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

by Bánffy, Miklós

  Then they began to discuss what would happen to Peter Beno Balogh‚ the official notary of Maros-Torda‚ whose behaviour at the inauguration of the Prefect appointed by the Bodyguard government had been, to say the least, equivocal.

  ‘Oh‚ they’ll kick him out, for sure. At least that’s what I’ve heard‚’ said the chemist. No more could be said for at this point the overseer’s wife called from the house that supper was on the table.

  So the stormy waves of politics were stilled and forgotten as everyone went indoors for the feast.

  No one was disappointed. The meal was sumptuous. The table was laden with a multitude of dishes, fattened geese and capons, enormous ducks and, what was exceptional at that time of year, sucking pigs roasted crisp and golden. Then there were French breads, stuffed cabbage, brioches, coffee with whipped cream, sugared doughnuts and strudl. With all this were served several different kinds of heady local wines and, of course, toast followed toast. As the heavy food and copious draughts of wine began to take effect, there followed ever coarser allusions to the wedding night and heavy jokes floated in the air, itself now thick with the aroma of food and wine and cigars and the presence of so many people in a none-too-large room.

  Finally everyone got up and went into other rooms or out under the portico while the table was removed to make space for dancing.

  Old Rattle had not eaten so much rich food for years. During her lifetime his ever-ailing wife had allowed no fat at the Miloth family meals and their cook had become so accustomed to this that even though the countess was no longer there the meagre food remained unchanged. Nor, for some time, had he had so much excellent wine, which, as he roundly declared in ringing tones, he fancied was the fruit of his own vineyards picked up ‘by that rascally overseer’ from the manor-house cellars. He said this to the chemist’s wife in what he firmly believed to have been a whisper, but it was overheard by everyone, including his other neighbour at the table who was the overseer’s wife. No one minded because he said it with such a good-humoured chuckle. After dinner Rattle remained in a good humour because old Borcsey showed much interest in his tales of Garibaldi, tales for which Count Akos could now find few listeners.

  He had just got to the battle of Palermo, which he was describing with outflung arms, when Adrienne came up to him and reminded him that the dancing would soon start and that as they were still in deep mourning it was now time to leave. At once old Rattle assumed an expression of the profoundest grief, his white bushy eyebrows and giant moustaches drooping with sadness.

  ‘Ah, my dearest daughter, of course you are right!’ he said mournfully. ‘This is not the place for a broken-hearted widower. My days of merry-making are over‚’ And he started at once for the door, followed by his son and daughters and by the other guests who had come down from the manor-house.

  They were all outside when Rattle stopped in his tracks.

  ‘Go on ahead, all of you! Old fool that I am, alas, I have to stay on just a little while. I’ve just remembered I promised the first dance to the bride. It would be too churlish to break my word. Painful though it’ll be I’ll just tread a few steps and come on after you … after all I’m almost a sort of best man, aren’t I? Go on, you lot! Go on!’ and he turned and vanished into the bustling crowd indoors.

  It was a long time before Count Akos came home. After he had danced a slow csardas with the bride he whirled her mother round the floor in a swift one. Then he danced a polka with the agility of a billy-goat and, in between dances, he would lean against the door-post mopping the sweat from his face, his eyes brimming with tears‚ and murmur‚ ‘My poor Judith, my poor dear wife!’ to whoever happened to be near him at the time. Then he would leap up again and bound away with some girl, hopping about and leaping in the air with all the energy of a twenty-year-old, before once again stopping for breath and his little moment of misery.

  The light of the full moon shed such a milky radiance over the mountainside and farm buildings below it that the shadows cast by the barns and stables seemed as dark as soot. The night air was cool and invigorating, and it was either that, or the fact that all the young people had had more than enough wine at dinner, that led to the mischief.

  ‘Let’s all do something crazy!’ suggested Adrienne, who, back home here at Varjas, felt just as she had years before when it was she who led all their childhood pranks. Here she became a girl again, forgetting her deranged sister, her own unhappy marriage, Uzdy and Almasko; here she was carefree and filled with the joy of being alive and young.

