Csardas (61 page)

When he went to the agency he took advantage of his temporary authority to translate it into French and English and sent it out on the agency transcript.

Just before the end of his studies in Berlin he wrote to Malie about the problem of Hanna. He and Hanna were going to get married and nothing was going to stop them. But his family had to be told—told that their son, a Ferenc, a Bogozy, was going to marry the daughter of an unemployed Hamburg shipyard worker. He had decided the best thing to do was to take Hanna home for the summer. Once they saw how she was, how quiet and restrained, they would have to accept her. He knew that of all of them Malie would be the only one to understand, the only one who would support him. He wrote and told her everything, except that he and Hanna had been living together for two years. He knew that even Malie would be shocked at that. Her reply came a week before he was due to leave Berlin.

My dearest Leo,

I cannot think why your letter surprised me, but it did; of course you are a man now, living a man’s life, and it was inevitable that sooner or later you would meet a girl you wished to marry. I am happy for you, but a little sad for myself. Forgive me. It is hard to realize that my little brother who was so unhappy whenever he was away from me has now grown up. How very much harder it will be for me when Karoly and Jacob go away and find women of their own. I must try very hard not to mind.

You have a problem, dear Leo, but you know that. Papa appears to be a little softer, a little more lenient now he is older, but he is neither so soft nor so lenient that he will accept your marriage without question. The problem will be, as you very well know, that of your Hanna’s family. I know things are different nowadays and we have lost our land. But this will make Papa—and Mama too, I fear—more defensive than ever of family standards. You told me that you remembered the time when I was betrothed to Karoly Vilaghy. Leo, I do not think you know all the things that happened to me because Papa considered Karoly and the Vilaghys were not suitable partners for the Ferencs. How much more he will declaim against your poor Hanna’s family who, as well as being poor, are also German. I cannot perform miracles, but I will do my best to prepare Papa, and of course I will take your Hanna into my heart and love her. It is better, I think, that she stays in our apartment rather than Papa’s, even though it is one house. Later perhaps you can go to the country, to Eva and Adam’s, although Eva may not welcome her too much either. Leo, my darling, if you wish to marry her, then make up your mind that she is the
only
one who matters. It may well be that the family will not forgive you, and in that case you must accept that you will have no family, only a wife and, of course, a loving sister.

To change the subject entirely, I am increasingly worried about something and I want you to help me on your way home from Berlin. Cousin Kati seems to have vanished—no, that is silly and melodramatic—but for eighteen months she has not answered my letters or communicated in any way at all. In the old days it would have been easy for me to make a little trip to Vienna and see how she was, but we are no longer able to afford little trips to Vienna, at least not for such a purpose as this. I still have her last address and I want you to try and see her when you pass through Vienna on your way home. It is four years since she left us, and she has never been home during that time and now has ceased to write. Something has happened to her and I am worried. I enclose her address. Please find out what is wrong.

I shall be so pleased to see you home again, little brother. We hear such frightening things about Berlin now—two elections already this year and a third about to take place and every one of them accompanied by fighting and murder. Who is this man Adolf Hitler? How is it he can make Germany such a disturbed place to live in? I hope you take no part in these political upheavals and keep away from all the Communist and National Socialist meetings. I shall be happy when you return home with your degree and your fiancee, safe once more in Hungary.

Your little nephews send their love—but they are not little any more! They are happy at school. Ah, yes, one more piece of news. Remember the peasant child, Janos Marton, whom Adam found a place for in the school? Apparently he is so gifted that his education is to continue—not university, of course, that would be unthinkable, but his teachers are endeavouring to find a college vacancy where he can train as a teacher. We all think it most suitable and possibly he could go back to the village at the end of his studies and take over the post in the village school. We feel that would be a most fitting conclusion to Adam’s kindness and generosity.

All our love, dearest Leo. Please help me with poor Kati.

