Csardas (91 page)

“Perhaps a well-balanced paper is not what the Party requires at this time, Comrade Ferenc.”

“The principles of the Party must always be the same, to build a new, free, socialist Hungary!”

The glasses glinted. The eyes were blanked out by reflected light. “I think you must allow the Party to know what it wants, Comrade Ferenc, and what it does not want is the rather... bourgeois, ineffectual medium that the paper is now.”

“Bourgeois?”

Another joyless smile. “That is the criticism, Comrade Ferenc. And, sadly, it has been pointed out that your background is obviously affecting your judgement. You come, I believe, from a family closely related to the old land-owning gentry. Headquarters does not like that, Comrade Ferenc. That is not at all a good background for a Party editor.”

“But I have spent years overcoming my background!” he shouted. “Was it for this I broke away from my family, risked imprisonment in the Horthy years, fought the fascists in Germany and here in Hungary? Does all this count for nothing?”

“The Party appreciates your efforts, Comrade Ferenc. That is why you have been appointed to the trade mission. Your services to the Party will not go unrewarded.”

“I have no wish to go to Budapest as a clerk! I have responsibilities here, my family are here—”

“No, I think not, Comrade Ferenc. You have a sister and an illegitimate nephew at Matrafured to whom you send money each month. You can do that from Budapest. Your brother-in-law—Kaldy—and his son are on their farm trying to work it together. Our report from that area is that they are having difficulties. They should leave, Comrade Ferenc. Sooner or later they will have to leave. This means that you live with your other sister, Eva Kaldy, and her daughter, who works at the County Offices. Neither of these ladies is in any kind of dilemma. There is no reason why you should remain here when the Party requires your services in Budapest.”

The chill spread down Leo’s spine, a vaguely familiar fear; it was the fear he had had during the war, hiding from the Nazis and the Arrow Cross.

“Things are to be done differently in Hungary very soon,” the soft voice continued. “When the election is won—and this time there will be... precautions taken to see that we win—things will be very different. There will be a place for you in the new Hungary, Comrade Ferenc—the Party is never ungrateful—but you must try to overcome your unfortunate background. Practise the rule of obedience.” Another eyeless smile. “What use is a Party member if he is not obedient?”

He had enough sense and enough control to remain silent, even though he felt the bottom had fallen from his world. He was shocked, betrayed, but he was also afraid, and he knew he must keep his protests to himself until he had had time to absorb the fear.

“You will enjoy Budapest,” purred the fat man. “You will be allocated a very pleasant apartment and your allowance will be most generous. And what work could be more rewarding than helping to re-establish the economy of our country?”

He couldn’t answer. If he did as he felt he would first of all weep, and then lean across the desk and squeeze the fat man’s neck until he died. Where had the dream gone? All the years of planning, the visions that were talked of in the Balasz, the war, the political persecution—what had happened? Where was the dream they had pursued for so long?

“There is no hurry for your departure, my friend. You need not be in Budapest for a couple of days. Take a little holiday before you go.”

Where had he heard that before? In 1939, on the newspaper, when the editor was trying to get rid of him because he was politically undesirable.

“Good-bye, Comrade Ferenc. I hope you will take every advantage of your stay in Budapest.”

The pebble lenses flashed again, and then Comrade Lengyel padded softly round the desk and opened the door of his office.

“Good-bye,” he said again, most pleasantly. Leo swallowed, nodded, and crossed in front of him. The door didn’t close immediately behind him and he was aware of the glasses observing him along the passage, could feel the spot on the back of his neck where they rested. When he left the building he noticed consciously, for the first time, that there were now three guards on the door of the building—three guards holding rifles—and a Russian soldier.

In the spring Malie and Nicky came back from the mountains. The year in the country had healed them: Nicky was strong enough to return to school, and Malie had regained her calm, her gentle tranquillity. She was older, much older than the rest of them, but some of her composure had returned. The tranquillity was needed, for she walked into a house where mother and daughter lived alone in sullen resentment over the question of Janos Marton. Once the warm welcomes were made, the invalid cosseted and admired and Malie’s careful nursing congratulated, the travellers were divided, Eva taking Malie into her room for a long complaint, leaving Nicky and Terez together in the cluttered kitchen.

