“I doubt whether that is the only reason you have come,” I said quietly, because I feared that there on the veranda where the conversation occasionally fell silent people might be listening to us, hearing what I was saying.
“No,” he said, and coughed. “No, that is not the only reason. No, Esther, I had to talk to you one last time.”
“I have nothing left,” I said involuntarily, somewhat daringly.
“I don’t need anything anymore,” he answered, evidently not insulted. “Now it is I who want to give you something. Look here, twenty years have passed, twenty years! There will not be many more twenty years like that now, these may be the last. In twenty years things become clearer, more transparent, more comprehensible. Now I know what happened, and even why it happened.”
“How repulsive,” I said, my voice breaking. “How repulsive and ridiculous. Here we sit on this bench, we who once mattered to each other, talking about the future. No, Lajos, there is no future of any kind, I mean for us. Let’s get back to reality. There is something, a quality you are unaware of: it is a kind of modest dignity, the dignity of bare existence. I have been humiliated enough. Just talking about the past is humiliating. What do you want? What’s the idea? Who are these strange people? One day you pack, round up some people and some animals, and arrive in the grand old manner, with the same old words, as if you were obeying a call from God…but people know you here. We know you, my friend.”
I spoke calmly, with a certain ridiculous pomposity, pronouncing each word clearly and firmly as if I had been composing the speech for some time. The truth was I hadn’t composed anything. Not for a moment did I believe that anything here could be “put right,” I had no wish to fall into Lajos’s arms, I didn’t even want to argue with him. What did I want? I would like to have been indifferent. Here he is, he has arrived, this was just another episode in the peculiar pageant of life, he wants something, he’s up to something, but then he’ll go away and we will go on living as before. He no longer has any power over me! I felt and looked on him, safe, superior. He no longer has any power over me in the old sentimental sense. But at the same time I noticed that the excitement of this first conversation was far from indifference; the passion with which I spoke was a sign that there still existed a relationship that was far from fanciful, affected, or imagined, a relationship that was not mere moonshine, memory, or nostalgia. We were talking about something real. And, since it was vital, after so much mist and fog, to find a toehold in reality, I answered quickly without choosing my words.
“You have nothing to give me. You took everything, ruined everything.”
He answered as I expected him to.
“That’s true.”
He looked at me with clear gray eyes, then stared straight in front of him. He pronounced the words childishly, with an air of wonder, as if someone had praised him for passing an exam. I shuddered. What kind of man was this? He was so calm. Now he was looking round the garden examining the house appraisingly, like an architect. Then he began a conversation.
“Your mother died there, in the upper room, behind closed shutters.”
“No,” I said, thinking back. “She died downstairs in the parlor that Nunu now occupies.”
“Interesting,” he said. “I had forgotten.”
Then he threw away his cigarette, stood up, took a few firm strides to the wall, and tapped the bricks, shaking his head.
“A little damp,” he said in a disapproving but abstract tone.
“We had it fixed last year,” I said, still lost in my memories.
He came back to me and looked deep into my eyes. He remained silent for a long a time. We gazed at each other under half-closed eyelids, carefully and curiously. His expression was solemn now, devout.
“One question, Esther,” he said quietly and solemnly. “Just one question.”
I closed my eyes, feeling hot and dizzy. The dizziness lasted a few moments. I put out my hand as if to defend myself. It’s starting, I thought. My god, he wants to ask me something. But what? Maybe he wants to know how the whole thing happened? Whether it was I who lacked courage? No, now I have to answer. I took a deep breath, ready to answer his question.
“Tell me, Esther,” he asked quietly, soulfully. “Does this house still have a mortgage?”
