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

by Bánffy, Miklós

  ‘These good people are lying to you, Mama,’ said Balint after reading the letter. ‘The house and gardens are both in a disgraceful condition because of their negligence, no one else’s! I’ve seen it all for myself. Azbej told me that the carpenter hasn’t paid a sou in years and he was about to give notice to the tailor for the same reason.’

  ‘This does not concern Azbej! He has no authority in these matters!’ said Countess Roza stiffly. ‘Azbej does what I tell him to do and I will not have these poor people thrown out on the street for no reason. I have never done such things and I don’t intend to start now. When the property is yours you can do what you like! But while I’m alive we’ll have none of these new methods, if you please!’ And she glared at Balint crossly, her little eyes bulging with anger.

  ‘My dear Mama, I really didn’t think …’ started Balint, but he was not allowed to continue.

  ‘All right! But let it be clearly understood I don’t want to hear anything more about it. And, what’s more, you will please remember to speak to me before you raise such things with other people!’

  This was the first time that Balint had had a collision with his mother since she had asked him to take more part in the running of their estates.

  The experience taught him that he would have to proceed with great caution as it was obvious that his mother was by no means as prepared to relinquish the reins as she had previously suggested. About two weeks later, therefore, when Kalman Nyiresy, the forest supervisor, brought in the report for which Balint had asked, he went immediately to his mother taking with him the old plans of the forests which Nyiresy now admitted he had found among the archives. Countess Roza was delighted and gave Balint a free hand at once.

  The weeks and months passed. Spring arrived, and whenever Balint found himself in Kolozsvar he would go, as dusk was falling, to visit Adrienne. He would usually go on foot and, as he walked down the Monostor road he would always ask himself the same questions: What did he want from Adrienne? What was the use of all this? Did he really want to start something that couldn’t be stopped and would tie him down, for he certainly did not want to lose his independence to any woman? Life should be lived without that sort of encumbrance. No commitments, that was always best. But if that is what he felt why was he pursuing Adrienne, when there were plenty of other women around with whom he could amuse himself without any problems? Each time he walked up the Monostor road he was assailed by the same confused thoughts and ideas.

  Sometimes another voice spoke within him, a voice more cynical, more arrogant, a voice that laughed at his scruples and self-searching, and which accused him of behaving more like a timid schoolboy than a grown man of the world. This was the voice that said Balint was a fool, which scorned his moral reticence and laughed at his failure to end their little game of caresses by a serious and determined onslaught. ‘Take her, you timid little college boy!’, it said.

  And one day, as they were lying close to each other on the cushions in front of the fire, it was to this second voice that Balint listened.

  As so often they had been talking about love but, whereas in what Balint said there was always a hidden meaning, a purpose that he felt impelled to conceal from her, when Adrienne spoke her words were cool, impersonal, genuine reflections of what was in her mind. She talked of love as calmly and logically as she might of painting, sculpture or books, and her opinions were radical and modern. Marriage, said Adrienne, was an old-fashioned and meaningless institution. Nobody had the right to limit the freedom of another individual. All women as well as men should be free to act as they chose, as much with their bodies as with their thoughts. This was the only undisputed right that was accorded to mankind. Free will must be paramount. If you wanted to – and, shying away from the subject, she paused before going on to say that of course it was incomprehensible that anyone should want to ruin their lives just for that – then it should be their own affair and no one else’s. She herself would never judge anyone for going against the judgment of society. If that’s what they wanted, well, let them! It seemed to Balint as if her disappointment in her own marriage echoed through her words and encouraged him to hope that this was the moment for which he had been waiting, the moment when he should press for more. Gently murmuring words of agreement and encouragement, he started his attack by pressing his mouth into the back of her neck and gently covering with kisses that part where the almost invisible hairs are as soft and velvety as the skin of a peach. It was here too that her very individual woman’s scent seemed at its strongest.

  Finally, when she paused for a moment he pressed her down violently, thrusting forward his shoulder to push her farther down among the cushions, his hands searching, searching, searching … For a brief moment Adrienne did not react; then, with the speed of a panther at bay, she jumped up and stood, back to one of the stone columns of the fireplace, tense, angry and defensive. She looked at Balint with hatred and amazement, outraged, unable to find words adequate to express her fury.

  ‘What? What?’ She was panting with emotion. ‘How dare you!’

  Balint bowed his head humbly, without moving from where he sat at her feet. ‘Forgive me!’ he said. ‘Please forgive me!’ And he tried to cover up with a lie, saying that he had slipped, that it was an accident, that he hadn’t meant anything … really nothing at all!

  Adrienne stood there without speaking, mutinous, looking at him with distrust, in her eyes the look of an animal that feels trapped and unsure of itself. After much pleading and more abject apologies from Balint she agreed once again to sit down beside him on the cushions, but apart, not close as before. This time she sat opposite him, her legs drawn up under her, defiant, coiled like a spring and ready to leap up and flee at his smallest move. Balint felt that she did not believe a word he said to her as she sat there, tense and strained, and so, after about half an hour of halting conversation on totally impersonal subjects, he got up to say goodbye. Adrienne gave him her hand but when he asked if he could call again on the following day, she said that she had some calls to make in the town and would not be at home.

