Esther's Inheritance (13 page)

“When did he write them?”

“Twenty years ago.”

“Is it the fault of the mail that they have just been delivered?…” she asked, partly curious, partly jealous.

“No, not the mail,” I smiled.

“Whose fault was it?”

“Vilma’s.”

“She stole them?…”

“She stole them.”

“I see,” she said, and sighed. “I hope she rests in peace. I never did like her.”

She adjusted the glasses on her nose, leaned to the flame, and began to read one of the letters as if she were back at school, quietly, in a singsong voice.

“‘My one and only darling,’” she read, “‘life is playing extraordinary tricks on us. I have no other hope but that I should have found you forever…’”

She stopped reading, pushed the glasses up to her forehead, and turned to me with shining eyes, moved and enchanted.

“He certainly could write a wonderful letter!”

“Yes,” I agreed. “Read on. He was a brilliant letter writer.”

But the wind, the end-of-September wind that had until then been snapping at the walls of the house, suddenly tore open the window, billowed through the curtains, and, as if it were bringing news, touched and shifted everything in the room. Then it blew out the candle flame. I still remember that. And remember also, though only vaguely, that at some stage Nunu closed the window, and I fell asleep.

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sándor Márai was born in Kassa, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1900, and died in San Diego, California, in 1989. He rose to fame as one of the leading literary novelists in Hungary in the 1930s. Profoundly antifascist, he survived the war, but persecution by the Communists drove him from the country in 1948, first to Italy, then to the United States. His novel
Embers
was published for the first time in English in 2001.

A NOTE ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

George Szirtes is the prizewinning author of thirteen books of poetry and several translations from Hungarian including Sándor Márai’s
Casanova in Bolzano
and
The Rebels,
and also poetry, fiction, and drama. He lives in the United Kingdom.

ALSO BY SÁNDOR MÁRAI

Embers

Casanova in Bolzano

The Rebels

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Translation copyright © 2008 by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Originally published in Hungary as
Eszter hagyatéka
by Révai, Budapest, in 1939.

Copyright © Heirs of Sándor Márai. Csaba Gaal, Toronto.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in Publication Data

Márai, Sándor, 1900–1989.

[Eszter hagyatéka. English]

Esther’s inheritance / by Sándor Márai ; translated from the Hungarian by George Szirtes.—1st American ed.

p.  cm.

Originally published in 1939 in Budapest, Hungary as Eszter hagyatéka by Révai.

I. Title.

PH
3281.
M
35
E
8613 2008

894'.511334—dc22     2008019610

eISBN: 978-0-307-27043-6

v1.0