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

by Bánffy, Miklós

  The great stretch of water, three hundred yards across, between the Zattere and the three islands of the Giudecca, was spanned by a temporary bridge festooned with electrical bulbs in the form of arches and pillars of fire. On one side the great Palladian church of the Redentore was a blaze of light and everywhere there were boats, thousands of them, covering the water as far as they could see. The state barges of the old patrician families had been brought out; every gondola in Venice seemed to be there and all were covered with flowers glowing in the light of baroque lanterns. Here also were the long barges normally used for transporting seaweed or wood or reeds across lagoons, the broad market boats that supplied the markets all through the week, little sandali and other rowing boats, all packed with people in festive clothes. Everyone mingled together, the richest beside the poorest, the lavish beside the meagre. One thing they had in common: all were decorated and everywhere people were laughing and happy. Some of the smaller craft, like Riccardo’s gondola, carried a bower of flowers, while the large barges had tables laid with food and drink and were peopled with handsome young men and pretty girls. The boys played guitars and mouth-organs and caressed the girls, who in their turn laughed and sang and giggled and kissed the boys and hid their faces in their brightly coloured shawls, those scialli which were an essential part of Venice’s traditional costume. Every boat was packed with as many people as could crowd aboard and everywhere was laughter and happiness.

  In the centre of this vast crowd of boats was the largest of them all, the ‘Serenata’, which rose in the water high above all the others and was hung with delicate paper lanterns. On board all the singers were in theatrical costume and on the deck Balint and Adrienne could just see the faces of Harlequin and Columbine dancing a pantomime, though they could not get close enough to make out what the others were doing.

  Behind them many other gondolas were being rowed as swiftly as their gondoliers were able, everyone wanting to be right at the heart of this great concourse of boats. In front of them there were so many craft that Balint and Adrienne could not see the surface of the water and, looking back to the Dogana, they saw that it was now the same behind them as well. It was a world of boats, nothing but boats, stretching across the waters as if the world were made of nothing else.

  Then, from behind the gleaming temporary bridge, the fireworks began.

  To Balint and Adrienne this was almost more dreamlike and unreal than had been their solitary excursions across the lagoon each evening. In the sky the myriad stars of exploding flame made the night sky seem even darker and more remote and, though the spectators were nearly blinded by the brightness of these lightning flashes of brilliance, to those standing behind, everyone in front of them became mere shadows, dark silhouettes rather than real living people. So it happened that for Balint and Adrienne, though they were surrounded by life and light and noise and the whole pulsating festive crown, it was still as if they alone existed and were real.

  It was their last carefree evening together.

  The next morning, as on every other of their stay on the Lido, the younger Miloth girls went swimming while Mlle Morin remained in the shade of the beach cabin.

  A little later, Margit, who was coming in from a long swim, heard shouting, not as might be expected from the shore but farther out to sea. She put her feet to the ground and stood up. She could not see much as the sea came up to her shoulders. All she could make out was that the noise came from the loud-hailer on the guard-boat. Margit realized at once that someone must be in difficulties as the guard-boat was no longer at anchor and stationary, but was being rowed frenziedly out to sea by the two guards.

  Margit looked around, her eyes searching for Judith, who should have been close behind her: she was nowhere to be seen.

  Instinctively, she knew the alarm was for her sister, who must have swum too far out to sea, to the undertow and the fatal offshore currents. From where she was standing on tiptoe, the sea coming up to her shoulders, all Margit could see was a tiny speck that from time appeared above the waves. She was certain it was Judith and at once struck out as fast as she could towards that little speck, her strong young arms cutting the water in a powerful crawl. She thought of nothing but how to save Judith and, as her head was half under water, she head nothing more of the commotion on the beach and did not see that a motor-launch was being hurriedly pushed out into the shallow water.

  Margit had to work hard to make headway against the waves. Water splashed over her but she battled on, using all her strength so as to get there as quickly as possible. She never heard the launch race past her and it was already returning to shore when she suddenly found herself being hauled on board. It was just in time, for she was now so tired that she too was at breaking point and had to be lifted out of the water by the strong arms of the beach guards.

  Judith was lying like a corpse in the middle of the boat. Margit crouched by her, panting. At this moment the ambulance boat arrived alongside and Judith was lifted into it. Artificial respiration was started at once as the hospital launch sped towards the shore.

  Judith was still not breathing when she was carried onto the beach. They laid her down and once again tried to pump life into her unconscious body.

  At this moment Adrienne arrived on the beach. Seeing the tumult and confusion in front of the hotel beach cabins she asked someone what had happened.

  ‘Una donna ungherese e morta!’ was the reply.

  She thought of Judith immediately and ran towards the crowd, pushing people aside in urgent haste.

  There, on the golden sand, surrounded by a crowd of onlookers eager to gaze at the detail of disaster, lay Judith, quite naked, for her swimming costume had been ripped off her, her little girlish breasts bare to the sky, her ribs and pelvis bones pathetically outlined through the naked flesh of her young body. Three burly life-guards were still desperately trying to bring her back to life.

