When their lunch was over Fanny went back to the couch. ‘Come here,’ she said. ‘Come close to me, and I’ll tell you what I’ve done about that problem of yours.’ She spoke proudly, thinking how adroitly she had managed everything. Laszlo lay down beside her.
‘Look!’ said Fanny, taking the Casino’s envelope out of her bag. ‘Everything has been settled. Here are your IOUs — two for five and one for three thousand. See, they’ve been torn across and countersigned by the club cashier! And here is something else …’ and she handed him a slip on which was written: ‘I hereby certify that I have this dayreceived from Count Laszlo Gyeroffy the sumof 73,000 crowns (that is seventy-threethousand crowns) for MrGedeon Pray.’
Laszlo raised himself on his elbow, taking the little slips of paper from her and studied them carefully. He could hardly believe what he saw. It was true; the IOUs and the cashier’s receipts were all there, just as she had said. Laszlo was flooded with an immense sense of relief, but then he suddenly straightened up and stared at her with wide eyes.
‘This is not possible!’ he said. ‘How did you do it? Where did you get all this money? You? You? I can’t accept this! No! Never!’
‘Why not? It’s only a loan … a loan, I tell you. I found someone ready to lend it to you.’
‘A loan?’
‘Yes, just for a few months, to give you time to raise the money. A few months should be enough.’
‘Who lent it? Who? I want to know!’
‘It doesn’t matter. It’s enough that I know. You’ll give it to me and I’ll pay it back.’
‘I insist on knowing who it is!’ cried Laszlo, furiously. ‘There’s something very tricky about all this. That … through you … I can’t possibly accept it … and I don’t believe a word of what you’ve said unless you tell me who! Tell me at one, who is it? Who?’
Fanny tried to lie: ‘It’s an old lawyer of my father’s. You don’t know him; he worked for my father. He’s very rich!’
‘His name! Tell me his name at once!’ Laszlo grabbed her roughly by the shoulder and then flung her back brutally on to the bed. As he did so the kimono fell open revealing Fanny’s white body against the dark blue satin. Laszlo stared at her, fascinated — the pearls! There was no sign of the pearls, either round her neck, nor over her breasts, nor wound round her waist or thighs. The pearls had gone, vanished!
It was only slowly as he looked at her with amazement that the connection came to him. Then, in stunned disbelief, he said dully: ‘You sold your pearls!’
Fanny sat up. She pressed herself to him and clung to him tightly. ‘No! I didn’t sell them, really I didn’t!’ And she told quickly how she had gone to the jewellers and pawned them as she often had in the past when she needed money. That it really didn’t signify — everyone did it, there was nothing to it, it was the most natural thing in the world. One could get them back any time, at a moment’s notice, a few days, a few months, it was all the same. It really didn’t matter at all and it meant nothing. That’s all she had done. It was no sacrifice, nothing he couldn’t or shouldn’t accept from her. Why, it cost her nothing; wearing the things concealed by her blouse or leaving them there for a little while, it was all the same to her. And she clung to him even more fiercely.
Laszlo did not respond, either to her words or to her embrace. He stood there, quite still, his arms hanging down loosely, his whole body slack as if he were infinitely weary. He only moved his head, shaking it continuously from side to side and muttering over and over again:
‘No! No! No! No!’
Fanny went on trying to cajole him. She became more eloquent in her love for him which, perhaps even now, though she did not realize it was a real love, inspired her to find the right words, the most persuasive arguments. What was done could not be undone. The debts had been settled, the money paid over and accepted. Nothing could be recalled. The only thing for him to do was to accept the fact and to forgive her — and he must get it into his head that he was not humiliated or dishonoured by what she had done — it wasn’t even a favour, it was really nothing. And he would do her a favour if he would forgive her. Possibly she had been thoughtlessly impulsive but she was only a woman who didn’t understand these things and who meant well. She had done it because she loved him as she had never loved anyone else and she had suddenly realized that if she lost him she would lose everything … everything. As she said these things she was seized with the fear that she might still lose him and the panic that possessed her then gave an even more convincing ring to her arguments and a warm softness to her voice. With renewed passion, now completely real and not, as when she had first started, carefully calculated to impress and persuade him, she clung to him tightly as if she feared ever to let him go, and for the first time in her life broke into deep wracking uncontrollable sobs, her tears running down his chest as she continued to murmur incoherently, kissing his neck, his ear, his hair, hurriedly, hurriedly, as if she feared that if one word were lost she would lose him be for ever. So she talked and talked and kissed and sobbed and held him tightly to her, her warm limbs naked under the kimono enlaced with his until, involuntarily, almost unconsciously, he began to respond, stroking her body automatically and then out of habit, returning her kisses, face to face, all possibility of argument or reproach submerged in their mutual desire. Fanny sank back on to the bed, drawing him down upon her until they were both lost to the world as they came together in the deep sensuous depths of their passion.
For a short time they slept, entwined in each other’s arms.
When Fanny awoke she thought at first that Laszlo was still sleeping but when she propped herself up on one elbow and looked at his face, she saw that his eyes were open. She slid one leg over his above the knee and held him as in a vice. Now at last he was really hers, her very own property who could no longer resist her and their love-making had been a pact, almost a contract by which he had accepted her sacrifice and help and admitted that what she had done for him was right. Now there was no way that he could demur or protest. She looked at him for a long time as he lay there motionless beside her, silent, his eyes still open as if he were a hundred miles away. No matter how much you fought me, she thought, you are now entirely mine, you can no longer resist or take refuge in those silly men’s prejudices against which it was normally impossible to make any headway. How meaningless such things were, how stupid and full of humbug, and how irrelevant to everything that really mattered in life.
She smiled to herself at the thought of what a mad world it was — why, even now he had not thanked her for what she had done for him; he wasn’t grateful. Far from it, indeed, for had he not been angry and struck her and flung her roughly on to the bed? It was not as if she had minded being manhandled, even beaten, for she had been flooded with pleasure when he had grabbled her shoulders with his two strong hands and so flung her so roughly from him. Still, it puzzled her, and she asked herself why she had done so much, and taken such risks, for a boy who did not love her and who had shown all too clearly that he only tolerated her presence and her devotion. Why, he barely even accepted what she had to offer, for did he not still love someone else, that girl who had turned from him and rejected him? It was clear that he did not, never had and never would love Fanny. Always it was that other … no one else …
Finally, when all these melancholy thoughts had become clear in her mind, she raised herself even higher on the pillows, still gazing down at the young man beside her, and involuntarily put her thoughts into words: ‘And you don’t even love me!’