‘How much?’ she said again.
‘It is difficult to say, exactly, but I think we could do it with forty thousand crowns.’
The countess rose and went over to a little rosewood escritoire which stood in the window embrasure. She sat down, opened a drawer and rummaged around for a moment without taking anything out. She liked to think that no one knew where anything was kept nor how much money she had, little dreaming that Azbej, with the help of the two ladies, knew all the details even better than she did: he even managed even to draw commissions from the banks each time that she made deposits. Finally Countess Roza drew out a savings-bank book and carefully re-locked the drawer.
‘Take this!’ she said, handing it to him. ‘The account contains forty thousand, seven hundred crowns, and there’s a half year’s interest due. Use this!’ Then her natural generosity overcome any reservations that good sense might have suggested.
‘Don’t mention any of this to my son. I wouldn’t like him to know that I had made this sacrifice for him!’
Nothing could have suited Azbej better. He pledged himself to the utmost secrecy and bowed himself from the gracious lady’s presence. A few days later a telegram arrived for the countess saying: ‘Situation promising’ and, on the eve of the elections, another which announced: ‘Victory certain!’
On the morning of 20 January a third telegram arrived which stated: ‘Rival withdrew. Count Abady elected unanimously. Congratulations. Azbej.’
The following day Azbej returned to Kolozsvar and again asked for a private interview with the countess. He brought with him the sum of five thousand, two hundred and twenty-seven crowns and forty-two cents in cash. This amount, he explained as he handed it to Countess Roza, had not been needed; and he proceeded to account for the rest in minute detail. The countess, impressed by this display of meticulous honesty, praised his reliability and expressed her pleasure with him and joy at the success of his mission.
He then went to see Balint.
Here he was not so well received, indeed he met with marked coldness.
‘Now I expect to be told what really happened,’ said Balint icily.
Azbej hummed and hawed. Naturally the majority of the electors wanted only his Lordship, the other had no chance and when he, Azbej, had persuaded him that his candidature was hopeless of course he had resigned. Balint, unconvinced, then asked why the lawyer had written that it might be ‘disadvantageous’ for him to appear at Lelbanya? Azbej parried this awkward question by saying that the man had had some adherents and he thought it better not to expose his Lordship to possible insult. Then why, asked Balint relentlessly, had the man withdrawn?
At this point Azbej felt that the moment had come when he would have to admit at least a part of the truth; by no means all of course, not that he already had had the other candidate’s resignation in his pocket by 14 January, nor that of the countess’s forty thousand crowns he had given fifteen to the fake candidate and kept twenty for himself. He decided to mention only that his Lordship’s gracious mother had sent a certain sum of money and that it had had the desired effect and was just about to open the tiny red mouth that lurked in the hedgehog beard when Balint interrupted.
‘I warn you that I’ll resign at once if I hear that there has been any dirty business!’
The little lawyer now realized that he had better keep his mouth shut; it would not fit his plans at all for Count Balint to stay at home after all the trouble he had taken to get him elected. Quickly he searched for another explanation. Using all his powers of invention Azbej launched into a long and complicated story about the morning of the election.
Balint listened to his rigmarole in silence. Then he dismissed the lawyer as coldly as he had received him. He did not believe what he had been told, but not knowing about his mother’s part in the affair, thought that he would have to seek some other explanation. But the good impression that the lawyer had previously made had received its first serious dent.
The result of the national elections was that the party which had governed Hungary since 1878 found itself in the minority. In the shock of surprise with which this news was everywhere greeted no one was more taken aback than the leaders of the former opposition who had now been placed in the uncomfortable position of having to make good their extravagant promises. Everyone was filled with a sense of foreboding, for now a conflict between the Crown and Parliament seemed unavoidable.
The situation was so strange and so exciting that Balint decided not to resign his seat, no matter how it had been gained. He wanted to be there when battle was joined; perhaps after all he would be able to contribute something useful.
