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

by Bánffy, Miklós

  ‘By the camp fire?’ asked Adrienne with an attempt at irony.

  ‘Not this time. Beside a waterfall. Think of a deep canyon, dark and narrow like a well. All around is snow and ice. Even the rocks seemed frozen. I looked up and …’

  He stopped as Pal Uzdy came up to them. Though it was getting late, Uzdy was as immaculate as when he had just left his dressing-room, his collar impeccable, his face cool. Of course he did not dance, indeed he rarely even sat down but stood leaning against a doorpost if people were dancing or against the wall in the supper-room while others ate, always apart, a spectator. He was so tall that his cadaverous diabolic face could be seen over the heads of everyone else. Now he moved slowly and deliberately to where his wife was sitting with Balint. He spoke to Adrienne as if she were alone. Balint might not have existed for all the sign he gave of noticing his presence.

  ‘I’m going home.’

  ‘You are?’

  ‘What time would you like the carriage?’

  ‘I really don’t know. The ball will go on until morning. For the girls’ sake it’s hard to say …’ Adrienne faltered. For a moment she seemed frightened of something.

  ‘Naturally, of course!’ Uzdy appeard to agree.

  ‘I could ask the organizers …’ suggested Balint, feeling that he should say something.

  ‘There’s no call for that,’ said Uzdy without turning his head and still looking at his wife. ‘Stay as long as they want to, of course! … I’ll send the carriage at seven. The horses can wait until you’re ready to leave. Enjoy yourselves!’ Abruptly he bent his long body in a stiff jack-knife bow and brushed Adrienne’s hair with his lips. As he straightened up he glanced for the first time in Abady’s direction, and a faint ironic smile seemed to hover under the drooping moustaches. From his great height he waved a limp hand to Balint and repeating ‘Enjoy yourselves!’ he turned and walked away as slowly and deliberately as he had come.

  For a moment neither of them spoke. Then Adrienne turned back to Balint with searching eyes and, gasping slightly like someone who is feeling faint and who needs water, said: ‘What were you saying? A waterfall? Go on, tell me! Go on! Go on! Quickly …’

  ‘I was standing beside the rocky pool at the base of the fall. It was very dark down there. Everything around me was covered in ice. Into this lifeless, petrified world there poured a great column of water seemingly from inside the earth, pushing its way through solid rock, breaking through the wall of granite. The water leapt out victorious, triumphant, unstoppable, liberated, unending, throwing out garlands of spray and vapour as it fell and then rushing on over the stones below me, following its fate, going wherever it had to go, wherever it was driven, down the mountain valleys, across the plains, going where nature led until it flowed into the vast waters of the ocean. Before my eyes was the triumph of life and motion over all obstacles … and I thought of you, just as I had by the fire. Of you, who are throbbing with … I’ve always felt it. On the terrace at Var-Siklod and when you were skating. Long ago, when you were still a girl in your mother’s drawing-room, it was already there, unformed, waiting. I could feel it, that powerful urge inside you …’

  He was silent for a moment, then very faintly, in a whisper, he said very slowly: ‘I love you, Addy!’

  Adrienne had been listening to him, leaning back in the armchair with her head propped up on one hand, her chin supported by her long supple fingers whose pressure made her lips seem even fuller than usual. Her eyes were half-closed like someone listening to a symphony, and when Balint reached out and touched her right hand which was resting lightly on the arm of her chair, threading his fingers between hers, she accepted the caress with no sign of the alarm she had shown the last time, at Mezo-Varjas.

  ‘It’s only now,’ he murmured, ‘only now that I realized I was in love with you, and always have been ever since we first met though I didn’t know it until now. There’s never been anyone else. I’ve always loved you and nobody else, never ever!’

  And for a long time he kept murmuring those two words ‘never ever’ like rain-drops falling in endless repetition, monotonous rhyming little words to replace the passionate phrases of a moment or two before.

