Csardas Page 3

  He heard someone behind him, felt a touch on his arm, and at the same time he saw the smile disappear and the girl turn away, hiding the table-napkin with her fan. Cousin Alfred’s voice penetrated his senses. “The general intends leaving very soon, Karoly. I think you had best come and make your apologies now.”

  He followed Alfred from the ballroom. At the door he turned back and saw the rose-coloured dress disappearing at the other end of the room—presumably going to hide the table-napkin.

  “Karoly, my boy,” Cousin Alfred was saying, “I know things are difficult for you and I know the general can be old-fashioned and irritating. We would all like to see changes in the country, none more so than I!” Now that the general had been restored to good humour with the help of several glasses of brandy, Alfred felt he could resume his stance of a liberal reformer. “But I know your circumstances. Without some influence in the right quarters it will be practically impossible for you to make any advancement. The general is old and retired, but it would be most unwise to upset him. So now”—he patted Karoly’s arm in a not unkind gesture—“go and make your peace. He is an old man and not impervious to flattery.”

  The constriction in Karoly’s chest had given way to swelling excitement. She was beautiful! The girl was beautiful, and she had smiled at him the way a woman smiles when she wants to attract a man. It was a smile that said, You are the only man in the room as far as I am concerned. How soon could he find out who she was? Cousin Alfred. He would know.

  “Cousin Alfred—”

  “Hurry now, my boy. Don’t keep the general waiting.”

  The general... yes. He knocked on the door of the library and entered. The old man was sitting, legs sprawling, with his back to the stove.

  “Sir! I wish to apologize for my behavior. My remarks were impertinent and unwarranted. I can only excuse myself by pleading too much devotion to the Monarchy. My opinions were possibly misguided, but my loyalty was never for one moment in doubt!”

  He was amazed at himself. The honeyed words slid from his tongue with a practiced ease he had no idea he possessed. And the general seemed suddenly pathetic; he was old and infirm and it was unlikely that any girl would ever smile at him except in pity. He noticed the decorations on the uniform, the stick resting by the chair, and the leg stuck out at an awkward angle as though in pain. He was aware of shame that he had injured the pride of a sad old man whom even the army couldn’t use any more.

  “I’m sure, sir, that as a young officer you often led your fellows in enthusiastic if erroneous schemes. If you had not been a high-spirited young man with intelligence and new ideas, you would hardly have risen in the service of Franz Josef.”

  “Fool!” said the general, but without rancour.

  He screwed up his eyes and stared hard at the straight young figure before him. The lieutenant made his heart twist; he was tall, and he had strong, aristocratic features beneath thick blond hair.

  “I had some spirit when I was young,” he said slowly. “It was good in those days. No one could touch us. We fought well, like men, not engineers. A man on a horse could be a hero in those days....” His voice trailed away and he stared at Karoly. “Not everyone would stand up to an old warhorse like me. They’re either too afraid—the spineless ones are afraid—or they have already discarded me; they count me as dead and don’t bother to talk to me at all.”

  “That is their loss, sir.” He said it to charm and found it was true. The general reached for his stick and the gesture reminded Karoly of the way the old men, the peasants, moved on the estate at home. It makes no difference in the end, he thought. Whether you are a general or a carter, the day comes when you are just an old man.

  “There’s no harm in him, Alfred,” the general said suddenly. “He’s young, that’s all. We’ve all suffered from youth, haven’t we?” He chuckled slightly and then grimaced as he tried to stand. “Come now, Vilaghy. Help me out of this chair and into my coach. I’ll pay my respects to the ladies, and then I’ll go home and sleep Alfred’s brandy away.”

  Karoly suppressed the surge of impatience rising in him. He knew how long it would take to get the old boy into his cape, make his farewells, and see him in his coach. It was late and he wanted to hurry back to the drawing-room and find the girl in the pink dress. But he was a soldier and knew what was expected of him. He swallowed and held his arm towards the general.

  “A privilege, sir.”

