Beware of Pity (18 page)

“‘My lawyer?’ She seemed to be dredging up a sombre memory of something. ‘Yes, yes, wait a minute … yes, the lawyer did write to me. It was something about an estimate … yes, you’re
right, because of taxes, but … but it was all in Hungarian, and I don’t know Hungarian. That’s right, I remember now, my lawyer wrote to say I ought to get it translated, and—oh, my God!—in all the turmoil I quite forgot. I must have put all the documents in my bag over there … I mean in the management building, that’s where I’m staying. I couldn’t sleep in the room that used to belong to the Princess … But if you would really be kind enough to go over there with me, I’ll show you all the papers … that is … ’—and here she suddenly stopped short—‘that is if I’m not troubling you too much with my affairs … ’

“Kanitz was trembling with excitement. All this was going his way at dreamlike speed—she herself wanted to show him the files, the estimates, and that would finally give him the upper hand. He bowed respectfully.

“‘But my dear Fräulein Dietzenhof, it would be a pleasure for me to advise you. And I may claim, without exaggeration, to have some experience in these matters. The late Princess,’ he added, lying outrageously, ‘always turned to me when she needed financial information. She knew that my sole interest was to advise her to the best of my ability …’

“They went over to the administration buildings. Sure enough, all the papers to do with the inheritance had been stuffed into a briefcase, all the correspondence with her lawyer, the documents about inheritance tax, a copy of the agreement she had signed with the other heirs. She nervously leafed through these documents, and Kanitz, breathing heavily as he watched, found his own hands trembling. At last she unfolded a sheet of paper.

“‘I think this must be the letter.’

“Kanitz took the sheet of paper, which had an enclosure in Hungarian clipped to it. It was a short note from the Viennese lawyer. ‘As my Hungarian colleague has just informed me, his
connections have enabled him to get a particularly low estimate of the late Princess’s estate, with a view to inheritance tax. In my opinion this estimated value corresponds to about one third and in the case of many items even only a quarter of the real value.’ His hands trembling, Kanitz picked up the list of estimates. Only one part of it interested him—the Kekesfalva property. It was estimated at one hundred and ninety thousand crowns.

“Kanitz turned pale. The sum, he worked out, tallied with his own calculations—Kekesfalva would be worth exactly three times this artificially low estimate. The real value, then, would be six hundred thousand to seven hundred thousand crowns—and the lawyer didn’t even know about the Chinese porcelain. How much was he going to offer her now? The figures danced and blurred before his eyes.

“But the voice beside him asked, very anxiously, ‘Is this the right paper? Can you understand what it says?’

“‘Of course,’ said Kanitz, pulling himself together. ‘Yes, indeed. Well … the lawyer has written telling you that the estimate for Kekesfalva is a hundred and ninety thousand crowns. Of course, that is only the estimated value.’

“‘Estimated value? Forgive me … but what does estimated value mean?’

“And now for some quick sleight of hand, now or never! Kanitz forced himself to breathe calmly. ‘The estimated value … well, the estimated value is always an uncertain, a very dubious figure, because … because the official estimate never corresponds entirely to the real sale value. You can never be sure … I mean, you can never rely
for certain
on receiving the full estimated value … in some cases of course you may get it, in some even more, but only in certain circumstances … this kind of procedure, selling to the highest bidder, is always something
of a game of chance. The estimated value, after all, is nothing but a kind of reference point, and of course a very vague one. For instance … we could assume—’ Kanitz was trembling, he mustn’t say too little or too much now!—‘we could assume that if an item like this is officially valued at a hundred and ninety thousand crowns … then we can assume that … that … that in a sale at auction you could expect to get at least a hundred and fifty thousand, yes, at least that! You could count on getting that in any event.’

“‘How much, did you say?’

“The blood was suddenly throbbing and droning in Kanitz’s ears. She had turned to him with a surprisingly decided air, asking her question like someone controlling anger only with difficulty. Had she seen through his mendacious game? Shouldn’t I raise the sum quickly, he wondered, raise it by another fifty thousand? But a voice inside him was saying—go on, try it! And he staked everything on a single card. Although his pulse was beating like a drum in his temples, he said, in a
down-to-earth
manner, ‘Yes, I’d expect it to make that amount at least. I think you could definitely expect to get a hundred and fifty thousand crowns.’

