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

by Bánffy, Miklós

  Behind him the door was slammed by the wind.

  Laszlo stumbled down the hill. The storm was in his face but he felt nothing, not even those myriad ice-needles which seemed to press into his skin. He ran down the valley, ran like a hunted animal keeping to a familiar path, oblivious of where he was going or what was happening to him, ran until he could run no longer. Then, though almost at the end of his strength, he still tried to run, for he sensed that the demon of arrogance and evil that had possessed him had now done its work and would soon vanish; and he was afraid that when that happened he would break down and weep.

  He ran too to escape from the fact that this attitude from which he had somehow expected to find some moral satisfaction had turned into a morass of shame, shame for his lack of gratitude, for his intolerable rudeness and brutality.

  When he reached the main road he saw in front of him the squalid little inn beside the station. He burst through the door.

  The room was filled with smoke and the few railway workers who were sitting there with their brandy took no notice of the newcomer and indeed did not even notice how wet, muddy and dishevelled he was.

  ‘Brandy! Brandy! A half-bottle of brandy!’ he muttered.

  ‘Which sort, aniseed or sweet?’ enquired the innkeeper curtly.

  ‘Either. It doesn’t matter,’ replied Laszlo. ‘But make sure it’s strong, very strong.’

  Laszlo drank it all down almost as soon as it was on the table. Then he had another, and another. Now he was already fuddled with drink and it occurred to him that Sara was sure to have sent someone out to look for him and that they had better not find him there, anything but that. So he flung a couple of crowns on the table and rushed out once again into the storm.

  He ran on like a man pursued. On the road there were large patches of snow and between them puddles of black water. Laszlo ran straight ahead no matter what lay in his way and hardly even noticing whether he stepped in mud, water or snow. On the edge of the village there was another inn. There he stopped again and drank more measures of brandy; and the more he drank the more he became convinced that someone was following him and that sooner or later he would be caught and taken back. But who it was and where he would be taken he no longer knew; only the fear stayed with him, the fear that someone was after him and that therefore he had to keep on running, running, running, even though his legs could hardly carry him.

  He managed to stagger through the village, though the snow was piling up in drifts beside the road and it was snowing so hard that no one, sober or drunk, could have told where they were. Somehow he pushed himself onward.

  Now the road turned towards the bridge over the river. Laszlo did not notice as mindlessly he put one tired foot in front of the other, his head bent under some intolerable and unknown weight. Every conscious thought had been wiped from his mind by exhaustion and alcohol; but still, like a hunted animal, he somehow managed to go on.

  Then, quite suddenly, there was no ground beneath his feet, and he fell into nothingness, into what was, in fact, a deep ditch half-filled with snow and slush. In this he lay with the upper part of his body spread-eagled face downwards on the sloping bank.

  And so he remained, unconscious of the snow which fell ever more thickly on his back.

  Chapter Five

  MIKLOS ABSOLON sat at his ease between two columns on the veranda of Borbathjo, his elegant baroque manor-house in the largely Szekler district of north-eastern Maros-Torda. His bald head was covered by a tiny velvet skullcap embroidered with pearls that he had brought from Bokhara and the collar of his soft silk shirt was open round his thick bull-like neck.

  It was May and the sun was shining. Absolon had nothing whatever to do and he was just sitting there, barely even allowing himself to think. His attitude was that of an inscrutable oriental sage, content merely to contemplate. After all, it was warm and the sun was bright. The view from where he sat was not particularly interesting but stretched into the far distance, right across the Kukullo river, which here was only a meandering stream, surrounded by water-meadows bright with the yellow of buttercups and the lime-green of young grass, up to the valley where the hillsides were covered with forests of beech, pine and hornbeam, all now in bud, and, still further to the south, to the peaks of the eastern Carpathians.

  The view was so familiar to him that now he barely noticed it. He had known it from his childhood before the days when his restless urge to travel had carried him to the farthest and most unknown parts of Asia. Of course he had come home from time to time, until that day when he returned with a crippled leg and could roam no more.

  If Absolon was thinking of anything at all it was to reflect that, after all, everything, everywhere, was much the same. What essential difference was there between squatting on a rock at Kuen-Lun disguised as a pilgrim and apparently watching the goats outside a Tibetan monastery, or lying at ease in the shade of a Kirgiz tent in the Taklamakan desert, and sitting here at Borbathjo, in the heart of the Szekler country, on the veranda of the house in which he was born?

  Life could be beautiful, thought the old traveller, wherever you were – provided that, if there was no reason to travel, one was content to sit still and enjoy it, unlike those city folk who always seemed so fretful and nervous. This was his philosophy, though he rarely thought about it in such simple terms and never discussed such things with other people.

  After sitting there serenely for a good hour and a half, during which time he only moved to throw away the butt of one cigar and light another, he noticed a carriage driven by four horses coming towards him from the road to the west. This was most unusual, for even in the height of summer few people used the lonely road which ran from the little country town of Szasz-Regen to the natural mineral springs at Szovata. In spring it was nearly always deserted but for the odd Szekler peasant’s cart or the light gig of some neighbouring landowner. What he saw now was an open travelling carriage.

