“No,” I replied, my throat dry. “Carry on. I won’t laugh.”
“Men, you know,” she said in a wise pedagogic manner with a light sigh.
I did laugh. But I immediately grew serious again. I couldn’t help but notice that Éva, Vilma’s daughter, this child with whom I had lightheartedly adopted an adult, grown-up-woman tone, knew something about men, certainly something more and more certainly than I did, I who could have been her mother. I scolded myself for laughing.
“Yes, yes,” she said innocently, and opened her big blue eyes to indicate her seriousness. “Men. There are such men, men unbound by family, possessions, or territory. They would have been hunters or fishermen in the past. Sometimes Father was away for months and then we were educated in institutions run by nuns who were good-natured if a little scared but who tried to keep us in order in much the same way as if they had found us abandoned by the roadside, as if bits of the jungle were still sticking to our hair, as if we had spent our time dining with monkeys off trees bearing loaves of bread. You see, that is the kind of colorful childhood we enjoyed…Not that I’m complaining. Please don’t think I am complaining about Father. I love him, and I think he was nicest to me when he returned from one of his longer excursions a little exhausted, utterly broke, looking as if he had been fighting wild animals. It was really good at such times, for a while at least. On Sunday mornings he would take us to the museum and then to the sweetshop and the cinema. He would ask to look at our exercise books, clip on his monocle, and would chide and teach us with a solemn frown…It was all most amusing, Father as schoolmaster, can you imagine?”
“Yes,” I said. “The poor thing.”
But I didn’t know who I felt more sorry for, the children or Lajos, nor did Éva ask. Now she was clearly absorbed in her memories. She continued in a friendly, easy manner.
“Actually, we didn’t have too bad a time of it. That is, until one day the woman arrived.”
“What woman?” I asked, striving to maintain a quiet conversational tone.
She shrugged.
“Fate,” she pouted. “You know. Fate, the lady arriving at just the right time, at the very last moment…”
“What moment?” I asked, my mouth dry.
“The moment Father began to age. The moment the hunter notices his eye is not as sharp as it was, that his hand is trembling. One day Father took fright.”
“What frightened him?”
“Old age. Himself. There’s nothing sadder than when a man of his sort grows old, Esther. Then anyone, anyone at all can take advantage of him.”
“What has she done to him?”
We spoke quietly, whispering like accomplices.
“She controls him,” she said. Then, after a few moments: “We owe her money. Have you heard? I am engaged to him.”
“Her son?”
“Yes.”
“Do you love him?”
“No.”
“Then why are you marrying him?”
“We have to save Father.”
“What do you know about him?”
“Something bad. He has bills in his hand.”
“Do you love someone else?”
Now it was her turn to fall silent. She stared at her pink-lacquered fingernails. Then, wise and mature, she quietly added: “I love Father. There are two people in the world who love him: you, Esther, and I. Gábor doesn’t count. He is quite different.”
“You don’t want to marry the son?”
“Gábor is much calmer,” she said, avoiding the answer. “It’s as if he had locked himself away through a kind of deafness. He doesn’t want to hear anything and seems not to see what is happening around him. It’s his way of defending himself.”
“There is someone else,” I ventured and stepped closer to her. “Someone you love, and if it were possible to arrange things…somehow…it wouldn’t be easy…and you should know, Éva, that I have little now, that we, Nunu and Laci and I, are poor now…but I might know someone who might help you.”
“Oh, you could help, all right,” she said in her cold voice again, with careless certainty as if dropping an aside. But it was some time since she had looked into my eyes. She was standing with her back to the window, and I couldn’t see her face. The sky had grown gray since lunch, and through the window I could see dense dark September clouds gathering above the garden. The room floated in a half-light. I went over to the window and closed one of the open casements, afraid that someone might overhear us in the heavy silence before the rain.
“You must tell me,” I said, my heart racing in a way it had not done for a very long time, the last time perhaps on the night when Mother died. “If you want to escape—you and your father—from these people, you must tell me if there is someone you love…If money can help…Now tell me.”
“I think, Esther,” she said, her eyes cast down on the floor in her innocent schoolgirl voice, “that money, that is to say money alone, can no longer help. We need you too. Though Father knows nothing about this,” she hastily added, almost frightened.
“About what?”
“This…what I told you.”
“What is it you want?” I asked impatiently, raising my voice.
“I want to save Father,” she dully replied.
“From these people?”
“Yes.”
“And you want to save yourself?”
“If possible.”
“You don’t love him?”
“No.”
“You want to get away?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Abroad. Far away.”
“Is someone waiting for you?”
“Yes.”
