Midnight Train to Prague - Carol Windley Page 0,30

his father before him. The village butcher arrived on horseback, bringing his knives and whetstones. On the last night they had dined on venison. In the dining hall, the table lit by tall white candles in ornate silver and pewter candelabra, Zita and his mother discussed horses and farming and village life. Then his mother said, So, Miss Kuznetsova, I understand you are a Communist. And are you also an atheist? Zita had replied that she remained committed to reform. Radical reform, she had added, smiling sweetly. As an infant she had been baptized in the Orthodox Church, she said, although it was some time since her last confession. He had hoped his lover and his mother would like each other. But there was something between them—not just a lack of sympathy but outright antipathy. A mismatch of personalities. He had told himself this would change, and if not, if he had to make a choice between them, it would be Zita. What he hadn’t realized then, was that Zita would never ask him to choose.

When they had finished lunch, Zita dusted crumbs off her hands, took a last swallow of wine, and said she’d read the manuscript of his new novel, which she had brought with her to Lake Hévíz. “It’s very autobiographical, isn’t it?”

“Not at all,” he said. “It is entirely fictitious.”

“Well, whatever it is, it will do. Every woman will see herself as the heroine, Inessa. Did you name her for Lenin’s lover, Inessa Armand?”

“No. I don’t think so. Does it matter?” He loosened his collar. While he was at the castle, Zita had had her hair cut. It fell in glossy curls around her face. The new look suited her—it made her eyes seem even more extraordinarily blue and lively. But he missed her messy chignon and the tortoiseshell combs that kept it precariously in place. He loved this woman. He loved her; he adored her mind, body and spirit. He delighted in her presence. He moved to embrace her; she drew away. “Wait, Miklós,” she said. “I’m talking. In your novel, a Hungarian nobleman goes to Russia in 1919, meets a Russian girl, a comrade, and kidnaps her, with minimal resistance on her part. This girl, Inessa, gets taken by the nobleman to his castle in Hungary, where he imprisons her in a crypt, an ossuary filled with the bones of the dead. Frightened, alone, with only one candle for light, she believes the skulls are gabbling to her in their diverse languages. After a few days and nights of this, she fears for her sanity. Her jailer brings her food and water. Why is she being so difficult? he keeps asking, when she know he wants only to marry her and make her happy. Meanwhile, his archrival, a young Hungarian Communist who, correct me if I’m wrong, bears a strong resemblance to Comrade Béla Kun, has tracked him down and challenged him to a duel, as a result of which our hero suffers a flesh wound in his arm. Weakened by blood loss, he is helped to the castle by his opponent, who, having salvaged his pride, rides off on his horse. Inessa, released from the dungeon, bandages our hero’s arm with a poultice of dock leaves and mustard. When he recovers, he sees her not as an obstinate girl who must be subdued but as his equal. And his life appears to him as less durable and robust than he had believed, but precious and of great value. And there is a wedding. Isn’t that how it goes?”

“Yes, more or less. None of it is in the least true, or not very true.”

“She is me, though, isn’t she? Inessa is me. There I am, languishing in your ossuary with one candle—one miserable candle—to keep the ghosts and rats at bay. The ossuary is real, I saw it myself. Your mother took me down to the cellars beneath the castle and trapped us both in that charnel house with one little candle and the grinning skulls and the stench of rats. It was a cruel thing for your mother to do. But never mind, she did free me, in the end. Miklós, look over there, at those sunflowers. Look at the size of them! They are like scrawny, big-headed people, all nodding in our direction, beseeching us.”

“Beseeching us for what, do you think?”

“Who knows,” Zita said. “For a kind word, maybe, or a smile.”

The sunflowers resembled a small, hopeful tribe of people, he thought.