“Where’s Janos, Terez? I thought he might be here to meet me. I haven’t seen him for a year—not since he took me to Matrafured—and apart from one postcard he has not written either.” He was hurt, and his voice was slightly plaintive. Janos had not fulfilled all the functions of a hero. Terez swallowed, took a deep breath and explained.

It took a moment for him to absorb. At first he didn’t believe, and then he did and looked puzzled and vaguely disapproving.

“Oh, no, Nicky! Not you too! I thought you would be on my side!”

“Oh, I’m not against you,” he answered airily. “I just think it’s a shame, that’s all—that Janos should want to get married. Everyone gets married. I thought he was different. But I suppose it’s all right.” He smiled at her, then came round the table and hugged her. “Of course it’s all right, Terez. If he wants to marry someone I’d just as soon it was you.”

So the younger members of the family were on her side, for George on his visits to the town with his father was moved to discreet indignation on his sister’s behalf.

Malie, listening to her sister’s voice rising and falling in a series of illogical and unco-ordinated resentments, suddenly wished herself back in the country. There she had mourned and buried her parents, her husband, her sons. She had come to a point where she had managed to rise above personal grief, where the flight of a heron over the lake, where clouds moving across the mountain, gave her peace and a sense of the continuity of her life. The continuity had included the steady improvement of her nephew and the knowledge that once again she had a responsibility to someone. The year had made Nicky her own, for if Janos Marton had become his father (and she came to understand that indeed this was so), then she, most certainly, was his mother. She had felt strong enough to return to the old house and adapt herself to a changed environment. She had felt strong enough to face the full responsibility of caring for her nephew. And now it appeared she had walked into a house divided into two camps, the older generation against the younger.

“What does Adam say?” she interrupted gently. Eva stopped her flow of complaints, which consisted mostly of a description of Janos’s bad manners and the fact that he didn’t bring them any black-market food.

“Adam is
heartbroken!”
she cried.

“But he hasn’t forbade it?”

Eva sniffed. “How can he? The war has changed all that. They do as they like now. No one is obedient to their parents any more.”

‘“What you mean, Eva, is that while Terez’s salary is keeping the apartment and you, no one has any right to forbid her to do anything.” She looked coolly at her sister, feeling the same irritation with her she had felt since they were girls. “Why haven’t you been out to find work? You could have helped if you’d wanted. You obviously don’t do very much to keep the apartment tidy.”

The rebuke was justified. The apartment was in chaos and when she and Nicky had arrived they had discovered Terez (who had hurried home immediately after work) preparing a meal for them. She had apologized for the untidiness but had pointed out that the bedrooms
were
tidy and that she had made the beds with fresh linen that very morning.

“How could you, Malie?” Eva whimpered. “I do what I can, but you know I never was any good at housework.”

“You ran the farm all right.”

“But I had servants,” she wailed “I know how to organize things, but I get tired so quickly if I have to work!” She sniffed again, then cheered a little. “It will be better now you are back. There’ll be two of us in the house all day long to do things.”

“No, there won’t.” Eva looked hurt. “I’ve applied for a kiosk, Eva. Tobacco and tickets—” She broke off as an expression of horror slowly spread over Eva’s face, the blood draining away and then flooding back in outrage.

“But you can’t, Malie! You can’t sit in a street kiosk all day selling cigarettes as though you were a war veteran!”

“That’s exactly what I am,” she answered sadly. “And that is why I shall almost certainly be granted one.”

“But Malie, you can’t!” Eva began to cry. “What would Mama and Papa say? A granddaughter of the Bogozy selling tobacco on a street corner!”

“How strange. It’s so long since anyone said that: a Bogozy granddaughter. It doesn’t seem to matter any more.”

“But why, Malie?” Eva sobbed.

