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

by Bánffy, Miklós

  Crookface said nothing for a moment; he was still looking at the picture. Finally he said, ‘What an idiot! And no one can make him see reason?’

  ‘He won’t listen to anyone. I’ve tried, several times, in vain. And he’s avoided me ever since. It’s a sort of suicide, what he’s doing to himself. His only hope is to be made a ward of court. That might save him, but there’s no one to do what’s necessary as he doesn’t have any parents or brothers; and no one else has the right to act.’

  ‘Bloody fool!’ said Crookface, and fell silent again. After a little while he got up and said, ‘Time for bed. It’s late. You’ll have to get up early to catch the morning train. I’ve ordered the car for six. That’ll get you to Hejjasfalva in time to catch the express.’

  Old Kendy showed Balint to a guest-room which was near the drawing-room just beyond the corridor. There he said goodbye, turned away and left quickly. There was no question of continuing their conversation.

  Balint found it difficult to sleep. On the other side of the wall of his room he could hear heavy footsteps walking to and fro, resounding in the empty space of the great drawing-room: it was old Kendy, cigar in mouth, pacing up and down the room from the glass doors to the windows and back, again and again.

  Chapter Four

  EIGHT PAIRS of perfectly matched Lipizzaners trotted down the arrow-straight country road.

  They were splendid horses, all dapple greys which could have been cast from the same mould, the only difference being that the older ones were slightly lighter in hue and the younger darker with more pronounced shading. They all had the same prancing movement, with their forelegs bending up well in front of them. This, of course, they had been trained to do, not for speed but for beauty and elegance and in fact their progress was comparatively slow. The eight carriages they drew were also identical, painted black with yellow roofs and upper-work. The coachmen wore grey livery and black top hats and they were all of similar build, broad-shouldered and clean-shaven. They too kept perfect rhythm and the fifteen metre distance between each carriage was never varied. Inside each carriage there was one male guest, who was one of the guns invited to the shoot, and in several there were also some ladies. And so, in stately procession, they passed along the acacia-lined country road. When one of the carriages reached its destination – which was marked by a bale of straw whose prominently displayed number corresponded to that accorded to the guest in the carriage, and where that guest’s loader, cartridge carrier and game collector were already waiting – then it pulled aside and stopped and allowed the other carriages to go on their way.

  A great hare shoot was about to begin, and it needed over three hundred people to be properly organized.

  Where the carriages stopped was the start. Between each gun, well spaced out, were six or seven peasant youths. The main band of beaters were nearly out of sight, divided into two halves, those on the left flank being nearly a mile apart from those on the right. These were mostly made up of girls who were more disciplined than young men and did not jump about so much but who remained well in line, their full skirts spread wide, crouching close to each other so that none of the hares should pass between them. From where the guns were placed for the start their multi-coloured blouses and head-scarves looked like an endless row of field poppies disappearing into the distance.

  All the beaters were Slovaks, for the shoot was taking place at Jablanka in Slovakia, a country estate belonging to Antal Szent-Gyorgyi, which was situated just where the valley of the Vag opens out onto the Lesser Alfold, the northern part of the Great Hungarian Plain. The landscape shone in the wintry sun. In the east could be seen the peaks of the smaller Carpathians while to the west the Tapolcsany range closed the great horseshoe-shaped ring of mountains to the north of the plains which stretched away endlessly to the south. In the centre of the horseshoe there was a row of gently undulating hills and there, right in the middle, was the snow-white square of the great castle of Jablanka, its windows, though more than a mile away, shimmering in the sunshine. Far behind, on a jutting outcrop of rock, the ruined fortress of Jablo was silhouetted against the shadowy outlines of the far-off Trencsen mountains.

