‘I have measured him already, my Lady … when he was brought in. He is two centimeters shorter, but he comes from a line that has always developed slowly and I’m sure that in a year or two’s time he will have caught up and then they’ll be just the same.’
‘We should still try him beside the Merges filly,’ suggested old Szakacs, waving to the lads to bring up the third choice whose name was ‘Mandula!’. Taking the halter he said, ‘Komelo’ – a strange word that for most people held no meaning.
Many years before Szakacs had gone to England with Countess Roza’s father who had wanted to find a thoroughbred stallion to improve the breed in Transylvania. There he had learned many things including the English way of strapping the horses with only one hand – though putting the whole body’s weight behind it – the use of flannel bandages, how to make a bran mash and what was meant by ‘blistering’. He also learned a few stable commands in English, though they became somewhat tangled when he tried to use them himself. But the stable lads, and the horses, soon understood what was expected of them; and now Mandula stepped smartly forward as if she already knew that Komelo meant ‘Come along!’.
Again they looked for a long time at the three possible choices and, as in all long-established studs where the breeding followed a set pattern, there was really very little to choose between them, and any one would have been a splendid match with either of the others. Finally Countess Roza turned to the coachman, Feri, and asked what he thought.
‘If your Ladyship pleases, I would be happy with any of them; still I rather think that Csujtar’s trot is the longer and that he would therefore be better for carriage-work.’
Simon Jäger’s eyes shone: ‘Mandula would look well with our other hunters’, he said. And in so speaking of the horses as ‘ours’ he was doing what everyone employed at Denestornya always had. Everything about the great castle and the estate was known, even to the youngest and humblest stable lads, as ‘ours’, in the first person plural, in pluralis majesteticus – the royal ‘we’.
They would say: this is ‘our’ lucerne, ‘our’ oats, ‘our’ meadows, mares and stallions, ‘our’ cattle, oxen and donkeys. Everyone used this majestic ‘we’ and ‘our’, from the great heights of the butler and the Chief Stud Groom, through the footmen, barn and storekeepers, huntsmen, gardeners, cooks, estate mechanics and smiths, down to the humblest scullery-maid or stable-boy. ‘Our’ carriages, ‘our’ farm-carts, ‘our’ pots and ‘our’ pans. It was even used of the Denestornya wildlife – ‘our’ deer, ‘our’ hares, ‘our’ pheasants – exactly as if it belonged to them, which in a very real sense it did, for they were intensely proud of Denestornya and everything about it as if they were in reality the owners of an estate which had no rival in the entire world.
This spirit had crystallized through many, many generations, for there was hardly a single family in the village some of whose members had not, at one time or another, done their stint ‘at Court’; and none who had not been the better for it, not only because everything was ‘found’ for those who were in the Abady employ and so those who had any money of their own could save it. Likewise if any of them thought to build, for example, a house on their own land (for nearly all the peasant families owned some land) they were freely given all the wood or quarried stone they needed. If a pig died it was replaced from the estate farms, and no one worried about sickness or old age, either for themselves or their families, because the ‘masters’ would take care to see that everything was provided. Not that anyone had, or needed, a contract, for all these things were taken for granted. A man had only to ask, and he was given as soon as he had spoken to the ‘master’ and explained his problem. The deep feeling of unity in the little village near the castle, the community spirit and the general feeling of goodwill and fellowship, sprang directly from these ancient traditions. As a result hardly any so-called ‘foreigner’ – which meant anyone from any other district, however close it might be – ever stayed long in the castle service. The only exceptions at that time were Countess Roza’s two housekeepers, who had come to her in her lonely widowhood, and who had then so ingratiated themselves with their mistress. As it was, both Mrs Baczo and Mrs Tothy were loathed and feared by the other servants, who resented the fact that the two women would always tell her whatever they might wish her to believe.
The decision had almost been taken to return Mandula to the stud to be trained later as a saddle-horse, while the other two would be paired off for carriage-work, when Countess Roza decided to take one more close look at them all. She rose and started to walk round them again when a loud blast from a car-horn was heard from outside the horseshoe court and, almost before the countess had time to look up, her son’s car came rushing through the great gates.
At the sight of the little group and the three young horses Balint slammed on the brakes, stopped the car and jumped out so quickly that it almost seemed as if he was rushing towards her before the car had stopped.
At once Countess Roza understood that something extraordinary had happened to her son, for it was a long time since he had seemed so young and happy and active. Here was a complete contrast to the sad and listless figure he had been for so long and, though she could not know what it was, she was sure that there was something and was determined to find out the reason. She peered at him with slightly screwed-up eyes, as she did when carefully examining her young horses, though by the time he reached her side she gave no sign that she had noticed any change in him. At once she started to tell him what she had just been doing and to ask his opinion, not that she really needed anything but his approval of the decisions she had already made. Nevertheless she went through the motions of asking a number of unnecessary questions and appearing to weigh up, once more, the arguments and reasoning which had led to her deciding to make a saddle-horse of the Merges filly and send the other two for carriage-training. Then mother and son walked back together to the castle door … and all the while she was keeping the talk going as long as she could so as to give her more time to look into his eyes and study his expression. There certainly was a difference, but what had caused the change she could only wonder.