Chapter Two
AT THE BEGINNING OF FEBRUARY, soon after the elections, Carnival started in Kolozsvar. All the families with marriageable daughters opened their town houses and prepared, politics or no politics, to go to dances, give dances and generally do everything they could to create the necessary opportunities for the girls to meet the eligible young men.
The Miloth family were among the first to arrive, and Countess Miloth immediately started taking her two unmarried daughters to call on the dowagers. Sometimes they made as many as seven such visits in a day.
One of their first calls was naturally on the widowed Countess Abady who, though she never went out herself, was by rank and breeding the most distinguished lady in their social group. At four o’clock one afternoon therefore a footman entered Countess Roza’s sitting-room and announced that Countess Miloth had called, with her daughters.
‘Pray bring them up!’ said Countess Roza, gesturing to the footman to remove from the table in front of her the needlework with which she and her two companions had been occupying themselves, as well as the empty coffee cup that had remained there after Balint, a few moments before, had left his mother to make arrangements to visit the forests at Beles two days later. Mrs Tothy and Mrs Baczo disappeared silently through a side door as Countess Miloth, with Judith and Margit, was announced. After the usual ceremony of symbolic kisses between the two elder ladies and handkissing and bows on the part of the girls, the visitors seated themselves opposite their hostess, Countess Miloth flanked by her two offspring as was correct. An insipid and formal conversation was begun all about the new débutantes, and what dances and balls were to be given.
Next it was the turn of fashion. They were just wondering if boas or shawls should be worn and whether tulle was more suitable for young girls than muslin when these exciting topics were brought to an end by the unexpected entrance of Balint. It was not the custom for young men to be present during such calls, but from the window of his room he had recognized the big-boned horses he had seen on the road to Var-Siklod, so saying to himself that he really should go and greet the Miloths as he had been their guest in the autumn, he had returned to his mother’s sitting-room.
Countess Miloth was agreeably surprised, assuming at once that he must be interested in one of her girls – but was it Judith or Margit? She forced a welcoming smile on her normally sour face and went on talking about the balls to be given. It was lucky for her younger daughters, she said, that Adrienne would be able to chaperone them as she herself could never stay up so late!
‘Is Adrienne in town?’ asked Countess Roza politely.
‘Not yet; I don’t expect the Uzdys until the day after tomorrow. But it doesn’t matter as there won’t be any dances before that.’ She went on to explain that Adrienne would be staying with her mother-in-law at the Uzdy house out on the Monostor road, where the old lady had already arrived with Adrienne’s child and the English nanny. A ground-floor wing of the house had been put at the Adrienne’s disposal for the season.
‘What a long way out!’ exclaimed Countess Roza who rarely moved and for whom almost any distance seemed too far.
‘Not too much, really,’ said Countess Miloth. ‘Anyhow they’re bringing two carriages so they’ll manage all right.’
After this exchange, which told Balint all he wanted to know, the talk
returned to the absorbing topic of clothes and the young man took his leave, explaining that one of his forest wardens was waiting to see him. As he left Margit looked up with a tiny smile at the corner of her mouth.
The ranger was waiting in the hall.
‘What’s the road like to Beles?’
‘It’s quite passable from Hunyad to Kalota, my Lord. That’s because it gets a lot of use. From there on there’ll be snow drifts. Packed snow’d be better!’
‘Why?’
‘Well, the runners cut deep into soft snow, ‘specially when the road’s uphill. But no matter, your Lordship, we’ll make it, even if we do go a bit slow, as you might say. The day after tomorrow then, Sir, at midday…?’
Balint thought for a moment. ‘Perhaps the road will improve if we wait? What do you think?’
‘Next Thursday, my Lord?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I’ll send word when I’m ready.’
Balint spent the next few days in seeing that he had everything he would needed for a winter trip to the mountains. He was fairly well provided, having spent a year in Stockholm where winter sports were beginning to be all the rage, but some things had to be bought. Three days after the Miloths had visited his mother, he caught sight of Adrienne coming out of one of the shops in the main square. Though she was still far away he recognized her at once from her long swinging stride. She was deep in conversation with two young men, Adam Alvinczy and Pityu Kendy, both of whom carried skates slung over their shoulders. In addition Adam carried a picnic basket and another pair of skates while Pityu had a fur rug in one hand and a thermos flask in the other. They were chatting gaily.
