Sandor Marai - Esther's Inheritance

I went into the house, arranged the dahlias in vases, and sat down with my guests on the veranda. Every Sunday morning Laci escapes to us for breakfast. At that time we lay the table for him, especially on the veranda or, if the weather is bad, in the old nursery, which we now use as a parlor. We put out the old cups and the English cutlery, and he pours cream from the silver jug he received as a christening present fifty-two years ago from a do-gooding relative with modest tastes. My brother’s name is engraved in italics on it. They were sitting on the veranda, Tibor puffing at a cigar, looking at the garden with concern, Laci eating with his mouth full as he had done in his adolescence. He was loath to miss these Sunday breakfasts. They seemed to conjure the precise details of his childhood for him.

“He has written to Endre too,” said Laci, full-mouthed.

“What did he write?” I asked, and went pale.

“He wrote that he should be available, that he shouldn’t be traveling anywhere that day. That he needed him.”

“Needed Endre?” I asked, laughing out loud.

“Tibor, it’s true, isn’t it?” asked Laci, because he always had to have a reliable witness. Laci dared not trust his own pronouncements now.

“Yes, it’s true,” said Tibor impatiently. “He wants something. Perhaps,” and his face brightened here, as if he had found the one proper and honorable solution to a problem, “perhaps he wants to settle his debts.”

We thought about that. I wanted to believe in Lajos, and now that Tibor had put forward this theory I myself did not feel it to be impossible. A flood of wild joy and sincere conviction rushed through me. Well, of course! After twenty years he wants to come home. He is coming here, where — and why should we pussyfoot around the issue? — he was indebted to everyone in some way, with money, with promises, with oaths! He is returning to a place where every meeting is bound to be fraught and painful for him; he is coming back to face the past, to keep his word at last! What strength, what hope, suffused my entire being at that moment! I was no longer afraid of meeting him again. People tend not to return, not after a decade of absence, to the places where they have failed. It must have taken him a long time to prepare himself for this difficult journey, I thought sympathetically. He will have prepared for a long time and who knows what false trails he had explored, what precipices he had avoided to arrive at this decision? It was as though I had suddenly awoken. This foolish hope that had chased away every sensible scruple, this clarity that was as brilliant as the rising of the sun, that now took hold of me in anticipation of Lajos’s arrival, completely vanquished all my doubts. Lajos was coming with the children, he was already on his way, he was quite close to me right then. And we who knew him, we who knew his weaknesses, must prepare for the great reckoning when Lajos would render everyone their due: he would fulfil his oaths, pay off his debts! Nunu, who had appeared silently at the door with hands linked under her knitted shawl, listened to our conversation and quietly intervened.

“Endre has sent to say he will be here in a moment. He says Lajos asked him to attend in an official capacity.”

The message only served to raise my hopes still higher. Lajos required a notary! We were talking wildly. Laci announced that the whole town had heard about Lajos’s impending arrival. Last night in the café a tailor had come up to Laci and started talking about Lajos’s old unsettled bills. A town councillor mentioned the concrete benches he had ordered some fifteen years ago on Lajos’s urging, benches on which a deposit had been paid but had never arrived. This gossip no longer troubled my memories. Lajos’s past was compounded of such easy-come, easy-go schemes and promises. Now they seemed merely acts of childish irresponsibility. We had been through some difficult times since then. Lajos had passed fifty and no longer told fibs. He would take responsibility for what he had done and was already on his way to us. I left the company to put on some decent clothes appropriate for such a ceremonial occasion. Laci was reminiscing.

“He was always asking for something. Do you remember, Tibor, the last time you saw him after that great argument when you told him to his face that he was a scoundrel, and you enumerated his faults, all the harm he had done his family and friends, and said he was the lowest of the low; how he cried and then embraced everyone and as a farewell gesture asked you for more money? A hundred or two hundred? Do you remember?…”

“I don’t remember,” said Tibor, ashamed and uncomfortable.

“But you must!” cried Laci. “And when you refused to give it to him, he rushed off, in a state, like someone about to meet his death. We were right here then, in this very garden, just ten years younger, thinking about Lajos. But he stopped at the gate, returned and quite quietly and calmly asked you for twenty, ‘or at least some change’ as he put it — because he hadn’t enough money for the train! And then you did give him the money. Was there ever such a man!” Laci passionately declared, and carried on eating.

“Yes, I gave it to him,” Tibor admitted with embarrassment. “Why wouldn’t I have given it to him? I could never understand why people should not give money if they had it. And that wasn’t the main thing with Lajos,” he said pensively, gazing at the ceiling with nearsighted eyes.

“Money was not important to Lajos?” asked Laci, genuinely astonished. “That’s like saying blood is of no interest to wolves.”

“You don’t understand,” said Tibor, reddening. He always reddened when there was a conflict with his role as a magistrate, the role that calls for guardedness and judgment, where he had to give the right verdict knowing that this verdict did not accord with the general sense of justice in which most people believed, and which he had sworn to uphold. “You don’t understand,” he repeated obstinately. “I have thought a great deal about Lajos. It’s all a question of motive. Lajos’s motives were entirely honorable. I can think of one occasion…at some party when he asked for money, quite a lot of money, and the next morning I discovered that he had given the whole lot to one of my clerks who had gotten into trouble. Wait, I haven’t finished. It’s not a heroic act of self-sacrifice, of course, being a philanthropist with someone else’s money. But Lajos too had urgent need of cash, his bills had expired, what shall I say…they were unpleasant bills. And this amount that he borrowed, drunk as he was, and that he handed over the next morning, sober, to a stranger, would have helped him too. Do you understand?”

“No,” replied Laci, in all sincerity.

“I believe I do understand,” said Tibor, and then as usual when regretting his words, fell stubbornly silent.

Nunu simply added, “Be careful, because it’s money he’s after. It will be useless being careful, of course. Tibor is bound to give him more.”

“No, I’ll not do that again,” said Tibor, laughing and shaking his head.

Nunu shrugged. “Of course you won’t! Like the last time. You’ll give him something. Another twenty. He is a man to whom one must give.”

“But why, Nunu?” asked Laci, utterly astonished and clearly jealous.

“Because he is stronger,” said Nunu indifferently. Then she went back into the kitchen.

I was dressing, standing in front of the mirror, when I felt dizzy and had to grope for support. I had a vision. I saw the past so clearly it seemed to be the present. I saw the garden, the same garden where we were just now waiting for Lajos, waiting under the great ash, but then we were twenty years younger, our hearts full of despair and anger. Harsh, passionate words buzzed like flies in the autumn air. It was autumn then too, toward the end of September. The air was scented and damp. We were twenty years younger then, relatives, friends, and vague acquaintances, and Lajos was standing in our midst like a thief caught red-handed. I see him there as he stands, unflummoxed, blinking a little, occasionally removing his glasses and carefully wiping them. He is alone at the center of the agitated circle, as calm as anyone can be when they know the game is up, that all is discovered and there is nothing left to do except stand patiently and listen while judgment is pronounced. Then suddenly he is gone, and we are living on in our mechanical way, like wax dolls. But it is as if we only appeared to be living; our true lives were the battles we had with Lajos, our passion the exasperation with him.