Beware of Pity (11 page)

I involuntarily shudder at the thought, and so strongly does the tremor run through me, all the way to the soles of my feet, that my spurs too move and clink. That silvery, clinking chime can only have been a tiny, barely audible sound, but it seems to have penetrated her shallow sleep. Still breathing irregularly, she does not open her eyes yet, but her hands are beginning to wake up. They fall apart, stretching and tensing as if the fingers were yawning. Then her eyelids flutter, in search of something, and her eyes look blankly around her.

Suddenly they catch sight of me, and instantly become fixed. A mere glance has not yet made the connection with conscious thought and memory. But then she shakes herself and is fully awake. She has recognised me, and blood, pumped from her heart all at once, rushes to her cheeks in a crimson
wave. Once again, it is like pouring red wine suddenly into a crystal glass.

“How stupid,” she says, drawing her brows sharply together, and nervously clutching the rug, which has slipped, closer to her, as if I had taken her by surprise lying there naked. “How stupid of me! I must have fallen asleep for a moment.” And already—I know how to tell which way the wind is blowing with her by now—already I see her nostrils twitching slightly. She looks at me, a challenge in her eyes.

“Why didn’t you wake me up at once? It’s not fair to watch people when they’re asleep! Everyone looks ridiculous sleeping.” Sorry that my concern for her has annoyed her, I try to gloss it over with a silly joke. “Better to look ridiculous asleep than ridiculous awake,” I say.

But she has already straightened up in the chair, bracing both hands on its arms. The line between her brows is deeper now, and I see that stormy fluttering and flickering around her lips. She darts a sharp glance at me.

“Why didn’t you come to see us yesterday?”

This attack comes out of the blue so unexpectedly that I can’t answer at once. But she is already going on, like an inquisitor, “You must have had some special reason just to leave us waiting. Otherwise you would at least have telephoned.”

Idiot that I am, I ought have seen that question coming and prepared an answer in advance. Instead, I shift awkwardly from foot to foot, coming up with the now stale excuse of the new horse that had to be inspected. At five, I say, I was still hoping to be able to get away, but then the Colonel wanted to show us all his new mount, and so on and so forth.

Her unwavering grey gaze, stern and sharp, is fixed on me. The thicker I lay on the circumstantial detail, the more
suspicious it becomes. I see her fingers nervously tapping the arms of her chair.

“I see,” she finally replies in a harsh, chilly tone. “And how does this touching tale of a new horse to be inspected end? Did the Colonel decide to buy his brand new mount or not?”

I realise that I have veered dangerously off course. She slaps the table with the glove she has removed from her hand once, twice, three times, as if to work off the restlessness of her joints. Then she gives me a dark look.

“Let’s not have any more of these tall stories! Not a word of them is true. How dare you expect me to swallow such nonsense?”

Her empty glove comes down on the top of the table harder and harder. Then, with a decided movement, she flings it far away from her.

“None of this drivel is true! Not a single word! You never went to the riding school. You weren’t inspecting any new horse. You were in the café at half-past four, and as far as I’m aware you don’t have to ride a horse to get there. So don’t pretend! Our chauffeur happened to see you still there playing cards at six o’clock.”

I’m still at a loss for words. But she brusquely interrupts herself.

“Anyway, why shouldn’t I call a spade a spade? Do you expect me to play hide and seek because you tell lies? I’m not afraid to tell the truth. Just so that you know—no, it wasn’t purely by chance that our chauffeur saw you in the café. I sent him specially to ask what was wrong with you. I thought you might be ill or something else had happened to you when you didn’t even telephone, and … oh, for all I care you can think my nerves are all on edge, but I can’t bear being kept waiting, I simply cannot bear it … that’s why I sent our chauffeur to ask
about you. But at the barracks he found out that Lieutenant Hofmiller was in perfect health and sitting in the café over a game of taroc, so then I told Ilona to find out why you were snubbing us like that, maybe something had offended you yesterday … I know I’m not always responsible for what I say when I lose control in my silly way. Well, there you are,
I’m
not ashamed to confess my failings to you. And then you come up with such stupid excuses—can’t you feel how shabby it is to lie in that wretched way among friends?”