  As the evening progressed, Eva completely forgot that it was Cousin Kati’s party. It became her party: the lights in the trees, the gypsy in the courtyard, the guests, the supper, the dancing, all were in honour of her, Eva Ferenc, and she was the first lady of the evening, the dazzling pivot around which everything and everyone was revolving.

  There had been the quarrel with Aunt Gizi—well, not quarrel, exactly, but slight tussle of personalities. Eva didn’t like her Aunt Gizi very much; she felt that her father’s sister was too clever and she also had the uncomfortable feeling on occasions that Gizi could tell exactly what Eva was plotting. Eva knew how to handle her papa, but when Gizi was there she couldn’t do it at all. There had been the time when she was trying to persuade Papa to take them to Budapest on his next business trip. Eva had coaxed and caressed and wheedled, and Papa had been on the point of giving in when Aunt Gizi had said, “Really, Zsigmond! You allow that child to do exactly what she likes with you. I don’t wonder the Bogozys laugh at you behind your back. This entire household is governed by the whim of a girl not out of the schoolroom.” And Papa had stood up, pushing Eva from his lap and saying angrily, “I’ve told you, Eva. You’re not going to Budapest, and I wish to hear no more of it.”

  This evening Aunt Gizi had looked at Eva’s dress and her lips had tightened into a thin, angry line. She had known something like this would happen. All the efforts required to make Kati’s party something out of the ordinary, something different and special so that everyone who came would feel that Kati too was different and special—all the planning and thought were brought to nothing by her brother’s wretched younger daughter. She wished—oh, how she wished!—that she didn’t have to ask her two nieces to every function. But family protocol set down firm rules about who came and who did not. And even without family duty there was always Kati, who insisted that her cousins were present at everything to which she was invited. Eva, standing defiant before her aunt in the drawing-room, her small, exquisitely shaped breasts rising exposed from the folds of tulle, was quite obviously going to steal the evening. Gizi could have screamed.

  “Go and borrow a scarf from your mama at once, child,” she snapped. “I can only believe she hasn’t seen that dress without a wrap. I think even Marta Bogozy will insist that you cover yourself.”

  “Mama isn’t here,” Eva said defiantly, twisting slightly on one toe in time to the music.

  “What do you mean, isn’t here?”

  “She’s playing cards. She sent her love and said she is sorry she confused the dates.”

  “You mean you and Malie have come here, unchaperoned, like—like a couple of shop-girls?”

  Eva tilted her head back and glared at her aunt. “We’re Bogozys,” she said haughtily. “The Bogozys can do all kinds of things the bourgeoisie can’t do.”

  She thought for a moment she had gone too far. She saw Aunt Gizi open her hand and she had the horrifying notion that she was about to be slapped in public like a disobedient child. Then Gizi had clenched her fist and walked away.

  “I’ve beaten Aunt Gizi!” she sang to herself. “For the first time in my whole life I’ve beaten Aunt Gizi. I can do anything I want tonight, anything at all!”

  As Aunt Gizi walked away, Eva was instantly surrounded by all the young men who were not already performing their duty dances. There were pleas and cries for the csardas, the quadrille, the cotillion, and above all for the supper dance. Eva prinked and smiled, tilted her head, gazed demurely but provocatively from under her long lashes, and all the time noted that Felix Kaldy was
dancing with a girl in a blue dress. The girl wasn’t very pretty and Felix looked bored: bored, but oh, how handsome! He was slim, wide-shouldered, and his soft dark hair fell in neatly groomed waves around his well-shaped head. Even his hands (for Eva noticed every tiny detail about Felix Kaldy) were beautiful, with long tapering fingers and immaculately groomed nails. As he passed her she lifted her hand in languid salutation and at the same time laughed vivaciously at one of the young men near her. Felix smiled and bowed his head, and the smile made her throw caution and good manners to the winds. Brimming with the confidence that the quarrel with Aunt Gizi had given her and encouraged by her adoring circle of suitors, she tilted back her head and winked—naughtily, vulgarly—straight at Felix.

  He was so startled he missed a step. His partner frowned, and as they passed on Eva had the satisfaction of seeing the back of his neck turn pink. She didn’t feel one bit ashamed of the wink. She knew she had made an impression and as soon as the dance was over Felix, having delivered the plain girl in blue back to her seat, came directly over to Eva, looking surprised but gratified.

