Csardas (84 page)

“Let us go,” he said to Terez. He debated asking the man to help carry George so that Terez could be relieved, but he felt he had pushed his Party card as much as he dared.

“Can you manage?” he asked her.

“What about Mama?”

“We will take George to the station, then go back for her.” Or leave her. That’s what he would like to do, leave her. She would survive—people like Eva Kaldy always did survive— by stealing the last of the food, by pushing onto a train ahead of everyone else and getting the best place, by battening on others whose consciences couldn’t quite let them abandon these useless leeches. But he had no conscience—not of that kind anyway—and he could happily desert the old trollop and let her make her own way back home.
And what would you say to young Nicky? To Terez?
his other self asked, the new emotional self that he despised.
What of these two young ones who say they are your friends? How would you face them?

As they arrived at the rail point one of the unpredictable nightmares of the war occurred—the train was already there, was about to leave. Oh, God! They should have started earlier. Every other train had taken hours to arrive. There had been hour-long—day-long!—waits, and now, when they still had to go and collect the old woman, the train, only a few hours from home, was about to depart.

“Hell!” Without realizing it he began to hurry forward, pulling the stretcher, pulling Terez behind him. “The last car is still open!” he shouted. “We can still get him in!” He loped along, right up to the train, conscious with some blanked-out part of his mind that someone was crying very quietly behind him.

“Hurry!”

“Janos, Mama. We can’t go without Mama!”

He looked over his shoulder, viewing her awkwardly against the pull of the stretcher on his shoulders.

“Please, Janos. Don’t go without Mama!”

He wanted to spit. He put the stretcher down, remembering to do it gently even in his anger. Then he turned and faced her. “There might not be another train for days!” he shouted. “We could be home by tomorrow. George may be dead by the time the next train comes!”

“Please don’t leave Mama!” Huge agonized eyes pleaded with him. She was afraid of him too, because she recognized his anger. He felt his hands trembling. He wanted to push her in, tears, protests, and all, and then bundle George up beside her. Fury exploded in his head and suddenly he found he was doing exactly that, throwing her into the open car, ignoring her feeble protests and struggling limbs.

“Janos!”

“Help me with the stretcher, damn you!” he shouted. “I’ll go back for her. You’ll have to manage as best you can; there’ll be someone at home who’ll help you off the train.” It began to move away, the stretcher only half in, and he gave a violent last push, trying not to hear George’s cry as the door slid against his side.

“Don’t hurt her!” she cried, staring out at him as they moved away. “Come as soon as you can. Don’t hurt her!”

Dirty face, filth-encrusted braids of hair, and two huge dark eyes fixed on him as the train gained speed. It was the way young Nicky had looked at him during the months of hiding. Every time he had to leave Nicky locked in the attic that same dirty, frightened face had stared at him. And he suddenly wanted to reassure her, to comfort her the way he had done when she’d clung to him in the derelict building.

He turned and spat. The train disappeared and now resentment descended upon him again. God knew how many days he was going to have to wait with that old woman before they could get home again.

They were lucky. It was only two days before another train came, but the two days were a purgatory of complaints and hysterical screaming. For now Eva had another grievance to add to all the others. Her daughter had deserted her, left her to the mercies of a brutal and sadistic peasant who swore at her and on one occasion, when she refused to get up and walk to the station (he made her go with him three or four times a day in case the fiasco of the departing train was repeated), actually pushed her. That was when she had enjoyed a bout of hysterics, screaming at him and at the Russians who had raped her. How dare he touch her! Wait until her husband heard about it; he would punish the peasant child, just as he’d punished his father! Oh, yes, she knew about that. Marton had been a thief and his son—his son was a rapist and a bully. He had abducted her daughter and son. Terez would never have left her, not her darling Terez! She’d never forgive her if she had just left her. No. That was gratitude for you: you spent your life sacrificing everything for your children and then they went off and left you.... The litany progressed.

