Csardas (66 page)

“No. I am a little afraid of Budapest. I know so few people, and I have been away for ten years.”

“You can stay here, Kati. I’ll see if we can find another room in this building.”

She smiled. It was the first time she had smiled since she had arrived and her pinched, ugly face looked a little younger. “Thank you, Leo. But no, I think I shall go home, not to the country but to the town. Our house is still there, the old Racs-Rassay house. We shall stay there, Nicky and I, and perhaps the family, Malie and Eva at least, will be kind to Nicky.”

“Of course they will!”

She smiled again, a gentle but slightly whimsical smile. “Dear Leo, you always see everything with such simplicity. You have accepted Nicky because your life too has changed since you went away from home. But the others have not changed so much.”

“Of course they will accept you,” he said doggedly. “There is no time now for the old habits, the old prejudices. We have only a little time left, Kati. Surely everyone will see this?”

“No, very few people will see it. To them I will be Kati Racs-Rassay, who married a Kaldy and brought disgrace to both names. But still, I shall go home. I do not like big cities any more. I do not like the shouting crowds and the violence, and the fear that cities breed.” She shivered. “Perhaps Budapest is not like this... yet. But I shall not stay here.”

He began to tell her about the changes that had taken place, to warn her that Hungary was a different country from the one she had left ten years before. There were more restrictions, a greater need to be careful if you held “rebellious” views. And there was the Hungarian Nazi party. Kati stared at him.

“Here too,” she said softly. “Why am I surprised? How foolish of me to expect that the disease had stopped at the frontier.”

“It is the Arrow Cross Party. You will know the symbol when you see it. And green shirts; they all wear green shirts.”

Nicky whimpered in his sleep at some childish dream and Kati leaned over and stroked his head. “What will happen to him, Leo? What will happen to all of them, Malie’s sons and Eva’s children; what will happen?”

She was afraid, a fear he could not fully understand because he had no children and therefore was not vulnerable in this way. But his affection for Kati made him sound more positive and cheerful than he felt.

“They will survive, Kati. We have bad times ahead, but they will survive.”

They finished the wine in silent friendliness. It was cosy and relaxed, and when he went to speak again he saw that Kati had sunk down by her son and was asleep. He took his coat from behind the door and spread it on the floor in front of the fire. It was a hard bed but a warm one, and on this particular night it was comforting to have others in the room with him. Like animals in a cave, he reflected, seeking comfort and security through the physical presence of others.

Just as he was dozing off to sleep he realized, dreamily, that Kati had not once asked how her husband and mother-in-law were. Nor had she mentioned the dilemma that her return with an illegitimate child would pose for them. He was faintly uneasy. Both Madame Kaldy and Felix were slightly unbalanced these days. “Poor Cousin Kati” and her son, in spite of the Racs-Rassay fortune, were going to be defenceless strangers against the neurotic anger of the Kaldys.

The Kaldy manor house stood, on its rising knoll of land, like the bastion of a forgotten world. Even in a country that was still imperialistic and clerical in style and administration, the house and its weird inhabitants stood out as anachronistic oddities, paid homage to by the countryside because of rank and wealth but still the subject of much gossip and speculation.

Madame Kaldy was largely unaware of the gossip. Arthritis incapacitated her to an increasing degree and she rarely left the house. She entertained a lot; she had never ceased to delight in the reacquisition of her husband’s family home and she displayed it lavishly on every possible occasion. But when the county came to receive her hospitality, the whispers were muted and the amused conjectures were kept for later.

Felix, who went out into society and also kept an apartment in the town, was aware of the gossip, and his resulting resentment and venom grew more paranoiac with every passing year. He had changed—in appearance as well as in character—from the beautiful young man who had charmed the county in his youth. The smooth olive complexion was the same, but the profile was not. The cheeks had become plump and puffy, the result of indulgence in all the rich food and wines that he enjoyed so much, while his nose, for some reason, had missed the fattening process and became sharper. It gave his face a slightly mean look that was emphasized by the gold-rimmed pince-nez that he wore.

