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

by Bánffy, Miklós

  After the momentous debate on 18 November, it was some time before the House met again. From the day that Tisza announced the strengthening of the Rules of Order, rumours, many of them mere malicious gossip, began to circulate freely. Every day there was something new, and the following day it would be contradicted. Today the Speaker had resigned, tomorrow he had hired special bodyguards to eject trouble-makers from the House; the day after he had had a stroke, and the day after that he was taking fencing lessons preparing for the inevitable duels that the next session would bring. There were rumours, too, about the government. Tisza had gone to Vienna to resign. Tisza had come back from Vienna more belligerent than ever.

  Never before had the newspapers attacked a Hungarian Minister-President with such open venom and personal insult. The cruelest, most outspoken articles were written by Miklos Bartha with such a masterly control of logic that Balint had almost been convinced by him, despite the violence of his views.

  The editorials in the conservative newspapers were more moderate, but their verdicts were just the same: Tisza must go, and when his head had fallen a new cabinet would legalize new Rules of Order which in themselves were, of course, both necessary and useful. This two-faced argument, formulated with one eye on the opposition and the other on the Emperor in Vienna, deceived no one.

  The views expressed by the newspapers set the tone for discussions in the National Casino Club which was still the capital’s political storm centre. Here members of all the parties would collect in groups, in the billiard-room and in the Deak Room, everywhere. The loudest talkers were always the youngest and above the uproar made by patriotic members or party candidates was always to be heard, shouting louder than anyone, the voice of the Austrian-born Fredi Wuelffenstein, who declared that his Hungarian blood boiled at such contempt of the Constitution and that he would fight anyone who contradicted him.

  Balint had been to the Casino every night during the previous two weeks, but though he had tried to remain impartial he had not been entirely unaffected by the revolutionary atmosphere. Ever since Slawata had spoken to him and given him a glimpse of the secrets of the Heir’s political workshop, he had begun to see these party antics in Budapest in a new light. Now he had become more sympathetic to those who attached such importance to maintaining forms and rules that helped to preserve, in whatever way, the integrity and independence of the country.

  Parliament was recalled and 13 December was announced as the date of the next session. On the preceding day a small paragraph appeared in the official gazette:

  The Parliamentary Guards have been instructed that in no circumstances, even if bodily assaulted, are they to restrain Members by force.

  Needless to say this decree had not been inspired by respect for the members, but rather was the Government’s reply to the rumours of violence that had been put about by the opposition, and which had done so much to alarm the public.

  On 13 December Balint had arrived somewhat late and, seeing the quantity of hats and coats in the cloakroom, realized that most of the other members had got there before him. It only occurred to him later how worried all the doorkeepers and porters had seemed.

  No one was to be seen in the corridors leading to the Chamber. All was silence; he could not even hear his own footsteps on the heavily carpeted floor. And any noise from inside was effectively cut off by the heavy curtains that draped all the entrances.

  Balint stepped inside totally unprepared for what he would find there.

  Only about thirty members were present, all ‘Zoltans’ – the nickname for those on the extreme left. They were standing on the Speaker’s platform, throwing down chairs, ripping out the balustrades, throwing the recording secretaries’ equipment about and, in the middle of the floor of the House, where the Table of the Law had already been overturned, they were making piles of the desks and chairs of the ministerial benches.

  At one side, surrounded by six or seven of his colleagues, stood Samuel Barra, their leader. When they saw Abady enter the room they swarmed round him, happy to boast of their antics to a newcomer.

  All shouting at once they bragged about their behaviour and their misdeeds, roaring and stamping. Balint listened in growing horror and disgust as they shouted:

  ‘We beat the hell out of them.’

  ‘Did you see how I hit him with an inkpot?’

  ‘The coward bent double … did you see?’

  ‘We’ve had a real battle here, my friend.’

  ‘But the guards couldn’t hit back. The Decree forbade it!’ shouted Balint when he had a chance to speak.

  ‘Be damned to that! They would have if we’d given them a chance, but we didn’t!’ cried Barra and he launched into one of his usual rabble-rousing speeches full of slogans like ‘Girded with the Nation’s Right’, ‘The Power of the People’, ‘Irresistible Force’, and ‘Spurred by the Sacred Flames of Hungary’s Freedom’ until finally halted by one of his henchmen who, interrupting this flow of self-praising oratory, came up and said: ‘Chief! Did you see how I beat them off the platform with this?’ He brandished a weapon made from a long piece of oak torn from the platform railings, from which nails protruded unevenly. ‘I harpooned the dogs!’

  Still bragging, they hardly noticed one of their band who had been sitting at the side and who now moved down to the centre of the floor where they had made a pile of the chairs and desks. He was a tall, skinny, unshaven and swarthy man dressed in a dirty priest’s frock. He climbed to the top of the pile of broken furniture and sat down, smiling viciously, his hands on his hips in the stance of a stage conqueror.

  ‘Bravo, Jancsi! Bravo!’ they cried.

  At this moment a side door opened. Tisza walked in. He stood quite still and just looked at them. There was a sudden silence as everyone present saw who was there. Tisza spoke quietly and coldly.

