Csardas (54 page)

The misery that overwhelmed him channelled itself. Everything must be borne so that soon he could come home and buy the family meat every day. This must be the thing he remembered above all else. He was going away so that soon he could return and buy his mother all the things he had seen in the village.

And then the fear washed over him again, driving high intention far from his mind. It wasn’t just the fear and misery of leaving his family, it was fear of the unknown, of a world totally unfamiliar to him in which he would be a stranger without friends or family, at least no family that he knew.

Uncle Lajos was a second cousin of his father, a man who had done well for himself and had been a credit to the sacrifices made by his parents. He had been apprenticed to a shoemaker and now had his own business in the town, that distant, legendary town where the Kaldys and the Ferencs and the Racs-Rassays came from, the town that included incredible things like the school and factories and hundreds of houses stretched out in rows. Uncle Lajos had married the daughter of a factory hand and their children were all grown up and all placed in brilliant positions of unbelievable sophistication: one was a railway guard; one, who had attended the secondary school, was a government clerk; and another had trained with his father as a shoemaker. Three daughters had all married well to affluent town dwellers. Uncle Lajos had been applied to for lodgings during the term time while Janos was at school. An arrangement had been made: Uncle Lajos and Aunt Berta would take a minimal fee for his keep, and he would have to earn the rest of his food and lodging by working for Uncle Lajos in the evenings and at weekends. At the back of everyone’s mind was the thought that, if the education failed, perhaps Uncle Lajos would keep the boy as an apprentice. So while Uncle Lajos and Aunt Berta were relations, he didn’t know them other than one brief meeting and they were also touched with the Olympian mystery of the town, the mystery that made them distant strangers and not part of the family at all.

For several months, during the time the arrangements for his departure had been going on, he had been the object of awed envy from everyone on the farm. Not only his schoolfellows but even the adults had spoken to him, of him, as one touched with divine blessing. No one talked of anything else, and his fame had spread from the Kaldy farm to the Racs-Rassay and the Ferenc. He had been pointed out by carter and ox herder, field worker and shepherd, from all the lands about, as the boy who had achieved the impossible and was going to the secondary school in the town. The respect, the reverent humility had been contagious, and for some time he had begun to believe that he was indeed set apart from his friends and relatives. But now, with departure imminent, he was shocked to realize that he was unworthy of the greatness and did not have the courage to grasp it.

“Mama, what shall I do if”—he choked, fought, and recovered—“if I get lost, or if no one will speak to me?”

“You will not get lost because in your pocket you have a paper with the address of Uncle Lajos written upon it. And everyone at the school will speak to you because his excellency, Mr. Adam, has arranged for you to have a place there.”

She had the firm note in her voice, the note he knew meant she would brook no change of plan and weakening of courage. He had heard the note in her voice many times during the last year, when she was talking to Director Feher at the village school, to the priest, to Mr. Adam Kaldy, to any number of relatives all round the county who might be coerced into help, to the Father at the Catholic
Gymnasium
who said he had no place available for a peasant child. He had heard it above all when she was talking to his father.

The day they had returned from Mr. Adam’s house, his father had been insane with rage. Subsequently Janos had realized the rage stemmed from fear. His mother’s impertinence could have cost his father his job in the granary. Undeterred, she had stated that Janos was going to receive an education, no matter how impossible it seemed. Through arguments and battles that ended in blows, she had maintained the firm and positive tones that all of them were coming to recognize. She had divulged the amazing news that she had saved money—how and what she could have saved it from was a mystery— to provide clothes and lodgings for her son, enough for one term at least. And finally his father had fallen before a spirit stronger than his own. He had capitulated, and gradually his chagrin had turned to pride. What a wife he had, to accomplish the impossible! And what a son, to receive a place at the grammar school! Once the decision had been reached he had done everything to further his wife’s crusade, dictating the letter to his cousin Lajos and begging rides for his son on carts going towards town on the day that the entrance examination had to be taken. He was proud of his son, and proud of himself. Did not men point him out on three farms as the father of the boy who was going to the secondary school? It was a pride shared by every servant on the Kaldy farm. It put them above all the other farms. There were, it was true, brilliant children on the Racs-Rassay land and on the smaller Ferenc farm; some were fortunate enough to be apprenticed, one or two even spent a little time in the town acquiring mechanics’ qualifications. But on no other farm was there a boy who was going to receive an education at the grammar school.

