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

by Bánffy, Miklós

  It was disconcerting to hear that disembodied voice coming out of the air above their heads. The invisible presence of Count Uzdy, disquietingly and in some way menacing too, was everywhere around them, next to them, between them …

  Adrienne and Balint sat down on a bench at the foot of the vaulted pillars that held up the covered balcony outside the salon. They sat where they could be seen from every angle and they talked of nothing but trivialities, so strongly did they both have the feeling that they were being watched by invisible eyes, and overheard by invisible ears, from every barred window in the fortress wing and from behind every shutter of the great house above.

  Dinner was served at eight o’clock in the big dining-room. The table was immense and they were seated far away from each other. The room was lit by paraffin lamps hanging from the ceiling. Countess Clémence made polite conversation when she had to, Adrienne barely spoke, and it was Pali Uzdy who kept everything going and led the talk in the direction he wished. It was the same after dinner in the oval drawing-room. The shutters, of course, remained closed, as they had been in the afternoon, and outside the wind had got up and could be heard howling round the house. Afterwards Balint could not recall what they had talked about: all he could remember was the flickering of the table lamps which had thrown agitated shadows on the high carved plaster of the ceiling and that his host had suggested that Balint should go out after roebuck at dawn with one of the forest guards. The man would call him early, said Pali, and went on: ‘They tell me there are some fine buck in my woods. I don’t know anything about it myself as I don’t shoot game, but if it would give you pleasure I should be very pleased. It’s high time some of them were shot!’

  Abady said he had not brought his guns.

  ‘That doesn’t matter! There’s everything here you could possibly need. A Schonauer? A repeater? Or would you rather try a Mauser?’ Then, seeing that Balint looked puzzled, he said: ‘I do a lot of target shooting. That’s why I only have high precision weapons. We can try that too, tomorrow if you wish … naturally, of course, of course!’

  Once again he went into peals of his strange, meaningless laughter until the sides of his long moustaches were pulled apart like two giant inverted commas.

  Balint did not really enjoy shooting but thought it would be churlish to refuse.

  Dawn was just breaking when Abady was called in the morning. The forest guard took him out past the upper forecourt until, some way further on, they left the road and took to the woods walking a long way between carefully tended parcels of woodland, each marked at the corners with little whitewashed posts bearing boards marked with a number. Balint noticed at once how well-looked-after the Uzdy plantations were and thought that this was how things ought to be in his own forests.

  After an hour and a half they emerged from the trees just where the whole of the slope below them had been cleared.

  ‘Careful now!’ whispered the guard. ‘This is where we’ll find them.’ He moved on silently through the undergrowth at the edge of the trees. Just as he had said, in front of them a small herd of deer were grazing in the centre of the clearing, their reddish fur gleaming dully in the morning sunlight. At last the guard pointed to a fine roebuck that was reaching up to nibble the leaves on a spreading oak tree.

  ‘Take that one, your Lordship! That’s a fine beast for you!’

  It was an easy shot, barely a hundred yards, and the buck fell at once, cleanly killed by Balint’s shot. The man went down the slope to pick up the kill and Balint sat down at the edge of the trees to wait until he returned. Then they started back.

  Balint knew that his mother owned some forests somewhere thereabouts and asked the man if he knew where they were.

  ‘Pity your Lordship didn’t mention it a bit earlier! Just there, where your Lordship shot the buck – across the valley the top of the ridge is the boundary between the Uzdy lands and your Lordship’s. I could have taken you there. It’s on the way to Hunyad when we go on foot.’

  They walked briskly on and, at the last crest before the house, they met Adrienne. She looked fresh and blooming with health and good spirits, her generous mouth smiling widely as she inspected Balint’s kill.

  ‘Poor roebuck!’ she said. ‘But perhaps it’s better to die like that, suddenly, cleanly. He might have been torn to pieces by wolves or caught in some poacher’s snare. Are you tired, AB?’ she asked suddenly. ‘If not, I know a beautiful spot from which one can see into the far, far distance!’

