Esther's Inheritance (7 page)

12

T
he only thing I couldn’t understand was what the strange woman was doing here. She was too old and plainly dressed to be Lajos’s lover. It took me a while to understand that the young man in the leather coat who had been the first to get out of the red car, who had mumbled a few courtesies of greeting and then said nothing the rest of the time, communicating only with his lion-headed dog, was the woman’s son. There was something contrary to our agreement here. The young man was blond, light blond, a kind of silvery blond; it was as if his face were naked, his eyelashes almost invisible against the pale skin. He was constantly blinking. His hair was curly and woolly in texture like an old African’s. Later he put on a pair of dark blue glasses and practically disappeared behind the dark lenses. It was only toward evening that I discovered that this young man was Éva’s fiancé and that the woman, a rather respectable sort of woman who tended to mix badly pronounced French words in her conversation, had for years been Lajos’s housekeeper. I understood nothing of this in the confusion of the first few hours.

The woman, whom the children addressed as Olga, was, if anything, rather melancholy and embarrassed. She made no effort to press her company on us and, after the introductions, sat quietly at the breakfast table fiddling with her parasol and gazing at her plate. I took her for an adventuress at first. But my later impression was that if she was an adventuress she was a tired and ill-tempered one, someone who no longer believed in the adventure and would happily give it all up to settle in some quiet occupation like crochet or embroidery. Occasionally she gave a bitter smile that bared her yellow, masculine teeth. When I came face-to-face with her I didn’t know what to say. We took stock of each other, smiling at first then without smiles, with hard looks and undisguised suspicion. A cloud of sweetish perfume billowed from her dress and painted yellow hair.

“Dear Esther,” she said.

I resisted the intimacy and loudly answered:

“Madam.”

I laughed. The house was all but dissolving in those hours before lunch, becoming no more than a splendid mirage. Doors were slamming. Lajos took out a box from which he produced a tortoise and was demonstrating how it responded to music, moving when he whistled, sticking out its wrinkled neck and making a hissing noise by way of communication. He had brought the creature with him as a conversation piece, an accessory, as evidence of his triumph as a genius animal trainer. The tortoise was a great success. We all stood around enthusing about Lajos’s performance, and even the solemn Endre succumbed to his curiosity.

Lajos went on to distribute presents: a wristwatch for Laci, two rare French editions of poetry, bound in leather, for Nunu (he had garnished the gift with a presentation verse of his own, indifferent to the fact that Nunu couldn’t read French), Tibor and Endre received expensive foreign cigars, and I got a lilac silk shawl. The excitement was general, constantly at boiling point. There were strangers gawping over the fence, so we retreated into the house. The house was filling up with the aroma of hot seasoned food that always carries an immemorial sense of the simple delights of life along with something of its haste, conjuring the tinkle of cutlery, the slamming of doors, the clatter of plates, the distant chatter of arriving guests, faint childish screams, all amounting to some physical or musical
fanfare
to declare that life was a miracle to be celebrated! Which was exactly what I saw whatever way I turned. The unknown woman sat down in a corner and talked in a flat voice.

She told me how she had first met Lajos eight years before when she left her husband. Her son worked in an office; she did not say precisely where or what kind. I had never in my life seen people like the woman and her son at close quarters. I had leafed through magazines where there were photographs of what the young were up to, or a species of youth, the kind of people who danced in jackets with padded shoulders in the lobbies of hotels or flew airplanes or dashed off somewhere on a motorcycle with young women whose skirts fluttered above the knee on the pillion seat. I am of course aware that there is another species of the young who are perfectly real people. The former is just my caricature of unnerving aliens of whom I know next to nothing but who live on in my memory and imagination. All I know is that they are no longer anything to do with me. Beyond the confusion, beyond my ignorance, when I am in their presence I know that I have no means of communicating with them; they are the species of motoring and dancing humanity I see on movie screens, who are not included in the contract my parents and I had established with society.

