Esther's Inheritance

by Marai, Sandor

  “No,” replied Laci, in all sincerity.

  “I believe I do understand,” said Tibor, and then as usual when regretting his words, fell stubbornly silent.

  Nunu simply added, “Be careful, because it’s money he’s after. It will be useless being careful, of course. Tibor is bound to give him more.”

  “No, I’ll not do that again,” said Tibor, laughing and shaking his head.

  Nunu shrugged. “Of course you won’t! Like the last time. You’ll give him something. Another twenty. He is a man to whom one must give.”

  “But why, Nunu?” asked Laci, utterly astonished and clearly jealous.

  “Because he is stronger,” said Nunu indifferently. Then she went back into the kitchen.

  I was dressing, standing in front of the mirror, when I felt dizzy and had to grope for support. I had a vision. I saw the past so clearly it seemed to be the present. I saw the garden, the same garden where we were just now waiting for Lajos, waiting under the great ash, but then we were twenty years younger, our hearts full of despair and anger. Harsh, passionate words buzzed like flies in the autumn air. It was autumn then too, toward the end of September. The air was scented and damp. We were twenty years younger then, relatives, friends, and vague acquaintances, and Lajos was standing in our midst like a thief caught red-handed. I see him there as he stands, unflummoxed, blinking a little, occasionally removing his glasses and carefully wiping them. He is alone at the center of the agitated circle, as calm as anyone can be when they know the game is up, that all is discovered and there is nothing left to do except stand patiently and listen while judgment is pronounced. Then suddenly he is gone, and we are living on in our mechanical way, like wax dolls. But it is as if we only appeared to be living; our true lives were the battles we had with Lajos, our passion the exasperation with him.

  Now here he was about to be in the old circle, in the old garden. Now we would start to live again with the same passionate exasperation. I put on my lilac dress. It was like donning an old theatrical costume, the clothes of life. I felt that everything a man might stand for—his strength, his own particular way of life—roused in his adversaries a specific image of what it means to be alive. We all belonged to him, had combined against him, and now that he was on his way to us, we were living different lives, more exciting, more dangerous lives. I stood before the mirror in my room, in my old dress, feeling all this. Lajos was bringing back both the past and the timeless experience of being alive. I knew he had not changed. I knew Nunu would be right. I knew there was nothing we could do to defend ourselves. But at the same time I knew that I still had no clue about life, about my own life and the lives of others, and it was only through Lajos that I could learn the truth—yes, through the liar, Lajos. The garden was filling up with acquaintances. A car was sounding its horn somewhere. Suddenly I felt a great calm descend on me: I knew Lajos had come because he had no choice, and that we were welcoming him because we had no choice, and the whole thing was as terrifying, as unpleasant, and as unavoidable for him as it was for us.

  9

  But reality, that miraculous ice-cold shower, woke me from my dream. Lajos had arrived and the day had begun, the day of Lajos’s visit, the day of which Tibor, Laci, and Endre would speak until their dying day, confusing his words, correcting each other, conjuring and refuting various images of the truth. I’d like to give a faithful representation of the events of that day. It took me some time to understand the true significance of his visit. It began like the publicity for a traveling circus. And it ended…but no, I can’t compare the end, his departure, to anything. It ended so simply. Lajos left, the day ended, as did an episode of our lives. We carried on living.

  Lajos arrived complete with menagerie. The car that stopped in front of the house had already aroused people’s interest. It was red and conspicuously large, like some public conveyance. I missed the moment, the long-awaited moment of his arrival, and could only piece together from Laci’s useless account, as carefully corrected by Tibor, how the first to emerge from the car was a peculiarly dressed young man with a yellow lion-headed dog in his arms. The dog was of some expensive Tibetan breed, angry and liable to bite. The young man was followed by an older woman with a painted face, whose outfit was more appropriate for someone younger, with a leather coat on top, then Éva, then Gábor, and, lastly, the figure sitting next to the driver, Lajos. Their arrival confused the welcoming party. No one hastened to greet them. They stood in the garden, stared at the red car, and did not move a muscle. Lajos was talking to the driver, then he entered the garden, looked around, recognized Tibor, and without even a hello said:

  “Do you have a twenty, Tibor? The driver needs to buy some oil and I have no change.”

