Esther's Inheritance

10

Nunu had served a cooked breakfast, the guests had settled down on the veranda, nervously eating and getting to know one other. Everyone felt that it was only the powerful spell of Lajos’s presence that prevented loss of temper. It was pure theater, every word of it. The hours were artfully crammed: Scene One, “The meal,” Scene Two, “A walk round the garden.” Lajos, with his director’s eye, occasionally spotted this or that group falling behind, and clapped his hands and brought the company into line. At last he was alone with me in the garden. Laci was on the veranda waxing enthusiastic, rapt and unguarded, talking with his mouth full. It was he who had first surrendered to Lajos’s charm, forgot his doubts, and was happily and openly bathing in the sunshine of the familiar presence. The first words Lajos addressed to me were, “Now we have to put everything right.”

Hearing this my heart began to beat loudly and nervously. I did not answer. I stood facing opposite him under the tree next to the concrete bench on which he had so often lied to me, and finally I took a good hard look at him.

There was something sad about him, something that reminded me of an aging photographer or politician who is not quite up-to-date regarding manners and ideas but continues obstinately, and somewhat resentfully, to employ the same terms of flattery he has used for years. He was an animal tamer past his prime, of whom the animals are no longer afraid. His clothes, too, were peculiarly old-fashioned: as if he were wanting to keep up with the fashions at all costs but some inner demon prevented him from being elegant or fashionable in the way he thought was necessary and which he liked. His tie, for example, was just a shade louder than was right for the rest of his outfit, his character and age, so he had the air of a gigolo. His suit was of a light color, fashionable in that it was loose and made for traveling, the kind you see movie moguls in magazines wear when they are globe-trotting. Everything was a little too new, specially chosen for the occasion, even his hat and shoes. And all this communicated a certain helplessness. My heart went out to him. Perhaps, if he had come in rags, a broken man without a shred of hope, I would not have tolerated this cheap feeling of sympathy. He’s had it coming to him, I would have thought. But this hopeless modishness, so redolent of shame, filled me with pity. I gazed at him and suddenly felt sorry for him.

“Sit down, Lajos,” I said. “What do you want of me?”

I was calm and well meaning. I was no longer afraid of him. This man has known failure, I thought, and felt no satisfaction thinking that; in fact, I felt nothing but pity, a deep and humiliating pity. It was as if I had noticed that he was dyeing his hair or had committed something equally unbecoming; ideally I would have cursed him for the past and for the present, seriously cursed him, but without any particular severity. Suddenly I felt myself to be much older, much more mature than he was. Lajos had stopped developing at a certain point and had aged into an impudent, pedantic fraud, nothing particularly dangerous, indeed — and this was the sadder part — something rather aimless. His eyes were clear, gray, irresolute, as they had been so long ago when I last saw him. He smoked his cigarette through a long cigarette holder — his hands with their prominent veins had particularly aged, and never stopped trembling — and to top it all he was looking at me so attentively, so calmly and objectively, he clearly knew that for once it was pointless and in vain to try to deceive me; I knew his tricks, I knew the secrets of his art, and whatever he said in the end he would have to answer with or without words, but, this once, it would have to be the truth…Naturally, he began with a lie.

“I want to put everything right,” he repeated mechanically.

“What do you want to put right?”

I looked into his eyes and laughed. Surely, this could no longer be serious! I thought. After a certain time has passed between people it is impossible to “put anything right” I understood this hopeless truth the moment we were sitting together on the concrete bench. One lives and patches, improves, constructs, or, occasionally, ruins one’s life, but after a while one notices that whatever has been so compounded of errors and accidents is quite unique. There was nothing more Lajos could do here. When somebody appears out of the past and announces in heartfelt tones that he wants to put “everything” right one can only pity his ambition and laugh at it: time has already “put things right” in its own peculiar way, the only way to put anything right. And so I answered:

“Forget it, Lajos. We are all happy, of course, to see you…the children and yourself. We don’t know what you have in mind, but still we are happy to see you again. Let’s not talk about the past. You don’t owe anybody anything.”

