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

by Bánffy, Miklós

  ‘You see, this really is a man to whom we could tell the truth about my nephew. There can be no doubt that if Pali Uzdy is not actually mad he is certainly not normal, so it would be a wise precaution to have him looked at by a specialist in mental cases. It would have to be done very discreetly, of course; and someone like Dr Kisch might advise some cure or other, some way to make him relax and take things more calmly. It might be a help in ensuring that … that things went smoothly, that there weren’t any unexpected … er … unpleasant consequences.’

  Absolon’s words were uttered with the same special inflection he had used the previous day when he had said, ‘I will do as you ask and try to help. You … and anyone else … must be protected’.

  ‘But aren’t there excellent specialists at Kolozsvar?’

  ‘My nephew probably knows them, if only by sight. He cannot possibly know anything about Dr Kisch. We might introduce him as some eminent fellow on a walking tour. As it happens, he really is an avid collector of butterflies, so it would seem quite natural if he suddenly turned up at Almasko.’

  Adrienne did not answer, she was too upset by what she sensed lay behind the old man’s words, by the possibility that Uzdy might need treatment for some nervous disorder. Though for years she had thought him remarkably odd and eccentric, it had never before occurred to her that he needed psychiatric treatment or that he might be heading for real madness; and the idea filled her with horror, for if that happened there could be no divorce and she would be bound to him until one of them died.

  Absolon, perhaps sensing her thoughts, said reassuringly, ‘Perhaps I’m being over-cautious, but it seemed like a good idea which might be a help in getting everything settled quickly. I’m sure it would help me to do what you ask.’

  ‘All right!’ said Adrienne. ‘I trust you. I’ll do whatever you think best.’

  As they were driving into the town they caught up with Absolon’s carriage which had left Borbathjo at dawn. It was drawn by four well-groomed ponies, sturdy and sleek with shiny coats and very long manes and tails. Absolon did not use a normal travelling carriage but preferred a long low country wagon such as the peasants used to go to market. The driver and groom were dressed to match, in the classic peasant’s trousers and jerkins, just like all those who worked at Borbathjo both inside the house and out, for Absolon did not care for livery, thinking it somewhat pretentious.

  When Adrienne’s carriage drew abreast Absolon called out, ‘Go straight to the White Lamb, unhitch the horses and wait there!’

  As he spoke they were rumbling across the old bridge over the Maros and were soon jolting through the town on what were well-known to be the worst cobble-stones in the district. Right through the town they went and out on the other side, where the new hospital stood upon a hill.

  It was a handsome building and on its , in huge letters, was written STÄDTLICHES KRANKENHAUS – Town Hospital. Inside, all the notices and signs were also written in German. The porter, who had already been warned of their arrival, showed them straight into the Warteraum from which opened another door labelled ORDINATIONS-ZIMMER DES OBERARZTES – Interview Room of the Doctor-in-Charge.

  Almost at once a young doctor came in to conduct Absolon to his superior. Adrienne was left alone and was at once filled with unreasoning anxiety, which she did not understand for she had become accustomed to hospitals during the long years of her mother’s illness and when her sister Judith had spent some time in various sanatoriums after her breakdown. At all those times she had been quite unaffected by the coldness and sterility of her surroundings and had paid no attention to it, accepting the frigid unwelcoming atmosphere as being appropriate to a building that had to be as functional as a machine-tool.

  Today, however, she felt that there was something malevolent about those white walls, something that menaced her personally. The feeling came to her most strongly that she had arrived at some new and frightening crisis in her life and that her divorce was no longer just a matter of escaping from a hated husband or protecting the well-being of her lover but had somehow become the impersonal material of a medical case-history.