  ‘Perhaps I could walk with you when you go calling? At least that way we could see each other,’ said Balint.

  ‘Very well. I suppose you could, though I don’t yet know who I’ll be visiting or when.’

  And so they parted.

  Balint was very angry. He blamed himself far more than he blamed Adrienne and even now he could not make up his mind exactly where the fault lay nor where he had gone wrong.

  Once again two warring voices competed in his brain, the one despising him for being a coward and not following up his advantage by taking her regardless of any resistance. This voice told him that he would never achieve what he wanted by hesitating until the moment had passed, and that even if she had been angry at first all women calmed down as soon as it was over. And if she didn’t calm down? Well, then, what would it matter? At least he would have had her once! But the other voice was stronger and more convincing. This voice blamed him for even trying when he knew that she was not ready and did not want it. What an ugly and joyless coupling it would have been if he had succeeded, humiliating to both of them. Nothing would have been achieved, never again would he be able to pass those afternoons in her arms, those extraordinary, childish, unfulfilled hours when they lay innocently, their bodies entwined in a brotherly passionless intimacy, and when he was obliged to be content with the light caresses that were all that this woman, so strangely ignorant of what was meant by love, would allow him.

  It was incredible that Adrienne could permit those endless fondling caresses, light wandering kisses, contact between their hands, legs and bodies, and still remain cool and unaroused while he was bursting with desire, as full of tension as a tightly drawn bow-string. Up until now this strange anomaly had charged him with power and pleasure until after he had left her as dusk fell, intoxicated but not disappointed, giddy with the effort to control himself, but happy too, always happy. But on this day he was sad
and depressed. Something had spoilt the magic for him and he could think only of how he could regain that strange paradise where, unlike Eden, the fruit of knowledge was not to be plucked.

  By the early afternoon on the next day Balint was already to be found sitting at a table in front of the Hotel New York in the King Matyas Square. He had chosen a place on the sidewalk where he had a good view of everything that took place in the square. To give a reason for being there, he had ordered a cup of coffee that remained untasted on the table in front of him. The weather was sunny but even so the spring warmth had hardly begun and there was no one else at the other tables. Balint waited for a long time until he saw Adrienne approaching. He rose hurriedly and went to meet her.

  Addy seemed as relaxed and gay as if nothing unusual had happened between them.

  ‘Do you have to start calling on people at once?’ asked Balint. ‘Couldn’t we take a stroll first? The weather’s so beautiful!’

  Adrienne agreed. ‘We could go to the top of the Hazsongard,’ she said. ‘The view from there is marvellous. I often walk there. Shall we?’

  The Hazsongard was the old cemetery of the town. The unusual name, which had no meaning of its own, was thought to have come from the German word Hasengarten, – a place where hares were to be found in abundance – and in time what had formerly been a place for hunting was found to be conveniently close to the town and so suitable as a burial place. A steep road, paved with cobblestones, led up a hill just outside the town. On both sides could be seen many tombstones, mostly old and neglected, as well as an occasional elaborate mausoleum erected by a prosperous family to house their dead in suitable dignity.

  Adrienne and Balint did not speak as they climbed to the top. Finally they arrived at the far end of the burial ground and found a place to sit on the flat top of an old tomb. Up on the hillside the wind was cold and strong.

  Adrienne had not exaggerated when she had said that the view was marvellous. From where they sat they could look down on the roofs of the town below and the lines of the old walls, which could only occasionally be discerned from close to, could easily be traced from here, the battlements and little defence towers clearly defining the medieval town and separating it from the more recent suburbs. The sunlight gave an ethereal glow to the old stones of the church walls and steeples. On the other side of the town the Citadel Hill rose dramatically from the faintly blue mists which shrouded the course of the Szamos river and its little tributary, the Nadas. Above, the peaks of the Gyalu mountains gleamed pale lilac above the yellow streaks of the rivers now swollen by melting snow and, far to the north east, the Tarcsa hills could be discerned rising from the valley.

  ‘It is beautiful here, isn’t it?’ said Addy.

  For a while Balint did not reply. He just sat there beside her, gazing at the panorama spread out before them. When he did finally speak he did not look at her but looked steadily in front of him. He needed all the control he could muster to keep his tone light and gently mocking.

  ‘You know, Addy,’ he said as if he were joking, ‘I’ve thought a lot about you, and I’ve made an important discovery!’

  ‘And what is it?’

  ‘That you are a dangerous impostor!’

  ‘Well, really! I’ve never had that compliment before!’