  Just as Adrienne got near, Judith opened her eyes; but in them there was no expression, no sign that she knew where she was or what had happened to her. Then she closed them again, but already her breathing was regular and so the guards flung a wrap over her, put her on a stretcher and carried her to the hotel. There Judith fell into a deep sleep.

  Young Margit too was still a little confused and had to be helped to her room. Though she protested vigorously, her legs would not carry her and she had unwillingly to agree. Mlle Morin, who, at the sight of Judith’s unconscious form, had cried: ‘Oh, mon dieu! Oh, cette pauvre enfant!’ and collapsed in a faint to the ground, was picked up by the largest of the beach guards, thrown across his hefty shoulders like some broken old doll, and carried upstairs.

  Margit was soon herself again. After lunch she started to search among Judith’s things and found hidden in her underclothes a bulky envelope which, she could tell from the postmark, had been forwarded from Mezo-Varjas and must have arrived the previous day. In the envelope was a bundle of letters tied with a ribbon and with it a letter in an unknown hand which read:

  Dear Countess Judith,

  I have learned that a certain Baron W. has left the country suddenly as a result of some unpleasant scandal. This person at one time used to stay in my house. Once, though whether it was to gain my confidence or out of sheer bravado, he showed me the enclosed letters. Thinking that if he showed them to me he was quite capable of showing them to other people too, I took them from him and kept them in a safe place. When the scandal broke I wondered for a long time what I should do with them. First I thought they should be burnt, but then I thought you might be worried thinking they were still in Baron W.’s hands and that he might – for he would be quite capable of such a thing – use them to blackmail either you or your family. So finally I thought it best to send them back to you so that you would know that there was no such danger. Please believe me when I tell you that no one else knows of their existence and no one, apart from myself, ever saw them while they were in my house.

  Sara Bogdan

  Marg
it and Adrienne read this together. So this was the explanation! Poor Judith. What had happened that morning was obviously no accident, no unlucky accident due to recklessness.

  Judith had wanted to die, and this well-meaning letter was the last death-thrust to her already wounded and grieving heart. Before she had learned what had happened to her letters she had believed firmly that everything that had taken place was the result of bad luck and the malice of other people. In her eyes her lover, that handsome young officer, had committed only one fault, and that was that he had not told her about his need to run away and that he had left her alone in Kolozsvar instead of taking her with him.

  All had been a terrible shock and it had been enough to kill her confidence in the man and his declarations of love for her. But now this, this was sheer ignominy – and the knowledge that he had actually shown those letters, in which she had bared her heart, to another woman and had allowed that other woman to keep them, that was enough, her sisters realized at once, to make her try to kill herself that morning …

  Later in the afternoon, when Judith woke up, they saw that she was not quite normal, that her manner was strange, disconnected, uninterested. Dutifully she drank the beef broth they gave her to drink. She even sipped a little brandy, but when the doctor came to examine her, she merely mouthed an odd sort of dumb laughter, as if she did not know where she was nor what was required of her.

  Adrienne started to tell all this to Balint when, a little later, they met at the foot of the bridge where Lobetti always brought their gondola. As they floated away from their trysting place she told him every detail and, when she had come to the end of her tale, she slid down into his arms, seeking consolation and forgetfulness.

  In the days that followed Judith recovered physically. Already on the morning after the ‘accident’ she was up and about in their suite, eating her food with appetite, but there was no improvement mentally. She had lost that hard, determined reserve that had been so marked in Transylvania and in the first weeks in Venice. Then, though somewhat stiff with the others and always distrustful of Adrienne, she had been full of strength, will-power and resolution. Now she was like a sick child, weak and needing constant guidance. She laughed without reason, and when she spoke there was something peculiar about her speech, for her words came out unnaturally slowly and she talked in a slovenly and drooling manner, little drops of saliva falling from the corners of her mouth.

  The day of the accident Adrienne wrote to her father to tell him what had occurred, describing everything as if it really had all just been an unfortunate accident which had ended well. However, a few days later she found herself obliged to write again, admitting that Judith’s state was giving them cause for alarm, and that the mental specialist they had consulted had ordered them to take her somewhere quiet, either to the country or to a sanatorium. Something had to be done at once, and so Adrienne wrote to ask what she should do.

  As she wrote this second letter to her father Adrienne knew that this meant the end of her stay, the end of those enchanted weeks of unexpected bliss and happiness, the end of everything …

  After a few days a letter came from her mother, but it contained nothing but complaints. Then old Rattle wrote to say that he was too busy to come himself and so had asked his son-in-law, Pali Uzdy, to send out the old butler, Maier, who used to be a male nurse and who could speak German. No doubt if Uzdy could spare him, his presence would be a great help to Adrienne.

  One evening while they were waiting for an answer from home, Riccardo rowed Balint and Adrienne farther than they had ever been before, southwards towards the salt-swept fishing town of Chioggia. It was already dusk when they started, for Adrienne now felt she had to stay on much later at the Lido.

  In silence they floated over the calm waters, leaning closely against each other and holding each other tight, both too overwhelmed by their approaching separation to speak.

