Csardas (39 page)

“So.” He stared at her, considering, making her feel ashamed.
“So,”
he said again. “Perhaps you are right. Perhaps the rumours are exaggerated. And, in any case, perhaps the killing is the price of peace. But you see, my little Amalia, the world will never be the same place again, because you are no longer the same person. Now you know of man’s evil and cruelty. You know that life is the briefest turn of a wheel and that happiness and the good things can be destroyed in a moment. Your sister, she has not learned this lesson yet. Perhaps she never will. But you—you understand how rare it is to capture contentment. You can never be as you once were: Amalia Ferenc, content to go to parties and visit with your mama. What are you going to do?”

She felt panic gripping her. The question, buried deep in her heart, was one she had fought against asking herself. What was she going to do? Spend the rest of her life bickering with Eva, paying visits to relatives, watching Papa and Mama grow more estranged as they got older?

“Something will happen,” she said defiantly, angry with him for spoiling her earlier happiness. “Something will happen to me, and then I will know what to do.”

“Would you like to marry me?”

All the uneasiness she had felt about Mr. Klein suddenly congealed into a knot of dread within her stomach. She longed to run, to shout, to vomit, to hit him. Instead she stood like a paralysed rabbit.

“You will notice I did not say, Will you? I said, Would you like to?”

“No.”

Mr. Klein laughed, a low soft chuckle. “How fortunate it is you are not in business,” he mused. “It does not do at all to be so direct.”

“I am sorry.” She was floundering, anxious not to be rude to Mr. Klein, who ran the bank, but also terrified that he come near her.

“Sorry? No, you must never be sorry until the bargain is closed, one way or another. And now... now I think it would be pleasant to return to the festivities. I have not yet danced with your charming mama, and as I can see, she still has much grace and ability.”

She was confused, angry and puzzled. Had she been proposed to or not? What kind of game was Mr. Klein playing? Why was he so serious one moment, trying to make her face up to unpleasant truths, and mocking and ironical the next? Her pleasure in the day, in the festival, was destroyed. She stood once more on the veranda and watched them all dancing, but now there was disturbance in her heart. Mr. Klein danced with Mama and then with Eva, and it was obvious that both her mother and her sister enjoyed his company completely. Mama was young again, laughing up into his face and tapping him reprovingly on the shoulder at some impertinent comment he had made. And as Malie watched Mr. Klein flattering and
playing
with Mama, her distaste renewed itself, and with it embarrassment that Mama could behave so badly. She finally looked away from them, vowing that she would only speak to Mr. Klein in a cool and detached manner from now on.

But then, that same evening, she watched him walking alone and a curious sense of fellowship overcame her. She had gone into the orchard when the evening was still light, and she saw him strolling beneath the trees, a slow, solitary figure who suddenly appeared to be older, heavier than he normally was. He was staring out at the fields beyond the trees and once he put his hand up and ran his forefinger lightly along the underside of a branch. His shoulders were slightly stooped and there was an ageless and familiar quality about him that she recognized from somewhere a long, long time ago.

She tried to remember, failed, tried again, and was rewarded by the memory of a visit to an old man when she had been small, an old man lying in a bed, a black hat on his head, an old man with a long beard and side whiskers. He had spoken to her in a language she did not understand and Papa—yes, Papa had taken her there—had answered in their own language that she did understand. The memory, dredged from her subconscious, had some curious significance. She remembered a feeling of identity with the old man. She felt it again now with Mr. Klein, and so she turned quickly away because the feeling was one she did not want to encourage. Neither did she want Mr. Klein to see her in the dusk and resume their bantering conversation of the afternoon. She hurried back into the house, confused and beset by emotions, puzzled by things she felt she ought to remember.

A few days later, when she was alone with Papa, she asked him about the old man. She had begun to wonder if perhaps she had dreamt the meeting: the small room, the bed, the old man with the shawl over his shoulders and the black hat on his head. Papa said slowly, “How strange, you should remember. You were not even three years old. He wanted to see you, the old man. He was dying, and though he never forgave me for marrying your mother, he still wanted to see his grandchild.”

“Ah, yes!”

Of course, it had been Papa’s own father. One never thought of Papa’s parents. He and Aunt Gizi had somehow thrown aside their old roots and lowered new and aggressive ones into the ground. But she remembered her affinity with the old man and sometimes—oh, very, very occasionally—she sensed this same affinity with Papa.