For a long time after they had first moved into the manor, he had been content. He had his beautiful things about him, the pictures and the silver, the tapestries and porcelain that he loved and that now—with the money from Kati’s dowry—he could afford to collect once more. He had enjoyed being a witty, admired young married man in a society not particularly noted for its ebullient characters. He had enjoyed the admiration of his mama and of his sister-in-law, whose good looks were a perfect complement to his own.

After the trip to Budapest, everything had changed. He began to hate Eva with a virulence that was later to be surpassed only by his hatred for his wife. If the scene in the Pannonia Street bedroom had left its scars on both of them, at least with Eva the years had slightly blurred the memory. For Felix the scene grew sharper and more hateful every time he thought of it. He heard the sniggers, the speculations of his “friends,” and he became convinced that Eva had told them everything. In his more rational moments he knew that she wouldn’t—couldn’t—have done so, but his rational moments became fewer as he grew older.

When Eva’s children had been born his relationship with his darling mama had changed too. Before the children she had, it was true, hinted at her hopes for a son of Felix and Kati’s. He had shuddered at the thought and ignored the hints but then, after Kati had left, Mama had tentatively, almost distastefully, mentioned divorce.

“It is a disgrace for people of our substance, Felix. But a wife is necessary for the owner of—all this. If there is no other way you must divorce.”

He had refused, mentioning their reputation, their family traditions, his own reluctance to bring vulgar publicity on their name. It had taken little to dissuade her, and in any case Eva had at last produced a son. With amazing speed Eva’s children had suddenly become the most important things in his mother’s life. She still indulged him, pandered to his whims and extravagances, but he was no longer the sun of her firmament. Eva had ousted him from his rightful position, sometimes his mother even took Eva’s part against him, and there had been one frightful moment when it was suggested that Terez and George should be brought to the manor to be reared in their ancestral home. All night he had turned in disturbed hatred, resolving that he would sooner see the house burnt to the ground than have Eva’s children living in it. The idea, thank God, had been rejected by Adam and he had been able to relax again, but his reprieve was a bitter one for now his mother constantly referred to the day when little George would be the new Kaldy. “Not until after your death, my love. But at least now we are assured that we have a son to love this place and live here.”

Live here, in the house that he had re-created so beautifully? Sticky, pudding-faced George and the other simpering brat who resembled her mother so much, in his house, fingering his carpets and Bohemian glass, enjoying his pictures, sitting in his chairs? What did it matter if he was dead then? It was now that mattered, and now was being corroded by the knowledge that Eva’s children were going to inherit his birthright.

He knew they laughed at him, the county. Oh, yes, he knew the things they said. “Nearly fifty, and still living with mother. Two old ladies together, counting the silver! And why did his wife run away? The ugliest creature—did you ever see her? But he couldn’t even keep an insipid little thing like that. Can you think why?”

He had his friends. He had always been popular, the most popular man in the town when he was young, and he still had his friends, his good friends. Mostly they were just a little beneath his level of society; his equals were the ones who laughed most and he could not forgive them. But he had good friends all the same—an advocat in the town, a couple of the officers at the garrison, these were the people who admired him and knew him for his real worth. His mother objected to their visiting the house other than on occasions when large parties were given, and so he entertained these wise and intelligent men at his apartment in the town. Without his friends, particularly Miklos Egry, the advocat, he would have been lost and desolate. He felt he had no family, his place in his mother’s heart had been usurped. His brother? Adam had never seemed like a brother. They had lived apart as boys, had been educated separately, and had lived as strangers for too many years. Adam had completed the estrangement by marrying that bitch. She had probably told him all about the night in the Pannonia apartment. That was why Adam treated him with contempt and spoke to him so rarely.

