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

by Bánffy, Miklós

  With an aching heart Adrienne realized that she had not only listened to everything that Balint had had to say, but that she had also accepted it. Not in so many words, of course, for she herself had hardly spoken, but with her eyes and her expression as she listened to him, with her body when she danced with him, in her silent acquiescence to his words, her acceptance of his hand twined in hers, and with the pressure of her fingers when he kissed her palm on the steps. She had never for a moment held back, resisted, never protested or rebuked him or even given the smallest indication that his ardent demands were not welcome and might not be accepted.

  Adrienne shuddered to think how far she had let him go, she who had never allowed Adam Alvinczy or Pityu Kendy to sit too closely beside her or to hold her tightly when they danced, and who had always frozen anyone into silence if they dared to flirt too outrageously or make even the mildest allusion to sexuality between men and women. Of course it had been easy with the others. Their attentions were all play-acting. Even if Pityu and Adam fancied themselves in love with her, she treated such attentions as a joke, to be shrugged off as lightly. It was easy because it meant nothing. With such friends she did not care, so she played with them as if they were outsize dolls made only for her amusement. If they tried to go further and tell her of their feelings with tears in their eyes, pleading to be taken more seriously, she only joked with them the more and teased them and made fun of them with careless coquetry.

  And now?

  Last night she had given everything to Balint that she had denied the others. She saw herself listening, captivated by the magic of his words and the strength of his passion. How sweetly what he had said had sounded in her ears, how welcome, how fascinating. And she had not flinched at the passion, the desire, which pulsated through everything he had said. His yearning for her could not be disguised. His meaning was so clear, so direct, that even when they had exchanged nothing but otherwise meaningless banalities, his words had only reflected his desire to love her. It was obvious what he was speaking of when he told her about the fire or the waterfall and his voice, so low and seemingly devoid of passion, and his look, which gave a new significance to otherwise innocent words, rang with the force of his inner feelings. Finally, when after a long pause he had said, ‘I love you, Addy!’, had she tried to stop him uttering the words that should never have been said? No! On the contrary she had drunk in his words with silent joy, sitting there with her hand in his, her heart beating; it had been as if they were alone in the world and existed only for each other. Lying now in her darkened room she stretched languorously at the memory of those magic moments until, all at once, she seemed to come to her senses, alert and conscious of a reality which almost made her jump out of bed. Adrienne shuddered as she realized what little Dinora must have seen in her face. What had she said? That Balint was ‘sweet and good’, that she ‘recommended him’! How shameful! And with horror she suddenly grasped the appalling implication.

  ‘How hateful! How mean! How vile I am! Now AB himself must believe that I’d be willing … with him … Oh, that revolting act! He’s a right to believe…’ Even in thought she couldn’t bring herself to put her revulsion into words.

  Adrienne was filled with horror. It was not only that the situation was so complicated, that she was a married woman who had given herself irrevocably to a man she did not love and who would never let her go, not only because of their child but also because, in his disgusting way, he loved her. Neither was it the thought of the social consequences, the menace of shame and exposure she would risk by falling in love with him. No! There was something much deeper in her woman’s consciousness that tore at her nerves and demanded, loath as she was, to be faced and accepted, a truth from which she recoiled with every fibre of her being. She had married without love, without even thought of love. She had longed to be free of her parents’ house; and when Pali Uzdy had courted her even he had not spoken of love but only of his loneliness, his desire for a partner in his work and his life, his longing for someone to help and support him. Their desires met and merged, seemed mutual, compatible. He had kissed her only once before their marriage, a brief passionless embrace under her ear, on her neck, at the moment she had accepted him, and he had released her quickly. Now, knowing him better, Adrienne realized that this was probably because he knew that he could not control himself. When, after the marriage ceremony, they had travelled by carriage to Almasko, and throughout the evening until it had been time to go to bed, he had maintained always his easy, calm, friendly manner though – or was it only afterwards that she had been conscious of it? – in his eyes had lurked the same watchful glitter as that with which a beast of prey would stalk its victim.

