Eva’s breathing had steadied to a slow gentle sound. Exhausted from crying she had fallen asleep and now, in blessed solitude, Malie could grieve quietly for him.
The sky was beginning to pale behind the church spire when she heard the door leading to the boys’ room open and close. Leo padded over and quietly climbed onto her lap, putting his arms up around her neck and placing his cheek against hers. His face was wet and soundlessly they wept together, her sorrow eased by the feel of his young body against hers.
Two days later Eva knocked on the bedroom door—she had knocked ever since the news had come—and entered bearing a huge basket of pink roses.
“For you, Malie. See how beautiful they are.”
She put her hand out and fingered the petals.
“They’re from Mr. Klein.”
“Mr. Klein? But how would he know?”
“Oh, no!” Eva flushed and hurriedly shook her head. “It’s nothing to do with... with Karoly. He sent roses for all of us, pink for you, yellow for me, red for Mama.”
“How kind.” They were beautiful and... unnatural. Roses in March, when men were being killed and people were starving in Vienna?
Eva stared at her anxiously. “I thought they might cheer you. I thought you would like them.”
“I like them.”
Eva’s shoulders slumped forward a little. “I wish you would not stay here in the bedroom so much, Malie. Just sitting in the chair and sewing. Why don’t you come out with me, come for a walk, sit in the drawing-room with the rest of us? Felix Kaldy came to see how you were. He was worried; he wanted to know if there was anything he could do.”
Malie put down her sewing. She had been repairing the Bogozy lace that had covered the table during Mr. Klein’s visit. It was intricate work that required maximum concentration and she wondered what she would do when the tear had been mended.
“I would like to stay here, Eva. It is quiet, and I can be alone.” Her voice raised a pitch. “They mean to be kind, but I cannot bear them: Mama, Aunt Gizi, Kati, Uncle Alfred, Marie, even Cook. They all talk and sit with me. They won’t leave me alone.”
“Do you want me to go?” Eva asked timidly, and Malie smiled and placed her hand over Eva’s.
“No, you stay if you wish. This is your room too.”
“You don’t want to see Felix either?”
Malie was silent. She didn’t want to see Felix, but there was something she wanted to know that only Felix could tell her.
“Will you do something for me, Eva?”
“Oh, Malie, anything you like. I’ll do anything. And—please forgive me, what I said that time. I cannot”—Eva began to cry, rubbing her knuckles into her eyes just like Leo did—“I cannot forgive myself.... That time, when I was rude about Karoly, said he wasn’t as good as Felix. I didn’t mean it, really I didn’t.”
Malie patted Eva on the shoulder and smiled. “No, of course you didn’t.”
“I’ll do anything you like, Malie.”
Malie pushed the cloth from her lap and let it fall to the floor. She stared out at the March sky, a pale, pale blue sky with wispy clouds coming down from the mountains. She took a deep breath and tried to control her voice. “I want to know... I want to know how he died.”
“But—”
“They told me he was shot... by his own soldiers. Why?” Her voice broke on a sudden sob and her forehead began to crease into lines. “Why did our soldiers shoot him? What was wrong? The war was over in Russia. They were all coming back. I want to know everything. I want to know exactly what happened, how and why and when. Please, Eva!” She sobbed again and twisted her hands together. “Promise me you will talk to Felix. He’ll know. Ask Felix.”
“Oh, Malie! You mustn’t think about it. You must try to forget.”
The days of kindly platitudes, the softened sympathy, the unreality of everything suddenly snapped in her head.
“But I can’t forget,” she screamed at Eva. “Don’t you understand? I can’t forget!”
She covered her face with her hands, not crying, trying to hold the pain behind her eyes from spreading.
“Please, Eva! If you ever loved me, do this thing for me. Ask Felix how it happened, and why, and where. Everything.”
Eva was frightened. Malie had always been the calm one, the capable one, and now she was shrieking just like—like she herself did on occasion.
“If that’s what you want—”
“I do. Ask him. And you must promise me—promise me—that you will tell me exactly what you learn. I will know if you are hiding anything. I always know when you are hiding things from me.”
