“Have you had the ring looked at?”
I sat up and rubbed my temples. I knew what she was thinking; I also knew that she was right: we had never talked about this, in fact I may never have showed her the ring, but still I knew she would be right, that the ring would prove a fake. I guessed as much. Nunu was uncanny like this. When did she hear of the ring? I wondered, then put the question aside, because it was perfectly natural that Nunu should know everything that pertained to the house, to the family, to my person, indeed to my life, including everything my dead sister had hidden away in the cellar or in the attic, so she would have known of the ring too. I had all but forgotten the story of the ring, because it was painful to think of it. When Vilma died, Lajos gave me this piece of jewelry, Grandmama’s ring. This middling-size diamond set in platinum was the only object of value my family possessed. I can’t quite understand how it remained in our possession — Father, too, valued the ring, regarding it with superstitious awe, and took great care of it though he was free enough with land and other valuables. It had the status of those famous diamonds in royal collections, the Kohinoor, the kind of precious stones that go in catalogs, whose market value no one considers and which are only meant to sparkle at the official anniversaries of dynasties, on the finger of a leading member of the family or on a queen’s brow, and that was how we, four generations of us, had guarded it, “the ring.” I never knew the actual value of the stone. In any case it would have fetched a good price, though nothing as princely as family legend would have it. It passed from Grandmama to Mama, and after our mother’s death it went to Vilma. When Vilma died Lajos suddenly waxed sentimental and in a moment of high pathos presented it to me.
I well remember the scene. Vilma had been buried in the afternoon. When we returned from the funeral I lay down exhausted on the divan in my darkened room. Lajos entered, head to foot in black, having dressed with such care for the funeral he might have been a soldier on parade — I recall he had special black buttons made for the occasion — and with a few grave words he handed me the ring. I was so tired and confused that I didn’t properly understand what he said and just stared vacantly as he placed the ring on the little table beside the divan, nor did I object when later he reminded me of the ring and put it on my finger. “You should have the ring,” he solemnly declared. I came to my senses afterward. The ring belonged to Éva, naturally: it belonged to my dead sister’s daughter, of course it did. But Lajos found an ingenious way to counter my argument. This kind of ring, he said, is not a family heirloom, it is a symbol, the symbol of family hierarchy. It therefore followed that after the deaths of both Mother and Vilma it should pass to me, since I was the oldest female. That settled it.
I said nothing and put the ring away. I had no intention, of course, not for a moment, of keeping the family heirloom. My conscience and the letter I have written in the case of my death — it’s there in the sideboard next to the ring and the underwear — bears witness to the fact that I have kept it for Éva and have arranged for her to have it when I die. Then I decided to send the ring to Vilma’s daughter for her engagement or her wedding, should she marry. The letter that deals with my few humble possessions clearly appoints Vilma’s orphans as the inheritors, on condition that they should not sell the house or the garden while Nunu is alive. (Somehow I imagined Nunu would go on living for many years yet, and why not? She has no particular reason to die, just as she has no particular reason to live! In any case the feeling that she will outlive me is both exciting and reassuring.) I put the ring away because I didn’t want to argue with Lajos and because I felt that this modest piece of jewelry, which might nevertheless help one of us given our circumstances — I thought the price it would fetch might cover the cost of a young woman’s trousseau — was better placed with me than be lost in the kind of clutter that naturally accumulated around Lajos, clutter that multiplied like weeds in a favorable climate. He’ll sell it or lose it in a game of cards, I thought, and was somewhat moved by his gesture of offering it to me. And just at the moment — God give me strength and help me be honest — when we had just laid my sister’s coffin in the earth, I hoped that the lives of Lajos, the children, and, indeed, my own life, might be put in order. The ring no longer mattered very much, it was the situation as a whole that mattered…So I put the ring away. And that’s how I took it away with me later when we separated and hid it among my mementos together with my will.
And in the meantime, in those years when I saw nothing of Lajos, I did not once look at the ring, because I was certain, the way a sleepwalker is certain, that the ring was fake.
“I was certain.” What a thing to say! I had never held the ring in my hands. I was frightened of it. I feared the knowledge I had never put into words. I couldn’t help but know that everything Lajos touched lost its original meaning and value, broke down into its elements, changed as did the noble metals once the alchemists got them into their retorts…I couldn’t help but know that Lajos was not only capable of changing the nature of metals and stones but could turn true people into false ones. I couldn’t help but know that a ring could not remain an innocent object once Lajos got his hands on it. Vilma had been ill a long time and couldn’t mind all the household affairs, so Lajos had the run of the place and had taken possession of the ring…the very moment Nunu said it, I knew it was true. Lajos had conned me with the ring, as with everything else. I sat up in bed, quite pale.
“Have you had a look at it?”
“Yes,” said Nunu quite calmly. “One time when you were not at home and left me with the keys. I took it to the jeweler. He had changed the setting too. He had picked some white metal for the clasp. Steel is less valuable than platinum. White gold, they said. He had changed the stone too. The ring you have looked after so carefully all these years is not worth five krajcárs.”
“That’s not true,” I said.
Nunu shrugged.
“Wake up, Esther!” she scolded me.
I watched the candle flame and said nothing. Of course, if Nunu said it, it must be true. And why should I pretend not to have suspected it for a long time, from the moment Lajos gave me the ring. A fake, I thought there and then. Everything he touches instantly becomes a fake. And his breath, it’s like the plague, I thought. I clenched my hand into a fist. It wasn’t because of the ring…what did a ring or any number of rings matter at my time of life? Everything he has touched is fake, I thought. And then I thought something else, saying it out loud:
“Was giving it to me a calculated act? Because he feared being pursued, by the children or someone else, later…and since the ring was a fake anyway he gave me the copy so they should discover I had it and once it turned out to be fake, blame me?”