Even as I was speaking I noticed how I too was in the grip of the mood of the moment, I too was saying the first things that came into my head, things that were, to put it bluntly, lies. It was only an excess of feeling and the concomitant confusion that could have exaggerated and declared that the past no longer existed, that Lajos did not owe “anybody anything.” We were both aware of this false note and gazed at the pebbles with downcast eyes. The tone we had adopted toward each other was pitched too high: too high, too dramatic, false. I suddenly noticed I had started to argue, not very logically but at least sincerely and with passion, since I could not hold myself back.

“I doubt whether that is the only reason you have come,” I said quietly, because I feared that there on the veranda where the conversation occasionally fell silent people might be listening to us, hearing what I was saying.

“No,” he said, and coughed. “No, that is not the only reason. No, Esther, I had to talk to you one last time.”

“I have nothing left,” I said involuntarily, somewhat daringly.

“I don’t need anything anymore,” he answered, evidently not insulted. “Now it is I who want to give you something. Look here, twenty years have passed, twenty years! There will not be many more twenty years like that now, these may be the last. In twenty years things become clearer, more transparent, more comprehensible. Now I know what happened, and even why it happened.”

“How repulsive,” I said, my voice breaking. “How repulsive and ridiculous. Here we sit on this bench, we who once mattered to each other, talking about the future. No, Lajos, there is no future of any kind, I mean for us. Let’s get back to reality. There is something, a quality you are unaware of: it is a kind of modest dignity, the dignity of bare existence. I have been humiliated enough. Just talking about the past is humiliating. What do you want? What’s the idea? Who are these strange people? One day you pack, round up some people and some animals, and arrive in the grand old manner, with the same old words, as if you were obeying a call from God…but people know you here. We know you, my friend.”

I spoke calmly, with a certain ridiculous pomposity, pronouncing each word clearly and firmly as if I had been composing the speech for some time. The truth was I hadn’t composed anything. Not for a moment did I believe that anything here could be “put right,” I had no wish to fall into Lajos’s arms, I didn’t even want to argue with him. What did I want? I would like to have been indifferent. Here he is, he has arrived, this was just another episode in the peculiar pageant of life, he wants something, he’s up to something, but then he’ll go away and we will go on living as before. He no longer has any power over me! I felt and looked on him, safe, superior. He no longer has any power over me in the old sentimental sense. But at the same time I noticed that the excitement of this first conversation was far from indifference; the passion with which I spoke was a sign that there still existed a relationship that was far from fanciful, affected, or imagined, a relationship that was not mere moonshine, memory, or nostalgia. We were talking about something real. And, since it was vital, after so much mist and fog, to find a toehold in reality, I answered quickly without choosing my words.

“You have nothing to give me. You took everything, ruined everything.”

He answered as I expected him to.

“That’s true.”

He looked at me with clear gray eyes, then stared straight in front of him. He pronounced the words childishly, with an air of wonder, as if someone had praised him for passing an exam. I shuddered. What kind of man was this? He was so calm. Now he was looking round the garden examining the house appraisingly, like an architect. Then he began a conversation.

“Your mother died there, in the upper room, behind closed shutters.”

“No,” I said, thinking back. “She died downstairs in the parlor that Nunu now occupies.”

“Interesting,” he said. “I had forgotten.”

Then he threw away his cigarette, stood up, took a few firm strides to the wall, and tapped the bricks, shaking his head.

“A little damp,” he said in a disapproving but abstract tone.

“We had it fixed last year,” I said, still lost in my memories.

He came back to me and looked deep into my eyes. He remained silent for a long a time. We gazed at each other under half-closed eyelids, carefully and curiously. His expression was solemn now, devout.

“One question, Esther,” he said quietly and solemnly. “Just one question.”

I closed my eyes, feeling hot and dizzy. The dizziness lasted a few moments. I put out my hand as if to defend myself. It’s starting, I thought. My god, he wants to ask me something. But what? Maybe he wants to know how the whole thing happened? Whether it was I who lacked courage? No, now I have to answer. I took a deep breath, ready to answer his question.

“Tell me, Esther,” he asked quietly, soulfully. “Does this house still have a mortgage?”