  ‘Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves?’ With a gesture of utter contempt, he turned on his heel and left.

  To Balint, lying sleepless in the train, the rumble and clatter beneath his carriage – Choo-choo-choo … Choo-choo-choo – recalled the mindless uproar in the Chamber and seemed to mock his own indecision.

  How could he ally himself to a crowd who could beat up defenceless public servants? Yet if he remained aloof he would be helping the secret plans of the Belvedere Palais, where the Heir was only waiting to pounce and destroy Hungarian independence once and for all.

  It was this dilemma that now chased Balint away from the capital. A sort of nausea overcame him as he lay there seeking, and yet fleeing from a decision. And all the time the monotonous, heartless Choo-choo-choo beneath him chased both sleep and a decision from him.

  It was late when Balint finally slept and it was late, too, when he awoke the following morning to find the sun glinting through the window blinds. At first he thought that the attendant had forgotten to wake him and that he had passed Kolozsvar in his sleep, but he was soon reassured: his train was now several hours late.

  He dressed quickly and went out into the corridor. The weather outside was superb. The snow glistened in the bright sunshine, and ice floated on the Koros river which ran beside the railway track. Everything was blindingly white; even the steep mushroom-like roofs of the peasants’ houses were thickly covered by snow. Here and there a dray-cart pulled by a buffalo could be seen on the road, its shivering owner walking alongside.

  Both far and near the thick carpet of snow had the fine texture of powdered icing sugar. Without stopping the train sped through Banffy-Hunyad and started the steep climb to the Sztana Tunnel.

  Balint moved back into his sleeping compartment to look out the other side of the train. He remembered that surely it was somewhere here that Adrienne’s home was to be found, a white house opposite an old ruin that could be seen as the train came out of the tunnel; and when, brakes screaming on the curve, the train did emerge from the darkness, the first thing Balint saw in the distance were the ruins of an old castle and in among a stand of now leafless beech trees, two
vertical white shapes which were probably the corner towers of a country house. He wondered if Adrienne were there, perhaps even at this very moment gazing, as he was, at the castle ruins. And if she were, would the knowledge that Balint was doing the same upset her as much as had the touch of his hand the last time they had met? It was many weeks since he had allowed himself to think about Adrienne, for after the scene in the garden he had chased away all thought of her even when his memories had brought her involuntarily to his mind.

  Balint’s mother, Roza Abady, was a short, chubby little woman who dressed always in black and whose snow-white hair and old-fashioned clothes made her seem years older than the mere fifty she really was. Since the early death of her husband, which had been a terrible blow to her after barely ten years of marriage, she had braced herself to accept the unwelcome role of a widow and had dressed as such ever since. Though their marriage had been planned by their families, the union of the handsome, talented and charming Tamas Abady with his rich little cousin Roza had been a love-match from the start. Even so, their early years together had been stormy and fraught with tension because their characters had been so different.

  The young Roza, an only child whose arrival after her parents had been married for more than twelve years was hailed as some kind of miracle, had been wilful, capricious and spoilt. She tyrannized her parents’ house and she had been treated so much like a princess in a fairy tale that, in time, this is what she believed herself to be. The grandeur of her surroundings, the huge castle of Denestornya with its countless servants and seemingly limitless parklands, over which the only child was allowed to believe she had absolute power, all contributed to inflate Roza’s sense of her own importance, and made her arrogant and, at times, uncontrollable.

  When she first married this had led to terrible quarrels between husband and wife, though, as she had fallen deeply in love with her handsome, understanding husband, these scenes invariably ended with Roza giving in. Soon she was to change and for the later years of their marriage she saw everything through her husband’s eyes and his every wish was as faithfully carried out as if it had been an Imperial decree. These had been happy years, and, as it turned out, her only happy years, for suddenly, after barely a decade together, Tamas was struck down by an incurable cancer and died only a few months later.

  Tamas Abady, a sensible man blessed with the gift of clear sight, had known what was the matter and how long he had to live. In the few months left to him he had concentrated all his time and declining energies to preparing Roza for their parting and for the tasks she would inherit when he died. Knowing his wife so well he took care that his wishes were expressed as definite instructions to be followed to the letter. Young Balint, as soon as he reached the age of ten, was to be sent to school in Vienna at the Theresianum; he was then to study law and, upon obtaining his degree, was to enter the Diplomatic Service. Tamas, conscious of the dangers to an only child brought up in a household of women, wanted to be sure that his son would grow up independent, travelled and experienced, and so be well equipped, when the time came, to decide his own future.

  After discussing his ideas with his father, old Count Peter whose knowledge of the world was of immense help to him, Tamas wrote down in a large notebook everything that his wife was to do for their son and also exactly how she was to run the Abady estates. He had made a great point of Roza promising that she would run the property herself and not put it in the hands of estate managers. He wanted her to make her own decisions. He also wanted to give her something useful to do which would occupy so much of her time that it would help lighten the burden of sorrow after his death.

