Csardas (80 page)

“Come, Ferenc. We must hurry if you are to get home before curfew.”

He led the way to a tall apartment block. The top floors were gutted and open to the sky, but the ground floor was still whole and weatherproof. The windows were boarded up and the brickwork was pitted and scarred with shrapnel wounds. Janos knocked quietly on the door and Leo heard a chain and bolt being drawn back. The door opened and a thin, brown-eyed face came into view, a face made sallow from months of hiding in cellars and attics but a dear, beloved face that was home and family and memories of a life that had died centuries ago.

“Nicholas! My boy! My dear good boy! Oh, God! You’re safe! One person... safe!”

“Uncle Leo.” The thin, nervous face crumpled and began to cry. “Uncle Leo, Uncle Leo!” Caught in each other’s arms, gripping each other because they were the only two left. “Where’s my mama? Is she safe? Have you heard anything about my mama? Nobody in the town knows anything. Janos asked. Do you know where they are? What happened to them when the Gestapo—?” His thin, leggy frame began to shake. He had grown tall in captivity, tall and white like a hidden plant. Sobs racked his body and over his head Leo’s eyes met those of Janos Marton. “They’re all dead, aren’t they, Uncle Leo? They’re all dead?”

Leo suddenly pushed the boy away and turned into the wall, his hands over his face. He had buried the knowledge of his family’s obliteration as best he could, but Nicholas’s raw emotion was about to unhinge him.

“Perhaps they are dead. Perhaps your mama is dead,” said the cool voice of Janos Marton, “but perhaps they are not. And now, young Nicholas, you have one person of your own back. It is not your mama—no, not your mama—but you have someone. Now you can come out of hiding and go and live with your Uncle Leo.”

The boy brushed his hand across his face and then smiled, the beautiful smile that had lit his face when he was a child, the smile that reminded Leo of Terez. Terez—where was Terez?

“Where—what happened to you, Nicholas? Why weren’t you taken with the others?”

The brown eyes glazed over, a nervous tic began just under the left one.

“I came back from school and I saw the truck—and the Gestapo—driving away. And I ran all the way to Grandma Ferenc’s house. I thought if I told Malie she would know what to do; she would know where they were taking Mama and know where I could find her. But before I got there the truck passed me again and... they were all in it. Mama saw me—I’m sure she saw me because she shook her head, very very slightly—and then the truck was gone. I ran after it but it was gone.” Tears ran down the sallow features. Nicholas had been such a beautiful child and now he looked like everyone else who had survived the war.

“I dared not go back to school, so I ran and hid near the steelworks. The houses there had no locks on the gates and I hid in one of the yards for two nights. And then I saw Janos, in the morning, and I remembered him because we had gone to see him, Mama and Aunt Malie and I.” His face screwed up again. “Where is my mama, Uncle Leo? What have they done to them?”

“I kept him hidden in my apartment for a few days.” The voice of Janos Marton was cool, sensible, the voice of reason amidst too much emotion. “Then it became dangerous. I was not—unknown to the authorities. There was never any proof, but it was not safe. He came here, in the attic until it was bombed, and then in the cellar. An old woman, dead now, whom I could trust; she helped. I brought food, books. He survived, as you see.”

Survived. One infinitely precious person, son of his cousin, blood of his blood, Cousin Kati’s bastard child—family, someone against whom he could measure himself. He was Uncle Leo again. He had a place and he had a pale, underfed youth to care for. He wanted to hold the boy in his arms, be reassured of a presence, a survivor, someone who should be loved.

“You’re thin, boy,” he said hoarsely, “thin and pale, but we’ll soon get you well again.” They stared at each other, held together by all the faces that were not there, a tiny lost oasis of family on a bombsite. “Come, Nicky, let’s go before the curfew.”

Nicholas turned and, to Leo’s astonishment, put his arms round Janos Marton. “Can I come and see you, Janos? Tomorrow? And you’ll come to see us?” His voice had the desperation of someone clinging to the small fragments of a familiar world. He had two people left, and he needed them both. Marton hugged the boy back and then softly made a fist to his face. “You’ll see me, Nicky. Don’t worry. You can come tomorrow. Perhaps you can help with some paper work. Go along now.”

