Esther's Inheritance

18

At that point I was not too concerned with the contents of the letters. I was fully aware of Lajos’s capabilities as a letter writer. But I did have a thorough look at the envelopes. All three bore my name and address, the hand was clearly Lajos’s, and the franking proved them to have been mailed to my address twenty-two years ago, the week before Vilma and Lajos were married. I am sure that I never received them. Somebody must have intercepted them. It wouldn’t have been too difficult to steal them: it was always Vilma, endlessly curious about mail, who took the letters from the mailman, and it was she who had the key to the sideboard. I carefully examined the backs of the envelopes, then threw them down beside the other objects displayed on the sideboard, next to the photograph of Vilma.

“Don’t you want to read them?” asked Lajos.

“No,” I said. “Why? I believe they say what you told me they said. They are not of great importance. You,” I said, almost crazy, pronouncing the words as if making a great discovery. “You can even make facts lie.”

“You never received these letters?” Lajos asked calmly, as though he were not too concerned with my criticisms of him.

“Never.”

“Who stole my letters?”

“Who stole them? Vilma. Who else? Who else would benefit from doing so?”

“Of course,” he said. “It couldn’t have been anyone but her.”

He went over to the sideboard and took a good look at the stamps on the letter and the franking, then leaned closer to look at Vilma’s picture, with a smile of good-natured interest, the cigar in his hand emitting clouds of curling smoke. He gazed at the picture fully absorbed, as though I was not in the room, wagging his head, then giving a low whistle of appreciation, the way one burglar might admire the work of another. He stood there, legs widely spaced, one hand in his coat pocket, the other with the smoking cigar, a satisfied professional.

“She made a good job of it,” he said eventually, and turned to me, stopping one step from me. “But in that case,” he went on, “what is it you want from me? What is my crime? My debt? The great thing I failed to do? What is the lie? It’s just details. But there was a moment,” he pointed to the letters, “when I did not lie, when I put out my hands because I was dizzy, the way a high-wire walker starts to get dizzy. And you did not help me. No one lifted a finger. So I danced on as best I could, since a thirty-five-year-old man does not fancy falling from such a height…You know I’m not particularly given to sentimentality, that’s right, I’m not even a passionate man. It was life that interested me…risks…the game, as you called it. I am not, nor have I ever been, the kind of man who stakes everything on a woman, on passion and sentiment…Nor was it any unstoppable tide of sentiment that swept me to you, I can tell you that now. You see, I don’t want to make you cry, it’s not that I want your heart to melt. That would be ridiculous. I did not come to beg. I came to demand. Do you understand now?” he asked quietly, amicable but solemn.

“Demand?” I said almost inaudibly. “That’s interesting. Go on. Demand.”

“Very well,” he said. “I’ll try. It is nothing I could put down on paper or go to the law with, of course. But there are other kinds of law. You may not realize it, but this is the moment you should become aware that beside the moral law there is another, just as binding, just as valid…how to put it? Are you beginning to suspect what it might be? There’s a kind of self-knowledge people are usually very reluctant to bear. You should know that it is not only words, vows, and promises that bind people together, nor is it feelings or sympathies that determine the true nature of their relationship. There’s something else, a law that is firmer and more severe, that determines whether one person is bound to another or not…It’s like the law between fellow conspirators. That is the law that bound me to you. I knew about this law. Even twenty years ago, I knew. I knew as soon as I met you. There’s no point in being modest now: I believe that of the two of us, Esther, it is I who am made of sterner stuff. That ‘stuff’ is not sterner in the sense that handbooks of moral guidance pretend. Nevertheless it is I, the faithless, the fly-by-night, the fugitive, who am more capable of remaining true to that law in both soul and will, this law of which you will find no trace in books or in the tables of the law but which is, nevertheless, the true law. And it is a very hard law…Listen. The law of life is that what is once begun has to be finished. This does not make for a particularly happy state of affairs. Nothing happens when it’s supposed to: at the very moment when you have spent your precious time preparing to receive an important gift, life gives you nothing. This belatedness, this disorder, can hurt you for years. We think someone is just playing with us. But one day we notice that everything has been exactly as it is supposed to be, in perfect order, in perfect time…it is impossible for people to meet one day sooner than they are supposed to. They meet when they’re ready for meeting…They’re ready not necessarily by virtue of their whims and wishes but by virtue of something deeper, some undeniable stellar law, the way planets meet in infinite time and space, precise to within a microsecond, colliding at a unique moment, one in a billion years in the vastness of space. I don’t believe in chance meetings. I am a man who knows a good number of women…forgive me, but this is an unavoidable part of what I have to say…I have met beautiful ones, high-spirited ones, in fact I have known some who were animated by some fire-breathing demon; I have known heroic women who could wade through Siberian snows in the company of a man, remarkable women who could help me and were prepared to share with me the terrible loneliness of existence for a while. Yes, I have known all these,” he said quietly, reminiscing, more to himself than to me.

