Sandor Marai - Esther's Inheritance

“Was giving it to me a calculated act? Because he feared being pursued, by the children or someone else, later…and since the ring was a fake anyway he gave me the copy so they should discover I had it and once it turned out to be fake, blame me?”

I was thinking aloud, as I always did when with Nunu. If anyone understood Lajos it was old Nunu, who knew him inside and out and read his every thought, even those thoughts he dared not actually think. Nunu was always fair. She answered in her usual way, gently and without fuss.

“I don’t know. It’s possible. But that would be a really lowdown thing to do. Lajos was not a schemer of that kind. Lajos has never once committed a criminal act. And he loved you. I don’t think he would have used the ring to drag your name through the dirt. It simply happened that he had to sell the ring because he needed the money, but lacked the courage to admit he had sold it. So he had a copy made. And he gave you that worthless copy. Why? Was it a calculated act? Was it cheating? Maybe he just wanted to be generous. It was such a wonderful moment, everyone arriving fresh from Vilma’s funeral, his first gesture being to hand over to you the family’s only valuable heirloom. I suspected it as soon as you described the grand moment. That’s why I had it looked at later. It’s a fake.”

“Fake,” she repeated mechanically, in the flattest of tones.

“Why wait to tell me now?” I asked her.

Nunu brushed a few gray locks from her forehead.

“There was no need to tell you everything straightaway,” she said, almost tenderly. “You had had quite enough bad news about Lajos.”

I got out of bed, went over to the sideboard, and searched out the ring in the secret drawer, Nunu helping me look in the light of the billowing candle flame. Having found it, I held the ring to the flame and thoroughly examined it. I don’t know anything about precious stones.

“Scratch the surface of the mirror with it,” suggested Nunu.

But the stone made no mark on the glass. I put on the ring and gazed at it. The stone sparkled with a cold vacant light. It was a perfect copy, created by a master.

We remained sitting on the edge of the bed gazing at the ring. Then Nunu kissed me, gave a sigh, and went off without a word. I carried on sitting there for a long time staring at the fake stone. Lajos has not even arrived yet, I thought, but he has already taken something from me. That’s all he can do, it seems. That’s the way it is, it is his constitution. A terrible constitution, I thought, and started shivering. That’s how I fell asleep, all goose-flesh, the fake ring on my finger, my senses dulled. I was like someone who has spent too long in a stuffy room then suddenly feels dizzy in the pitiless sharp air of truth that roars about her like a gale.

T he day Lajos returned to us happened to fall on a Sunday at the end of September. It was a wonderfully mild day, its colors glassy and clear. Gossamer was drifting between the trees, and the air was sparklingly clear without a trace of mist, a thin transparent solution coating everything with the finest enamel, as if all visible objects, including the sky itself, had been touched in with the most delicate of brushes. I went out into the garden in the early morning and cut three dahlias for the vase. Our garden is not particularly big, but it does completely surround the house. I don’t think it had passed eight o’clock yet. I was standing in the dew, in the great silence, when I heard conversation on the veranda. I recognized the voices of my brother and Tibor. They were talking quietly, and in the stillness of the morning every word rang out as clear as if it had been broadcast by some invisible loudspeaker.

In the first few moments I would like to have intervened and warned them that I could hear it all, that they were not alone. But already the first sentence, spoken in a low voice, silenced me. Laci, my brother, was asking:

“Why didn’t you marry Esther?”

“Because she wouldn’t have me,” came the answer.

I knew Tibor’s voice, and my heart beat loud in my chest. Yes, this was Tibor, his quiet, calm voice, and every word of his was the kindly, slightly melancholy truth spoken patiently and dispassionately.

Why does Laci ask such things? I thought, insulted and agitated. My brother’s questions always have an air of accusation: they sound aggressive and unbearably intimate. Laci hates any kind of secret. But people like their secrets. Might another man have given an evasive answer and protested against this invasion of privacy? Tibor answered quietly, as honest and correct as if someone had asked him a question about the railway timetable.

“Why wouldn’t she have you?” my brother badgered him.

“Because she loved someone else.”

“Who?” came the flat, ruthless question.

“Lajos.”

Then they fell silent. I heard the scrape of a match, one of them lighting a cigarette. It was so quiet I even heard Tibor blow the match out. The question I was anticipating came as perfectly on cue as thunder after lightning. Laci was doing the asking.

“Do you know he is coming here today?”

“I know.”

“What does he want?”

“I don’t know.”

“Does he owe you money too?”

“Let it go,” a reluctant voice replied. “It was a long time ago. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“He owes me,” Laci declared with childish pride, as if it were something to boast about. “He had borrowed Father’s gold watch too. He asked me to lend it to him for a week. That was ten years ago. No, wait, twelve years. He still hasn’t given it back. Another time he took away the complete set of encyclopedias. Borrowed. I never saw those encyclopedias again. He asked me for three hundred korona. But I didn’t give him that,” said the voice, with the same childish self-satisfaction.

And the other voice, the deeper, quieter, more even one, answered rather modestly.

“It wouldn’t have been such a disaster if you had given it to him.”

“You think so?” Laci asked, suddenly ashamed. I stood among the flowerbeds and could almost see the blush on that aged child-face of his as he smiled in confusion. “What do you think? Does he still love Esther?”

There was a long wait before he received an answer to this. I really would like to have said something myself, but it was too late. It was a ridiculous situation. Here I was, alone, much older, surrounded by the flowers in my garden like the heroine of some old-fashioned poem, on the very morning when I was waiting for him to call, the man who had deceived and robbed me, here in the very house where it had all happened and where I had spent my entire life, where I kept Vilma and Lajos’s letters in a sideboard along with the ring that I knew for certain, at least since the previous night — though I had previously suspected it — was fake, theatrically overhearing a theatrical conversation, waiting for an answer to a question, the only question of any interest to me, and what happens? The answer is delayed. Tibor, the conscientious judge of the situation, weighed his words carefully.

“I don’t know,” he said after a time. “I don’t know,” he repeated more quietly, as if arguing with someone. “Doomed love cannot die,” he finally added.

Then they said more in low voices and went into the house. I could still hear them, looking for me. I put the flowers down on the concrete bench and walked to the bottom of the garden, to the well, and sat down on the bench where Lajos had proposed to me twenty-two years before. There I crossed my arms above my heart, drew the crocheted scarf over my breasts because I was cold, looked out at the highway, and suddenly could not understand Laci’s question.