11
The events of the morning, at least all those that followed this last sentence, have grown a little confused in my mind. “Mister” Endre chose that moment to come over. Lajos was confused and started lying, very loudly. Like someone who wants to overcome his fear by shouting, he began in high C with false geniality and a hollow superior air that had no effect on Endre. He grabbed Endre’s arm in “dear old friend” manner and regaled him with some amusing anecdotes, behaving entirely as if he were a warmly awaited, high-ranking guest in the house of his social inferiors. Endre calmly heard him through. Endre is the one man in the world Lajos fears, the one utterly impervious to his magic, who has an inner indifference to the kind of rays and spells that, he believes, emanate from Lajos and affect everything, even animals and inanimate objects. Endre listened carefully to Lajos, fully aware of his professional secrets, knowing how he performed his conjuring tricks, quite prepared for Lajos to produce the national tricolor flag from his hat or make the fruit bowl disappear from the middle of the table. He listened with polite attention, without rancor, clearly interested in what Lajos had to say. It was as if he himself were saying: Show me another trick. As for Lajos, he took a brief rest between tricks, flicking the odd careful sidelong glance at Endre.
I think I was the only one to spot the panic. Tibor and Laci were absorbed by the sheer beauty of the performance. Later, in the afternoon, I learned that little Éva had also noticed Lajos’s confusion. Endre seemed to know some simple undeniable truth with which he could pin Lajos down anytime he chose. But he was not mocking, nor was he in the least unfriendly.
“So, Lajos, you’ve come,” he said, and they shook hands.
That was all. Lajos gave a nervous laugh. No doubt he would have worked with fewer constraints had there been no witnesses to his moment of departure. But ultimately, as we knew, it had been he who had invited Endre “in an official capacity.” He had expressly requested, in writing, that Endre should not be absent that day, since he wanted to talk to him. Endre came with Lajos’s letter of invitation in his pocket and stood in the garden, fat and placid, mildly blinking, patiently listening to Lajos without any sense of superiority, with the unshakable confidence of people who disdain the use of their full powers, knowing that one glance, one raised admonitory finger, and Lajos would immediately fall silent, slink away, and the show be over. Nevertheless, it seemed that Lajos could not do without this inconvenient witness. It was as if, after a long internal struggle, he had decided to face the truth—Lajos having always regarded Endre as the representative of truth, remorseless as judge and witness, a ruthless, antagonistic object to whom Lajos’s spells were like water off a duck’s back—and say: Let’s get this over and done with. That is how Lajos regarded the aging figure of Endre.
It was only some three or four years since Endre had aged. Everything that was serious and heavy in his appearance and nature, the mysterious resistance to the world that never let anyone get close to him, the priestly air and the silent watchfulness that was characteristic of him from his earliest youth, sometimes made it hard, even for a stranger, to connect with him. He wasn’t exactly unfriendly, it was just that one always felt he knew something about the world that defied all its laws and that he kept that secret to himself. His goodness was heavy, cautious, and clumsy.
Even now he was looking at Lajos like someone who knows everything but feels no temptation either to judge or excuse him. The phrase “So, Lajos,” with which, after twenty years, he greeted him, was not exactly condescending, not proud or severe, and yet I saw how the words discomposed Lajos, how he was glancing around nervously, in a funk, wiping his brow with a handkerchief. They talked together about politic
s and about the funeral. Then Endre, having seen and heard enough, gave a shrug, sat down on the bench, and crossed his hands over his belly, old-gentleman fashion. The day was well into the late afternoon, and once he had checked the deeds by which I empowered Lajos to sell the house, he had nothing more to say to anyone.
Naturally, we were all aware that Lajos wanted my life, or, more precisely, Nunu’s life, that he wanted to rob me of my peace. The house was still there providing a roof above our heads, a little battered by time but, despite everything, still fortress-like: the house was the last object of value we possessed that Lajos had not yet taken away, and now he had come for it. The moment I received the telegram I knew he was after the house; one doesn’t think such things in words, one just knows. I carried on deceiving myself to the last. Endre knew, so did Tibor. Later we were astonished at how cheaply and easily we surrendered to Lajos and accepted the fact that in life there are no halfway solutions, and the process having begun fifteen years ago simply had to be finished. Lajos knew it too. He had established that the house was a touch damp and having done so immediately talked about something else, as if the most important part of his business was concluded and there was no point wasting words on details. Tibor and Laci stood by inquisitively. Sometime later, before dinner, a tailor arrived, Lajos’s old tailor, and bowing and scraping in embarrassment handed over a twenty-five-year-old bill. Lajos embraced him and sent him away. The gentlemen drank vermouth, talked in loud voices, and laughed a great deal at Lajos’s anecdotes. We sat down to dinner in an excellent mood.