“Yes, Malie.”
“Ask him, Eva.”
“Yes, Malie.” Eva sniffed and wiped her handkerchief across her swollen nose. She would have to bathe her face in cold water before she could talk to Felix Kaldy.
In fact she had to wait a few weeks for the difficult conversation with Felix. He had been recalled to Budapest; there were so many rumours and counter-rumours circulating that it could be for any number of reasons. It was said that the Czechs had demanded independence, that the King and Emperor was suing for peace, that there were strikes again in Budapest, that cholera had broken out in Vienna. But whatever of the now-taken-for-granted disasters it was, it kept Felix away some time. When he came again he called immediately to inquire after Malie.
“I don’t want to see him, Eva. You talk to him. You ask him... about Karoly... the things I want to know.”
Eva, now that the moment was imminent, became nervous. Felix had been different ever since he had returned from the Serbian front, and she wasn’t sure how to talk seriously to him.
“You come too, Malie,” she pleaded. “Hear for yourself the things about... the things you want to know.”
But Malie shuddered. “I don’t want to talk to him.”
“Please, Malie.”
“No.”
And so she had to go into the drawing-room alone, and when Mama had finally left them she had to broach the difficult subject herself. Felix was restless. He kept bounding up from his chair and pacing to and fro.
“I haven’t seen Amalia since that... the day I brought the news.”
“No,” she said timidly.
He stared at her, eyes piercing and the muscles in his cheek tensed. “Is she ill?”
“No, it’s just... she’s not like Malie at the moment. She doesn’t talk very much, and she doesn’t seem to want to see any of her family and friends, even though we all love her.”
“Does she think about it much? About Karoly being shot?” She didn’t like the way he asked that question. He didn’t say it with any concern for Malie; it was said with curiosity, an unhealthy kind of curiosity, as though he wanted to share Malie’s emotions for all the wrong reasons.
“She thinks about Karoly all the time—I believe she does although she never mentions him.” Then she remembered what she was supposed to be finding out from Felix. “That is, she doesn’t mention him very much.” She cleared her throat. “That day, when you came, you said he had been shot by his own soldiers?”
“That’s right.”
“She—Malie—she wants to know why, how it happened. I think”—and now Eva tried to put into words what fears she thought Malie had—“I think she is afraid that something terrible happened to him, that he was tortured or was ill or something. She said you would know.”
Felix’s eyes were brilliant. The pupils had retracted into pinpoints and they stared straight ahead into the air.
“No, he wasn’t tortured—although he could have been, Eva! He could have been! You don’t know, none of you, what it’s like out there! It isn’t like a world of people; it’s a wilderness that goes on forever: killing everywhere, death everywhere....”
Eva tried to look away but couldn’t. She was fascinated by the sight of his tall, slim figure striding up and down, his hands clenching and unclenching by his sides.
“Everything’s broken up on the east
ern front. There’s no discipline any more, just a great wilderness of soldiers trying to go home, trying to find food, trying to find women. Russian soldiers, our soldiers, prisoners, Poles, Slavs, Czechs. It’s the revolution. All the troops know what it means and some of them, the revolutionaries, those who hate us even though they have been fighting for us, they just want to kill. They want to kill everyone who made the war.”
“But Karoly didn’t make the war!”
A thin stream of saliva was beginning to trickle from the corner of his mouth and with just a trace of the old Felix, the gay pre-war Felix, he flicked his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his lips. His hand was trembling. “He was an officer. That was enough.”
“How do you know he wasn’t hurt... tortured?”
“Tilsky—you remember Stefan Tilsky—they tried to shoot him too but he got away. Karoly and Stefan were trying to requisition transport, trying to get back home, here to Hungary. And a group of soldiers on horses—Russian horses—came up and he ordered them off the horses. And they just surrounded him and Tilsky and shouted ‘Death to the tyrants!’ and they shot him. Tilsky killed one of them with his sabre and then jumped on the man’s horse and rode away.”