“I am so glad,” I said stiffly when he stopped, “so delighted that you have chosen to come back to me and regale me with your acquaintances.”

But I immediately regretted the words. They were unbecoming to me, and unbecoming to what Lajos had just said too. He looked at me calmly and nodded, bemused.

“What was I to do when it was always you I was waiting for?” he asked almost tenderly. It was simple. It was elegantly and modestly said.

“What was I to do?” he said more loudly. “And what can you do with this belated confession that, at our time of life, has neither meaning nor virtue. One shouldn’t say things like this. But the manners of should or should not are worthless when discussing the truth. See, Esther, a leave-taking can be just as mysterious and exciting as a first meeting…I have long known this. Revisiting someone we loved is not the same as ‘returning to the scene of the crime,’ ‘driven by an irresistible compulsion,’ as the detective stories have it. All my life I have loved only you, not out of some strict necessity, nor quite according to the laws of logic…Then something happened, not only the accident of the letters, the letters Vilma stole. You didn’t really welcome love. Don’t deny it! It is not enough to love somebody, you must love courageously. You must love so that no thief or plan or law, whether that be the law of heaven or of the world, can come between. The problem was that we did not love each other courageously enough. And that is your fault, because a man’s courage in love is ridiculous. Love is of your making. It is the only respect in which you achieve greatness. That is where, somehow, you fell short, and as you failed so did everything else, everything that might have been, all that was obligation, mission, the meaning of life. It is not true that men can be held responsible for this or that love. Go on, love heroically. But you committed the worst sin a woman can commit, you took offense, you ran away. Do you believe me yet?”

“What does all this add up to?” I asked. “What does it matter whether I believe or confess or resign myself?” My voice sounded so odd I might have overheard it in another room.

“That is why I have come,” he said, more quietly now because the room had darkened and we instinctively dropped our voices as if everything — all the objects in the room, all we had to say — was fading with the light. “I wanted you to know,” he went on, “that people can’t end anything by simply wanting it to end, one can’t abandon something before it has run its course. It is impossible!” he declared, and gave a satisfied laugh. I was half expecting him to rub his hands together like a card player who has, to his greatest astonishment, discovered that he has won a round he firmly expected to lose. “You are part of me, even now, when time and distance have annihilated all we once had together…Do you understand yet? You are responsible for everything that has happened in my life, just as I — in my fashion, in a man’s fashion — am responsible for you, for your life. There was bound to come a day when you would know that. You must come away with me, with us. We’ll take Nunu too. Listen, Esther, just this once you have to believe me. What possible advantage would I have in telling you anything but the truth, the last mortal truth?…Time burns away everything, everything that is false in us. What remains is the truth. And what remains is that you are a part of me even though you ran away, even though I was what I was and am. Yes, I too believe that people don’t change. You are a part of me even though you know I have not changed, that I am the same as I was, as dangerous and unreliable. You cannot deny it. Raise your head, look into my eyes…Why won’t you raise your head? Wait, I’ll turn on the light…You still have no electricity?…Look, it is completely dark now.”

He went over to the window, looked out, then closed it. But he did not light the table lamp. Instead he spoke to me in the darkness.

“Why won’t you look at me?” he asked.

And when I did not answer, he went on in the murk, his voice farther away now.

