Csardas (44 page)

Mrs. Marton’s blue eyes—eyes that, of her four children, only her son inherited—were a rarity and an object of both discussion and envy on the farm. They placed her apart in the same way that the lace curtains and the pictures on the walls placed her apart. There was talk that she must be the byblow of a farm manager or a bailiff, but no one could be quite certain, for she had come to the farm as a child with her uncle from some place on the other side of the county.

Janos did not know his father until the war ended. When he was three, or perhaps it was four, a soldier had walked into the hut one day. His mother had been working in the fields and Janos had been husking maize with his grandmother. The soldier had stared and then disappeared even as Grandmother cried out and reached her arms towards him. Later he had returned with Janos’s mother and she had given him bread and soup and told Janos that the soldier was his father.

The soldier had come and gone after that; sometimes he was gone for so long that Janos thought he had gone forever and the thought made him happy. Then, late one night, his father had returned looking thinner and more ragged than usual. His mother had begun to cry, saying she was afraid, and the soldier, his father, had sagged wearily as though he too would have been afraid if only he had had the energy. Janos had been turned out of his bed that night and put to sleep with his grandmother in a small bed in another corner of the room. All night there were whispers and sobs, his mother asking why Janos’s father had done something and his father growing more and more afraid. Towards morning the whimpers and scoldings ceased and there was suddenly another sound, the noise of a creaking bed and strange grunts and breathing. These noises had disturbed the boy much more than his mother’s tears or his father’s fears.

In the morning his father had polished his boots and taken him to see Mr. Adam at the farmhouse. He told Janos to wait outside and that was the first time the boy saw that not everyone lived as he did. He had often seen the farmhouse from a distance, but now he was close and had a clear view right down into the kitchen—a kitchen in which the floor was not earth but some shiny, flat stuff, a kitchen with only one stove, but that stove stretching along one entire wall and bigger than both his mother’s and Mrs. Boros’s put together. There were chests and chairs and tables, and the tables were covered with food. He had never seen food like it in his whole life and his empty stomach began to gurgle at the sight of the sausages, the ham, the noodles, the cabbage. An aroma wafted up the kitchen steps, delicious but strange, a brown smell, rich and exotic. He had closed his eyes and the smell had luxuriated throughout his body, giving him the same sensation that lying in the sun gave him. He breathed the heady scent deep into his lungs—and then felt himself knocked down the steps by a giant hand. Just before he tumbled against the kitchen door the hand jerked him back and set him on his feet in the yard. It was his father, standing angry and red-faced and twisting his hat round and round. “Miserable dog!” he shouted at Janos. “Peering into his honour’s kitchen like a mangy hound. Bow to his excellency and ask his pardon!”

Janos had felt himself wrenched forward by one ear. Mr. Adam stood before him. The child bowed and muttered something apologetic.

“Forgive him, excellency!” His father was sweating a little. “This is what happens when a man’s son is left to grow without menfolk to correct him
.”

“No harm, no harm,” muttered Mr. Adam. He was staring at Janos and finally he said, “So this is the grandson of old Marton. He was a fine soldier. You should be proud of your father, Marton. He was a brave and loyal man.”

“Yes, excellency.”

Mr. Adam stared at Janos again. “The child is slight, Marton, and the blue eyes—they are not like those of your father.”

“No, excellency. The boy looks like his mother.” He puffed proudly a little. “Edina worked for your mother, Mr. Adam, sir. She was your mother’s sewing girl before the war.”

Mr. Adam made a non-committal noise. He looked away from Janos, past him and out towards the fields and pastures. “Indeed, Marton, indeed. Get along, now. Your place is restored to you, and there is much to be done. The land has suffered in the last years, with only women and children to tend it.”

“Yes, excellency.” He cuffed Janos round the ear. “Bow to his excellency.” Janos bowed.

“I have not forgotten that your father, old Marton, was overseer of the threshing barn,” Mr. Adam said. “We shall see how the crops progress.” He turned away and was nearly back in the house when he suddenly turned again and rummaged in his pocket. He extracted a
filler
and threw it down the steps onto the ground. “For the child, old Marton’s grandson,” he said, and went into the house.