“How could they do such a thing? How could they shoot a man who was one of their own officers?”
“You don’t understand, Eva. You don’t understand what horrible things happen! That wasn’t bad. What happened to Karoly wasn’t bad!”
He was like a madman, a controlled madman, and that made it worse.
“I’ve seen the bad things. I’ve seen them, Eva! Men together, advancing, retreating, it’s all the same. Mad, terrible, bad things.” He sat suddenly and began to rock to and fro. “Eva, I’ve done those things... terrible things... I’ve done them.” He gazed at her imploringly, and she, not understanding, tried to comfort him with all the senseless phrases that she had ever heard or read.
“Yes, Felix, of course. You are a soldier. You had to kill the enemy. It was part of your duty.”
“Not soldiers, Eva,” he moaned. “I didn’t kill soldiers. They were civilians—don’t you understand? Women.... Old men.... Children....”
She was cold, icily, clammily cold, and she wanted to get away. Malie shouldn’t have forced her to ask these questions; it was making Felix tell silly lies.
“I couldn’t control the men,” he cried, staring up at the ceiling. “We were advancing behind the front line and they learned that the Serbs were to be punished. Mackensen, victorious Mackensen, he conquered Serbia, and we—I—came behind. I couldn’t control them, Eva. The soldiers... every village... I wanted to stop them but I was afraid because they weren’t my men any more. I was afraid.”
Horrified she watched him drop his face into his hands and sob. She felt sick, ashamed, frightened.
“I’ll go to Malie now,” she cried shrilly, but before she could rise from her chair he was kneeling beside her, gripping her hands in his, gazing up at her.
“Don’t leave me now, Eva! Don’t go away now! Nobody knows, and I can’t sleep at night! We burned them, Eva, burned them alive! They stood round laughing, and... I had to stand there too. They wouldn’t stop so I had to pretend it was my orders.”
“Don’t tell me any more! I don’t want to know any more!” She placed her hands over her ears but Felix pulled them away.
“We cut them into pieces, little pieces, and then they pegged some of the women out”
“Stop!” she screamed. “Stop, Felix!”
“They—we—pegged the women out, and after they had used them they cut them in pieces too... and it went on and on, village after village. Sometimes we just tied them up and left them without water. Everything died: the cattle died, and the dogs and horses.... It went on and on. I was an officer and I had to pretend. Don’t you understand, Eva? I had to pretend.”
“I don’t want to hear any more!” she sobbed. “I don’t want to know any more.”
“Oh, Eva! Don’t turn away from me!” He began to cry into her lap. “I’m afraid to go to sleep at night. And they know, the authorities know that I was no good. I ran away in the end, I ran back to the supply lines with a silly story I made up, but they all knew. I wasn’t a proper officer. Mama had to go to Budapest and speak to some friends. I don’t have to go to war any more, but I can’t sleep. I can’t sleep and no one understands, and I can’t tell anyone, not even Mama!”
She felt sick. Her stomach was turning and twisting and there was a sharp, hideous pain in her bowels that made her want to run to the water closet. She tried to get up again but Felix, on his knees, stumbled after her, holding her skirt and crying into her hands.
“Please, please, Eva! Don’t despise me like the rest do! If I’d gone to Russia, like Karoly and Adam, it might have been different, just an ordinary war, shooting at the enemy. But they made me do this. What would have happened to anyone—Karoly, Adam, anyone—if they’d had to punish the Serbs!” He raised his face to her and curiously, in spite of the tears and the misery, it was more like the old face of Felix, before the twitch and the trickle of saliva.
“Eva, I needed someone! I needed to tell someone—if only Adam had been home; if only I could have seen Adam! I’m like a madman, I can’t stop thinking about it, seeing them roasting, bleeding, the bodies cut—”
“Stop!”
She took a deep, deep breath and then, because it was obvious that Felix was not going to let her move, she sat down again. She closed her eyes and tried to think of Malie. How would Malie have dealt with this horrible, sick, vile confession? What would Malie have done?
