Old Marton never tired of telling himself that one had to be a pretty clever fellow to be a good poacher. One had to know what wire or thread was right for each kind of trap or snare and he even knew that the best, though hard to come by, were violin strings. While he still lived in the manor house he had found a packet in one of the drawers and, as Laszlo had long before sold his violin, old Marton quickly slipped it into his own pocket. Of course one had to know, too, exactly how to set the snare so that no passer-by should see it and steal it before the game had been caught. Neither was it an easy matter to go round checking the snares, either at dawn or any other time, without being seen by some curious eye. Furthermore one had to have the Devil’s own cunning, and a lot of knowledge and experience, before one could succeed in getting one’s prey home undetected.
He had been at it for years, but he had only occasionally been able to bring something home for the pot as in those years small game was scarce in that part of Transylvania, especially on such a run-down estate as Kozard.
While he had been lodged in the servants’ quarters of the manor house he would set his snares near the boundary of the park. This had been comparatively easy and it had not been necessary to take many precautions against being seen for no one lived nearby; but since he had moved down into the house in the village things had become more complicated. Azbej had the park fences repaired and so old Marton had no excuse if he were discovered wandering about inside. The only hunting ground left was the forest, down by the riverbed and up the hillside beyond. It was more difficult, but also more exciting.
The old poacher laid his plans carefully and, so as not to make himself conspicuous, went out only occasionally, and when it seemed most likely he would catch something, for example when it looked as if it would snow the following day. He knew that hares were particularly sensitive to the weather and at such times always made for the thickest parts of the woods. At such times old Marton would go off to gather kindling: at least that was what he would tell one of the estate game-keepers if they happened to meet and if, and only if, the other man was bold enough to ask what he was doing. This hardly ever occurred for he was known to be surly, a man of few words who usually gave a rude answer if spoken to. The following day at dawn he would visit his traps and snares, and if anything had been caught in the night he would bring it home concealed under his jacket, while he carried a heavy bunch of dry twigs so that anyone could see why he had been in the forest. At such times he would walk with his back bent as if tired out from his heavy labours and heaving great sighs as he staggered past the outlying cottages. And all the time he would exult inwardly, his soul pouring out a paean of triumph and joy, for he knew that he was cleverer than them all, for was he not carrying home the fruits of his illegal poaching under their very noses while they knew nothing, nothing at all?
Of course the whole village knew and had always known, but they would never have told it either to Azbej, whom they hated as a quarrelsome martinet – and a stranger to boot – or to old Marton himself, for if they had let the old man know that everyone knew what he was up to, there would have been no more fun to be got out of it. As it was they watched everything he did. They saw when he sauntered out to the forest pretending to search for kindling, and how he staggered back under huge loads in the morning before stealing off to the next village to sell the skins. They watched the whole comedy and laughed their heads off when he was out of earshot. Even the children would enter into the spirit of the game, sometimes calling out: ‘What are you carrying, Uncle Marton?’ and when the old man merely growled back ‘Can’t you see? Wood, of course!’ or ‘Mind your own business, you little bugger!’ they would pull faces behind his back and laugh about it all the following week.
Laszlo knew nothing of all this.
But on that one day it happened that he was stone cold sober and in a foul mood because his weekly allowance had all been spent and at the shop they wouldn’t give him any more to drink. Little Regina would have given him something, but it was Friday afternoon and because of the Sabbath Bischitz would not be leaving the shop and so Laszlo would have no opportunity of getting the girl on her own. He got more and more desperate. Money had to be found somehow or he felt he would go mad. At that moment he happened to glance at the worn chest-of-drawers – a worthless piece of furniture from one of the old servants’ rooms that Azbej had generously allowed him to take from the manor house. On its top lay a long smooth leather case with triangular little canvas covers on the corners to prevent it from scuffing and a tiny elegant snap-lock. It was an English-made case for a pair of guns, though now it held only one. It had been sent after him from Desmer when Sara Bogdan Lazar had sent back everything that had belonged to him. The feeble lamp cast only a faint glow and yet the smooth hard leather and the brass of the lock and clasps on its leather straps still shone brightly. Laszlo gazed at the case as if hypnotized.
Laszlo had entirely forgotten that he still had it. He got up and looked at it more closely. There, stamped in the leather top, was his name, engraved with a slight spelling mistake – Count Ladislas Gieroffy – just as it had always been from the time, so long ago, when the pair of guns had been a Christmas present from his two aunts in Western Hungary. He stroked the letters lightly, thinking back to that Christmas in the Kollonichs’ great country house when he had been just eighteen. Christmas at Simonvasar! In the library there had been a Christmas tree that reached to the ceiling. The room had been lit by thousands and thousands of candles. Everything had been so bright and Klara had been there … in a white dress … still very slim and girlish … and he could remember her eyes, ocean-grey, and wide open with joy and happiness …
For an instant he stood still, lost in his memories. Then he shook himself and pressed back the catch almost with loathing and lifted the lid of the case until it rested against the wall. There lay the gun, its stock and barrel in separate compartments, and there lay too the place for its pair which had been sold long before. He wondered why he had kept this one, he who had no money for brandy, let alone for cartridges.
