Esther's Inheritance

13

There are three conversations I should note here.

That was precisely how many took place that afternoon. Éva was first at my door, followed by Lajos, and lastly by the “officially invited” Endre. After lunch the guests dispersed. Lajos lay down to have a nap, as naturally as if he were at home and would not be diverted from his domestic habits. Gábor and the strangers set off in the car to see the church, the neighborhood, and the local ruins, returning only at dusk. Éva, however, came to my room straight after the meal. I stood with her by the window, cupped her face in my hands, and gazed at her a long time. She gazed back steadily with her clear blue eyes.

“You have to help us, Esther,” she said eventually. “Only you can help us.”

She had a sweet singsong voice, like a schoolgirl. She only reached up to my shoulder. I hugged her but then felt the whole scene was a little too sentimental, and was glad when she gently disengaged herself, moved to the sideboard, lit a cigarette, gave a light cough, and, as if freed from an embarrassing, slightly disingenuous situation, examined the objects and framed photographs arranged on the flat surface. This shelf, the upper half of the sideboard, was a sacred place for me, the kind of thing the Chinese think of as a household shrine, before which they bow and honor their ancestors. Everyone I loved or was close to me stood there in a long row, each of them looking at me. I went over to her and watched her eyes moving along them.

“That’s Mama,” she said quietly but with evident delight. “How beautiful she is. She must have been younger there than I am now.”

An eighteen-year-old Vilma gazed back at us, a little chubby, dressed in the garments of the time, in white lace with high black boots, her hair undone, curled, and combed over her brow, carrying flowers and a fan. The picture must have been for an occasion, since it was a touch self-conscious and unnatural. Only the dark, questioning eyes betrayed something of the later angry, passionate Vilma.

“Do you remember her?” I asked, and knew my voice was not quite steady.

“Vaguely,” she replied. “Someone comes into my room in the dark and leans over me with a warm familiar scent. That’s all I remember. I was three years old when she died.”

“Three and a half,” I say, flustered.

“Yes. But really I only remember you. You are always adjusting something on me, my dress or my hair, and you are always in my room, you always have something to do there. Then you too disappear. Why did you leave, Esther?”

“Hush,” I say. “Hush, Éva. You don’t yet understand.”

“Yet?…” she asked, and started to laugh in the same singsong way, the laugh a little forced, too drawn out, too theatrical. Everything she said seemed extraordinarily important, too carefully composed. “Are you still playing at being the little mama, Esther, dear?” she said, kindly, superior, and compassionate. And now it was she who, with an adult movement, put her arm round my shoulder, led me over to the couch, and sat me down.

This time we looked at each other like two women, women who know or guess each other’s secrets. Suddenly a hot flush of excitement ran through me. Vilma’s daughter! I thought. The daughter of Vilma and Lajos. I felt I was blushing with a jealousy that sprang from somewhere so deep it shocked me with its energy and power: it was as if a jealous voice were shouting in me. I didn’t want to listen to it. She could have been your daughter! was what the voice was crying. Your daughter, the meaning of your life. Why has she come back? Agitated, I bowed my head, burying my face in my hands. The significance of the moment balanced the shame I felt even as I was moving. I knew I was betraying my secret, that I was being watched by someone who was pitilessly observing my shame and discomfort; that the young woman who might have been my daughter had no sympathy and was not about to save me in this sorry situation. After an interval that seemed to be infinitely long I heard her mature, strange, self-aware, indifferent voice again.

“You shouldn’t have gone away, Esther. I know it can’t have been easy with Father. But you should have known you were the only one who might have helped him. And then there were Gábor and me. You simply left us to our fates. It was like abandoning two children at the gate of a house. Why did you do it?”

And when I remained silent, she calmly added:

“You did it out of revenge. Why look at me like that? You were wicked and acted out of revenge. You were the only woman who had any power over Father. You were the only woman he ever loved. No, Esther, that much I know, at least as well as you and Father. What happened between you? I have thought about it a long time. I had time to think, an entire childhood. Believe me, that childhood was not particularly happy. Do you know the details? I am quite prepared to tell you. I came here to tell you. And, at the end of my story, to ask you to help. I feel you owe us that much.”

“Anything,” I said, “I’ll do anything to help you.”

I straightened up. The difficult moment had passed.