  The shoot had been arranged so that the guns advanced towards the castle, finishing just at the edge of the park, where the two long lines of standing beaters converged. This was carefully thought out because the host was anxious not to over-tire either himself or those who had had the honour of an invitation to shoot with him. Unlike his brother-in-law, Louis Kollonich, whose ambition it always was to set up record bags, Antal Szent-Gyorgyi merely sought elegance and style. For him a shoot should be a pleasure, not a competitive chore. It should not start too early; and it should not last too long. The guests invited to shoot should have room to shoot as they pleased – which is why they were placed so far apart. It was for this reason that he never had more than eight guns and he only invited enough guests to make up this number. As both his sons were at home only five others had been asked this year. It was considered a great honour to be invited to shoot at Jablanka, and all the more so because Antal Szent-Gyorgyi was known to be extremely choosy as to whom he might ask. Apart from his own relations hardly anyone was held worthy of an invitation. Count Antal’s group of acceptable guests was like the very smallest of concentric circles, like the monarch’s own chosen group of shooting friends whose composition was forever frozen in immutable categories of which only the innermost could ever hope for an invitation. As in Dante’s Purgatory the ever-rising floors finally dwindle into the narrowest, uppermost circle and there, right at the top, the peak of the whole envied structure, was Paradise.

  Szent-Gyorgyi’s reasons for exclusion, starting from the outer rings, were quite clear. Ruled completely out were the bad shots; these were utterly unacceptable. Next were the bad-mannered, people who were known to be querulous or irritable or bad-tempered if they missed a shot: they were not to be thought of either. These were followed by anyone with decided political opinions, for Szent-Gyorgyi loathed politics – and politicians – and though such subjects were by no means banned in his presence, and indeed he would from time to time speak of such matters himself, they had to be discussed dispassionately as if the speaker were infinitely distanced from his subject. The fourth criterion was birth and here Count Antal had his own special individual standpoint. With a rich knowledge of history and genealogies, he was capable, if he thought their ancestry ignoble or unworthy, of placing ruling princes and families closely connected to royalty, in a lower category than some simple country nobleman whose ancestors had been ‘nice people’ since time immemorial. For Count Antal, anyone who was able to trace his descent from the days of the Arpad kings, especially if they had earned no black marks by unfortunate behaviour in the ensuing centuries, took precedence over all others, provided always that they fulfilled his other requirements. A fifth category, which was totally excluded, was composed of anyone of Czech origin no matter what rank he might hold. Whether it was because in the fifteenth century the lands of the Szent-Gyorgyi and Bazini families had been overrun by the army of Giskra, or because he believed that anyone even remotely connected with the ever growing pan-Slav movement had to be pro-Russian and was therefore automatically the enemy of the Habsburg monarchy, was not clear: but all Czechs were automatically banned from Jablanka. For the sixth group, which was composed of anyone who had had any kind of connection with the Heir, the Archduke Franz-Ferdinand, he had more personal reasons for antagonism. As hereditary Master of the Horse to the King of Hungary, Szent-Gyorgyi gave his entire loyalty to the old Emperor and he classed all those who grouped themselves around the person of the Heir (and who were clearly only waiting for the demise of the old monarch to be shown in their true colours) as greedy, unacceptable opportunists. The seventh category, those who were eligible for invitations, therefore had to pass unscathed the severe requirements of the first six.

  This year, however, there were some surprises as there had been included two guests who would nev
er normally have qualified at all.

  The first was Fredi Wuelffenstein, who was not important but who was well-known to be a party man, ferociously partisan, loud-mouthed, outspoken, argumentative and always knowing better than anyone else. It was hoped that here at Jablanka he would be sufficiently in control of himself to keep quiet, especially as he owed his invitation solely to the influence of his sister, Fanny Beredy, the only female guest who was not herself a relation of the host or hostess.

  More important than Fredi was Count Jan Slawata, whose presence was indeed astonishing for according to the rules he should have foundered on all counts; firstly at the outermost circle because he was such a bad shot, secondly because he was a politician, thirdly because one of his ancestors, in 1618, who had never drawn his sword to defend himself, was flung out of a window in the fortress of Hradčany in Prague and, instead of being killed honourably on the flagstones below, landed on a dung-heap and lived (thereby falling inevitably into the category of ‘unacceptable behaviour’), fourthly because he was a self-declared Czech nationalist which he proclaimed by signing his name ‘Jan’ instead of ‘Johann’; and finally because it was well-known that he belonged to the group who clustered round Franz-Ferdinand in the Belvedere Palace and indeed was rumoured to be the Heir’s confidential adviser on foreign affairs. And yet he had been admitted to Eden, to that Paradise of sportsmen, a shooting party at Jablanka.