Of course he must sell it at once, and he wondered why it had not previously occurred to him to do so.
He took out the gun and put it together. It was so perfectly made, as neat as any chronometer, that it opened noiselessly and the stock and barrel fitted together with a barely perceptible click. Slight though this was the sound made Laszlo shudder, for it reminded him of the countless times he had heard the same sound, without then even noticing it, at the great annual shoots at the Szent-Gyorgyis’ or the Kollonichs’; and now it was like a great chime of bells from some infinite distance, from a past which was no more. Quickly Laszlo took the gun apart again and put it hurriedly back in its case. He knew he had to get rid of it as quickly as possible.
Grabbing his hat and jacket he ran out of the house like a man pursued.
For a little while Laszlo followed the road through the village, and then he turned off down a track that led to the old fuller’s mill on the banks of the Szamos where there lived a man called Fabian. He was known only by his first name for being of Czech or Moravian origin his family name was Szprnad and no one at Kozard could pronounce it properly. He was obviously rich and so had been known as ‘The Millionaire’ ever since he had arrived in the village a year before. As well as the mill he had bought up a wool-combing business and had also built himself an oil-press. He seemed to be half peasant and half townsman and had come from Borgo where, people said, his father had kept an inn. It was soon obvious that he was an astute businessman: he was also a great drinker and sometimes would carouse so long with his friends that the entire supply of beer in the village was consumed and more had to be sent for in a hurry.
Laszlo had first met him in Bischitz’s shop and the newcomer had at once bought him so many tots of brandy that Laszlo had passed out and had to be carried home. Fabian had knocked back just as much, but it had not seemed to have any effect on him and indeed he hardly blinked even after more than a dozen
gills of the strongest brand. Since that day the two men had formed a sort of drinking friendship – it had no other basis – and from time to time Fabian would carry Laszlo off to Szamos-Ujvar for an orgy of drink and gypsy music and sex with the town whores which would last well into the next day. The local tarts were what one might expect in such a small provincial backwater and as for the gypsies they came mostly from the poorest of their kind whose families scratched a living digging clay. This is what Fabian enjoyed for he could only relax in the sort of company where the music was unbelievably noisy, where he could tear off all his clothes and where the women were fat.
Laszlo went down the little path that had been trodden in the snow until he could see a faint glimmer of light from the fuller’s window. The throb of the oil press was like a giant’s heartbeat, and Laszlo, knowing that Fabian was often away travelling, prayed that this time he would find him at home.
He was just in time, for round the corner came Fabian driving his sturdy little cart. The fuller was of medium height and broad of shoulder. A white sheepskin hat covered his shaven head and he wore a beard that was trimmed round the corners of his mouth as far back as the ears so as to show off his wide black moustaches of which he was very proud. His thick fleshy exceptionally red lips were full of life and vigour and all the hair on his face seemed to be brushed horizontally sideways. He stopped the cart and greeted Laszlo boisterously.
‘What’s this, Count? Coming to pay a visit? That’s wonderful!’ he shouted in a voice of thunder and, although he spoke Hungarian fluently, one could tell from the long-drawn-out vowels that it was not his mother tongue. ‘I’ll drive you home,’ he went on, ‘but I can’t stop as I’ve been asked to supper at Iklod.’ And he shoved out a giant fist and pulled Gyeroffy up beside him as if he had weighed no more than a feather. They drove on slowly for the road was all soft snow and mud.
Laszlo said he wanted to sell his gun, a valuable one, made in England.
‘How much?’
‘Whatever you say,’ answered Laszlo.
‘Count, you’re mad!’ said the fuller laughing, and he gave the young man a playful push with his massive shoulder. Then he added, ‘I can give you some money if you’re short.’
‘Certainly not! If you want the gun then buy it … but no hand-outs. That I won’t accept!’
‘Let’s have a look at it then.’
They got down at Laszlo’s little house and went in. Fabian bought the weapon at once but refused to take the case even though Laszlo pressed it on him. What did he need with the case, said Fabian. It would only get in the way and anyhow it had Laszlo’s name on it. He went out, threw the gun under the seat in the cart and paid for it at once, two hundred crowns in cash, which was an absurdly low price for such a splendid double-barrelled Purdey. Of course Fabian had no idea what a treasure he was getting and even fancied he was being over-generous. Then he drove off.
Laszlo remained alone in the darkening room. Two bank notes lay upon the table before him and so he had enough money to drink himself into oblivion. With money he could drink, and with drink he could forget … and now especially he needed something to wash away that sentimental heart-ache he had momentarily felt when Fabian had seized the Purdey with his great coarse hands and practically run out of the door with it. Why, he wondered, had that action given him such a sudden stab of pain? Why now, suddenly, when so long ago he had decided that anything that reminded him of his lost past was hateful. Oh, well, it was good that he had seen the last of it!