“Yes,” I repeated, my heart lighter, and sat down exhausted. I pressed my hands to my heart. I felt dizzy again, as I always do when I step out of the shadow world of pointless watching and waiting and come face-to-face with reality. How much simpler reality is! Éva loves somebody and wants to join him: she wants to live a decent, honest life. And I have to help her. Yes, with everything at my disposal. Almost greedily, I asked her:
“What can I do, Éva?”
“Father will tell you,” she replied with difficulty, as if reluctant to pronounce the words. “He has a plan…I think, they have plans. You’ll get to hear them, Esther. That’s their affair and yours. But you could help me particularly, if you wanted to. There is something in this house that is mine. As far as I know, it is mine…Excuse me, you see I am blushing. It’s very difficult to talk about it.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, and felt my hands grow cold. “What do you mean?”
“I need money, Esther,” she said now, her voice breaking and raw, as if she were attacking me. “I need money to get away.”
“Yes, of course,” I said, puzzled. “Money…I am sure I can get hold of some money. I am pretty sure Nunu can too…Maybe I can talk to Tibor. But Éva,” I said, as if coming to my senses, disillusioned and helpless, “I am afraid that what I can put together will not amount to very much.”
“I don’t need your money,” she said, cold and proud. “I want nothing that is not mine. I want only that which Mother left me.”
Suddenly her eyes were burning and accusing as she looked directly at me.
“Father said you were looking after my inheritance. That is all I have left of Mother. Give me back the ring, Esther. Now, immediately. The ring, you hear?”
“Yes, the ring,” I said.
Éva was looking at me so aggressively that I backed away. It so happened that I found myself standing by the sideboard in which I had hidden the fake ring. I had only to lean back, open the drawer, and hand the ring over, the ring that Vilma’s daughter had demanded from me with such hatred in her voice. I stood there helpless, my arms folded, determined to keep the secret of Lajos’s treachery.
“When did your father speak of the ring?” I asked.
“Last week,” she said, and shrugged. “When he told me we were coming h
ere.”
“Did he talk about the value of the ring?”
“Yes. He had it looked at once. A long time ago, after Mother’s death…before he gave it to you, he had it valued.”
“And what is it worth?” I asked calmly.
“A lot,” she said, her voice with that peculiar hoarseness again. “Thousands. Maybe even ten thousand.”
“Yes,” I said.
Then I said, and I wondered at how I could maintain such control and even sound somewhat superior: “You are not getting the ring, my girl.”
“Is there no ring?” she asked, looking me over. Then, more quietly: “Is it that you don’t have it, or that you won’t give it to me?”
“I will not answer that question,” I said, and stared straight in front of me. At that moment I felt Lajos silently enter, stepping as lightly as ever, so lightly he might have been onstage, and I knew he was somewhere near.
“Leave us alone, Éva,” I heard him say. “I have some business with Esther.”
I did not glance back. It was a long time before Éva—giving me a long dark look that was to show she did not trust me—slowly left the room, hesitating on the threshold, giving a shrug, then pacing rapidly away. But she drew the door closed quietly, as if not entirely certain. We stood in the room for a while without seeing each other. Then I turned and, for the first time in fifteen years, stood face-to-face, alone with Lajos.
16
He looked at me and smiled a peculiar, modest smile as if to say: You see, it’s not such a big thing really! It wouldn’t have surprised me if he had rubbed his hands together at that point, like a satisfied businessman left to meet his family after a particularly good deal, contemplating ever new deals and ever more tempting offers in the exhilaration of the moment. There was not a trace of shame or doubt on his face. He was in a good mood, happy as a child.
“I slept really well, Esther,” he said expansively. “It’s as if I had come home at last.”
When I did not answer he took my arm, led me to an easy chair, and courteously sat me down.
“Now at last I can look at you,” he murmured. “You haven’t changed. Time has stopped in this house.”
It did not disturb him at all that I remained quiet. He walked up and down, gazed at various photographs, occasionally smoothing his thinning gray mane of hair with a cheap, stagy gesture. He meandered around the room with no more care than if he had popped out twenty-five years ago because he needed to be somewhere but was back now, absentmindedly resuming a conversation out of mere good manners. He picked up an old Venetian drinking glass from the table and gazed at it in wonder.
“This is a present from your father. For your birthday, wasn’t it? I remember,” he said amicably.
“When did you sell the ring?” I asked.
“The ring?”
He looked at the ceiling with a studious, puzzled expression. His lips moved silently as if he were counting.
“I can’t remember,” he said, perfectly charming.
“A likely story, Lajos,” I pressed him. “Think back. I am sure it will come to you.”
“The ring, the ring,” he obligingly repeated, shaking his head as if he would be delighted to satisfy someone’s whim, a peculiarly whimsical curiosity of little significance.
