Csardas (7 page)

Mama, with one of her kind, thoughtless, spontaneous Bogozy gestures, swept across to Kati in a cloud of violet perfume and kissed her on both cheeks.

“Dear little Kati,” she said warmly. “Now! You shall show that you have forgiven your silly aunt for her foolishness and you must promise to come to
our
little party on Saturday. Yes!” She clasped her hands together. “We shall invite
everyone
and it will be just for you—a second birthday—and this time we shall all behave
beautifully
!
”

When she was young, when Zsigmond Ferenc had been in love with her and overwhelmed because it seemed that she, a Bogozy, was within his reach, such gestures had moved and enchanted him. Now they made him angry.

“Sit down, Marta! Why do you never stop to think? Kati has had her party and you did not come. You think, in a few days, you can give her more than Gizi gave her?”

“And in any case,” said Gizi, stinging from her sister-in-law’s careless patronage, “we shall not be here on Saturday. We are going to the country.”

“You too?” said Eva, dismayed. “Going to the country in March? Why are you going to the country in March?”

Gizi’s bright black eyes were expressionless. “It will be quiet for us. We are all tired after Kati’s party, and we can rest and enjoy the spring. Now is the best time to go to the hills, before everyone else comes up.”

“But Fel—” Eva stopped. She didn’t want to mention anything that might refocus attention on her behaviour of last night.

“Now we shall leave,” said Papa, rising from his chair. “There is nothing more we can say. Amalia, pick up your purse, please.” He made no attempt to kiss his sister good-bye, and he did not speak to Kati. He had not spoken to Kati at all. He walked to the door and waited for Mama, Eva, and Amalia to file past him; then he followed, down the stairs and out into the courtyard.

“I shall walk,” he said to them as they climbed into the coach. “Eva, I shall see you in my study at three this afternoon.”

“Yes, Papa.” Eva’s voice was so small it was blown away in the wind.

“Did you hear what I said, Eva?”

“Yes, Papa.” Louder.

“Now you may go.”

He nodded to Uncle Sandor and the coach moved away. Inside, Eva began to cry.

By three she had not only recovered, she had thought of a brilliant and wonderful plan—a plan that would solve all their problems at once and make her the happiest girl alive again. She was waiting outside Papa’s study ten minutes before she was to see him, wearing a rose-coloured woollen dress with cream lace at the neck and wrists. Her hair was brushed, and shiny tendrils curled out and framed her face. In her hand she carried a wooden box covered in coloured pebbles. Promptly at three she knocked on the door.

“You may come in, Eva.”

With bowed head she went and stood before him.

“I could not speak to you before, because I could not trust my own temper. I was shocked and appalled to hear of your behaviour last night. The dress—that alone would have horrified me. But to learn of your impertinence, and your... your wantonness! I am distressed, Eva. I cannot tell you how distressed.”

Eva began to cry again, but this was not the way she had cried in the coach; this was a gentle bowing of the head and a soft brimming over of the eyes.

“I cannot let your behaviour pass without punishment.”

She sobbed a little. “I know, Papa.”

He looked down on his daughter, puzzled and angry at the emotions in his breast. She was so pretty, this one. She was like Marta had been twenty years ago—gay, thoughtless, self-indulgent, spoilt in spite of his careful discipline, caring for nothing except her own pleasure—so why did this one child make his heart leap when she came into the room? Why did Eva delight him when she said or did the same things that angered him so much in his wife? He sat down, depressed and confused, and Eva dropped gracefully to the floor at his feet and rested her hand on his shoe.

“I’m so sorry, Papa! Truly sorry. I cannot think why I behaved that way. It was because you were not there. I would not have behaved so badly if you had been there.”

“There was the dress,” he murmured. “How could you have gone to Kati’s wearing a dress like a... like a street woman?”

She sobbed again. “I didn’t know it was like that, Papa. I didn’t realize, and when Aunt Gizi told me to wear a scarf I was so embarrassed I didn’t know what I was saying.” Her head slipped forward onto his knee, and unconsciously his hand touched her hair.

“Your mama had no right letting you go like that,” he said, suddenly very angry with his wife. “She should have seen the dresses before you collected them. She should have made you change your gown.”

