Csardas Read online

  “Just look at the trees, Eva! We’ve never seen them like that before!”

  Eva, two high spots of colour on her cheeks, hugged her sister. She wanted to scream with happiness. “It’s going to be a wonderful, wonderful spring! Oh, Malie, I’m so happy! Do you think I’ll ever be as happy as this again?”

  Malie, who was well aware of the reason for Eva’s delirium of ecstasy, looked at the other occupants of the coach. Mama wore an expression of gloomy resignation. Informed of Papa’s decision that the entire family should be banished to the country, she had tried to look for compensating factors. They would be free of Papa’s constraining presence for several weeks and she would also be a happy distance from one or two creditors that she seemed, unwittingly, to have acquired. But the country was going to be dull and dreary until the rest of the town’s inhabitants came up for the summer. There would be no one to play cards with, no dressmaker with whom to while away a pleasant morning, no friends to drink chocolate and gossip with, no visits to the town’s one provincial theatre. She sighed. The only company within reach would be her sharp-tongued sister-in-law constantly reminding her that she was, truthfully, rather lazy and ineffectual, and, on the other side of the farm, the autocratic widowed mother of Felix and Adam Kaldy. For the rest she supposed—oh, dear!—it would be an affair of picnics with the children and the dubious delights of domestic life with their tenant farmers.

  The little boys were happy enough, giggling and scuffling in the coach and huddling up to Malie for protection every time Uncle Sandor glared back at them. The weather had suddenly become very warm and they had brought the little open carriage that they always used for the farm in summer. Released from the discipline of their father, knowing they would be free for weeks and weeks and weeks, the boys had become skittish and naughty. Jozsef threw a small stone at one of the horses, and Uncle Sandor turned, glared, and growled.

  “Don’t do that, Jozsef,” said Mama wearily, but she need not have bothered. Uncle Sandor had turned his evil eye upon the boys and they were quelled. Awed, they moved closer to Malie, one on each side.

  The farm, with its wooden arcaded porch and red-tiled roof, stretched round three sides of a large courtyard. A chestnut tree grew in the centre and beneath its shade the ground was always a little moist, even in the midst of summer when the rest of the yard was baked into dust. As they turned out of the acacia woods the little boys bounded back to the sides of the coach, pointing excitedly to each familiar and beloved feature which had not been seen since last summer.

  “The wine press! See the wine press!”

  “And the vine... but no grapes. Why are there no grapes, Malie?”

  “And baby chickens... and a lamb!”

  “Tulips. The red flowers are tulips, aren’t they, Malie?”

  “That’s right, darling.”

  Uncle Sandor shouted, “Aaagh,” a deep, terrifying sound that the horses seemed to understand because they came to a halt. Uncle Sandor put up the reins and prepared to clamber down and help the ladies, but Eva could not wait. As soon as the coach stopped she flung the door open, jumped, staggered, and regained her balance. “Dear, darling, wonderful farm!” she cried, opening her arms wide to the chestnut trees. “How glad I am to be here!”

  “Us too! Us too!” cried the little boys, standing on the step of the coach and holding out their arms. Eva caught them and whirled them round once before dropping them on the ground.

  “I will alight in the normal way, Sandor,” said Mama wearily, waiting for the steps to be put down.

  The yard was a rambling, disorganized, colourful chaos of chickens, geese, carts of fodder and cattle-dung, and old wine casks that had been filled with earth and planted with flowers. Against the hot stones of the wine press two shaggy dogs lay dozing and twitching flies away from their eyes. They jumped up when Leo and Jozsef ran from the coach, and at once there was a tumble of dogs and boys in the soil of the yard.

  Mama sighed once, twitched her elegant grey skirt, and picked her way carefully across the yard to where Zoltan and Roza, dressed in festive best, were descending the steps to welcome them.

  Zoltan, in high black boots, bowed with his hat held hard against his chest. Roza bobbed down respectfully, and Mama leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek.

  “How pretty your flowers are, Roza. The first thing we noticed as we drove in.”

