They Were Counted (The Writing on the Wall: the Transylvanian Trilogy)

by Bánffy, Miklós

  Reminded by the sight of the two Kendys of those student days of five or six years before, Balint recalled that there was at least one girl who did not feel, or pretend to feel, sympathy for the man who was a notorious rake. He had met only one who, when some young man would start to boast of his exploits, would frown, straightening her well-shaped brows, and lift her chin with disapproval and distaste.

  Only one: Adrienne Miloth.

  What a strange independent girl she had been, different in almost every way from the others. She preferred a waltz to a csardas, she scarcely touched champagne and in her glance there was a sort of grave thoughtfulness, sweet and at the same time intelligent. How could she have married such an ugly and gloomy man as Pal Uzdy? Some women seemed to like such grim looks, but then Adrienne Miloth was not ‘some women’ and, remembering this, Balint felt again the same stab of senseless irritation that he had experienced two years before when he had heard of her betrothal.

  Not that this was jealousy; far from it!

  He had met Adrienne when she came out in the spring of 1898. He was a senior student then and passionately involved with his first real love affair, with the pretty little Countess Dinora Abonyi. For Balint this was the first adventure that really mattered. He had pursued Dinora for months, and after the sparkling hopes and torturing jealousy of the chase, what a glorious fulfilment! And this was when he had first seen Adrienne, just when all his desires, all his senses, were engaged elsewhere.

  He often used to pay visits to the Miloths’ town house, but not looking for love. The subject of love never rose with Adrienne and he never raised it. They did not flirt or even talk about flirting. No matter how long they spent together, nor how long they danced, she never aroused him as a woman. And they met almost daily and often sat talking for hours at a time. In their social group there was no gossip if a young man called regularly at a house where there were marriageable daughters. Indeed, at Kolozsvar there was a great deal of social life and, as in all small towns, most people met every day.

  The aristocratic families of Transylvania still spent the winters in their town houses in Kolozsvar, and received their friends every afternoon quite informally. Everyone was expected to drop in, from the old ladies, their grandchildren and mothers with marriageable daughters, to cousins, aunts and friends – and all the eligible young men. Invitations were sent out only for luncheons and dinners and it was at tea-time that those who did not make the rounds for some days attracted attention and comment. It did not therefore suggest serious courtship if the same young bachelor came every day and sat with the girls drinking coffee and whipped cream which was then more popular than English tea.

  The same groups used to form – three or four girls and five or six young men, brought together by mutual sympathy or family relationship. Together they would drink tea and coffee, play tennis, go to the theatre and organize picnics. In such groups the tie would be friendship and sympathy, above all sympathy, and it was this alone, which existed between Balint and Adrienne Miloth.

  Perhaps Adrienne’s strange beauty played its part, but Balint’s awareness was casual not emotional, and he admired her as he would have admired a fine jewel or an exquisite bronze.

  Adrienne’s figure was slender and still very girlish, yet her walk, light but in some way determined, reminded him always of a painting of Diana the Huntress he had once seen in the Louvre. She seemed to have the same elongated proportions, the same small head and supple flexible waist that the artist had given the goddess when she reached over her shoulder to take an arrow from its quiver. And when she walked she had the same long stride. Her colouring, too, recalled the Diana of his memory, the clear ivory skin with slight golden tints which never varied from her softly shining face to her neck, and the arms and shoulders that emerged from the silken décolleté of her ball-dress. Only her hair was different, and her eyes, for whereas Diana was blonde and blue-eyed, Adrienne’s hair was dark and wavy and alive – and her eyes were onyx, flecked with golden amber.

  Not only was Adrienne beautiful, but she was always interesting to talk to. Her ideas were her own, very individual for a young woman of her background. And she had ideas about everything. She was well-read and cultivated, and with her one didn’t have to avoid subjects such as foreign affairs, history or literature as one did with so many young girls who would otherwise take offence thinking one was trying to show off superior knowledge. She spoke several languages and she loved to read, but not the romantic novels which were all that most other girls read. Against these she rebelled, for in the finishing school at Lausanne to which she had been sent she had been introduced to Flaubert, Balzac, Ibsen and Tolstoy, and ever since the trivial had no longer appealed to her.

  The first time they had supper together, at Adrienne’s coming-out party, they had talked about books and ideas, and so they did again, each time that Balint would visit the Miloths, which he now started to do regularly. At this time Balint was reading Spencer’s Principles of Sociology and it had made a deep impression on him, especially the first volume which discussed the basic ideas about God and the origins of spiritual belief in primitive man. Carried away by his own enthusiasm he spoke impulsively on these subjects to Adrienne and found himself taken by surprise by the depth of her response and by her thirst for knowledge. This is how they began; but of course they did not stop at one subject but touched on numerous others, words flowing in an ever-guessing, probing search for the truth as is the way with the young. Balint told Adrienne about his grandfather, of his wise appreciation and understanding, of his unerring judgement and how it was only now after so many years that he realized how clearly and cogently the old man had explained life to a twelve-year-old boy. As he talked to Adrienne, ever more fluently and enthusiastically, it seemed to him that he could express himself better and more vividly to this girl who always listened with such intensity and whose answers were always so interesting. It seemed that her presence, with those amber eyes fixed on his, increased his power and his eloquence. They had spent many such hours together, and even when the days grew longer it was often dark before he left. Sometimes a late visitor interrupted them, but usually their talks were brought to an end in a different way. From beyond the double-doors which connected the two drawing-rooms would come the sour voice of Countess Miloth, stern and disapproving: ‘Why are you sitting there in the dark, Addy? You know I don’t like it. Have the lamps lit at once!’, and Adrienne would get up in silence, pausing to get control of herself, forcing herself not to answer back. She would stand for a moment, defiant, her head held high, gazing straight in front of her into the darkness. And then, still silent, she would cross the room with her long strides to the high standard lamp and light it. Before she returned to Balint she would remain there, motionless, gazing into the light with narrowing pupils.

  All these memories crowded into Balint’s mind, not in order, not in words or sentences, but in pictures vivid with every detail, time and place rediscovered, recaptured without the need for connected thought or conscious recall, the images of an instant, and as fleeting.

  Another carriage passed Balint’s: more acquaintances. As he waved to them the previous vision vanished, like the reflections on the smooth surface of a lake wiped off by the slightest breath of wind over the surface. Other carriages passed, more and more, hastening to Var-Siklod to bring guests after the races and, after each, billows of dust coating the verges and the meadow beyond them. Two large greys, drawing a grand open landau drew alongside. The Prefect sat alone in the rear seat. He called out a friendly greeting to Balint and then his carriage too disappeared in a cloud of dust.

  Soon Balint’s old fiacre, moving slowly, was overtaken by all sorts of other vehicles, some driving so fast that he could only occasionally recognize a face or two before they too were swallowed up in the dust. He caught a glimpse of Zoltan Alvinczy alone in a one-horse gig. Then two elegant carriages, in one of which he saw the widowed Countess Gyalakuthy with her daughter, Dodo. An American racin
g four-wheeler hurtled by with a fearsome rattle of harness and pounding of hoofs and quickly vanished. It was Tihamer Abonyi, driving his finely-matched pair of black Russian trotters. He drove with style and elegance, his elbows out and his hands pressed to his chest, and next to him was his wife, the fascinating Dinora, who turned and waved and smiled back at him with her open, white-toothed, sensual mouth.

  The dust had hardly settled when another carriage appeared beside him, a carriage drawn by four heavy strong bays, trotting unhurriedly in steady unison together. Clearly, like all the horses of the plains, they were used to long distances. They were the opposite of Abonyi’s Russians, who would make ten kilometres in as many minutes but then could do no more. These bays could travel a hundred kilometres a day but, though in high spirits, they never altered their even steady trot. Abady loved these old-fashioned Transylvanian carriage horses and gazed at them with the eye of a connoisseur. So intent was he on admiring the team that it was only when the carriage was almost past that he saw who the passengers were. At first Balint only saw a man unknown to him, then beside him with her back to the coachman he recognized Margit, the youngest Miloth girl. In the rear seat there were two ladies. Though he couldn’t see the face of the one on the left he assumed that it must be Judith, because on her right sat Adrienne, her profile turned towards her neighbour. A moment passed before he was sure, because her distinctive flaring hair, her most recognizable characteristic, was concealed in a turban, which in turn was swathed in a voluminous dust-wrap which covered her neck and shoulders in thick coils, and a fine veil caught under the chin. It had to be her, with her fine slightly aquiline nose and chiselled lips. So Adrienne would also be at the ball.

  Balint realized that, as a married woman, she had come to escort her younger sisters, replacing their sour-faced mama who had made such heavy weather of Addy’s coming-out. He wondered how old the younger girls were now. When he had last seen them they were still in the schoolroom. Even so they must still be rather young to come out. Perhaps Judith was already seventeen but Margit could hardly be more than sixteen at the most. But then he remembered how closely related they were to the Laczoks – Countess Miloth and Countess Laczok were sisters, Kendys from Bozsva – and young girls could always attend family parties.

  Though Balint realized that he would see Adrienne that evening the thought had little effect on him. It caused neither joy nor that slight irritation he had felt previously when he had thought of her marriage. He felt only indifference and soon his mind was occupied with other things. Other carriages passed, some with single carriage-horses, some with teams of two and occasionally a four-in-hand. One-horse farm wagons started to appear, filled with farmers and their wives, and those who had had a drink at the races would be yodelling and singing in high good humour as they raced each other home. These were the Szeklers, who loved their little grey and bay horses with the same passion as the young aristocrats loved their thoroughbred teams. The Szekler farmers would let no one pass; they drove to the right, to the left, or weaving in the middle of the road so as not to be overtaken, jangling their bridles and shouting encouragements to the horses.

  Some middle-class townsfolk, each trim little carriage driven by their single servant, were also on the road. They were the parish clerk, the vicar, the orthodox priest, but however loud they shouted the Szeklers would not give way.

  The dust became so thick one could not see five yards ahead.

  A single rider, unimpeded by the carriages, rode briskly up. It was Gaspar Kadacsay, known to everyone as Crazy Baron Gazsi. He was still wearing his white racing breeches and brown-cuffed boots. On his head was a soldier’s red field cap and over his shoulders the light blue cape of an officer of the 2nd Hussars. He had ridden four hurdle races that afternoon and now, as if that were not enough, he was riding to Siklod on a fresh young piebald. He galloped in silence, weaving between the trundling one-horse farm carts, pulling up when a lumbering wagon appeared out of the dust clouds, spurring on, reining in, zig-zagging through the carts and carriages as if they were obstacles in a slalom race. No sooner had Gazsi disappeared than the sound of cracking whips was hear from behind, whips cracking like gunfire coming ever closer, a tremendous clatter of hoofs, bells and harness coming up like thunder. A high, shrill commanding voice could be heard, ‘God damn it! Out of the way! Make way there!’ The Szeklers, who had paid no attention before, pulled their wagons off the road in great speed, only with seconds to spare before a team of five horses drew level with Balint’s fiacre. First the three leaders, their nostrils flaring, their mouths foaming and their harness covered with ribbons and rosettes, and then the two shaft-horses, all so close to Balint they almost brushed against the old carriage. Behind the rushing team of five dappled greys was a long, low wagon, skidding to and fro as the speed brought the hind wheels off the ground.