There was something unusual about the boy; he might have been the hero of a novel, most likely a detective story. He said little, and when he spoke he stared at the ceiling and pronounced each syllable distinctly, almost singing the words. He was as melancholy as his mother; both exuded a dreary sadness. I had never before been with people who were so insultingly, so brazenly alien. He didn’t smoke, he didn’t drink. He wore a thin gold bracelet on his left wrist. Sometimes he raised his hand so suddenly it looked as though he wanted to hit someone; then, with a stiff mechanical movement, he would push the bracelet farther up his arm. I discovered he had not long passed thirty and was a secretary of some sort at the headquarters of one of the political parties, but when he took off his dark blue glasses and surveyed the people and objects in the room his watery eyes made him look even older than Lajos.

Why do you bother with them! I thought. But I couldn’t help noticing that he kept an eye on the company. I didn’t even like his name, the rather common Béla. It meant nothing to me. I always have a strong reaction to names, liking or hating them. It is an unjustified, crude feeling. But it is just such feelings that determine our relationship to the world, our loves and hates. I couldn’t give him very much attention, since his mother completely occupied mine. Without any invitation whatsoever she gave me her life. The story was one long catalog of complaint, a shrill cry of accusation directed at authorities both earthly and heavenly, at men and women, at relatives and lovers, at children and husbands. The accusations were rendered in a flat, even voice, in smooth, round sentences, as if she were reciting a text she knew by heart. Everyone had deceived her, everyone was against her, and, in the end, they had all left her; that, at least, was what I gathered from her philippics. I occasionally shuddered: it was like being addressed by a lunatic. Then, without pausing, she got on to the subject of Lajos. She spoke cynically and confidentially. I couldn’t bear her manner. It humiliated me to think that Lajos required accomplices of this kind to call on me, that this person had some kind of rank. I stood up with Lajos’s gift, the lilac silk shawl, in my hand.

“We don’t know each other,” I said. “Perhaps we should not be speaking like this.”

“Oh,” she said calmly, quite indifferent to my concern. “We will have plenty of time to talk about it. We will get to know each other, dear Esther.”

She lit a cigarette and blew a long line of smoke, gazing so assuredly through the cloud at me it seemed she must have already arranged everything. It was all decided: she knew something I didn’t, and there was nothing I could do except give in.

13

T
here are three conversations I should note here.

That was precisely how many took place that afternoon. Éva was first at my door, followed by Lajos, and lastly by the “officially invited” Endre. After lunch the guests dispersed. Lajos lay down to have a nap, as naturally as if he were at home and would not be diverted from his domestic habits. Gábor and the strangers set off in the car to see the church, the neighborhood, and the local ruins, returning only at dusk. Éva, however, came to my room straight after the meal. I stood with her by the window, cupped her face in my hands, and gazed at her a long time. She gazed back steadily with her clear blue eyes.

“You have to help us, Esther,” she said eventually. “Only you can help us.”

She had a sweet singsong voice, like a schoolgirl. She only reached up to my shoulder. I hugged her but then felt the whole scene was a little too sentimental, and was glad when she gently disengaged herself, moved to the sideboard, lit a cigarette, gave a light cough, and, as if freed from an embarrassing, slightly disingenuous situation, examined the objects and framed photographs arranged on the flat surface. This shelf, the upper half of the sideboard, was a sacred place for me, the kind of thing the Chinese think of as a household shrine, before which they bow and honor their ancestors. Everyone I loved or was close to me stood there in a long row, each of them looking at me. I went over to her and watched her eyes moving along them.

“That’s Mama,” she said quietly but with evident delight. “How beautiful she is. She must have been younger there than I am now.”

An eighteen-year-old Vilma gazed back at us, a little chubby, dressed in the garments of the time, in white lace with high black boots, her hair undone, curled, and combed over her brow, carrying flowers and a fan. The picture must have been for an occasion, since it was a touch self-conscious and unnatural. Only the dark, questioning eyes betrayed something of the later angry, passionate Vilma.