  Roza’s nut-complexioned face expressed plaintive satisfaction. “We tried to make everything ready for you, madame, but coming so soon... there was nothing, no cheese made, and the last season’s apples all gone, and too soon for the strawberries, and none of the lambs ready for killing, and the quilts not hung out from the winter, and I said to Zoltan, We must do our best for madame and the little ones but she will wonder what we have done with the house and farm all winter when there is nothing to eat and nowhere to sleep and the rain still coming—not too much but a little, you understand, and—”

  Mama drew her hand across her forehead. “I’m sure it will all be perfect, Roza,” she said. “You always do everything beautifully. And now I think I should like to go in. The sun is very hot and we have been in the coach for several hours. Perhaps—”

  “Pardon, madame! Of course. Foolish old woman that I am, how could I forget? Come now, all of you, come and rest and eat.”

  Eva kissed Roza and then stood on her toes and kissed Zoltan too. “Hullo, Uncle Zoltan,” she said naughtily, enjoying his embarrassment.

  “You are nearly too old, Miss Eva, to greet me like that,” he answered sternly. Eva giggled and skipped into the house behind Mama and Roza. Malie followed. She asked Roza how her children were, and then she asked Zoltan how the farm was and how many horses he had. He talked for ten minutes of cows and crops and horses before she could get away.

  Their rooms were light and sunny and smelled of soap, and of linen that has been dried hung out over bushes. Mama expressed a desire to lie down and drink coffee in her room and as soon as she had been setttled with a sachet of lavender to hold for her headache and a novel (which Papa would have forbidden her to read) to kill the hours until supper-time, Malie and Eva hurried down to the kitchen.

  The farmhouse was one-storied, and the kitchen was built sunk a little way into the ground beneath the wooden porch. It should have been dark and dreary but somehow, because of Roza, it never was. The huge stove stretching the whole of one side belched out warmth, and the table was spread with a red, black, and white cloth. The back of each kitchen chair had been carved by Uncle Zoltan into designs varying from flowers in a formal intertwining pattern to a stag being killed by dogs. Neither Jozsef nor Leo liked to sit on that chair.

  ‘“Sit! Eat!” said Roza happily, offering coffee and honey cakes. She stood by the table, filling small cups and passing a huge bowl of cream. “Why have you come so early? And when does your papa come?”

  “Papa comes in June or July, I suppose. We have come early because... because Cousin Kati is here and we want to be with her.”

  Roza wound her hands in her apron, shrugged, and made a hopeless grimace with her mouth. “Aach! Your poor cousin.” She sighed. “We heard they had come, and the Kaldys too.’”

  “They have new machinery. To sow seeds, now they have a machine.” Uncle Zoltan took his pipe from his mouth and laughed. “They came, the two young men, and asked me if I would like to go and see their machine. But no, I said, what should I do with a machine? Machines are for the young—there is a motorcar at Matrafured now—but I have always sown with oxen and my two good hands.”

  “They came... here?” asked Eva in a small voice. “Felix and his brother came here?”

  “Two days ago. To talk about the machine.”

  “So surprised they were, to hear that you were coming,” Roza said coyly, and Uncle Zoltan gave a great bellow of laughter.

  “Now that you have become elegant ladies we shall have all the young bulls of the county coming here to call!”

  Astonished, Malie watched a deep
flush spread up her sister’s face. Eva, who had worn a dress cut so low that it had shocked the town’s society, who had winked at Felix and shown Aunt Gizi that she was moderne, was suddenly reduced to girlish embarrassment at Uncle Zoltan’s earthy humour. Somehow calling Felix a young bull hadn’t seemed quite nice. Felix with his delicate manners and poet’s profile was not part of the general coarseness that now sent Zoltan and Roza into ribald laughter.

  “I think I shall go and see how Mama is.” Eva said stiffly, and at once Roza was all contrition and kind thought, fetching a jug of hot water and arranging pastries on a plate.