  In the deep leather driving seat, swinging on its straps like a spring, sat Joska Kendy, proudly erect, his legs spread wide, his body rigid and a pipe between his teeth. In his left hand, tied in a wreath, he held the reins of the five horses tight as cables, while in his right he wielded the fourheaded driving whip, cracking incessantly and rhythmically and making figures of eight in the air.

  In front of him the road cleared as if by magic, for everyone knew that delay would be fatal when Joska Kendy had the whip in his hand and cried out for room on the road. With his strong wagon he could tear a wheel off any cart and send everyone into the ditch. It was wiser to let that one go by! And so they gave way, letting the racing team of five vanish swiftly into the distance.

  At last, through the dust, Balint began to make out the long avenue of Lombardy poplars which led to the Laczoks’ place. The old fiacre turned in on to the straight pebble-paved drive and the clatter of wagons which had become so deafening during the last half hour, began to die away behind him, leaving only the slight tinkling of the harness bells and the soft hiss of the wheels on the ground.

  Chapter Two

  THE CASTLE OF SIKLOD, the home of the Laczoks for many hundreds of years, was a typically Transylvanian fortress erected on a slight rectangular platform that jutted out from the side of the hill behind. Hardly more than ten metres above the surrounding country it had been built during the Middle Ages on the site of an old Roman fort, open on three sides and backed on the fourth by the rolling hills of the Maros valley, now covered in vineyards. The first Laczok to make his home on the edge of this smiling valley, which now lay between the main road and the village where the peasants lived, seems to have chosen the site as a strategic point between the counties of Maros and Torda, where he could best protect his lands and serfs from marauding bands of Szekler huns.

  Even in those early days Var-Siklod can never have inspired the same awe as those great frowning fortresses of stone that we know from drawings in medieval French and German monastic manuscripts. The four square walls, following the lines of the Roman camp, were joined at each corner by stout little towers. Over the entrance gates was another small castellated tower and in the centre of the wide courtyard stood the keep, where the lord and his family lived, and which, in those days was merely a two-storey building standing by itself, with massive walls and tiny windows set in deep stone embrasures. Useless against cannon and sophisticated siege machinery, the little fort had been all that was needed to hold the land against the fierce raids of Tartars, armed only with their courage and primitive weapons, and, later, against the bands of brigands and free Szeklers. If the raiding party was large, and enough warning had been given, the livestock for miles around could be herded into the great courtyard around the keep.

  Var-Siklod had not changed until the middle of the eighteenth century when the then head of the Laczok family, Count Adam – Vice-Chancellor of Transylvania and Governor of the province – decided that he must have a residence more worthy of his great position. It was just when the massive elegance of baroque was being transformed in Vienna, Munich and Brandenburg, into the fantasies of rococo; and it was t
his last that appealed to the taste of Count Adam.

  First he removed the battlements from the fortified keep and replaced them with a soaring roof of shingle, made in three sections like a pagoda, the first ascending steeple, and the second and third mounting in an elaborate S-bend to form a mushroom-shaped roof that was taller even than the building beneath. He did not enlarge the windows but surrounded them with carved stone cornices decorated with garlands of flowers and fruit. Stone pilasters with elaborate capitals were grafted on to each corner of the building and, over the main entrance, he built out a new doorway, surmounted by vaulting, which in turn supported a balcony whose parapet of carved stone reflected the wildest and most fantastic intricacies of rococo taste. Above the balcony, supported on thin iron poles, was another roof made of copper, separate from that of the main house but also mushroom-shaped in two elaborate and unexpected curves. As the supporting poles were barely visible it seemed as if the heavy shining roof hung in the air unsupported from below. In Count Adam’s time rich curtains had been hung between the iron poles, thus giving him the appearance he wanted, the fashionable Chinese style that had inspired the Pagodenburg at Munich. That this was the effect intended was clear from the upturned edges of the different sections of the roof above, and from the oriental detail of the drainpipes which, in times of rain, shot spouts of water in arcs of ten metres out of their dragon-shaped mouths.