Csardas

by Pearson, Diane

  “We will do everything we can to help you find a position when you’ve finished in Berlin. But it’s very difficult now, so little work available—”

  “That’s all right, Papa. I’ll manage.”

  They were all so small, so wrapped up in their tiny lives (Mama crying over her diminished dress allowance!) that he wanted to shake them, make them wake up and see what was happening in the world. He longed to shout, “Look at me! I’ve been living with a girl whose father is a labourer and I’ve been in prison and I’ve been beaten up by S.A. men at Communist meetings!” He still wasn’t a Communist yet, not officially. The memory of Uncle Sandor hovered at the back of his soul.

  He wandered like a miserable estranged being through the summer, writing long letters to Hanna and finally accepting Eva and Adam’s invitation to go to the country.

  Adam too was concerned about economy. He hadn’t been hit like David, but he was anxious and worried about produce prices and also about the fact that his pepper crop had failed. He was short-tempered with the farm servants and irritable with his wife and children, even Terez, who could usually charm him into humour.

  On the morning that the overseer of the granary came and told him several sacks were missing, Leo, for the first time, saw his brother-in-law lose his temper.

  “Again? Haven’t we stopped that yet? It’s enough. I’ve been lenient long enough. Get the pandur and we’ll settle this question of stealing the way it should have been settled long ago.”

  “It must be the granary workers, excellency,” the overseer said, afraid of the wrath he had unleashed.

  “Of course it is, you fool! How many in the granary these last months?”

  “Two men, excellency, Dezso and Marton.”

  “Well, which of them is it?”

  “I think Marton, excellency. He has a son away at school, and they sell all their food to send money to him. And yet they do not starve.”

  “Fetch the pandur. Leo, you come with me.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Come with me! If an example is going to be made, it must be done with a show of authority. You will come with me!”

  He knew before they even started for the farm cottage that the boy was going to be there; he felt it in his blood and bones. Janos was a constant reproach in his life, but a reproach for what? He hated that thin blue-eyed boy, hated him as much as it was possible to hate a human being. At each profound moment of his life it seemed that Janos Marton stared at him, making him ashamed of what he was, what he could not help being.

  It was as he thought. When they walked into the Marton hut the boy was there, standing defiantly by the bed in the corner where his mother lay.

  “Where is your father, boy?”

  He pointed, out through the door and across to the ox stables. Adam turned and strode away, followed by the overseer, two pandur, and Leo. And behind him, Leo could feel Janos Marton following, feel the eyes staring into his back and imagine the breath of the skinny youth on his neck.

  Outside the ox stable Marton was unloading a cart. When he saw them hurrying toward him he dropped a sack, swore, and then stood waiting beside the cart. Adam nodded to the policemen. “Go ahead, question him.”

  They stepped forward, towering menacingly over him. One forgot how small the peasants were until one saw them close to ordinary people. The pandur were thick, big men, and Marton seemed to shrink back into the cart as they came near him. Neither of the policemen spoke. The bigger one slapped Marton across the face several times with one hand—across, back, across, ack, slap, slap—and the peasant’s head flew from side to side. He cringed and put his hands up to save his face, and the other pandur hit him on the side of the head, then pushed him hard so that he fell against the first man.

  “Stand up!”

  He began to whimper, shielding his face again, whining and crying into his hands, begging his excellency for mercy. His face was marked in vivid red and white patches and a stream of mucus came from his nose. Leo looked down at the ground, but behind him he sensed the boy.

  “Where have you hidden the grain?” barked the pandur. “The grain you have stolen from his excellency’s barns. Where have you hidden the grain?”

  “I have taken no grain!”

  Slap, slap again, and the hands trying to protect the face, the pushing, jostling the man to and fro, frightening him more than hurting him. Leo felt the boy moving and then saw him standing by the oxcart as near to the policemen as he dare go.

  “No grain!”

  Slap, and a boot was thrust roughly against the man’s leg. One policeman grasped his shoulders and swung them towards his colleague. They played thus for a while, pushing him to and fro between them with what amounted to good-natured indifference. “Where is the grain?”

  “No grain!”

  Slap. His nose began to bleed. A final push caught him off balance and he toppled over, cringing into a heap on the ground.

  Leo watched, helpless, but with nausea turning in his bowels. It was degrading, shaming; it was also customary and nothing out of the ordinary, and before he went to Berlin he would have accepted it—unhappily—as the law of his country.

  “Where is the grain?”

  “In my house! Beneath my wife’s bed!”

  Leo darted a glance at the boy, expecting to see the blue eyes blazing hatred at him and was shocked when he met blankness, veiled passivity that told nothing. Janos Marton looked at him and nodded, his face and eyes empty—carefully empty. There was no hint of defiance or arrogance in the nod; it was a careful and guarded token of respect and Leo was inexplicably alarmed.

  The policemen released the man and turned to Adam. “We will get the grain, excellency.”

  Janos came forward. “I will get it. My mother is ill in the bed. I will get the grain.” He vanished, hurrying away, revealing nothing except respect and obedience.

  “You wish to charge, excellency?”

  Adam shook his head. “The lesson has been learned. He will not steal again.”

