Esther's Inheritance

15

“Look, Esther,” she said, a little confused now, and lit another cigarette. “Father will tell you everything. I think he’s right. You may think a great deal has happened since you left us, and indeed a great deal has happened, not always for the best. I don’t remember the earliest days. Then we went to school and life became exciting. We moved apartments yearly, not just apartments but schools and nannies too. Those nannies…my god…as you can imagine Father was none too choosy. Most of them ran off, taking a few of our possessions with them, or it was we who ran off, leaving home and furniture behind; we went from one rented apartment to another. One time, when I would have been about twelve years old, we were living in hotel rooms. It was such an interesting life. The headwaiter dressed us, we shared lessons with the elevator boy, and when Father disappeared for a few days the chambermaids would look after us and see to our education. There were times when we ate sea crab day after day and other times when we hardly ate anything. Father is very fond of crab. That was our upbringing. Other children are brought up on sour milk or vitamins…But we generally had a good time. Only later, when Father’s fortunes were on the rise and we reverted to respectable middle-class life, renting an apartment, managing a household, when Father set out on some new venture — and even as a child I trembled at Father’s ventures — we occasionally wept to remember our hotel days, because even in our “respectable life” we were living like nomads in a desert. Father is not really an urban creature, you know. No, don’t protest, I think I might know him better than you do. There is nothing of the materialist in Father, possessions mean nothing to him, he doesn’t even mind whether he has a roof over his head or not. There is something in him of the hunter-gatherer, who rises in the morning, gets on his horse — he always kept a car even at the worst of times, usually driving it himself — and sets out into his own patch of savannah or forest, which in Father’s case was the city, sniffs the air, stays on the alert, hunts down a suitably large banknote, roasts it, and offers everyone a bite; but then, while there is anything left of the prize, for days or even weeks on end, he is not interested in anything else…And, when it comes down to it, this is what we love in Father, and what you too love, Esther. Father is capable of discarding a piano or a decent job the way other people throw away used gloves; he has no respect for objects and market value, you know. This is something we, as women, cannot understand…I have learned a great deal from Father, but his real secret — his carelessness, his inner detachment — I cannot learn. He does not feel closely bound to anything, the only thing he’s interested in is danger, life being the most peculiar danger…God alone knows, God alone can understand this…He needs this danger, this life among people but without human ties; he breaks ties out of curiosity and absentmindedly throws them away. Did you not realize this when…? I mean, did you not feel it? Even as a child I felt we were meant to live in a tent, a migrant tribe traveling through country that was sometimes dangerous, sometimes pleasant, Father with bow and quiver in his hand going ahead, spying out the terrain, dashing to telephones, listening, watching certain signs, then suddenly full of energy, fully alert, and tensed for action…elephants approaching the drinking pool, Father in his covert raising the bow. Are you laughing at me?”

“No,” I replied, my throat dry. “Carry on. I won’t laugh.”

“Men, you know,” she said in a wise pedagogic manner with a light sigh.

I did laugh. But I immediately grew serious again. I couldn’t help but notice that Éva, Vilma’s daughter, this child with whom I had lightheartedly adopted an adult, grown-up-woman tone, knew something about men, certainly something more and more certainly than I did, I who could have been her mother. I scolded myself for laughing.

“Yes, yes,” she said innocently, and opened her big blue eyes to indicate her seriousness. “Men. There are such men, men unbound by family, possessions, or territory. They would have been hunters or fishermen in the past. Sometimes Father was away for months and then we were educated in institutions run by nuns who were good-natured if a little scared but who tried to keep us in order in much the same way as if they had found us abandoned by the roadside, as if bits of the jungle were still sticking to our hair, as if we had spent our time dining with monkeys off trees bearing loaves of bread. You see, that is the kind of colorful childhood we enjoyed…Not that I’m complaining. Please don’t think I am complaining about Father. I love him, and I think he was nicest to me when he returned from one of his longer excursions a little exhausted, utterly broke, looking as if he had been fighting wild animals. It was really good at such times, for a while at least. On Sunday mornings he would take us to the museum and then to the sweetshop and the cinema. He would ask to look at our exercise books, clip on his monocle, and would chide and teach us with a solemn frown…It was all most amusing, Father as schoolmaster, can you imagine?”

“Yes,” I said. “The poor thing.”

But I didn’t know who I felt more sorry for, the children or Lajos, nor did Éva ask. Now she was clearly absorbed in her memories. She continued in a friendly, easy manner.

“Actually, we didn’t have too bad a time of it. That is, until one day the woman arrived.”

“What woman?” I asked, striving to maintain a quiet conversational tone.

She shrugged.

“Fate,” she pouted. “You know. Fate, the lady arriving at just the right time, at the very last moment…”

“What moment?” I asked, my mouth dry.

“The moment Father began to age. The moment the hunter notices his eye is not as sharp as it was, that his hand is trembling. One day Father took fright.”

“What frightened him?”

“Old age. Himself. There’s nothing sadder than when a man of his sort grows old, Esther. Then anyone, anyone at all can take advantage of him.”

“What has she done to him?”

We spoke quietly, whispering like accomplices.

“She controls him,” she said. Then, after a few moments: “We owe her money. Have you heard? I am engaged to him.”

“Her son?”

“Yes.”

“Do you love him?”