“Look, Éva,” I went on, and now I too felt calm. “Your father is a really interesting, very talented man. But all those things you were talking about just now have become a little confused in his memory. You should be aware that your father is quick to forget. Please don’t think I am criticizing him. He can’t help it. That’s his nature…”

“I know,” she answered. “Father never remembers reality. He is a poet.”

“Yes,” I said, my heart a little lighter. “He might be a poet. Reality gets confused in his mind. That’s why you shouldn’t believe everything he says…his memory is poor. The time you are talking about was the most difficult, most unbearably painful, most complicated part of my life. You say revenge! What kind of word is that to use? Who taught you to use it? You know nothing. Everything your father says about that time is fantasy, pure fantasy. But I do remember the reality. It was rather different. I owe nothing to anyone.”

“But I have read the letters,” she retorted in a matter-of-fact way.

Now I fell silent. We looked at each other.

“What letters?” I asked, astonished.

“The letters, Esther,” she sharply retorted. “Father’s letters, the ones he wrote to you at the time. You know, when he used to visit the house, when he was obsessed with you, saying that you should run away together because he couldn’t go on otherwise, could no longer keep up appearances, that he couldn’t cope with Vilma, who was stronger than he was and who hated you, Esther…because Mother did hate you…. Why? Because you were younger? Or more beautiful, or more real? Only you can answer that.”

“What are you talking about, Éva,” I cried, and shook her by the arm. “What letters? What is this nonsense?”

She freed her arm, stroked her forehead with her gentle childlike hands, and stared at me with big wide eyes.

“Why are you lying?” she asked, her voice cold and hard.

“I have never lied,” I answered.

She shrugged.

“I have read the letters,” she said, and folded her arms like a magistrate. “They were lying in the cupboard for ages, in the cupboard where Mama kept her underwear, where you hid them — you know, in that rosewood box…It is hardly three years since I found them.”

I felt myself going pale, the blood draining from my face.

“Tell me what they say,” I demanded. “Think what you like, think me a liar, but tell me everything you know about those letters.”

“I don’t understand,” she said sharply, now that it was her turn to be surprised. “I am talking about the three letters that Father wrote you when he was engaged to Mama, begging you to release him from his emotional prison, because he loved only you. The last letter was dated just before the wedding. I compared the dates. It’s the letter where he writes that he can’t speak to you directly because he hasn’t the strength and is ashamed on account of Mama. I don’t think Father has ever written a more sincere letter. He writes that he is a crushed, injured man, that he trusts only you, that only you can give him back his self-respect and sanity. He begs you to elope with him, to abandon all else, to go abroad with him; that he puts his life into your hands. It is a letter of despair. It is impossible that you should not remember it, Esther. It is impossible, isn’t it? For some reason you don’t want to discuss these letters with me…maybe they are painful on account of Mama, or you simply want to hide the whole thing from me. I understood everything once I read these letters. I saw my father in quite a different light from that time on. It’s enough that once in one’s life one should strive to be strong and good. It wasn’t his fault that he failed. Why didn’t you answer?”

“What should I have answered?” I asked, in the same flat, indifferent voice anyone might use in admitting that they had lied, and if I had genuinely known of these letters.

“What?…My god! You should have answered something. These were the sort of letters people get just once in a lifetime. He wrote that he would wait till the morning for your answer. If you did not answer he would know you lacked the strength…in which case he had no choice but to remain here and marry Mama. But he couldn’t speak to you about this. He was afraid you would not believe him because he had often lied before. I cannot know what happened between you…I don’t even have any right to ask. But you did not answer his letter, and soon everything went terribly wrong. Don’t be cross, Esther…now that it is all over I think you were partly responsible for what happened.”

“When did your father write those letters?”

“The week before the wedding.”

“Where did he address them?”

“Where? Here, home, to your house. You lived here then together with Mama.”

“You found them in a rosewood box?”

“Yes, in a box, in the cupboard where the underwear was kept.”

“Did anyone have a key to that cupboard?”

“Only you. And Father.”

What could I have answered? I let go of her arm, stood up, went over to the sideboard, and picked up Vilma’s portrait and gazed at it a while. It had been a long time since I had held the picture in my hands. Now I stared at those familiar and yet terrifyingly strange eyes and suddenly I understood.