“Janos is the grandson of that old man, Papa.”
She was angry with her father, but sad more than angry, because until now he had always understood, had always known her heart, followed her dreams. Now he was expressing standards and creeds that meant nothing to her. He was preaching customs that she believed had been discarded long ago. She tried to explain her heart to him, her feelings and admiration for Janos. She tried to tell him how brave and gentle he was, how patient, how fair. But her father only shook his head and begged her to reconsider.
Uncle Leo had hurt her most of all. He had ignored her for a week, refusing to listen when she talked about it, pretending that it had never happened. And when her father had gone back to the farm (taking George with him, ostensibly to help on the land but, Terez suspected, because he did not want Janos Marton to steal any more of this children), Leo had called her quietly into his room.
“I want you to look at this photograph, Terez,” he said, holding out a picture of a girl with short hair and a funny old-fashioned droopy dress. “I don’t know if you will remember her—you were only a little girl when she came here—but I want you to look at her.”
“Yes, Uncle Leo.” Obediently she looked, wondering what great influence the picture was supposed to wreak on her.
“She was German, the daughter of a shipyard labourer. She worked in a shop in Berlin when I was a student there.”
“Yes, Uncle Leo.” Fragments filtered back to her, half-heard pieces of conversation that had hardly interested her at the time.
“I was in love with her, Terez. We lived together in Berlin for over two years. I wanted to marry her in spite of all the differences between us. Grandpapa Ferenc was against it, but it made no difference to me. I was in love with her.”
She was interested in spite of herself. She guessed that the story would only illustrate some point as to why she shouldn’t marry Janos, but the image of Uncle Leo, twenty and in love, was an intriguing one.
“She loved me too, I know she did. But one day she discovered that Papa was a Jew, and even though she loved me, she found she was unable to overcome the barriers and marry me.”
“What’s that to do with Janos and me?” she snapped. “Janos doesn’t care what I am, and I don’t care what he is. We just love each other, that’s all.”
“Terez.” He sighed. “I have told you this because I want you to understand that it never works, to marry someone too different from yourself. You think it is all right, and then one day a gulf yawns, a gulf that no amount of love can bridge.”
“Uncle Leo, it’s no good trying to tell me these things. If you had been told the same things at twenty you would not have believed them either.”
He put the photograph down and sat in silence for a moment. “Terez, your father would not forgive me if he knew what I am about to say. But Adam is an old-fashioned man in many ways. He doesn’t understand what it is to search and seek for what is new in life. Terez, if you love this man you do not have to marry him. Please, I beg you. Make no permanent commitment yet. Do what you must, what you want, but don’t marry the man—don’t marry him!”
“I want to marry him!” she sobbed. “I hate you for saying that, Uncle Leo! It’s none of your business what I do! You have no right to tell me how I should conduct my life!”
She ran out of his room and he sat down on the edge of his bed, allowing his careful restraint to evaporate in hatred for Janos Marton. He had forced himself to talk to her without prejudice, trying to put aside the fact that what especially nauseated him was the knowledge that it was Marton whom she loved, not another peasant turned successful leader, but Marton who had shadowed him from childhood. Every way he turned the man was there, at work and now in his private life. Terez, his favourite, the golden girl who was like him in so many ways, to be ruined by the ambitious desires of a murderer’s son!
He couldn’t speak to her again for several days, but he could think of nothing else, nothing else but her and Marton. When he received a message to go and see him he felt relieved because at last he could fight without having to consider feelings and family. He walked along to the Party offices shaking with a mixture of rage and delight, knowing that he was going—at last, at last—to say the things he had stored away for so many years.
“Sit down, Ferenc.” Leo could see that Janos was embarrassed. He felt a surge of wild elation. Already the man was uncomfortable, knowing there was going to be a quarrel, a lancing of the bitter emotion of years.
“I would rather stand. What we have to say cannot be discussed across a table like a Party matter.”
Janos looked surprised. “But it is a Party matter.”
“No! This is to be treated differently. This has nothing to do with our varying levels in the Party. This is a personal matter, between you and me!”
Marton rustled some papers on his desk and stared without expression at Leo. “It has nothing to do with us,” he said. “Whatever I feel personally about your editorship of the paper, I would take no steps to remove you on my own authority.”
“The paper?” What was he speaking of? What had the paper to do with Terez?
“I tried to warn you, Leo. I tried to tell you that the paper wasn’t right for Party needs. But you’ve continued to do it your way, and now the leaders in Budapest have noticed. They have stated that”—he consulted the papers before him—“‘Comrade Ferenc’s early participation in the production of the paper was timely and in the spirit of that period. It is now considered that Comrade Ferenc’s many and special gifts can be put to better Party use in a different sphere of activity. The Party thanks Comrade Ferenc for his early work in founding Liberation and asks that he will report to Budapest for duties of equal importance to the creation of our social and democratic state.’”
It filtered through a stunned brain still obsessed with thoughts of Terez. What was Marton saying, that they were taking the paper away from him? His paper. His own special task that had come to be so important to him.
