Csardas (59 page)

He didn’t go home that summer. He managed to get a job doing a few translations for a press agency, French, English, and Hungarian. The agency was run by a middle-aged Jew called Heinlein whose obsession, to the point of paranoia, was hatred of Hitler’s propaganda paper, the
Völkische Beobachter.
At least once every week he would get Leo to translate a section of the paper into French, Hungarian, and English, together with an editorial written by himself. Whether or not the editorials were ever used Leo did not know. He found the pieces he was forced to translate so crudely and blatantly anti-Semitic, so over-dramatic, that he didn’t see how anyone could take them seriously. He dismissed Herr Heinlein’s fanatical opposition to the paper as the obsession of an unhappy Jew whose own journalistic career had ended in a second-rate translation agency. As he explained to Hanna, no one of any intelligence could possibly take the screaming editorials of
Völkische Beobachter
as anything but cheap journalism, appealing to just a few illiterate thugs, the thugs who had beaten him up in March. He was shocked and slightly alarmed when, in the September elections, Hitler’s party returned 107 seats to the Reichstag. How could so many people vote for a party that was unbalanced and had no economic policy at all? The following week at a meeting of the Red Student Group he got up, for the first time in his career, and made what he considered to be a rather well-planned speech on the best way to educate people against Nazism. He received moderate but well-selected applause and was feeling pleased with himself with the door burst open again and in came the S.A. again.

His group were more prepared this time. They had formed a fighting unit of their own, armed with truncheons and staves. This time he came out of it with no more than a black eye, and that night he and Hanna bought a bottle of wine and celebrated what they decided was their anniversary. The S.A. had brought her to his bed in the first place, he remarked wryly; therefore this second attack could be considered a sentimental reminder of a happy occasion.

The ripples from the Wall Street crash spread wider and more devastatingly. On May 31, 1931, the Kreditanstalt, Austria’s largest bank, collapsed and, like current travelling along a wire, sent disaster to the German banks and thence to the Hungarian. A panic—controlled, but still a panic—spread through the financial quarters of Budapest. When he arrived at the Pannonia apartment on his way home that summer it was to learn of disastrous family news. David Klein broke it to him, quietly and with a distant restraint, as though the catastrophe was an inconvenience that had occurred on the other side of the world.

“I am telling you, Leo,” he said softly, “because your father is still a very proud man. Once before he failed his family—or considered he had failed them—by his financial losses. This time he is older and not so resilient. I think if he has to tell you himself it will break him.”

“But what—how—what will he live on? He and Mama, and Jozsef too; Jozsef works for the bank. What will Jozsef do for a living?”

“We can salvage a little. By some judicious... rearrangement we can preserve your father’s interest in the bank and protect Jozsef’s position there. Amalia and I will be giving up this apartment.”

“Giving up the apartment! But why?”

Malie, who had said nothing until now, moved across the room and placed her hand on David’s shoulder. She didn’t look shocked or strained, not as strained as David did. She looked, extraordinarily enough, contented and cherished.

“We are going back home, Leo. We shall live near Papa and Mama. David—” She smiled down at her husband’s head and then raised her hand and stroked his hair in a gesture so affectionate that Leo suddenly felt his throat constrict and a longing for Hanna, for the comfort and affection she gave, swept over him. “David has come to Papa’s rescue again. He thinks he can manage to ease Papa’s situation if we give up this apartment and reinvest in the town.”

“But—but surely,” stuttered Leo, “your business is here, in Budapest. Surely—”

David smiled, a rather wry, self-deprecating smile. “I’m afraid that I too have sustained losses, Leo. Large ones. You look surprised? Yes, well, I was aware that for many years you all looked upon me as the financial genius of the family, but I am afraid that your genius has betrayed you. Most of my international investments have crashed, and my interests here in Budapest have only just survived. What, at the moment, seems to be unimpaired is the money I spent twelve years ago to save your father. I invested heavily in the town’s factories and steelworks.” He raised a quizzical eyebrow. “My altruism has been rewarded.”