  Little Dinora Abonyi came into the room with light steps. She had torn a flounce on her dress and was on her way to have it repaired in the ladies’ room which could only be reached through the library where Balint sat with Adrienne. Balint heard someone coming and pulled his hand back from her’s.

  Dinora stopped beside them and, putting her hand on his shoulder, spoke to Adrienne: ‘He’s very sweet, this Balint! I know him … and he talks beautifully! Nobody can talk like him! And he’s kind and good, not like the others. I know! I can recommend him!’

  She smiled at Adrienne and moved lightly away. Her words, which could have sounded bitchy coming from anyone else, were not vicious, not from her. From Dinora they came from the heart, a gift for Adrienne who, unlike the others, had gone out of her way to be kind to her all the evening. Dinora’s simple, kind heart had been deeply touched when Adrienne had spoken to her at the buffet, taken her by the arm and asked her to eat at her table whereas the other ladies, after listening to Aunt Lizinka’s malicious gossip, had seemed to take pleasure in cutting her, ostentatiously turning away if she approached. She had nothing else to give Adrienne so she offered her old friend.

  Dinora’s coming back had broken the spell that until then had separated Balint and Adrienne from the rest of the world. Adrienne did not take in what Dinora had said, but the fact that someone else had spoken to her brought her back to reality, to the fact that she was in the Assembly Rooms of the Casino, attending the Mardi Gras Ball and that gypsy music was being played in the ballroom next door. Dream-like she came back from a world of dreams.

  When the csardas came to an end several couples started to drift back to the supper-room. Isti Kamuthy, after seeing that his partner was seated among friends and noticing that Abady was already sitting there with Countess Uzdy, same over to greet them, eager to hear the latest news from the capital.

  ‘Tho you’re back from Budapetht? What’th new in Budapetht?’

  Balint replied politely but non-committally. Then they got up and moved back to the ballroom, still in a dream of their own …

  As they arrived a waltz was just beginning. They stood for a moment in the doorway, Adrienne looking at Balint with her wide eyes, golden in the candle-light like those of a lioness, looking deeply into his. Then, putting her hand on his shoulder she leaned towards him, her eyes closed. Neither spoke; their movements were natural, inevitable and, as Balint put his arm round Adrienne’s waist, they moved out on to the dance floor, gently turning and yielding themselves to the rhythm of the music in mute tenderness, each of them conscious of nothing but the other. Though surrounded by a milling crowd, once again they were alone.

  After the waltz they separated and, after agreeing to sup together at the following evening’s ball, they each went their separate ways, even trying to keep apart, Adrienne by instinct and Balint consciously, not wishing that they should give any occasion for gossip by the hawk-eyed old ladies. But their efforts were in vain. Wherever they were, on the dance floor, at the buffet, in the drawing-room, every few minutes they seemed to come together again automatically as if an invisible thread bound them always to each other. And, whenever this happened, they would exchange a few banal phrases – ‘Isn’t it a lovely ball?’ – ‘How sweet little Dodo looks tonight!’ – ‘I love this old tune, don’t you?’ – ‘What a good organizer Alvinczy is!’ or some such trivial remark that could be overheard by anyone without a malicious interpretation being possible. Yet all the time a secret current flowed between them, isolating them from all others, creating for them a world of their own as private as if they had been alone on a desert island. No matter what words came from their lips, for both Adrienne and Balint they could have only one meaning: ‘You! You! You!’ and whenever one caught sight of the other it was with a kind of happy surpri
se at the discovery of their new-found bliss.

  Balint and Adrienne were so wrapped up in this new little world of their own that it was with a shock of surprise that they found it was eight o’clock when the ball came to an end. In the entrance hall a crowd of waiting footmen helped the girls and their chaperones to find their wraps and the young men were busy collecting the cotillion favours and flowers of the girls with whom they had flirted the night away.