Their chauvinism had reached unsurpassed proportions. Uncle Istvan had made a school box for Janos’s clothes. It was of beautiful grooved and fitted wood and the top was carved with his initials. Aunt Rozi had given him a pair of boots that were nearly new, even though it meant that her own son would have to go without during the winter. From Uncle Pal a comb, from Aunt Nansci two handkerchiefs, and so on. He had felt like a prince until this morning, when he felt like an exile.

His mother left him and went out into the kitchen. He followed her because this was the last morning he would be able to help her get the wood in for the stove. She prodded and blew and finally the full embers glowed again and she moved the pan of soup over to the hot part.

Yesterday he had been sent down to the river to wash and then had gone in company with his father to thank Mr. Adam Kaldy for the great kindness he was receiving. He was no longer afraid of Mr. Adam Kaldy. During the year since his mother had first gone there he had seen Mr. Adam many times. Once, in the estate office, Mr. Adam had made him stand by the desk and had shown him the account books for the estate. He had explained the columns and the entries and then asked Janos to take a separate piece of paper—beautiful white paper!—and copy the entries and then work out how many hectares of land provided the wheat and the maize and how much milk the herds could be expected to give and what proportion of that could be used in the dairy and so on. Janos had been nervous, but not of the task set him. He had been nervous in case he made the white paper dirty, and in case he disgraced himself by speaking disrespectfully to his excellency. He had begun working on the columns of figures and had finally forgotten about Mr. Adam. This was a far more brilliant and exciting problem than any set by Mr. Feher. He had raced through, checking and calculating and pointing out an error that had been made in the book. When he gave the result to Mr. Adam, his excellency had appeared to be surprised, and Janos wondered if perhaps he had not been careful enough with the paper. But Mr. Adam had said nothing, just sent him home again and told him to return on the same day in the following week.

Frequently after that Mr. Adam gave him problems to do out of the estate books. Sometimes he also told him not to use certain words as the people in the town wouldn’t understand him. When the time came for him to go to the school and take the entrance examination, Mr. Adam had given him a letter addressed to the director. On the way to the town with his father (they had started before dawn and it had taken four different carts to get there), he had asked a question that had been troubling him for some time.

“Papa, why is it that there is so much maize and wheat and beet grown on the estate and yet we do not have enough?”

“How do you know what is grown?” his father growled.

“I have seen the book, in Mr. Adam’s office. He showed me only one book, but I have seen the others when they were open. Many hectares, much hay and wheat and milk—so much milk. Why is there not enough for us?”

Usually his father was uncommunicative, sometimes boastful, but mostly terse. That day he seemed to be searching for words, trying to explain something.

“It is the law,” he had said finally, and then added haltingly, “You must never talk like that in front of other people. It will bring trouble. You must remember that his excellency Mr. Adam is sending you to school because your grandfather fought with him in Russia. That is all you must remember.”

Yesterday he had thanked Mr. Adam, who had given him three
filler.
He’d offered the money to his mother when he came home, but she had told him that this time he could keep it. Now it rested in his pocket and the feel of it gave him a small security. With money he wasn’t quite so defenceless.

He drank some soup and then his mother wrapped a shawl round her head. He kissed his grandmother and sisters good-bye, and he and his mother walked over to the ox stables, where the cart was ready to depart, the oxen already yoked.

“Good-bye, Janni. Be a good boy.” She gripped him close and he wrapped his arms round her waist again, smelling the dear beloved smell of her for the last time. She was crying; he could feel her body shaking and he could hold his own tears no longer.

“I wish I wasn’t going! I wish I wasn’t going!”

“Hush now!”

