Free Esther's Inheritance by Sándor Marai

hard.
    “I have never lied,” I answered.
    She shrugged.
    “I have read the letters,” she said, and folded her arms like a magistrate. “They were lying in the cupboard for ages, in the cupboard where Mama kept her underwear, where you hid them—you know, in that rosewood box…It is hardly three years since I found them.”
    I felt myself going pale, the blood draining from my face.
    “Tell me what they say,” I demanded. “Think what you like, think me a liar, but tell me everything you know about those letters.”
    “I don’t understand,” she said sharply, now that it was her turn to be surprised. “I am talking about the three letters that Father wrote you when he was engaged to Mama, begging you to release him from his emotional prison, because he loved only you. The last letter was dated just before the wedding. I compared the dates. It’s the letter where he writes that he can’t speak to you directly because he hasn’t the strength and is ashamed on account of Mama. I don’t think Father has ever written a more sincere letter. He writes that he is a crushed, injured man, that he trusts only you, that only you can give him back his self-respect and sanity. He begs you to elope with him, to abandon all else, to go abroad with him; that he puts his life into your hands. It is a letter of despair. It is impossible that you should not remember it, Esther. It is impossible, isn’t it? For some reason you don’t want to discuss these letters with me…maybe they are painful on account of Mama, or you simply want to hide the whole thing from me. I understood everything once I read these letters. I saw my father in quite a different light from that time on. It’s enough that once in one’s life one should strive to be strong and good. It wasn’t his fault that he failed. Why didn’t you answer?”
    “What should I have answered?” I asked, in the same flat, indifferent voice anyone might use in admitting that they had lied, and if I had genuinely known of these letters.
    “What?…My god! You should have answered something. These were the sort of letters people get just once in a lifetime. He wrote that he would wait till the morning for your answer. If you did not answer he would know you lacked the strength…in which case he had no choice but to remain here and marry Mama. But he couldn’t speak to you about this. He was afraid you would not believe him because he had often lied before. I cannot know what happened between you…I don’t even have any right to ask. But you did not answer his letter, and soon everything went terribly wrong. Don’t be cross, Esther…now that it is all over I think you were partly responsible for what happened.”
    “When did your father write those letters?”
    “The week before the wedding.”
    “Where did he address them?”
    “Where? Here, home, to your house. You lived here then together with Mama.”
    “You found them in a rosewood box?”
    “Yes, in a box, in the cupboard where the underwear was kept.”
    “Did anyone have a key to that cupboard?”
    “Only you. And Father.”
    What could I have answered? I let go of her arm, stood up, went over to the sideboard, and picked up Vilma’s portrait and gazed at it a while. It had been a long time since I had held the picture in my hands. Now I stared at those familiar and yet terrifyingly strange eyes and suddenly I understood.

 
    14

    M y sister Vilma hated me. Éva was right, there had been bad blood between us for as long as I can remember, a nameless dark fury the reasons for which had disappeared over the years. Nothing can explain this mutual hatred—for the fact is that I hated her as much as she did me—nor did either of us ever seek to explain it. I cannot be more precise in specifying whether this or that act of hers did the damage; she would have said something different anyway, and that was why we were so much against each other. She was always the stronger, even in matters of hatred.