Your sister,

Malie

He wasn’t sorry to be going home, even with the problems that Hanna’s presence would bring and even though a long period of trying to find employment lay ahead. Berlin was making him feel angry and impotent. Political persuasion had degenerated into nothing but street fights, and with each fight he grew a little angrier, a little more bloody, more anxious to inflict pain on his brown-shirted opponents. Now leader of his own particular Red Student Group, he was also aware of being ineffectual. Berlin was not his city; he could not influence votes. He wanted to get home and right the wrongs in Hungary.

He didn’t show Amalia’s letter to Hanna. He just told her that his sister was most anxious to meet her.

“What about your parents?” she asked. “Why don’t your parents write and say they are looking forward to meeting me?”

“My parents are old-fashioned,” he said guardedly. “They have very fixed ideas of the kind of girl I should marry. They will be happy when they meet you—they will love you, Hanna—but I have asked my sister to explain the situation to them. It will be a shock for them that I have found a wife who is someone they do not know.”

“You’re afraid they won’t approve of me?”

“No.” And then, realizing that she was too intelligent to be deceived, he continued, “And even if they don’t, it makes no difference.”

“It does if we’re to live in Hungary.” She sat down on the bed and reached out for his hand, as though trying to take comfort. “Leo, couldn’t we get married and stay in Berlin? You could get a job. Mr. Heinlein gives you quite a lot of work at the agency, and perhaps he could recommend you to others. And now that I have work, we could manage. We’ve been so happy here.” She stared round at the apartment that had been their home for over two years, the screen in the corner, the high marble mantelpiece, the Chinese shawl pinned up on the wall. “Couldn’t we stay here, settle in Berlin, keep away from both our parents?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I must go home. Hungary is my home. And I’m beginning to hate Berlin, Hanna. I think if I stay here I’ll be killed... or I’ll kill someone.” He rose from the bed and paced restlessly over to the window. On the wall opposite, a weather-stained picture of Hitler stared out from a hoarding, a relic of the second election campaign. Someone had thrown mud at it and the top left-hand corner had torn away and flapped down over the eyes. “Hitler, Hitler,” he mused. “I’m tired of translating pieces about Hitler and elections. I want to go home and try to find a job in Hungary.”

Hanna sighed. “All right, Leo. But what shall I do? Am I supposed to stay with your sister until you find a job and we can get married? Or do I just stay—and then come back to Berlin and wait?”

“You can stay with my sister as long as necessary. If you want to come back, you can.” He sounded more abrupt than he meant to and she was annoyed. She went behind the screen and began to fuss with coffee and bread. He followed her round and pulled her close against him. “It will be all right, Hanna. I promise you it will be all right.”

Her arms gripped him hard. “I’m so afraid something will happen to spoil everything,” she whispered. “I’m afraid of your family. You speak of them so little, you tell me nothing about them: their habits, their customs, the things they like. You mention them so seldom and when I ask you about them you do not really answer me. No, Leo, you don’t tell me the things I want to know.”

“It doesn’t matter about them,” he murmured into her hair. “If they don’t like you, it doesn’t matter. We’ll never see them again if they aren’t good to you.”

They had one of the happiest weeks together they had ever had, and then Leo left for Vienna. In two weeks she would follow him to Hungary.

Approaching Kati’s apartment he prepared himself for the worst. He remembered seeking out Hanna after her “disappearance.” He remembered the shoddy room with the fungus under the window and he supposed that—for whatever reason—Kati too had somehow been forced to live in destitution, although so far as he knew there was still plenty of money from the Racs-Rassay estate.

She was not at the address Malie had given him, but the new tenants had been in residence only six months and they told him where Kati was now living. He jumped onto a tram going to the Sudbahnhof and there, just off Wiedner Gürtel, he found her apartment.

He didn’t even have time to prepare himself for the worst. Kati opened the door herself and he could see at once that the apartment was pleasant, large, and clean. Kati looked astonished, pleased, then nervous.

“Leo!”

“Hello, Cousin Kati. Can I come in?”

“Well—”

He stared at Kati, astonished. Poor Cousin Kati had always been so grateful for attention, any attention. What was she doing hesitating about letting him in?