“For Nicky. Someone has to keep him, to buy his clothes and schoolbooks. He is going back to school, and then to college or university, however it can be managed. Janos Marton has told him the same thing and he is prepared to work and catch up with his schooling because of this.” She saw Eva stiffen at the mention of Marton’s name. “I know you do not like him, Eva. But I try to remember what he has done for Nicky—and what he may do in the future. I am told it is going to be difficult for children of bourgeois background to find places in the colleges. We need every help that Janos can give him.”

“He won’t give anything, anything! I told you, he never brings presents, never an extra pound of butter or fresh coffee. And don’t tell me he cannot get them, of course he can.” The tirade continued, the same grievances and moans that she had begun her litany with an hour before.

“And Leo? What does Leo say to all this?” The letters from Leo had been solicitous but uncommunicative. They had told her nothing of his own feelings, of his work in Budapest, of his opinions about Terez and Janos Marton. Sometimes, during the past year, she had worried about him a little—but not too much. Up in the mountains her sense of isolation had protected her from the emotions of others. She had needed the year and had deliberately tried to detach herself from the abrasive disturbances of others.

“Leo?” Eva shrugged. “You know what Leo is like, a big Party man now with an apartment in Buda and the use of a car. He hasn’t been home once. Not once. He said he would visit us when you and Nicky came back, if he wasn’t too busy with the election. He doesn’t like Janos Marton either.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he told me he didn’t wish to discuss him in his letters. I had written, you know, about Terez, asking for a little help, asking him to speak to Janos—and he said he wished never to hear the man’s name again. Do you think I should write again?”

“Leave him, Eva, leave him. I will talk to him when he comes to see us. He will come now, I’m sure of it, and I will talk to him then.”

Just before the elections he came. She hadn’t seen him for a year and she recognized at once the old signs in him: the restlessness, the rebellion, the air of barely concealed excitement. It was the election, she supposed wearily. He was absorbed with seeing that the Party finally and completely mastered the land.

At thirty-seven he seemed to have changed hardly at all from the boy who had gone off to Berlin and fought the Nazis, only now he was respectable, a Party man, for once on the right side, the winning side.

But as his time with them passed she grew at first puzzled and then concerned. He didn’t behave like a Party man. For one thing he didn’t go and visit any of his old comrades, and whenever any mention of the election was made, he spoke in a manner that was openly derisive. “Election? What election? I hope no one is foolish enough to believe they are about to choose a government. The Russians have chosen it already. Last time they were careless. This time it has all been arranged exactly the way they want. It will make no difference if you vote or how you vote; the result will be exactly the same.”

He shrugged his shoulders and walked away from the window (he spent a lot of time just staring out of the window) back to where she was sitting on the old French settee.

“How shabby this is,” he murmured, stroking the threadbare damask. “And I remember it as so pretty. It was in Mama’s drawing-room. I remember you sitting on it when David Klein first came. You were so unhappy then, do you remember?”

She nodded, and he reached over and took her hand. “Malie, will you really be all right now? You have Nicky, and you have Eva and her family. Will you be all right? If anything happened to me, would you be all right?”

“Why?” she asked, her heart beating and a flicker of fright moving in her stomach. “What is going to happen to you?”

“I don’t know yet,” he muttered, and then he sprang away from her and walked back to the window. “I only know I cannot continue in this way any longer. My life here is finished, useless. I have to change it.”

“You are not to do anything foolish, Leo!” she cried, afraid, remembering how he had lectured to the steel workers and plotted in a Budapest café to bring about the downfall of the government. “Please don’t do anything foolish. This time there will be no one to help you, no David to find a barrister, no influential friends to help. We have only Janos Marton, and even he would not be powerful enough to save you now.”

“Janos. Ha!” He flung the windows open and grasped the frame. Dirt came off onto his hands, and he stared at his blackened palms, then brushed them against his trousers. “Marton? He would not help me. He is one of Them, one of those who believe that any means are justified if the result fulfils their dreams. He believes that Hungary can still be saved and he would sacrifice me or Terez or anyone to bring about that dream.”