A World to Win
Page 22
I looked at my plate, but I wasn’t seeing my food; I was seeing the threatening picture of Lajos which István had painted.
Elisabeth frowned. “He’s getting a little above himself, is he not?”
“Lajos? Oh no,” said István sarcastically. “He even thanked us for our time, after we had given in to everything!”
“Poor István. You’ve had an awful day.”
“We all have,” Katalin murmured.
“I haven’t,” Mattias protested. “I’ve had a wonderful day!”
“I think you’ll find your wonderful day has landed us all in the basket!” said his brother. “Oh, don’t look so worried, Elisabeth, we shall come about. We’re still in control. We may even shake off some of Vienna’s interference, which would be an excellent thing, provided it is no more than that.”
Some hope, I thought. It is already more than that.
* * * *
Katalin directly refused to go to the Pilvax that night. The day’s events had shaken her, and she couldn’t help seeing the young revolutionaries as anti-aristocratic Jacobins. For the first time, I think Alexandru’s involvement with them actually bothered her. She had a few things to come to terms with, so after dinner I left her to herself.
On the stairs, I met Mattias, leaping down two at a time.
“Where are you off to in such a hurry?” I asked, amused by his unrelenting energy.
“The Pilvax, of course, and then the National Theatre!”
All at once, my breath caught. As he moved to go on, I laid my hand on his arm to stay him.
“Mattias, may I come with you?” I asked abruptly.
He blinked, then grinned. “Why not? Get your finery on quickly though, for I’ll not wait forever!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The festivities at the Pilvax that night had a carnival air about them; Petöfi and the other leaders of the day’s demonstrations were being fêted as heroes, and they were exultant.
I noticed two things at once: Lajos was not there; and Alexandru was, sitting a little apart and looking thoughtful. His face lit up as soon as he saw us — and clouded when he realized Katalin was not with us. I knew I was going to have to speak to him immediately, whatever Mattias might think, but to my surprise it was Mattias himself who, taking my arm in a firm grip, said, “Let’s go over here — I want a word with Zarescu.”
I rather hoped he didn’t also want to fight. Alex stood up a little stiffly as we approached him, but Mattias immediately startled him — and me — by holding out his hand with obvious friendship.
“Well met, Zarescu! You know my cousin, Katie, don’t you? Dash it, she’s not my cousin, she’s my niece, but I can’t get used to that!”
Alexandru looked amused, but carefully greeted me more formally than usual, holding a chair for me to sit down. When we had all duly sat, Mattias said directly, “I’ve been wanting a word with you, Zarescu. About my sister.”
“Indeed?” The air had turned frosty again.
“Yes. I want to apologise for being so — stuffy about you and her. After all, it doesn’t make sense. You’re the best of good fellows, Zarescu, and if you still want her, you have my blessing for what it’s worth — which isn’t much. It’s my father you have to get round. But I wanted you to know I’ll stand your friend in this, as in the cause.”
If Alexandru was half as stunned as I at this handsome apology, he covered it well. He was certainly silent for a moment, but then his face broke into a delighted grin, and he reached across the table to shake Mattias’s hand again.
“Thank you,” he said simply. “Katalin is everything to me. I’d give her the world if I could.” He glanced at me. “Er — where is she?”
“Sulking,” said Mattias, surprising me for the second time that evening. “Because you were at the meeting outside the Museum this afternoon, instead of lurking inside waiting for her — even if she couldn’t come anyway! Women!”
“How do you know that?” I demanded, appalled that he knew so much.
He grinned. “She told me. Don’t worry — her sulks don’t last...” He broke off. “Hallo, here’s Lajos!”
My eyes flew to the door, and sure enough there he was, striding into the room with an unusually purposeful gait. As one of the day’s great heroes, he was greeted by a standing ovation, which brought him to a surprised halt. Just for a second, I thought he looked confused, as if his mind had been somewhere quite different; then the half-smile appeared. He flourished his arm, giving an exaggerated bow to the company.
