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

by Bánffy, Miklós

  He said nothing else, and nothing at all to indicate that he was a doctor by profession. He spoke fluent Hungarian with hardly a trace of a German accent, and he explained that he was a keen collector of butterflies and had wandered rather further than he had planned. That was how he had happened to come so far, roaming wherever the chase took him. Uzdy was now roaring with laughter, but the doctor took it all in good part. Looking around he saw the elderly Englishwoman and said, ‘Your wife, I presume! I kiss your hand, my Lady.’ He didn’t seem to notice Maier, though it had been with him that he had planned his arrival that morning when the old butler had walked over to the inn at Korosfo. Maier had started life as a trained nurse.

  That was how Dr Kisch had introduced himself to Almasko, and Uzdy had at once asked him to stay, considering the doctor as his special acquisition, almost as his prey. It was as if he were proud of him. Countess Clémence, just as obviously, disliked him. She too did not know his profession.

  For some time now Uzdy had no longer listened to anything his mother had to say. There was even a hostile glint in his eyes when he looked at her. This had started when the old lady had got back from Meran, and was most unexpected in Uzdy who had always been scrupulously polite and attentive to her. Now he would answer her with unconcealed irritation and sometimes he even queried her household arrangements even though that had always been her undisputed domain. Then too he would tease and persecute the new governess, and he would do it in such a way that it was clear to everyone that he only did it to annoy his mother.

  However he took an immediate liking to Dr Kisch and on the first morning of his stay took him into his confidence and revealed to him all the details of that tremendous secret by which he would reform the whole world’s science of figures. All through Dr Kisch’s stay they would be closeted together for hours on end, go for long walks together, and spend half the night in talk in Uzdy’s study. Though it was forbidden to everyone else the doctor was told to enter that holy of holies whenever he wished, whether invited or not.

  Seeing this Adrienne began to realize what an accomplished man he was.

  Altogether he spent five days at Almasko. On the sixth day he left at dawn. The night before, when he said his goodbyes, his host made him promise to return at the end of the summer.

  ‘I’ll come then because the most interesting butterflies are to be found at the beginning of the autumn,’ Dr Kisch replied, playing his part as a specialist in such matters.

  Though offered the carriage he left on foot as he had come, taking the path to the crest of the hills where it joined the road to Banffy-Hunyad. It was barely dawn when he left.

  A few hours later Adrienne went for a walk, not on the same path but in the same direction. They had agreed this in advance for it had been quite impossible for them to talk privately while the doctor was staying in the house. The matter had been fixed by Maier, the butler, who was the only person at Almasko whom Adrienne could trust with the knowledge of the doctor’s real identity and the purpose of his visit. They had worked it all out when she returned from seeing Dr Kisch at Regen.

  Adrienne had always been an early riser and often in the mornings would go for long walks in the forest, so there was nothing unusual about her doing the same that morning.

  Filled with anxiety she hurried through the young trees. Her heart was beating furiously for she realized that her fate would shortly be decided and that she would soon know whether it would be possible to bring up the question of divorce. She had no presentiments, either good or bad, for she had been able to read nothing in the doctor’s face, even though she had been watching closely for five long days.

  As she emerged from the woods Adrienne saw that Dr Kisch was waiting for her just beyond where the last trees had been felled. He was sitting, exactly as planned, on one of the posts that marked the boundary of the Uzdy properties.

  As it would not be wise for them to be seen together, for no one gossiped more than country people and many of them used this little road on their way to market, Adrienne at once suggested that they left the path and walked back into the trees.

  There was only one direction in which they could go. Only there, into the Abady lands at that ancient beech-tree surrounded by young shoots, to the same spot where she and Balint had renewed their love the year before, could she be sure of not being seen. For months before that, during their long separation, she had often come there alone, hoping subconsciously for that longed-for reunion, for that unplanned meeting which one day had become a reality. Why had she chosen that spot? Because it was there that she used to meet Balint at the very beginning of their love for each other, and because it was their own secret meeting-place.

  Adrienne had come to look on the giant old tree as her friend and protector, for it had been the only witness of their mutual fulfilment and so to her was symbolic of their passion for each other.

  Now, when Adrienne had led the doctor to this secret place, she leaned back against the great trunk. He stood before her and told her what she had to know.

  He spoke carefully‚ choosing his words with his usual circumspection. He started by going over the known facts: Uzdy’s parents had both been mentally afflicted, the father clinically mad and Countess Clémence seemed to him to be far from normal. This in itself did not mean very much, for hardly anybody would be considered normal if all their oddnesses and quirks of behaviour were to be known.

  Adrienne nodded her understanding but did not interrupt, only her large topaz-coloured eyes widened in anxious expectation.

  The doctor went on, his soothing voice blunting the effect of the harsh facts he had to convey. His meaning, however, was utterly clear. He believed that Uzdy was at present in a state of high nervous tension. This might, indeed probably would, diminish in time, especially if he took regularly the calming medicine he had recommended.