“But why go back? You know you will hate it. You and Malie, in a provincial town? Oh, no, you will hate it!”

David frowned. “Many things are happening that people hate, Leo. People will hate being unemployed, will hate to starve because they have no work. We are fortunate because we can still live in some kind of comfort.”

“But surely—all right, so you cannot afford to keep this apartment, but there are less expensive places in Budapest.”

“The reason we are returning, Leo, is because David is good and generous and kind,” Malie said very loudly. “If we sell this apartment we can buy Papa’s house—he must sell it to someone—and he and Mama can remain there. We shall turn it into two apartments; it is far too big now anyway. We shall live in one, and Papa and Mama can remain at their old address. Remember how Mama was always so adamant about a permanent address?” She smiled a little. “With what David can save for Papa, and with our own financial interests in the town still reasonably intact, we shall be able to see that they live in not too changed a manner.”

“I see.” He was beginning to see a great deal, chiefly that David Klein, who appeared to be no more than a worldly wise sophisticate, was doing more for his father-in-law than could possibly be expected of him. He was doing more—far more—than Zsigmond Ferenc’s own sons were able to do.

“Why are you doing all this, David?” he asked quietly. “Why are you going to live in a provincial town that you will hate, merely in order to save my father’s pride?”

“Because they are my family. Because your father is also the father of my beloved wife.”

The longing for Hanna struck him afresh, and the longing brought loneliness; even if Hanna were here, their relationship wouldn’t be like that of the two people in front of him. He was envious and his sense of isolation grew. He felt he had no one in the world to whom he could reach out. He used to cry for Malie when he was a little boy, but now Malie, even though she still loved him, was welded into intimacy with this gentle, sardonic, good man. One can only give completely to one person, he reflected, and Malie’s being was given to David. She wasn’t “his” Malie any more.

“There’s one more thing, Leo,” she continued softly. “The farm. The farm has to go.”

“Oh, no!”

“We have no choice, darling. But it will not be too bad. There is still Eva and Adam’s farm; we can go there, any of us, whenever we wish, and you always liked it there with Adam. You spent a long time with them when you were ill; you were very happy there. You can always go there again.”

She spoke calmly, but he knew that of all the losses this one would hurt her most. She had loved the farm as much as he had.

Later, when David was absent, he spoke to her about it again. “Is there no way the farm could be saved, Malie? Is there nothing else that can be sold?”

Slowly she shook her head. “David tried. It is not possible. He knew how much I loved it, how much it meant to the family. It was the reason I married him. Did you know that, Leo?”

“I heard Jozsef mention something once.”

“Oh, that wasn’t the only reason. But he held the deeds to the farm and I couldn’t bear to let it go. So much had happened there. We were all so very young and happy at the farm. You wouldn’t remember it all, Leo; you were too young to remember how it was before the war, the picnics and parties. Eva was silly about Felix Kaldy in those days, and I—” She paused and stared out of the window, smiling a little. “I suppose I was silly too, and I suppose I wasn’t happy a lot of times. Papa was stricter then—oh, so much stricter!—but you wouldn’t remember that either.”

“Yes, I do,” he said quickly. “I remember the day when war broke out and Papa came and you were with Karoly.”

She turned away from the window and looked at him. “How strange you should remember that. You were such a little boy then.”

He remembered, and now, because he was grown up himself and in love and concerned about the person he was in love with, he asked, “Was it very bad, Malie? When Karoly was killed, was it very bad?”

She nodded. “Oh, yes, Leo, it was bad. It’s always bad losing someone you love.”

“How could you bear to marry someone else then?” he blurted out. “I don’t understand. If you loved Karoly then, how can you be so happy with David now?”

She smiled, a little wistfully.”I didn’t love him at first, but he was kind, and he held the deed to the farm, and I didn’t know what else to do with my life. Karoly was dead and I knew I would never fall in love like that again. But when you live with someone every day, and grow to know them, then something happens to you. One day I found that because I lived with David and shared his friends and tastes and life, I was happy with him. You’ll understand when you live with someone, Leo. You’ll understand how living with someone is nothing to do with falling in love.”

