Csardas (6 page)

“It wasn’t us, was it?” asked Leo. His small round face topped with tight black curls was frightened and he looked as though he were going to cry.

Malie bent over and kissed him. “Of course it wasn’t you, darling.”

Leo gazed hard at her, seeking reassurance, then decided it was all right and laughed, a small boy’s gurgling chuckle. He reached up and tangled his fat hand in her hair.

“I shan’t like you if you do that,” said Malie crossly. She had spent all afternoon having her hair washed and curled, and now she could smell caviar being wiped across it. Leo’s face crumpled and his lower lip began to tremble.

“Baby!” said Jozsef contemptuously, seizing the other strudel, which was really Leo’s.

Malie wiped their fingers on the napkin, kissed them, and pulled the cover up to their chins.

“Was it a
lovely
party, Malie?” breathed Leo.

“Lovely, darling.”

“And did you meet a prince?”

“Not this time.”

“Did Eva?”

Malie smiled. “Oh, yes. Eva met a prince.”

Eva was in bed when she went back to their room. Her clothes were flung all over the floor. The window was still open and Eva lay, like the small boys in the room next door, in young animal slumber. Malie began to pick her sister’s clothes from the floor and then suddenly let them fall back to where they had been. She remembered the fair young soldier; why hadn’t he followed the coach with all the others? And why, with a town full of young men who would, given a little encouragement, adore her, could she not fall in love?

“I don’t think I’m ever going to meet a prince,” she said crossly, and let her dress fall untidily on the floor beside Eva’s.

It was very bad at breakfast the following morning. Eva was fretful and bad-tempered, Mama guilty and nervous, and the little boys were, as always, terrified. Breakfast was the one meal of the day, other than Sunday lunch, that they shared with their father. It was in fact the only time they saw their father other than when they were being punished, and consequently the huge dark man at the other end of the table, the stern disciplinarian who rarely smiled, took on the aspect of an ogre. On this particular morning the little boys were aware, as was everyone else in the house, that Zsigmond Ferenc was very angry.

He said good morning and waited for Eva and Amalia to come round the table and touch his cheek with tremulous lips. The little boys, as they had been taught, said in unison, “Good morning, Papa,” and then silence descended over the table as Marie brought in coffee and milk and hot new bread.

The noise of eating and drinking, of cups clinking against saucers, of knives on plates, sounded loud and offensive in the oppressive silence of the dining-room. Jozsef drank his milk too quickly, hiccoughed, and said very quickly, “Sorry, Papa,” before he could be reprimanded. Leo’s eyes filled with sympathetic tears at the thought that his brother had transgressed so badly and thus left himself open to one of Papa’s rebukes. Malie caught his nervous glance and made a little comforting moue of mouth and eyes at him. Leo gave a watery half-smile.

“I would be obliged, Amalia, if you would refrain from pulling faces at your brother at the breakfast table.”

“Sorry, Papa.”

Leo’s eyes filled once again. The troubles of other people, especially those he loved, were almost more than he could bear.

“I have decided,” Papa said, after a further long silence in which everyone made a pretence of eating, “that it would be courteous if I accompanied you, Marta, and the girls, when you go to visit my sister this morning.”

Mama slumped despondently over the table. “Yes, Zsigmond. If you think that is best.”

“It is the least we can do.”

Eva roused herself from a gloomy reverie in order to try and prevent the impending disaster that a meeting between Papa and Aunt Gizi would inevitably produce. She took a deep breath, drew her back up straight, and smiled.

“Papa, it was perfectly all right, you and Mama not being there, really it was. Kati had a wonderful party and we gave her Mama’s present and she was
delighted.
And Uncle Sandor brought us home early, and I’m
sure
that if Malie and I go to see Kati and Aunt Gizi this morning everyone will be quite, quite happy....” Her voice trailed away under Papa’s gaze.

“I am sorry, Eva, to see that at the age of seventeen you still have no idea of what is meant by duty to one’s family. It was bad enough that I was absent on the occasion of Kati’s party. We have only a small society in this town, and we do not delude ourselves that we are aristocrats observing formal manners. Nonetheless certain standards, the code of our class, must be respected. Your cousin Kati was launched into the society of our community at great trouble and expense. If we, her family, are not prepared to observe the formalities of such a gathering, then the structure of our society means nothing. I have told you before, many times, that the family is the foundation on which our civilization is built. Obey the rules of the family, and nothing can go wrong with the society in which we live.”