Laszlo was still barefooted since he had taken off his sodden boots and socks on coming into the room. He decided he would have to send old Marton out for brandy so he picked up one of the notes and stepped out onto the hallway that separated the part of the house where he lived from Marton’s own lodging. This was a widish room with a fireplace, behind which was the kitchen that had been used by all the inhabitants of the house when it had lodged two tenant families. He opened the door opposite and there was the old servant crouching down on the floor with a candle beside him: he was stretching the hare-skin on a plank of wood. Caught in the act he stared up as his master too dumbfounded to speak. Laszlo burst out laughing.
‘You old rogue! Now I’ve caught you! Out with it, where did that hare come from?’
‘I caught it.’
‘How? Not while it was on the run, I’ll be bound.’
‘With a snare.’
‘Bravo indeed! I like that. Very clever. Where, may I ask?’
Balogh did not want to answer that. Still, he said, ‘In the forest.’
‘I see! In the forest! Well, if Azbej can steal my forest I suppose I can steal his hares! Why not? Now go over to Bischitz’s and bring me half a litre of brandy, the best he has. We’ll talk about all this later …’
And so Laszlo became a poacher, and his life was changed. In a few days he had learned the essentials from old Marton, how the snares were prepared and where were the most likely places to set them. After a while they would go in turns to the forest, Laszlo in the evening to set eight or ten snares in places they had already planned together, and Marton at dawn to collect the game. They caught two good hares in the first week.
This was the first thing in many years to give Laszlo any pleasure. His fingers, trained to the intricacies of the violin and keyboard, soon adapted to tying the most delicate of snares; and these he hung with such skill and art where his prey had trodden a path at the foot of a thornbush thicket, or along a branch, that neither man nor beast could have said they were there.
There was only one snag: he soon found that hares rarely went deep into the forests when the weather was fine nor even when the sky was merely overcast. Then they stayed out in the meadows and ploughed fields. They went to the woods only when it was exceptionally windy or when there was snow in the air. Then, and only then, was it worth the effort of setting the traps and snares.
This was not enough for Laszlo, for he had become so fond of this new game that he wanted to play it every day.
Between the house where Laszlo lived and the road was some wooden-plank fencing but only on each side, running from the road to the little stream that ran at the bottom of the slope behind the house. On the left there was only a hedge between, a piece of vacant land between Laszlo’s little house and the Bischitz’s shop; while on the right, between it and the grounds of Laszlo’s old manor house, Azbej had added a fence of dry sticks near the bank of the stream. There, as the place was sandy and close to water, he had also placed his new hen-run. Azbej had started to raise Orpingtons whose brown eggs were so popular that he hoped to export them even to England. A long hen-house had been built with a flat sandy yard between it and the stream. At the far end, just under the slope of the hill on the top of which had been built the manor house itself, the new owner had built a house for the farm overseer. It was all neat and clean and new – a model chicken-farm – and the yard was filled with big golden hens who scratched disconsolately at its sterile surface where no insects, or worms, or other favourite morsels were to be found. Their eyes darted from left to right as they searched in vain. Their only excitement came, twice a day, when their feed would be brought in … and that was all. They were bored. Every so often one would approach the dry-wood fence and peck its way along searching for some way of escape to the Paradise Garden beyond.
Late one afternoon Laszlo strolled down to the bank of the stream near to where old Marton was cutting up a fallen alder tree. The first snows had come and gone and it had been dry freezing weather ever since. That day it had clouded over and Laszlo went down to ask the old man if the snow was coming again, because if so it would be a good moment to set the traps in the woods and he would have time to do it before it got dark.
Marton stopped his work, leaned on his axe and threw back his head. He wiped the sweat from his face and from his long moustaches, and sniffed the air.
‘No snow today!’ he said laconically.
Laszlo stood there for some time watching the old
man as he worked. He felt thoroughly out of temper because he had set his mind on going to the woods that evening. Finally he turned and started slowly to walk back to the house.
The branches of the fallen tree had blocked the garden path so Laszlo was forced to make a detour along the hedge beyond which Azbej had erected his fence. Until that moment Laszlo had been thinking of nothing but his annoyance that the weather was so contrary but now, seeing before him the new wooden fence, the neat poultry-yard, the farm beyond it and, high on the hill behind, the white manor house itself, with its new pink roof shining through the bare winter trees, a fresh thought struck him. For a moment his face darkened with anger as he looked at everything that had once been his and then slowly a wicked smile appeared on his face. Between the laths of the poultry-yard paling he could see a few hens peering at him and all too clearly searching for an opening through which they could reach the tempting worked soil with its wealth of fallen seeds that was waiting for them on the other side.
Laszlo looked around. There was no one in sight, and even old Marton had his back to him.
They Were Divided Page 11