“I don’t understand,” he cried. “What do they mean, the production was ‘in the spirit of that period’?”
Marton rustled the papers again. “It means that you are not doing what they want. And with the new election every paper is going to be of vital importance. This time we must win. And it is felt that you are not an editor to help us win.”
He sat down, feeling that his life’s energy was draining away from him. He could hardly believe it. He was being dismissed!
“But they can’t do it! Liberation is my paper. I created it. I have made it from a single news-sheet into a comprehensive, well-balanced journal. They can’t take it from me!”
He noticed that Janos Marton wouldn’t look at his eyes. He stared down at the desk and, if it had been possible for Marton to look uncomfortable, he would have done so now.
“No, Leo. It is not your paper. That is the trouble. You have been behaving as though it were your paper instead of the Party’s.”
“I shall not accept this decision! It is a slight to me personally and I do not believe you had nothing to do with it. This is a personal thing, Janos Marton. You want me away from this town because of Terez!”
Silence, the cold silence that Marton was so skilled at creating. And then, as though Leo had not spoken, “Your duties in Budapest could prove to be exciting and interesting. You are to act as translator at the preliminary talks on setting up a trade mission. Possibly you will travel with the mission to countries of both West and East. It is a post in which the Party places great trust and responsibility in you.”
“A translator!” The blood began to pound in his head. He could have accepted many things—a junior place on a national paper, an editorial post of any kind—but this was a calculated insult. He was to act as a glorified clerk to a band of civil servants and bureaucrats!
“I refuse! This is more than a Party decision. This is a personal vendetta, and I will not countenance it. I demand to see Comrade Lengyel!”
“I do not advise it, Leo. Comrade Lengyel is... a different kind of member from the rest of us. He is stricter, Moscow trained. I suggest you do not speak to him.”
“I insist! If you block this I shall file a complaint against you!”
“Very well.” A small pulse beat in the side of Marton’s brow. He lifted the telephone and spoke to someone at the other end. There was a long wait, then a voice. He replaced the receiver. “If you wait outside Comrade Lengyel’s office, he will try to see you sometime later this morning.”
Leo turned and flung out of the room, hating Marton so much he could not even throw a final vitriolic word at him. He was shattered. The paper was the culmination of his editorial life. He had spent time and energy in composing what he considered exactly the right mixture for a socialist party in a county town: some simple but intelligent editorials, poems by local patriots and writers, a small column of theatrical and arts criticism, and a diary of the social progress being made by the Party. He had felt the way old Heinlein in Berlin must have felt, as though he were creating a mouthpiece for the truth to be presented to the world. And now it was to be taken away, because he would not accept his niece’s affiliation with a dangerous political rival.
He had to wait for an hour outside Comrade Lengyel’s office and during that time his anger had a chance to evaporate a little. In its place grew a slight unease. Could it be entirely Marton’s fault? No, Marton was not that powerful. Some remaining spark of judgement made him admit that neither would Marton stoop to personal vengeance. There was something else behind it, something he didn’t quite understand. By the time Comrade Lengyel opened his office door, a chilly premonition had superseded everything else in his heart.
“Comrade Ferenc, I understand you are dissatisfied with the decision to transfer you to new duties in Budapest?”
Lengyel was plump and had a bland round face sheltering behind thick pebble glasses. He smiled, but the smile was solely a movement of the lips. Behind the glasses magnified pale eyes observed.
“I cannot understand why now, when I have achieved my aims with Liberation, I should be taken away. I have worked to create a balanced socialist paper that everyone can read and appreciate—”
“Perhaps a well-balanced paper is not what the Party requires at this time, Comrade Ferenc.”
“The principles of the Party must always be the same, to build a new, free, socialist Hungary!”
The glasses glinted. The eyes were blanked out by reflected light. “I think you must allow the Party to know what it wants, Comrade Ferenc, and what it does not want is the rather... bourgeois, ineffectual medium that the paper is now.”
“Bourgeois?”
Another joyless smile. “That is the criticism, Comrade Ferenc. And, sadly, it has been pointed out that your background is obviously affecting your judgement. You come, I believe, from a family closely related to the old land-owning gentry. Headquarters does not like that, Comrade Ferenc. That is not at all a good background for a Party editor.”
“But I have spent years overcoming my background!” he shouted. “Was it for this I broke away from my family, risked imprisonment in the Horthy years, fought the fascists in Germany and here in Hungary? Does all this count for nothing?”
“The Party appreciates your efforts, Comrade Ferenc. That is why you have been appointed to the trade mission. Your services to the Party will not go unrewarded.”
“I have no wish to go to Budapest as a clerk! I have responsibilities here, my family are here—”
“No, I think not, Comrade Ferenc. You have a sister and an illegitimate nephew at Matrafured to whom you send money each month. You can do that from Budapest. Your brother-in-law—Kaldy—and his son are on their farm trying to work it together. Our report from that area is that they are having difficulties. They should leave, Comrade Ferenc. Sooner or later they will have to leave. This means that you live with your other sister, Eva Kaldy, and her daughter, who works at the County Offices. Neither of these ladies is in any kind of dilemma. There is no reason why you should remain here when the Party requires your services in Budapest.”
