“As free as you like, darling. You can do just what you want!”

Kati smiled, nodded, and looked strangely composed—for Kati. “That’s what I found hard to believe when I first came. But I believe it now.”

Silence again. Finally Amalia went to the wardrobe, anxious to lighten the heavy atmosphere of the room. “Let me help Eva pack her things. Then we will ask David to take us out for our last evening. Would you like to dance, Eva? I believe there are some bars, rather daring places, where it is possible to dance.”

“Oh, Malie! I would love that!” All traces of tears had vanished. The little faerie face, even more piquant beneath the short hair, was alive and flushed.

“Very well. I will ask David to arrange for some partners.”

“What a wonderful last evening!” exclaimed Eva. She felt happy, excited, and not altogether sad about going home on the following day. Kati’s revelation—now that she was thinking about it—made her heart pound a little. He had been true to her! He loved her, desired her so much that he had been unable to bring himself to embrace Kati even once, even when his mother, the old witch, wanted an heir. The suspense, the anticipation that preceded dances and balls in the old days, was back in her heart and she began to look forward to going home to the country—where Felix was.

The summer that followed was a strange one. An atmosphere that was almost unreal pervaded each and every one of them, even the older generation. The pace was quicker, the laughter shriller, and the cars that traversed the routes between farmhouses, manor, and villa went faster and more furiously. Afterwards Malie often thought about the summer of 1925. It was as though some enormous event lay ahead so that, like birds before an earthquake, they were all behaving in an unnatural manner. What the something was she couldn’t say—something wonderful, awful, stupendous, dreadful; it was impossible to tell. But afterwards she reflected that it
should
have been like that in 1914; they should have felt that sense of impending events then instead of dancing through the pre-war summer as though the world was going to last forever.

It would have been easy to attribute the changing atmosphere solely to Eva. Certainly she was different that summer, wilder, gayer, slightly hysterical. Her short hair style was only the first of many changes. She began to use eye make-up, then lipstick, and her dresses became shorter, flimsier, more daring. She lost weight too, and now she looked like some mythical wood sprite, a beautiful but insane creature from an old forest legend. Even Mama, that indulgent good-natured hedonist, was troubled and spoke tentatively to Eva about her latest dress, an affair of silver transparent gauze that showed her knees at the hem and was cut nearly to the waist at the neckline. Every time Eva moved it clung and rippled over her body, revealing the fact that she was wearing very little underneath. Mama, vivacious and clothes-loving, was perturbed by her near-naked daughter.

“Eva, my darling,” she faltered one day when Eva had called to collect her for a summer evening party at the Kaldy manor. “That dress. Is it—is that what the fashion says must be worn now? It seems so... so vulgar.”

Eva slid her naked arms down the side of the dress. The armholes were cut so low it was possible to see her rib cage as she moved. “Of course it is fashionable, Mama,” she snapped. “Would I wear it if it wasn’t?”

“But... it just doesn’t seem suitable for a simple summer party among friends. And why—” Mama stammered, uncertain of herself. “Why does Amalia not wear such a dress? Amalia lives in Budapest and goes to Vienna and Paris once a year. Why does she not dress in the latest fashion?”

“Because she is dowdy and because she has an old husband!” snapped Eva. “What point is there in comparing me with Malie? She has surrendered her life to dreariness. You forget, Mama, I have visited Malie in Budapest. Her friends are all insufferably dull, the friends you would expect David Klein to have. And what does she do all day? She talks to the boring friends and looks after her boring children.”

“Eva!”

“They are boring,” said Eva defiantly. “All children are! That is why Malie dresses like an old woman. You might as well compare me with Kati.”

Mama looked unhappy but said no more. She was sensitive enough—even Marta Bogozy was sensitive enough—to be aware of the disapproval of Madame Kaldy and Aunt Gizi. Eva, darting through the crowd in her silver dress, was like a provocative tropical bird, or a piece of white fire that would soon burn itself out.

In the old days they would all have expressed displeasure and Eva would have felt reproved. But she was a married woman now and she anticipated any disapproval by calling across to Felix as soon as she entered the room, “Felix, my darling! I hope you too are not going to reprimand me about my dress! Mama has scolded me, and just look at Aunt Gizi and your mama. I can tell that no one approves of my delightful, delightful gown!” She pirouetted and pulled a streamer of silver gauze over the lower part of her face, clowning, sensual, bizarre. Felix adored the whole performance.

“Where is Adam? Where is my son?” barked Madame Kaldy, and Eva barely bothered to turn when she answered.

“Oh, cows... or sheep... or something.” She shrugged. “He hates parties anyway, you know that.”

“Well, I
love
parties,” declared Felix enthusiastically. “And I love the dress. How daring! No one, but no one, has worn a dress like that yet, I am quite sure. And the material! Eva, my darling! When did you buy it?”

They were away, the pair of them, chattering and exquisite, a pair of sharp-set magpies darting through the room, and everyone was silent and bothered without knowing why.

But although it would have been easy to blame Eva for the unnatural atmosphere of the summer, it wasn’t just Eva. Everyone was different.