“Yes, of course,” she said finally, opening the door a little wider. “Come in.” And then, with a touch of the old Kati, “Oh, Leo, how good to see you. How very good! And how changed you are. I would hardly have recognized you, so big and square. And have you finished at university now? So strange... so strange. Little Leo grown up, a great big man now.”

He had always been aware that Kati was small, but now he felt as though he were towering over her. She hadn’t grown any smaller; it was he who had changed. He was large; for the first time he realized just how large he was.

The apartment was... interesting. A large window was open onto a balcony packed with geraniums and sunflowers. The floor was covered in linoleum, but that was obviously because the room was also a studio. An easel and stacks of canvases littered the floor. Orange curtains draped the windows and there were shelves full of books and china. Kati saw his eyes staring at the china.

“Do you like that?” she asked cheerfully. “I made them, made them and painted them. They are good, don’t you think?” Vases, cups, jugs, plates, all painted in different designs of poppies and sunflowers. They were bright and exciting.

“We wondered, Kati—at least Malie wrote to me and said she was worried because you had stopped writing to her. She asked me to come and see you on my way home. I think she thought you might be ill or dead. She’s been very worried.”

Kati stared down at the table and picked at a white fringe round the edge of the cloth. “I know,” she said without looking at him. “I’ve wanted to write. I just didn’t know what to say.” He frowned, but before he could ask her any more questions she jumped up and cried, “What am I thinking of! Here you are straight from Berlin and I haven’t even made you food to eat. What would Malie think of me! Come now, sit by the window while I get coffee and cheese and cake. Later, we will go out to eat and you shall have some good Viennese food.”

She disappeared into a kitchen on the far side. There were four doors leading from the studio. It was obvious, from the comfort and size of the apartment, that whatever troubled Kati it was not shortage of money.

She chattered back through the open kitchen door, telling him of her painting, of what small success she had achieved.

“You know, Leo, when I first came to Vienna I was going to be a great artist, the first female Rembrandt!” She laughed, a pleasant, amused laugh that contained no bitterness. “I think I had lived in my dreams for so long that when at last I had a chance of freedom I thought it would be easy for the dreams to come true. Can you imagine how bad it was when I discovered I was not a great artist? Oh, Leo!” She came through the door bearing a tray. “It was such a shock to me. For years I had been nobody, and I wanted so much to prove that I was good at something. And here I was in Vienna and I had failed!” She poured coffee and piled a plate with strawberry cake and cream.

“I nearly went back to the loving comfort of Malie, who accepted me as poor Cousin Kati and loved me just the same. But I didn’t. I stayed and I discovered that even though I couldn’t be a great artist, I could be a good one, yes? The china is good, very delicate in design, and yet the painting is colourful, is it not?” She held the cup towards him. “You will see it is good to drink from too.”

He didn’t know Kati intimately or well. To him she had always been the subject of pity and, more recently, of speculative whispers. Vaguely he had gleaned the knowledge that she had been forced into marriage with Felix Kaldy. Her desertion of her husband caused no little disapproval in his home town. Even his own family, other than Malie, seemed to think that Kati had disobeyed certain rules. He knew little of her past, nor cared to know, but he did recognize that this Viennese Kati who designed china was totally different from the cousin he remembered.

She was still small, still plain. Her hair was still colourless, her nose large, her eyes pale and uninteresting, but in some indefinable way Kati had become a person, someone you would notice and remember. Her hair had been hacked off short, like a man’s, and her face seemed bolder because of it. She was wearing a black cotton tunic—completely unfashionable—that had been painted across the bodice with bright red flowers. On her arms were several coloured bangles. Kati looked odd, ugly but interesting.

Aware of his scrutiny she looked up and smiled. Of course, he thought, that was why she seemed different. The old Kati had never smiled, at least not like that.

“How long are you staying in Vienna, Leo?”

“I shall go home tomorrow. I’ve missed the afternoon train now.”