  The memory of that night still made her sick with fear and disgust. She had gone to bed, nervous and frightened, but nothing had prepared her for the horror that followed. As soon as Uzdy had come to her bed he had flung himself upon her, tearing at her with his hands, his teeth clenched in mindless passion as he assaulted her and, brutally forcing her legs apart, entered her with all the power of a battering ram. He subjugated her, defamed her, taking his pleasure how and when he wished, with never a word of tenderness or thought for his victim – and he went on until morning when he abruptly left her without a word as dawn began to show through the curtains. And every time since it had been the same. Never once did Uzdy make the smallest attempt to arouse in his wife any tenderness, to awaken any response to his passion, to allay her fear. He seemed, on the contrary, to glory in the terror that he must have sensed in her, as if, by some atavistic instinct, he himself was only aroused by resistance in the female. From that very first night, whenever Adrienne had seen that tell-tale glitter in her husband’s eye, she had felt as if she were being stalked by hired assassins.

  Lying now in her room as the afternoon light was fading the memory of these scenes came back to her so vividly that her soul cringed with disgust. This loathsome memory was all that Adrienne had ever experienced of love, and now she was filled with dread at the thought that this was what Balint would wanted of her and, what was worse, what she herself had allowed him to expect.

  How could she have given Balint hope that she, of all people, would ever permit him to do this to her? She must stop it at once. She must not cheat him or lead him on. She must put an end to this terrible situation before this strange love for him that she felt welling up in her drove her unconsciously into his arms. She knew that this would happen, and she knew too that if it did she would hate him for ever. If she were to preserve her love for him she must act at once and, though she had barely realized that this was her real motive, she made a swift decision. Jumping out of bed, she hurried into the drawing-room, stumbling through the growing darkness to her desk. The clock struck a quarter after four. There was so little time! On a leaf of paper she wrote: ‘I have a bad headache and slight fever. Can’t take you to the ball. Get someone else. Love. Addy.’ Slipping the note into an envelope, she addressed it to Judith Miloth, marking it ‘Urgent. Deliver at once’. Then she went back into her bedroom, lit a candle, got back into bed and rang for her maid.

  ‘Please have this sent at once to my sister Judith,’ she said.

  ‘Wouldn’t her Ladyship like something to eat? It’s ready…’

  ‘No. No, I don’t want anything. Wait! A little beef-tea. I think I have a temperature!’ Adrienne realized that she had better start playing her part at home if she did not want her servants inadvertently to betray her.

  When the soup was brought she drank it swiftly and went to sleep. Soon after seven she was woken again by the arrival of her sisters, both already dressed for the ball, hoping that they could persuade her to go with them.

  ‘Do come, Addy! It will be so boring with Papa, and we can’t find anyone else so late. You’re not really ill, are you? Not too ill to come with us? Please, Addy!’ They both spoke at once and Mlle Morin, who had come with them, added her own plaintive soprano warblings.

  Adrienne lay back looking col
dly at them from the mountain of lace-edged pillows. She did not reply, thankful that her face could hardly be seen in the faint candle-light. Judith went on: ‘Papa is cross as pie, and there really isn’t anyone else!’ Then, very determinedly, she said, ‘I absolutely must go tonight. I’m engaged for supper.’

  With a knowing smile Margit asked: ‘Have you taken any aspirin?’

  Adrienne hated lying, so she just said, rather crossly ‘Do go now and leave me alone!’

  Margit looked back from the door and asked, ‘Who were you having supper with? I’ll take him over if you like. I haven’t got anyone.’

  Adrienne did not answer, but she gave her youngest sister such an angry look that Margit hurriedly left the room and closed the door behind her.

  Adrienne counted the chimes as the church clock struck, first eight, then half past, then nine o’clock. Now they must be dining. Half past nine. Ten o’clock. Now they would be striking up the csardas, and if she had gone to the ball, she would have been alone with him as she had on the previous day. Could it have only been yesterday?