Aunt Gizi didn’t talk very much, unlike Gizi; she spent a lot of time staring into the middle distance and staring also at Kati. She sat down a lot, ate little, and as the summer progressed she became thinner. It was all the more noticeable because Uncle Alfred had become fatter and noisier. When his attention was drawn to the fact that his wife didn’t look very well, he was full of loud solicitude. He was insistent about her resting and could be heard whispering noisily about “women’s difficulties.” The old Gizi would have silenced him with a waspish comment, but now she seemed glad of the excuse to rest away from the others. She said she wasn’t really ill, just suffering from digestive troubles. She sucked a lot of carbon tablets and no one bothered too much because obviously Aunt Gizi wouldn’t allow herself to be seriously ill. Nonetheless, the lack of scolding, the subduing of her sharp tongue, added to the general strangeness of the summer.

In June a ghost arrived to see Malie, a Polish ghost, unbelievably handsome and carrying in his hand a bundle of letters nearly ten years old. It was Count Stefan Tilsky, ex-hussar officer from the old Imperial army, friend and comrade of the lover she had nearly but not quite forgotten. He drove, in a black shiny car, up to the farmhouse one hot afternoon, bent over her hand—the old manners of the Empire were still there—and smiled, a deep, warm smile that held sympathy but also curiosity in its depths.

“Amalia—Mrs. Klein now, I believe?—how strange. I have not seen you for eleven years. You will forgive me for coming unannounced.”

“I am happy to see you.” She spoke the formal words, but she wasn’t happy at all. Stefan Tilsky brought back memories: balls at the garrison; the first csardas, when the men picked the girls they wanted instead of the ones they had to pick; picnics with Karoly; the war.

“I meant to come before to see you, to talk to you—that is if you wished to talk—and to give you back your letters. But I have not been able to visit Hungary or see my old friends and comrades until now. We have had a little war of our own.” He smiled a trifle. “You may have heard?”

“I am happy for you, Stefan. We thought of you many times. We thought of all our old Polish friends while you were fighting Russia. And we were happy that you became your own country again. You—I suppose you have your land restored?”

He nodded and smiled again. She had forgotten just how handsome Stefan had been. Now, in his middle thirties, he was even more attractive. His body had filled out—wide shoulders, strong legs—and his face had the interesting marks of a man who has discovered how to live with himself.

“After the Germans and the Russians there was little land left, Amalia. It took time to rebuild and somehow, because one was never sure of what would happen next, it seemed unwise to go visiting. But I always intended to come back. My friends, the few left after the war, were here.” His brown eyes twinkled and mocked himself. “My youth was here.”

“Are you married?”

He shrugged, raised an eyebrow, and smiled. “A little. You too, of course. I hear that you are both married, the enchanting Ferenc girls. How long ago it seems!”

It was long ago, and she didn’t wish to be reminded. That girl was dead, the girl who had waded barefoot in a stream with a young man, who had kissed him at a crowded railway-station in 1914. That girl was dead.

They were both silent, staring out from the veranda into the gentle trees of the acacia woods. She was startled to feel her hand taken.

“Amalia. I took your letters from Karoly’s body. After he was killed I went back. I wanted to be sure—anyway, I took the letters. I thought you would prefer that no one else read them.”

He had been carrying a smooth leather briefcase, and now he opened it and took a bundle of shabby envelopes, meaningless paper, from the case. “At first I thought I should send them, then somehow it was too soon after the war and I was afraid of disturbing you. But last year I heard that you were married, with children, and were happy and settled, so I thought now would be the time to return the letters.”

“Thank you.”

He placed them in her lap, crumpled fragments of tragedy. Karoly, that brave, first, yearning love. She had defied Papa, lived in hope for three years, survived his death, and married someone else. Where had that girl gone? Where had Karoly gone?

Stefan pressed her hand and she looked up, surprised to see that his eyes were moist. The emotional Poles, she thought disparagingly to herself, and wished he had not come, bringing pain with him.

“You are very lovely, Amalia. You are more beautiful than you were as a girl.”

She shrugged. “I am an old married lady now—nearly thirty, Stefan—with two sons.”

“Their names?”

She hesitated, swallowed. “Jacob... and Karoly. The elder is Karoly.”

How to explain, how to account for the curious scene by her bedside when her first son had been born? Her husband in his shirt sleeves, ruffled, unlike himself and with a thin film of sweat across his forehead, kneeling by her bed with his arms stretched round her shoulders, watching her face, searching for something.

“We have a son, Amalia. A strong boy, a strong dark boy like his father.”

She was tired, pleasantly tired, relieved that the ordeal was over and that she had done her duty according to the unwritten marriage contract between them. She had smiled at him, patted his cheek, wished he would go away so that she could sleep.

“Would you like to name him, Amalia?”

“I thought we had decided,” she had murmured sleepily. “Jacob if a boy, Julie if a girl. We will call him Jacob, after your father.”

“Would you like to call him Karoly?” It had jarred, hurt and disturbed her, and her face had twisted into a frown, a small moan of denial issuing from her lips. But the pain had disappeared almost immediately. She had felt her husband’s arms tighten around her. “Karoly, yes?” And she had nodded, not understanding but content that he would not let the memory hurt her. It had been as inexplicable as many of the things he did; her wedding present had been the deeds of the farm, purchased in a private transaction from her father and handed to her as a security for all of them for all time.

Stefan Tilsky stared curiously at her, a beautiful Polish aristocrat, so handsome, so warm and charming it would have been easy to tell him everything, if only she had understood it herself.