“Yes, Papa.”

“My business transaction coinciding with Kati’s debut was unfortunate but unavoidable. I did my best to rectify it by returning at the end of a long and tiring day in order to join my family—albeit briefly—in my sister’s house. Imagine my disappointment and... and anger”—Papa’s voice began to grow louder as his fury renewed itself— “to find my wife playing cards and my daughters attending the most important family function of the year as though they were members of the
demimonde.”

Leo, not understanding but hopelessly depressed by the general air of misery and disapproval, could suppress his grief no longer and burst into tears.

“Why are you crying, Leo?” asked Papa, not unkindly, but Leo was too bewildered and unhappy to answer. “Please ring for Marie to take the children away,” Papa said wearily to Mama. In his way he loved his sons, but he had no comprehension at all of their behaviour. They seemed irrational, undisciplined, and incapable of understanding basic elementary laws. He was proud of them, as he was proud of his wife, his daughters, his house in the town, and his country farm up in the hills. They were his tribe, his unit of the world that he had created for himself. He led them and intended to go on leading them, even though they needed constant discipline and correction.

Marie came in and the small boys were taken back to the nursery—Leo still weeping and Jozsef trying hard not to because he was six. Papa’s temper abated and breakfast was resumed.

“I hope, in spite of the unorthodox way Kati’s party was attended, that you conducted yourselves courteously—as befits the Ferenc girls.”

“Yes, Papa.” Their eyes met briefly and then they hurriedly looked away from one another. Papa’s idea of how the Ferenc girls should behave was very different from theirs.

“What was the noise outside the house last night?” asked Papa calmly, but there was the suggestion of a threat behind the question.

Malie answered quickly, anxious to prevent Eva’s giving a rapturous but possibly unwise account of the evening’s finale. “Some of our partners during the evening escorted us home—at a distance. They employed Uncle Alfred’s musician to play to us as a compliment for the pleasant evening.”

“You did not encourage them? There was no forwardness?”

“No, Papa.” Said together and in perfect unison.

“Very well.” He could accept the compliment to his daughters as it was given in the traditional manner. It was quite understandable that young men would—respectfully—wish to pay tribute to the daughters of the house of Ferenc. He pushed his chair back and rose from the table. “I suggest we call on Gizi at eleven-thirty,” he said. “I will have Uncle Sandor bring the coach round at eleven.”

“Yes, Zsigmond.”

“Yes, Papa.’”

And then, as he left the room, “Oh, how dreadful it is going to be!”

Aunt Gizi lost no time at all in conveying to her brother her fury: with his wife for forgetting the date of Kati’s party, with the décolletage of Eva’s dress, with Eva’s impertinence and rudeness, and with the wink, which she had most certainly seen. Her anger was all the more vehement because six of the most eligible young men had left the party early in order to accompany her brother’s wretched girls home. Papa grew more and more silent, and his face went red and white in turn.

Mama, staring wan and disinterested out of the window, mentally removed herself from the entire situation and began to plan her summer wardrobe: soft mauves and lavender this year, she thought, the full range in muslins and voiles and trimmed with falls of white lace and ruffles. Lavender shoes to match. And for country picnics up at the farm, some new white shirtwaists and a mauve and white hat. It would all be quite entrancing. She had discovered, many years ago, that whenever she became frightened of her husband she could, in some measure, control the fear if she pushed it to the back of her mind and thought about something else, something trivial but nice like a party or a new dress. It didn’t remove the fear entirely but it gave her a sense of detachment, as though it were someone else he was angry with. She couldn’t always do it. Last night the full first blast of his anger had reduced her to paralysed tears, but now, with the spring sun shining on the branches of the trees outside the window, she began to practise her usual antidote. There was also a small glow of satisfaction at the back of her mind because she had won at cards last night and therefore would be able to settle her dressmaker’s bill without asking him. Resolutely she pushed away the thought of what would happen if ever he found out that she played for money.

There were no traces at all in the drawing-room of last night’s party. The carpet was rolled down again and the chairs were back in their usual places. Uncle Alfred was absent, still coping with the excesses of the previous evening, which had left him with a sour mouth and eyes that needed protection against the glare of the sun. He was also in no mood this morning to cope with his wife, who was angry about Kati again.

