Csardas (11 page)

“You want to visit your cousin, Racs-Rassay, I hear? Up in the mountains?”

“Yes, sir.”

The colonel put his pen down. “Yes, well, mustn’t behave like old women. Seeing Serbs behind every cautionary move from headquarters. Any trouble and you’ll be recalled at once. Leave granted.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He saluted, clicked heels again, turned, and left the office. He was disconcerted at the degree of informality with which the colonel had spoken to a very junior officer. His leave had been granted and he should have felt pleased and elated. Several weeks in his cousin’s luxurious villa, with the strong possibility of seeing Amalia Ferenc again, should have filled him with gratified satisfaction. Instead he felt, once more, the vague sense of disquiet that hung over the garrison.

For the little boys it was the best spring and summer they had ever known, and mostly it was because Papa was not there.

They spent much of their time haunting Roza in the kitchen, waiting for cream bowls to lick, for pieces of strudel to pick up from the floor, for honey cakes to steal straight from the oven. Outside were the dogs, and the new lambs and calves, and the orchard to race in and the river to fall in, and there was no one to punish them or shut them in their room.

They were with the people they loved most: Mama, who (when Papa was away) let them do just as they pleased provided they didn’t give her a headache; Eva, who was pretty but who, like Mama, didn’t always welcome their presence; and Malie, their beloved Malie, who helped them up into trees, who took off her shoes and stockings and paddled with them, who took them on picnics up in the hills, and who—above all—that summer discovered the Meadow.

That was the very best day of summer, the day they discovered the Meadow. Mama had announced on the previous evening that, provided her headache was better in the morning, they would all go for a picnic on the following day. Uncle Sandor would drive them into the mountains, and they would cook a meal, just like gypsies, out in the open over a fire. At first they had been excited, shouting and thumping each other, but when Uncle Sandor’s name had been mentioned they had become subdued and silent. They had never confessed, not even to each other, how afraid they were of Uncle Sandor—not in the same way they were afraid of Papa; that was a fear, they sensed, in spite of their years, that was shared by all the family and servants, a fear that had been with them since birth and which they took for granted. No, the fear of Uncle Sandor was more spine-chilling, more supernatural than the fear of Papa. It was like the feeling they had when the housemaid, who came from Transylvania, told them stories about giants and werewolves. Uncle Sandor was huge and black: black boots, black moustache, black eyes, and black hair all over his arms and the backs of his hands. Even the horses he drove were black. And Uncle Sandor rarely spoke; he growled and grunted, and he glared at them when they misbehaved in the coach. Once, when they were very small and were annoying Eva by pulling her curls, she had told them that Uncle Sandor would eat them if they were naughty, and pulling her hair was very naughty. They hadn’t taken any notice at the time—Eva was always saying things like that when she didn’t get her own way—but the next time they were in the coach they had both stared at Uncle Sandor’s huge back beneath the red and black
mente
of his hussar’s uniform, and a shudder that started in the soles of their shoes had spread rapidly upwards, completely enveloping them. Neither of them had ever seen Uncle Sandor smile, but they had a horrifying notion that if he did the parting of his lips would reveal long, sharp, pointed teeth.

When Mama suggested the picnic, they were torn between the delight of going into the mountains and living like gypsies and the fear of having Uncle Sandor with them for a whole day. Mama had looked puzzled.

“Don’t you want to go?”

“Yes, Mama.”

Amalia had grinned and whispered something to Mama, who laughed (how pretty Mama was when she laughed) and said that of course Uncle Sandor would stay with the horses when they arrived and wouldn’t follow them to their picnic spot. That was better. They didn’t mind Uncle Sandor in the distance with the coach and horses. It was just the thought of being alone with him in the mountains.

They stood on the chairs in Roza’s kitchen and watched her packing up the box: a thick woven red-and-black cloth, a big jar of goulash and a pot to heat it in, a jar of sweet-and-sour green beans and another of stuffed cabbage, two long loaves of white bread still warm from the oven, a crock of nut cakes, milk, cups, plates, spoons, and a wet cloth for wiping sticky hands after eating.

“Just like gypsies!” gloated Leo, and then, “Roza, can we carry the box out into the yard?”