“Really now, when did I sell that ring? I do believe it was a few weeks before Vilma died. You know, we were so short of money at the time…Doctors, social life…Yes, it must have been that year.”
And he pinned his shining eyes on me, bright with innocence.
“But Esther,” he went on, “why are you interested in the ring?”
“And then you gave me the copy. Remember?” I asked, and took a step toward him.
“I gave it to you?” he repeated mechanically, and instinctively took a step back. “I might have. Did I really give it to you?”
He was still smiling, but a little less certainly now. I went over to the sideboard, opened it, and went straight to the ring.
“You still don’t remember?” I asked, and passed it over to him.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “Now I remember.”
“You sold the ring,” I said. I too had instinctively dropped my voice, the way one does only when speaking of something deeply shameful that has to be kept secret, even from God perhaps. “And when we returned from the funeral you gave it to me with a grand gesture as Vilma’s bequest, as the one family heirloom of any great value, as something I alone should have. I was a little surprised. I even protested, do you remember? But then I accepted it and promised you I would look after it and pass it on to Éva when she grew up and when she needed it. You still don’t remember?”
“You promised that, did you?” he asked lightly. “Well, give it to her if she asks for it now,” he added over his shoulder. He had started to walk about again and had lit a cigarette.
“Last week you told Éva that I was looking after this ring for her. Éva needs money: she wants to sell the ring. The moment she goes to have it valued, she will find out it is a fake. Naturally, I am the only one who could have had it faked. That is your doing,” I said hoarsely.
“Why?” he asked astonished. It was a simple question. “Why you? It could have been somebody else. Vilma, for example.”
We stood silent.
“How low will you sink, Lajos?” I asked.
He blinked and examined the ash on his cigarette.
“What sort of question is that? How low will you sink?” he asked uncertainly.
“How low will you sink?” I repeated. “I imagine everyone has a kind of gauge, a spirit level that determines what is good and bad within them. It’s universal, everything has a limit, everything that is to do with human relationships. But you have no gauge.”
“Mere words,” he said, and waved them away as if bored. “Gauges, levels. Good and bad. Mere words, Esther.”
“Have you thought,” he continued, “that the great majority of our actions are undertaken without reason and have no purpose? People do things that bring them neither gain nor joy. If you looked back on your life you would notice that you have done a good many things simply because they seemed impossible to do.”
“That’s a little too fancy for me,” I said, depressed.
“Fancy? Nonsense! Just uncomfortable, Esther. There comes a time in life when a man grows tired of everything having a point. I have always loved doing those things that have no point, things for which there is no explanation.”
“But the ring,” I insisted.
“The ring, the ring!” he muttered, annoyed. “Let’s not get started with the ring! Did I tell Éva that you were looking after the ring? I might have. Why would I have said it? Because it seemed the thing to say at the time, it was the simplest, the most reasonable thing. You bring up the ring, Laci talks about some bills…what do you want? That’s all in the past, these things no longer exist. Life destroys everything. It’s impossible to live all your life with a burden of guilt. What soul is as innocent as you describe? Who is so high and mighty that she has the right to stalk someone else all their life? Even the law understands the concept of obsolescence. It’s only you people who insist on denying it.”
“Don’t you think you are being a little unfair?” I asked more quietly.
“Maybe,” he said, also in a quieter voice. “Levels! Gauges of the soul! Please understand that there are no gauges in life. I might have said something to Éva, I might have made a mistake yesterday or ten years ago, something to do with money or rings or words. I have never in my life resolved on a course of action. Ultimately people are only responsible for the things they consciously decide to do…Actions? What are they? Instincts that take you by surprise. People stand there and watch themselves acting. It is intention, Esther, intention is guilt. My intentions have always been honorable,” he declared with satisfaction.
“Yes,” I replied, uncertain. “Your intentions might have been honorable.”
“I know,” he said, more gently now, a
little wounded, “I know I am a misfit in the world. Should I change now, in my fifty-sixth year? I have never wanted anything but good for everyone. But the chances of good in this world are limited. One has to make life more beautiful, or else it’s unbearable. That’s why I said what I said to Éva about the ring. The possibility consoled her at the time. That’s why I told Laci fifteen years before that I would repay him, though I knew I would never do so. That’s why I promise people all kinds of things on the spur of the moment and know, as soon as I tell them, that I will never do what I promised. That’s why I told Vilma I loved her.”
“Why did you tell her?” I asked, surprised at how calm and detached I sounded.
“Because that was what she wanted to hear,” he said without a thought. “Because she had staked her life on me telling her that. And because you did not stop me from saying it.”