“I won’t wear it again, Papa. I promise.” In her other hand was the box covered in pebbles. She held it up to him, raising her tearstained face at the same time.

“I hate to make you unhappy, Papa. I finished this just now, because I want you to know how sorry I am. I thought perhaps you could keep your cigars in it, or nibs, 1 or something; I have tried to make a pretty pattern with the pebbles. It is to show I am sorry.”

How lovely her face was—pink, bright, young, the way Marta’s had been.

“Thank you, Eva,” he said sternly. “But the little box, precious though it is to me, cannot excuse you from punishment. You have behaved badly and you cannot expect to be excused.”

“Oh, no, Papa! I thought—forgive me, Papa, but I thought if I promised not to go to any more parties this spring, and not to go out to picnics or to coffee or
anything,
it would show that I was
truly
sorry.”

He frowned. “I think I must insist on no more parties for a little while.”

“Yes, Papa. Of course. And I thought that—to show Cousin Kati and Aunt Gizi how sorry I was, to make it up to them—I would go away from the town. Go to the country early, like Kati. I could keep her company. I would be very good with only Kati and Aunt Gizi there, Papa.”

Zsigmond Ferenc was silent. In his heart he couldn’t believe she was really this penitent, ready to give up two months of parties and other social events that delighted her frivolous heart so much. Why was she saying these things? Why was she so pretty, so like a piece of delicate porcelain? Why did she move him more than Amalia, who was obedient and reliable, and more than his sons, who would carry on his name and the business he had created from nothing? Why could this soft creature cajole and delight him as no one else could?

“I would like to go to the country, Papa,” she said simply. “I would like to show Kati how sorry I am.” She bent forward, hiding her face and resting her cheek on his hand. Suddenly he couldn’t bear it and abruptly he stood, letting her slide to the floor. But even that she did with grace.

“Very well.” He walked over to the window and stared out, clasping his hands hard together behind his back. “Very well. But you will not stay with Kati and Aunt Gizi.” He knew enough of his sister to understand that the very quality in Eva that enchanted him infuriated his sister. “We shall go to the farm early this year. You and Amalia, and Mama and the boys, you will go as soon as we have sent a message up. And I shall follow when I can, perhaps a little earlier than usual. We shall have a long spring and summer together, a quiet summer up in the hills. You can go over to see Kati every day—she will be very happy, I am sure—and we will remind ourselves that we are one family again: Gizi, Kati, you, me, all of us, one family.”

She was so happy, so singing happy, she could hardly keep still. She wanted to rush across to Papa, dear wonderful Papa, and hug him for giving her what she wanted most. But she had never hugged Papa, not even when she was small. But how good he was—how kind and wonderfully indulgent!—to send her to the country early, up into the hills where Felix was.

“I’ll go and tell Malie now, Papa,” she said meekly.

Papa didn’t turn round, nor did he answer.

“Thank you, Papa,” she said softly, and she rose to her feet and glided to the door. He was still staring out of the window—what a very big man he was—and she closed the door quietly behind her, anxious not to disturb him.

Outside she raced along the passage and into their bedroom, longing to share the news with Malie, the wonderful news that they were leaving town and going to the farm almost at once.

She didn’t even think about whether or not Malie would have preferred to stay in town that spring.

The Ferenc farm was neither as splendid as Aunt Gizi and Uncle Alfred’s nor as profitable and modern as the Kaldys’. But Malie loved it—warm, rambling, casual—more than Gizi’s elegant stone-built country house or the Kaldys’ smart, modern building complete with dairies and granaries.

Their farm, which lay on a huge natural meadow just before the mountains rose up into vast oak forests, was surrounded with birch and acacia trees. When they arrived the first thing Malie noticed was the acacia trees, a mass of white and yellow with bees already humming in and out of the blossoms.

“Just look at the trees, Eva! We’ve never seen them like that before!”

Eva, two high spots of colour on her cheeks, hugged her sister. She wanted to scream with happiness. “It’s going to be a wonderful, wonderful spring! Oh, Malie, I’m so happy! Do you think I’ll ever be as happy as this again?”