  She was far too agitated to sit quietly waiting so she got up and walked over to the window. But once there she hardly noticed the ravishing view over the roofs of the old town, nor the ever-widening valley of the Maros which seemed to melt into the infinity of the misty blue sky above. She saw nothing of the radiance of the spring sunshine, nor the young green shoots on all the trees, nor the budding horse-chestnuts. She felt surrounded by impenetrable darkness, blinded by misery and with her whole soul torn by the agonizing question – what could it be that Absolon and Dr Kisch were taking so long to discuss?

  Of course it was not really a long time and very soon the door opened and a pleasant voice said, ‘Darf ich Sie bitten, Gnädige Frau – perhaps we could talk now, my Lady?’

  It was Wolf Herman Kisch. Absolon, who had come in with him, now left them alone.

  Dr Kisch was a large big-boned man, almost as tall as Pal Uzdy. Though he could hardly have been more than forty he was completely bald. He had very pale blue eyes and wore enormous glasses and on his long-jawed face his mouth was a thin line with the lips normally kept so tightly closed that deep furrows had appeared on each side. And yet his manner was so endearing and sympathetic, his smile and the way he spoke so full of understanding, that it was as if some inner magic had ironed away those deeply etched lines of bitterness and disappointment.

  As soon as she saw him Adrienne’s depression lifted, her anxiety fled and she almost felt at ease as she sat there in front of him. What he now said was also reassuring.

  Dr Kisch said that even though he thought it was hardly necessary for him to come to Almasko, of course he would do so because he had been asked by his dear friend Absolon with whom he often stayed in the country. Perhaps, too, it would be a wise thing to do as maybe he would be able to put his finger on something that was troubling Count Uzdy; and, if he knew what it was, perhaps too he could help in alleviating the stress it had caused. He hardly even mentioned the matter of divorce except to say that with people like her husband it was always better to act with care and circumspection. All this was wonderfully soothing to hear, not perhaps the sense of what he was saying but the sound of his voice, which was so caressing and sympathetic that Adrienne’s fears were soon allayed.

  Dr Kisch’s technique was so accomplished that very soon they were talking about Adrienne’s problems with as much ease as if it were mere drawing-room chat. She felt no shyness at all and they talked for a long time, until finally the doctor rose and straightened out his long body, which was made to look even taller than it was by his narrow white coat, and escorted her back to the waiting room where Absolon sat placidly smoking a cigar. Then they discussed what they would do.

  Dr Kisch said that he would not be able to get to Almasko before the middle of June when he would be taking some leave. He would definitely not arrive in a carriage as if paying a call but would come on foot, walking through the mountains and showing up as if by chance. He often went on walking tours, he said, and there wasn’t a corner of the surrounding ranges that he didn’t know well. ‘Es wird mir eine Erholung sein – it will be a holiday for me,’ he said as if it were they who would be doing him a favour. ‘Psychopatische Probleme haben mich immer sehr interessiert – psychopathic cases have always interested me,’ he said, and this was the only thing he did say which might have been taken as an allusion to all the sacrifices he had made when he had decided to come back home. For a moment his lips were again tightly pressed together as if in silent resignation; and then he went straight on in his natural friendly tones, ‘Ich komme sobald ich kann … ich gebe Ihnen Bescheid – I’ll come as soon as I can. I’ll let you know.’

  He went down with them to the carriage and there he said some more encouraging things to them both before he walked slowly back to the tiny little hospital which must sometimes have seemed to him, who should have been something great in the w
orld, like the tomb of all his desires.

  But Mannestreue, that old German tradition that a man must be as good as his word, did not apply only to the glamour and chivalry of medieval knights: heroism and self-sacrifice could be just as noble in the grey obscurity of ordinary people in a little country town.

  Now the Miloth chestnuts were trotting briskly towards home. The lead-horse tossed his mane with eagerness and his companion lifted his muzzle as they climbed each slope as if scenting ever more familiar air. The shaft-horses leaned dutifully forward into their harness and the four of them somehow always managed to keep an even speed whether they were going up or down in that mountainous country. The sun glinted on their shining coats and they were not even beginning to sweat despite the distance they had travelled that day.