Eva, sitting silent and miserable between Kati and Amalia on the ottoman, reflected how cruel and bitter fate was. Last night, in this very room, she had had the most
wonderful
experience of her life. And now she was sitting here listening to Aunt Gizi giving a long and thoroughly
prejudiced
account of the evening and watching Papa grow more and more angry. Malie, dressed in a dark grey dress and hat that reflected the general mood of gloom, was nervously drawing the strings of her purse open and shut, open and shut. Eva glared at her; it was really more than she could bear. Her head ached and she longed to go home and shut herself in her room (away from Papa) with a cologne-soaked cloth on her forehead.

“Do stop that, Malie!” she hissed suddenly. Amalia jumped and let the bag fall to the floor. It fell with a loud
clink,
and Papa stared and frowned.

“Uncle Zsigmond looks cross,” whispered Kati helpfully-

And Eva snapped, “Of course he’s cross! Don’t be so stupid, Kati!”

Papa rose from his chair. His stillness was controlled, only just controlled, and not for the first time Eva noticed what a very big man he was.

“If you cannot be quiet, leave the room, Eva.”

“I’m sorry, Papa.’”

“Please apologize to your cousin for your rudeness.”

“I’m sorry I called you stupid, Kati.”

Kati smiled, humbly and apologetically. “Oh... yes. I’m sure I don’t mind, Eva.” She paused, desperately trying to think of something she could say that would help her lovely, gay, enchanting cousin. “I’m sure I
am
stupid. You’re quite right.”

“You see!” Aunt Gizi, erect and taut, turned brilliant eyes on her brother. “You see! Everything, just everything I do for Kati is ruined by Eva. Last night’s party, disgraced by a girl who is blood relative to me. And Kati goes round telling everyone she is stupid just because her cousin says so!”

“Not everyone, Gizi. Only the people in this room.”

Aunt Gizi ignored him. Her beautiful long hands curled over the arms of her chair and her fingers slotted into the carved mouths of two snarling wolves. Malie, in spite of her nervousness, looked from Aunt Gizi’s elegant hands to those of poor Kati: small and square-fingered, with close-cut stubby nails.

“All this comes from sending them to Vienna,” Gizi told her brother viciously. “They had tutors and governesses enough before that—but you had to send them to an expensive finishing school. Left to roam the streets and gardens on their own, and what have they learned? Bad manners and lack of consideration for the family. Eva deserves to go back to the nursery until she has learned her manners. As for Marta—”

Her eyes narrowed as she stared at her sister-in-law, who, with enormous concentration, was managing not to hear most of what was being said. But at the mention of her name she was forced to look up, smile, and say, “Yes, Gizi?”

Gizi’s look implied that Marta Bogozy (for she still thought of her sister-in-law as a Bogozy) should go back to the nursery also.

“I am very sorry I confused the date of Kati’s party,” Mama said vaguely. She wondered if she were too old for the really soft lilac shade, verging on pink. Silk with a fall of lace would be so effective.

“You confused them because you could not be bothered!” said Gizi in shrill tones. “It was my daughter, and therefore you were not interested.”

“Oh, no,” replied Mama, distressed. “Truly no, Gizi. I would not dream of neglecting Kati or hurting her. We love her too much for that! We love her most dearly; it is as though she were one of us!”

Kati flushed happily. She looked proud and not quite so plain as usual, and Gizi was suddenly unable to answer. Partly it was rage—the impertinence of daring to suggest that Kati, the nearest thing the town had to an heiress—should be honoured by inclusion into the ill-mannered Bogozy tribe, but also because Kati looked so small and ugly sitting beside her beautiful cousins. How could it have happened? she thought. How could it have happened? I was—am—attractive. I would never have captured Alfred if I had not been. I am brighter than my brother. There were only the two of us but always I was the quicker, and he, indeed, was quick enough. I have made Alfred’s fortune for him. I have run his house as though I, not he, were the child of gentlefolk. And to what purpose? She is ugly, slow, without wit or pride. She is my daughter and I love her, and I want her to be bright and pretty like those other two. But nothing I do can make her that way. Nothing.