Tea had been laid on the covered veranda outside the big first-floor drawing-room in the west wing.
For the countess only coffee and buffalo milk was served, but as Balint had just arrived the housekeepers quickly put out a full spread of cold meats, hot bread, sweet and savoury cakes, freshly churned butter so rich that it was practically melting on its silver dish, honey in the comb, quince jelly and three different sorts of jam. As if this were not more than enough Mrs Tothy and Mrs Baczo reappeared every few minutes carrying in more covered dishes of hot cakes and doughnuts straight from the oven, fritters, muffins and scones; and then they stood silently to one side with huge smiles on their fat little faces as the son of the house fell on the unexpected repast with the appetite of a wolf.
Countess Roza watched it all with a secret smile that could hardly have been detected by anyone else, casting covert glances at her son’s expression as he devoured dish after dish. Not that she asked anything about what she most wanted to know, for she knew better than that. Instead she kept up a flow of small talk, recounting what had happened at home during the five days since her son had gone to the opera in Kolozsvar. Holes had been dug in the orchard where they had planned to put in some seedling fruit-trees; that morning there had been some early frost, but only on the lower meadows near the river; the young footman Sandor had announced that he would soon be getting married; and that very same morning they had heard a fallow buck calling from some way off in the park. And with every little tale that she told Countess Roza was wondering: what has happened? What could have happened to put him in such a good humour all of a sudden? And what could she do to find out?
By now the sun was beginning to set. The peaks of the Jara mountains turned slowly to purple and the sky above was streaked with orange and deep carmine. Here and there thin vaporous clouds were to be seen, and th
rough them the rays from the sinking sun soared high above etching great lines of fire on the brilliant green and pale blue of the darkening heavens. The edges of the few clouds were ringed with a rosy fire and it seemed as if the whole world were bathed in a golden light that reached all around them, penetrating even the dark entrance to the Torda gorge, casting a soft glow over the distant grasslands of the Keresztes plain and on the nearby river banks, and even into the deepest recesses of the wide glazed veranda.
Blinking slightly at all this brightness Countess Roza at last tried a more direct approach. Brightly, but still carefully, she said:
‘But you haven’t told me about the opera! How was the Madam Butterfly? Was it well done? Was it as beautiful as everyone expected?’
Balint gave a few banal replies saying that, oh yes, it had been lovely, very grand, very beautiful.
‘And the French singer?’
‘Excellent. Really beautiful! Superb!’
All these answers, despite their superlatives, he gave somewhat hurriedly without offering a single phrase to explain what he meant or justify his praise. It seemed that for some reason of his own he did not want to be forced into giving details and, as this was so unlike her son, who never had any difficulty in expressing himself with ease and fluency and whose descriptions of what he had heard or seen were usually vivid and to the point, Countess Roza realized at once that she was on the right track and that if something had happened at the opera she would have to feel her way with caution if she were to find out what it was.
‘They tell me it’s a most dramatic piece. What part did you find the most exciting, the most touching? How was the entr’acte before the last act?’ Having read the newspaper articles – which Balint had missed – it was soon obvious to her that she knew more about the tragic love of Cio-Cio-San for Lieutenant Pinkerton than did her son, who did not seem at all familiar with anything except the long first act love duet, for it was to that that he always returned whatever she might ask him about the rest of the work. And then he started to peel an apple and seemed so absorbed in so doing that it seemed to her better to let the subject drop.
Knowing her son so well Countess Roza thought it would be better not to insist any more. One more question, however, she did ask. She wanted to know if he had seen any of their friends at the theatre, and so learned that Margit Miloth and her husband had been in the Gyalakuthy box next to the Abadys’ and, though Balint said nothing about Adrienne, his manner was suddenly so awkward and constrained that his mother quickly decided to change the subject, not bringing the matter up again, and then only with great circumspection, until they were seated at dinner that evening.
She reached the subject in the most roundabout manner, as was her way. First of all she talked about the hunting at Zsuk. Then she asked which families had brought out debutante girls that season, and asked if the autumn social life in Kolozsvar was as lively and amusing as it usually was when the hunt season began. She wanted to know who had opened their town houses and who was going to give balls and dinners; and in this way she eventually arrived at her destination, which was to ask about the Prefect’s supper party. Now she discovered her first important fact: Balint had had a headache and had not attended. He had been sorry to miss the occasion for he would have liked to have met the diva and seen so many of their friends, but it had been a rotten sort of migraine and he hadn’t felt up to it, admitting for the first time that he hadn’t even stayed until the end of the performance. Perhaps, he said, thinking no doubt that it was quite an adequate excuse, he had been rather vague about it when they had discussed his doings over tea that afternoon.
In fact the inadequacy of the excuse was just what Countess Roza wanted to hear, for it immediately gave her a clue as to what had really happened. It was clear to her now that her son had met someone at the theatre, and it was for this person’s sake that he had left early and for whom he had failed to go to the party. It could only have been Adrienne; and Countess Roza knew it as surely as if he had spelled it out.
For a moment her old anger flared up once again. That woman! That accursed woman! But then her wrath dissolved again almost as quickly as it had appeared.
For twelve long, miserable months after she had forbidden Balint to come home to Denestornya, Countess Abady had sat alone in her great house; and even after her son had been allowed back he had been so gloomy, so distracted, so totally uninterested in everything in which he had formerly taken such pleasure and so listless, that it had been like living with a ghost. Every time that she had looked at her son’s weary face her heart had constricted and, though she never for a moment thought that she had acted in anything but his best interests – and, of course, to preserve the family’s prestige and honour – it had been a daily sorrow to see him so heartbroken. Only now, this very day, had he been his old self again, young and cheerful and filled with hope and the joy of being alive. She hadn’t seen him like that for so long, oh, so long; and her joy and thankfulness for his being restored to his old self prevented her from analysing the reasons too carefully lest they should be too difficult to accept. Nor for a moment did she question the rightness of her royal decree – however arrogant and tyrannical it might have been – but she now realized that since he could never marry that woman, since he could never bring her to enjoy the Abady house and inheritance, what did it matter if by seeing her he could be made happy once more? Of course it would mean that a proper acceptable marriage for him would now be put off for a few more years, but she could accept that as the price for once more seeing peace and happiness in his face.
It only took her a moment to think this out and accept the situation for what it was and so she quickly stopped asking any more awkward questions. Without appearing to have noticed her son’s hesitation and embarrassment she switched smoothly to less controversial subjects.
‘Tell me about those two daughters of Laszlo Gyeroffy’s old guardian, Stanislo. Do they have red-blonde hair like their father’s famous wig? And the second Kamuthy girl – I suppose those are the new ones this year – is she as roly-poly as her brother or is she like her elder sister?’ Balint, now alive and unconstrained again, did his best to imitate those moonfaced, simple-minded girls and was so successful that Countess Roza roared with laughter and even called upon the two fat housekeepers who sat in silence at the end of the table to do the same and agree with her delighted applause.
‘Yes, indeed!’ said one, and the other echoed, ‘Indeed, yes!’
Recently these two had tried their best to ingratiate themselves with Balint. Their old ally and supporter, the rascally lawyer Azbej who for so long had managed Countess Abady’s affairs, was no longer there since he had not long before resigned from acting as her agent. The little lawyer was no fool and, as soon as Countess Roza had made peace with her son, he realized that if he were not very careful the young master would soon find out many things Azbej would rather remained hidden; and that he would then be called to account without mercy. It was better, he thought, to go before this could happen and so, during the previous winter, he had made the journey to Abbazia where the mistress was spending the cold season and told her that family matters of his own obliged him to leave her service. The explanation he gave was that, with the principal motive of doing a service to the Countess’s noble family, he had bought Laszlo Gyeroffy’s estate of Szamos-Kozard (which, of course, no one else would have bought) and to do so he had used his wife’s money. Now he would have to give up everything else in order to be free to run the place. Of course it had all been done only to serve the interests of the Gracious Countess’s most illustrious family. He took with him a sheaf of impressive-looking accounts and a carefully worded dispensation which only required the Gracious Countess’s signature. This obtained he went on his way and the Gracious Countess herself had said how sorry she was to see him go.
With Azbej’s departure Mrs Baczo and Mrs Tothy at once lost that precious ally with whose protection they had been enabled to lord it over Counte
ss Roza’s household. They knew that the other servants detested them both, knowing what advantages they had gained from their privileged position and how much they had been able to profit by it. Now they needed a new protector, and both thought they could do no better than to get the young master on their side. Only he would be able to protect them if their mistress, or even he himself, somehow got wind of what they had been up to for so long; and so they worked it out that, if they paid their court well and pleased him and somehow earned his approval, then he would be less inclined to start looking into how they had run the kitchens and stillrooms and asking why the bills for butcher’s meat, sugar, coffee and cooking fat had been so high.
It was true that since his return the young master had shown no sign of being interested in anything, let alone such awkward matters as household expenses. When Azbej had first left and Balint had come home nearly everyone employed at Denestornya had one great fear. The estate foremen, the farming tenants and many others had all been guilty of persistent falsification of their accounts which Azbej had overlooked because, if he protected them, they in turn would say nothing about his own even more profitable thieving: now they were all scared to death that Count Balint would at once put his nose into everything. But it hadn’t happened: Count Balint did nothing. It was the same with the administration of the forest holdings in which he had formerly taken such a deep personal interest. He came, he went. He had looked around and dealt without joy with whatever was put in front of him. He had made a few enquiries, but had initiated nothing new and indeed treated everything with the same listless indifference.
They Were Divided Page 7