  Staring unseeingly at the dark ceiling she conjured up the scene in the deserted supper-room. Balint’s face, lean and hard, a young man’s face with a thin, straight nose, narrow blond moustache, fairer than his hair which he wore longer than most of the other young men. How shiny it is! she thought, remembering how his head had glowed in the candle-light. How silky it must be! How intently he had gazed at her with those steely grey eyes, and how serious was the curve of his lips as he spoke those magic sentences of love and adoration.

  She longed to be with him again and asked herself over and over why she had given up so easily, hidden herself away and pretended she did not long to be with him and sit dreamily with eyes closed as he talked, letting those beautiful words flow deep into her heart. He would be bitter and angry that she had not come, though he could not know – and thank God for it – what her real reasons had been. But why hadn’t she gone herself to tell him, to explain the confusion in her heart? Balint Abady would have understood that he must not expect… Now probably he was thinking that she had led him on only to forsake him. There would have been no real harm in seeing him again tonight, for he would soon have to go back to Budapest to attend Parliament, or to the mountains to visit his forests, or … So why not allow one more meeting, just one, perhaps the only one? Now it was too late! She had given him up and he would know it because she had not come; and she had gone through all this only to throw away the only joy she had ever known. She had never ever… ‘Never – ever’, his words rang in her head, endlessly repeated, as her throat tightened and the tears gathered in her eyes, slowly running down her cheeks and falling one by one on her breast. When she could bear it no more she turned, strangled with sobs and buried her face in the pillows, her black hair tumbling about her head, and cried, one crying fit following another until sleep came to blot out her sorrows.

  The clock tower chimed the passing hours but Adrienne heard nothing.

  When she woke in the morning the hair about her face and her pillows were still wet from her tears.

  Chapter Seven

  THE ASSEMBLY ROOMS of the Casino were full of people waiting for the evening’s festivities to begin. Today was the Ash Wednesday Ball. It was already after eight-thirty but, though the dinner had been ordered for eight o’clock, the Miloth party had still not arrived.

  Farkas Alvinczy, as official organizer, was looking at his watch every few minutes, for though the caterer had already twice sent word that the dinner would be spoilt if it were not served at once, he was anxious that everything should go right. Five more minutes, he said, but he was not pleased that something seemed to have gone wrong on the last night of the season.

  Alvinczy turned to his fellow organizer, Baron Gazsi. ‘What shall we do? If we don’t start soon the dinner will be ruined!’

  ‘It’s very awkward. We could send word, or telephone?’

  ‘They don’t have one, but we could send a carriage to meet them. Perhaps something has happened. One of their horses may have fallen and they’re stuck somewhere,’ said Farkas, again looking at his watch.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ said Gazsi, turning to give an order to one of the waiting footmen. Hardly had he done so when a stentorian voice could be heard at the entrance.

  ‘What a mess! But it’s not my fault. How are you, my boy? They dragged me here by force! Me! An old man at a ball!’ The big double doors were flung open and there appeared framed in the doorway Judith and Margit Miloth with old Rattle behind them, keeping up a constant flow of talk in his loud voice. The group of waiting young men, with Adam Alvinczy, Pityu and Balint in the lead, swarmed round them.

  ‘Where’s Adrienne? Didn’t she come?’ Adam asked Margit, who raised her little hawk-like nose and, looking at Abady though replying to Alvinczy, said: ‘It seems she has a headache – and a temperature!’

  A hint of a smile hovered at the corners of Margit’s mouth, which made Balint think that she did not believe a word of it and was making fun of him.