“Children too, Eva.” He was gasping, sobbing. “Children too, broken to pieces and—”
“Stop, Felix! You must stop! I promise you I will stay here. I will not run away. But you must stop telling me these things. I understand what... what you did”—she was trembling, shaking with nervous movement—“but now you must stop talking of them.”
“I can’t, Eva! I can’t!”
“Yes you can, Felix. If you stop talking I will stay here with you. See, I will hold your hand.” Yes, that was good. Malie would have held his hand. Malie always held people when they were wild and hysterical. “I will hold your hand, but if you go on telling me—telling me... the things, then I will go away.”
“Oh, no,” he sobbed. “Don’t go away, Eva. Everyone has gone away. In the office, at Budapest, they don’t talk to me; they put the papers on my desk but they don’t talk to me. I have no one, Eva. No one!”
It was too much. She didn’t want the responsibility of this helpless, disintegrating man. She was sorry for him, but she didn’t know what to do.
“Eva, how can I sleep without dreaming? What can I do? The pictures in my mind... the time that—”
“I shall go away,” she screamed. “I shall go away.” His mouth trembled and he clenched his lower lip between his teeth. “I’ll stop, Eva. I won’t talk any more.”
“No. Don’t talk any more.”
He was gripping her hand very tightly. His head was close to her knee and as she looked down she could see the beautiful tearstained profile, the dark lashes wetted into spikes, the high smooth cheekbones, the lips trembling like a child’s.
“Oh, Felix!” she said piteously, and at the sorrow and kindness in her voice he looked up into her face.
“You’ll help me, won’t you, Eva?
“How can I help you? What can I do? I don’t know what to do.” She remembered Malie suddenly, Malie upstairs, waiting to know how Karoly had died. “It’s all too much: the war, Karoly, now you.... I don’t know how to help anyone. I—”
“But you’ll pray for me, Eva, won’t you?”
“I’ll pray, but what good will it do?” she cried. “Malie prayed for Karoly, and your mama prayed for you all through the war. What good did it do?”
“Mama doesn’t understand,” he said, frustrated and desperate. “Mama is good, and she is always there, and she will make things come right for me; she stopped
them from discharging me from the army. But she doesn’t know why they think I am a coward. And I can’t tell her. She wouldn’t understand.” He gripped her hand again, gazed up, then frenziedly kissed her fingers. “You understand, Eva. You understand and you’ll help me! You’ll make the dreams go away. You’ll make me stop thinking about it!”
Beneath the horror and the great weight of responsibility she felt a tiny throb of acid satisfaction. At last there was something the old witch hadn’t been able to do for her son. He had come to her, Eva, hadn’t he? He wanted Eva, not Madame Kaldy.
“How can I stop, Eva? How can I stop thinking?”
“You—you can think of nice things: the farm in summer, the picnics, the dances....”
It was a futile suggestion and she knew it. Felix wrinkled up his face and moaned, “No, no!”
“You can come to see me, Felix.” She was groping, fumbling in the dark for a way to help him combat a nightmare she could hardly cope with herself. “You can come to me, or if you are in Budapest and the dreams... then you must sit down and write to me.”
“Yes,” he cried eagerly. “Yes, if I share it with you, if I tell you—”
“No!” She swallowed hard, then tried again. “You must not talk of—of the... things. You must just write, or come and see me, and you will say, ‘Eva, I am afraid and unhappy, and I am lonely,’ and then I will know what is troubling you and I will think of you and pray for you and talk to you—not about Serbia, just talk. And after a little while you will feel better.’”
“Yes, Eva.” His eyes were fixed on her face, in their depths the same faith and hope that she had seen in Leo’s when Malie was promising something.
“We will never talk of... specific things again, but you will know that I am sharing your... unhappiness, and then it will be better.”
“Oh, yes!”
“Now get up, Felix. You must try to start living as a gentleman again. You must try to have nice manners and be polite, and then, you will see, everyone will like you again.”
He looked miserable and unbelieving, and so she hurried on.
Csardas Page 23