Esther's Inheritance by Marai Sandor

Author:Marai, Sandor [Marai, Sandor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307270436
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2008-10-27T21:00:00+00:00

13

There are three conversations I should note here.

That was precisely how many took place that afternoon. Éva was first at my door, followed by Lajos, and lastly by the “officially invited” Endre. After lunch the guests dispersed. Lajos lay down to have a nap, as naturally as if he were at home and would not be diverted from his domestic habits. Gábor and the strangers set off in the car to see the church, the neighborhood, and the local ruins, returning only at dusk. Éva, however, came to my room straight after the meal. I stood with her by the window, cupped her face in my hands, and gazed at her a long time. She gazed back steadily with her clear blue eyes.

“You have to help us, Esther,” she said eventually. “Only you can help us.”

She had a sweet singsong voice, like a schoolgirl. She only reached up to my shoulder. I hugged her but then felt the whole scene was a little too sentimental, and was glad when she gently disengaged herself, moved to the sideboard, lit a cigarette, gave a light cough, and, as if freed from an embarrassing, slightly disingenuous situation, examined the objects and framed photographs arranged on the flat surface. This shelf, the upper half of the sideboard, was a sacred place for me, the kind of thing the Chinese think of as a household shrine, before which they bow and honor their ancestors. Everyone I loved or was close to me stood there in a long row, each of them looking at me. I went over to her and watched her eyes moving along them.

“That’s Mama,” she said quietly but with evident delight. “How beautiful she is. She must have been younger there than I am now.”

An eighteen-year-old Vilma gazed back at us, a little chubby, dressed in the garments of the time, in white lace with high black boots, her hair undone, curled, and combed over her brow, carrying flowers and a fan. The picture must have been for an occasion, since it was a touch self-conscious and unnatural. Only the dark, questioning eyes betrayed something of the later angry, passionate Vilma.

“Do you remember her?” I asked, and knew my voice was not quite steady.

“Vaguely,” she replied. “Someone comes into my room in the dark and leans over me with a warm familiar scent. That’s all I remember. I was three years old when she died.”

“Three and a half,” I say, flustered.

“Yes. But really I only remember you. You are always adjusting something on me, my dress or my hair, and you are always in my room, you always have something to do there. Then you too disappear. Why did you leave, Esther?”

“Hush,” I say. “Hush, Éva. You don’t yet understand.”

“Yet?…” she asked, and started to laugh in the same singsong way, the laugh a little forced, too drawn out, too theatrical. Everything she said seemed extraordinarily important, too carefully composed. “Are you still playing at being the little mama, Esther, dear?” she said, kindly, superior, and compassionate.

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