  ‘A headache! Did you ever hear such nonsense?’ roared old Rattle. ‘Just like her mother, never without a headache or a migraine! Got one tonight too. Ah, women! Women! Never marry, my boy, or you’ll get like me, always at their beck and call! Get dressed, they say, without a by-your-leave. What? Sit at a ball ’til dawn, at my age? These old bones ought to be in bed. A coffin! That’s where I should be!’ He shook hands all round, full of life and good spirits, gesticulating widely as with a huge smile under the walrus moustache he continued to shout over the heads of the company who had now started filing into the dining-room. ‘These stupid servants of mine couldn’t find my tails! “What the Devil do you think I should wear, you ox!” I said, “I can’t go naked! D’you think I’ll prance about in front of all the ladies in a fig leaf? I’d be thrown out on my ear! What d’you think I am, a gypsy brat? They can go naked, not me, you ox!”’

  Everybody laughed, everybody but Balint who was filled with anger.

  Bitch! Flirtatious bitch! he said to himself. Obviously this headache was just an excuse, Margit’s secret little smile proved that. Here he was, the victim of the oldest trick in the world. All over you one day, kick you in the teeth the next. What a fool he was to be taken in! Play cat and mouse with him, would she? Tease until you plead, and then let you back until the time to get thrown out again. Oh, but with him this little game would not work, he knew how to have his revenge and he wouldn’t spare her, not now! He’d play the same little trick on her. He had hesitated to declare his love because he wanted to spare her the problems such a love would provoke. He had thought that Adrienne was different, sincere, true and straight, not to be played with like the other married women he had known. This was why he had tried not to fall in love with her. Well, no more. His scruples had been ridiculous, for this evening proved that Adrienne was indeed just like all the others; and he knew how to treat them! They were all alike, shallow and untrustworthy.

  Balint looked around to find a supper partner so that no one should gossip about his heing stood up by Adrienne. Perhaps the little Gyalakuthy girl was free? He would seek her out.

  As it happened Dodo was free. No one had asked her and the organizers were just then looking for someone among the young men who were attending their first balls. She was overjoyed when Abady approached her, even though she thought that he had been sent over to rescue her, and putting her hand on his arm she cast a grateful glance at Farkas for having found her such an escort.

  They went down to the large Casino dining-room where Abady found two places at the table farthest from the door, sitting diagonally across from where Judith Miloth was sitting with Wickwitz. Their presence reminded Balint of what Dodo had told him at Var-Siklod. When the first course had been served the music began. As at Siklod, it was Laji Pongracz who led the band. Under cover of the popular gypsy music, Balint turned to Dodo and said: ‘I didn’t dare hope to have supper with you!’

  Dodo looked
at him, astonished. ‘But I told you everybody avoided me, didn’t I?’

  ‘There’s one who doesn’t. Over there!’ he said as he glanced at Wickwitz across the table.

  The girl shrugged her shoulders. After a little pause she said: ‘How is your cousin Laci? What is he doing? I would have thought he’d be here now.’

  Balint told her all about Laszlo’s work at the Music Academy in Budapest.

  He spoke gaily, light-heartedly, for he wanted the whole world to see how merry he was so that it should not guess he was eating his heart out with misery and anger. Exaggerating somewhat he told Dodo everything that Gyeroffy had outlined to him when they had been together at Var-Siklod, all his dreams, ambitions and plans. Dodo listened enthralled, drinking in his words. And when Balint had said all there was to say about Laszlo’s ambitions he recounted how they had been together at Simonvasar, though he told the girl nothing about Laszlo’s love for his cousin Klara. It had always been against his nature to gossip about such matters, and especially now, when his anger made him despise all things to do with love, he steered well clear of the subject and concentrated on telling Dodo about the pheasant shoot, about his hosts and the guests they had assembled at the castle. Balint did his best to be as amusing and entertaining as possible, but more for the benefit of anyone else sitting near them than for little Dodo herself.

  As it happened, no one was watching him except Dodo, and she only wanted to hear about Gyeroffy. When Balint told her Laszlo was now organizer of the Carnival Balls in the capital, she sighed and said: ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Mama should take me to Budapest! Oh, how marvellous it must be!’

  ‘Don’t you believe it! Girls from Transylvania aren’t made very welcome there … or men either, for that matter! Besides you might fall in love with someone, and that would never do!’ Balint laughed in sympathetic mockery.