  And because he had chosen to say exactly what everyone was expecting him to say, no one protested or got annoyed: they were all under his spell, in the garden in which they had last seen him twenty years ago, under the same tree, in the same light, and because he addressed them in exactly the same words with which he had left them, they understood that this was part of an unalterable law and fell silent. Tibor numbly extended the requested banknote to him. They stood there a while longer like actors in a mime. Then Lajos paid the driver, returned to the garden, and introduced the newcomers to the company. That’s how it began.

  Later I often wondered whether it was something Lajos set up, something smacking of theater. I believe it was, it was just that the theatricality was unconscious. Lajos wouldn’t have the effect he does if it were deliberate, since ordinary braggarts and amoral buffoons who provide some brief amusement or rouse fierce debate in their social circle grow tiresome eventually and find that people turn away from them, precisely because everything they do is calculated and predictable. But people don’t turn away from Lajos, because his little shows are full of surprises that he himself enjoys but does not prepare, and when the punch line is delivered he loves nothing better than to laugh dreamily and applaud himself. Lajos would often recite the speech in Shakespeare that begins, “All the world’s a stage…” He performed on that stage and always played the leading role in the historical present, never studying the part. Even now, in the very moment of his arrival, he was directing, presenting, and speechifying with transparent pleasure. He introduced his children with a gesture that was hard to classify but was unmistakably melodramatic, as though they were orphans.

  His first words were accusing, accusing and pleading. Behold the orphans! he declared to Tibor and Laci, indicating the two children who had in the meantime grown up: Gábor, a shifty, sluggish, blinking, and over-weight young man, now a qualified engineer; and Éva, a little madam, very much the lady-about-town in her modish sporting outfit, with two fox furs round her neck, and wearing a slightly mocking, resentful smile of anticipation. Behold the orphans! Lajos’s gesture implied when introducing us to Vilma’s children, who were indeed orphans, or rather half-orphans, who had by now overcome whatever difficulties fate had presented them with. They had grown up and returned to us out of the past in confidence-inspiring physical health. It is hard for me to explain this. We stood there confused, just as we were to do later, facing the orphans but averting our eyes. Lajos kept showing them off, from the front, from the side, as if he had found them on the street deserted by God and man like ragged urchins, as if someone in the house—Tibor or Nunu or possibly I myself—were responsible for the orphans’ predicament. He did not blame us in so many words, but right from the beginning that was the manner in which he presented us with Éva and Gábor. And what was stranger still was that, looking at these two well-fed, apparently well-dressed, and, what was more, suspiciously mature, poised young people who had dropped out of the sky into our laps, we who were gathered in the garden actually felt responsible for everything, responsible in the common sense of the word, as though we had refused to share a crust or our affections with someone who had a right to expect such things and had need of them. The two orphans waited patiently, standing at ease, looking about
as if they were used to Lajos’s theatrical presentations, knowing there was nothing for it but to wait till the performance was over and the audience started applauding. After a carefully timed moment of silence, by which time our consciences were well and truly soaked in guilt regarding “the orphans,” Lajos coughed twice, as he always used to do, then went into his conjuring act.

