They Were Found Wanting (Writing on the Wall: The Transylvania Trilogy)

by Bánffy, Miklós

  Until recently Ambrus had concentrated on more facile conquests. With his hawk-shaped nose and bristling dark brown moustaches he had the sort of good looks that made servant-girls catch their breath when they met him on a dark staircase. He was usually in luck even though his conquests rarely lasted more than half an hour and were the result of a casual and laughing request for a ‘quick rough and tumble’ for which nothing more was needed than the opportunity and an available sofa. Since he had been a boy Ambrus’s heart had never beat the more swiftly for any woman, and he was convinced that they were all there for the taking whenever he was in the mood.

  It was also true that he never made a move towards any girl who had not already shown him that she was ready for it.

  He had never previously taken much note of Adrienne’s existence. Of course they had moved in the same social group for several years. He had danced with her countless times, often dined at the same table and met in the same houses, but Adrienne, with her girlish appearance, thin neck and undeveloped body, and with the air of icy disapproval with which she kept at bay any conversation that seemed to be heading towards risqué subjects or lewd innuendo, had held no interest for Ambrus. Subconsciously he had felt that she was not yet really a woman in spite of having a husband and a child. In some way she was different from the women he was used to. When Adam Alvinczy and Pityu Kendy had openly avowed their love for her he had laughed at them and told them they were a pair of donkeys. But everything had changed‚ quite suddenly‚ when he saw her again this carnival season in Kolozsvar.

  It was difficult to explain what it was in Adrienne that made her seem different. She was cool and flirtatious, but she had been both before, and she had always loved to tease the men who were in love with her‚ even tormenting them a little. The truth was she played with them as if they were amusing automatons‚ dolls without hearts. This play was totally instinctive, like that of the fairy tale giant princess who tossed the dwarfs in her pinafore, never for a moment reflecting that they might have human feelings. Adrienne kept her playthings in strict order. No words with double meanings were ever allowed; and no reference, however veiled, to sexual desire or contact, to kisses or even innocent compliments to her beauty‚ complexion or colouring were allowed to pass their lips. All this remained unchanged … yet there was a difference, subtle but definite. Now she played her game with compassion and with a softer, wiser understanding than before. Though, as before, all references to sex were forbidden, now it seemed as if her veto sprang not from a lack of knowledge or from unawakened ignorance, but rather because she held the subject so holy that she felt it would be too easily profaned.

  The men who continued to pursue her were still her playthings, but she no longer treated them as unfeeling objects, rather, perhaps, as lesser beings who knew nothing of what they wanted to discuss and who, if they suffered at all, suffered only lightly with no risk of serious wounds. If they desired something it could only be trivial, minor yearnings with which she could sympathize and feel sorry for, listen to gently and even try to ameliorate by a kind word … but as for taking them seriously? What did they know of love‚ of what she had experienced, of what she had lived through?

  What she had lived through … It had been the previous summer. For one short month she had escorted her sisters to Venice and, during those four weeks, every dawn had brought her one step nearer to self-destruction, to a death towards which she went with head raised, happy as she had never been before, as if she carried her red beating heart in her two hands in joyous sacrifice, glorying in the magic of her own fulfilled womanhood. That she did not kill herself before returning home, as she had planned, but came back to the husband she loathed and dreaded and must continue to live with, was for her the real sacrifice. This was the price she had had to pay if she was to save her lover from taking his life too. She would willingly have accepted her own death, but she could not bear to be responsible for that of her lover. He would have killed himself if she had‚ and that was the reason why she had come back. With this memory deep within her, with the knowledge that she had already lived through all the pain and bliss of life, experienced every pleasure and faced the reality of death, with this secret in her heart, everything else in her eyes seemed grey and drab, cheap and poor. It was because of this that she listened with sympathy and understanding, and with a tiny pitying smile upon her lips, to Adam Alvinczy or Pityu Kendy when they poured out their woes to her and tried to tell her what sorrow she caused them. She treated them like children who had to be comforted when they had fallen and bruised their knees.