Leo found he could not speak. He should feel gratitude to Marton for saving the life of his family, his minute family. But the debt was too great. He could think only of Nicholas—his child now, all that was left.

“I—”

“That’s all right. Go now.” The blue eyes glittered, not with tears but with some deeper emotion that Leo didn’t try to understand. He placed his arm round Nicky and propelled him through the yard, looking back once to see Janos Marton watching them, solitary, lonely. Leo had a curious sensation of guilt, as though he were stealing Nicky from him.

“We must hurry, Nicky.” They began to trot over the wet cobbles. After the curfew the Russians shot anyone they saw. Nicky was clinging to his arm and he felt the thin body trembling against him. “Are you all right?”

The boy nodded, too breathless to speak, and Leo realized that he was not only unwell but also afraid of the streets. He had been in hiding for so long he was nervous of sky and spaces. A lump formed in Leo’s chest and with it a determination to get the boy well again. I can get black-market rations. There must be some things left in the upstairs apartment I can sell. If I can buy good food—some meat and butter, perhaps—he’ll soon grow well again.

They reached his apartment, the apartment of an Arrow Cross man who had fled before the Russians, three minutes before curfew. Nicholas stared up at the house, confusion registering on his face.

“Aren’t we going home, Uncle Leo?”

“This is home for me, Nicholas. The other house—the old house—it’s empty, and Grandpa Ferenc’s apartment has been ransacked. It’s better here.”

“But that’s where they’d come, Uncle Leo! Mama and Aunt Malie and all of them. That’s where they’d come. We should go there in case they return and find it empty. We should be there with food and a fire. We should put a light in the window so they know we are there. We—” Leo led the weeping boy through the door and closed it behind him.

Nicholas’s words prevailed. It was foolish to hope that any of them would come back—but if they did, the boy was right. They would go to the old house. He spent several weeks making up his mind, weeks in which he adapted his life to sharing with a fifteen-year-old boy. Together they worked out a new pattern of living, dividing the tasks of queuing for food and keeping their clothes as clean as possible and their bodies as warm as the lack of fuel permitted. Nicholas had been very quiet for the first few days, and then had begun his two recurring themes, their return to the old house and the sayings of Janos Marton. A dozen times a day his sentences began with “Janos says” and “Janos believes,” and although it was natural—so Leo consoled himself—because Janos Marton had been the only human contact Nicky had had for several months, he became increasingly tired and resentful of Janos’s place in his nephew’s life.

But Nicky’s other concern made sense.

The Russians were moving swiftly over the land now. Budapest was taken in January, and as the spring advanced more and more territory was “liberated.” Great sections of the population that had been displaced by the vagaries of war began to drift back to old and familiar haunts. It was difficult not to hope, and with hope came an urge to go back to the old house, to prepare a welcome for anyone who might arrive.

They cleaned out the yard that had been used as a latrine and they washed the stairs and the floors of the upstairs apartment, Malie and David’s apartment. Leo had sold what could be sold for winter food, but there were beds and carpets, chairs and cooking utensils. He even managed to find some unbroken glass which, inexpertly, he put into one of the drawing-room windows. The light streaming into the familiar room gave them a fleeting confidence. Some of them will come back—surely some of them will come back?

It was impossible to travel without the blessing of the Soviet army or some kind of official permission. There were no trains or buses, no postal service or telephones, but in March a miracle happened. They received a letter. The letter was delivered by a huge grinning Cossack who waved it in Leo’s face and then asked for payment. The sight of Adam’s handwriting induced such delirium in Leo that he let the soldier come in and pick what he wanted: an evening coat of Malie’s, a cuckoo clock, and three bottles of wine from Papa Ferenc’s cellar that had somehow been missed during the looting. There was little else to take that could be carried but the Cossack ambled off, seemingly content. The letter, devoured in the light from the single window, spread the family net wider, made them three instead of two.