  With the sharp eyes of a hunter he could make out that the carriage was drawn by four excellent chestnut horses and that the leader had a white blaze. Inside the carriage there sat a lone woman.

  Absolon wondered who it could possibly be, as he knew everyone who lived in the district and most of them at one time or another used the road which ran directly below his grounds. All the same his appraisal was not based on any real curiosity – for what did it signify what one looked at? – but rather on that mild interest aroused by the unusual. It happened, so he watched: that was all.

  The carriage came nearer and nearer winding through the three sickle-shaped curves that skirted the base of the hills to the right, until at last it was coming straight towards the high bank which marked the boundary of the Borbathjo park.

  Now Absolon could see the driver more clearly, an old man with imposing moustaches and elaborate braiding on his long Hungarian driver’s coat. The driver’s high seat partially concealed the woman behind him, and all that could be seen from where Absolon sat was the white parasol which blossomed above her like a giant mushroom.

  Quite suddenly, it seemed, the carriage was close at hand and now disappeared behind the ivy-covered wall which surrounded Absolon’s property. It could still be heard for a few moments and, to the old man’s surprise, then came the sound of wheels and hoof-beats on the wooden bridge beyond the vegetable garden which had to be crossed by anyone coming to the manor-house. Then he could hear the horses panting as they trotted laboriously up the slope to the house. It was the most unexpected thing – someone was coming to see him, and it was a woman, alone.

  A large hand-bell had been placed on the veranda balustrade. Absolon rang it vigorously and almost at once a plump middle-aged woman with a pretty face stepped out of the house. She walked swiftly towards the old man who was still gazing outwards, stopped just behind him and put her hand on his shoulder. ‘At your service, my Lord,’ she said.

  It was Marisko, Absolon’s housekeeper and mistress of many years’ standing. It was she of whom Aunt Lizinka had
spread so many malicious tales, saying that she was nothing more than a ‘crack-heeled servant, no better than she should be, the slut!’

  Like all such calumnies there had once been a grain of truth in what the old gossip had said. It was true, for example, that Marisko had started as a kitchen-maid at Borbathjo at the time when Absolon had returned from his wanderings. She was from the next village, sixteen years old, had never worked anywhere else and had never been known to be flighty with the young men. It was quite untrue to say, as Aunt Lizinka often had, that she was ‘a bad one!’.

  Absolon, though crippled, had still been a man in his prime and had no sooner seen the girl than he had lusted after her; so he did as the Tartars did, took her to bed and the following day sent generous presents to her father. In the East it had been the custom and so he had done the same. That very morning he had sent over four magnificent oxen which had at once been accepted, not as the price of shame, which would have been the case with money, but as a generous gift from one free man to another. Four oxen! That was indeed a worthy gesture.

  Marisko had stayed at Borbathjo ever since, for it was not in her nature to betray her master with anyone else. By nature she was utterly faithful and upright, with a straightforward, open expression in her velvet-dark eyes and a ready smile. And whenever she looked at her lover and master, as now, her eyes caressed him with loving kindness.

  ‘A visitor has arrived,’ said Absolon. ‘The carriage has just turned into the drive. Someone must go down to greet them. And you,’ he went on, ‘must make some tea.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘At once!’

  The powerful old man heaved himself up and stood still for a moment. Then, with his cigar clenched between his teeth, he pressed his short crutch to his bad leg and with surprising speed hurried so fast through the house that he was already standing in the portico of the entrance when the four-in-hand entered the courtyard.

  This portico was unique to Borbathjo. It was a kind of open hall with a roof supported on wooden pillars, and it joined the main house to the rest of the manor’s buildings. It was simply paved with ordinary brick and the pillars were roughly hewn. It was furnished only with two long wooden benches, but on the walls were hung the old explorer’s hunting trophies. Heads, horns, claws and fangs of all the fauna of Asia looked down on Absolon as he stood there, leaning on his stick and waiting for his guest to arrive. A servant stood at the foot of the steps below him.

  The carriage drew up, and Adrienne got out.

  For some time she had been planning to visit her husband’s uncle, ever since, in fact, the time of Margit’s wedding when he had been the best man. It was then that they had become friends, for Adrienne had sensed at once that old Absolon understood her, shared her views and her outlook on life and appreciated her in a way that no other member of her husband’s family had ever done. When the wedding itself was over he had driven out especially to see her and had stayed for a long time.

  This was most unusual for Absolon who was known rarely to seek the company of women; and so for him to ask permission to call, and to stay for a long time, were quite exceptional marks of respect and sympathy. Then too Adrienne had sensed a certain compassion in his voice as if he had seen and understood the awful problems of her married life. It was after this visit that Adrienne, after much self-searching, had decided to come to Borbathjo and try to enlist on her side the one member of her husband’s family who would be sympathetic when she sued for divorce, someone to whom Uzdy and his mother would listen, someone who could support her plea to be freed from the slavery of the past few years. Absolon had the guts to speak the truth to Pali Uzdy; he was intelligent and fearless and would know how to plead her right to have custody of her daughter, and he would even be strong enough to prevent Uzdy from harming Balint, should it come to that.