“Speech, Lázár! Speech!” yelled one of the young men.
“Another speech?” Lajos groaned. “My throat is raw!”
“Get up there, you weakling,” Petöfi ordered, and together with Vasvári, he hoisted Lázár up on to a table, to the half-bantering applause of his friends.
He surveyed his audience a little resignedly, before eloquently shrugging his shoulders. “I don’t know what else I can say, except that today we have begun it, and that is a great thing. But it is only the beginning. We’ve won the first skirmish, yet there’s a whole war waiting to engulf us if we weaken. More than ever we must work to unite the people, to unite ourselves, put aside our petty prejudices of race and class, stand as one with our Romanian and German brothers, so that no one can take from us what we have won today. So that we can bring the revolution to its only, rightful conclusion. My friends, I give you a toast...” He reached down and plucked Jókai’s glass from his hand, raising it high. “To the Revolution! Long live the people!”
He threw the contents of the glass down his throat as everyone else, including Mattias and Alexandru beside me, fervently echoed his toast. And while they drank, I saw his eyes quickly scan the room. For a second I thought he saw me, and I couldn’t stop the foolish leap of my heart, but then his gaze passed on and I knew I had been mistaken.
“Thank you,” he said abruptly, and jumped down from the table to the sound of more applause. I watched him give the empty glass back to the grinning Jókai, and then, amazingly, he was making his way towards us, carelessly acknowledging greetings and shrugging off such adulation as he met with en route. I forced myself to breathe normally.
“How does it feel to be a hero?” Alex enquired sardonically.
“Ask one,” Lajos recommended, seizing the chair beside me and sitting on it back to front with his arms resting across its back. He was smiling at me. “Katie Kettles. I never even hoped to see you tonight.”
It was so totally unexpected after his single-minded pursuit of revolution, that I was taken unawares. I felt my cheeks burn. I could think of nothing to say. And then, like a gentleman, he turned to the others.
“So you two are friends again? I hope it was something I said.”
“Hola, Lajos!” Petöfi called from across the room. “Come here and listen to this!”
Lajos sighed and met Alexandru’s amused gaze.
“You could always say ‘come here and tell me this’,” the Captain suggested.
“I could,” said Lajos, “but then he would. Excuse me.”
And he swung his leg round the chair and stood up. Trying not to watch him, my eyes fell instead on Julia Petöfi, sitting alone and a little aloof in the corner. After a moment, she caught my gaze and smiled her recognition. I excused myself to my not very interested companions and went to speak to her.
“You must be very proud,” I said, after the greetings were over.
“Very proud, and very nervous,” she said frankly. “Of course, I am behind him in this as in all else, but sometimes I think they are in another world, my Sándor, your Lajos and the others...”
I flushed, saying hastily, “He’s not my Lajos.”
“No? Sándor believes he is.” She regarded me directly. “I suppose it’s as well if you are right. He doesn’t believe in God, or in marriage, you know.”
I laughed with genuine amusement. “I’m not surprised, somehow! But tell me, were you at the meeting this afternoon?”
“I only wrote it two days ago, for the peasants’ banquet in fact,” he confessed with a boyish grin, and I began to make my way back towards Mattias.
“Katie. Just the person,” said a familiar voice. I paused, turning my head to see Lajos leaning against the pillar beside me, another empty glass in his hand. I wondered whose it was this time.
“Just the person for what?” I enquired, pleased to hear the steadiness in my own voice. He smiled slightly, easing his lithe body away from the pillar and laying the glass down on a nearby table.
“For running away with,” he said unpredictably. “Shall we?”
“Where to?” I asked in the same spirit, answering the smile in his oddly restless eyes.
“Anywhere. Away from people, all this...”
“You love all this.”
“So I do, but tonight I’m tired of it. Come, Katie, let’s run away from it all, you and I!”