She wiped her face with her apron, then wiped his tears away. “Remember, you and I are different, Janni. We have blue eyes. No one else on the farm has blue eyes. So we’ll always be different—different and together—and that is why you must go away to school now and why you won’t cry.”

Light was beginning to break. He was lifted onto the plank across the front of the cart.

In the back was a load of manure, which caused his mother to call anxiously, “Don’t lean back and dirty your clothes, Janni. Remember you must be better, cleaner, more industrious than anyone else!”

He nodded, unable to speak again. He saw his father hurrying from behind the sheds, taking a moment from his work in order to say good-bye.

“God bless you, my son.” He lifted the new wooden box up onto the plank beside Janos, and then Uncle Andras stirred the oxen and the cart began to rumble away across the yard. He looked back to see his mother standing alone. She raised her hand and then the cart turned and he saw her no more.

Aunt Gizi was growing worse. Her complaint, diagnosed as “female trouble,” did not right itself with the passing of time, and finally an appointment was made for her to go to a hospital in Budapest. An abdominal operation resulted in the announcement that she was cured, but all through the winter that followed Aunt Gizi lay in her bed and grew more and more skeletal.

Kati, who had at first commuted between the Kaldy manor and her parents’ house in town, now moved permanently to look after her mother. Silent—and surprisingly efficient—she washed, fed, and administered drugs.

Uncle Alfred alternated between drunken tears and drunken optimism.

“She’s getting better, isn’t she?” he demanded of Malie, who was visiting. “She had a little food today. That’s a good sign, isn’t it?” And then, as he so often did, he collapsed into a confession of self-mortification, recounting all the things he had always meant to do for Gizi but had never done. If only she would get better so that he could do all those things! Every day he went into Gizi’s bedroom and endeavoured to cheer his wife with jovial and noisy humour. Watching her mother’s face grow even more drawn, Kati did her best to hasten his departure and would prepare herself for Alfred’s collapse as soon as he stepped outside the door.

Malie, during her visit, tried to console the maudlin Alfred as best she could. “But what will he do when—if anything happens to Aunt Gizi?” she asked Kati.

Kati smiled, a bitter little smile that was unlike her. “No ‘if,’ Malie. There’s no need to pretend when Papa’s not here. She’s dying. She knows she’s dying. She told me two weeks ago.”

“Oh, Kati!” Malie placed her hand over Kati’s stubby fingers. “I’m so very sorry.”

Kati stared out of the drawing-room window. She, more than either of her cousins, looked her age. She was thirty-one, as indeed was Malie, but Kati’s years had given her a dried-up, unlived-in look. Now, pinched and white through hours of nursing, she could have been anyone’s spinster daughter.

“Hasn’t Felix—or your mother-in-law—suggested helping?”

The bitter little smile again. “Madame Kaldy has done all the proper things. She has written, and sent flowers and fruit from the hothouses. And she has made three visits with Felix and has sent a nurse to help (Mama won’t have the nurse near her). Madame Kaldy also told Papa that he wasn’t to feel one bit guilty at keeping me here away from my home and husband. I was to stay as long as I was needed.”

“I see.”

“How horrible marriage is, Malie. How hypocritical and... expedient. Everyone living in pairs because it is arranged that way, and everyone so lonely.”

Malie was shocked. Even allowing for Kati’s curious marriage, she was still dismayed by her cousin’s cynicism.

“Oh, Kati! That’s not true! Your own marriage, it was wrong, but not all of them are like that.”

“No?” Kati picked at the tassels on the velvet curtains. “I suppose not. You seem happy enough, although we all knew you only married David Klein because Karoly was dead. And Eva? Is she happy? I don’t think so. And my own mama and papa: all those years of marriage, all those years, and he cannot help her now she’s dying; she just wants him out of the room. She never asks for him. And all he does is think of how he’s going to manage when she’s gone. I don’t think he really cares for her. And I don’t think Mama cares for him. I don’t think Mama has ever really loved anyone in her whole life.”

“Kati!”

“No. She’s felt responsible for me. But she’s never loved me. Even now, even while I’m nursing her and helping her, she doesn’t love me. How can someone die without loving someone, Malie?”