“No.”

“Then why are you marrying him?”

“We have to save Father.”

“What do you know about him?”

“Something bad. He has bills in his hand.”

“Do you love someone else?”

Now it was her turn to fall silent. She stared at her pink-lacquered fingernails. Then, wise and mature, she quietly added: “I love Father. There are two people in the world who love him: you, Esther, and I. Gábor doesn’t count. He is quite different.”

“You don’t want to marry the son?”

“Gábor is much calmer,” she said, avoiding the answer. “It’s as if he had locked himself away through a kind of deafness. He doesn’t want to hear anything and seems not to see what is happening around him. It’s his way of defending himself.”

“There is someone else,” I ventured and stepped closer to her. “Someone you love, and if it were possible to arrange things…somehow…it wouldn’t be easy…and you should know, Éva, that I have little now, that we, Nunu and Laci and I, are poor now…but I might know someone who might help you.”

“Oh, you could help, all right,” she said in her cold voice again, with careless certainty as if dropping an aside. But it was some time since she had looked into my eyes. She was standing with her back to the window, and I couldn’t see her face. The sky had grown gray since lunch, and through the window I could see dense dark September clouds gathering above the garden. The room floated in a half-light. I went over to the window and closed one of the open casements, afraid that someone might overhear us in the heavy silence before the rain.

“You must tell me,” I said, my heart racing in a way it had not done for a very long time, the last time perhaps on the night when Mother died. “If you want to escape — you and your father — from these people, you must tell me if there is someone you love…If money can help…Now tell me.”

“I think, Esther,” she said, her eyes cast down on the floor in her innocent schoolgirl voice, “that money, that is to say money alone, can no longer help. We need you too. Though Father knows nothing about this,” she hastily added, almost frightened.

“About what?”

“This…what I told you.”

“What is it you want?” I asked impatiently, raising my voice.

“I want to save Father,” she dully replied.

“From these people?”

“Yes.”

“And you want to save yourself?”

“If possible.”

“You don’t love him?”

“No.”

“You want to get away?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Abroad. Far away.”

“Is someone waiting for you?”

“Yes.”

“Yes,” I repeated, my heart lighter, and sat down exhausted. I pressed my hands to my heart. I felt dizzy again, as I always do when I step out of the shadow world of pointless watching and waiting and come face-to-face with reality. How much simpler reality is! Éva loves somebody and wants to join him: she wants to live a decent, honest life. And I have to help her. Yes, with everything at my disposal. Almost greedily, I asked her:

“What can I do, Éva?”

“Father will tell you,” she replied with difficulty, as if reluctant to pronounce the words. “He has a plan…I think, they have plans. You’ll get to hear them, Esther. That’s their affair and yours. But you could help me particularly, if you wanted to. There is something in this house that is mine. As far as I know, it is mine…Excuse me, you see I am blushing. It’s very difficult to talk about it.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, and felt my hands grow cold. “What do you mean?”

“I need money, Esther,” she said now, her voice breaking and raw, as if she were attacking me. “I need money to get away.”

“Yes, of course,” I said, puzzled. “Money…I am sure I can get hold of some money. I am pretty sure Nunu can too…Maybe I can talk to Tibor. But Éva,” I said, as if coming to my senses, disillusioned and helpless, “I am afraid that what I can put together will not amount to very much.”

“I don’t need your money,” she said, cold and proud. “I want nothing that is not mine. I want only that which Mother left me.”

Suddenly her eyes were burning and accusing as she looked directly at me.

“Father said you were looking after my inheritance. That is all I have left of Mother. Give me back the ring, Esther. Now, immediately. The ring, you hear?”

“Yes, the ring,” I said.

Éva was looking at me so aggressively that I backed away. It so happened that I found myself standing by the sideboard in which I had hidden the fake ring. I had only to lean back, open the drawer, and hand the ring over, the ring that Vilma’s daughter had demanded from me with such hatred in her voice. I stood there helpless, my arms folded, determined to keep the secret of Lajos’s treachery.

“When did your father speak of the ring?” I asked.

“Last week,” she said, and shrugged. “When he told me we were coming here.”

“Did he talk about the value of the ring?”

“Yes. He had it looked at once. A long time ago, after Mother’s death…before he gave it to you, he had it valued.”

“And what is it worth?” I asked calmly.

“A lot,” she said, her voice with that peculiar hoarseness again. “Thousands. Maybe even ten thousand.”

“Yes,” I said.

Then I said, and I wondered at how I could maintain such control and even sound somewhat superior: “You are not getting the ring, my girl.”

“Is there no ring?” she asked, looking me over. Then, more quietly: “Is it that you don’t have it, or that you won’t give it to me?”

“I will not answer that question,” I said, and stared straight in front of me. At that moment I felt Lajos silently enter, stepping as lightly as ever, so lightly he might have been onstage, and I knew he was somewhere near.

“Leave us alone, Éva,” I heard him say. “I have some business with Esther.”

I did not glance back. It was a long time before Éva — giving me a long dark look that was to show she did not trust me — slowly left the room, hesitating on the threshold, giving a shrug, then pacing rapidly away. But she drew the door closed quietly, as if not entirely certain. We stood in the room for a while without seeing each other. Then I turned and, for the first time in fifteen years, stood face-to-face, alone with Lajos.