“Why did you ask, Amalia? What made you think of the old man?”

“It was... Mr. Klein,” she said slowly. “A feeling that I had seen him before. And I remembered him—my grandfather—and that was whom Mr. Klein reminded me of.”

Papa smiled. “No. Mr. Klein is no relative of ours, not even distantly.” He paused as though considering something and then continued, “Amalia, I have been intending to speak to you about Mr. Klein.”

“Yes, Papa?” The old familiar pounding in her breast, a nervous excitement that anything to do with Mr. Klein always precipitated.

“Mr. Klein—David—has indicated to me, most tactfully, that he finds you personable and admirable in every way.” Papa cleared his throat. “He asked what my reaction would be if he asked you to marry him.”

“I see, Papa.” It hadn’t been a joke. That day at the harvest party he hadn’t been joking or teasing.

“I explained,” said Papa haltingly, “about Karoly, that it was just over two years since—Mr. Klein said he knew about that.”

“Yes, Papa.”

“Amalia, I do not want to force you to do anything against your will. I remember my sorrow when you and Karoly—But there, that is past and the war changed everything and had he lived I would have accepted your wishes. But no. I do not want to force you again. It is only that I ask you to think about this. Mr. Klein is a good man.”

“I know, Papa.” She closed her eyes, swallowed, and opened them. “I know he is a good man. But I do not want to marry him.”

“I see.” Papa picked up the inkwell and absent-mindedly smoothed the top of it with his thumb. “Could I ask why?”

Why? How could she explain to Papa the mingled emotions Mr. Klein induced in her?

“I do not wish to marry anyone, Papa. Karoly was to be my husband, and now he is dead I don’t want to marry anyone, ever.” She knew it sounded foolish, the kind of thing every young girl bereft by the war was saying, and so she added something that Papa would understand. “And, Papa, if I were ever to think of marriage again, it would not be with someone of Mr. Klein’s age. He is far too old.”

“He is eighteen years older than you, Amalia,” said Papa, for some reason nettled. “And even if the disparity in age is rather pronounced, just remember that Mr. Klein’s age enables him to offer more in marriage than another, younger man. You would have a secure and assured place in society. You would be superbly maintained. You would travel, if you wished. You know him well, Amalia. He is a generous man, a responsible man. Many women would envy you.”

“Then let one of those women marry him!” she cried nervously, feeling that, for all his assurances, Papa was going to try and coerce her. “Eva, for instance. Oh, yes, now she is miserable because of Felix, but in time Eva would adore to be the wife of someone like Mr. Klein. She likes him and he flatters her; she would love to be rich and travel and live in Budapest. Why doesn’t he wait and then ask Eva?”

“Because he has chosen you, Amalia. If he had wanted Eva, he would have said so.”

“He only chose me because he thought Eva was going to marry Felix,” she cried. “He would have
preferred
Eva at the beginning. Oh, Papa, she is so much more suited to him than I—she likes to flirt and laugh and tease—why doesn’t he wait and then ask Eva!”

She had lost control. At the beginning of the discussion she had been determined to remain calm, to answer Papa’s comments with cool reason, but now the fear of being forced to marry Mr. Klein made her panic and say foolish, ill-advised things.

“No, Amalia,” said Papa slowly. “Mr. Klein spoke to me a long, long time ago about his feelings—the first time he came to stay with us, in fact. I was not certain then just how serious he was. And in any case Karoly was alive—or we thought he was alive—at that time, and I told him of your commitment to that young man.”

She was shocked. She supposed she ought to feel flattered, but she was only aware of shock. All those visits, when he had flirted with Mama and Eva, when he had indulged in sharp witticisms and sophistications with the two exquisite little Bogozy women, all that time he had been watching her, considering, comparing. But it made no difference. She didn’t like Mr. Klein and she couldn’t marry him. Papa had said he wouldn’t try and force her again, and so she must remain firm, like she had before when Karoly had been the crisis in her life.

“I would rather not marry him, Papa,” she said quietly. Papa sank down into a chair and rested his hands on the desk. His shoulders were slumped and under his eyes deep folds of skin made haggard stains on his cheeks. He was old again, thin and old and worried.