  ‘I didn’t give him an official prescription as a doctor would,’ he said smiling. ‘He believes me to be some sort of amateur quack. I had to make it appear that way if he was going to take me seriously! He thinks it’s something to stimulate the brain for the unusual but interesting work on which he is engaged. Nothing else can be done for the present. We have got to wait until this degree of over-excitement had died down.’

  Then he explained that people like her husband suffered alternating periods of excitement and unnatural calm, and that these periods could be longer or shorter and could even disappear altogether. There was always the possibility of cure. Now followed the doctor’s considered diagnosis for which Adrienne had been waiting with agony in her heart. Dr Kisch’s voice became lower as he pronounced the fatal words: ‘Bei dieser heute latenten Erregung könnte jede seelische Erschütterung irgend einer Art eine heftige Krise zum Ausbruch bringen, die nicht ohne ernste Folgen bliebe – in this state of latent excitement any spiritual shock might bring on a crisis which could have dangerous secondary effects.’ This obviously meant her divorce, for that would be a severe ‘spiritual shock’ – it was, in fact, the exact opposite of everything that she had been hoping for these last long years.

  When they finally said goodbye Dr Kisch added some phrases so as not to sound too discouraging, words that could be taken as hopeful but which, in the pain and disappointment of knowing that they still had to wait, Adrienne only remembered long afterwards.

  For some time she remained there at the foot of the tree. She gazed ahead of her across the familiar clearing, in front of which she had so often paused before taking the path which led to the log-cabin that Balint had had built so that they should have a place to make love. It was here that a sudden wind had once torn down the young undergrowth, and now it seemed to the young woman standing there with such unnatural stillness that great swirls of mist were rising all around her and that the whole world grew darker and darker until she was alone in a sea of blackness. Then her knees buckled and she slid unconscious down the trunk of the great tree and lay in a faint between its entwining roots.

  It was a long ti
me before Adrienne came to, and by then the noonday sun was shining on her face. She had been lying on the same soft bed of moss on which she and Balint had fallen into each other’s arms that evening in May a year before.

  Chapter Three

  ADRIENNE’S FIRST LETTER FOUND Balint at Denestornya, the next at Budapest. In between he received a brief note which ‘Honey’ Andras Zutor, the forest guard, delivered to Abady at Banffy-Hunyad. All this said was:

  We can’t see each other, not for a long time. I’ll write to Budapest.

  Adrienne had had to send it there because Balint, when he had received her first breathless message at Denestornya, had at once written back that he would come to the cabin in the forest so that they could meet.

  Though the fact that this new turn in events meant that the inevitable break with his mother was now delayed was some slight consolation, the despair he sensed from Adrienne’s brief letter was a deep source of worry. It was because of this that he had decided to go to the Kalotaszeg so that they would be able to talk matters out face to face. Life at home was becoming more and more intolerable as the relations between mother and son grew ever colder and more tense. Everything they said to each other had an artificial ring, so much so that they might have been two sleep-walkers speaking at each other. Mother and son would still have their meals together, walk down to see the horses, stroll in the park and round the gardens, but it was all a sham; to both of them everything they did was no more than a charade designed to fill in the ever-diminishing time they had together before the storm broke.

  On the surface they both maintained the fiction that nothing had changed between them.

  One day Balint read out to his mother a report that had been sent to him by their forest manager Winckler. It said that this summer red deer had appeared on the mountain, and that he supposed that they must have come from the Gyalu range or from Dobrin, the Andrassys’ place, where quite a number had been set free ten years before. Two groups of hinds had been sighted, with some youngish stags in attendance, and there were reports of great bulls with magnificent sets of antlers though it was not clear if they referred to one bull or to several different ones.

  Balint showed the report to his mother, explaining as he did so how marvellous it would be if the red deer could be induced to stay. He thought he should go there at once and order larger feeding troughs and salt-licks to be provided to attract the deer in the coming winter. Roza Abady listened stony-faced; she didn’t believe a word of it. All she knew was that a letter had arrived from Almasko, and she was sure that her son had received a summons. Accordingly she hardly glanced at the papers her son passed over to her, but said icily, ‘Yes, of course. All right. Go if you must!’

  Her protruding eyes might have been made of glass.

  Balint only spent a few days on the mountain. He heard what the gornyiks, who had seen the deer, had to tell him about their tracks, and in turn had given his instructions about food troughs and the provision of rock-salt. And with the manager he discussed all those seemingly endless subjects that crop up in any substantial forestry holding; but his heart was not in it, for all he could think about was Adrienne’s divorce.

  Everything he did, he did automatically, like a robot, and, most unusual for him, he did not even notice any of the beauties of nature. Indeed he could hardly wait to get away.

  The letter he found waiting in Budapest was longer than the first, but still far from clear. Adrienne related what the doctor had said, but in hesitant, imprecise terms; and she also told him of those few more encouraging words he had said before they parted. There was something else which made Balint wonder where all this was leading to. When Adrienne wrote about how Dr Kisch had said that in Uzdy’s present state of mind any sudden shock might provoke a dangerous reaction, she had added two phrases about her daughter Clemmie: ‘We also have to consider her future. The child’s stability must be protected too!’

