Since the shooting party he had not seen Klara. He had been asked to Simonvasar for Christmas but he had not gone, feeling that his aunt had only invited him with reluctance. She had written ‘Come to usif you have nothing better to do …’which did not seem encouraging, and he sensed that she had only sent the invitation as a matter of form. Also, he could not forget his own sense of outrage and his hurt feelings when she had so cruelly ordered him to leave by the next train. He had answered her letter casually, saying in a somewhat offhand manner that he would probably have to go back to Transylvania during the holidays as he had business to attend to. As it happened he had not gone anywhere, but had stayed in Budapest alone. He had regretted later that he had not accepted, but it had been too late to change his mind. And so Christmas Eve was spent in his sordid little apartment sitting alone at his window by a tiny tree he had bought, and thinking about all those other Christmases when he had been with his Kollonich cousins.
Naturally it was the picture of Klara that he had conjured up and thought about; Klara as a child, Klara as a schoolgirl, Klara as a young woman still unawakened. He saw her with white socks and flat-heeled shoes, her hair streaming over her shoulders. He saw her in pigtails, long-legged and skinny, but with huge shining eyes, radiant in a white lace dress standing under the towering, brightly lit Christmas tree. It was so vivid that he could not bear the memory and had got up from the window seat, turned off the lights in the shabby little room, and lit one tiny candle on the artificial shop-bought tree that he placed on the drawing board that served as his work table. As one candle burned out he lit another and, gazing into its minute flame, tried to make his lonely Christmas Eve last as long as possible. In this way he nursed his sorrow and transformed the Holy Night of joy into an agonized vigil of self-torment.
Near the tree he had placed a teapot and a bottle of rum so that he could get himself drunk, for if he drank enough he knew that he would be able to sleep and so forget. But when the last candle had burned out and he was forced once again to turn on the lights, there was still some rum in the bottle. With uncertain fingers he poured all that remained into the last of the tea, swilled it down and went to bed. He slept until noon, heavily and without dreaming, and when he went back into the little sitting-room he found that the electric light was still burning and that the room was filled with the stifling smell of burnt candle-wax.
For Laszlo Christmas Eve had been the darkest moment of this sorrowful period. Later, with the new-found self-confidence that he learned at the gaming tables, with his appointment as elotancos and his growing social success, he began once again to feel the elation with which he had returned from Simonvasar filled with the knowledge that he was loved by Klara. Of course he no longer went to the Academy of Music; there was no time, for if he was to sleep at all he could not get up before midday, and in the afternoons there were too many visits to pay and too much to organize. He told himself that once Carnival was over he would go back into seclusion, as he had done the previous autumn, and then he would be able to catch up with his studies. Until then it would be impossible. In the meantime he was living a wonderful life and soon, very soon, the Kollonich family would arrive, Klara with them, and he would be able to lay at her silk-clad feet every flower, every melody, every dance and every new social success that he had achieved since they had last met. In the middle of February she and her mother would be back from Paris where they had gone to buy clothes. In a few days he would see her again.
Suddenly they had arrived. There was to be a ball in the evening, a so-called ‘picnic-dance’ in the lower rooms of the Casino. Laszlo stood at the entrance to the smaller of the drawing-rooms to greet the mothers and daughters and their escorts, for on such occasions the elotancos acted as host. At first he did his job automatically, almost formally, for all his attention was riveted on the great doors which opened on to the street. He held himself as straight as he knew how so as to show to the best advantage the new tail-suit he had recently ordered from England, that suit which moulded his shoulders so well, and the snow-white waistcoat which emphasized the slimness of his waist. Indeed he looked at his best, very slim and tall, closely shaven, his wavy brown hair impeccably brushed, a saffron yellow carnation on the silk of his broad lapel, a figure worthy to greet a princess!
There was such a crowd in the entrance hall that he could no longer see the doors. Even so he knew at once when Klara arrived. He could not see her, but he knew she was there and his heart beat faster. In a few seconds there she was, moving serenely in the wake of her mother, and to Laszlo it was as if the room were suddenly filled with a light of dazzling brilliance in the centre of which stood Klara. It was as if all this glitter emanated from somewhere inside her pale shoulders, irradiating her white tulle balldress in much the same way that Virgin saints are portrayed as the centre of flickering golden flames that make everything around them fade to dull insignificance. The diamond at the centre was Klara, with her full mouth and smiling eyes, and no one, no one but she, existed in the whole wide world.
The princess swept forward and patted Laszlo’s face with two white-gloved fingers.
‘Laci! My dear nephew, how manly you have become!’ she said, though her eyes remained cold, and she moved on, accepting as her due the homage with which she was greeted by those already assembled in the drawing-room. Laszlo took Klara’s hand, so soft that it seemed to melt in his palm. She smiled, but did not speak, and he knew only from the gentle pressure of her seemingly boneless fingers, that she too was filled with remembrance of their last sweet moments together. Then, as she moved on in the wake of her mother, a wave of happiness rushed through Laszlo’s whole being. Swiftly he strode over to the entrance of the ballroom and called to the musicians to strike up a waltz. Seeing his cousin Magda Szent-Gyorgyi nearby he seized her by the arm, rushed her on to the deserted floor, and immediately whirled her in an elaborate reverse across the highly polished golden parquet. In a moment they were joined by other couples and the ball had begun. But for Laszlo there was only one thought: ‘She is here! At last she is here, here!’ And every time they turned to the rhythm of the music the beat seemed to echo: ‘Here! Here! Here!’
It was now the height of the season, and balls to which ‘everyone’ went were held nightly. Laszlo saw Klara every day, though always in a crowd of people, beneath huge brightly-lit chandeliers and surrounded by a multitude of other young girls all dressed in the colours of spring flowers. They were never alone and could never exchange two words that were not overheard by others, although at the supper which always followed the quadrille Laszlo would invariably sit on Klara’s right. Since he had become the dance leader Laszlo never asked any girl to partner him for the quadrille, for, as he had explained to everyone, in directing the complicated movements of that dance the elotancos was bound constantly to leave his partner and this was hardly fair to any girl unlucky enough to be chosen by him! Laszlo made this announcement so dogmatically that everyone saw the logic of his argument and believed it to be the truth. It was not, of course. The real reason was that the quadrille and the supper that followed it were traditionally linked and a young man was expected automatically to escort his quadrille partner to the supper-room and sit with her. Laszlo wanted to remain free so that when Klara sat down he would be able to join her party without having to bring another girl with whom he would have to talk and gossip and flirt. Though Klara and he never discussed this manoeuvre it was perfectly clear between them that Klara would see to it that her own partner sat on her left and that she would keep the chair on her right for Laszlo. It was an unwritten law and it worked perfectly.