  Marton had pulled himself up and was leaning against the cart wiping his nose on a handful of straw. He blubbered a humiliating excuse which Leo could still hear as they walked away from the stables. As they passed the cottage they saw Janos dragging out a sack of grain which he heaved onto his shoulders and began to carry back to the grain sheds. Adam was very quiet. “It is unpleasant to have to do that,” he said, “but it is better to punish and then forget the whole affair than to bring him to court where his wife and children would suffer also. Now it is over. I shall not dismiss him. He has been punished and we shall continue as before.”

  Leo could not answer. He felt they had all lost something—dignity, he supposed—by the scene he had just witnessed. And he began to feel there was something sick and wrong with his country.

  He went back to Berlin earlier than he needed to. He wanted the freedom of Germany again, the liberty and the right to make anything public that you wished. It was noisier, rowdier, there were more street fights between the Communists and the S.A., but the noise and the fights were at least a symbol of Germany’s freedom. He looked forward to discussing it with Hanna. He had so often found her a clever and provoking sounding-board, helping him to define his thoughts. Her first words when she saw him were, “Did you tell them?”

  “Tell them?”

  “Your family. About us.”

  He had forgotten that that was to have been the purpose of his visit. He tried to explain what had happened, the crash, the depression at home, his father, but none of it sounded convincing. It was hard to make her, an emancipated daughter of Berlin, appreciate the heavy atmosphere of Hungary, of his home and family.

  She looked hurt and said little, but later that night in bed she asked him quietly. “Are your family very rich?”

  “Not now. They were.”

  “Why do you speak of them so little? Is it that you like to keep us in separate boxes, me here as your lover in Berlin, and them, rich and respectable, the p
art of your life which you do not wish me to share?”

  “Oh, Hanna, no! I don’t talk about them because... because there is nothing to say.”

  “I have spoken to you of my family.”

  And every time she had he had been aware of the gulf between the Ferencs and the shipyard worker’s family. He was embarrassed not because of her but because of them, his family—snobbish, conservative, self-indulgent—and yet they were his family and he didn’t want to betray them to Hanna yet.

  She said nothing more, but the next day there was a tension between them, a slight strain that was carefully concealed beneath scrupulous consideration and politeness for one another. Finally, in the afternoon, he went out, deciding he would go to the press and translation agency and tell Mr. Heinlein he was ready to work at whatever was available.

  As he came near the agency he saw a crowd and heard the noise of fighting and breaking glass. He began to hurry, and when he heard someone screaming he pummelled his way through the crowd to the pavement in front of the agency. Mr. Heinlein was in the arms of two S.A. men and a third was in the process of smashing his face with his fists. The windows of the agency were broken and “Jew” was written on the brickwork underneath the frame. Mr. Heinlein was screaming and the S.A. men were swearing at him. He couldn’t believe it. Fighting, yes, at meetings when the students and the S.A. punched each other with sticks and truncheons and all went off happily to the police station together. But this was cold and vicious, and what made it worse was the crowd, standing silent, staring and not doing anything.

  “Mr. Heinlein!” he shouted, and rushed in, diving for the legs of the attacking S.A. man and bringing him crashing to the ground. There was the familiar sensation of a boot in his side and then the three of them were on him, kicking and punching. “Help, you bloody cowards, help!” he bellowed to the silent crowd, and was aware of a rustle through its depths that settled down once more into frightened stillness. He stood, punched, and was punched in turn, right into the broken window. It was his salvation. His hand closed around a jagged sword of glass and he stood up.

  “Right!” He grinned hatefully. “Who’s coming in first?” The spike of glass was eighteen inches long and he jabbed it viciously in the direction of the nearest S.A. man. Heinlein had somehow managed to crawl to the shelter of the window and from some hidden source of courage suddenly reached up his hand and snapped off another shard of glass.

  “Two of us. Come on!” snarled Leo, his legs bent and the glass held in front of him. “Come on, boys! Whose eyes are going to come out first?”

  The crowd rumbled and began to move, hurrying away, frightened because something had changed, and anyway if glass was going to be thrust about there was no knowing who might get hurt.

  “Jew lover!” one of the S.A. men shouted and advanced a step forward. Leo raised his arm, an expression of fiendish pleasure on his face. He had forgotten everything but the soul-satisfying pleasure. Too much violence, at home and here, had bred a need to assert himself, to strike back at the striker, to kill and draw blood.

  “Come on, Heinlein,” he encouraged. “You’ve a big piece of glass there. Good. Go for their eyes or their throats. Or try to dig right through the cheeks.” He was almost insane now, loving it, enjoying it. He couldn’t wait for them to come closer and suddenly he jumped out of the broken window and advanced towards them, blood streaming from his hand.

  One of the S.A. men walked away, just turned and strode swiftly up the street. The others hesitated and then looked again at the madman bearing down on them, a spear of bloodstained glass in his hand.

  “Jew lover!” they shouted again, and ran. He found he was running after them, the attacked suddenly becoming the attacker. He couldn’t bear to let them go without maiming them.

  “Leo!”