For a moment Balint wondered if Adrienne were still angry with him but, even as the thought flashed across his mind, she had stopped in front of him and was holding out her hand: ‘Here I am!’ she said happily, her golden onyx eyes full of light and welcome. It was as if the scene on the bench had never happened.
‘We’re going skating. The ice must be wonderful.’
‘But it’ll soon be dark!’
‘All the better; nobody’ll be there! What’s the matter? Do you think it’s not “done”?’
‘Not at all!’
‘We’re going to have tea there, on a bench beside the lake. Any nasty suspicions must freeze into nothing at ten below zero, isn’t that so, Adam Adamovitch?’ She lifted her aquiline nose at Alvinczy, whose father was also called Adam and who was then engrossed in reading Russian authors. She laughed provocatively.
‘What a pity you don’t skate, AB! It’s marvellous!’
‘But I do! I learned in Sweden.’
‘Come with us then! Do!’ said Addy with sudden warmth. ‘You won’t regret it … and you’ve never seen me on the ice!’
‘All right, but I must go home and get my skates. I’ll join you there.’
Balint walked home as quickly as he could, but it took him some time to find his things and when he had finally discovered where his boots, jerseys, trousers and woollen stockings had been hidden it seemed almost too late to go and join the others. Still a promise was a promise, and she did seem to have forgiven him …
It was dark when Balint arrived at the park. The frozen lake was surrounded by a railing over which hung a few lighted lanterns. He bought his ticket and entered the enclosure. There were only few people there apart from one or two beginners who were practising with wicker chairs to hold them up, and who did not venture far from the little pavilion, but he could see Adrienne and the two young men gliding about on the far side of the lake. One of them had paid a man with an barrel organ to play to them and he was grinding out an ancient waltz which had once been the rage of Vienna. On it went, the tune endlessly repeating ‘Nur … für Natur … hegte Sie … Sympathie …’, and to this old melody they waltzed in wide figures of three, leaving behind them faint white furrows cut in the ice.
He should have gone straight over, but instead he stood there watching and thinking how lovely Adrienne was, gliding effortlessly across the ice like a shadow in a dream. She was wearing a dress of brick red which seemed almost black in the half light, the same colour as her hair and the sealskin collar, hat and edging to the hem of the funnel-shaped skirt, which fluttered round her like an ever widening saucer as she turned and twisted in the movements of the dance.
How beautiful she was! She looked weightless and ethereally tall as she danced with both men at once, doing a few turns with one and then, with a double turn, seeming to fly into the arms of the other, spinning arabesques of grace to the rhythm of the old waltz. It was like a ballet with every step lengthened into great sweeps of movement each covering more than thirty feet to a single beat.
As she danced Adrienne seemed more youthful than Balint had ever seen her, her fine elongated silhouette more slender, more alluring, watching her now, passing so lightly from one admirer to another, her lips parted in a dazzling smile of pleasure as each man in turn caught her by the waist and whirled her away with the speed of an eagle taking its prey, Balint knew that he would never again think of Adrienne as the reincarnation of Diana the Huntress who hated men.
In total surrender to the intoxication of the dance, she seemed to be moving in a trance, dazed but ecstatic. This was no virgin goddess performing her hieratic ritual dance; this was a wild young mænad caught in a magic wintery bacchanalia, a prey to every madness of love and abandon, drunk with unrestrained desire and ready for whatever the night might bring. She was the stuff that dreams were made of, impelled by speed, by the rushing strength of her own young body and by the darkness of night in which all desire could be fulfilled and yet remain secret, a nature free of all restraint.