  The guard left them to take the buck back to be skinned and they walked, upwards again, into the woods on the opposite side to that from which they had come. The path was narrow and winding and they had hardly taken a hundred paces before they stopped and kissed. After that they kissed and held each other tightly every thirty or so steps until they reached the top and emerged from the trees. In front of them was a superb view over wave after wave of forest until, dominating the whole scene, on a high crest, stood the ruins of the old fortress. Balint noticed none of this, for he was drunk with the nectar of Adrienne’s kisses and with the joy of holding her body tightly pressed to his. They did not sit but remained there for a long time, holding each other as if their very lives depended on it, as if they had both quaffed a potion that rendered them oblivious to everything except each other.

  At midday Farkas and Adam Alvinczy arrived. They drove over in their own carriage because Farkas had a house at Magyarokerek which was only ten kilometres from Banffy-Hunyad. Even their presence did nothing to bring life to the cold and formal atmosphere of the Uzdy household and indeed, in some ways it had the opposite effect for both young men had been brought up in the rowdy school of Uncle Ambrus and now found themselves constrained in the presence of the dowager Countess, Adrienne and Pali Uzdy, none of whom would have appreciated their usual coarse speech and bad language. As a result they were awkward and stiffly formal, especially the younger, Adam, whom Adrienne jokingly called Adam Adamovich because he was in love with her and tried to hid the fact by adopting an even stiffer bearing than did his elder brother.

  As a result the Alvinczy boys were unusually silent both during luncheon and afterwards, leaving Uzdy to keep the conversation going. This he did, in his habitual inconsequent fashion, while Adam and Farkas sat tongue-tied only occasionally contributing some inane triviality. Uzdy was in his element. As an exceptionally well-read man, cultivated and erudite, he chose his topics today only from the latest scientific researches and discoveries and, when it was obvious that the others did not have the smallest notion of what he was talking about, he would turn to one or other of them and put a question to them only to dismiss the answer with contemptuous mockery barely veiled by a veneer of good manners. In this same way he would wittily mix up details of the latest advances in electrical or astronomical research, until his audience was even more bewildered than before. Balint felt at once that Uzdy was showing off, though it certainly was not for his benefit, nor for that of the Alvinczys. For his wife then? Ah, that was it. It was as if behind every clever phrase rang the words: ‘See! This is me, this is how I am, your husband! Your beaux are nothing but country dullards, blockheads – look at me, only at me!’

  Adrienne’s face gave nothing away, her eyes quite expressionless under half-closed lids. Countess Clémence, too, was stonily entrenched behind the wall of her inexorable politeness.

  The large figure of the butler, Maier, served them in silence in the shuttered dining-room. Later, when they sat in the gloomy shade of the salon whose shutters also were still closed, he would from time to time glide silently into the room to bring coffee or to empty the ashtrays and then just as silently and unobtrusively leave it again. He appeared to ignore everyone in the room, but Balint noticed that from time to time he would raise his large sad eyes and glance at his master. Uzdy went on talking wittily but nervously well into the afternoon.

  All at once he got up and suggested they go out pigeon-shooting.

  ‘That’s a real sport!’ he said. ‘I h
ave an excellent field for it; just like in Monte Carlo. Does everyone agree? Yes? Well then, let’s go!’

  Countess Clémence withdrew to her own rooms, but Addy walked down with them.

  ‘I assume you breed them yourself?’ said Adam Alvinczy as they started off.

  ‘Pigeons? Certainly not, not one! We shoot only at clay pigeons. I wouldn’t slaughter a living animal. Why should I? They don’t harm anyone. People, yes. That would be different; but animals, never!’ and, turning back towards the rest of them he seemed to be weighing them up, measuring their capacities and perhaps their characters, with his wide-set, slanting Tartar eyes. Then, tossing back his head and straightening his narrow shoulders, he turned and led the way down the hillside to a small valley. Targets had been set up in front of a patch of bare clay where part of the steep hillside had slipped. Some way away in the meadow, in front of the landslide, throwing machines had been placed in a fan-shaped formation, with wooden planks for the guns to stand on, and, where the path came to an end, there were tables with ammunition boxes, pistol-holders, a selection of rifles, two benches to sit on, and a small telescope on a stand.