  Eva left, and Malie climbed the steps that led into the yard. Everything was fertile, blossoming, rich. Tiny new leaves on the chestnut tree tinted the branches with green, and when she walked across the courtyard and out into the farm she could see that the orchard, which stretched from one side of the house right down to the river, was massed with blossom. It was going to be a good year for the peach crop; already burdens of pink flowers smothered the branches. Apples, pears, nut trees, raspberry canes, all grew amongst the new young growth of wild flowers and grass. Later the sun would dry out much of the ground and the grass would turn yellow and patchy, but now all was green and pink and white. Everything smelled young and clean, and through the trees she caught glimpses of the cow pens where five young calves sucked greedily from their mothers. The sun was warm and musky and gave a promise of adventure, of hot summer nights and picnics up in the hills, and—oh—young men with posies and relaxed manners and white hats with large brims. Eva was going to spend the spring and summer falling in love with Felix Kaldy, which meant that she, Malie, would have to pair off with Adam. She sighed. Adam was nice enough, but so serious and well-intentioned, so reliable, so honest, so... dull. Did she envy Eva falling in love and, in turn, being loved by Felix? She considered, picking idly at the low-hanging blossom of a peach tree. No, for to be truthful she didn’t think Felix was very romantic either; she found him too thin, too charming, and too indecisive. She couldn’t imagine him running after a coach and shouting his name through the window. Karoly Vilaghy... a hussar. Like Uncle Sandor, but oh, how different....

  “Maaa-lie!” she heard the little boys cry. She thrust her foolish thoughts aside. Probably she wouldn’t even like the lieutenant if she met him.

  “Coming,” she answered, and began to walk towards the two small figures at the orchard gate.

  Aunt Gizi and Kati lost no time in calling. The next morning Gizi was sitting in the drawing-room telling Mama just how careless Zoltan and Roza were with the farm.

  “Half the sowing not done, the land left fallow, the pruning not finished. You are foolish, Marta. You spend my brother’s money on extravagant self-indulgence, and here, where a little supervision could mean an investment for your children, you just allow everything to degenerate into laxness and confusion. I was horrified at your yard when I drove in!”

  Mama ignored the complaint. She raised her hand to her forehead in the eloquent gesture that everyone recognized. “How my head aches,” she said feebly, and then, bravely, to Kati, “What a pretty dress, Kati dear. Red is most becoming to you. You should wear it more often.”

  Gizi looked annoyed, Kati pleased. Her Aunt Marta was so elegant and graceful that a compliment from her was high praise.

  “We are to call on Madame Kaldy this afternoon,” she said nervously. “I wish you would come with us. Madame Kaldy is so... so very grand I wish you would come.”

  Aunt Gizi gave a small cluck of annoyance. “Don’t be silly and thoughtless, Kati. Your cousins have only just arrived. They will need to settle themselves before they can begin following you around the countryside.”

  “We are quite settled, thank you, Aunt Gizi! We would love to come with you, wouldn’t we, Malie? Wouldn’t we adore to go and visit Fe—Madame Kaldy this afternoon? Mama, may we go with Kati to call on Madame Kaldy?”

  ‘“I suppose so,” said Mama, bored.

  “We could call for you at three,” bubbled Kati happily. “We could all go in our coach, couldn’t we, Mama?”

  Aunt Gizi looked furious and didn’t answer. She stood up, pulling on her gloves in a savage, jerky fashion. She muttered something that they couldn’t quite hear and then turned towards the door. Kati followed her.

  “Aren’t we going to have a lovely summer?” she said happily to her cousins. “Isn’t it going to be wonderful? Just the three of us?”

  Before they could answer Aunt Gizi had jostled her through the door and they were gone.

  The land was rich, but it should have been richer. In the south the puszta housed great herds of cattle and sheep, and to the north the apricot orchards of Kecskemet provided an abundance of brandy. From the meadows and wheatfields of Transylvania to the vineyards of Eger and Tokay, all was lush and fertile, warmed by a near-eastern sun, irrigated by the waters of the Danube, and sheltered from the cold winds of Russia by a great chain of mountains. A huge peasant force laboured over the fruitful land, which should have been more fruitful. The sheep should have been fatter, the peaches and apricots and peppers more abundant. But one third of all the land was entailed, and the magnates, the counts, and the rest of the nobility saw no reason to waste time and money improving what they could not sell, what would always be theirs, providing a living of some kind or another no matter what they did. They also, in common with the gentry and the minor nobility, shared a national abhorrence for “grubbing in the soil.” It was not gentlemanly or noble to suddenly concern oneself with crop rotation or milk yield. It would only bring down the contempt and ridicule of their fellows. So they placed a manager over their estates and then joined the Imperial armies or the civil administration. They rode well, danced well, gambled, hunted, made love, and acquired debts which, in cases where the land was not entailed, often meant that certain portions of their property had to be parcelled off and sold.