Malie, who was well aware of the reason for Eva’s delirium of ecstasy, looked at the other occupants of the coach. Mama wore an expression of gloomy resignation. Informed of Papa’s decision that the entire family should be banished to the country, she had tried to look for compensating factors. They would be free of Papa’s constraining presence for several weeks and she would also be a happy distance from one or two creditors that she seemed, unwittingly, to have acquired. But the country was going to be dull and dreary until the rest of the town’s inhabitants came up for the summer. There would be no one to play cards with, no dressmaker with whom to while away a pleasant morning, no friends to drink chocolate and gossip with, no visits to the town’s one provincial theatre. She sighed. The only company within reach would be her sharp-tongued sister-in-law constantly reminding her that she was, truthfully, rather lazy and ineffectual, and, on the other side of the farm, the autocratic widowed mother of Felix and Adam Kaldy. For the rest she supposed—oh, dear!—it would be an affair of picnics with the children and the dubious delights of domestic life with their tenant farmers.

The little boys were happy enough, giggling and scuffling in the coach and huddling up to Malie for protection every time Uncle Sandor glared back at them. The weather had suddenly become very warm and they had brought the little open carriage that they always used for the farm in summer. Released from the discipline of their father, knowing they would be free for weeks and weeks and weeks, the boys had become skittish and naughty. Jozsef threw a small stone at one of the horses, and Uncle Sandor turned, glared, and growled.

“Don’t do that, Jozsef,” said Mama wearily, but she need not have bothered. Uncle Sandor had turned his evil eye upon the boys and they were quelled. Awed, they moved closer to Malie, one on each side.

The farm, with its wooden arcaded porch and red-tiled roof, stretched round three sides of a large courtyard. A chestnut tree grew in the centre and beneath its shade the ground was always a little moist, even in the midst of summer when the rest of the yard was baked into dust. As they turned out of the acacia woods the little boys bounded back to the sides of the coach, pointing excitedly to each familiar and beloved feature which had not been seen since last summer.

“The wine press! See the wine press!”

“And the vine... but no grapes. Why are there no grapes, Malie?”

“And baby chickens... and a lamb!”

“Tulips. The red flowers are tulips, aren’t they, Malie?”

“That’s right, darling.”

Uncle Sandor shouted, “Aaagh,” a deep, terrifying sound that the horses seemed to understand because they came to a halt. Uncle Sandor put up the reins and prepared to clamber down and help the ladies, but Eva could not wait. As soon as the coach stopped she flung the door open, jumped, staggered, and regained her balance. “Dear, darling, wonderful farm!” she cried, opening her arms wide to the chestnut trees. “How glad I am to be here!”

“Us too! Us too!” cried the little boys, standing on the step of the coach and holding out their arms. Eva caught them and whirled them round once before dropping them on the ground.

“I will alight in the normal way, Sandor,” said Mama wearily, waiting for the steps to be put down.

The yard was a rambling, disorganized, colourful chaos of chickens, geese, carts of fodder and cattle-dung, and old wine casks that had been filled with earth and planted with flowers. Against the hot stones of the wine press two shaggy dogs lay dozing and twitching flies away from their eyes. They jumped up when Leo and Jozsef ran from the coach, and at once there was a tumble of dogs and boys in the soil of the yard.

Mama sighed once, twitched her elegant grey skirt, and picked her way carefully across the yard to where Zoltan and Roza, dressed in festive best, were descending the steps to welcome them.

Zoltan, in high black boots, bowed with his hat held hard against his chest. Roza bobbed down respectfully, and Mama leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek.

“How pretty your flowers are, Roza. The first thing we noticed as we drove in.”

Roza’s nut-complexioned face expressed plaintive satisfaction. “We tried to make everything ready for you, madame, but coming so soon... there was nothing, no cheese made, and the last season’s apples all gone, and too soon for the strawberries, and none of the lambs ready for killing, and the quilts not hung out from the winter, and I said to Zoltan, We must do our best for madame and the little ones but she will wonder what we have done with the house and farm all winter when there is nothing to eat and nowhere to sleep and the rain still coming—not too much but a little, you understand, and—”

Mama drew her hand across her forehead. “I’m sure it will all be perfect, Roza,” she said. “You always do everything beautifully. And now I think I should like to go in. The sun is very hot and we have been in the coach for several hours. Perhaps—”