12
The only thing I couldn’t understand was what the strange woman was doing here. She was too old and plainly dressed to be Lajos’s lover. It took me a while to understand that the young man in the leather coat who had been the first to get out of the red car, who had mumbled a few courtesies of greeting and then said nothing the rest of the time, communicating only with his lion-headed dog, was the woman’s son. There was something contrary to our agreement here. The young man was blond, light blond, a kind of silvery blond; it was as if his face were naked, his eyelashes almost invisible against the pale skin. He was constantly blinking. His hair was curly and woolly in texture like an old African’s. Later he put on a pair of dark blue glasses and practically disappeared behind the dark lenses. It was only toward evening that I discovered that this young man was Éva’s fiancé and that the woman, a rather respectable sort of woman who tended to mix badly pronounced French words in her conversation, had for years been Lajos’s housekeeper. I understood nothing of this in the confusion of the first few hours.
The woman, whom the children addressed as Olga, was, if anything, rather melancholy and embarrassed. She made no effort to press her company on us and, after the introductions, sat quietly at the breakfast table fiddling with her parasol and gazing at her plate. I took her for an adventuress at first. But my later impression was that if she was an adventuress she was a tired and ill-tempered one, someone who no longer believed in the adventure and would happily give it all up to settle in some quiet occupation like crochet or embroidery. Occasionally she gave a bitter smile that bared her yellow, masculine teeth. When I came face-to-face with her I didn’t know what to say. We took stock of each other, smiling at first then without smiles, with hard looks and undisguised suspicion. A cloud of sweetish perfume billowed from her dress and painted yellow hair.
“Dear Esther,” she said.
I resisted the intimacy and loudly answered:
“Madam.”
I laughed. The house was all but dissolving in those hours before lunch, becoming no more than a splendid mirage. Doors were slamming. Lajos took out a box from which he produced a tortoise and was demonstrating how it responded to music, moving when he whistled, sticking out its wrinkled neck and making a hissing noise by way of communication. He had brought the creature with him as a conversation piece, an accessory, as evidence of his triumph as a genius animal trainer. The tortoise was a great success. We all stood around enthusing about Lajos’s performance, and even the solemn Endre succumbed to his curiosity.
Lajos went on to distribute presents: a wristwatch for Laci, two rare French editions of poetry, bound in leather, for Nunu (he had garnished the gift with a presentation verse of his own, indifferent to the fact that Nunu couldn’t read French), Tibor and Endre received expensive foreign cigars, and I got a lilac silk shawl. The excitement was general, constantly at boiling point. There were strangers gawping over the fence, so we retreated into the house. The house was filling up with the aroma of hot seasoned food that always carries an immemorial sense of the simple delights of life along with something of its haste, conjuring the tinkle of cutlery, the slamming of doors, the clatter of plates, the distant chatter of arriving guests, faint childish screams, all amounting to some physical or musical fanfare to declare that life was a miracle to be celebrated! Which was exactly what I saw whatever way I turned. The unknown woman sat down in a corner and talked in a flat voice.
She told me how she had first met Lajos eight years before when she left her husband. Her son worked in an office; she did not say precisely where or what kind. I had never in my life seen people like the woman and her son at close quarters. I had leafed through magazines where there were photographs of what the young were up to, or a species of youth, the kind of people who danced in jackets with padded shoulders in the lobbies of hotels or flew airplanes or dashed off somewhere on a motorcycle with young women whose skirts fluttered above the knee on the pillion seat. I am of course aware that there is another species of the young who are perfectly real people. The former is just my caricature of unnerving aliens of whom I know next to nothing but who live on in my memory and imagination. All I know is that they are no longer anything to do with me. Beyond the confusion, beyond my ignorance, when I am in their presence I know that I have no means of communicating with them; they are the species of motoring and dancing humanity I see on movie screens, who are not included in the contract my parents and I had established with society.