  With so many of her fears allayed by the skilful Dr Kisch, Adrienne could once again appreciate the beauty of the spring landscape. Now they were already driving through the well-known and well-beloved hills of the Mezoseg country where she had been born. Each time they rode a crest in the hills a fantastic panorama was spread before them. Range after range of mountain peaks lay to the south and the west and here and there was a rocky summit towering above the others, all of which were now tinted gold by the setting sun with deep lilac shadows in the valleys between. Once, as they rounded a bend in the road, Adrienne caught a glimpse to the north of the high peaks of the Kelemen and Negoj ranges which sparkled with snow and ice all the year round. A few fleecy clouds floated high in the pale blue sky, and from time to time a glimpse could be caught of small lakes in the valleys, their shores bordered by reeds and their surfaces dotted with moorhen and wild duck. Sometimes too there could be heard the faint chorus of frogs croaking their love to potential mates.

  At one turn the carriage had to stop to let by some hay-carts and here it was that Adrienne heard the song of a nightingale that must have been hidden in some thicket near the road. And at the sound every last hint of anxiety fled away from her as quickly as it had come. She no longer felt cowed and oppressed and she kept on hearing in her mind the last few words of that kind and sympathetic doctor, who had said, ‘Seien Sie guten Mutes, Gnädige Frau, seien Sie guten Mutes – be of good heart!’ And though perhaps his words had been just what he always said to his patients, Adrienne did not think of them as such. To her they were a promise, a pledge, a hope …

  She felt as if she had passed the first stop on her way to freedom.

  PART SIX

  Chapter One

  IT WAS HALF-PAST ONE. Hundreds of news-vendors streamed out into Rakoczi Street carrying great stacks of newspapers, some in baskets or canvas bags, some under their arms. They were very different sorts of people, men with one leg, bent old crones and blind men led by children, though for the most part they were made up of growing lads, fleet-footed boys in their teens who raced each other towards the fashionable and crowded Karolyi and Museum Boulevards and the streets of the inner town, all shouting the news at the tops of their voices, knowing that he who shouted loudest would sell the most copies. They skidded and slithered in front of cars and trams, defying death by their daring, and ran on regardless, some on the pavements, dodging between the passers-by, and some in the middle of the streets in front of carriages and cart-horses, bicyclists and the wheels of angry motorists who responded with a chorus of klaxon horns. And no matter where they were, running among a thousand perils, they never stopped shouting the names of their newspapers and, to entice the passers-by, the day’s sensational headline: ‘LASZLO LUKACS, HOMO REGIUS, LASZLO LUKACS …’

  It was not often that the newsboys had such a good day. In a few moments they were surrounded by people and every paper sold. As it happened, business had been exceptionally good ever since April when the Wekerle government had resigned for the first time. Since then there had been several important royal audiences, and ‘official sources’ declared first that there would be an independent Hungarian State Bank and then that there wouldn’t; there were rumours of secret intrigues with Vienna; and then, by the influence of the left-wing Independence Party, Parliament had been adjourned it – was all splendid fodder for the hungry newspapers! Then came revolution in Turkey and sensational developments, the army revolt in Istanbul (one minister dead, two wounded!), street fights with troops brought in from across the Bosphorus and general mobilization in Salonika. Pera rang with detailed rumours of the massacres in Armenia (women raped, children impaled!). Always there was some new sensation. One day the papers declared that troops from Salonika had marched on the capital and were camped round the walls; then they had marched in, besieged the Jildiz Palace and captured the Sultan Abdul Hamid. Sultan murdered! Sultan not murdered! Abdul Hamid escapes! He didn’t escape but was torn from his throne and cast into prison! Then there was a new sultan, Mehmet V, who was brought out of obscure captivity and thrust onto the throne – and then there was a dictator, the Pasha Mehmet Sefket, who commanded the army at Salonika.