“But at that moment his heart missed a beat, and his still drumming pulse briefly failed him entirely. For the unsuspecting woman beside him said, in genuine amazement, ‘As much as
that
?
Do you really think it would make as much as
that?
’

“It took Kanitz some time to recover his composure. He had to force himself to breathe regularly before he could reply, in a tone of matter-of-fact conviction, ‘Yes, dear lady, I can as good as vouch for it that you would at least get
that
sum.’”
Dr Condor interrupted himself again. At first I thought he was stopping only to light a cigar. But I realised that he was suddenly nervous. He took off his pince-nez, put them on again, stroked back his sparse hair as if it were in his way, and looked at me. It was a long, restless, enquiring look. Then he leant abruptly back in his chair.

“Lieutenant Hofmiller, perhaps I have already confided too much to you—more, anyway, than I originally meant to say. But I hope you won’t misunderstand me. If I have told you frankly the story of the trick that Kekesfalva used to hoodwink that wholly unsuspecting young woman at the time, it was not to set you against him. The poor old man at whose table we dined this evening, sick at heart and distraught as we saw him, the man who has entrusted his child to my care and would give the last penny of his fortune to know that the poor girl could be cured, is no longer the man who thought up that shady stratagem, and it’s a long time since he was. Now of all times, when he really needs help in his desperation, it seems to me important for you to hear the truth from me, and not from the malicious gossip of others. Please remember one thing, then—Kekesfalva, or rather still Kanitz at the time, had
not
gone to the Kekesfalva property that day intending to cheat the unworldly Fräulein Dietzenhof into letting him have the estate at a knock-down price. He simply meant to do one of his little deals on the side, no more. The extraordinary chance that came his way took him by
surprise,
and he wouldn’t have been the man he then was if he hadn’t exploited it to the full. But as you will see, it didn’t turn out quite like that.

“I don’t want to go into it at too much length, I’d rather
summarise
the details. But I will tell you this—those hours were to be the most moving and disturbing of his life. Think about
it—here’s a man who has been only an ordinary sort of agent so far, an obscure fixer of this and that, and suddenly the chance of becoming rich overnight drops into his lap like a meteor falling from the sky. He could earn more within the next twenty-four hours than he had earned in twenty-four years of petty bargaining, devoting himself entirely to his work—and there was another, extraordinary temptation too. He didn’t have to pursue, confine or drug his victim to make her go to her fate—on the contrary, the sacrifice went willingly to the slaughter, actually licked the hand already holding the knife. The one danger was that someone else might step in to stop him. So he couldn’t let the heiress out of his power for a moment, couldn’t give her time to think. He had to get her away from Kekesfalva before Petrovic the manager came back, and while he was taking all these precautions he must not for a moment let her know that he himself had an interest in buying the estate.

“His plan to take the besieged fortress of Kekesfalva by storm before the relieving forces arrived was audacious—and risky—on a Napoleonic scale. But fortune favours the bold, in this case a bold gambler. A circumstance of which Kanitz was entirely unaware had secretly smoothed the path ahead of him, the very cruel yet natural circumstance that the unfortunate heiress had already, during her first hours in the castle she had inherited, encountered so much humiliation and hostility that all she wanted was to get away from it as fast as she could!
Meanminded
natures never show themselves more resentful than when they see someone raised, as if on angel’s wings, above their own dreary station in life. The servile will forgive a prince the most extravagant display of wealth sooner than tolerate the slightest presumption from someone of their own background. The domestic staff at Kekesfalva could not suppress their wrath
now that this north German woman—at whom, as they very well remembered, the irate Princess would often throw her brush and comb while she was doing the old lady’s hair—was suddenly to become the owner of the Kekesfalva estate and thus their mistress. When news of the heiress’s imminent arrival came, Petrovic boarded the train to Vienna so as to avoid welcoming her to the house. His wife, a vulgar woman who had once been a kitchen maid in the castle, greeted her with the words, ‘Well, I reckon you won’t want to be mingling with the likes of us, we won’t be fine enough for you.’ The manservant had slammed her suitcase down on the ground outside the door, leaving her to drag it indoors herself, while the steward’s wife didn’t lift a finger to help her. No refreshments had been prepared for her, no one took any notice of her, and at night she could hear from her window clearly audible conversations about a certain fortune-hunter who was nothing but a fraud.