But his final humiliation did not occur until the spring of 1938. The speculative whispers, the gossiping, the giggling had grown worse. He could feel people looking at him, especially when he came up to the town to pass a few days with his very good friends. He had grown into the habit the last few years of suddenly spinning round whenever he was in company or walking down the street. One day he was going to catch them looking at him and whispering; he would see who the traitors were and he’d be revenged in some way. He’d cut them to begin with, never ask them to a party or dinner at the manor ever again. And after that he’d find something else to punish them. He’d find out their secrets and whisper back at them. He was walking to his apartment one day when he heard someone whispering and spun round in his usual way. Miklos Egry was behind him, talking to a man he hadn’t met before.

“Felix, good friend. I was bringing this gentleman to meet you. He is a colleague from Budapest, Mr. Jeno.”

He was disconcerted, but when he had recovered he decided that it was nice to see them and he invited them to the Grand Hotel in the square to take coffee with him.

Mr. Jeno was full of the good news about Austria and was also full of promises about Czechoslovakia. The injustices of Trianon would be righted, he was sure. The portion of Hungary that had been stolen by the West and given to the Czechs would be restored. He was full of praise for the Germany which would bring the miracle about. Perhaps, later, the rest of Hungary would be reclaimed. A new empire was being created out of Germany’s strength!

The talk was exciting, patriotic and fervent, and Felix responded dramatically to Mr. Jeno’s words.

“You are right, Mr. Jeno! You are right! For twenty years our country has borne the decapitation thrust upon it by the West. And now it is Germany, Germany alone, who will right our wrongs.”

“Not just Germany, my dear Kaldy. No, not just Germany, but the one man who
is
Germany! Adolf Hitler will perform the miracle for us.”

Felix hesitated. He was full of praise for the Germans, but he was a little guarded in his views of Germany’s Chancellor. The man might be competent, but he was of plebeian origin, a Viennese tramp who had risen on the baser desires of his subjects. Mama always spoke dismissively of him as “a vulgarian who dresses without style,” and there was also the distasteful affair some years ago of his niece. No one knew the truth of that matter, but it appeared to be unpleasant and vulgar. So in answer to Mr. Jeno’s paeans of praise he gave an inaudible grunt and stirred his coffee.

“Hungary can only be restored to her former greatness if she follows the example of the German nation,” Mr. Jeno said excitedly. “All the weakening elements, the corrupt and decadent, must be rooted out and then Hungary can be what she once was: the land of Arpad, the people who conquered the Turks!”

“You are right, Mr. Jeno, you are right.”

“Mr. Jeno is a member of the Arrow Cross Party,” said Egry smoothly. “He has persuaded me, by the sense and force of his arguments, to join the organization. I am convinced, Felix, that the future of our country will be proved through the Arrow Cross. We must cleanse ourselves of Jews, Marxists, revolutionaries—the dangerous elements of our country—and the Arrow Cross has enough strength and purpose to do this.”

“Yes, yes!” Felix answered excitedly. “I do not associate myself personally with any party, Miklos; you know that. My mother believes, and so do I, that it is not the duty of the nobility to associate with political factions. We rest above parliamentary bickerings. But I am convinced that
you
have done the right thing. For you I think it a splendid notion.”

Mr. Jeno leaned forward across the table. The corners of his mouth were filled with fragments of coffee coloured saliva. He spat a little as he talked but Felix was too engrossed to notice.

“But Mr. Kaldy, it is precisely because you are of the nobility that we want you to join our movement. People like you are important to us, all important. We cannot tell you how much we need you, your name and wit and reputation in this community. I feel, most sincerely, that it is your duty to support us with your presence.”

Mr. Jeno spoke with respect and reverence, and Felix was warmed. He called the waiter and ordered a bottle of wine. He was with friends, dear, good friends who valued him and thought him important. He was raising his glass to his friends when Egry dropped his bombshell.

“I hear your wife is back in town, Felix. She has opened the old Racs-Rassay house again.”

The wine plummeted down into his bowels and he knew he must go immediately to the lavatory. He tried to stand but before he could move Egry spoke again.

“Am I right in believing that your wife is Jewish?”

“No. Well, partially. Jewish in origin, not in religion or upbringing.”

“I ask because her son looks Jewish,” Egry said smoothly. And then he waited.