Csardas (93 page)

He was saying it badly, but it didn’t matter. Whatever explanations he made the old man would not accept the marriage. His land... his daughter—the loss of the two was somehow the same. And Janos Marton, a peasant who had betrayed his master, was responsible for both.

“I can do nothing any more,” the old man said. “You people will do what you want to do.”

“I wish you would understand—”

“Go away!” Adam suddenly put his hand up before his eyes. “My little girl... to go and live with you? You are so hard, Janos Marton. You will destroy her.”

Janos turned away and groped for the door. Why had it seemed so important? Why had he wanted them to accept it? Not to like him, just to accept that he loved Terez as he had loved only one other woman in his whole life.

“What happened?” Terez whispered. “What did they say?”

“Nothing.” He was curt, and down the sides of his cheeks the muscles moved. “I will arrange the necessary papers for the marriage as quickly as possible. We shall stay in my room until we find a bigger apartment.” He swallowed, unable to look at her unhappy face without hating the people in the other room. “I quite see you cannot remain here for any longer than you have to.”

He forced himself to walk slowly down the stairs. He didn’t touch her or kiss her. He heard the door of the drawing-room open and close and then the sound of her father’s voice speaking to her. He stepped out onto the cobbled yard, feeling once more the son of a thief, knowing that nothing he had ever done, or would do, would change these people. He would always be Janos Marton, who had stolen their child.

In the sitting room the two sisters remained in silence. Eva, her hands trembling, suddenly said into the quiet, “I do love Adam, Malie. I know you thought I never did, and perhaps, when we were first married, I wasn’t too sure. But I do love him.”

“He doesn’t know it,” Malie said softly. “He has grown used to loving you, Eva, but he gave up expecting anything years ago.”

“I hate to see him like this.” Quiet tears, so unlike Eva, flowed down her face. “I always knew he loved his farm—I used to tease him about it—but I didn’t think he would be like this because he had lost it.”

“Poor Eva,” Malie whispered. “You never did understand anyone very much, did you?”

“Do you think I could make it up to him, Malie? If I told him how much he meant to me, if I tried to be a good wife, do you think I could make him happy?”

“Perhaps. You could try.” She reached across and patted her sister’s hand, knowing how impossible it was for Eva to change at this time of her life, but also knowing that she had spoken the truth when she said she loved him. “How strange,” she murmured. “History repeating itself... First me, then you, now Terez.”

“What do you mean, Malie?’”

“All of us so unhappy with our first loves. Remember Karoly? And how cruel Papa was when I loved him so much? And when at last he consented, the war—” She sighed. “And you were in love with Felix, and you married Adam. And my poor darling Kati, who knows who she might have loved, but she had to marry Felix.”

“Felix was evil!” Eva flushed. “He was wicked and evil!”

“And now,” Malie continued, “Terez cries herself to sleep every night. I hear her from my bed. I pretend to be asleep so that she can save her pride. She loves the boy, Eva. Is it always to be this way with us?”

“He’s a peasant, Malie! His father was a thief, and he has no manners, no charm, no way of making my little girl happy.”

“He is a brave young man,” Malie chided gently. “Have you forgotten all he did? He hid Nicky from the Nazis, rescued you and Terez and George from the Russians, arranged for Nicky to have doctors and rooms in the country. He is a good young man, and Terez loves him. She loves him the way I loved Karoly and you loved Felix. There’s nothing you can say to alter that.”

“Well, she’s going to marry him.” Eva sniffed. “She’s luckier than we were. I don’t see why she cries at night.”

“Remember the ball, Eva? Cousin Kati’s birthday party when it all began?”

“Oh, yes! I had a dress with roses and you were cross because it was cut so low.”

“Remember what they called us, the enchanting Ferenc sisters?”

“Yes.” Eva smiled and clasped her hands together; then the smile faded and she stared down at her hands. “Look at us now. We’re old and ugly. We’re not the enchanting Ferenc sisters any more.”

Malie smiled and patted Eva on the shoulder and said briskly, “Yes we are, Eva. We can still be the enchanting Ferenc sisters if we wish. Eva, if Janos Marton comes here again will you try—for Terez’s sake—to be gracious to him, enchanting, the way you used to be?”