  ‘It’s true! You talk about love as if you know all about it, while the truth is you know nothing at all, less than nothing. You’ve really no idea what it’s all about! There are teachers, you know,’ he went on lightly so as to soften the harshness of what he was saying, ‘who talk about icebergs, or the sea, or the jungle, without ever having been outside the four walls of their study. They’ve learned all they know from books. You are like them,’ he added slowly and deliberately. ‘This is very dangerous for those who must listen to such teachers. It can be misleading. And you, you of all people! Why, everything about you, your lips, smile, hair, walk, it all contributes to the swindle! Yes, swindle! Everything about you tells the world that you are a woman when the reality is that you are nothing but an ignorant little girl who knows nothing at all of what she is talking about. Everything about you is false, nothing is what it seems, nothing. This is surely what the Greeks had in mind when they invented the Sphinx, half woman, half … half monster – un monstre, as the French say so descriptively. And you are something even more strange, a sphinx who doesn’t even know the answer to her own questions. Oh, what a danger you are to us modern wanderers!’

  A deep blush spread slowly over Adrienne’s ivory skin. Never before had anyone detected the sexual deficiency which for so long had made her feel set apart from other women. When some of her female friends confided their problems to her the only result was that she was made to feel different from them, poorer, lonelier, ashamed – and for this reason she had never told anyone of her own difficulties and confusions. Indeed she had done all she could to hide her misery from the world. Knowing that she was blushing, and hoping to prevent Balint from realizing it, she put up her hand as if she needed to hold on to her hat against the strength of the wind but in reality to shade her face from him, so that he could not see her expression.

  ‘A yellow-eyed monster!’ he went on. ‘It sounds dreadful, doesn’t it? But that’s what I’m going to call you from now on; the Yellow-Eyed Monster! In memory of this afternoon.’

  Adrienne understood at once that he was not referring to that afternoon but to their meeting the day before. Balint’s tiger pounce made her angry even now when she thought about it, but this feeling lasted only an instant, for she immediately consoled herself by assuming that everything that Balint had just said had been intended to justify himself, not to attack her. That must have been what was in his mind, she said to herself, when he said that she was different from women with experience in matters of love. Yet, inexperienced and innocent as she was, she still had an uneasy feeling that other women in love would not have been offended or repulsed him as she had. Refusing to admit this, even to herself, she raised her head defiantly as if to ward off further attack. Balint, however, changed the subject.

  ‘Do you see? The willows are already green and the birches are coming into bud? They’re all golden as if covered in a gauze veil, and in a week’s time they’ll be in leaf.’

  ‘Yes! Yes, it is lovely!’ Adrienne spoke with added eagerness, thankful to be talking of something else.

  ‘Springtime awakes! It’s like Wedekind’s play. Did you ever read it?’

  Adrienne admitted that she had and found it interesting but strange. So with relief on both sides they slipped into an easy discussion about books and plays and writers which lasted until they started to descend the hill once again. The wind grew stronger and, as they battled against it, the lines of Adrienne’s legs were clearly visible through the serge of her skirt. With the material fluttering in the wind behind her Balint was once again reminded of Diana the Huntress in the Louvre, whose stride and bearing were nothing if not victorious.

  On the following day they again went for a walk in the afternoon and it was not until three more days had passed that Adrienne allowed Balint to visit her again at her home. And then it was only because Parliament had been recalled and Balint would have to go back to Budapest on the night train. It would be his last evening at Kolozsvar.

  ‘All right, you can come,’ said Addy, and went on with severe emphasis, ‘but only if you promise: as we were before. You understand?’

  When Balint arrived and was shown into Adrienne’s sitting-room, he found her as usual half sitting, half lying on the pile of cushions in front of the fire. He sank down beside her and it seemed to him that today she received his kisses with more response than before, as if she were tacitly trying to tell him that she wanted to be forgiven. Though no words passed her lips she seemed to say: Even if I can’t give you more at least I can give you this with all my heart! But please don’t ask for more! They remained for a long time, mouth to mouth and body to body, barely speaking apart from an occasional endearment, never a sentenc
e or question that had to be answered. Adrienne’s wavy hair fell in disorder round her shoulders until they had to pull apart so that she could sit up and pin her rebellious mane back into place. As she did so Balint leant back, away from her, his eyes drinking in the beauty of her slim waist and the line of her arms as they curved above her head.

  The door from the bedroom door opened. Pal Uzdy came in, silently, his slow measured steps making no sound as he walked slowly to the fireplace. There he turned stiffly, straightened up his long thin body and without any polite hesitation or greeting, said: ‘What are you doing here in the dark?’

  ‘Talking!’ said Addy defiantly.

  ‘So! So! Indeed! That’s very good. Of course! Of course!’ Uzdy spoke slowly and deliberately, pausing between each repeated word, a smile of mockery on his cadaverous face. As he spoke it was clear that his eyes were taking in the pile of cushions strewn on the floor, some of which showed clearly by their disarray that they had been lain upon for a considerable time.

  ‘Artistic subjects, of course! The arts … culture. Very absorbing, I know. It’s a pity I don’t understand such things. Anyway I have not time for them. I arrived from Almasko this instant, and I’ve a great deal to do!’