  The voice penetrated his consciousness but he couldn’t stop. They were nearly out of sight now and he could have cried with disappointment.

  “Leo, stop it! It’s me, Hanna! Put the glass down before you get arrested!”

  Through a white-red haze he saw her, breathless and trotting beside him, trying to snatch at the arm holding the glass.

  “Hanna.” He stopped and stared back. Mr. Heinlein had crawled into the agency window and was lying on the floor.

  “We’d better help him,” he said, staring down at his bloody hand. “I wanted to help him. I wanted to kill those men.”

  “Someone’s gone to him now,” said Hanna, pointing to the agency. “Someone has gone in there; look, they’re getting a chair for him to sit on.”

  “Why didn’t they help before?” he said bitterly. “Why did they just stand and watch?”

  “Come on, Leo. We’ll go home.”

  He walked back to the agency. Mr. Heinlein was sitting, covered with blood and one arm hung useless by his side.

  “We’ve rung for his brother and an ambulance,” said a fat man in a raincoat and homburg. Leo had noticed him in the crowd, watching. He ignored him.

  “You’ll be all right, Mr. Heinlein. I’ll come and tidy up here and see about new glass. I’ll answer the phone and stay here until something is sorted out.”

  Mr. Heinlein nodded, trying to speak words that were inaudible between his battered lips. Leo bent his head down and caught the words Völkische Beobachter.

  “I expect you’re right, Mr. Heinlein, I expect you’re right. They can’t forgive the things you write about them.”

  There was a gleam of satisfaction in the little man’s rapidly closing eyes. Someone pushed a glass of schnapps into Leo’s hand and said, “Drink this, son, and then we’ll get you to the hospital too.”

  He ignored the schnapps and the kind words. Berlin, the free, emancipated city, had sickened him and at this moment he could only see Hanna and Mr. Heinlein.

  “You’ll be all right until the ambulance comes?”

  Mr. Heinlein nodded.

  “I’ll go home and come back later to sort all this out.” He patted the little grey man on the shoulder and saw him wince. “We did well, Mr. Heinlein, didn’t we? Just us and some pieces of glass!” And again he felt the pang of disappointment that they’d got away before he could gouge out his hate on them. “You did very well, Mr. Heinlein.”

  The frustrated press man gleamed and nodded.

  Leo succumbed at last to Hanna’s gently pulling hand and allowed himself to be led away. “So much violence, fighting,” he muttered to her, and she squeezed his arm comfortingly. “Nothing but hurt and violence, wherever I go,” he continued.

  They climbed the stairs to their apartment and he drank coffee and schnapps and felt a little better. He began to talk about it, the crowd standing watching, the senseless unreasoning cruelty, the urge to kill that had overtaken him. And then he began to explain what he had wanted to explain before: the other scene of violence, the orderly controlled one at home when two policemen had intimidated a grain thief. He tried to tell her what he felt about his country, what was wrong, and why he hadn’t been able to tell his family about her and about the life they led together.

  This time it was all right. Maybe he was explaining better or she was understanding better, but at least the artificiality of the morning vanished and she smiled at him, the smile that still moved him profoundly every time he saw it.

  “I’ll come with you tomorrow and help you run the agency for the old man,” she said. “Maybe he’ll give you an increase when he comes out of hospital. Maybe he could even find me a job!”

  They were together again, loving one another, close, reaching out for comfort and consolation. He was glad because he suddenly realized that vibrant, emancipated Berlin was not a good place to be alone in.

  He couldn’t sleep that night, and it wasn’t just from the bruises. So many things were wrong, and now he knew the time had come to do something about them. A blaze of revelation burned in his head. For so long he had drifted, doing a little of this, hoping that temperance and moderation would put things right. The scene outside th
e agency showed him that from now on one must fight back, any way one could. “Uncle Sandor,” said the old voice, and this time he was able to answer, “a victim of people’s misery,” and even though it sounded like vulgar propaganda, there was no doubt in his heart.

  Everything was resolved, and not just the big things, the burning causes that he could now espouse. Another excitement was leaping in his fevered brow. He pulled a sheet of paper toward him and began to write: In the last week, in two widely differing countries, I have seen two men of varied state and circumstances being beaten by uniformed bullies...

  The words flowed, balanced and exciting. He didn’t even have to try and marshal his thoughts. The story came out, a clear, concise piece of reportage and when he read it to Hanna next morning she was critically enthusiastic, praising both his style and his handling of the subject.

  When he went to the agency he took advantage of his temporary authority to translate it into French and English and sent it out on the agency transcript.

  26

  Just before the end of his studies in Berlin he wrote to Malie about the problem of Hanna. He and Hanna were going to get married and nothing was going to stop them. But his family had to be told—told that their son, a Ferenc, a Bogozy, was going to marry the daughter of an unemployed Hamburg shipyard worker. He had decided the best thing to do was to take Hanna home for the summer. Once they saw how she was, how quiet and restrained, they would have to accept her. He knew that of all of them Malie would be the only one to understand, the only one who would support him. He wrote and told her everything, except that he and Hanna had been living together for two years. He knew that even Malie would be shocked at that. Her reply came a week before he was due to leave Berlin.