  Adrienne called for her sisters. Margit came at once but they had to look for Judith, who was found talking to Wickwitz in a dark corner. Their party now left escorted by a whole band of admirers: Wickwitz, the ball’s two organizers, Baron Gazsi and Farkas Alvinczy, as well as Adam Alvinczy and Pityu Kendy. Adrienne was on Balint’s arm. Well wrapped up against the fierce cold of the morning, they waited just inside at the head of the steps until the noise of the carriages and the hurried entrance of a footman announced that their carriage was at the door.

  Balint and Adrienne still moved like figures in a dream, for the fact that in a few hours time there would be another ball at which they would naturally meet again and which would give them the opportunity to pass another whole evening in each other’s company, was enough to remove any sting from this morning’s parting.

  Everyone said goodbye; the men shook hands with the girls and, as with the other married ladies, they bowed to Adrienne and kissed her hand. Balint was the last. Adrienne had not yet put on her gloves and, when he took her hand, the feel of her bare skin went up his arm with the power of an electric shock. He paused, bending over her, holding her hand in his for a fraction longer than was usual. Suddenly, speaking so low that no one else could hear, he said: ‘Not where the others did!’ and turning her hand quickly over he buried his face in her palm. Adrienne made no resistance, and in a second Balint had straightened up again. No one had noticed.

  The ladies climbed into their carriage, the doors slammed and the horses were quickly whipped away in a fast trot.

  Most of the young men ran quickly back up the steps to say goodbye to other friends, but Balint stood motionless with closed eyes, suffused with a happiness he had never known before. Then he pulled himself together and returned to the Casino, bounding up the steps two or three at a time.

  Quickly finding his fur coat, he returned and hurried down into the open street. Outside it was a bright sunny morning with a few inches of fresh untouched snow covering everything in sight. He walked slowly home, his narrow patent leather dancing shoes leaving sharp tracks in the virgin snow. It was like walking in cold water, cool, refreshing, somehow wonderful. He was entirely alone in the deserted streets. He was happy.

  Chapter Six

  ADRIENNE LEANED BACK in her corner of the carriage so absorbed in her own thoughts that she did not notice that Judith also remained totally abstracted. The two of them, wrapped almost to the eyes in their furs and shawls, had the same closed expression on their faces, the same taut line round the mouth, and they both shut their eyes as if they had secrets that must be protected from the outside world. Only Margit, sitting opposite them, was her usual merry self, keeping up a stream of chatter and excitement.

  The carriage stopped at the Miloth’s town house. Briefly wishing Adrienne goodnight and saying they’d see her again that evening, the girls hurried indoors.

  Over the freshly fallen snow Adrienne’s carriage moved silently as it made its way along the Monostor road. Even the hoofbeats of the horses were muffled to a mysterious murmur.

  Finally they turned into the forecourt of the Uzdy villa, a large two-storeyed house flanked by long low wings which were fronted by glazed galleries to keep out the cold. The carriage stopped at the entrance to the wing on the right, where the young Uzdys lived. Only the old countess, Pal Uzdy’s mother, lived in the main house with Adrienne’s little daughter and her nanny. At this moment however the old countess and her grandchild were not there; they had left Kolozsvar for Meran ten days before.

  The house was an old one dating from the eighteenth century, with tall rooms and long windows. The wing where Adrienne and her husband had their rooms, though the windows had a marvellous view across the park to the river, must originally have been designed as servants’ quarters for, with one exception, all the rooms were small and linked by a long narrow vaulted gallery. The exception, right at the end of the wing, was a large room which Adrienne had furnished as a drawing-room. It had once been the kitchen where meals could be prepared for a hundred people.

  The entrance to Adrienne’s apartment was in the centre of the glassed-in gallery and, as she hurried inside, the carriage turned and drove out again through the entrance gates as the stable-yard and coach-house were reached through a separate gate further along the main road.

