Csardas (26 page)

She felt worse when the summer came. She knew, they all knew, that Malie had been hoping Karoly would come home on leave. But in June came news of a giant Russian offensive on the eastern front. The streets of the town were suddenly filled once more with walking wounded, more women wearing black, and the family knew that Karoly wouldn’t come home unless he was wounded too.

Uncle Zoltan, that solid farmer figure whom they had known and accepted every summer since childhood, vanished in a sea of dead and missing men lost during the Russian advance. When they arrived at the farm that summer they found that Roza, although not as old as Mama, had already undergone the metamorphosis that changed Hungarian peasant women from healthy sloe-eyed girls into shrunken old women in black.

Mama, her volatile emotions moved to heartbreaking grief by this first casualty in her immediate circle, stepped down from the coach and hugged Roza closely to her.

“Oh, my dear!” she cried softly. “My poor, poor Roza! How can we console you? What can one do to comfort you for the loss of your dear man?”

Roza, always plump and strong, was now so tiny that Mama seemed to dwarf her. Tears ran down the leathery cheeks framed in her black handkerchief. She brushed them roughly away with an awkward movement of her hands. “He will come back! He is a prisoner; he must be. Many, many men have been taken prisoner this June. My Zoltan, he is not dead—he cannot be dead!”

Her hands were ingrained with dirt from the fields. Her back was bent, a little from grief but mostly from bending over the soil.

“Madame,” she begged, “what will the master do? He will not take the farm from me because I have no man? I am strong, like a man. I can manage. See already what we have done—your Roza and all the other women who are left. We work hard, the children too. And my sons, two strong sons, madame! They will come home soon from the war. They can take their father’s place; the master will be pleased with them! I promise you the master will be pleased. Even if my man—” She choked suddenly, her old woman’s face crumpled and distorted as she fought for control. “Even if Zoltan is dead—” And now she could not finish. The use of the terrible word had stripped away pretence. It broke from her in a wail of anguish.

“My dear! My dear!” Mama held Roza by the hand and began to lead her towards the house. “Of course you shall not leave here. I will speak to the master....” Mama’s voice trailed away and, behind her, the eyes of Eva and Amalia met in dubious communication. Mama must not promise things she could not guarantee. No one was more war-conscious than Papa, no one more prepared to extol the gallant soldiers who were keeping the Russians from the Hungarian plains. But business was business, and Papa would not tolerate for long a farm run inefficiently by a woman.

Uncle Sandor suddenly came forward. He did not speak, but he placed one huge hand on Roza’s shoulder and, as she turned, he bowed and nodded his head slowly two or three times.

“May the Holy Mother bless you, Sandor,” the old woman muttered. He patted her shoulder very gently, then turned back to the horse and coach and to the boys, who were waiting very quietly at the side of the yard. They were awed and a little afraid. The war had been glorious until now, martial lessons at school and a sense of excitement and patriotism. Now it was suddenly real; Uncle Zoltan was dead. Leo couldn’t remember him very well—it was two years since he had seen him—but the realization that the distant figure had gone forever induced a sense of dread round his heart.

He and Jozsef followed the coach round into the side yard and watched Uncle Sandor unharness the horse.

“Was it like this before, Uncle Sandor?” asked Jozsef. “When you rode seventy leagues and fought the King of Prussia, was it like it is now?”

Uncle Sandor flipped the reins over Sultan’s nose. “War is always the same,” he growled. “And for the women it is harder.”

Jozsef had been concentrating on an inconsistency that had been bothering him for some time.

“Why is it, Uncle Sandor, that when you were a soldier you were fighting the Prussians, and now the Prussians are on our side?”

Uncle Sandor led Sultan into the stable. “It is good to have a change,” he answered. “That is the way of war.”

“Uncle Sandor,” asked Leo timidly, “you won’t have to go, will you? Like Uncle Zoltan? You won’t have to go and fight the Russians?”

The coachman grinned and Leo, for the first time since their arrival, felt safe.

“I am an old man. I think too old even for the King to use.”

That was all right then. The uncomfortable feeling induced by Roza’s unstable grief melted away. Uncle Sandor could not be killed.