  The magic show was to fill up the afternoon. He worked feverishly. It was clear this was going to be a bigger and better show than any before, the very acme of his art; his whole heart was in it, the tears were real, the kisses hot, and the feats of memory involved in compiling the various tricks were astonishing: his talent dazzled everyone. Even Nunu. In the first hour we could not get a word in. His performance left us breathless. He kissed Nunu twice, once on the right cheek, once on the left, then took from his wallet a letter from the secretary of state, in which that high-ranking official acknowledged the communication of his dear friend Lajos, wherein he had urged the immediate appointment of Nunu as postmistress and was even now working on the case. I saw the letter with my own eyes; it was on official paper, properly stamped and watermarked, and the words “Secretary of State” appeared in the top left-hand corner in a firm round hand. The letter was genuine, the real thing. Lajos really had acted in Nunu’s interest. It was just that no one mentioned the fact that he had promised Nunu to do this fifteen years ago, and everyone kept silent about Nunu being almost seventy years old now, about the fact that she had long given up any ambition she had had of being a postmistress, was no longer up to the task and could not be employed at this age for such a position of responsibility, and that, in short, Lajos’s noble deed was precisely fifteen years too late. No one gave this a thought. We stood round the two of them, Lajos and Nunu, our eyes sparkling with relief and exultation. Tibor looked round with pride, his spectacles glinting with satisfaction. “There, you see. We were wrong! Lajos has kept his promise after all,” said the look. Laci smiled in confusion, but at that moment he too was clearly proud of Lajos. Nunu wept. Back home in the Felvidék she had been assistant postmistress for thirty years and vainly hoped to be promoted at last, but when this hope faded with the years she upped and moved to live with us and gave up her dreams of office. She read the letter now with tears in her eyes, deeply moved by the lines mentioning her by name; the secretary of state was not promising anything, but he said enough to hold out the hope that he would be well disposed in the matter of Nunu, and would “look into the possibility.” None of this was of any practical use, but Nunu still wept and said quietly, “Thank you, Lajos darling. It’s probably too late. But I am so happy.”

  “It’s not too late,” said Lajos. “You will see, it is not too late.”

  He declared this with such conviction it seemed he was on confidential terms not only with the secretary of state but with God himself, that he could arrange matters of age and death too if he chose.

  We heard him and were moved.

  Then everyone fell to talking excitedly. “Mister” Endre arrived and stood beside the concrete bench a little reserved and confused, like someone whose appearance had not been entirely voluntary but had been summoned by Lajos in “an official capacity.” Lajos was organizing things. He introduced people, arranged them into picturesque groups, and initiated little scenes—scenes of farewell, scenes of delight and tearful reconciliation—all this with a few words or a hint, concealing the true meaning and import of the meetings behind a facade of stagy artificial group compositions that were empty of content; and everyone played along, all of us smiling in confusion, even respectable Endre, with a briefcase under his arm, the contents of which we never discovered and which he must have brought with him for purely symbolic purposes, as a line of defense to show that he would not have come voluntarily but was on official business. And it was obvious that everyone was happy that Lajos was here, happy to be present at this reunion. I would not have been surprised to see a small crowd gather behind the garden palings and sing something. But the general confusion was so much like a deluge that individual details were lost in the flood of well-being. Later, about dusk, when we had recovered our senses, we stared at each other amazed, as if we had fallen under the spell of an Indian fakir at work; the fakir had thrown a rope into the air, climbed the rope, and disappeared among the clouds before our very eyes. We were looking at the sky, seeking him there, and were astonished to see that he was taking a bow among us, here on earth, his begging bowl in front of him.

  10

  Nunu had served a cooked breakfast, the guests had settled down on the veranda, nervously eating and getting to know one other. Everyone felt that it was only the powerful spell of Lajos’s presence that prevented loss of temper. It was pure theater, every word of it. The hours were artfully crammed: Scene One, “The meal,” Scene Two, “A walk round the garden.” Lajos, with his director’s eye, occasionally spotted this or that group falling behind, and clapped his hands and brought the company into line. At last he was alone with me in the garden. Laci was on the veranda waxing enthusiastic, rapt and unguarded, talking with his mouth full. It was he who had first surrendered to Lajos’s charm, forgot his doubts, and was happily and openly bathing in the sunshine of the familiar presence. The first words Lajos addressed to me were, “Now we have to put everything right.”