  It was such an amazing thing that even such a self-assured man as Antal Szent-Gyorgyi felt impelled to offer some explanation to the other guests – Balint, Imre Warday and even to his nephew, young Louis Kollonich – as to why Slawata had been invited.

  Szent-Gyorgyi had ordered a pedigree pointer puppy from Germany. The dog had been sent in a specially constructed cage by the Orient Express but at the frontier post at Passau the customs officers found some reason to object to the animal’s importation into Austria and wished to take it off the train until some obscure difficulty as to its legal status could be cleared up. As it happened Slawata was on the same train, learned what was causing the delay, and used his diplomatic position not only to keep the dog on the train but also to free it from its prison cage and take it into his own private compartment (though it wasn’t yet house-trained). Such a personal service had to be properly rewarded.

  It was one of Antal Szent-Gyorgyi’s guiding principles that he would never accept a favour, except from a close personal friend, without returning it in full measure. And if the donor was a stranger, or someone socially inferior, then the recompense must be all the more generous lest there be the slightest suspicion that Count Antal remained in their debt. Since it was not possible to offer Slawata a tip he had been invited to the shoot. Szent-Gyorgyi would far rather have paid out any amount of mere money!

  However, having once decided to do it, it was done in style. Slawata was treated as the guest of honour and given the best position, at one of the ends of the line, for it was one of the peculiarities of hares that they would run along the line of the beaters, out of range of the guns until they reached the end of the line where they would come straight towards the last gun. This place was therefore the most sought-after for here there was always more game to shoot. Slawata was known to be a weak shot and so young Louis Kollonich, who was very good indeed, had been posted next to him as Eckhalter – or corner guard – with strict instructions to ‘help’ the guest of honour by shooting first at anything that came that way.

  ‘Don’t let anything past!’ called the host to his nephew as he passed by in his carriage and winked at him from an otherwise expressionless face. Then he drove on past his son Toni to his place at Number Four. Countess Beredy, who had been sitting beside him in the carriage, started to get down when he did but Count Antal, speaking in English, called back to her, ‘No! No! You go on!’ and gestured to the coachman to continue. Fanny smiled back indulgently. Many months after Laszlo Gyeroffy had left her she had started an affair with Antal Szent-Gyorgyi. For Fanny this was an innovation since hitherto her lovers had all been young men. However, after the shock of her desertion by Laszlo, who was the only one she had truly loved, she did not feel like starting a new relationship with anyone else young and unreliable. The few words that Laszlo had sent her – ‘Thank you for everything …’ – just that, scribbled on the back of a visiting card – still made her heart contract with pain each time she thought of them; and it was for this reason that she had finally responded to the silent courtship of this man of fifty. Szent-Gyorgyi was tall and elegant, like a well-bred greyhound, a man of the world who would hold no surprises for her. She needed someone in her life – for she and her husband had led separate lives for a long time – and she had been almost a year without anyone when she decided to accept Szent-Gyorgyi as her lover. It was a calm relationship which brought both of them solace and joy with none of the pangs and complications of a passion. Count Antal was a careful man, for he still lived in friendly companionship with his ageing wife Elise; and for both of them caution was necessary, not the least for Fanny since she knew only too well that ‘my lord Beredy’ – as she ironically called him whenever she happened to think of him – would be only too happy to throw her out and divorce her if she gave him the opportunity. He had made this perfectly clear to her many years before, and ever since she had been very, very careful. Only with Laszlo had she taken any risks, but then she had been a little light-hearted …

  ‘At least with this one I won’t have to worry about causing any scandal!’ she thought, and smiled to herself.

