“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.
16
He looked at me and smiled a peculiar, modest smile as if to say: You see, it’s not such a big thing really! It wouldn’t have surprised me if he had rubbed his hands together at that point, like a satisfied businessman left to meet his family after a particularly good deal, contemplating ever new deals and ever more tempting offers in the exhilaration of the moment. There was not a trace of shame or doubt on his face. He was in a good mood, happy as a child.
“I slept really well, Esther,” he said expansively. “It’s as if I had come home at last.”
When I did not answer he took my arm, led me to an easy chair, and courteously sat me down.
“Now at last I can look at you,” he murmured. “You haven’t changed. Time has stopped in this house.”
It did not disturb him at all that I remained quiet. He walked up and down, gazed at various photographs, occasionally smoothing his thinning gray mane of hair with a cheap, stagy gesture. He meandered around the room with no more care than if he had popped out twenty-five years ago because he needed to be somewhere but was back now, absentmindedly resuming a conversation out of mere good manners. He picked up an old Venetian drinking glass from the table and gazed at it in wonder.
“This is a present from your father. For your birthday, wasn’t it? I remember,” he said amicably.
“When did you sell the ring?” I asked.
“The ring?”
He looked at the ceiling with a studious, puzzled expression. His lips moved silently as if he were counting.
“I can’t remember,” he said, perfectly charming.
“A likely story, Lajos,” I pressed him. “Think back. I am sure it will come to you.”
“The ring, the ring,” he obligingly repeated, shaking his head as if he would be delighted to satisfy someone’s whim, a peculiarly whimsical curiosity of little significance.
“Really now, when did I sell that ring? I do believe it was a few weeks before Vilma died. You know, we were so short of money at the time…Doctors, social life…Yes, it must have been that year.”
And he pinned his shining eyes on me, bright with innocence.
“But Esther,” he went on, “why are you interested in the ring?”
“And then you gave me the copy. Remember?” I asked, and took a step toward him.
“I gave it to you?” he repeated mechanically, and instinctively took a step back. “I might have. Did I really give it to you?”
He was still smiling, but a little less certainly now. I went over to the sideboard, opened it, and went straight to the ring.
“You still don’t remember?” I asked, and passed it over to him.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “Now I remember.”
“You sold the ring,” I said. I too had instinctively dropped my voice, the way one does only when speaking of something deeply shameful that has to be kept secret, even from God perhaps. “And when we returned from the funeral you gave it to me with a grand gesture as Vilma’s bequest, as the one family heirloom of any great value, as something I alone should have. I was a little surprised. I even protested, do you remember? But then I accepted it and promised you I would look after it and pass it on to Éva when she grew up and when she needed it. You still don’t remember?”
“You promised that, did you?” he asked lightly. “Well, give it to her if she asks for it now,” he added over his shoulder. He had started to walk about again and had lit a cigarette.