  Adrienne had gone over it in her mind time and time again. She had not come before but waited until now because she had just had a letter from her mother-in-law saying that she would return home with her grandchild at the end of May. This would mean that Adrienne would then be able to start her divorce proceedings since she would no longer be held back by the fact that little Clemmie was out of her care.

  Making her now familiar excuse, she left her husband’s house at Almasko and took the train to stay with her father at Mezo-Varjas. On the following day she ordered the carriage and had herself driven to Borbathjo. In this way no one at Almasko would know about it, for she was the mistress in her father’s house.

  It was a long way fifty – kilometres to Regen, where she lunched, and then thirty more to Borbathjo – but the Miloth chestnuts were sturdy animals and were so used to long journeys that they arrived as fresh as when they left.

  ‘My dear niece, how nice of you to come to visit me!’ said Absolon as he kissed her hand with old-fashioned ceremony. He would kiss the hands of any young woman, of older ones never.

  Adrienne looked around her with interest. Borbathjo was a most unusual house. It was set above the side of the hill and appeared from the smooth paving of the courtyard to have been built on one floor only. But from where the portico with its wooden pillars joined the two parts of the building together the garden fell away in such a steep slope that the main part of the manor-house had in fact been built in two storeys, so that the long veranda was high above the flower-beds. Here there was a group of wicker chairs in which Absolon and his guest sat down, and it was here that Adrienne told him why she had come.

  Adrienne told her story simply and sincerely. She held nothing back, not even the brutality and unpredictable behaviour of her husband, nor the difficulties with her mother-in-law, even though she was Absolon’s sister. And without realizing it she even let him know, though not in so many words, that she loved someone else with whom she wanted to start a new life once she was divorced from Uzdy.

  It all came out so easily, far more so than she had ever imagined it would. So much sympathy and understanding radiated from the simple, sincere old man who sat opposite her that it was just like talking about some long-understood problem which never needed explanation because it was already so familiar to them both. It was not like trying to make a stranger understand some subject to which he was a stranger. Absolon’s family likeness to her husband did not bother her, though he had the same Tartar face with prominent cheekbones and slanting eyes, wide mouth with fleshy lips, and his skin held the same oriental pallor. The difference, though Adrienne hardly realized it at the time, lay in the fact that while Absolon was absolutely natural and devoid of artifice, Pali Uzdy was all contrivance and took pains to present an air of undisguised evil; it was as if he wanted to be taken for Lucifer himself with an exaggeratedly long pointed beard and moustaches that curled away from his lips.

  Besides this there was, and perhaps it was more important, a totally different expression on their faces. Whereas Uzdy adopted an air of sardonic mockery, his uncle, at this moment at any rate, seemed the personification of concerned goodwill; though he was capable of malice if provoked.

  It took some time for Adrienne to tell her tale, and when she finished the old explorer picked up the crutch which lay beside his chair and struck the floorboards heavily. He always did this when about to say something important. With one of his eyebrows lifted high on his forehead he looked sharply at her and, speaking each phrase deliberately and carefully as if it were the result of deep thought, said, ‘All right, I will help you, but it won’t be easy. You’ll bear a heavy responsibility, you know, but I’ll do it all the same. There will be no problem with my sister Clémence. I’ll deal with her when the time comes; but my nephew Pali will not be so easy.’

  Adrienne looked up at him anxiously, enquiringly.

  ‘I just mean to say that my late brother-in-law was mad and we had better not forget that when dealing with his son. It is that fact that makes it so easy for me to accept everything you’ve told me, and, perhaps, some of the things you haven’t; and it is that we have to guard against. We must remembe
r what might happen – though of course it might not; but we must make sure that you … and maybe someone else … are properly protected.’

  For a moment Adrienne was startled, for it was clear that he was referring to some other love and yet she had said nothing except that she wanted to make a new life for herself as soon as she was free. She realized that here was a man of clear-sight whose instinct could be trusted, a man for whom all human frailty was natural. Then, seeing the effect of his last words, he added light-heartedly, ‘Tea-time! I can’t think why it isn’t already on the table,’

  He heaved himself up, and even though the bell was within reach and he only had to ring it when he wanted something, he stumped off into the house.

  Adrienne remained alone, leaning on the balustrade and gazing into the distance. How sympathetic the old fellow was, she thought. How ready to help, to be kind and useful. How tactfully he had let her know that he had understood what could not be said, how he had himself introduced the one subject that must not be mentioned, her love for Balint.

  Was it possible that he had heard something of it? Could he possibly have known that she was in love and that the man she loved was Balint? It seemed hardly possible, for even though she never discouraged the old ladies from gossiping about her she had seen to it that it had always been that group of young men like Adam Alvinczy and Pityu, and the egregious Uncle Ambrus, who had given rise to their talk; Balint, she was sure, had never been mentioned.

  No, no! It couldn’t be. Old Absolon could not have known anything definite; and his words must have sprung simply from his deep knowledge of life, from the wisdom of the truly tolerant.

  She was absorbed in these thoughts as she looked down over the spring flowers in the beds below her.