  ‘Come on!’ she cried. ‘Back to the village. If we look around perhaps we’ll think of something.’

  Young Zoltan, who spent most of his time with the estate workers during his holidays at harvest-time, at once had an idea. ‘Everyone says that the night-watchman doesn’t make his rounds any more but sits up at the shop because the Jew pays him more. Let’s go and see if it’s true!’

  This would do to go on with, so they all trooped off down the deserted village street where the high pointed roofs of the houses cast cone-shaped shadows on the unmade road.

  It was not long before they arrived at the shop, which was dark and silent and firmly closed by iron-bound shutters. They looked around but there was no one to be seen, neither on the steps, nor in the ditch which surrounded the building. So what they had said about him was not true. Then someone suggested that maybe the man went home to sleep and cheated both the village and the shopkeeper.

  ‘If only we knew where he lived!’ said one of the others. Zoltan knew that too. The night-watchman’s house was at the far end of the village close to the gypsies.

  The little band turned and went in search. At the foot of the hill, where a rough track led up to behind the manor-house, they found a little house just across the road from the first of the gypsies’ huts. This too was in darkness but the watchman’s house was brilliantly lit by the moonlight. Under a towering thatched roof there was a veranda with wooden pillars, in the middle of which was the door. Against the door-post was leaning a giant stick as thick as a man’s arm with one end thickened into a club. There it was, sure sign that the village watchman watched no more but had simply gone home to sleep.

  Everyone was delighted by this bizarre discovery; it was more than they had hoped for. Someone said, ‘Let’s teach him a lesson!’

  ‘What shall we do? Steal his stick?’

  ‘That’d give him a surprise in the morning!’

  ‘It’s not good enough. We must think of something else,’

  The little band stood in the road huddled together, talking in whispers and giggling, all of them trying to think up some prank that was worth playing.

  ‘If he’s got a cow we could steal it. That would be a lark!’ This bright idea came, most unexpectedly, from Balint, the serious legislator, Member of Parliament for Lelbanya and hardworking apostle of the co-operative movement, who was as much carried away by the infectious merriment of the others as any of them.

  The cowshed was close to the house. There appeared to be no one keeping watch; and if there was a dark shadow in front of the gypsy hut on the other side of the road, it did not move and so no one noticed it.

  The two Alvinczys opened the door as quietly as possible and Balint and Gazsi tiptoed inside. It was very dark and they could see nothing but, groping their way, they found the cow. Kadacsay quickly untied the halter while Abady grabbed the horns and pulled the animal out of the shed. On the road they were greeted by the others with half-stifled laughter and then they all joined in to drive the beast up the road and away from the watchman’s house.

  It was a bizarre procession, the women in silk dresses and high-heeled shoes and the men in thin patent-leather evening pumps and evening clothes and, in their midst, the skinny little cow, sickly and dirty and with her backside crusty with dried dung, being urged on as quickly as possible so that she would not start to make a noise too close to home and thus wake her rightful owner. All went well and the little band was already half-
way up the hill and well out of earshot when the cow recovered from her surprise and started mooing pathetically.

  Everyone broke out laughing, pleased with their adventure. They were wondering what to do next, discussing where they should hide their prize and what they should agree to say in the morning, when the little cow started to run away, not, as might have been expected, in the direction of home but off the road and straight towards a field of clover that she must have smelt was nearby. Still laughing they all watched her as she fled, lurching awkwardly with tail twisted up and udders swinging right and left and flapping against her hind legs.

  The laughter quickly died on their lips as they realized what a catastrophe could follow if the cow was allowed to remain free and started to eat her fill of the dew-soaked clover. If that happened then, like as not, she’d overeat and get all bloated and die of a colic; and that would be a sorry end to the prank! At once they realized she had better be caught again before she did herself any damage.