“The unfortunate weak-willed heiress could tell from this reception that she would never have a moment’s peace here. That was her sole reason, although Kanitz did not know it, for agreeing with alacrity when he suggested setting out that very day for Vienna, where he said he knew someone who was sure to buy the property. This grave, helpful and knowledgeable man with his melancholy eyes seemed to her like a messenger sent from heaven, and she asked no more questions. She gratefully gave him all the documents, listening with her calm blue gaze as he advised her on the investment of the proceeds of the sale. She must put it only into something absolutely safe, he said, such as gilt-edged bonds, government securities. And she must not entrust the slightest part of her fortune to any private person, it must all go into the bank, and a qualified notary should be appointed to manage it. There was no point whatsoever in
dragging her lawyer into it now—what was legal business all about, if not making something straightforward look complicated? Of course, he kept earnestly interjecting, of course it was possible that she might get a higher price in three years’ time, or five years’ time. But think of all the expense incurred in the interim, and the law courts and the civil servants! And seeing once again, from the fear that came back into her eyes, how terrified this peace-loving woman was of courts of law and official business, he repeated the burden of his song over and over again, always winding it up with the final chord that said—quickly, get it done quickly! At four in the afternoon, when Petrovic came back, they were already in perfect agreement and on the express train to Vienna. All this had happened at such lightning speed that Fräulein Dietzenhof hadn’t even had an opportunity to ask the name of the strange gentleman to whom she was entrusting the sale of her entire inheritance.

“They travelled first-class—it was the first time that Kekesfalva had ever sat on the red velvet upholstery of a first-class carriage—and in the same way, when they reached Vienna he booked her into a good hotel in Kärntnerstrasse, and took a room there himself. Now two things were incumbent on Kanitz—first, he had to get his usual accomplice in sharp practice, Dr Gollinger the lawyer, to draw up a bill of sale that very evening, so that his great coup could be given legally watertight form next day, but secondly, he dared not leave his victim alone for a minute either. So he resorted to what, in all honesty, I have to admit was a stroke of genius. He suggested that Fräulein Dietzenhof might like to spend her free evening at the Opera House, where a touring company was performing that evening in a production that had attracted a lot of attention, while he tried to get hold of the gentleman who, he knew, was looking
for a large country estate. Touched by such thoughtfulness, Fräulein Dietzenhof happily agreed; he left her safely at the Opera House, where she would be occupied for the next four hours, and Kanitz himself took a horse-drawn cab—again, the first time in his life that he had hired one of those expensive vehicles—and hurried off to see his disreputable friend Dr Gollinger. However, Gollinger was not at home. Kanitz ran him to earth in a wine bar, promised him two thousand crowns if he would draw up the sales contract complete with all details that night, take the deed of sale to a notary and arrange for him to come at seven on the evening of the next day.

“Throwing money about for the first time in his life, Kanitz had kept the horse-drawn cab waiting outside the lawyer’s house during his negotiations, and having given Gollinger his instructions, he now raced back to the Opera House as fast as the cab could go. He was lucky, and arrived just in time to meet Fräulein Dietzenhof, in transports of delight, in the foyer and escort her back to the hotel. Now he began a second sleepless night. The closer he came to getting what he wanted, the more nervously he feared that the deal, successfully as it had gone so far, might yet fall through. He got out of bed again and again to work out his tactics for the next day. He must hire another horse-drawn cab, keep it waiting everywhere, not let her go a step on foot just in case, by chance, she met her lawyer in the street. He must make sure she didn’t read a newspaper—there might be something in it about the settlement of the Orosvár case, and then she might suspect that she was being cheated for the second time. In reality, however, all these fears and precautions proved superfluous, for the victim did not
want
to get away. She ran obediently after the bad shepherd like a lamb on a pink ribbon, and when our friend came down to the breakfast room
of the hotel, worn out after a terrible night, there she was in the same dress—a dress she had made for herself—patiently waiting for him. And now began a strange merry-go-round, while our friend entirely unnecessarily dragged poor Fräulein Dietzenhof around in circles from morning to evening, warning her of all the imaginary problems that he had laboriously worked out during his sleepless night.