“To Janos Marton?”

“To your daughter’s sweetheart!”

“Oh, Malie!” She began to giggle, and Malie knew that if she closed her eyes the giggle would sound the same as it had thirty-four years ago.

“Promise?”

“Oh—all right.”

“The enchanting Ferenc sisters?”

“You’re a silly old woman, Malie!”

“And your hair needs re-dyeing at the roots. But in spite of it all we’re still the Ferenc girls, are we not?”

And Eva smiled and wiped away a romantic tear, knowing she had been handled but enjoying it just the same.

The following morning Comrade Lengyel sent for him. It was a rare occurrence. Usually they sent memoranda to each other or spoke on the telephone. Sometimes, in the café, they would courteously drink coffee together, their conversation limited to short comments on Party trivia. Now, his thoughts of Terez driven away by the unaccustomed summons, he hurried up the two flights of stairs to Lengyel’s office.

A pot of coffee waited, two cups, cream. Comrade Lengyel beamed affably behind the glinting glasses and beckoned him to the seat on the other side of the desk.

“Comrade Marton! We must speak together. We speak so rarely, do we not? We are busy men, but sometimes a little... conversation is necessary. Your coffee. You like to take cream?”

He shook his head and reached his hand forward to take the cup. As he did so he caught a glimpse of Lengyel’s eyes behind the lenses, and the old sense of unease descended on him once again.

“We have worked hard, all of us, have we not? And now, Comrade Marton, our vision is in sight, a
fait accompli.
We are proud—but not too proud, because there is still much to be done... much to be done....” His voice trailed away and he spooned several layers of cream onto his coffee.

“You may not be aware, Comrade Marton, that you are thought of very highly in the Party. Yes, very highly. I have heard it whispered that Comrade Rakosi himself has noticed you. Did you know that, Janos Marton?”

“I am honoured,” he replied tonelessly.

“So are we all. To think that one of our comrades in this humble town may be singled out for greater glories to the state. It is not impossible, Comrade Marton, that you have a future—in Budapest, of course—a great future.”

“Thank you.”

“Of course”—Lengyel suddenly pushed aside the cup and pulled a folder of papers towards him—“to succeed in the Party must mean sacrifices. We have all made sacrifices. You too, Comrade Marton, must make sacrifices in the cause of the Hungarian state.”

He knew what was coming. Lengyel had to say no more. He knew what was in the folder: every meeting with Terez recorded, every moment she had spent in his room carefully checked and double-checked.

“We—the Party—are unhappy about your connections with a certain family, a bourgeois family—dangerous—and particularly with the daughter of that family. It is a great pity. You remember Leo Ferenc, of course—if only he had not betrayed the Party perhaps his family would not now be considered quite so... bourgeois.”

“What are you trying to say, Comrade Lengyel?” he asked icily. The glasses glinted, as though faintly shocked at his peremptory tone.

“I am saying that disquieting rumours have reached me. I hear you have not only indulged in a liaison with this girl but are considering marriage. Furthermore, you have, on frequent occasions, assisted her family in a variety of ways, the most recent the arranging for her cousin to be given convalescent rooms in the country.”

“That is quite true.”

“Comrade Marton.” The bland tones melted, as though some of the cream still lingered in his throat “Don’t you see that is exactly why the Party frowns on these liaisons with bourgeois families? It begins with a little... amusement... and it ends with favours that should only be granted to Party members.”

“It is not improbable that Nicholas Rassay will one day be a Party member.”

The fat man shrugged, bored with such a dialectic notion. “The fact remains, Comrade Marton, that it would be most foolish of you to entertain any idea of marrying this girl. You have a brilliant future before you. You are a rarity in Hungary, a peasant who has achieved distinction under most difficult circumstances. It would be tragic to destroy all this—the success of your future career—by linking yourself to a woman who is the niece of a renegade and the daughter of a kulak.” The fat hand closed the folder, stroked it, and pushed it away. Then it reached for the coffee again. Janos watched and hated—first the hand, then the man—hated everything that Lengyel represented, hated the corruption and distortion of ideals that had once bound together a group of men in courage and endeavour.

