Csardas (63 page)

“I’m sorry, Malie,” he said finally.

His sister sighed. “When I was very young I used to long for us all to grow up,” she said tiredly. “I grew so weary of Eva’s temper and I thought that when she grew up it would all go away. Alas, it is worse.” She smiled a little wryly. “I hope you have not inherited that temper, Leo.”

“No.” He paced moodily across to the window, then came back and flung himself onto the couch. “No. It was my fault as much as Eva’s. But she does seem sharper than she used to be. I don’t remember Eva always being so... so sour.”

“It has something to do with Felix, I think. Remember what great friends they used to be, how funny and gay they were together? And then Eva became pregnant and for some curious reason Felix changed towards her. I suppose he was jealous and resentful, anxious in case his mother diverted some of her attention to her grandchildren. Have you never noticed how he and Eva still joke and talk but how spiteful it all is?”

“I do hope she’s going to be nice to Hanna. She’s not going to be sharp with Hanna, is she?”

Malie chuckled. “What an old mother hen you are, Leo. One would think that no one ever brought a girl home to meet his family before. Now just relax.”

He tried. He tried his very best in the days that followed to behave naturally, both with his family and with Hanna. He realized how much Berlin had changed him. He was two people, the boy who had grown up in this comfortable middle-class home and the man who had lived with Hanna in Berlin. He found it difficult to fuse the two. It was made more difficult because of the charade that he and Hanna had to enact. Each evening she went upstairs to her virginal room in David and Malie’s apartment and the separation drove a gap between them. She grew prim and even more silent, and as Hanna withdrew into herself the family became more positively gracious, as though they were saying, Look how hard we are trying to like your young woman. Even though she is not responding, just look how charming we all are.

Even Papa was checking his disapproval. David Klein had obviously spoken to him, asking him to control his resentment and remember the changing times. But with all that, with Papa’s control and Malie’s warmth, with Jozsef’s genial acceptance and Eva’s heavy attempts at friendship, it was obvious that the visit wasn’t working. And it was obvious, even to Leo, that the barrier, the stiffness, was mostly Hanna’s.

Strangely, the only person she seemed to relax with was Mama. Silly garrulous Mama and carefully controlled Hanna—it was an incongruous relationship, but the only time Hanna smiled was when Mama was prattling on about clothes and about her girlhood in Vienna.

At the end of two weeks Hanna said she thought she would return to Berlin. He was stunned.

“I know it’s difficult for you, Hanna, but couldn’t you try a little longer? I’m sorry about Papa, but he really is trying hard to be pleasant and it is very difficult for him. He is old-fashioned and—”

“I think it’s better I return to Berlin,” she said, not looking at him. “If I go now I shall be able to return to the office. I will get a smaller room and wait for you to send for me.”

“Hanna, you don’t have to spend the whole summer here. We hadn’t planned it that way. We could go to Eva’s farm in the mountains. It’s beautiful up there and you’d love it. We could ride and walk and lie out in the sun—lie out on our own somewhere.” He tried to pull her close to him, but she was stiff and unyielding.

“It’s no good, Leo. I’ll go back to Berlin.”

Her face was pinched, her mouth seemed even smaller than usual. Beneath her cream cotton dress her neat little body was taut. He realized that for several days the strain between them had been so great he hadn’t even wanted to make love to her.

“You know I don’t care what they think. You know that, don’t you, Hanna?”

“Your family are very important to you. Otherwise why are we doing all this?”

“They’re important, yes. But I am not prepared to risk losing you, and if you are not happy with them, if you think you can never be happy with them, then you need never meet them again. We shall live in Budapest or wherever I can find employment—and we will begin together, two people without families.”

“Oh, Leo!” For a moment he thought she was going to capitulate, but then she drew a deep breath and stiffened her body against him. “I’m sorry. I’m confused and disturbed. It was all so simple in Berlin and I think if I go back there I shall be able to sort everything out... about your family.”

“It will be simple when we are married,” he insisted. “All right, go back if you must. But don’t go back to worry about my family. Just remember that once we are married there will be only the two of us, no one else, and then it will be just the way it was in Berlin.”