“Pick it up.”

Janos couldn’t pick it up. He wanted it, but he couldn’t pick it up. His father had called him a dog and that was what he felt like, a blue-eyed dog.

“Pick it up.”

“No.”

His father felled him to the ground with one blow. He picked the filler up.

When they got home his mother was burning a strip of red cloth in the stove. She looked up and asked, “Well?” and then she jabbed hard at the red cloth with a piece of stick until it took light and vanished.

“All well. I am to have my old job back and we can stay here. He promised me Father’s place one day, overseer of the barn.”

His mother’s smile, the easing of lines on her face, was like the transformation the sun achieves on a black day. She looked so happy Janos forgave his father for the lie—not lie but exaggeration—about the threshing barn.

“We are safe then! I have burnt the.... No one need know.”

They smiled at one another and Janos was unhappy. That night the bed creaked and rustled again and he wished his father had never come home.

His father went to work in the granary, and his mother began to have children, girl children. Grandmother nursed them while his mother hoed their strip and tended the pig and the chickens. Every day six eggs had to go up to the farmhouse, and once a week his mother took what eggs were left and walked three miles to the market to sell or barter them. The girl children took what little leisure his mother had left, and now she had no time to tell him the stories she had gleaned from the Kaldy house, no time to tell him about the world according to her interpretation, no time to draw letters in the earth with a stick and tell him that once he had mastered them he would be able to read for himself.

He had his work to do, fetching water, picking caterpillars from the crops, husking maize, but when these tasks were done there was still time left and he wandered away in search of company—and the nearest company was the Boros family. He was fascinated by them. Their room was dirty and they ate (not often but they did eat sometimes) from bowls without spoons or knives. They didn’t even sit at a table to eat because there was no table. The women sat on the bed and the men took their food outside to eat from the carts. The children just squatted where they were. At first appalled, later envious, he saw that the Boros children were allowed to do many things that he was not. They spat and blew their noses on the ground. They did not wash at all when the weather was cold, and not very much when the weather was warm. They gambled, imitating the young men playing for money on Sundays, only they used pebbles instead of
filler.
And they swore—how they swore!—rich, earthy epithets that shocked and thrilled him. It was the swearing that finally led to his downfall. The baby was in his charge and she was crying, crying, crying. He rocked her and patted her the way Grandmother did and finally—because he resented having to watch her when he wanted to play with the Boros boys—he became irritated and called her “the poxy mother of a whorehound,” a phrase he did not really understand but which relieved his feelings because he knew it was coarse. His mother, entering the room at that moment, was suddenly still. She didn’t beat him, but her face was sad and her shoulders, already tired from the day’s work, slumped a little more.

“Why did you say those things, my son?” she asked.

He stammered some reply about the Boros boys, his face red, knowing he had done wrong. His mother sat down. She was expecting another child—he knew how to tell now—and as she pushed her legs out in front of her he saw that her ankles were thick and puffy.

“This is my fault,” she said, speaking quietly to herself. “I have allowed the family to slip back, and this is my punishment.”

“I’m sorry, Mother.” He wanted to cry.

“It is time you were at school; that is my error. Tomorrow I go to see the schoolmaster. You will come with me.”

He had looked forward to going to school, but now it was tinged with unpleasantness. Instead of the exciting world his mother had promised him it was to be a punishment because he had sworn at the baby.

That night his father thrashed him and the next morning his mother asked permission of Mr. Adam to walk the three miles into the village and see the schoolmaster. Mr. Feher was fierce and large and barked questions at Janos: how old was he, how many maize heads could he husk in an hour, could he pick beans, and so on. Mother stood, humble and quiet, knowing her place before this man of learning. She was aware of their good fortune in that the farm children were allowed to attend the village school. Many farms had their own classes, but the Kaldys did not have sufficient farm servants to warrant a
puszta
school and an arrangement had been reached with Mr. Feher in the village. To go to school in the village, to mix with the children of sophisticated families, some of whom had small portions of land of their own, this was honour indeed.