Dear Leo and Nicholas,

The local committee visited me today to assess my land and, unwelcome as they were, they brought news of you that made me forget their purpose and rejoice. I feared it might be a rumour and no more than that—God knows the world is full of rumours at the moment—but I think it cannot be. You are on the District Committee, Leo, and editing the town’s paper. These details were so prosaic I knew they must be true. They said also that Nicholas was with you. Thank God, my dear, dear friends! You cannot know what this news has meant to me, for if you have survived then perhaps so have others. The knowledge of your safety gives me hope again. I know no details of your survival, only that you are there. It is enough. Please God my beloved wife and children are alive and will come home soon! Your family too, my dearest friends! I try not to think of what the Germans have done—surely some of them have survived.

I will tell you what little there is to tell of myself. Felix and my mother are dead. I have 100
hold
of land and the rest has been distributed to the peasants. This you know, of course, Leo, and I do not wish to enter into discussion upon the subject with you. But I have one thing to say—what use is the Kaldy land to the peasants when the trees have been felled for firewood, when every animal has been stolen, when the seed grain has been eaten, and when the Russians are using the old manor as their headquarters? My 100
hold
are as useless as everyone else’s and this coming year will see famine in our barren land. God help us all.

News of my family. Eva and the children escaped just before the Gestapo came, but now they are lost to me. They moved west before the Russian advance and I cling to the need that they must be safe—they must be safe. The last time I had news of them, they were with the sister of Janos Marton outside Magyarovar.

Leo, I think if they return it will be to you—to the old family house. I hear that sometimes, where the Russians feel so disposed, they will send back a convoy of refugees and deposit them at some central point. This is the only hope for them until we are allowed to travel again. If they come I beg you to use your influence as a Party man and try to get a message to me.

One of the committee men has agreed to take this letter part of the way in return for a bag of flour. I have told him that whoever delivers it will be rewarded lavishly and can only hope you have something that will fit that description. Take heart, my dear friends, for if some of us are still alive then others will be. The war is over and nothing matters—not our differences in ideas, nor the decimation of our land—except that those we love will return to us. Give me news as soon as you can, Leo, and take good care of our beloved cousin, Nicholas Rassay.

Adam

“You see, Uncle Leo, we were right to come back! Otherwise we would not have received the letter. And Uncle Adam says himself that they will come here. They will come back soon, Uncle Leo. They will, won’t they?”

His face was alive, smiling and excited. Leo was suddenly overwhelmed with depression. They both hoped, prayed and hoped, but Leo knew that the hope was thin. The family were not going to return. Inevitably Nicky’s faith was going to be destroyed, his grief was going to be twice as shattering, because he still believed his mama—and all of them—would come back.

“Nicky,” he said tonelessly, “you are fifteen. At fifteen there are some things it is difficult to accept. You still believe that if you want something badly enough you can have it. At fifteen you cannot that believe God could be so cruel as to take your mama when you have done nothing to deserve it.”

The pallid face with the huge brown eyes was anguished, determined not to listen.

“Nicky, we must both try to accept that they are gone—all of them. It is finished. There is just you and me and Uncle Adam.”

“No!”

“Yes, Nicky. What you do with your life from now on must be for the future, a future in which the only family you will have will be me and Uncle Adam, no one else. You understand?”

“I don’t believe you!” He jerked round and ran across the room. “I don’t believe you!”

“Where are you going, Nicholas?”

“To see Janos, my friend Janos!” He was fumbling at the door, trying to grasp and turn the handle. It never had opened properly; Leo could remember Malie’s having trouble with that door. “Janos won’t tell me lies like that! Janos won’t say those things... those terrible things!”

He went, and Leo sat looking down at the letter in his lap. He could tell Nicky that he must not hope. Surely he should tell himself the same thing, make himself accept the loss of all of them. He didn’t want to think about it and so he clung to the one point of positive energy that coursed through his brain, an increasing and jealous resentment of Janos Marton.

When he heard Nicky’s feet on the stairs outside his room he experienced, as he always did when the boy came, a soft implosion of pleasure. Emotional reaction, quickly brought under control, shrank into a tiny pinpoint of something that was warm and yet at the same time painful. He recognized the pain, a fragment of an old and much larger sensation. It was the pain of loving someone. He had learned to master it years ago.