He tried once more to persuade her; then, when he could see the tension and constraint in her, he ceased to plead. He tried not to notice how relieved the family were, and then he took her to the station to bid her a miserable farewell. Just before the train pulled out he had a brief glimpse of the old Hanna. Her eyes filled with tears and, standing on the step of the train, she said suddenly, “We were so happy, weren’t we, Leo? In Berlin we were so happy.”

“We will be again! I promise you, we will be again.” And then the train began to move and she stepped up and vanished into the corridor, appearing once more, just briefly, at a carriage window before the train pulled away. He walked back home feeling more despondent than he had for a long time, but also determined to find work as quickly as possible so that he could send for Hanna and be happy again.

The slump began to hit him for the first time. Until now it had been a vague threat lying somewhere in the future; now it was the barrier that kept him apart from Hanna. He wrote to every publisher, every newspaper, every press agency in Budapest, sending clippings of his work for Mr. Heinlein and references from a variety of sources in Berlin. Most of them didn’t even bother to answer. He applied for a post as teacher at any number of grammar schools and was told that there were experienced teachers who were looking for work. He realized how useless a qualification in literature was, although he took comfort from the fact that students of science and economics and mathematics were having just as difficult a time as he was. In desperation he even put his name forward for a position in government administration—although he didn’t know how he was going to bear working in a government office—and was told that his name would be added to the list of other waiting applicants.

He earned a little money that summer and autumn. He wrote a few miscellaneous pieces for the local press—nothing controversial, just critiques of plays and books. And while the summer lasted he earned a little more at coaching schoolboys in tennis. He wrote long encouraging letters to Hanna, assuring her that soon he would find a job and then she could join him and they would marry. Hanna’s letters were short and there were longer and longer intervals between them. They ceased to be intimate, and panic grew within him because his lack of work was driving her away; he knew he was going to lose her if he didn’t find something soon. In December, although he wrote several times, she didn’t answer him. He looked for a letter every day, but December slid into January and there was still no news from her. He began to wonder if she was all right, if the hideous year of elections and street fighting had somehow claimed Hanna as a victim; the figures were growing increasingly frightening in the papers. Finally, in February, he swallowed his pride and asked Papa if he could borrow a little money for his fare to Berlin. His anxiety was now so acute he knew he had to go and see her and find out exactly what was wrong. He had a little cash saved from the coaching and from a recent article on a visiting violinist. Grudgingly Papa gave him the balance of the money.

On the morning that he was about to depart, he received two letters with Berlin postmarks. One was typewritten; the other was addressed in Hanna’s neat script and he tore her envelope open first, his hands shaking a little.

Dear Leo,

This is the most horrible letter I have ever had to write. It is horrible because I know it is going to hurt you, and it is also horrible because I have to confess to something in my character which is shameful, I don’t think you will ever understand—or perhaps, remembering those years in Berlin, you will understand a little and just be shocked that the girl you thought so highly of could be like everyone else.

Leo, I know you thought I shared all your beliefs, all your ideals. I thought I did too and I was so proud when you fought the fascists and defended Mr. Heinlein outside the agency. I was proud, not only of you, but of myself because through you I was part of everything you were fighting for. I used to lie beside you at night unable to believe how lucky I was, that I, Hanna Weiss, the daughter of a shipyard labourer, should be loved by a man of your background who was also an idealist. I knew you came from a wealthy family, but it really didn’t matter to you. You didn’t care about it at all and it made no difference to you that I was who I was.

I was so frightened of meeting your family. You spoke of them so little and yet I knew the kind of people they were. I used to see them when I was a child in Hamburg, people with cars and houses and good clothes. I was so afraid when I came to Hungary and then—oh, Leo! why did you never tell me you were Jewish? Why did you keep it a secret? If ony I had known before, right at the beginning, everything might have been all right. I tried not to let it make any difference. It
shouldn’t
make any difference, but it does. I don’t ask you to forgive me, or even understand why I was so shocked when I realized (it was your brother-in-law, David Klein, he looked so Jewish, and then I asked your mother about how she met your father and she told me the whole family history). Right from a child I have been taught that the worst thing to be in the whole world is a Jew—no, not taught it, but it was always there as though one didn’t
have
to be taught it. One didn’t play with Jews or go to their houses, and it took me years to realize that this was wrong.

I prided myself that I really had thrown off all my old prejudices and narrow attitudes, and then I came to Hungary and I was shocked, most of all with myself. Leo, I loved you. I still love you. But obviously I don’t love you enough, because when I think of leaving my family, my country, my friends, and coming to live in Hungary with a Jew, I cannot do it. That is about the ugliest way I can think of putting it, but the facts
are
ugly, the fact that I am still bigoted enough, prejudiced enough, not to be able to accept your race. In the months since I returned to Berlin I have tried every way I can to become the idealist I thought I was, the person I really want to be. I have told myself that nothing matters except that you and I love one another, but it isn’t true. I am unhappy now, but I know I would be even more unhappy if I married you, and I think I would destroy you.

I deserve to be hated, Leo. I hate myself. The only redeeming aspect I can find in this whole situation is that at least I have, from somewhere, found the courage to write the truth to you. But perhaps even that was wrong.

Please don’t answer this letter or try to contact me. I hope that God, and you, will in time forgive me.

Hanna

He began to laugh. He laughed until tears streamed down his face and when Jozsef came into the room he laughed even more, stopping only to gasp, “Did you know we were Jews, Jozsef? Did you realize that we were Jews?” Before his brother’s puzzled, anxious face his laughing continued and then faded away into a heavy silence.

He had forgotten the other letter. He discovered it the following day tucked beneath the clock where Marie had placed it. It was a short, terse communication from Mr. Heinlein.

The report he had written more than eighteen months ago had just been syndicated by an American, English, and French press group. Adolf Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor had produced a flurry of retrospective interest in his political growth. The article, lying fallow all these months, had become a piece of historical news, and Mr. Heinlein listed the papers in which it would appear. They were impressive. So was the cheque that accompanied the letter. It was enough to take him to Budapest and keep him there while he looked for a job.

In every family there is one child, not necessarily the most beautiful or the most intelligent, who has some magic alchemy that makes him or her the favourite and best beloved of parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins. Such a child was Terez, the daughter of Eva and Adam Kaldy.

She was able to leap straight through the prejudices, fears, and cautions of every adult in the family so that when her name was spoken an indulgent smile would spread over the face of the listener, banishing bad temper and anxiety. She was able to charm such widely diverse characters as Grandpapa Ferenc and Grandmama Kaldy. She managed to be the pampered favourite of her Aunt Malie and Uncle David, and yet her boy cousins, Karoly and Jacob, were never jealous of her. Her Uncle Jozsef always gave her a handful of
filler
whenever he saw her, and her Uncle Leo—the one she loved best—was never too busy or too tired to tell her stories and explain things that she wanted to know. She could make her silent father talk and her chattering mother be silent. She could make her Grandmama Ferenc give up an afternoon at the hairdresser just to come and play with her. And with all this, with the total of love and affection and indulgence that was heaped upon her, Terez never became precocious or greedy or complacent. She was most truly a child of love.

She had had the good fortune to inherit her mother’s looks but not her bad temper, and Marta Bogozy’s gaiety but not her fecklessness. She had also been blessed with Malie’s warmth and cursed with her sensitivity.

Of all those in the family who loved and petted her, there was just one person who didn’t like her, and as she grew older she accepted unconsciously that not only did her Uncle Felix not like her, he actively disliked her. Her first unpleasant memory of Uncle Felix was when she was very small and visiting her Grandmama Kaldy up at the manor house. When she and Mama went to visit there she knew she had to do all the right things: refrain from getting dirty, drink her milk carefully without spilling or making a guzzling noise, accept only one honey cake, and speak quietly instead of shouting as she usually did when she grew excited. She had done all these things most carefully, and was feeling tired with the effort, when the door of the drawing room opened and Uncle Felix came in. He stared at her and then laughed.