On the way back from the school he began to notice the village, and for the second time in his life he observed that not everyone lived as he lived. The houses were different, spaced apart, and some were big and some small. Each house had its own vine trained along the portico and there were grapes hanging, all belonging—so his mother said—not to Mr. Adam but to the people themselves. The chickens in the yards were fatter. There were as many as three pigs to a house, and two houses had cows. And the people, so many! So many it was frightening. They were fatter than the farm servants. There was a shop too, a shop with a glass window that he was afraid but compelled to look at. It was a bakery, full of confections—cakes and creams and loaves which seemed unreal.

“Is it a picture, Mother?”

“No, Janos, it is a bakery, where people buy food to eat.”

They watched, saw a boy enter, select a confection, pay, and leave. As he walked along the road he bit into the food, and cherries welled out of the side of the dough. Janos swallowed. Beside him he heard his mother’s stomach rumble.

“Come, my son, we must go home. We can tell Grandmother what we have seen.”

They began the long walk back to the farm and were still on the village road when a frightening, repetitive noise jerked them into the brush at the side. An incredible contraption was coming towards them, a coach without horses, a coach that rattled and banged and was covered in brass.

“A motorcar!” breathed his mother reverently. “A motorcar, and with the young Ferenc ladies inside. Bow, Janos!”

Janos bowed, his mother curtsied. She was still graceful, in spite of her swollen legs and the heavy stomach. The people in the coach didn’t see them. No, one person did see them; a boy with black curly hair stared out and raised a hand in lofty salutation.

“There!” His mother smiled, a radiant, excited smile, the same smile she wore when speaking of her time at the Kaldy house. “We have seen so much, Janos! A bakery, and a motorcar, and the young Ferenc ladies! So much!”

She took his hand and he was happy. She was his mother again, the way she had been during the war. On the long walk back they sang together, the old songs of the country people, and he picked her a bunch of wild scabious to wear in her kerchief, “flowers the same colour as our eyes, Mother!”

At home the baby was crying and there was no flour left. It was nearly quarter day when Mr. Adam would allocate the next payment of grain, but the Martons, like all the other families, could not make their grain last three months however hard they tried. They had turnip soup for supper, and his father was angry because the trip to the village had meant that no work had been done on their strip. He shouted at Janos and then stumped away to the stables to talk to the men. Janos wished his father had never come home.

Suddenly the farm was seething with rumours and counter-rumours. There was to be a party, a wedding party for his honour, Mr. Felix, who was to marry the daughter of the Racs-Rassay family. A big wedding! And after the wedding the manor house was to be reopened and the old madame was to retire there with her son and daughter-in-law. Madame Kaldy and Mr. Felix were distant and lofty figures; even though the women said that Madame Kaldy had worked on her own land during the war, she was still lofty and distant. She and her son were real gentry. Mr. Adam was gentry too, but he was different because he was also the farm manager. The fact that he ran the farm and knew about crops and animals removed some of the aristocratic aura from him. Rumour had it that the wedding of his honour, Mr. Felix, was to be celebrated with a party at the Racs-Rassay villa, a party to which the workers on the two estates would be invited.

Speculation, incredulity, cynicism, and faith wrestled with each other until the matter was finally decided with the arrival of a carter from the Racs-Rassay estate who had brought seed for Mr. Adam. It was true, said the carter. There was to be food and drink and dancing for anyone who could get to the villa. More speculation, this time as to the quantity of the food and drink, what would be served, and who would be able to eat the most. The men looked out their wedding jackets and best hats. The women took their black dresses from chests which had stored the selfsame garments for three or four generations. A little exchanging was done—someone’s grandmother had been taller than her granddaughter; this one was bigger at the waist and could be lent to a girl just pregnant whose own dress wouldn’t fit her. For days the women of the farm slipped in and out of the Marton room—“Just a favour, Edina. My mother’s old dress, it is too tight here, too loose there, the sleeve is torn”—and his mother stitched and sewed and was somehow happy even though she had too much work to do.