There was something unusual about the boy; he might have been the hero of a novel, most likely a detective story. He said little, and when he spoke he stared at the ceiling and pronounced each syllable distinctly, almost singing the words. He was as melancholy as his mother; both exuded a dreary sadness. I had never before been with people who were so insultingly, so brazenly alien. He didn’t smoke, he didn’t drink. He wore a thin gold bracelet on his left wrist. Sometimes he raised his hand so suddenly it looked as though he wanted to hit someone; then, with a stiff mechanical movement, he would push the bracelet farther up his arm. I discovered he had not long passed thirty and was a secretary of some sort at the headquarters of one of the political parties, but when he took off his dark blue glasses and surveyed the people and objects in the room his watery eyes made him look even older than Lajos.
Why do you bother with them! I thought. But I couldn’t help noticing that he kept an eye on the company. I didn’t even like his name, the rather common Béla. It meant nothing to me. I always have a strong reaction to names, liking or hating them. It is an unjustified, crude feeling. But it is just such feelings that determine our relationship to the world, our loves and hates. I couldn’t give him very much attention, since his mother completely occupied mine. Without any invitation whatsoever she gave me her life. The story was one long catalog of complaint, a shrill cry of accusation directed at authorities both earthly and heavenly, at men and women, at relatives and lovers, at children and husbands. The accusations were rendered in a flat, even voice, in smooth, round sentences, as if she were reciting a text she knew by heart. Everyone had deceived her, everyone was against her, and, in the end, they had all left her; that, at least, was what I gathered from her philippics. I occasionally shuddered: it was like being addressed by a lunatic. Then, without pausing, she got on to the subject of Lajos. She spoke cynically and confidentially. I couldn’t bear her manner. It humiliated me to think that Lajos required accomplices of t
his kind to call on me, that this person had some kind of rank. I stood up with Lajos’s gift, the lilac silk shawl, in my hand.
“We don’t know each other,” I said. “Perhaps we should not be speaking like this.”
“Oh,” she said calmly, quite indifferent to my concern. “We will have plenty of time to talk about it. We will get to know each other, dear Esther.”
She lit a cigarette and blew a long line of smoke, gazing so assuredly through the cloud at me it seemed she must have already arranged everything. It was all decided: she knew something I didn’t, and there was nothing I could do except give in.
13
There are three conversations I should note here.
That was precisely how many took place that afternoon. Éva was first at my door, followed by Lajos, and lastly by the “officially invited” Endre. After lunch the guests dispersed. Lajos lay down to have a nap, as naturally as if he were at home and would not be diverted from his domestic habits. Gábor and the strangers set off in the car to see the church, the neighborhood, and the local ruins, returning only at dusk. Éva, however, came to my room straight after the meal. I stood with her by the window, cupped her face in my hands, and gazed at her a long time. She gazed back steadily with her clear blue eyes.
“You have to help us, Esther,” she said eventually. “Only you can help us.”
She had a sweet singsong voice, like a schoolgirl. She only reached up to my shoulder. I hugged her but then felt the whole scene was a little too sentimental, and was glad when she gently disengaged herself, moved to the sideboard, lit a cigarette, gave a light cough, and, as if freed from an embarrassing, slightly disingenuous situation, examined the objects and framed photographs arranged on the flat surface. This shelf, the upper half of the sideboard, was a sacred place for me, the kind of thing the Chinese think of as a household shrine, before which they bow and honor their ancestors. Everyone I loved or was close to me stood there in a long row, each of them looking at me. I went over to her and watched her eyes moving along them.