  She suddenly lost her confidence. Close up, Felix was even more breathtakingly beautiful, slim and graceful with silky hair, silky moustache, and the profile of a poet. She was outraged with herself for winking at this exquisite, spiritual young man. Colour rushed up from the low neck of her dress. Good heavens, Malie was quite right! The dress was far too low. It was vulgar and immodest and she wished, oh, how she wished, that she had done what Aunt Gizi had told her to do and draped a scarf over herself. She gazed at Felix in unconcealed admiration. Felix raised a silken eyebrow, smoothed his immaculate shirt-front, and smiled again.

  “Oh, Felix! You look so elegant!”

  He was pleased. He looked at Eva, at the young men clustering about her, at the room in general.

  “I should like to take one of your dances,” he said pleasantly, and was slightly disconcerted to find Eva’s card thrust into his hand before he had even finished speaking.

  “I still have the supper dance,” she said hopefully. “I saved it.”

  Felix waved his hand in the air. “I’m sorry, Eva. The supper dance is already taken.”

  He was flattered to see Eva’s small face crumple with disappointment. He was by no means unaware of the effect he was creating; after all, this was one of the Ferenc girls. There wasn’t a young man in the room who wouldn’t have relinquished every dance for the rest of the evening in return for taking Eva in to supper, and he, Felix Kaldy, had to refuse.

  “Kati,” he said, in answer to Eva’s unspoken query. “Your Aunt Gizi suggested I should take Kati as it is her birthday.”

  Eva smiled her relief. “Oh!” she said. “That’s all right then, if it’s only poor Kati!”

  It wasn’t quite the reaction he had hoped for, but he was rewarded when he filled in three dances on her card and saw her face light up. It was all very, very gratifying.

  “Adam will take you in to supper,” he said graciously. “He will be delighted.”

  She didn’t know what to do. If she couldn’t have Felix, she would sooner pick one of the other gay young men clustering about her. Adam was solid and rather taciturn, not a bit like his handsome brother.

  “Well,” she began, but before she could formulate an excuse Adam was standing before her, affirming his wish to eat strudel and birthday cake with her. Felix handed him her card and she said a bleak “Thank you” and smiled thinly.

  But it wasn’t an evening when one could remain bleak for long. The early duty dances were always dull, but somehow this evening even those obligatory rounds were pleasurable. She was swept into a csardas, and then a mazurka, and then she waltzed with Felix, round and round, his arms holding her with great respect, his elegant form the envy of every girl in the room. She was incredibly happy. She could never remember being this happy before, not even when the fencing master in Vienna had presented her with a box of confectioneries in Mariahilferstrasse one day (she had had to eat the sweetmeats quickly between Mariahilferstrasse and the Akademie because she didn’t want Malie to know). Now the passion for the fencing master seemed adolescent and callow, and she could not even remember what he looked like. Gazing up at Felix she reflected that she had never known a man as beautiful as he was. And Felix, seeing the glow and sparkle of her face, catching glimpses of her tulle skirt billowing out behind her, and noting the way the new electric light made her black hair gleam, was suddenly sorry when the dance was over. He went to find Kati to do his duty in the matter of the supper dance, and after Eva’s dainty flattery, Kati seemed awkward and clumsy and, incidentally, not at all pleased to see him.

  “Oh,” she mumbled nervously. “Yes, of course. It’s time, isn’t it.” He pulled her arm through his and was embarrassed when she stumbled and caught her heel in the hem of her dress. He had to wait for her to free it. Across the room he could see Eva talking to his brother. Adam was just staring back at her. Vaguely, Felix thought that Kati and Adam would make a good pair, two uncommunicative, charmless lumps.

  Eva didn’t see much of Malie, only glimpses of her whirling round. They waved and laughed at each other several times, but they were both so busy dancing, charming the young men, smiling, swaying, flirting, that it was enough to know the other was happy too.

