Esther's Inheritance

7

This shelter — or that’s what it seemed to be at the beginning — was more than a little shaky. When Father died, the executors, Tibor and Endre, made a thorough examination of the estate. Endre, the public notary, was constrained to do so by virtue of his office. Our financial position seemed impossible at first. The little that remained after the latest upheavals — my father’s resentful neglect and ill-tempered dealings, Mama’s illness, Vilma’s dispossession and death, the capital required by Laci to establish his business — all drained away to Lajos by way of narrow, invisible channels. Once he could no longer lay hands on money he started removing objects from the old house, as “mementos,” he said, combining the curiosity of a child with the avidity of a collector. Later I would sometimes defend him against Endre and Tibor’s criticism. “He’s only playing,” I said when they charged him with rapacity. “There is something childish in his makeup. He likes to play.” Endre sharply disagreed. Children played with model boats or colored marbles, he indignantly argued; Lajos was the kind of “eternal child” who preferred to play with bank bills. He did not say, though you could pick up the hint, that these bills, Lajos’s bills, were not to be regarded as entirely pure and harmless playthings. And indeed, after Father’s death some bills turned up that Father appeared to have signed over to Lajos, though I myself never questioned their validity. Then these too leaked away, as did everything else, in the general collapse.

When I noticed that I had no one left in the world — except Nunu, with whom I lived in a certain interdependent relationship, as mistletoe to tree, though neither of us knew which was the tree and which the parasite — Endre and Tibor endeavored to save something for me out of the wreckage. This was the time when Tibor wanted me to marry him. I hemmed and hawed but couldn’t give him the real reason for my rejection. I couldn’t tell him that in my heart of hearts I was still waiting for Lajos, expecting news of some kind, a message, possibly some miracle. Anything to do with Lajos was charged with an air of miracle, so I did not think it in the least impossible that he should appear one day, somewhat theatrically perhaps, like Lohengrin, singing an exalted aria. But then, after our separation, he disappeared as miraculously as if he had wrapped himself in a cloak of invisibility. I heard nothing from him for years.

There was just the house and the garden now. There was also the question of some minor debt. I have always believed myself to be an inexhaustible, obstinate, practical being. But the moment I was left alone I was obliged to notice that I had been living in Cloud Cuckoo Land before — clouds heavy with thunder, I should add — and had hardly any idea of what was real and reliable and what was not. Nunu told me the garden and the house would be enough for the two of us. Even today I don’t understand how it could be “enough.” Certainly the garden is large and full of fruit trees and Nunu had banished those lush, decorative flowerbeds, the winding paths sprinkled with red clay, the romantic waterfall with its moss-covered rocks, intensely cultivating every inch of ground like one of those southern mountain dwellers who exploit their fields and gardens to the fullest, squaring off each square meter of plot with stone walls to protect them from storms and unwelcome visitors. The garden was all that was left. Endre and Tibor suggested we should let out some of the rooms and take in lodgers. The idea foundered primarily because of Nunu’s opposition. She didn’t say why she was against it, she offered no explanation, you could just tell from the tone of her voice and even more from her silences that she was not happy with having strangers in the house. Nunu always arranges things and “solves problems” in ways that you would not expect of her. Two lonely women with nothing to do might, or so the world thinks, set up as seamstresses or cooks, or advertise fancy embroidery, but Nunu did not consider any of these. It took some time before she allowed me to take on some of the neighbors’ children for piano lessons.

We survived somehow…I know now it was the house that kept us going, that and the garden, all that our poor risk-taking father had left us. This was all that remained, all that sustained us. The house offered us shelter; even as it was, deprived of the old furniture, it provided a home. The garden provided food, just enough and no more than a castaway requires. Somehow it grew around us because we gave it all we had, feeding it with our labor and our hopes, so that sometimes it seemed like a proper estate where anyone who chose to tie himself to it could live without a thought. One day Nunu decided to take the end of the garden, the sandy part, a whole two acres, and plant it with almond trees. These almond trees were like mysterious hands that reached over us to shelter us, casting their almonds before the starving. Every year they brought good produce that Nunu managed, in her own secretive way, quite ceremonially, to put a price on, and it was from that sale that we managed to live, and, indeed, clear our debts, sometimes even to the extent of being able to help Laci. For a long time I did not understand how this was done. Nunu only smiled and kept her counsel. Sometimes I stopped in front of our small forest of almonds and stared at them as if superstitious. It was like a miracle there in the sand, in our lives. Someone is looking after us, I felt.

The almond orchard was Father’s idea originally, but he was too tired by the end to make it happen. Once, some ten years ago, he had said to Nunu that the sandy back of the garden would be good for almonds. Father didn’t much concern himself with what life had to offer; in the eyes of strangers it was he who had wasted the modest resources of our family. Even so, after his death we noticed that in his own silent, resentful way, he had left everything that was due to us in order; it was Mama who was the chief burden on the house; it was he who, by Lajos’s request, kept the garden for our use, who argued to the last against moving away. When Nunu and I remained alone we had no more to do than take our place among the gardens that Father had made for us. We had the house renovated, thanks to Endre, who arranged a cheap loan against the bequest. All this happened without being planned: it simply happened without any particular intention or aim. One day we noticed we had a shelter over our heads. Occasionally I could buy material with which to make clothes, Laci could borrow what books were necessary, and the state of solitude we entered with such trepidation after the collapse, like wounded animals entering a cave, slowly dissolved around us, so soon we had friends and the house rang on Sundays with hearty male conversation. People looked after us, giving Nunu and me a place in the world, allocating us a slot in the nook of their imaginations where we could quietly get on with our lives. Life was nowhere near as unbearable or hopeless as I had imagined it would be. Slowly our lives were given over to new activities: we had friends and even a few enemies, such as Tibor’s mother and Endre’s wife, who, ridiculously and entirely without cause, resented their menfolk visiting our house. There were times when life in the house and the garden was like real life that has a purpose, a project, some inner meaning. It was just that it had no meaning; we could have gone on for years on end just as we were, but if someone had ordered us to leave the very next day I would have put up no resistance. Life was simple and safe. Lajos was a disciple of Nietzsche, who demanded that one should live dangerously, but he was frightened of danger, and when he entered into some political “involvement” he did so as he embarked on any passion, with a loud mouth and equipped with some “secret weapon,” protecting himself with carefully calculated lies, with warm underwear, with some cosmetic items and the well-preserved, more scandalous letters of his adversaries in his pocket. But there was a time when I was close to him when my life was as “dangerous” as his. Now that this danger has passed I can see that nothing is as it was, and that such danger was in fact the one true meaning of life.