  At first it was just the men and young Zoltan who set off. The first to reach her was the long-legged Adam Alvinczy and his brother Akos, but no sooner had they caught her up than she was off again changing direction and running downhill. After some twenty metres she found herself face to face with Zoltan, Gazsi and Abady but before any of them could catch the rope which trailed from her halter she was off again, racing down towards the reed-covered lake only stopping every now and then to gulp down a mouthful of rich grass.

  The race was now on in earnest for the pursuers quickly realized that once she reached the reeds in the lake they would never be able to get near her and prevent her eating her fill of such dangerous food. This had to be prevented at all costs and so the men, running hard, formed a half circle to drive the now terrified animal back up the hill. Lowing dreadfully, she seemed quite wild as she searched for a means of escape.

  Now it was the turn of the women to join in the chase for if they did not close the circle at the top of the field the animal would certainly get away again.

  Adrienne, Margit and Ida Laczok quickly formed a battle-line at the top edge of the clover field and as soon as the little cow came towards them they danced about, jumping up and down and waving their evening wraps like great furry bat’s wings so as to scare her back. The animal stopped and stared at them. Quickly Gazsi saw his advantage and, creeping up silently behind her, seized the trailing cord. Taken by surprise the little cow, finding herself caught, jumped crazily sideways and rushed down the hillside dragging Gazsi, who had fallen on his stomach, across the wet clover. Gazsi, who had the presence of mind not to let go, soon slowed down the animal until she ran out of breath and stopped. It was this heroic deed which ended the battle. Everyone now crowded round, petting the little cow and letting her have a few munches of clover as a reward, for a little could do no harm.

  Then they stopped and looked at each other, laughing because of the state they were all in, muddy to the knees, great smears of earth on the women’s silk dresses, silk stockings soaked and torn and fine leather shoes unrecognizable under the dirt. The men stood there sweating, hair on end and collars awry. The oddest looking, and the funniest, was Gazsi, whose stiff white shirt and waistcoat were so smeared with green from the clover that even the patches that were still white also seemed to glow green in the moonlight.

  ‘Just my luck!’ he said ruefully‚ in his old mock plaintive manner. ‘First the fox and now the cow! Why, I might be a fr-r-rog‚’ and he started to croak away sadly. Everyone laughed because the contrast between Gazsi’s great beak-like nose and the frog-like croaking was so absurd.

  Still laughing, and with the little cow in their midst, they moved on uphill until they reached the garden door of the manor. Then they led their prize up the shadowy paths to the coach house and put her in one of the empty horse boxes. Zoltan, who knew where everything was kept, threw in a bushel of fodder and they all stole out taking care not to wake the coachman who was asleep on his own bed of straw. They went so silently that not for a moment were the man’s healthy snores interrupted.

  ‘What on earth can the time be?’ asked Adrienne, as they all stood together in the moonlight in front of the house. And when Akos Alvinczy replied that it was half-past eleven, she glanced at Abady and said, ‘Time for a good sleep! Goodness, I’m tired after all that running about!’

  They said goodnight on the veranda that ran the whole length of the house and, still laughing at their adventure, started to go to their rooms. Under the vine-covered trellis it was so dark that only Margit noticed that when Addy arrived at the door of her room she stopped for a moment and looked back briefly before disappearing inside. By this time the only ones left were Adam, whose back was turned, and Abady. Then they too turned as if to go to their own rooms.

  In a few moments all was silence, mysterious and profound. All that could be heard, from far, far away, was an occasional note from the gypsy band’s bass viol whose distant rhythm sounded like a man’s heart beating in joyous expectation.

  It was ten o’clock before everyone started to gather at the breakfast table and the news from the village of the bizarre consequences of the night’s adventure had already reached the house.

  The dining-room was between the main living-rooms and the kitchen quarters. There were doors at each end of the room and as a succession of servants – the footmen, the butler and maids – passed through, so each of them brought more news until by midday the full story was known.