  No one knew anything of the drama she had lived through in Venice: no one, that is, except perhaps her youngest sister, Margit, who was an observant girl and who may have guessed, but only guessed, a little of the truth. But even she knew nothing for certain and the others nothing at all.

  Adrienne’s appearance had hardly changed. Her figure was as tall and slender as ever, like the Greek statues of antiquity‚ but her arms were perhaps a little rounder and the hollows above her collarbone, which had given her such a girlish undeveloped look, had now filled out. And her ivory skin shone even smoother, as it does when women leave their childhood behind them, and glowed as if lit from inside. Adrienne no longer pulled her wraps or boas tightly round her shoulders as young girls instinctively do when some man glances at them. Now she allowed herself to be admired, though she did so with the somewhat contemptuous air with which beautiful women use their desirability as a form of armour, which would itself hold an enemy at bay.

  No one saw this clearly, though Adam and Pityu were more hopelessly in love than ever, but Uncle Ambrus had felt it instinctively and so he too started to pay his court. He believe that it would take no time at all to reach his goal. At first he started with the same approach he used to peasant girls, but when Adrienne reproved him sternly he became all submissive and tried other ways of attracting her attention with humbleness and sentimental looks and phrases. In Countess Uzdy’s presence the formidable Ambrus became quite a different man. When he was with her he played the faithful guard-dog – but only in her presence; when he was with the other men he felt obliged, so as not to lose face, to maintain his former role of the all-conquering seducer and every now and again would let drop hints that he wasn’t hanging around that ‘pretty little thing’ in vain!

  The Uzdy villa was a large building that stood alone surrounded by a vast garden. On each side of the main house were wings which had originally been designed as servants’ quarters and in one of these wings were Adrienne’s apartments. The musicians entered the forecourt and stopped in front of the glazed veranda behind which they knew was Adrienne’s bedroom. They all walked on tiptoe as quietly as possible, and exchanged only a few words in low whispers while the double-bass player took extra care that not a throb should be heard from his instrument; for it was an unwritten law that serenades should come as a surprise and that the music alone should awaken the sleeping inmates of the house. Everything was carefully done and the table, chairs, glasses and wine were all in place – and the men seated round the table – when the musicians started to play.

  On the way the young men had drawn lots as to who should have the first turn with the musicians. Thus it was decided that Uncle Ambrus should be first and the others would follow. Ambrus stood facing the windows in front of the table on the side nearest the house, the others further back on the other side. The band started softly, playing his own tune: ‘Do come when I call you …’ and then, somewhat more loudly‚ Adrienne’s song. After these two there followed some mood music and, as soon as they could all see a glimmer of light from the window giving onto the glass veranda, Ambrus began to sing. He had a good baritone voice, even if it was by then somewhat vinous in quality. The other men sat round the table drinking their champagne in the background. Song followed song until, after a rippling csardas, Uncle Ambrus signalled to the gypsies to stop. At this point he should have stepped back as it was the turn of Pityu’s serenade. However
he did not do so but had a chair brought forward to the place where he had stood in front of the window and sat down, glass in hand; and there he stayed.

  Ambrus was in an awkward position, because if he had retired to the other side of the table, as he ought to have done, he would have had to abandon his pose of the triumphant successful lover. So he stayed where he was, playing the Devil-may-care wooer in front of the other men, but only showing to Adrienne, who might have been peering unseen through the window curtains, a face less ferocious than the others would ever have imagined.

  So he stayed there, conscious – as it was a clear moonlit night, that he was in full view of the window, and every now and again he would sing again with the musicians, even though he no longer had the right as it was not his music that was being played. As their leader, Ambrus assumed more rights than the others, but even so Pityu did not like it. He said nothing because he was a modest young man, a weaker bough than most on the strong ancestral tree of the Kendy family. This could be seen in his appearance. He was thinner, frailer than other members of the clan and in him the famous Kendy nose which so resembled the beaks of birds of prey‚ eagles‚ falcons and hawks, had dwindled in Pityu’s case to the less ferocious but none the less exaggerated of some exotic jungle bird. With Pityu’s weak chin his face seemed to consist entirely of a huge hooked nose and two sad-looking black eyes.

  The serenade was nearly over when there was heard behind them a loud clatter of horses’ hoofs.

  A carriage drawn by a team of four horses raced into the forecourt and drew up barely an inch from the back of the cymbal-player. The first two horses snorted but remained otherwise motionless but the gypsies quickly scattered.

  Uncle Ambrus started to swear in his usual masterly and complicated fashion but he was forced to break off when he saw that it was Pali Uzdy, Adrienne’s husband, who jumped down from the high travelling carriage. So he rearranged his face into a smile of welcome and cried out, ‘Servus‚ Pali! Where do you spring from at this late hour?’

  Uzdy walked over to the serenaders with his usual measured tread. His thin figure, like a dark tower, seemed even taller than usual in his ankle-length double-breasted fur coat and, as he was narrow-shouldered as well as exceptionally tall, he somehow gave the impression of having been whittled away the further up you looked. With his elongated pale face framed in the fur collar, long waxed moustaches and goatee beard he looked for all the world like one of those tall bottles of Rhine wine whose wooden stopper has been crowned with the caricature of Mephistopheles.

  Towering above the others he replied, ‘I’ve just come from home‚ from Almasko. I like to come and go without warning … and sometimes I get quite a surprise, as now, though this, of course, is a very agreeable surprise!’ Pali emphasized each last word in his usual ironic manner. He shook hands with each in turn.

  His slanting almond-shaped eyes glinted with private amusement he sat down at the table. ‘You don’t mind if I join you?’ he asked‚ the polite words barely masking the mockery of his tone. The serenaders were extremely put out, for they had chosen that evening only because they knew that Uzdy was away. Now he had turned up and spoilt everything.

  ‘So? A serenade? It is a serenade‚ is it not? For Adrienne‚ of course! Very good! Very good! You are quite right! I am most flattered that you should honour our house in this way. I am only sorry I disturbed you, but I must say in my defence that I knew nothing about it. You will forgive me, I’m sure,’ went on Uzdy without giving the others any chance to reply‚ ‘… but go on! Please go on‚ and, as long as you don’t object, I’ll just sit here and listen. It’s a great joy to me to hear such beautiful music. I never get the chance at home.’

  This was more than Uncle Ambrus could bear. Angrily he burst out‚ ‘Only an idiot would serenade a lady when her husband’s at home! Perhaps you’d like us to come and play to you when …’ Ambrus broke off when he saw that Uzdy was looking at him with a strange gleam in his eyes.

  ‘When …?’ he enquired icily‚ raising his long neck from the fur collar.

  ‘Well … when you’re asleep‚ or, or… when …’ stammered Ambrus. ‘Anyhow‚ it isn’t the custom!’ Then, to bring the evening to an end as quickly as possible, he turned to the musicians and shouted, ‘Well, you dolts, get on with it! Play Master Alvinczy’s song, are you daft?’ Turning once more to Uzdy in explanation he said, ‘It’s Adam’s turn. That’s what the boys agreed.’

  Again song followed song, but more swiftly now as if the gypsies wanted to get it all over with and run.

  Though the music continued the festive mood round the table had been extinguished. While Adam Alvinczy stood near the band-leader‚ all the rest remained seated, Ambrus still nearest to the veranda, Uzdy at the upper end of the table, Kadacsay and Pityu on the courtyard side and, at the other end of the table, rather apart from the others near to the wooden gates at the end of Adrienne’s wing which led to the garden and the Szamos river that flowed beyond it, sat Laszlo Gyeroffy. While it was obvious that Uzdy’s arrival had spoilt the evening for the others, Laszlo seemed quite indifferent. He sat very straight, staring into the night, drinking tumbler after tumbler of champagne, laced with brandy. He sat so still he might have been a robot.