Balint felt like an intruder, a Peeping Tom to whom something forbidden had inadvertently been revealed. This was no longer the Adrienne he knew, neither the moody Addy of his youth nor the bitter Adrienne who escaped from the gaiety of the dance to pour out her disillusion on a moonlight night. Nor was it the playful, childish Adrienne who climbed the haystack with her sisters at Mezo-Varjas, or even the sad woman in flight from the bitterness of a failed marriage who had revealed her soul to him in her father’s garden and then rounded on him in anger and disgust when he dared to kiss her arm. This was a different being, someone he did not know, a stranger, flirtatious, without fear, without regrets and free of the constraints with which he had thought his Adrienne to be inexorably hedged.
Suddenly he felt himself a stranger, an intruder who had no right to be granted this forbidden insight. He had no business to be there unless, perhaps, he was just one more young man she was drawn to seduce!
The music of the barrel-organ stopped abruptly. Adrienne and her two young admirers skated smoothly to the side of the lake where, spreading the fur rug on a bench, they took out their picnic and started to eat. Even from where he stood Balint could see what a good time they were having, how they laughed together and joked and chatted, and how the vapour of hot tea curled up from the open thermos beside them.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked himself. Spying?’
He turned away, left the frozen lake, and walked slowly home.
The very same evening he sent off a telegram: ‘ARRIVE BELES MORNING TRAIN WEDNESDAY. HAVE SLEIGH AND HORSES READY AT NOON.’
Chapter Three
THE SLEIGH BELLS TINKLED MERRILY as they drove Up through the pine forests to the ridge of Csonka-Havas which formed the watershed that had to be crossed before they could reach the little settlement of Beles. Andras Zutor, known as ‘Honey’, the forest ranger who had come to Kolozsvar, and the coachman, ‘Clever’ Janos Rigo, sat huddled together in the driver’s seat. Both wore jackets made of thick flannel embroidered in patterns of red, blue and green. Over these they had old worn sleeveless sheepskin waistcoats, for no one wore new clothes to go to the mountains in the winter. These too were elaborately embroidered with flowers and traditional Hungarian symbols. Both jackets and waistcoats were short and when their wearers bent forward they showed a line of bare tanned s
kin between them and the tops of their trousers: all Kalotaszeg folk wore short shirts and jackets, for it was said that they did not feel the cold as other mortals did. Both men were of similar build, stocky and so wide of shoulder that there was only just room for the two of them on the narrow driver’s seat of the sleigh.
As they turned a bend in the road Andras Zutor turned to Balint. ‘That’s Beles in front of us now,’ he said. On the floor of the valley below, Balint could see a huddle of little shingle-roofed huts where the foresters and workers in the sawmill were lodged. From a distance they looked like rows of blackened wooden coffins. Beyond them could be seen the canteen, the houses of the sawmill manager and clerks and, still farther on, the larger roofs of the sawmill itself surrounded by huge piles of uncut tree-trunks, neat mountains of cut planks and heaps of greying sawdust.
The little settlement was ringed with mountains, the Gyalu Boulini side of the Funcinyeli range, and these, shrouded in greyish mist darkened by wisps of smoke rising from the houses and the sawmill, effectively obscured any more distant view.
The noon siren sounded as they drove between the houses. Here the snow had been trodden into mud. All this, explained Andras, was part of the Abady estate. They passed a group of workers, some of whom raised their hats. Once through the settlement the sleigh turned once towards the mountains passing between snow-covered meadows, bare and white between dark plantations of fir trees. Here and there a rock stood out above the snow. As they passed an old willow tree that leaned over the edge of a deep canyon Andras turned again to Balint and explained that this marked the boundary of the Count’s property. Even though the road now started to climb steeply the horses increased their speed knowing that they would soon be home. Behind a fence stood a row of ash trees laden now with bunches of red-brown berries, and behind these again stood the little house of the forest manager. The sleigh turned in through an open gate and drew up before the front door where Kalman Nyiresy, he who had made such a bad impression on Balint when he had come to Denestornya, stood waiting on the steps, pipe in mouth and cap in hand.
They Were Counted (The Writing on the Wall: the Transylvanian Trilogy) Page 24