“Bim bim bim!”
cried Roza. “Such impatience! How can two such little men get that heavy box from the table?”

Puffing and red-faced they tried, determined to punish Roza for calling them little men, and finally by using the chairs (and with a little secret help from Roza) the box was on the floor. “Now,” said Jozsef, assuming the authority of the elder, “out into the yard.” The box was pushed, pulled, and kicked across the floor. At the foot of the steps they paused. Leo looked as though he were going to burst and one of Jozsef’s stockings was hanging round his ankle. “You can rest now, Leo,” he panted graciously, and then they both froze because coming down the steps was a huge pair of black boots. Uncle Sandor didn’t say a word. He just stopped and lifted the box as though it were made of paper, then stumped up into the yard.

It was glorious outside. They took the track leading from the back of the farm, through yet another acacia wood, and the sun shining through the lace of the young leaves made a dappled pattern on the backs of the moving horses. Then they came to the road where the women from the village curtsied; then, when they had left the village, Uncle Sandor turned the coach onto a track that became steadily steeper and darker, screened on each side by beech and oak trees and with outcroppings of rock hanging over the path.

Finally the track came to a clearing where sunlight lit a patch of new grass. Uncle Sandor turned into the clearing and stopped.

“Now,” said Amalia, “we must look for a place to have our picnic. Not too far from the coach, but up a little into the trees.”

Mama said she would wait until they had found the perfect spot, and the four of them, one small boy to each sister, began to climb up through the forest. And it was Amalia who found the Meadow that was to become so important to them that summer.

It was a tiny, flat area, hidden from below and surrounded by trees, a secret meadow full of buttercups and with a stream running at one side. Someone had discovered it before because just by the stream a place to light a fire had been built from the grey mountain stone. They raced back to the coach, and Uncle Sandor brought up the box. Then he collected wood, lit the fire, and went to sit at the edge of the meadow on his own.

“Is he going to stay there?” asked Leo grudgingly as the smell of goulash began to pervade the mountain air.

“Just until he has eaten.”

“Who will take his food to him?”

“You will,” said Eva brightly. “You and Jozsef will take his food to him, and Mama and Amalia and I shall go for a walk and leave you.” Two white faces turned and stared at her, and Eva suddenly exploded into laughter. “I hope there’s enough goulash for Uncle Sandor,” she continued wickedly. “Who knows what he may eat if he gets hungry enough?”

Jozsef swallowed hard. He was the elder, and besides, he felt sure that Eva
must
be teasing. A quick glance at his brother showed that Leo’s face had turned very red and his plump cheeks were beginning to quiver.

“Oh, Eva, really!” said Mama crossly. “You shouldn’t be so unkind. Now see what you have done. I shall go home if the boys begin to cry. My poor head couldn’t bear it.”

Malie put an arm around each of them. “When we have eaten,” she whispered, “you and I, just the three of us, will go high into the mountains, as high as we can, and I will show which way is Russia and which way is Austria, where the King lives. Perhaps we shall even be able to see a castle.”

Amalia, and the plates of goulash, made things sane again. Eva took a large plate of food over to Uncle Sandor and the boys watched very carefully to see what he would do. Uncle Sandor pulled a brown kerchief over the knee of his trousers and took the plate from Eva. Then he proceeded to eat. From this distance it was impossible to see his teeth.

After the food, Mama and Eva went to sleep in the sun. Amalia put her straw hat on again and began to lead them up through the forest, through a just discernible path. There were rustlings on either side, and once they surprised a pair of pheasants which sprang up, shrieking, in front of them. They found the small black body of a dead mole, its hands curled close to its face, and Jozsef discovered a stone shaped like a dog’s head. It was a good track and it led to a promontory of rock from where they could see stretch after stretch of mountains all covered in oak forests.

“There. That way is Russia,” said Malie, pointing. “If you could walk for long enough, up and over the hills and through the rivers and marshes, you would come to Russia.”

They stared for a moment, then became bored and wriggled away from Amalia, chasing off into the trees. “Don’t go far, boys!” she cried, but they only giggled and Jozsef made a rude noise with his mouth.