I was going to reply—I think I even had the courage to tell her the whole tale of Ferencz and Jozsi. But she snaps at me, “No more inventions, please … no new lies, I can’t bear any more. I get told so many lies that I feel quite sick. People are always coming up with lies from morning to night. ‘Oh, you look so well today, you’re walking very well, wonderful, you’re much, much better!’ Always the same soothing, sugary stuff all day long, and no one notices it choking me. Why don’t you say, straight out: ‘I didn’t have either the time or the inclination to visit you yesterday’? We haven’t taken out a monopoly on your time, nothing would have pleased me more than if you’d just phoned to tell me, ‘I’m not coming out to see you today, we’re going to have a good time strolling about the town.’ Do you think I’m so silly that I can’t understand how boring it must be for you sometimes, acting the Good Samaritan here day after day, do you think I don’t realise that a grown man would rather go riding or walk about on his own strong legs instead of feeling bound to a stranger’s armchair? There’s only one thing that I simply can’t bear, and that’s excuses and deceit and lies—I’m sick and tired of them, sick and tired. I’m not as stupid as you all think, I can bear to hear the truth. You know, a few days ago we engaged
a new Bohemian maid to do the dishes and scrub the floors because our old maid-of-all-work had died, and on her very first day, before she’d had a chance to talk to anyone yet, she sees me being helped into my chair with my crutches. She drops her scrubbing brush in horror, crying out loud, ‘Oh, dear Jesus, what a misfortune, oh, how sad! Such a rich, distinguished young lady, and a cripple!’ Ilona went for the good woman like a spitfire, she was all for having the poor soul dismissed and turned out. But I was
glad
, her horror did me good because it was honest, because it’s only human to take fright when you see something like that unexpectedly. I gave her ten crowns at once, and she went straight off to church to pray for me. I felt glad of it all day, genuinely glad to know for once what a stranger
really
feels on seeing me for the first time. But the rest of you, you always think you ought to ‘spare me’ with your false delicacy of feeling, you imagine that your wretched consideration for me does me good … do you think I don’t have eyes in my head? Do you think that, hidden behind all your chattering and stammering, I don’t sense the same discomfort, the same horror as that good, that genuinely
honest
soul? Do you all think I don’t notice you suddenly catching your breath when I pick up my crutches, hastily talking on so that I won’t notice—as if I didn’t see through you all with your sugary-sweet talk, valerian pills to soothe me, oh, it’s all so slimy and disgusting! I know just how you all breathe a sigh of relief when you can close the door behind you and leave me lying there like a dead body, do you think I don’t? I know exactly how you instantly sigh, ‘Oh, poor child,’ and at the same time you’re very pleased with yourselves for so generously giving up an hour or so of your time to the ‘poor child’. But I don’t want any sacrifices.
I don’t want any of you feeling in duty bound to serve me up my daily dose of your pity—I couldn’t care less about your wonderful sympathy!—once and for all, I don’t want pity. If you want to come and see me, then come, and if you don’t want to then don’t! But be honest about it, don’t tell me tales of new horses to be tried out! I can’t … I just can’t stand the lies and your revolting attempts to spare me, I can’t bear it any more!”

As she utters these last words she sounds absolutely beside herself, her eyes burning, her face pale. Then her tension
suddenly
dies down. As if exhausted, she lets her head fall against the back of the chair, and gradually blood comes back into her lips, which are still quivering with emotion.

“There now,” she says very quietly, as if ashamed of herself. “Well, I had to say it sometime, and now I have! We won’t talk about it any more. Give me a cigarette, will you?”

And now something strange happens to me. I am usually in reasonably good control of myself, and I have firm, steady hands. But this unexpected outburst has shaken me so much that I feel as if I were the one paralysed; never in my life has anything upset me so badly. With difficulty, I get a cigarette out of my case, hand it to her and strike a match. But as I hold the match to the cigarette my fingers are trembling so badly that I cannot keep it straight, and the little flame flickers and goes out. I have to strike a second match, and this one too wavers in my trembling hand before I light the cigarette with it. However, she must have noticed my obvious clumsiness, shaken as I was, for now she asks me, quietly, in a very different, an amazed and concerned voice, “Oh, what’s the matter? You are trembling. What … what has upset you? What is it?”

The little flame of the match has gone out. I am sitting there in silence, and she murmurs, moved, “But how can you mind my stupid talk? Papa is right about you—you really are a … a very unusual person.”