  Adrienne had added these two little phrases only so that Balint should not begin to worry about his personal safety. She had known that he would never accept this as a valid reason for delay, but she had written honestly and truthfully because she was not only devoted to the child but also worried about her, since it was clear that old Countess Clémence did more and more to alienate the child from its mother. As it happened Adrienne’s anxiety was not entirely justified because Clemmie lived in a separate wing of the house at Almasko, along with her French governess and the old English nanny, and it was easy to keep from her anything that happened in other parts of that large house.

  Balint knew this and so Adrienne’s innocent remarks first startled him and then sparked off a new and disconcerting train of thought.

  It occurred to him that Adrienne had become so obsessed with that long-standing war with her mother-in-law over who should have most influence over the child that she might now be tending to subordinate all her feelings about the divorce to the single matter of whether or not she would be able to keep custody of the child. Though natural enough in itself this, to Balint at least, was a minor issue when their future together was at stake: and above all minor to Adrienne since the child had been effectively removed from her care ever since its birth and so, in many ways, had never really been hers. Until now this was how Adrienne had seen it and indeed she had often said so.

  The little girl, with her closed expression and somewhat brusque movements like a robot, seemed to have nothing youthful, and certainly nothing childlike, about her. She was essentially the product of Almasko and of Uzdy’s own kind, and Balint could see in her no sign of that marvellous creature who happened to be her mother. He would willingly have accepted her if Adrienne brought the child with her, but he could see no reason to sacrifice their happiness if the others wanted to keep her.

  As these thoughts passed through his mind the image of their own much longed-for son rose within him, as it did each time that Adrienne spoke of bringing little Clemmie with her.

  Oh yes! thought Balint, it’s high time the idea of our son were replaced by the real thing. What Adrienne needs is the fact of motherhood, not just the desire for it.

  There was something else that Adrienne would have to face. She too must burn her boats if she was going to come with him. Just as he was prepared to become a stranger to his mother, to sacrifice his home and exile himself from his beloved Denestornya, indeed to give up everything that was dear to him for her sake, so she too must make her choice: was she prepared to leave everything for his sake, or would she give up their chance of happiness together for the sake of clinging on to that strange girl she hardly knew?

  Everything depended on that, and on nothing else.

  He decided not to do anything until the end of August because that was when Dr Kisch had promised to go again to Almasko. In the meantime he would go to Budapest and wait there for news. If Adrienne still wanted to put off any decisive action then he would have to act himself; but not until then.

  In the meantime there was something more important that he had to do. He had to find a place for them to live, for quarterly leases started on the first of August.

  After only a few days’ search he found the ideal thing, a third floor apartment whose entrance was in Dobrenty Street at the foot of the Castle hill in Buda, but whose windows looked out over the Danube at the quietest part of the long quays. It was a modern house with three superb rooms overlooking the great river. When he was first looking over the apartment he leaned out of one of the windows. From there one could see for miles, up and down the river, past the bridges and, over the multitudinous roofs of the outer parts of the city, far into the distance, to the east, towards Transylvania.

  It would be wonderful to live there, even if he were an exile, far from his native land, from his home, from Denestornya, where until now he had always imagined their life together. However much it hurt to be an exile it would still be wonderful as long as Adrienne were with him.

  For a few moments he imagined her presence so vividly that it was almos
t as if he could feel her curls brushing his face.

  Parliament was in recess and nothing of any great importance seemed to be happening abroad, excepting perhaps certain signs that the Entente was likely to become a reality.

  King Edward of England was once again taking the waters at Marienbad, though this time he did not go to see Franz-Josef but merely sent him polite greetings by telegram. And this year there were no visits by diplomats, and events showed that presumably these were no longer necessary as the contours of an Anglo-Russian understanding were there for all to see. For instance, Russian troops occupied a part of Persian territory – which, only a year or two before, would have meant war – and Great Britain said nothing; obviously it had been done with her full knowledge and consent.

  Despite the growing evidence that the central European powers were gradually being encircled, at home in Budapest no one thought of anything but their own internal affairs. Justh made more speeches at Independence Party meetings up and down the country, but these, as might be expected, were principally concerned with domestic politics and the vexing question of an independent banking system. There was a high treason trial in Zagreb, with more than fifty accused, but it made more stir in the Paris papers than at home. At Schwechat near Vienna the harvest festival was spoilt by an orgy of bloodletting when Czechs and Germans decided that a riot was the way to settle their differences.

  When Balint read all this it only enhanced his general feeling of bitterness without raising any feeling in him; he was totally engrossed in the agony of waiting.

  He tried to do some work, so as to alleviate his self-enforced idleness. He drafted a report to the co-operatives’ central authority demonstrating that, as now formed, those co-operatives that incorporated the people in the mountains were not as effective as they should be, for the simple reason that the farmers seemed reluctant to make proper use of the new cheap credits that were available to them. Balint, of course, realized that even though the notary Simo might make a show of trying to recruit the men of the mountain into the co-operative, they, no doubt intimidated by other influences, kept away. The apparent failure of his efforts to help these people added to Balint’s growing frustration and bitterness.