  Zsigmond Ferenc had acquired his farm by such means. A local magistrate who had played chemin-de-fer too exuberantly in Vienna was pleased to sell a portion of his land to the wealthy Jewish banker and thus appease his creditors. Zsigmond Ferenc, trying to found a dynasty in the face of the difficult caste system of the Hungarian aristocracy, did not care too much what he paid. He had a beautiful wife of noble birth and background. Now it was necessary to have land in the country.

  When the opportunity came of buying a small “estate” adjoining that of his brother-in-law he paid the price asked without demur. He felt, in a curiously indefinable way, that he was taking something that was already stamped with his family seal. Alfred’s land—three farms and a large tract of forest and mountain—had belonged to Alfred and to Alfred’s family for one hundred and thirty years. When Alfred Racs-Rassay married Gizelli Ferenc it was disastrously in debt. Three generations of charming spendthrifts had reduced the fine old country house to a tumbling ruin and the land to an infertile waste that barely supported the peasants who farmed it.

  The Ferenc money had saved Alfred’s land, and Gizelli’s keen brain and astute business acumen had enlarged the fortune she had brought as her dowry. Zsigmond Ferenc’s farm, bought only a few years after his marriage to Marta Bogozy, was far smaller than his sister’s, but he could gaze in one direction and, as far as the eye could see, know it had all been bought or restored with Ferenc money. It gave him a sense of belonging, the security of knowing that the family were united.

  On the other side of the Ferenc farm lay the land belonging to the Kaldys, old and undiluted gentry with whom the Ferencs and Racs-Rassays maintained an uneasy social exchange.

  The pure Magyar gentry did not accept the new mixed middle class, however wealthy they were, however much they intermarried with the nobility. Usually the old gentry, with their charming lazy manners, were considerably poorer than their bourgeois neighbours and undoubtedly a little jealousy sharpened their disdain. Civilities were exchanged between the two strata, a certain amount of socializing was indulged in, but nonetheless there was an awar
eness on both sides that a gulf existed between the old gentry, like the Kaldys, and the new landowners of mixed blood and background, like the Ferencs and the Racs-Rassays. The fact that a middle-aged lady of the nobility like Madame Kaldy socialized at all with her bourgeois neighbours was due to the fact that the Kaldys themselves held a rather uneasy position in the county’s society and were considered very odd. They worked for their living.

  Madame Kaldy, whose family was as ancient and noble as anyone could wish, had watched her father, her brothers, and finally her husband dissipate, in the usual aristocratic way, all the family wealth. Her husband, who had been a charming and incredibly handsome officer attached to the General Staff Corps in Vienna, had excelled himself. He had wooed her, married her, and established her in a style more suited to the Esterhazys than to a debt-ridden officer of the Imperial and Royal army. For five ecstatic years she had lived as an aristocrat—a town house in Budapest, an estate in the country for the summer months, trips to Vienna, Paris, the Lido, and the Riviera. She was constantly showered with dresses, horses for her stable, silver and old furniture for her two houses, and jewellery that marked with love and adoration every tiny anniversary and event of their married life.

  On his death she had discovered that unfortunately she had not been the only one showered with gifts; her husband’s generosity had been unbounded and horses, jewels, and furs had also been lavished on his two mistresses, one in Budapest, the other in Vienna. She also discovered that they had been living their entire married life on money borrowed against the estate at an exorbitant rate of interest.

  Grimly she accepted the fact that the honeymoon was over. With two small sons and overwhelming debts she had tried to salvage what was left from five years of indulgent fantasy. The jewels, the stables, the house in Buda, the furs, and the furniture were all sold. When the estate was finally settled, the debts paid, she was left with a fraction of the country property, an area amounting to no more than a large farm. The other part, which contained the manor house and the tract of forest where her husband had entertained large hunting parties, she sold, much to the consternation of her friends and relatives, all of whom would have preferred to see her living in penurious elegance in the crumbling Kaldy house than superintending a farm.