  She accepted several invitations for future engagements—coffee at the patisserie on the following morning, a theatre party, tea at the Franz-Josef—and all the time her heart was singing because Felix Kaldy, even when he was dancing with someone else, kept looking across the room at her, smiling, giving little nods of recognition and shared grimaces, as though they were party to private jokes about the rest of the guests. When at last he came to claim her for the lancers she pouted prettily and put her right hand up for him to hold.

  They swung, chasséed, formed squares, jigged up and down. The music swept them along, out into the room with all the colours of the girls’ skirts mingling, brushing against each other like flower bells, the young men tall and straight in slim black evening suits or colourful dress uniforms, standing like pivots for the girls to swing round, strong arms holding waists, and the music swelling into a gaiety that filled the whole room. As it finished Felix picked her up by the waist and swung her round while applause—some for the musicians but some surely also for her and Felix—filled the air. She laughed and for one brief, breathless second leaned against Felix’s shoulder.

  “You dance so beautifully, Felix!”

  He smiled. “It was most pleasant, Eva. Thank you.” He began to escort her from the floor through an avenue of admiring young men—“Oh, Eva! You must dance with me!” and “Lucky old Felix!”—and then as she reached her seat she saw Malie waiting, her wrap already round her shoulders and her purse clutched in her hand.

  “Uncle Sandor’s come,” she said sadly.

  “Oh, no!”

  “We must go. He’s sent a message in—twice.”

  “But the dancing hasn’t finished!”

  “I know. But we’ll have to go. If Mama had come I suppose it would have been all right. We could have stayed as long as we liked. But as she isn’t here we will have to go now.”

  They stared at one another. All the audacity of being moderne meant nothing now. If only Mama had come they could have stayed to the end. Eva trailed miserably after Amalia. At the door of the drawing-room she felt a touch on her arm and turned, hoping to see Felix.

  “You dropped these, Eva,”’ said Adam Kaldy, holding out a spray of artificial pink roses. “They fell from your dress when you were dancing.”

  Eva remembered who she was, a Ferenc girl. Even to dull old Adam Kaldy she was still a Ferenc girl. She smiled and dimpled. “Keep them,” she said airily. “Keep them close to your heart!”

  To her surprise Adam grinned, then bowed and clasped the crumpled cloth roses to his heart in a gesture of dramatic agony. She was astonished. She could never remember Adam being anything but wooden and humourless and she found his clowning sligh
tly disconcerting.

  “We have to leave now,” she said.

  Suddenly she realized that she had no idea when she and Felix would meet again. Unlike all the other young men he hadn’t once suggested coffee or the theatre or a spring picnic (they were all the rage this season). Her heart plummeted. It had taken so long to arrive at this point and now she would have to wait until they chanced to meet again at some social function. She decided she couldn’t possibly wait for an accidental meeting in the near future.

  “Adam, we are having our friends for a supper party in ten days.” She prayed that in ten days she could gain written permission from Papa in Budapest for a small formal party and give Mama enough time to organize it. “We will write, of course, but if you—and Felix—could come....”

  Adam appeared to be genuinely disappointed. “We’re going to the country on Sunday,” he said

  “Surely not! You, yes; I know you stay up in the country all the year round. But not Felix. Felix wouldn’t go to the country in March. Nobody goes to the country in March!”

  Adam stared, startled by her vehemence. “It’s the beet,” he said feebly.

  “Beet!”

  He flushed at her contempt. “I’m trying a new crop, sugar beet. I’ve—we’ve invested quite a lot of money in it, and Mother says she wants Felix at home. He is supposed to know what is happening on his land, she says.”

  She couldn’t speak, she was so plunged into despair again. Blindly she nodded good-bye to Adam and then turned away from him. Outside the drawing-room Kati, flushed, and Aunt Gizi, disapproving, were waiting to say good night. Uncle Alfred was prized from his friends and came out smelling of brandy and tobacco and looking rather hot. He kissed them and mumbled something that sounded like “pretty little things” before disappearing back into the smoke of the library. And then, suddenly very tired, they stumbled down the stairs to a bristling and bad-tempered Uncle Sandor.