“No,” I said. “It is simply that I don’t believe it, Lajos. There is no such thing as a prosthetic being. You can’t graft the moral character of one person onto another. Forgive me, but these are just ideas.”
“No, they are not just ideas. A moral character is not something you inherit but a quality you acquire. People are not born with morals. The morals of wild animals, the morals of children, are not the same as the morals of a sixty-year-old circuit judge in Vienna or Amsterdam. People acquire their moral characters in the same way as they acquire their mannerisms and their culture.”—He was intoning like a priest. — “There are people who are more adept at moral character, yes indeed, there are moral geniuses just as there are musical and literary geniuses. You are such a moral genius, Esther; no, please don’t deny it. I feel it in you. I am tone-deaf when it comes to issues of morality, practically illiterate. That is why I needed to be with you, or that at any rate is the chief reason, I think.”
I was obstinate. “I don’t believe it,” I said, “but even if it were so, Lajos, you cannot want someone to act as moral nanny to all kinds of morally imperfect beings. A woman can’t play moral nurse her whole life.”
“A woman! A woman!” he said quickly, courteously waving my answer away. “I am talking about you, Esther. I mean you.”
“A woman,” I said, and felt the blood rush to my face. “I know you mean me. I have had enough of being the model for a false view of the world all my life. Get that into your head at last. There is no point in me saying it again…though maybe you are right, we cannot remain silent about this forever. I don’t believe in your ideas, Lajos, I believe in reality. The reality is that you deceived me; once upon a time people might have put this in a more flowery, romantic way, such as: ‘I was your plaything, your toy.’ You are a strange gambler; you play with passions and people instead of cards. I was one of the queens in your hand. Then you stood up and went off elsewhere. Why? Because you grew bored. You had had enough and simply walked away. That’s the truth. That is the terrible immoral truth. One can’t throw a woman away the way one does a matchbox simply because one has passions, because that happens to be one’s nature, because one finds it impossible being tied to a woman or because one is ambitious, or because everything and everyone is merely useful. I can even understand that…it is a low act with something human in it. But to discard someone out of sheer carelessness, that is lower than low. There is no excusing that, because it is inhuman. Do you understand now?”
“But I called you, Esther,” he said quite quietly. “Don’t you remember? Yes, I was weak. But then, at the last moment, I came to my senses and knew that only you could help me. I called you, I begged you. Don’t you remember my letters?”
“I know nothing about any letters,” I said, and was frightened to note how sharp my voice sounded, sharper than it had ever been, almost shrieking. “It’s all lies. The letters are a lie, like the ring, like everything you ever said or promised me. I know nothing about the letters, I don’t believe in them. Éva has only just told me that she had found letters like that…in the rosewood box…how should I know what is true in all this? I don’t believe you. I don’t believe Éva either. I don’t believe in the past. It is all lies and conspiracies, a piece of theater full of stage properties, old letters and vows that were never made. I don’t go to the theater nowadays, Lajos. I haven’t been to a theater in fifteen years. I don’t go out. I know the truth, do you understand? The truth. Look at me! This is the truth! Look into my eyes! I am old. We are at the end of life, as you yourself so grandly declared. Yes, it is the end, and you are the reason that this is the way it has passed, so empty, so false; it is why I stayed here, living alone like an old maid who is thrifty with her feelings but eventually buys a cat and a dog as pets…my pets are people.”
“Yes,” he admitted, bowing his head in guilt. “That is a very dangerous thing to do.”
“Yes, dangerous,” I repeated, instinctively more quietly now, then fell silent. I had never spoken for as long and as passionately as that at one go. I was quite out of breath.
“So, let us leave it,” I said. Suddenly I felt weak. I did not want to cry, so I sat there with my arms folded and my back straight, but I must have gone very pale because Lajos looked at me, concerned.
“Do you want a glass of water? Shall I call someone?”
“Don’t call anyone,” I said. “It’s not important. It looks as though I am no longer as healthy as I was. Look, Lajos, while two people are still at the stage where one doubts the words of the other, then there is soil enough, however shallow, to build a relationship on. The soil may be marshland or loose sand. You know that what you build will eventually fall down, yet there is something in the enterprise that is real, human and destined. But those cursed by fate to build on you have a far worse time of it, because one day they are obliged to notice that they have built on mere air, on nothing. Some people lie because it’s their nature, because they seek some advantage or spontaneously for a moment’s excitement. But you lie the way rain rains: you can lie with tears, you can lie with your actions. It must be very difficult. There are times I think you’re an absolute genius…the genius of lies. You look into my eyes or touch me, your tears welling, and I start to feel how your hand trembles, but all the time I know you are lying, that you have always lied, right from the first moment. Your life has been one long lie. I don’t even believe in your death: that will be a lie too. Oh yes, you’re a genius all right.”
“Well, there you are,” he replied calmly. “In any case, I have brought you the letters. I did, after all, write them for you. Here they are.”
And with a simple courteous gesture he produced the three letters from his coat pocket and handed them over to me.
18
At that point I was not too concerned with the contents of the letters. I was fully aware of Lajos’s capabilities as a letter writer. But I did have a thorough look at the envelopes. All three bore my name and address, the hand was clearly Lajos’s, and the franking proved them to have been mailed to my address twenty-two years ago, the week before Vilma and Lajos were married. I am sure that I never received them. Somebody must have intercepted them. It wouldn’t have been too difficult to steal them: it was always Vilma, endlessly curious about mail, who took the letters from the mailman, and it was she who had the key to the sideboard. I carefully examined the backs of the envelopes, then threw them down beside the other objects displayed on the sideboard, next to the photograph of Vilma.
“Don’t you want to read them?” asked Lajos.
“No,” I said. “Why? I believe they say what you told me they said. They are not of great importance. You,” I said, almost crazy, pronouncing the words as if making a great discovery. “You can even make facts lie.”
“You never received these letters?” Lajos asked calmly, as though he were not too concerned with my criticisms of him.
“Never.”
“Who stole my letters?”
“Who stole them? Vilma. Who else? Who else would benefit from doing so?”
“Of course,” he said. “It couldn’t have been anyone but her.”