  Count Tamas’s instinct had been right. After the first few months of deep mourning the Countess Roza set about her new responsibilities with heroic dedication. She began by reading closely the book of instructions and very soon she had it by heart. This book became her bible, the holy writ which her beloved husband had ordered from the World Beyond. And if her adoration of his memory at times bordered on the morbid, the responsibilities he had imposed upon her saved her reason.

  In her great house she led the life of a hermit. At first she would not see even her own close relations. She wanted no guests. She would live only to carry out her husband’s sacred orders. Gradually she lost touch with all her friends; and neighbours, knowing they were not welcome, stopped calling. While her father-in-law lived he would bring his guests up to see her at the castle, but after his death she saw no one. This was something which her husband, in all his wisdom had not foreseen, and it had its ill effects. The countess by nature was generous and good-hearted, but she needed the company of people with she could talk and who would, in return, talk to her. She needed, too, people whom she could help and to whom she could be of service and play Lady Bountiful. Soon there appeared those who recognized not only this but also the fact that Countess Roza was susceptible to flattery, and who gradually began to insinuate themselves into the castle’s service so that they could take advantage of the solitary countess’s weaknesses.

  The first was an unscrupulous lawyer, Kristof Azbej, with whom Countess Roza had made contact when she had been to Torda for some trivial lawsuit. He soon discovered how she could best be manipulated. He started by praising her late husband, and went on, apparently reluctantly, to allow the countess to force him to admit that he was poor because he only accepted briefs from the righteous, even if they could not afford to pay him. The widowed countess, impressed, used his services, without noticing that lawyer Azbej gave them even though she could afford to pay. She felt sorry for him and little by little allowed him more and more power and responsibility in the management of her affairs, until in the end, in all but name, the simple Mr Azbej became Agent for the Abady estates – a title he was careful never to use in her presence.

  Gradually he made himself indispensable – principally by dint of revealing to her abuses she would never have discovered for herself (‘The noble Countess will understand that I would never have mentioned it were it not that …’) to the point at which she suggested he should always be near at hand to devote himself to her service. After her father-in-law died, she offered him rooms in the house at Denestornya where Count Peter had lived.

  In much the same way, two women insinuated themselves into the countess’ confidence and after a while they came permanently to live with her in the castle in the summer and in the town house in Kolozsvar when she moved there in the winter. They were Mrs Tothy, widow of a Protestant sexton, and Mrs Baczo, whose origins were more obscure but who was rumoured once to have been a cook in Des. These two, whether at Denestornya or Kolozsvar, would sit with the countess, take their meals with her and talk to her over their needlework. They also assumed responsibility for certain household tasks – Mrs Tothy supervised the laundries and made lavender water, while Mrs Baczo took charge of the kitchens and made all the preserves; she made them very well.

  However their principle function was to listen to everything their mistress said and to agree that she was right. They were also the bearers of gossip on whom their mistress relied for all information of that sort both from inside and outside the castle walls. This they did faithfully with one reservation; they never gossiped about each other or about Mr Azbej, who in turn always supported the two women. Together they formed a kind of triumvirate who between them shared the rule of the Abady estates. Just as the women controlled everything in the house and in the orchards and kitchen gardens, so Azbej ruled the farms and forests. As might be expected this alliance brought advantages to all three. The one domain over which they had no power and in whose rule the countess never consulted anyone’s opinion but her own was the stables and the stud-farm.

  The day Balint returned home he had coffee with his mother in her sitting-room. The countess sat on a sofa behind a long table and, one at each end, sat the two ladies on upright chairs which they always chose instead of more comfortable fauteuils to show that they knew their place. They were so alike that Balint was never
quite sure which was which. Both were thick, fleshy women with olive complexions and dark hair and tiny sharp eyes sunk in the fat of pendulous cheeks. Their appearance showed how they thrived on the rich food of Transylvania. Each time he returned after a long absence Balint had to relearn that the only way to be sure which was which was to remember that the widow Tothy had three double chins while the Baczo had only two. Now, as Balint came into his mother’s room he found them both doing crochet work, sitting bolt upright and working at exactly the same speed. In front of his mother, but untouched, was a large Chinese lacquer bowl which served her for a work-basket. The countess made Balint sit beside her on the long sofa. She gazed at him fondly with her slightly bulging eyes and, took his hand in her pudgy little fingers.

  ‘Tell me everything! Where have you been? What have you been doing?’

  Balint first told her all about the shooting party at Simonvasar, who was there and who was not there. Then he recounted the political events in Budapest. He tried to tell her everything but she, never talking her eyes off his face and constantly pressing his hands as if to reassure herself that it was really he, never really grasped whether he was talking about his cousins or telling about the rows in the House. That this was so was made perfectly clear as her occasional interjections only concerned his health: ‘Are you sure you didn’t catch cold? Are you well?’

  ‘You’ll stay on a bit now, won’t you? You won’t leave us too soon. It will soon be Carnival, and there are some very pretty girls around.’

  ‘Very pretty, yes indeed!’ echoed the widow Tothy.

  ‘Yes, indeed, very pretty!’ said the widow Baczo.