Finally he walked out of the barn. He returned at mealtimes with food, and whenever they needed to check at the station, and every time he returned he hoped she had gone. But some hideous instinct of self-preservation in Eva made her acknowledge that this man—sadist, rapist, peasant, bully, son of a thief—was her best chance of getting home again. For some reason, no matter what she screamed at him, no matter what she said, he wouldn’t abandon her, and she was clever enough to stay where she was still his responsibility.

There was one more violent outbreak of emotion between them, when they heard at the station that a train was expected to come within the next few hours. Eva wanted to go back to the barn—which had now taken on the aspects of a cosy retreat—and sleep until it was time for departure.

“We don’t go away,” Janos snapped. “We move a little way up the line—far enough away from the station to avoid trouble—and we wait!”

“No! I cannot wait there, in a field. I shall be sick, die. Hasn’t my body been abused enough? Haven’t I suffered enough that you—you should do this to me?”

He had walked away up the track, leaving her to follow, and because she knew it was unsafe to remain alone in the station without the protection of his Party card, she had been forced to run after him, screaming abuse and finally pounding him on the back. The face he turned on her was so virulent that she had suddenly cowered away in terror. The old Eva—the clever knowing-how-to-handle-people Eva—realized that she had done something very unwise.

“Don’t touch me!” he snarled. “If you touch me I think I shall kill you!”

And from then on she remained silent, quite still throughout the long wait and the ride on the train. She didn’t think he
would
kill her, but she knew that he was prepared to leave her behind. Whatever cause had bound him to her before had now been outweighed by her behaviour. She knew she must be quiet—well, just a little whimper, a little moan from time to time, but no more screams and accusations. And after all they were on a train going home, home to Adam, who would care for her and treasure her and make up for all the dreadful things that had happened.

When they finally pulled into the station he thought he was going to choke for they were all there, had been waiting for hours ever since the rumour of the train had circulated round the town. It was something that had never happened to him before, being met by a group of people at the station—eager expectant faces turned upwards, smiles, arms outstretched, figures hurrying forward to help, to take bundles, to cry and kiss—oh, not him, but the charged atmosphere affected him as well as Eva.

Adam had somehow got down from the farm. Young Nicky had sent a message to him saying that his dear friend, Janos Marton—hero, partisan, leader of the District Committee—had gone to bring Eva and Terez and George back home, and Adam, walking most of the way, had arrived in town at the same time as Terez and George. There was an impression of great crowds, of a huge noisy family clustering round Eva when she had clambered down, but in reality there were only four and the best of these was Nicky, whose face glowed with pride because his friend, Janos Marton, had brought about this miracle.

Mr. Adam—Uncle Adam?—was crying, unashamedly crying as he clasped that nauseous greedy woman in his arms, and then, to Janos’s astonishment, he saw a complete metamorphosis take place in Eva Kaldy, a change not of character but of physical appearance. He couldn’t believe it and he watched in something akin to horror as she sloughed off the form of a fat caterpillar and turned into a butterfly. During the last nine days he had come to regard her as fat, shapeless, half-witted, and uncontrollably greedy. She had seemed fat because she never moved when she could help it and ate more than anyone else. But now the lethargic lump suddenly drew herself up and, on tiny, dainty feet, fluttered into her husband’s arms where she looked small, shapely, and incredibly helpless.

“Oh, Adam, my dearest husband!” She smiled bravely through a face of tears. “Oh, Adam! Thank God it is all over! Now we can be happy again. Now we can forget the war!”

Nothing about the Russians or the hunger or her health or the vicious peasant who had brought her home. And nothing either about the health of her son. Nothing about Terez, or young Nicky, or her brother Leo, who all stood there smiling and embracing her and talking at once.

They turned and began to troop alongside the rail, still talking, still hugging each other. Their emotion, their pride in each other, their happiness, was all enveloping, complete; they needed nothing else at this moment, although later they would begin to worry about the others who had not yet come home. And their happiness, their absorption in each other, left no room for Janos Marton.