  For once the weather was cloudy, and when they went far out, so far out that they could hardly see any sign of the shore they told Riccardo to stop rowing and just let them glide as the current took them. They stayed like this for a long time. Here the lagoon was at its widest and loneliest. There were no other boats to be seen and, as dusk slowly fell, the faint lines of the distant shores disappeared until they could no longer distinguish the horizon from the darkening sky above. Now all was a uniform greyness, empty, cold and lifeless.

  Both of them felt that they were surrounded by a void, an empty space that had nothing above and nothing below, no sound, no colour, no past and no future, and that they glided disembodied over a nothingness that had no beginning and no end.

  That night they returned very late having hardly exchanged a word the whole time they were together.

  The next afternoon Adrienne arrived at their meeting exactly at the hour they had arranged. Without a word she handed Balint a telegram which read: ‘ARRIVING TOMORROW AT MIDDAY – UZDY’. That was all. He gave it back looking at her enquiringly. Without a trace of emotion Adrienne, in a cold voice, said: ‘You must leave here tomorrow!’

  They sat in the gondola slightly apart from each other, but as soon as they emerged from the narrow dark canal and were well away from the city they fell hungrily into each other’s arms.

  When they parted later at the quay she turned to him and said: ‘Come to me later … just once more … to say goodbye.’ And she hastened away in the dark.

  In Adrienne’s dimly-lit room they made love as they never had before.

  In the last weeks, since they had first come together and all Adrienne’s latent femininity had been awakened, an ever-increasing frenzy of passion had seized her every time she lay in Balint’s arms. That wild joy of life that Balint had so often sensed in her but never before aroused, now so overwhelmed her that Adrienne had given herself without reserve and, in realizing to the full the satisfaction of her own nature so she had been able to make it the same for her lover. When, exhausted and spent, they had fallen asleep, it had been as if they were but one person. And if, from time to time in the course of those delirious nights, the Angel of Death was beating his wings above them, they had turned away consciously refusing to think of the future …

  On this last night they did not sleep. Without uttering a word, they clung to each other desperately, kissing, biting each other’s flesh, tearing at each other trying to suffocate in their overwhelming search for oblivion. It seemed that all that was left to them was to seek death from exhaustion, as if now the only fulfilment was to be found in killing the other with the urgency of their love.

  When dawn broke Balint lifted himself up onto his elbow. Now, for the first time he spoke:

  ‘What is going to happen, when …?’

  They looked into each other’s eyes for a long time, seriously, not very close, almost at arm’s length apart. He did not have to say more, for Adrienne knew at once what he had meant. The look in his eyes was enough. It said, as clearly as if he had pronounced the words out loud: If you decide to die, I shall too. I must know and I demand an answer, straight, clear, unequivocal …

  As she looked up at him, into those wide, questioning eyes, she thought for a moment of all those plans she had made when they had not been together. Her original plan was now unthinkable. As soon as Balint had left she had decided to swim out to sea, carefully keeping out of the sight of the lifeguard in his boat, until she was wafted away for ever by those currents whose force no one could ever overcome. It would seem like bad luck and unlucky chance. But that was now impossible, for Judith had thought of the same thing, got there first as it were, and so spoiled her carefully thought-out plan. No one could do that now, for they had posted a double guard; besides which the memory of Judith lying there naked on the sand being looked at pruriently by all those people filled her with horror. No! That way was no longer open to her. Of course, she reflected, she still had the little Browning; but she could not use that either, not here in Venice. Everyone would know at once that she had killed herself on pur
pose and Uzdy would soon find out how she had acquired the weapon and then as sure as anything on this earth he would search out Balint and kill him.

  Abady’s eyes were still on her, demanding an answer.

  Adrienne looked back at him, and then, very slowly, she sald: ‘I will try to go on living. Maybe I’ll succeed, even if we never see each other again …’

  Now it was nearly daylight.

  Adrienne sat on the side of the bed, still in her torn, thin nightdress. She did not move, but leant back on her elbows, her head thrown back and her eyes tightly closed.

  Balint was already dressed. He was standing face to the wall. Then he turned back towards her and fell at her feet, burying his face in her lap and sobbing as if his heart would break. His whole body was so racked with sobs that his back heaved and shook as he pressed his face ever deeper into her lap, into the smooth curves of her half-naked thighs. Deep groans broke from him and he cried ever harder as if he would never stop. He was like a child in the grip of an unknown horror, a nightmare that could never be told in words, clinging to his mother’s knees and clasping her as strongly as if he would never let go. His hands clutched at her body, at her bare flesh, not in desire but as a drowning man clutches at anything that comes his way. Through these racking sobs which so tore his throat that she could hardly distinguish what he was trying to say, through the waves of pain that both were feeling, came only one word, repeated over and over again: ‘Addy … Addy … Addy …’

  Adrienne gently stroked his head, not caring that her nightdress was torn, not noticing the ever-brightening light of the morning sun, regardless of her bare breasts, feeling no shame at the revelation of her torn and bruised and naked flesh. She felt nothing but sorrow, a dreadful, suffocating sorrow and pity.