“Amalia,” he said, almost choking, “I have no right to ask this of my daughter, but please, consider it carefully. Do not reject Mr. Klein without thinking a little, without giving him some time. If I did not know he would be a good husband, I would not beg you to think again. But I do ask you. For all our sakes I ask you.”

“I don’t understand, Papa.” A cold sensation in the pit of her stomach warned her that she was being steadily cornered. Papa looked terrible. With every passing moment he looked infinitely worse. And there was something degrading about seeing Papa, who was stern and cruel and could be hateful, broken and begging his daughter to reconsider a matrimonial decision.

“It was the war,” he mumbled, and then he turned red-rimmed eyes up to hers. “The war, and the revolutions after the war. I did everything I could. If only I had possessed a little more capital I could have invested the way Gizi did—I might have saved us—but it just got worse. If it hadn’t been for Mr. Klein I would have had to close the bank... our bank.”

“But we’re all right now, Papa, aren’t we?” she asked, fighting away a sense of dread. “We all knew it was bad just after the war, but we’re all right now, surely?”

“We are all right because Mr. Klein has not pressed for his money or demanded his securities,” Papa replied heavily. His hands were trembling and she had to look away, it was so dreadful to see—hear—Papa making such a humiliating confession. “Mr. Klein owns virtually everything we have, Amalia. The bank, all my securities, our house, this farm—”

“No, Papa! Not the farm!” The one place they were inviolate, the place where so much had happened, where they had all been so happy. And it belonged to Mr. Klein! It wasn’t theirs. They were all living there, enjoying the summer, giving parties for the harvesters, and none of them had any right to be there! The house belonged to Mr. Klein; the land, the harvest, the food they ate, all was his. She felt humiliated, and then she felt lost and homeless.

“Not the farm, Papa! Oh, no, not the farm!”

Papa looked down at the top of his desk, an unhealthy flush staining his face. All his life he had set incredible standards for his wife, his daughters, his sons, his employees. He had applied those standards cruelly and rigidly and had felt justified in doing so because he set standards for himself that were equally severe. And he had proved unequal to the task he had set himself. He had failed to provide for his family.

“Can’t Aunt Gizi and Uncle Alfred help us? Uncle Alfred is part of the bank. Surely he could help us!”

“Gizi and Alfred backed the bank right at the beginning, and it was not enough. We were all... in danger. And then Mr. Klein took over the affairs, and since that time I have preferred to do business with him rather than with Gizi and Alfred.”

Through her own distress she was vaguely aware of his, sensing a little of his humiliation at not being able to save Gizi’s investments as well as his own. No, not Gizi’s; he wouldn’t have minded so much if it had only been Gizi. It was Uncle Alfred—a Racs-Rassay—whom he could no longer bear to ask for help.

“Gizi has recouped her losses,” he continued hoarsely. “Mr. Klein helped her too, and she invested wisely and suffered little loss overall. I have not been so fortunate—no, I must not say fortunate, as though luck were part of it. I have failed through my own lack of foresight. I have no excuse, no excuse at all.”

“Oh, Papa.” She wanted to comfort him suddenly, to reassure him that it didn’t matter. But it did matter, it mattered very much that Mr. Klein owned the very chairs they were sitting on.

“In time,” he said, “and with Mr. Klein’s patience, I shall be able to redeem the securities, rebuild as Gizi has done... but it will take time.”

The cold clutch of fear in her breast again. “But Papa, surely Mr. Klein wouldn’t demand his securities just because I refused to marry him.”

“No, of course not, Amalia.” He tried to smile at her, then reached across and patted her hand. “Of course not, and in time I shall repair the crisis myself. I am not asking you to marry Mr. Klein in order to save the family fortune. No father has any right to expect another man, even a son-in-law, to do what he cannot do himself. But Mr. Klein would be so happy if you could bring yourself to even think of his proposition. I only ask you to
consider
it, Amalia. Just
consider
it.”

She could no longer bear Papa’s pleading, his humiliation and lack of authority. She wanted to get away and try to sort out the implications of what she had learned. She wasn’t even sure of her own reactions to the news. Certainly she was no longer prepared to state with final authority that she would never marry Mr. Klein. She could think of many situations in which she
would
be prepared to marry him; the war had taught her that lesson, that it did not do to set high and rigid rules for oneself. But... Mr. Klein... as a husband?