“Do you remember her?” I asked, and knew my voice was not quite steady.

“Vaguely,” she replied. “Someone comes into my room in the dark and leans over me with a warm familiar scent. That’s all I remember. I was three years old when she died.”

“Three and a half,” I say, flustered.

“Yes. But really I only remember you. You are always adjusting something on me, my dress or my hair, and you are always in my room, you always have something to do there. Then you too disappear. Why did you leave, Esther?”

“Hush,” I say. “Hush, Éva. You don’t yet understand.”

“Yet?…” she asked, and started to laugh in the same singsong way, the laugh a little forced, too drawn out, too theatrical. Everything she said seemed extraordinarily important, too carefully composed. “Are you still playing at being the little mama, Esther, dear?” she said, kindly, superior, and compassionate. And now it was she who, with an adult movement, put her arm round my shoulder, led me over to the couch, and sat me down.

This time we looked at each other like two women, women who know or guess each other’s secrets. Suddenly a hot flush of excitement ran through me. Vilma’s daughter! I thought. The daughter of Vilma and Lajos. I felt I was blushing with a jealousy that sprang from somewhere so deep it shocked me with its energy and power: it was as if a jealous voice were shouting in me. I didn’t want to listen to it. She could have been your daughter! was what the voice was crying. Your daughter, the meaning of your life. Why has she come back? Agitated, I bowed my head, burying my face in my hands. The significance of the moment balanced the shame I felt even as I was moving. I knew I was betraying my secret, that I was being watched by someone who was pitilessly observing my shame and discomfort; that the young woman who might have been my daughter had no sympathy and was not about to save me in this sorry situation. After an interval that seemed to be infinitely long I heard her mature, strange, self-aware, indifferent voice again.

“You shouldn’t have gone away, Esther. I know it can’t have been easy with Father. But you should have known you were the only one who might have helped him. And then there were Gábor and me. You simply left us to our fates. It was like abandoning two children at the gate of a house. Why did you do it?”

And when I remained silent, she calmly added:

“You did it out of revenge. Why look at me like that? You were wicked and acted out of revenge. You were the only woman who had any power over Father. You were the only woman he ever loved. No, Esther, that much I know, at least as well as you and Father. What happened between you? I have thought about it a long time. I had time to think, an entire childhood. Believe me, that childhood was not particularly happy. Do you know the details? I am quite prepared to tell you. I came here to tell you. And, at the end of my story, to ask you to help. I feel you owe us that much.”

“Anything,” I said, “I’ll do anything to help you.”

I straightened up. The difficult moment had passed.

“Look, Éva,” I went on, and now I too felt calm. “Your father is a really interesting, very talented man. But all those things you were talking about just now have become a little confused in his memory. You should be aware that your father is quick to forget. Please don’t think I am criticizing him. He can’t help it. That’s his nature…”

“I know,” she answered. “Father never remembers reality. He is a poet.”

“Yes,” I said, my heart a little lighter. “He might be a poet. Reality gets confused in his mind. That’s why you shouldn’t believe everything he says…his memory is poor. The time you are talking about was the most difficult, most unbearably painful, most complicated part of my life. You say revenge! What kind of word is that to use? Who taught you to use it? You know nothing. Everything your father says about that time is fantasy, pure fantasy. But I do remember the reality. It was rather different. I owe nothing to anyone.”

“But I have read the letters,” she retorted in a matter-of-fact way.

Now I fell silent. We looked at each other.

“What letters?” I asked, astonished.

“The letters, Esther,” she sharply retorted. “Father’s letters, the ones he wrote to you at the time. You know, when he used to visit the house, when he was obsessed with you, saying that you should run away together because he couldn’t go on otherwise, could no longer keep up appearances, that he couldn’t cope with Vilma, who was stronger than he was and who hated you, Esther…because Mother did hate you…. Why? Because you were younger? Or more beautiful, or more real? Only you can answer that.”