Inside the house the four women were sitting in the kitchen. It was the first time the girls ever remembered their mama sitting in the kitchen; indeed, she rarely visited it at all. Amalia made coffee, and Roza, her tension and grief released by the support of the three Ferenc ladies, poured out a long and detailed step-by-step account of her bereavement, as though by repetition she could make herself believe it and gradually come to acceptance.

“And after the telegram,” she continued in a high-pitched monotone, “I had a letter from his officer—‘a gallant soldier’ he called him, ‘a gallant soldier’—and then Victor—you remember Victor, the carter on the Kaldy estate; he was in the same unit as my man and he was wounded; they have taken his arm off, poor fellow—he came to see me and he said my Zoltan was one of the few men in their unit who did not desert; there were just a few of them in this barn, a few infantrymen and some cavalry officers whose horses had been killed. And Brusilov’s soldiers coming at them and they all shooting but with only one machine-gun from the loft of the house. And at night my man and two of the others go out for water. There is shooting, Victor said, and they do not come back. But who is to say if he is dead? Holy Mother Mary! Do not let him be dead!

“The front is terrible. Victor says we cannot know how bad it is from the papers; they do not tell us all. For the cavalry it is worse than the rest; all their horses killed and they have no good weapons. They have to fight on foot and stay with anyone who has a gun.”

Malie’s face blanched and Roza, even from the morass of her undisciplined outpourings, noticed the girl’s stillness.

“But don’t you worry, my dear little girl,” she said quickly, placing her hand over Malie’s. “The officers—of course—they will be safe! Officers do not die like soldiers. Your young captain will be away on his horse out of danger; it is the men who die, not the officers. Look now, how many of our peasants have died, but none of our young gentlemen!”

It was said without rancour and accepted in that spirit by the Ferenc ladies. It was natural that the peasants should die quicker than the officers. There were more of them, and they were more easily expendable.

“The young Kaldy gentlemen now, they are both safe! One of them here on leave with his mother.... You must not worry, my little girl. He will come home safe.”

“Which Kaldy boy is on leave?”

“Why, Mr. Felix. But surely you knew? Mr. Felix writes and—”

Eva was gone. She rushed away and they heard her feet running up the stairs. Amalia, her heart still thumping from Roza’s description of the front, ran after her, expecting to find her flung across the bed crying or at least in a storm of anger. Eva, however, was pulling her yellow lawn dress out of the trunk.

“You’ll come with me, won’t you?” she demanded peremptorily. “You must. It will look bad if I visit on my own.” She took pins from her hair and the great dark mass fell round her shoulders. “Can I borrow your cream gloves, Malie? I shall wear my cream hat with the daisies. Papa always says I look well in yellow and cream.”

“Eva! We have only just arrived! You cannot go rushing off to Madame Kaldy’s without any kind of announcement.”

“Yes I can.” Eva stopped brushing her hair, and her face, in the mirror, stared back at Malie. “I’m going to find out why he stopped writing to me. And if that old witch had anything to do with it, then I’ll make her sorry!”

They had to walk to the Kaldy estate. Uncle Sandor had already put the coach away and was out working in the fields. Even Eva didn’t have the courage to order him back to the coach on such a transparently self-indulgent excursion. She grumbled all the way along the hot track as the dust settled round the hems of their gowns and their faces grew red and dirty. She complained about Madame Kaldy, about Uncle Sandor, about the unmade country tracks, and about the uncomfortably high neck of her lawn dress. After the first few moments Amalia ceased to listen and studied the condition of the fields about her.

Madame Kaldy’s land, like everyone else’s, was suffering from lack of manpower. But even though there were signs of neglect, that indomitable old woman had somehow kept her soil producing more than anyone else’s. Adam’s beet field had vanished; it was ploughed over and planted with peppers. Already they were turning red and an old woman was hoeing between the lines of plants. The grain had been cut and stacked—cut badly by women, leaving an irregular stubble—but nonetheless the harvest was in. The fruit trees that lined the fields were laden: unripe apples, pears, and plums; apricots and peaches ready for picking. Another old woman was on a ladder, a basket strapped over her back, picking the last of the apricots. As they approached she was respectfully quiet, motionless on the ladder, her black gown and handkerchief outlined against the green foliage. Malie waited for the customary bob of the head, the kindly but deferential greeting that was their right as young ladies. It did not come and, surprised, Malie looked upwards, then became as still as the old woman.