  ‘Here we are! This is it!’ cried the host. ‘It’s splendid, isn’t it? I practise here every afternoon. Well, my friends, choose your guns, please! They’re all here!’

  The visitors went over to the tables at the stands and were surprised to see only sporting rifles, no shotguns. ‘It’s more fun with these,’ said Uzdy from behind them. ‘I never shoot with anything else. You’ll see! This is the real sport, I assure you. Now go on, take your pick, choose what you like. If you want to you can try them out at the fifty-and hundred-metre targets.’

  Adrienne sat down silently on one of the benches. The guests took a few shots at the targets and they shot well, for in those days in Transylvania target-shooting was a popular sport.

  ‘Well done! You’ll do! Let’s start!’ shouted Uzdy excitedly as he checked the results through his telescope. A young peasant lad, who had been waiting for a sign from his master, now slipped down into the trench behind the clay-pigeon machines, so that all they could see of him was the top of his head and his hands when he inserted the discs into the throwing machine.

  Uzdy himself was the first.

  ‘Ready!’ he called, and a disc flew up. Uzdy fired and the clay pigeon was shattered before their eyes. The others followed, but with little success. Out of five throws Adam achieved only one hit: the others did not even do as well as this. Only Uzdy never missed. One by one the others gave up, but there was no stopping Adrienne’s husband, who became more and more animated, jumping up and down on the wooden platform and finally discarding his hat and jacket. Moving his body frenetically and waving his long arms in their shirt-sleeves he looked like some giant long-legged spider, over-excited, almost out of control. All Uzdy’s normal restraint disappeared, as if the shooting had liberated something in his soul which was normally hidden only by the man’s delicately balanced self-control. The sun started to set and still he did not stop. He shouted new orders, sometimes having two discs shot up at the same time – and when he did this he invariably managed to hit both. He was an exceptional shot who took aim as if by instinct rather than by conscious skill. His appearance was frightening, with his elongated figure and satanic head etched black against that yellow hillside whose sulphurous hue was now emphasized by the rays of the setting sun.

  Adrienne and the three guests watched in silence, only occasionally interjecting a ‘Bravo!’ or ‘Well shot!’ out of mere politeness. They wondered if Uzdy would ever stop and, indeed he did not do so until Maier appeared from somewhere and touched his master on the shoulder, and said quietly: ‘It’s time to dress, my Lord. Dinner will be served in fifteen minutes.’

  After dinner Balint saw that the french windows onto the terrace had been opened for the first time since he had arrived at Almasko. The previous evening, of course, had been a windy night, but today all was still and the full moon shone with a clear milky radiance.

  Adrienne led Balint and Adam Alvinczy outside to some chairs beside the stone balustrade. They talked quietly and slowly, using few words, and now it was Adam who spoke while Balint, who sat a little farther away from Adrienne, merely listened without taking in much of what the other was saying. Inside the house it was the elder Alvinczy’s turn to exchange platitudes with their host and his mother, while Count Uzdy himself sat hunched up in a large wing armchair and seemed to do nothing but gaze directly at one of the table-lamps. One might have thought that perhaps he was overtired after his exertions that afternoon at the pigeon shoot, but close inspection of his eyes showed that he was possessed by some strange and secret agitation, and that he might have been seeking the solution to his problems in the flame behind its glass shade. Occasionally his facial muscles would give a twitch, sometimes the corners of his mouth were pulled back as if he were about to laugh or take a bite at something; then he would blink and slowly lean his head back against the upholstery of the chair, remaining motionless for a long time. Balint could see him well from where he sat outside the room.

  Adrienne was also silent, though not with the tranquillity of mutual repose as when she and Balint would sit together in silence for hours at a time. Now her silence was hostile, like that of someone alone in an alien world. Her manner was unpropitiatory and antagonistic to those around her and the few words she spoke were hard and dismissive; and though she sometimes made a joke of what was being said, teasing Adam Adamovich and laughing at his attempts to entertain her, she was not natural and her laughter seemed artificial and forced.