  Hearing this my heart began to beat loudly and nervously. I did not answer. I stood facing opposite him under the tree next to the concrete bench on which he had so often lied to me, and finally I took a good hard look at him.

  There was something sad about him, something that reminded me of an aging photographer or politician who is not quite up-to-date regarding manners and ideas but continues obstinately, and somewhat resentfully, to employ the same terms of flattery he has used for years. He was an animal tamer past his prime, of whom the animals are no longer afraid. His clothes, too, were peculiarly old-fashioned: as if he were wanting to keep up with the fashions at all costs but some inner demon prevented him from being elegant or fashionable in the way he thought was necessary and which he liked. His tie, for example, was just a shade louder than was right for the rest of his outfit, his character and age, so he had the air of a gigolo. His suit was of a light color, fashionable in that it was loose and made for traveling, the kind you see movie moguls in magazines wear when they are globe-trotting. Everything was a little too new, specially chosen for the occasion, even his hat and shoes. And all this communicated a certain helplessness. My heart went out to him. Perhaps, if he had come in rags, a broken man without a shred of hope, I would not have tolerated this cheap feeling of sympathy. He’s had it coming to him, I would have thought. But this hopeless modishness, so redolent of shame, filled me with pity. I gazed at him and suddenly felt sorry for him.

  “Sit down, Lajos,” I said. “What do you want of me?”

  I was calm and well meaning. I was no longer afraid of him. This man has known failure, I thought, and felt no satisfaction thinking that; in fact, I felt nothing but pity, a deep and humiliating pity. It was as if I had noticed that he was dyeing his hair or had committed something equally unbecoming; ideally I would have cursed him for the past and for the present, seriously cursed him, but without any particular severity. Suddenly I felt myself to be much older, much more mature than he was. Lajos had stopped developing at a certain point and had aged into an impudent, pedantic fraud, nothing particularly dangerous, indeed—and this was the sadder part—something rather aimless. His eyes were clear, gray, irresolute, as they had been so long ago when I last saw him. He smoked his cigarette through a long cigarette holder—his hands with their prominent veins had particularly aged, and never stopped trembling—and to top it all he was looking at me so attentively, so calmly and objectively, he clearly knew that for once it was pointless and in vain to try to deceive me; I knew his tricks, I knew the secrets of his art, and whatever he said in the end he would have to answer with or without words, but, this once, it would have to be the truth…Naturally, he began with a lie.r />
  “I want to put everything right,” he repeated mechanically.

  “What do you want to put right?”

  I looked into his eyes and laughed. Surely, this could no longer be serious! I thought. After a certain time has passed between people it is impossible to “put anything right” I understood this hopeless truth the moment we were sitting together on the concrete bench. One lives and patches, improves, constructs, or, occasionally, ruins one’s life, but after a while one notices that whatever has been so compounded of errors and accidents is quite unique. There was nothing more Lajos could do here. When somebody appears out of the past and announces in heartfelt tones that he wants to put “everything” right one can only pity his ambition and laugh at it: time has already “put things right” in its own peculiar way, the only way to put anything right. And so I answered:

  “Forget it, Lajos. We are all happy, of course, to see you…the children and yourself. We don’t know what you have in mind, but still we are happy to see you again. Let’s not talk about the past. You don’t owe anybody anything.”

  Even as I was speaking I noticed how I too was in the grip of the mood of the moment, I too was saying the first things that came into my head, things that were, to put it bluntly, lies. It was only an excess of feeling and the concomitant confusion that could have exaggerated and declared that the past no longer existed, that Lajos did not owe “anybody anything.” We were both aware of this false note and gazed at the pebbles with downcast eyes. The tone we had adopted toward each other was pitched too high: too high, too dramatic, false. I suddenly noticed I had started to argue, not very logically but at least sincerely and with passion, since I could not hold myself back.