“Tell me, Esther,” he asked quietly, soulfully. “Does this house still have a mortgage?”
11
The events of the morning, at least all those that followed this last sentence, have grown a little confused in my mind. “Mister” Endre chose that moment to come over. Lajos was confused and started lying, very loudly. Like someone who wants to overcome his fear by shouting, he began in high C with false geniality and a hollow superior air that had no effect on Endre. He grabbed Endre’s arm in “dear old friend” manner and regaled him with some amusing anecdotes, behaving entirely as if he were a warmly awaited, high-ranking guest in the house of his social inferiors. Endre calmly heard him through. Endre is the one man in the world Lajos fears, the one utterly impervious to his magic, who has an inner indifference to the kind of rays and spells that, he believes, emanate from Lajos and affect everything, even animals and inanimate objects. Endre listened carefully to Lajos, fully aware of his professional secrets, knowing how he performed his conjuring tricks, quite prepared for Lajos to produce the national tricolor flag from his hat or make the fruit bowl disappear from the middle of the table. He listened with polite attention, without rancor, clearly interested in what Lajos had to say. It was as if he himself were saying: Show me another trick. As for Lajos, he took a brief rest between tricks, flicking the odd careful sidelong glance at Endre.
I think I was the only one to spot the panic. Tibor and Laci were absorbed by the sheer beauty of the performance. Later, in the afternoon, I learned that little Éva had also noticed Lajos’s confusion. Endre seemed to know some simple undeniable truth with which he could pin Lajos down anytime he chose. But he was not mocking, nor was he in the least unfriendly.
“So, Lajos, you’ve come,” he said, and they shook hands.
That was all. Lajos gave a nervous laugh. No doubt he would have worked with fewer constraints had there been no witnesses to his moment of departure. But ultimately, as we knew, it had been he who had invited Endre “in an official capacity.” He had expressly requested, in writing, that Endre should not be absent that day, since he wanted to talk to him. Endre came with Lajos’s letter of invitation in his pocket and stood in the garden, fat and placid, mildly blinking, patiently listening to Lajos without any sense of superiority, with the unshakable confidence of people who disdain the use of their full powers, knowing that one glance, one raised admonitory finger, and Lajos would immediately fall silent, slink away, and the show be over. Nevertheless, it seemed that Lajos could not do without this inconvenient witness. It was as if, after a long internal struggle, he had decided to face the truth — Lajos having always regarded Endre as the representative of truth, remorseless as judge and witness, a ruthless, antagonistic object to whom Lajos’s spells were like water off a duck’s back — and say: Let’s get this over and done with. That is how Lajos regarded the aging figure of Endre.
It was only some three or four years since Endre had aged. Everything that was serious and heavy in his appearance and nature, the mysterious resistance to the world that never let anyone get close to him, the priestly air and the silent watchfulness that was characteristic of him from his earliest youth, sometimes made it hard, even for a stranger, to connect with him. He wasn’t exactly unfriendly, it was just that one always felt he knew something about the world that defied all its laws and that he kept that secret to himself. His goodness was heavy, cautious, and clumsy.
Even now he was looking at Lajos like someone who knows everything but feels no temptation either to judge or excuse him. The phrase “So, Lajos,” with which, after twenty years, he greeted him, was not exactly condescending, not proud or severe, and yet I saw how the words discomposed Lajos, how he was glancing around nervously, in a funk, wiping his brow with a handkerchief. They talked together about politics and about the funeral. Then Endre, having seen and heard enough, gave a shrug, sat down on the bench, and crossed his hands over his belly, old-gentleman fashion. The day was well into the late afternoon, and once he had checked the deeds by which I empowered Lajos to sell the house, he had nothing more to say to anyone.
Naturally, we were all aware that Lajos wanted my life, or, more precisely, Nunu’s life, that he wanted to rob me of my peace. The house was still there providing a roof above our heads, a little battered by time but, despite everything, still fortress-like: the house was the last object of value we possessed that Lajos had not yet taken away, and now he had come for it. The moment I received the telegram I knew he was after the house; one doesn’t think such things in words, one just knows. I carried on deceiving myself to the last. Endre knew, so did Tibor. Later we were astonished at how cheaply and easily we surrendered to Lajos and accepted the fact that in life there are no halfway solutions, and the process having begun fifteen years ago simply had to be finished. Lajos knew it too. He had established that the house was a touch damp and having done so immediately talked about something else, as if the most important part of his business was concluded and there was no point wasting words on details. Tibor and Laci stood by inquisitively. Sometime later, before dinner, a tailor arrived, Lajos’s old tailor, and bowing and scraping in embarrassment handed over a twenty-five-year-old bill. Lajos embraced him and sent him away. The gentlemen drank vermouth, talked in loud voices, and laughed a great deal at Lajos’s anecdotes. We sat down to dinner in an excellent mood.
12
The only thing I couldn’t understand was what the strange woman was doing here. She was too old and plainly dressed to be Lajos’s lover. It took me a while to understand that the young man in the leather coat who had been the first to get out of the red car, who had mumbled a few courtesies of greeting and then said nothing the rest of the time, communicating only with his lion-headed dog, was the woman’s son. There was something contrary to our agreement here. The young man was blond, light blond, a kind of silvery blond; it was as if his face were naked, his eyelashes almost invisible against the pale skin. He was constantly blinking. His hair was curly and woolly in texture like an old African’s. Later he put on a pair of dark blue glasses and practically disappeared behind the dark lenses. It was only toward evening that I discovered that this young man was Éva’s fiancé and that the woman, a rather respectable sort of woman who tended to mix badly pronounced French words in her conversation, had for years been Lajos’s housekeeper. I understood nothing of this in the confusion of the first few hours.
The woman, whom the children addressed as Olga, was, if anything, rather melancholy and embarrassed. She made no effort to press her company on us and, after the introductions, sat quietly at the breakfast table fiddling with her parasol and gazing at her plate. I took her for an adventuress at first. But my later impression was that if she was an adventuress she was a tired and ill-tempered one, someone who no longer believed in the adventure and would happily give it all up to settle in some quiet occupation like crochet or embroidery. Occasionally she gave a bitter smile that bared her yellow, masculine teeth. When I came face-to-face with her I didn’t know what to say. We took stock of each other, smiling at first then without smiles, with hard looks and undisguised suspicion. A cloud of sweetish perfume billowed from her dress and painted yellow hair.
“Dear Esther,” she said.
I resisted the intimacy and loudly answered:
“Madam.”
I laughed. The house was all but dissolving in those hours before lunch, becoming no more than a splendid mirage. Doors were slamming. Lajos took out a box from which he produced a tortoise and was demonstrating how it responded to music, moving when he whistled, sticking out its wrinkled neck and making a hissing noise by way of communication. He had brought the creature with him as a conversation piece, an accessory, as evidence of his triumph as a genius animal trainer. The tortoise was a great success. We all stood around enthusing about Lajos’s performance, and even the solemn Endre succumbed to his curiosity.