There was an amused, half-mocking challenge in his eyes that would have been mischievous in anyone else. I found myself responding to it. After today, recklessness was in the air. But then, after today, what on earth was reckless about leaving a coffee-house with a friend?
I laughed. “All right; but I’ll have to tell Mattias...”
“No, Nico will tell him,” Lajos said, stopping a frantically overworked waiter and giving him a quick request, together with a nod in the direction of Mattias and Alex, after which I found my arm taken in a strong grip and my person almost hustled to the door. We only paused once on the way, to collect my cloak, and then we were outside.
Fortunately the rain had gone off by then, but we still had to negotiate the large group of people who had gathered outside the cafe to cheer their heroes. Discreetly, I drew my hood well forward, while Lajos, firmly holding on to my arm, exchanged a few encouraging and humorous words with the crowd. At last we were past them and walking freely down the road, but at the first turning we came to, Lajos steered me round it to the right, and then suddenly seized my hand and began to run.
I gasped, half-laughing as I was dragged along, then gave in and ran with him. He pulled me down empty side streets and alleys, avoiding people, which, looking back, was just as well. It would have done neither my own nor the Szelényis’ reputation any good if I had been seen scampering along the street hand-in-hand with Lajos Lázár. Or with anyone else for that matter.
At last I managed to ask breathlessly, “Where are we going?”
“I don’t know — to the river, I think.”
I gave a choke of laughter. “Lajos, you’re quite mad! Oh, slow down, I’ll die!”
“You have no stamina, you aristos,” he said provokingly, but he did stop, allowing me to catch my breath for a moment, watching me with that distinctive half-smile I had come to love and fear. I tried to draw my hand free, but his fingers tightened and I submitted.
I met his gaze. There was an odd, feverish glitter in his eyes, reflecting the light from nearby windows, and suddenly, belatedly, I realized the cause of his subtle strangeness this evening.
“Lajos, are you drunk?” I asked straightly.
He swung my hand into the air and began to walk again. “I believe I am intoxicated,” he admitted, “but I don’t think it’s the wine. Shall we go to the Erzsébet Island? It’s a pleasant spot.”
I felt the laughter bubble up in me again. “How do we get there?”
“By boat, of course. A friend of mine by the harbour will lend us his...”
I confess I doubted him, but he did indeed borrow a small boat from a tolerant old man who lived near the harbour, and even rowed us quite expertly down the river. It seemed he was right: whatever was making him so — exhilarated — it wasn’t solely alcohol.
I sat back, trailing my hand in the cold, dark water. The river was deserted; everyone was either hiding indoors or celebrating the day’s events elsewhere. I gazed up at the harsh castle of Buda, wondering with a sudden return of dread what plans were being laid there, despite the Vice Regal Council’s promise of no military intervention.
“The soldiers faced us as we marched up to the fortress this afternoon,” Lajos said. “They stood by their guns with burning fuses in their hands while we came on shouting for liberty and equality. And they did nothing.”
“Perhaps they won’t always do nothing.”
“They might join us,” said Lajos. “After all, they’re only people — like Alex.”
I regarded him across the darkness. “You must be very pleased with yourself.”
“I’m very pleased,” he said, after consideration. “Are you?”
Was I pleased? Certainly, I was aroused by this united action of the people; I prayed it would bring them a better future; but still I was terrified that in reality it would lead only to violence, greater suppression, more bloodshed.
At last I said, “I don’t know. I’m afraid.”
A ghost of a laugh came from him. “So am I.”
I stared at him, but I couldn’t see his expression in the gloom. It was so easy to forget that he was only twenty-five years old, little more than a boy, yet with a large share of the responsibility for a national revolution pressing on his shoulders. He had wanted it so much that I had never imagined he could have doubts too.
I felt the ache in my heart grow stronger. I closed my eyes for a moment, listening to the rhythmic splash of the oars, yearning to give him comfort and strength, but not knowing how. And then, without any warning, without even interrupting his strokes, he began to talk. The words fell from him as if he could no longer keep them in, pouring out his elation at the day’s success, his pride in this bloodless revolution he had begun, his desperate, straining hopes for its future.