The chill spread down Leo’s spine, a vaguely familiar fear; it was the fear he had had during the war, hiding from the Nazis and the Arrow Cross.
“Things are to be done differently in Hungary very soon,” the soft voice continued. “When the election is won—and this time there will be... precautions taken to see that we win—things will be very different. There will be a place for you in the new Hungary, Comrade Ferenc—the Party is never ungrateful—but you must try to overcome your unfortunate background. Practise the rule of obedience.” Another eyeless smile. “What use is a Party member if he is not obedient?”
He had enough sense and enough control to remain silent, even though he felt the bottom had fallen from his world. He was shocked, betrayed, but he was also afraid, and he knew he must keep his protests to himself until he had had time to absorb the fear.
“You will enjoy Budapest,” purred the fat man. “You will be allocated a very pleasant apartment and your allowance will be most generous. And what work could be more rewarding than helping to re-establish the economy of our country?”
He couldn’t answer. If he did as he felt he would first of all weep, and then lean across the desk and squeeze the fat man’s neck until he died. Where had the dream gone? All the years of planning, the visions that were talked of in the Balasz, the war, the political persecution—what had happened? Where was the dream they had pursued for so long?
“There is no hurry for your departure, my friend. You need not be in Budapest for a couple of days. Take a little holiday before you go.”
Where had he heard that before? In 1939, on the newspaper, when the editor was trying to get rid of him because he was politically undesirable.
“Good-bye, Comrade Ferenc. I hope you will take every advantage of your stay in Budapest.”
The pebble lenses flashed again, and then Comrade Lengyel padded softly round the desk and opened the door of his office.
“Good-bye,” he said again, most pleasantly. Leo swallowed, nodded, and crossed in front of him. The door didn’t close immediately behind him and he was aware of the glasses observing him along the passage, could feel the spot on the back of his neck where they rested. When he left the building he noticed consciously, for the first time, that there were now three guards on the door of the building—three guards holding rifles—and a Russian soldier.
42
In the spring Malie and Nicky came back from the mountains. The year in the country had healed them: Nicky was strong enough to return to school, and Malie had regained her calm, her gentle tranquillity. She was older, much older than the rest of them, but some of her composure had returned. The tranquillity was needed, for she walked into a house where mother and daughter lived alone in sullen resentment over the question of Janos Marton. Once the warm welcomes were made, the invalid cosseted and admired and Malie’s careful nursing congratulated, the travellers were divided, Eva taking Malie into her room for a long complaint, leaving Nicky and Terez together in the cluttered kitchen.
“Where’s Janos, Terez? I thought he might be here to meet me. I haven’t seen him for a year—not since he took me to Matrafured—and apart from one postcard he has not written either.” He was hurt, and his voice was slightly plaintive. Janos had not fulfilled all the functions of a hero. Terez swallowed, took a deep breath and explained.
It took a moment for him to absorb. At first he didn’t believe, and then he did and looked puzzled and vaguely disapproving.
“Oh, no, Nicky! Not you too! I thought you would be on my side!”
“Oh, I’m not against you,” he answered airily. “I just think it’s a shame, that’s all—that Janos should want to get married. Everyone gets married. I thought he was different. But I suppose it’s all right.” He smiled at her, then came round the table and hugged her. “Of course it’s all right, Terez. If he wants to marry someone I’d just as soon it
was you.”
So the younger members of the family were on her side, for George on his visits to the town with his father was moved to discreet indignation on his sister’s behalf.
Malie, listening to her sister’s voice rising and falling in a series of illogical and unco-ordinated resentments, suddenly wished herself back in the country. There she had mourned and buried her parents, her husband, her sons. She had come to a point where she had managed to rise above personal grief, where the flight of a heron over the lake, where clouds moving across the mountain, gave her peace and a sense of the continuity of her life. The continuity had included the steady improvement of her nephew and the knowledge that once again she had a responsibility to someone. The year had made Nicky her own, for if Janos Marton had become his father (and she came to understand that indeed this was so), then she, most certainly, was his mother. She had felt strong enough to return to the old house and adapt herself to a changed environment. She had felt strong enough to face the full responsibility of caring for her nephew. And now it appeared she had walked into a house divided into two camps, the older generation against the younger.
“What does Adam say?” she interrupted gently. Eva stopped her flow of complaints, which consisted mostly of a description of Janos’s bad manners and the fact that he didn’t bring them any black-market food.
“Adam is heartbroken!” she cried.
“But he hasn’t forbade it?”
Eva sniffed. “How can he? The war has changed all that. They do as they like now. No one is obedient to their parents any more.”
‘“What you mean, Eva, is that while Terez’s salary is keeping the apartment and you, no one has any right to forbid her to do anything.” She looked coolly at her sister, feeling the same irritation with her she had felt since they were girls. “Why haven’t you been out to find work? You could have helped if you’d wanted. You obviously don’t do very much to keep the apartment tidy.”
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