“If you really are so absolutely convinced, why won’t you look at me? I have no kind of power over you. I have no rights. And yet there is nothing you can do against me. You can accuse me of anything you like, but you must know that you are the only person in the world before whom I am innocent. And there came a day, and it was I who returned. Do you still believe in words like ‘pride’? Between people who are bound to each other by fate there is no pride. You will come with us. We will arrange everything. What will happen? We will live. Maybe life still has something in store for us. We will live quietly. The world has forgotten all about me. You will live there with me, with us. There’s no other way,” he said aloud, exasperated, as though he had finally understood and grasped something, something so simple, so blindingly obvious, that he resented arguing about it. “There’s nothing else I want from you except that just this once, for the last time in your life, you should obey the law that is the meaning and the content of your life.”

I could hardly see in the dark by now.

“Do you understand?” he asked, his voice quiet, coming at me from a long distance. It was as if he were talking to me out of the past.

“Yes,” I said involuntarily, almost in a trance.

That was the moment the curious numbness started, the kind sleepwalkers must feel when setting out on their dangerous course; I understood everything that was happening around me, I was fully aware of what I was doing and saying, I saw people clearly, as well as those parts of their souls that manner and custom tend to draw a veil over, but knew at the same time that whatever I was doing so sensibly and so firm of purpose was to some degree unconscious, that it was partly a dream. I was calm, almost good-humored. I felt light, without a care. There was indeed something I understood that moment in Lajos’s words, something stronger, more rational, more compelling than anything else, something over and above his charge against me. Naturally, I did not believe a word he said, but my skepticism amused me. While Lajos was speaking I understood something, the simple, assuring truth of which I could not have articulated in words. He was lying again, of course…I didn’t quite know in what way or in what respect, but he was lying. Maybe it wasn’t even his words or feelings that had lied, it might have been just his very being, the fact that he, Lajos, could not do anything else, not before and not now. Suddenly I was aware of myself laughing; I had burst into laughter, not a mocking laughter but a sincere, good-humored laughter. Lajos did not understand why I was laughing.

“Why are you laughing?” he asked suspiciously.

“It’s nothing,” I said. “Do please carry on.”

“Do you agree?”

“Yes,” I said. “To what? No, of course I agree,” I quickly added.

“Good,” he said. “In that case…Now look, Esther, you mustn’t believe that anyone is against you or wishes you harm. We have to arrange our affairs as simply and as honorably as we can. You are coming with me. Nunu too…maybe not straightaway…a little later. Éva gets married. We have to redeem her,” he said more quietly, as though we were plotting. “And me too…You can’t understand it all yet…But do you trust me?” he asked uncertainly, his voice quiet.

“Carry on,” I answered, just as quietly, joining the air of conspiracy. “Of course I trust you.”

“That’s most important,” he muttered with satisfaction. “Don’t think,” he added more loudly, “that I will betray your trust. I don’t want you to make a decision right away. There are just the two of us here. I’ll go and call Endre. He is a family friend, a notary, with an official role. You should sign it in his presence,” he declared with a large gesture.

“Sign what?” I asked him in the same conspiratorial tone, like someone who has agreed and volunteered for a task and is merely inquiring after details.

“This piece of paper,” he said. “This contract that authorizes us to arrange everything and to have you come and live with us.”

“With you?” I asked.

“With us,” he said uncomfortably. “With us…Near us.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Before you call Endre…before I sign…Just clear up one matter for me. You want me to leave everything and go with you. I understand that much. But what happens after that? Where, near you, will I be living?”

“What we were thinking,” he said slowly, turning the matter over in his mind as if it were perfectly normal, “was that it would be somewhere near us. Our apartment, unfortunately, is not suitable…But there is a home there where lonely ladies of a certain standing…It’s quite close. And we could see each other often,” he added generously, as if to encourage me.

“A sort of workhouse, I imagine?” I asked, perfectly calm.

“A workhouse?” he replied, wounded. “What an idea! A home, I said, with ladies of good upbringing. People like you and Nunu.”

“Like me and Nunu,” I said.

He waited a while longer. Then he went over to the table, found a match, and lit the table lamp with clumsy, unpracticed movements.

“Think it over,” he said. “Think, Esther. I’ll send Endre in. Think hard. And read the contract before signing it. Read it very carefully.”

He produced a sheet of paper folded into four from his pocket and placed it modestly on the table. He looked me over one more time with a friendly encouraging smile, gave a little bow, and, sprightly as a young man, turned and left the room.