I listened, as I always listen, and gradually a quiet gladness began to seep through me. For the first time in our enigmatic relationship I felt he needed me, and though it was so much less than I secretly craved, I found my own contentment in the fact that it was me he wished to tell all this to, not Alex, or Petöfi, or Teréz Meleki. And as he spoke, the strange, restless tension I had sensed in him all night began to drain away, until his voice at last faded and died, leaving behind only the tranquil shadow of his triumph.
For a time we were both silent. Then he said in the old lazy, humorous voice I knew best, “Have I bored you, or terrified you?”
“No,” I said economically. I hesitated, then added slowly, “You’re working as hard as you can for what you believe is right. I can only admire that.”
Now he was silent again, and I had the impression he was surprised. “Thank you,” he said quietly, making me smile into the distance. And suddenly I was aware that Erzsébet Island was looming out of the darkness only yards away. Seeing my alarm, Lajos glanced over his shoulder.
“Shall we go ashore?” he suggested calmly.
The island was a popular place for summer picnics; exactly what he wanted to do there on a wet March evening in the pitch darkness, I couldn’t tell, but it was a delightfully pointless expedition, and just for tonight I think he needed that. He rowed us into the island as far as he could, then stood up and leapt into the shallow water to pull the boat ashore.
“You’ll catch pneumonia,” I warned.
“Nonsense,” he said, straightening his back and reaching for me. I tried to give him my hands, but instead I found myself taken by the waist and lifted clean out of the boat. He swung me round and then let me slip slowly to my feet.
He was holding me so close that I could smell the wine on his breath, and that nearness, the touch of his body against mine, was beginning to make me dizzy. I tried to ignore the surge of desire that shot through me, yet I wanted this closeness; I wanted it more than anything in the world...
Despite the dark, I could tell he was smiling; hazily, I thought it must mean that he t
oo was having second thoughts about this mad start, so I smiled back at him.
“Lajos, what are we doing here?” I asked.
I heard his breath catch. “This,” he said, and bent and kissed my lips as if he would never stop.
Shocked, I gasped into his mouth, instinctively dragging up my hands to push him away, but his arms went round me, drawing me inexorably even closer, and then it was quite another, much stronger instinct which made me hang there so weakly, and my traitorous hands were not pushing, but clutching at his coat while I let him kiss me and prayed it would go on forever.
He wasn’t smiling any more when he lifted his head. His eyes were warm and serious. Helplessly, I tried to gather my wits, but all I could manage, in a tiny, shaken voice, was, “Let me go, Lajos — you mustn’t...”
“Mustn’t I?” he said softly. “Come, Katie, don’t you think it’s time there was some honesty between us?”
“What do you mean?” Slowly, an amazed, exultant hope was creeping over me and I was afraid I was wrong. Afraid I was right — yet how could I be?
“I mean I want you,” he said candidly. His finger was lightly tracing the line of my jaw and making me shiver. “I’ve always wanted you, ever since I first saw you in Vienna, and you looked at me so sweetly, with your eyes so ready to smile even while your mouth tried to disapprove. I still want you, more than ever, more than I had thought possible.”
I stared up at him dumbly, disbelieving, yet fearful that I would wake too soon from the dream.
“But — you can’t,” I blurted, and now his eyes were laughing. His fingers stroked my cheek, lingered on my lips.
“Why can’t I?” he enquired as I caught his hand.
“I’m too old,” I floundered, “too dull for you...”
“That’s rubbish, and you know it.”
“No, Lajos,” I said painfully, “I don’t know.”
He paused then, searching my face in the darkness, and I stood there in the circle of his arm, waiting to be hurt, vulnerable as I had never been in my life before. At last, he said softly, “Then I’ll have to show you,” and his mouth came down on mine again.