  At dawn the watchman’s wife had risen to milk the cow and, finding that it was nowhere to be seen, had rushed back into the house to wake her husband and give him the dreadful news. Dumbfounded, they had together stared into the empty shed and then the curses began. ‘Stolen, God damn it! Stolen! But who did it, in God’s name?’

  Chacha, the gypsy potter whose hut was just across the road, was the first to hear the news and the first to bear the brunt of the watchman’s wrath, who at once accused the poor man, with horrible curses, of being responsible for the theft. Chacha just shrugged his shoulders and laughed. Then the watchman’s wife remembered that it was market day in Sarmas and that there would be another market, in two days’ time, at Regen. Perhaps itinerant salesmen, who often drove their cattle that way as it was a shortcut across the mountains, had passed in the night? They could have stolen the cow! Surely it must be them! So she urged her husband to hurry after them so as to catch them before they arrived. The man grabbed his stick and rushed off to Sarmas which was ten kilometres away; the woman, sobbing and whimpering, limped up the crest of the Ormenyes in case she could see something, but she came back crestfallen and it was noon before they had both returned empty-handed.

  By then the news of the theft had spread throughout the village and, as it was Sunday and there was no work to do, a group of villagers had collected in front of the watchman’s house, bewailing the loss and eager to be the first to hear what had happened.

  Why, they lamented, their cattle were not even safe in their own houses! This was a dreadful thing, unheard-of, appalling! Everyone at once thought of their own possessions and this made them ever more sympathetic to the watchman who was sorrowfully repeating his sad tale, over and over again, to each newcomer who arrived. Meanwhile his wife, keening as for the dead, kept up a continual wailing chant: ‘Vaiii! Vaiii! My poor Jambor! Vaiii! You were so beautiful, so lovely! My poor Jambor!’ calling out the beast’s Hungarian name because even in Romanian villages in Transylvania all animals were given Magyar names.

  From his hut the gypsy then called out softly that of course he didn’t know but that it was possible that the cow was up at the manor-house. Chacha had been the dark shadow that Adrienne and her friends had not noticed.

  General astonishment. What was this the man was saying? What on earth could he mean? The watchman bellowed out furiously‚ ‘So now you tell me‚ you bastard?’

  There was a roar of laughter for everyone at once grasped that the whole affair was nothing more than a joke, a trick played on th
e watchman to show him up as being so lazy that he whose job it was to guard the village could have his own possessions removed from under his very nose, indeed from his own backyard! And the more they thought about it the more they laughed. And at this moment their mirth got completely out of hand for just up the road the cow itself appeared‚ led by Zoltan and driven from behind by one of the Miloth stable-lads.

  Up at the manor old Rattle, who always got up late, had just heard about the affair and stormed into the dining-room, roaring like a bull and shouting, ‘So my house is turned into a nest of thieves and robbers, is it? Shame on you all, to bring dishonour on my grey hairs! My honest house a receiver’s den, a dirty receiver’s den!’ he shouted as he rushed into the dining-room where his daughters and their guests were still chuckling over the news that the watchman had run all the way to Sarmas while his wife had climbed almost as far as Ormenyes. ‘Off with you, you rascal!’ he bellowed at his son. ‘Go hang your head in shame and take the poor beast back at once. Yes, you, at once I say, or I’ll break every bone in your body!’ and he lunged at young Zoltan with his stick – just as the boy was making for the door. Then he turned back, shaking with laughter, and said, ‘All right, you blackguards, how did you do it? Tell me all about it, my dears. Come on, tell me!’

  He sat down at the table, spread a thick slice of bread and butter with honey and, his moustaches dripping, munched away as he listened eagerly to their tale. Still eating, he nodded and swallowed and let out great roars of laughter as they told him what had happened. This went on until it was nearly time for lunch. Only old Mademoiselle Morin, the sour-faced old governess, sat grimly at the end of the table and, every now and again, repeated, ‘Oh, ces enfants! Oh, ces terribles enfants!’ because even after more than twenty years in the house, her spinsterish nature, soured by a bad digestion, had never learned to appreciate the pranks of her former charges.