  In May there were more juicy items to follow: a real Japanese prince visited Budapest. That sold a few more papers; then the Austrian Minister-President Bienerth attacked Burian openly in the Vienna Parliament, which completely put in the shade the pan-Slav conference in St Petersburg at which the Czech, Croatian, Serb and Slovak delegates were hailed as suffering brothers in a speech by the Tsar himself.

  Then came June and still the news did not dry up. More audiences were held in Vienna as government crisis followed government crisis. Then a new development. Sensation! For the first time ever the Hungarian leaders Wekerle and Andrassy were received by the Heir, the Archduke Franz-Ferdinand, who was well known to hate Hungary. Although the leader-writers dared to produce only a watered-down version of what they knew about this historic encounter, it was clear to anyone who read between the lines that Franz-Ferdinand had received the men from Budapest with arrogant frigidity. At home there were more demonstrations calling for an independent banking system and noisy meetings were held in the great courtyard of the Town Hall and also in the country. Kossuth and Justh had a vitriolic argument at an important meeting of the Independence Party and it took, or so it was made to appear, three days of backroom negotiations before the two leaders could be induced at least to go through the motions of being friends again.

  It was all very exciting; and it was very good for sales.

  Now came the real bombshell. Laszlo Lukacs, once finance minister in the Tisza government, was rumoured to be bringing a royal decree from Vienna. Ignoring both the Minister-President Wekerle and the Independence Party leader Kossuth, he had consulted only Gyula Justh. Not until his appointment as Homo Regius – the King’s personal representative charged with forming a new government and standing apart from all party loyalty – had been publicly announced did he visit Kossuth; and even then he held aloof from all the other Coalition leaders.

  This was the greatest sensation of them all.

  In front of the National Casino the news-vendors were doing a roaring trade. Balint bought some papers and started to read them as he walked towards the staircase. Then, bored with their exaggerated tone, he threw them away and went calmly up to the first floor.

  There he found a mass of angry politicians, mostly from the Coalition and People’s Parties, and with them some of the followers of Apponyi. From inside the Coalition it seemed as if the arch-enemy was Gyula Justh and he it was who everywhere was being attacked by these noisy groups in which it seemed that everyone was explaining everything to everyone else, and that they were all doing it simultaneously. It was the same in the great glazed-in terrace of the dining-room where Abady went next. At every table he heard the same complaints.

  Loudest of all was Lubiansky, whose patent of nobility had been on the point of being gazetted; and now, because of the change of government, all those years of planning and plotting had gone for nothing! Poor Lubiansky had been so eager to have his daughters transformed into Comtessen, which would have been a help in finding them husbands, and his sons given just that extr
a fillip in their search for willing heiresses, but now he would still have to endure being addressed as ‘your Lordship’ merely out of courtesy and not because he had a right to it.

  But even angrier than Lubiansky was Fredi Wuelffenstein who, as usual, was laying down the law on constitutional precedent in terms of what was and what was not gentlemanly behaviour. This, for him, was the only criterion of proper conduct.

  ‘No gentleman would have done what this Lukacs has!’ he roared. ‘By-passing the Coalition leaders! Going behind the back of the government to consult that awful busybody, that demagogue Justh! You just don’t do that sort of thing! Of course I know what it’s all about; they want to sabotage the new suffrage laws and undermine our legitimate demands for the army, just as in Kristoffy’s time. All that creature Justh wants is to chuck away our national aspirations! Into the dustbin with Hungarian sword tassels and our thousand-year-old national language. My Hungarian blood boils at the thought of it!’ he shouted, and wiped his forehead which was covered with beads of sweat brought out by his self-induced passion.

  Antal Szent-Gyorgyi, who was sitting with icy calm at the next table, now said to Fredi, with disdainful irony, ‘These demands – were they in the Constitution Party’s programme too? I hadn’t realized.’

  Wuelffenstein swallowed the bait, not noticing that Szent-Gyorgyi was making fun of him.