“Where did you spend the Horthy years, Comrade Lengyel?” he asked coldly.

The hand paused over the coffee pot. “Moscow, Comrade Marton. You know that.”

“Then you know little of what we suffered here during that time?”

Lengyel turned the glasses full onto Janos’s face. The eyes were dangerous, embedded in fat and pinpointed with malice.

“I see no connection between your question and the matter we are discussing.”

“No?” He rose suddenly. He was angry, terribly angry, but strangely he was also relieved. The unease of months had dropped away, the unease of not knowing what was wrong, of wondering how far to go in a cause one believed in. He still believed in his cause. He had fought for freedom from want, bread for the masses, and that cause had been fulfilled. But somewhere along the way the purity had been lost—the purity and dedication and a belief in the building of the Hungarian nation. He was angry but excited, the way he had been excited before—coolly, dispassionately, knowing exactly what he believed in, knowing what principles he must embrace no matter what happened.

“Thank you for the coffee.” He stood, looking down on the fat man before him, not underestimating his capabilities or training but knowing that he was wrong—completely and absolutely wrong—for what Hungary needed.

“Comrade Marton—”

“Goodbye.”

He closed the door quietly behind him. All his control, his cool sense of balance had returned. He could hold hard to his ethics, and everything else became natural and right. Terez, her bourgeois family who only yesterday had had the power to hurt and intimidate him—all these things fell into place because, once more, the truth had blazed in his heart. No, not his heart, his brain.

He returned to his office and sat quietly, thinking of all that might happen and knowing it was unimportant. What a stupid, cowardly fool Leo Ferenc had been. How could they continue to create their country when people ran away at the first setback? He had betrayed his own ideals, sacrificed them because of personal frustration and hurt pride. What good was it to run away? One must stay in the place allocated for as long as possible, deviating not at all from the truth discovered in one’s own heart, endeavouring, believing, fighting, the way he had fought for years against the
pandur,
the Nazis, the Arrow Cross.

He would have liked to see Terez at lunchtime, but Lengyel had kept him too late and he had missed her. He sat at his desk, working happily at the suggested plans for re-schooling in the area. There will be trouble with Lengyel, he prophesied to himself, and then with wry humour reflected that he was unlikely to fulfil the promise of a rising career in the Party—at least not this time, not until everything had been cauterized, fought against, rediscovered, and put right....

When it was time to go, he carefully tidied his desk and put out the new work for the next day. Schools, more schools. He was still a teacher in many ways; that was probably why he had enjoyed talking to Nicky and George so much. Possibly, if the Party had no further use for him, he could teach again. He shrugged, thinking it unlikely he would be allowed to but not worrying too much. It didn’t matter what one did as long as one went on fighting for the right things.

He went home, washed, shaved, put on a clean shirt and then caught the tram to the main square. He hadn’t arranged to meet her this evening but, like a young man in love—the way he had never been before—he prepared to go and see his bride.

The door of the apartment was open; so was the door to the drawing-room. The two old aunts were there, Malie doing the accounts from her kiosk, Eva unpicking an old dress that looked like a crumpled curtain.

“I’d like to wait for Terez, if I may,” he said courteously. They stared at him. “Will she be long?”

Malie recovered first. “Not long, no. Please sit down and wait.”

Eva looked at his face, then at the bundle he carried in his hand. “What do you have there?” she breathed.

He flushed a little and placed the bundle on the table.

“Roses,” he said coolly. “Roses, for Terez.”

“May we look?”

He nodded.

Her wrinkled old hands undid the paper. Across her face spread a smile of gloating delight. “Look, Malie! Roses! Red ones!” She fondled them, bowed her head into the blooms, smiled at them. “How many?”

“Twelve,” he answered, staring hard across the room.

“Twelve roses!” She gulped and stroked one of the petals with a caressing finger. “Twelve roses, for Terez.”

The two old ladies sat one each side of the table, looking down at the flowers. He leaned back in his chair, embarrassed but happy, and listened for the sound of Terez’s feet upon the stairs.

We hope you enjoyed this book.

Click one of the links below for more information: