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

by Bánffy, Miklós

  Sadly enough, this disdain for internal politics was reflected by an equal disregard for the signs of more sinister developments abroad. It should have been a warning to Hungary that when all the defendants in the Zagreb treason trial were given heavy sentences of imprisonment, the French Press hailed it as a welcome sign of Balkan disintegration. What, it should then have been asked, was the true significance of the meeting at Racconigi between the Tsar of Russia and the King of Italy? No one knew, no one cared, and no one bothered to ask. True, there were cheerful gossipy items in the Press about the meeting of the two rulers, one of them the ally of the Anglo-French Entente Cordiale and the other of Austria and Germany, but it was complacently assumed that nothing would shake Italy’s loyalty to the central European powers. The newspapers wrote, ‘There is no question of Italy quitting the Triple Alliance’. No one thought to look further, and nothing was said to reassure those who might have been surprised that the Tsar‚ who had never been a peripatetic monarch like King Edward of England, should have gone to Italy at all. And yet, as was learned much later, it had been during this visit that plans were laid that led later to Italy’s change of heart during the Great War.

  Even Abady, who had formerly followed all such developments with growing concern, kept himself aloof, wrapped up as he was by his personal sadness and his worry over Adrienne. He only attended the sessions in Parliament once, and that was because he had been summoned by the Speaker who had sent a message that more members were needed to make a quorum so that the business of the House could continue. When he got there he discovered that the unfinished business was simply that the House could not legally rise until the date of the next session had been fixed and that there were not enough members present for any decision to be legal. In the past no one had minded or bothered to count: now it was different.

  It had started when a Slovak member had been absent and one of his friends had tried to vote for him. A count was taken and there were too few members in the Chamber. Justh adjourned the session while everyone telephoned everyone else to come quickly. At the next count there were still only fifty-nine when there should have been at least a hundred.

  Pandemonium! Old hands grumbled, but the House Rules were the House Rules and had to be obeyed. Bells rang throughout the House, footmen were sent searching every corner for stray members … and all was in vain, for now only fifty-seven could be rounded up.

  Despite every effort by five o’clock only sixty-seven supporters had been gathered in. Only sixty-seven: no one else could be found.

  This is when they thought of Abady, who hurried in a little after eight. As he passed along the corridor he found he had to pass a laughing group of People’s Party members who were merrily puffing at their cigars and gloating over the impotent rage of Justh and the more vociferous anger of Hollo. And the more they discussed it all, the more it was obvious that for them it was all the most enormous joke.

  ‘Don’t hurry!’ one of them called to Abady. ‘There never was such a lark! Come with us to the bar and drink some champagne. Nothing’s going to be settled until noon tomorrow at least. And why rush to the aid of those separate-bank cranks?’

  In the Chamber they were counting heads, but even with Abady there were still only ninety-eight. Meanwhile the clerks kept rushing in with more news of absent members and whether they would come in or not. Then, all at once, the number jumped to one hundred and four, and the Speaker dashed out calling: ‘Stay where you are, everybody! Please stay just a moment!’ Jubilation! Then the Speaker returned with Justh and the session was legally brought to an end with no surrender on either side.

  Balint walked slowly home. He was filled with sadness, for what had rejoiced the fractious People’s Party and deeply angered the Independents had merely induced in him a sense of gloom and depression. So this is what they had come to, all those politicians who not so long ago had taken office with such enthusiasm and such patriotic fervour! To think that Parliament itself, for so long the pride, indeed the glory, of the Hungarian people, could be desecrated by such a miserable, pathetic performance!

  There were those who thought of it as nothing but a huge joke, and there were those who saw nothing but a clever manipulation of those tiresome Rules. There was also, and this was perhaps the most depressing thought of all, that large majority who didn’t even bother to attend the House as the debates had become little more than word-chopping and argument. The Upper House no longer even met and all law-making had long since ceased. Indeed, thought Balint, there was no longer a government, no one party had a majority and the whole machinery of governing the country had ground to a halt. It was all meaningless, empty, like the dried carcass of a dead insect from which all life had long since departed. There were plenty of good men there, honest fellows from the country, and there were honest and experienced leaders too, men like Andrassy and Wekerle, full of goodwill and selfless devotion; but they were powerless in the morass of the present malaise. It was as if a curse had fallen on Hungary.

  After this brief interlude came more days and weeks of empty monotony. The public and political indifference weighed on Balint’s spirits like a leaden cloak. He felt alive only when he sat down to write to Adrienne.

  At first he wrote only occasionally, but as time went by his letters became ever more frequent until by the end of October he was writing every two or three days. He no longer cared if anyone noticed at Almasko. He did not even care if his letters stirred up trouble, indeed he would have welcomed trouble which would at least have rescued him from that hell of ashes in which he was living. So he poured out his soul into more and more letters, pleading, demanding, hotly exacting a decision; and since he wrote with passion and thought, weighing every word and every argument, the letters were good ones. He searched his mind for words of reproach which he knew would strike home, for he wanted her to be so hurt that she might be forced into action. He wrote about the spiritual misery of his life of exile, how he spent night after night alone in his dark little hotel room, how he dreamed every night of Denestornya, of that beloved home he had thrown aside for her sake. And then there would be letters in which he wrote only that he could not write because he had nothing in the world to write about.

  Sometimes he would include something more trivial. One day, for example, he had run across little Lili Illesvary. It had been a chance meeting just as she was passing through Budapest with the Szent-Gyorgyis, and he had dined with them that night. During the evening he had again been invited to Jablanka and Lili had smiled at him saying, ‘I will be there too!’ Afterwards it had occurred to Balint that he might be able to use this to make Adrienne jealous and so in his next letter he had told her of that occasion in the summer when they had played ‘Up Jenkins’ at the Park Club and he had found himself physically excited by her. He had gone on to praise the girl, saying how sweet and pretty and desirable she was and quoting her words which had seemed then like a caress. It was cruel of him, he knew, but perhaps it would bring some reaction.

  Mostly, however, he wrote about that son for whom he longed so much, until his letters spoke of almost nothing but that. Over and over again he wrote how vital it was to him that this boy, his and hers, should be born to them, and how he could think of nothing else but his need for an heir who would be the ultimate bond between them. In his later letters even his desire for Adrienne became merged with his yearning for their boy until the image of this unborn child melted into that of Adrienne herself. It was her body, her beautiful, desirable body, that now became the instrument forged only to bring forth the ultimate object of their love.

  Adrienne’s replies, on the other hand, gradually became shorter and shorter. At first she tried to convince him by argument, and, though by no means sure of herself, to explain herself, to convince him that at present it was impossible to come to a decision, to make a definite break. She wrote that she had a great responsibility but that … well, one day … And though her letters became ever more brief and incoherent, through her falterin
g words there throbbed a passion as affecting as a heartbeat. Finally all she could say was ‘I think of you all the time … Don’t torture me … You can’t possibly know‚ you can’t know …’ and nothing more. For some time she had not mentioned her daughter, and Balint instinctively felt he had chosen the right course and went on writing those cruel letters, though his heart bled for her each time he did it.

  On November 10th the post brought him a letter; and this time it was a long one.

  ‘I can’t stand it any more!’ she wrote. ‘I can’t stand it!’ Then, with almost businesslike dryness she said that she had made up her mind to ask for a divorce at once, no matter what happened as a result. She had written to Absolon to come to Almasko and she would give him a letter to hand to her husband announcing that she was going home to her father’s house at Mezo-Varjas whence she would start proceedings. She could trust no one else and old Absolon was only to give Uzdy the letter after she had left the house. Balint was to stay in Budapest and on no account to move from where he was, nor write her a single line, not even of thanks, because she wouldn’t be able to stand it. ‘It is because what I do now – this reckless chance I must take – must be done for myself alone and not also for you. If a catastrophe follows it must be I alone who am responsible!’ Only in this way, she wrote, could it be possible, and only in this way was there a chance of success. ‘I will let you know at once if there are any developments, important developments. Don’t be impatient because it will be at least 10 or 12 days before I’ll be able to tell you anything‚’

  At the end of the letter there was a short postscript. ‘Uzdy seems quieter now.’ And then there was a single word, twice underlined: ‘Maybe??’

  Chapter Five

  ‘MAYBE??’ These five letters and the double question-mark encapsulated the anxiety and spiritual turmoil that had been Adrienne’s lot ever since Dr Kisch had made his first visit to Almasko. It was only now, three months later, and especially since the doctor’s second visit at the beginning of September, that Adrienne had begun to understand the full meaning of those careful deliberate words with which Dr Kisch had given his opinion. He had repeated much the same thing when he came again in September, and it was now clear to Adrienne that what the doctor had been saying implied that her husband, if not already mad, was certainly on the verge of madness.

  They had been married for nearly ten years and she had often thought of him as eccentric and cranky. To herself she used the word ‘crazy’ but not in this sense, not pathologically. She had never thought of him as incipiently clinically mad. The thought had never occurred to her. Now she had to face reality, to face the fact that he was menaced by that monster insanity, which could wreck her whole future – for if he really did go off his head she would never be able to divorce him, such was the law.

  Adrienne was careful to keep this appalling thought to herself. She did not even mention it in her letters to Balint, telling herself that she did not want to worry him further. Subconsciously she was bowing to the superstition that if the thing was put into words then it would become so, as if the words themselves could conjure up the fact. She hardly even admitted it to herself, though now she watched anxiously every word and movement her husband made. Of course she had always watched him, but now it was different. In their first years of marriage she had had to be on the alert whenever they were together, but this was to protect herself from his violence and unpredictability; later, when she had learnt from Balint what love really was, she feared for her lover’s safety. Now her vigil was more clinical and she watched over Uzdy more as his nurse, dispassionately, without ill-feeling.

  It was from this time that she found her hatred for him diminishing, for it was no longer her husband who was the enemy, but rather that dreaded sickness which if allowed to strike would utterly destroy everything she lived for. She found that she could even think of the onslaught of madness as something alien, some malignant superhuman force that came from God knows where.

  Everything that Uzdy now said or did was for her merely a symptom to be studied, analysed and interpreted – but it was all so contradictory, so confusing, that the more she watched the more confused she became herself. One day she would be filled with hope, the next with despair.

  On the surface nothing had changed. Uzdy lived as he always had and behaved as he always had, one day arrogant and ironic, another disdainfully polite; and yet there was always that latent ferocity lurking behind the of normality. He continued to work at those wondrous tables of figures that he believed would one day transform the world, indeed more devotedly than ever since Dr Kisch had praised his endeavours. He barely seemed to notice Adrienne’s presence and mercifully never came to her room at night, though this might have been due to exhaustion after long hours of work in his study or even to those soothing medicines the Saxon doctor had prescribed. Superficially everything was normal until something happened which seemed to disturb him. There should have been nothing in it, and its effect was only gradually noticeable.

  It was after Countess Clémence came home from Meran that Adrienne began to notice that her husband seemed, though without any obvious reason, to be annoyed with his mother. He would pick on her, taking any occasion to reprimand her, sometimes with an insolent rudeness that had never before been the old lady’s lot. Adrienne did not remember his ever doing this before, though she admitted to herself that she might not have noticed in the summer and only did so now because she was watching him so carefully.

  And, as soon as she did notice, she saw that the habit was growing. The first obvious clash came when the new young French governess arrived and Countess Clémence made her senior to the old English nanny. In those protocol-ridden days this was quite correct since the governess was an educated woman with an official diploma. Uzdy did not protest but lost no opportunity of humiliating the girl, all the while gazing maliciously at his mother. Then there was a host of unusual little incidents, all essentially trivial. Uzdy would suddenly start cross-questioning his mother as to why she had sent the carriage somewhere, or he would demand a detailed explanation for the replacement of one of the under-gardeners; he even expostulated with her for sending a basket of plums to the priest from Nagy-Almas who came each Sunday to say mass at Almasko. He, who had never bothered his head with anything to do with the daily running of the house, now took his mother up about all sorts of little everyday details of housekeeping. And when he did so one could tell from his tone of voice that, though he was making an effort to control himself, he now used with her that ironic insulting manner which would end in angry shouts when he lost control.

  When this happened Adrienne felt herself go rigid with anxiety. What, she asked herself, could be the reason for this suddenly revealed resentment? What was the cause of this latent hostility which seemed as if he were demanding expiation for some secret offence? What could it be that had made Uzdy change so much towards his mother when for so many years he had always taken her part against her daughter-in-law? Why did he now turn against and ill-treat the one person he had always seemed to love and revere?

  And why did the old lady take it all without a murmur?

  Countess Clémence, faced with this inexplicable change in her son, would reply to him, giving the shortest possible answers in a calm but ice-cold manner. As always her expression showed no emotion and was as stiff as ever; her face might have been made of marble and her eyes of glass. She did not look at her son, but at something far, far away in space … or perhaps in time?

  There was no regular pattern, no continuity. Sometimes ten days or a fortnight would pass without incident, and then suddenly a stormy scene would interrupt their calm. In the middle of October one such scene disturbed Adrienne greatly.

  They were sitting in the big oval drawing-room after lunch. Adrienne was doing some needlework and her mother-in-law sat, as she always did, stiffly upright on the sofa with a table in front of her. Uzdy was pacing about the room from the stove to the windows and back again. It was the s
ame as any other day and, like any other day, no one spoke. The habitual silence was broken only by the sound of his footsteps on the wooden floor.

  Adrienne did not look up from her work but she was still able to see that every time her husband passed in front of them he darted a piercing look at his mother. This went on for a long, long time, until Adrienne became convinced that something strange and terrible was about to happen. It was as if the air under that high coved ceiling might suddenly transform itself into a menacing cloud above their heads. If the old lady felt it too she gave no sign. Her face was in shadow and her high-piled hair was edged with silver from the light behind her.

  When Uzdy returned from what seemed like the hundredth time he had paced the room he stopped behind his wife’s chair, grasping it with both hands which Adrienne could sense were trembling uncontrollably.

  ‘I should like to ask,’ he said to his mother, ‘why you are spying

  ‘I have no idea what you mean!’ she replied.

  Uzdy laughed, with menace in his voice. ‘You? You have no idea? All right, I’ll tell you! For some time now I have seen dark figures skulking under my windows. They march to and fro, stopping, spying and sneaking away. Then they come back again … What about that?’

  ‘It must be the night watchman,’ said Countess Clémence icily. ‘As far as I am aware, that is what he is supposed to do.’

  ‘So that’s it, is it? The night watchman? Well! Well! Well!’ Uzdy leant forwards so that his chest brushed against Adrienne’s hair. ‘The night watchman, eh?’ Then, suddenly, he shouted, ‘It’s a lie, a lie, a lie!’