“I thought you were not arriving until today,” said Madame Kaldy bitterly. “I hardly expected you so soon. I am not dressed for visitors.”

She was angry. She began to clamber down the ladder, and Malie was too embarrassed to offer to help with the basket.

“I’m so sorry—so sorry, Madame Kaldy. We had no idea.... Of course we shall go at once. We should not have called so soon. Please forgive us. Mama—”

“Your mama, no doubt, is lying down with a novel after her tiring journey in the coach,” Madame Kaldy replied with some asperity. “She will be amused—no, that is the wrong word—she will be incredulous to learn that I have been up a ladder trying to save my apricots.”

Amalia was flustered. Madame Kaldy, who had been caught doing something no lady should ever do, had managed to turn the tables and make it sound as though their mama was in the wrong, not her.

“We will call again when it is more convenient,” she said stiffly.

Madame Kaldy unstrapped the basket from her back. “Now you are here you can come in,” she snapped. “Take the other side of the basket and help me carry it to the house.”

Awkwardly, moving out of step with each other, they puffed along the path. Eva, unembarrassed and uninvolved, walked behind.

“We’ve come to see Felix,” she said bluntly. “Roza told us he is on leave.”

“Yes.”

“It would be so nice to see him.”

“My son is resting.”

Eva suddenly ran forward, trotting sideways and trying to look into Madame Kaldy’s face as she moved. “He is not wounded, is he?”

“No.”

“Is he ill?”

“He is... tired. Felix is very tired.”

Her voice, like her face, was non-committal.

“Can we see him? Malie and I would love to see him.”

“I don’t know. Leave the basket here, on the porch, Amalia. I will spread them for drying tomorrow.”

They followed her into the unprepossessing Kaldy farmhouse. The old woman led them into the drawing-room, then hastily withdrew. It was silent and heavy and there was no sign of Felix.

“What’s the matter with him?” Eva whispered. “Why didn’t he come out to greet us? Surely he should be pleased to welcome us.” Malie did not answer and the silence in the room became oppressive. Madame Kaldy had not hung her summer blinds, and the room was dusty and airless behind winter plush.

She returned at last with a tray of cake and lemonade. She had removed the handkerchief from her head and had pinned a cameo and a cream lace collar to her dress. She was, once more, a lady.

She asked after Karoly, and the girls asked about Adam. Then another depressing silence descended and finally Eva could bear it no longer.

“Can we not see Felix, Madame Kaldy? Would he not be cheered by the presence of old friends?”

The bite, the asperity had gone from Madame Kaldy. Her dark eyes were expressionless. “He is very tired,” she said again. “Just for a few moments.”

She looked out of the window, her face set in long, dour lines, and finally she rose from her chair, using the arms to pull herself upright as though she were very tired.

“I will fetch him.”

They waited again, Eva fidgeting with her hair and dress and arranging her parasol prettily to one side of her. They heard footsteps—slow footsteps—and Amalia, remembering the emaciated aged young man who had returned to her from Russia a year ago, braced herself for a horrifying sight.

“Hullo,” said Felix dully.

It was incredible. He hadn’t changed at all. He was still olive-skinned, beautifully shaped, black-haired and dark-eyed. He hadn’t changed—no—but what was it? There was some imperceptible difference, something so slight it was difficult to define. And then, shocked, Amalia realized what the change was: Felix was unshaven. Previously his soft moustache had pouted from a smooth brown face; now there was a dirty three- or four-day stubble on his cheeks.

And he was in shirt sleeves too. It was all right in the summer, on picnics and outings, for the young gentlemen to remove their jackets, but not for a drawing-room, and in the presence of two visiting ladies.

“Oh, Felix! It is good to see you! I—we—we were worried. We wondered what had happened to you!”

Felix’s gaze moved dreamily from his mother to Eva, then out of the window.

“Oh... yes...” he said, and yawned.

“I—we thought perhaps you were wounded, or ill, or . .. something....”

“Did you? Oh, no. I was all right.”

Eva swallowed, Malie could tell from the pitch of her voice that Eva was close to tears.