  This was the third day of Fanny’s visit to Jablanka. When she had first arrived she had thought that she had been asked so that her host would be able to come to her at night. This would have been easy and agreeable and such a pleasure to be able to make love freely and at leisure instead of going through all that performance of stolen meetings, dressing and undressing and watching the clock in the little garconnière in Budapest! But it was not to be. She was mistaken. On the first night he did not come, nor on the second, and when she had asked him why, he had replied that it was too dangerous, someone might see him … the servants … the risk …! Who knows what might not happen? ‘No! No! It’s no good, not here!’ he had said in English, whereupon Fanny had decided to become better acquainted with the lie of the land. She started to make a tour of the vast house. If anyone had asked her what she was doing she was going to say that she was looking for her maid.

  The castle of Jablanka had been built round a huge symmetrical square courtyard on all four sides of which was a two-storeyed vaulted gallery off which opened all the rooms as in old monasteries. And this, indeed, is what it had once been. The Szent-Gyorgyi family, who then still lived in the now ruined fortress on the crags above, had had it built for the Pauline monks in the first years of the eighteenth century. In 1780, when the order was dissolved, the Emperor Joseph gave the building back to its original founders as they were considered gut gesinnt – well disposed – to the Habsburgs, of course. It was at this time the ancestors of Count Antal decided that the vast monastery would make better living quarters than the medieval fortress and moved in. The monks’ oratory, now the castle chapel, was situated on the first floor directly opposite the main entrance and to this day the wings on each side were known as ‘on the right of the chapel’ or ‘on the left of the chapel’. The reception rooms were all on the first floor on the front of the building, looking south over the plain. The exterior of the great house had been left exactly as it had always been, austere and plainly whitewashed. Inside a few smaller cells had been joined together to make larger rooms and the corridors had been lavishly decorated with the heads of roebuck and other game.

  Fanny started off from her room which was the furthest from the chapel in the left-hand wing. The next door led to her bathroom and after that there was a little staircase. Then followed door after door, each carved from precious woods, inlaid with the sort of elaborate motifs beloved of ecclesiastics. On each door was a little brass frame holding a card with
the name of the guest to whom the room had been allocated. After two that were empty Fanny found that the third bore her brother’s name, Wuelffenstein, and after that Abady. Round the corner the first name was Warday’s and then Slawata. After this there was a double stair and at its head the monumental doorway which led to the chapel, then more doors which opened on the Szent-Gyorgyi boys’ rooms and that of the young Louis Kollonich. Round the next corner the rooms were family apartments – this was the ‘right of the chapel’ side – and finally, with windows that must be on the eastern of the building, to Countess Szent-Gyorgyi’s own apartments.

  Fanny did not go as far as this but turned back.

  As she did so she noticed Klara Kollonich’s name on one of the doors. So she did not share a room with her husband, thought Fanny, who wondered for a moment until she remembered that Klara was in the last stages of her pregnancy and that she had heard her hostess say that they would put her in her old room so as to be where her aunts and cousins could look after her properly. Nothing very interesting here! thought Fanny and she went back to where she had started and descended the small stair near her room. Here too was a wide corridor hung with antlers and other game trophies, hundreds of them clustered on the white-washed walls.

  Fanny walked slowly and cautiously along towards the main staircase, cautiously because she had heard that Count Antal’s smoking-room was to be found somewhere there. She did not have to go far. The second door was open and she saw at once that this was the host’s bedroom. On the vast bed several different sets of shooting clothes had been laid out for the count to choose from, and his valet was now busy putting them back on their hangers. Luckily he was standing with his back to the door and so did not see her looking in. As the second door was the bedroom Fanny at once assumed that the first was probably that of the adjoining bathroom, as on the floor above. Therefore if Szent-Gyorgyi wanted to come up to her all he had to do was to slip out of his rooms and up the little stair beside them; and it would be the same if he wanted her to come to him. No one would be likely to notice them. Why! she thought. Nothing would be easier! All she had to do was to be careful while in the corridor for no one could possibly catch sight of her on the little stairway which had walls on both sides. She decided that as soon as she saw him she would suggest coming down that night. That would certainly be the best. Perhaps Antal was afraid of catching cold in the corridors – men were so delicate! – and that perhaps had been why he had not come to her. Fanny’s mouth widened in a knowing smile.