He nearly told her then—about Hanna. Sometime, soon, he was going to have to tell the family about Hanna because he had one more year at university and at the end of that time he couldn’t possibly leave her. He had fully intended this summer to break the news to the family that he was “engaged.” He had prepared himself to withstand the family’s shock when they learned that a Ferenc son was going to marry the daughter of an unemployed German shipyard labourer, but the financial disaster blocked his efforts. How could he say he wanted to get married—to anyone—when he hadn’t even begun to earn his own living?

Papa, over sixty now and trying to hide his humiliation behind coldness and disapproval, had an embarrassing talk with him.

“I had hoped, Leo, when your studies were finished, that David and I would be able to find a niche for you in one or another of the businesses. Literature and languages—well, you know how disappointed I was when you elected to read those subjects instead of something a little more useful, but nonetheless I hoped we might find something for you to do. However”—he looked tormented for a moment—“at this time I can see no prospects for you. I can just manage to see you complete your course, but that is all.”

“That’s fine, Papa.” He wanted to say that nothing on earth would have dragged him into the family combine. Long ago he had decided he didn’t want to join the comfortable, dull, financial set-up in which they all lived.

“In fact, Papa, I already have a job in Berlin, translating for a press agency. I can manage without my allowance next year.”

The relief on Papa’s face was obvious, even though he tried to hide it. “Are you sure?”

“Quite sure.” And why did he not tell Papa his reasons for refusing the allowance? He had decided on this course of action before he knew anything of the financial crash. Why did he not tell Papa that his new principles forbade him to accept bourgeois money that had been earned at the expense of others? He had rehearsed his speech all the way home from Berlin but now, hypocrite that he was, he let Papa think he was refusing the money for the sake of the family.

“We will do everything we can to help you find a position when you’ve finished in Berlin. But it’s very difficult now, so little work available—”

“That’s all right, Papa. I’ll manage.”

They were all so small, so wrapped up in their tiny lives (Mama crying over her diminished dress allowance!) that he wanted to shake them, make them wake up and see what was happening in the world. He longed to shout, “Look at me! I’ve been living with a girl whose father is a labourer and I’ve been in prison and I’ve been beaten up by S.A. men at Communist meetings!” He still wasn’t a Communist yet, not officially. The memory of Uncle Sandor hovered at the back of his soul.

He wandered like a miserable estranged being through the summer, writing long letters to Hanna and finally accepting Eva and Adam’s invitation to go to the country.

Adam too was concerned about economy. He hadn’t been hit like David, but he was anxious and worried about produce prices and also about the fact that his pepper crop had failed. He was short-tempered with the farm servants and irritable with his wife and children, even Terez, who could usually charm him into humour.

On the morning that the overseer of the granary came and told him several sacks were missing, Leo, for the first time, saw his brother-in-law lose his temper.

“Again? Haven’t we stopped that yet? It’s enough. I’ve been lenient long enough. Get the
pandur
and we’ll settle this question of stealing the way it should have been settled long ago.”

“It must be the granary workers, excellency,” the overseer said, afraid of the wrath he had unleashed.

“Of course it is, you fool! How many in the granary these last months?”

“Two men, excellency, Dezso and Marton.”

“Well, which of them is it?”

“I think Marton, excellency. He has a son away at school, and they sell all their food to send money to him. And yet they do not starve.”

“Fetch the
pandur.
Leo, you come with me.”

“I don’t—”

“Come with me! If an example is going to be made, it must be done with a show of authority. You will come with me!”

He knew before they even started for the farm cottage that the boy was going to be there; he felt it in his blood and bones. Janos was a constant reproach in his life, but a reproach for what? He hated that thin blue-eyed boy, hated him as much as it was possible to hate a human being. At each profound moment of his life it seemed that Janos Marton stared at him, making him ashamed of what he was, what he could not help being.

It was as he thought. When they walked into the Marton hut the boy was there, standing defiantly by the bed in the corner where his mother lay.