“We’ll wait until she goes to sleep—grown-ups always go to sleep—and then we will jump out on her,” he said with relish.

They watched her yawn, sit down with her back against a rock, and close her eyes. They waited a moment, then jumped—roaring—out of the trees. But before they came close to her a man in a uniform like Uncle Sandor’s walked into the clearing from the track. He ignored them and walked straight up to Amalia. They waited, afraid both for themselves and for Malie, to see what he was going to do. He did nothing—no, not quite nothing, for he smiled a little sheepishly at her and nodded as though they had met before.

“We rode up after your coach,” he said, very dignified, and yet there was something shy about him. “Your mama and your sister told me you had come this way through the forest.”

Malie stood up. She was awkward—most un-Malie-like—and she began to brush grass and dirt from her skirt.

“Do you remember my name? Do you remember seeing me before?”

“Karoly Vilaghy. At Kati’s birthday party.”

“I am staying with Cousin Alfred. We called on you this morning, just after you had left for your picnic. Your aunt and Cousin Kati are back in the clearing, with your mother.”

Amalia picked an ant from her skirt. “Oh,” she said foolishly.

The boys grew bored again. The soldier, in spite of the Uncle Sandor uniform, was harmless, and he and Malie were obviously not going to do anything interesting. Jozsef pushed Leo onto the ground and began to stuff leaves down his neck. Leo roared, surfaced, and chased his brother into the trees.

“You are not to go too far away, boys,” Malie cried. “Play close to the track.”

They didn’t answer. They peered through the trees and saw that she had sat down again, very prim and upright this time. The soldier was beside her, lounging on the earth in spite of his smart red trousers.

Jozsef discovered a hoard of last year’s acorns and cups. They had a race to see who could collect the largest number and then they stood on opposite sides of the track (Jozsef was the Austrian army and Leo the Prussian) and hurled them at each other. After a while they saw a glimmer of white through the trees. Malie was walking very slowly down the track with the soldier. They were talking softly, and Leo and Jozsef waited behind the bole of a tree.

“Brrrraah!” they shouted, jumping out. Malie jumped and looked suddenly very cross, so cross that Leo went up and burrowed in her skirt.

“Why don’t you run on and find Eva and Kati,” she said impatiently. She turned to the soldier and smiled, and Leo was instantly jealous. He moved round to walk between her and the soldier, holding her hand and trying to push her away from the hussar.

“You’re pushing me off the track, Leo!”

“I love you, Malie,” he said fiercely, glaring at the soldier.

Malie looked down at him, sighing, and then she said kindly, “All right, Leo, you can walk with us if you want to.”

He hated the soldier. They had been having a lovely day until he came. He waited until Malie was looking in the other direction and then he pulled a horrible face at the lieutenant, the one where he crossed his eyes and blew his cheeks and nostrils out. When he did it to the dogs they ran away.

“That’s quite enough of
that,”
said Karoly Vilaghy, and Leo found himself swinging through the air, right up onto the soldier’s head. He could see for miles! He could see right down the track into the Meadow and over the trees in three directions.

“I can see the world!” he shouted gleefully to Jozsef, and at once Jozsef began to pummel the soldier’s legs and say it was his turn. It had become a good day again.

When they arrived back at the Meadow there was a lot of tedious grown-up conversation with Aunt Gizi and Kati, all about who was related to who and what kind of plans they could make for the summer. Eva flirted with the soldier, and Amalia stood about looking silly with a permanent smile on her face.

They raced away to the stream, had a fight over the dog-shaped stone, fell in, and had to be hauled out by Karoly Vilaghy.

“It is time we went home,” said Mama wearily. “Any more of this and my migraine will come back.”

Everything was packed into the box. Uncle Sandor came over, lifted it to one shoulder, and vanished into the trees. The late-afternoon sun was warm and golden and they were relaxed, all of them, even Aunt Gizi, and full of the lethargic gentleness of a summer afternoon. The leaves on the trees were small and green, the grass was crisp and new, and all around them it smelled of things growing. Even Uncle Sandor must have sensed the summer for he drove very slowly and didn’t growl at all when he had to stop and let the boys take turn and turn about between the coach and a ride on Karoly Vilaghy’s grey horse.