At that moment I hear a slight humming sound behind us. It is the lift coming up to the roof terrace. Josef opens it and out steps Kekesfalva with the shy, somehow guilty manner that for no good reason always seems to weigh him down as soon as he approaches his invalid daughter.

I stand up quickly to greet the new arrival. He nods to me self-consciously, and immediately bends down to kiss Edith’s forehead. Then a remarkable silence descends. Everyone in this house seems to know instinctively all there is to know about everyone else; the old man must certainly have felt a dangerous tension between his daughter and me, and now he stands there uneasily, eyes cast down. I can tell that he would like to make his escape again at once. Edith tries to help.

“Just think, Papa, this is the first time Lieutenant Hofmiller has seen the terrace.”

“Yes, it’s really beautiful up here,” I say, and instantly I am painfully aware of making a shockingly banal remark, and my voice falters again. To ease the general awkwardness, Kekesfalva leans over the wicker wheelchair.

“I’m afraid it will soon be too cold here for you. Why don’t we go down?”

“Yes, let’s,” says Edith. We are all glad to find a few
unimportant
things to do to distract our minds: packing up the books, putting Edith’s shawl around her, ringing the bell, for a bell
stands ready here, as on every table in this house. Two minutes later the lift is humming on its way up, and Josef wheels the lame girl in her chair over to the lift shaft.

“We’ll be down in a few minutes,” says Kekesfalva, waving affectionately to Edith. “Perhaps you’d like to get ready for dinner. I can walk a little longer in the garden with Lieutenant Hofmiller.”

The manservant closes the door of the lift, the wheelchair containing the crippled girl goes down as if into a crypt. The old man and I have turned away. We are both silent, but
suddenly
I feel him hesitantly coming closer to me.

“If you don’t mind, Lieutenant Hofmiller, there’s something I would like to discuss with you … that’s to say, something I want to ask you. Perhaps we could go over to my office in the estate-administration building … only if it’s not a nuisance to you, of course. Otherwise … otherwise, naturally, we can walk in the park.”

“Why, it would be an honour, Herr von Kekesfalva,” I reply. At this moment I hear the lift humming as it comes up again for us. We ride down in it, walk across the yard to the estate management building, and I notice how cautiously Kekesfalva steals along close to the wall, how small he makes himself look, as if afraid of being caught out in some
misdemeanour.
Involuntarily—I can’t help it—I walk behind him with an equally quiet, cautious tread.

At the far end of the long, low estate-management building, which could do with a new coat of whitewash, he opens the door into his office. It proves to be not much better furnished than my own room in the barracks: a cheap, well-worn desk with its wood beginning to rot, stained old wicker chairs, a few old documents, lists or tables that obviously haven’t been consulted
for years up on the wall, pinned over the shabby wallpaper. And the musty smell also reminds me of our own office in the barracks. Even at first glance—and how much I have learnt in these few days—I realise that this old man heaps every luxury and comfort on his child, while spending as little as a tight-fisted farmer on himself. As he walks ahead of me, I also see for the first time how shiny the elbows of his black coat are with wear; he has probably had it for ten or fifteen years.

Kekesfalva pushes a big chair upholstered in black leather over to me—it is the only comfortable chair in the office. “Sit down, Lieutenant Hofmiller, do please sit down,” he says, with a certain affectionately pressing note in his voice, and before I can prevent it he takes one of the rickety wicker chairs for himself. Now we are sitting close together and he could, should begin on what he wants to say. I am waiting impatiently, as I’m sure anyone can understand, because what can this rich man, this millionaire, have to ask of me, an indigent army lieutenant? However, he keeps his head bowed as if intent on examining his shoes. I hear only the heavy, difficult breathing from his narrow chest.

At last Kekesfalva raises his head, and I see beads of sweat standing out on his brow. He takes off his clouded glasses, and without that glittering protection his face immediately looks different, more naked, so to speak, more wretchedly tragic. His eyes, as so often with the short-sighted, appear much duller and wearier than behind the lenses that amplify his vision. And the sight of the slightly reddened rims of his eyelids makes me think that this old man sleeps little, and poorly. Once again I feel that warm surge of emotion—an emotion that I now know to be pity. All at once I am facing not the rich Herr von Kekesfalva, but an old man weighed down by cares.