  Uzdy suddenly rose and left the salon, returning in a few moments with a silken shawl which he brought out to Adrienne.

  ‘This is so that you wouldn’t catch cold!’ he said.

  ‘Thank you, but it isn’t cold tonight. I don’t need it,’ she said, protesting, as he tried to put it round her shoulders. But despite her protests her husband still wrapped the shawl round her before turning and making his way back to the drawing-room. Did Balint imagine it, or had Uzdy given him a mocking glance as he passed?

  It was such a little thing that Balint was not sure he had not been mistaken, and nothing else out of the ordinary was to happen before they all went to bed a little later. When the old lady got up from her accustomed place on the sofa the others all rose too, and those on the balcony came back into the room to say goodnight. They all left the drawing-room together and while the two Alvinczys were escorted by the butler to their rooms on the lower floor, Countess Clémence went directly to her apartments on the left of the oval entrance hall.

  Adrienne, Uzdy and Balint went to the doors on the right, where Balint’s room was to be found at the beginning of the corridor leading to the Uzdy’s private wing. They stopped outside Balint’s door for a moment and said goodnight. Then Uzdy put his arm round his wife and led her away. Balint watched them until they had disappeared round the corner.

  Balint turned down the light as soon as he got into bed, but he couldn’t sleep. It was hot in the room so he got up, went over to the windows and threw open the shutters.

  Before him there was a beautiful view; or rather half a beautiful view, for everything to the left was cut off by the protruding wing and the wooden tower with its staircase at the far end. The windows were all dark, with no sign of light apart from that of the moon shining outside. Not a sound was to be heard.

  The young man leaned out of the window thinking that though the view before him was exceptionally beautiful, it was in some mysterious way gloomy; though perhaps this was due the cold brightness of the moonlight. Round the house were low irregular hills covered with the black outlines of oak trees; closer to Balint the lawns and flowerless gardens were black too and only in the distance, seemingly just an inch away from the vertical line of the projecting tower, could be seen the twin ghostly outlines of the ruined fortress across the valley, shining now not with the brilliance of sunlight that had illuminated them as he looked from the train,
but with a vapoury, ghostly iridescence that seemed fraught with forebodings of a tragic destiny.

  Balint remained there for a long time, gazing out into the night and trying not to allow his memory of how Adrienne looked that evening to haunt his memory. Her face had been set in cold, hostile lines, not only for everyone else but also, and this he did not understand, for him as well. Since the Alvinczys had arrived she had made a point of devoting herself to Adam Adamovich rather than to him whom she had treated with a coquetry that was both cold and contrived. It had hurt; it was humiliating and, after those kisses in the forest that morning, utterly incomprehensible. Balint became filled with doubts and began to wonder if it were possible that in reality Adrienne was one of those calculating women who planned their conquests with cunning but with ultimate frigidity. Could she be one of those who carried on with several men at the same time, taking pleasure from making them suffer and only happy when she could laugh at their enslavement? Women like that can never really love, reflected Balint as he leaned on the cold window-sill, all they can do is rejoice when they know they are causing torment.

  As he was thinking about the enigma of Adrienne the silence was interrupted by the sound of wooden boards creaking. The sound came from the staircase in the tower and from where he stood Balint could see the faint light of a candle held by someone slowly ascending the stairway within. For a moment there would be a glow at one dark barred aperture, then nothing, then again it would appear at a window farther up. At the topmost window it disappeared altogether.

  Balint’s heart constricted. Uzdy was going to his wife.

  Everything that had previously mystified him was now made clear. Clear, why Adrienne’s mirth had been so false and hard; clear, why she had made that flight to the covered balcony after dinner, and why she had tried to reject the wrap brought by her husband; clear, her terrified face when she said goodnight in the corridor. And, just as distinctly, Balint had seen in Adrienne’s face that evening the same agonized expression as when he himself had nearly raped her at Kolozsvar. How had he not recognized it earlier? Balint now realized that all evening she had felt nothing but loathing for everyone and everything around her because she knew, in advance, what was in store for her later.