Esther's Inheritance

20

About midnight I heard Nunu’s footsteps; she climbed slowly up the creaking, rotted wooden stairs, pausing on every third step to cough. She stopped on the threshold of my room just as she had last night, the flickering candle in her hand, wearing her day clothes, the solitary black ceremonial dress she had not yet had time to take off.

“You’re not asleep,” she said, and sat down beside me on the bed, placing what remained of the candle on the bedside table.

“You know they have even taken the jam?”

“No,” I said. I sat up in the bed and started laughing.

“Not everything, just the peach,” she said in a matter-of-fact way. “All twenty jars. Éva asked for them. They took the flowers, too, the remaining dahlias in the garden. It doesn’t matter. They would have faded by next week anyway.”

“Who took the flowers?” I asked.

“The woman.”

She coughed, folded her arms, and sat up straight, as calm and self-contained as ever in life, whatever the situation. I took her bony hand that was neither warm nor cold.

“Let them take what they want, Nunu,” I said.

“Of course,” she agreed. “Let them take it, my girl. If there’s no alternative.”

“I couldn’t go down to supper,” I said, and squeezed her hand for support. “Don’t be cross. Were they not surprised?”

“No, they were simply quiet. I don’t think they were surprised.”

We both looked at the unsteady candle flame. I felt cold.

“Nunu, darling,” I asked her. “Please close the shutters. And there, on the sideboard, you’ll find three letters. Would you bring them over, my dear?”

She moved slowly through the room, her shadow enormous on the wall. She closed the windows and brought over the letters, then she tucked me up and sat back down beside me, her arms folded, a touch ceremonially in her ceremonial dress, as if appearing at some peculiar, grotesque occasion, an occasion unlike others, one that was neither wedding nor funeral. She sat and listened.

“Do you understand, Nunu?” I asked her.

“Yes, my girl, I understand. I understand,” she said, and put her arms around me.

So we sat and waited for the candle to burn down or for the wind to abate, the wind that had been moaning around the house ever since midnight, tearing at the muddy boughs of the trees, waiting perhaps for morning. I myself didn’t know what we were waiting for. I shivered.

“You are tired,” she said, and covered me up.

“Yes,” I said. “I am very tired. It was all too much, you know. I’d like to sleep, Nunu dear. Would you be so kind as to read me those three letters?”

She reached into her apron pocket, searched for her wire-framed spectacles, and carefully studied the letters.

“Lajos wrote them,” she said.

“You recognize his writing?”

“Yes. Have you only just received them?”

“Just now.”

“When did he write them?”

“Twenty years ago.”

“Is it the fault of the mail that they have just been delivered?…” she asked, partly curious, partly jealous.

“No, not the mail,” I smiled.

“Whose fault was it?”

“Vilma’s.”

“She stole them?…”

“She stole them.”

“I see,” she said, and sighed. “I hope she rests in peace. I never did like her.”

She adjusted the glasses on her nose, leaned to the flame, and began to read one of the letters as if she were back at school, quietly, in a singsong voice.

“‘My one and only darling,’” she read, “‘life is playing extraordinary tricks on us. I have no other hope but that I should have found you forever…’”

She stopped reading, pushed the glasses up to her forehead, and turned to me with shining eyes, moved and enchanted.

“He certainly could write a wonderful letter!”

“Yes,” I agreed. “Read on. He was a brilliant letter writer.”

But the wind, the end-of-September wind that had until then been snapping at the walls of the house, suddenly tore open the window, billowed through the curtains, and, as if it were bringing news, touched and shifted everything in the room. Then it blew out the candle flame. I still remember that. And remember also, though only vaguely, that at some stage Nunu closed the window, and I fell asleep.