  Alvinczy told the gypsies to play ‘A hundred candles …’

  Up to this moment Uzdy too had sat quite motionless in his chair‚ his long narrow eyes fixed on the glimmer of light that showed from behind the shutters of Adrienne’s room. His lips were drawn back, showing his broad teeth as if he were about to bite. Now‚ however‚ he straightened himself up and his hand disappeared into the folds of his coat. When the band came to a climax with the words ‘a hundred pints of wine’, his arm suddenly shot forward and, at the fortissimo of ‘wi-i-ine’, fired his Browning directly at the gate-post leading to the Szamos, not twenty yards away.

  It was lucky that the gypsies, intent on their playing, did not hear the noise of the shot; but all those seated round the table did, as well as the bullet’s impact on the gate-post. They all jumped in their seats, Ambrus belching out ‘God damn it!’ as he snatched his head sideways.

  Uzdy burst out in a roar of laughter.

  Only Gyeroffy remained unmoved‚ even though the bullet had whistled straight past his nose. Without appearing to notice what had happened, Laszlo continued to look dispassionately in front of him as he raised his glass once more to his lips.

  This unexpected calm seemed to impress even Uzdy.

  ‘Your nerves are good,’ he called to Laszlo.

  ‘My nerves?’ said Laszlo, his voice seeming to come from a great distance. ‘Why?’

  ‘This is why!’ cried Uzdy, and fired two more shots in quick succession past Laszlo’s head, but the latter merely reached for his glass and drank down his wine as calmly as before.

  This brought the serenade to an abrupt end. The gentlemen, all of them now in a chastened mood but delighted to get away‚ hurried back to town grumbling among themselves about what a strange, unpredictable fellow that Uzdy was. The only exception was Gyeroffy.

  He walked now with a proud air, his previous diffidence completely gone, his head held high, his tall hat at the back of his head and, below those eyebrows that met so menacingly across his face, his aquiline nose was lifted in proud disdain. Laszlo’s lower lip stuck out, giving his whole face an air of arrogance. ‘Don’t stumble about like that,’ he said to Pityu Kendy when they were about fifty yards from the villa. ‘You’re in my way!’

  The others whispered among themselves because they realized that he was extremely drunk.

  And drunk he was, so drunk that he no longer remembered all the humiliations that he had suffered before returning to Transylvania the previous spring. Then, when he had been sober he had never been free of a nagging sense of self-accusation, never free from the knowledge that the cousin with whom he had been so in love, Klara Kollonich, had married someone else because he, Laszlo, had shown himself to be too weak of character to deserve he
r; never free either of the disgrace of being forced to resign from all his clubs in the capital because he could not pay his gambling debts. When sober he could never escape a nagging sense of being inferior to others. He had convinced himself that he was worthless and that he wore on his forehead a visible brand that advertised this worthlessness to everyone he met, even if they were kind to him and pretended not to see it. And if anyone showed signs of being friendly, he took it for pity.

  At the moment when he had had such terrible losses at the gaming table, he would have been able to settle if he had not thought it more important to repay his mistress the money she had paid out for him on a similar occasion some months before. He had felt himself more dishonoured by being indebted to a woman, even though no one else knew of it, than by the public scandal which had put an end to his being accepted in the high society of the capital. And at the time he had felt that there was something noble and uplifting, cruel but at the same time triumphant, in choosing social death over private dishonour.

  It was not long before the exaltation, the sense of the spiritual strength which had then given him such support, began to wither and die. Soon the recollection of his folly and weakness came back more and more strongly, to the point that he could only banish these gnawing regrets by getting drunk. And when he was drunk he went at once to the opposite extreme. Then he would become arrogant and scornful, letting everyone see that he thought himself infinitely superior to them. At these times he would believe himself to be a great artist, which indeed he could have been if he had not squandered his time and neglected his talent. But of this he never spoke. Even when drunk he would tell himself that they would never understand; and so confined his boasting to telling tales about his social success in grand society as if that were the only thing that would impress ‘those country bumpkins’.