He stared after them, standing alone with his rucksack on the ground beside him, and an old, well-remembered bitterness stirred in his heart. No. No place for bitterness now; he had rooted it out years ago as a useless and wasteful emotion. Why should they thank him? They were the kind of people who never did say thank you. They said please but not thank you. He had been asked to do something and he had done it. No one had forced him to go to Magyarovar, and therefore he could not expect thanks. He picked up the rucksack and brought his intellect to bear on the hurt within his heart.

And a few moments later, just as his intellect was winning, as cool logic was suppressing mere feeling, he heard a shout and saw two figures running back towards him, two figures that became Terez and Nicky, shouting, smiling, and then hugging his arms, one on each side.

“I knew you’d do it!” gloried Nicky. “I knew if anyone coud find them and bring them home, you could.”

No answer—there was no answer unless it be something sentimental, foolish.

“How is George?” he said to Terez.

“A little better. The fever has broken. His leg is still bad, but he is happy to be home. And so am I, Janos Marton. And I shall never forget what you have done for us.”

It was terrible! All the emotion, the gratitude, the hugging on his arms and the two faces, so alike, staring up at him, smiling, happy. He was confused, ashamed, worried, and the sheer physical contact of their bodies disturbed him.

“Good,” he said coldly. “You must ensure he rests. Presumably he will stay here, in town, until he is better?”

“I shall stay too.” She smiled. “Mama will go back to the farm and I shall stay here and look after George.”

The implosion of pleasure again. She would be here, in town, living with young Nicky and Leo Ferenc. He would see her—inevitably he would see her.

“A sensible arrangement,” he said coolly.

Terez smiled again, and he noticed she was clean. He had grown so used to her with a dirty face and hair that to see her clean and pretty was surprising. He saw, too, that although she was like Nicky, yet she was not, for her face had feminine fullness where Nicky had angles, and her eyes, now that she was happy, narrowed at the corners in a disturbing, seductive way.

“How very alike you two are,” he mused softly.

“Do you think so? I am supposed to be very like my mama.”

“You’re not a bit like your mother,” he snapped. “Not at all. In no way are you like Madame Kaldy!”

“She was pretty when she was young,” Terez invited naughtily. How quickly they recovered, the young ones. How quickly their spirits revived. She was a girl again; in spite of what the Russians had done, she was a girl.

“I would like to go home now,” he said, suddenly longing for the quiet asceticism of his room, his bed, his books, the picture of the stag on the wall.

The naughty, flirtatious girl vanished and the young woman who had carried the other end of the stretcher said quietly, “I want to thank you again, Janos Marton. I am sorry my mother made everything worse than it needed to be. She will not thank you; she has forgotten it already because it was unpleasant and my mama does not remember things that are unpleasant. Especially she does not remember when she has been unpleasant. My papa, as soon as he has recovered, will come and thank you himself. He is old-fashioned and he does not approve of you—or Uncle Leo—but he will thank you, and he will never forget your deeds and your discipline with Mama. He knows her well enough to understand that only someone like you could have got her home.”

She squeezed his arm, tilted her face towards his, and for one horrifying second he thought she was going to kiss him. She must have felt him flinch because she smiled again, the smile that narrowed her eyes, and then removed her arm from his.

“Come now, Nicky,” she cried. “Let us go home. Janos Marton, would you like to come with us and tell everyone your adventures?”

“No,” he said, horrified.

“Then good-bye.”

They left, and he shifted the rucksack to make it more comfortable and then began to walk home. In his room he would be restored to order, discipline, and the controlled purpose to which he had dedicated his life. He would be calm, quiet, and—he smiled—he would be able to lie back on his bed and hear... nothing! The wonder of hearing nothing after days and days of Eva Kaldy!

But strangely, when he got there, when he had washed and unpacked the rucksack and stretched himself on his bed to try and sleep, the tranquillity would not come. His room was empty, and he felt an uneasy need that he could not at first define. After concentrated thought and rationalization he realized that his need was one of conditioning that could soon be overcome. It was for people—human contact—people he liked and who liked and needed him. George perhaps, young Nicky, Terez.