  As she went towards her room, Adrienne glanced at the windows of her husband’s room which also led off the gallery. The door was open and the place was obviously being aired. This surprised her, for Uzdy was not usually an early riser.

  ‘Is the Count already up?’ she asked the maid who was carrying the basket of favours and flowers, an elderly grey-haired little woman who had once been her nanny, ‘… or didn’t he go to bed at all?’

  ‘His Lordship didn’t go to bed, my lady. He just changed his clothes and left for Almasko before dawn.’

  Adrienne was not altogether surprised at this news since Uzdy often came and went unexpectedly without telling anyone of his plans in advance. He kept a post-chaise always ready in town, and a four-horse carriage at his farm in Szentmihaly, halfway to Almasko. By doing so he could make the trip quickly, only stopping long enough to change the horses, without having to make arrangements in advance. He liked to arrive unannounced: it kept everyone on their toes! Adrienne said nothing, but a close observer could have told from the way her body relaxed that she was relieved to hear the news.

  ‘Just put the flowers in water, Jolan, and don’t wake me ’til five. I want to sleep. You can go now, I don’t want anything.’ Adrienne always dressed and undressed herself. She did not like having people hovering round her.

  ‘I’ll bring in the breakfast,’ said the old nanny.

  The big room was bathed in light, sun streaming in through the three long windows which gave over the park, casting over the white painted walls a faintly bluish tinge from the reflection of the snow. It was the same shade as the colour of the shadows on the outside of the house here in Kolozsvar and on the banks of the Szamos.

  Adrienne moved over to the tall french doors that looked over the park and leant against the moulded window-frame, her mind devoid of thought, her eyes narrowed in the blinding morning light. She stood there staring outside but seeing nothing, feeling nothing, thinking nothing. She did not hear her maid come with the breakfast, nor her murmured farewell when she left. For a long time she stood there, weary with a faintly sensuous languor that kept her from thinking of what had happened that evening. Everything was in a hazy confusion in her mind, but a confusion tinged with nameless happiness.

  A sudden sound recalled her to herself: it was the crack of a burning log in the fireplace which had fallen into the centre of the fire. Adrienne turned to look and, as she did so, the sight of the flames reminded her of what Balint had said about her dress. Slowly she looked down at her bare arms and shoulders and half-concealed breasts, and at the shimmering panels of silk that flowed from them down to the floor. In the brilliant sunlight she felt naked and exposed. Turning quickly she almost ran through the dark bedroom into the bathroom beyond and undressed. Her movements were automatic and when, a few moments later, she returned to the bedroom and lay down, she thought that she would certainly not be able to sleep. Somehow she did not even want to, for in this unusual feeling of being remote from all thought, all reality, there was a sort of magic which Adrienne would have liked to go on for ever. She lay with her eyes open, the only light in the darkened room coming from narrow spaces where the closed shutters did not quite meet. It was only a few minutes before she sank into a deep dreamless sle
ep which wiped away every image, thought and memory.

  Adrienne awoke as three o’clock struck on the church clock in the town nearby. For a few seconds she stared into the darkness before being gripped by a nameless fear. She did not know why, but she was so terrified that she sat up looking wildly around her and clutching her knees tightly to her chin.

  What was it? What had happened at the ball?

  And then it all came back to her quite clearly. As she slept the impressions of the evening, which had been so confused and vague when she went to bed, had sorted themselves out in her mind. Everything now fell into place with a clarity that appalled her. Repeating to herself the astonishing words, ‘I am in love! In love! In love!’, all the consequences of this reared up in her. It wasn’t possible. She had a husband, a child. She couldn’t. She was tied, bound to the duty that she herself had chosen and husband she had accepted. She was no longer free, so what could it all come to? Balint’s love was no mere Schwärmerei, no little girl’s crush, brought on by propinquity and moonshine. In his words rang the deep sincerity of a real emotion, not the light cajolery of mere flirtation. He wanted her … and there would be no bargaining.