It was obvious that he would only need one snare, and that the hedge would hide him as he set it.
He hurried back to the house, collected a snare, and a steel screwdriver from the gun-case, and in a moment or two was back by the fence. He bent down and with a swift turn of the screwdriver forced one of the wooden palings out of its lower socket. Then he grasped a live twig from the hedge in front of the opening he had just made, bent its end back in an arc and attached his snare to it. All this was done so swiftly that in a couple of minutes he was back beside the house apparently just idly looking up at the sky. For a while he stood there, every nerve taut. He listened hard. Dusk was falling and this was the moment when all the birds usually found their way back to the hen-house. In less than half an hour they would all be inside again and so there was not much time left for one of them to discover the trap that had been set for it. Laszlo then began to wonder if a trapped bird would make such a noise when the noose tightened that the farm people would be alerted and discover what he had been up to … and then the shame of being found out. The shame!
For what seemed like an eternity he heard nothing. Then there was a sudden brief fluttering of wings, and then again nothing. The trap had been sprung.
It was almost more than he could do not to run down excitedly. Nevertheless he managed a lazy stroll and, sure enough, from the branch he had so cunningly bent so as to be sprung by the snare, a fine fat Orpington hen was hanging, as dead as anyone could wish. Laszlo unhooked it swiftly, hid it under his coat, and then he did run, as swiftly as possible, back into the house. He felt no remorse at all for having caught one of Azbej’s birds, and that what he had done was nothing less than common theft never even passed through his mind. If he thought of it as anything at all it was as a simple act of revenge and as such gave him the satisfaction of paying back in his own coin someone who had robbed him. The moment that this occurred to him Laszlo’s heart took a great leap of joy and triumph; and if he had somehow regained all his lost inheritance it would have made him no happier than he was at that moment.
From that day on Laszlo set his hen-trap every eight or ten days. He always did this on his own for it was obvious that old Marton wanted nothing to do with it. He never spoke his mind, or indeed said anything at all on the subject, but Laszlo sensed that in his book wild game was God’s gift to whosoever might catch it but that poultry belonged to the man who raised and fed it. Accordingly, though he would cook any bird that Laszlo took, he would not eat it. He was even reluctant to pluck and draw such birds, so Laszlo found that he had to call upon young Regina to get this done. She came eagerly. All Laszlo had to do was to give the girl a little private nod when he was drinking his tot of brandy in the shop, or a discreet wave from over the hedge, and she would somehow contrive to come at once, no matter what she was supposed to be doing. Though no one could have noticed that she was doing it, Regina somehow managed to keep a permanent watch on Laszlo’s house and on him if he were out of doors. For her any reason was enough if she could be near him.
Sometimes when she disappeared from the store her father and mother would start calling for her, and then she would sneak home, making sure that she always appeared to be coming from somewhere quite other than where she had really been. When she went to Laszlo’s she would cross the piece of empty land between the houses through the gate that her father had put in the hedge when he had rented it some years before; but she would never come back the same way, for if she had she knew her parents would guess where she had been. A moment or two after they started calling she would reappear as if coming from the stream, or from the roadway, or even from the house opposite; and even though she sometimes got a slap on the face she never let on where she had been.
Her love for Gyeroffy was like that of a faithful hound.
Of course she was still a child and the deep love she felt for the young man was utterly innocent, though she experienced all the ecstasy and suffering of a grown woman. If Laszlo spoke to her she was happy, and she suffered and felt excluded when he talked to other people.
She loathed Fabian. On those occasions when Laszlo and Fabian went into Ujvar together and did not come back until the next morning, she knew instinctively that they had been enjoying themselves with other women – horrible, coarse creatures, no doubt – and she was consumed by jealousy and hurt rage and cried all night. The following day she would try her best to be angry and not keep glancing at Laszlo’s house; and she would decide not to go if he should call out for her. But a single word or a casual glance from him was enough to make her forget all her resentment, and then she would once again be his faithful doglike slave. And yet, behind this unthinking bondage, there was something else – a young girl’s perennial curiosity about what the act of love was really like. On the days after his trips to the town Regina did all she could to get close enough to him, either in his own house or else in her father’s shop, to be able to look closely at him, to study his face and hands and how he moved; and she would lift her delicate straight little nose and sniff the air around him: and when she thought that she had seen or sensed some legacy of that night spent away from home, a strange scent or a bite-mark on his skin, she would become strangely upset and her throat would constrict. It was unspeakably painful … and yet mysterious and attractive too.
Just after the New Year a covered carriage drew up outside Laszlo’s house. It was nine o’clock at night, and Fabian had come to celebrate his Saint’s Day. With him he had brought a huge cold turkey, some savoury biscuits and sweet cakes and a large hamper of brandy and cheap champagne. He also brought two women. The village gypsy musician was sent for at once and he played standing in the kitchen doorway as there was no place for him in Laszlo’s room where the four of them dined and danced and sang. Fabian himself always needed plenty of space, for he loved to jump up and hurl himself about, sometimes dancing with both women at once, throwing himself about with wide-flung arms and all the time yodelling at the top of his voice.
News of the party spread quickly through the village and soon there was a group of neighbours gathered near the house to listen to the music and find out what was going on. They were mostly women, and they cross-questioned the driver about the loose women he had brought and were deliciously scandalized by what he had to tell. Some of the younger boys and girls started dancing on the frozen snow-covered ground; but it was bitterly cold and soon they all went home.
After dinner was over the Bischitz family always sat in the large room behind the shop in which the family lived and ate. Here the shopkeeper kept his account books and also any special delicacies such as sugar and spices and dried figs which might have absorbed the smells of dried fish or pipe tobacco if these had been kept in the store-room next door. On this evening old Bischitz sat reading a newspaper while his fat wife dozed in an armchair, worn-out from the heavy labour of the daily chores. Regina had already put her younger brothers and sisters to bed and was folding away the tablecloth and napkins when their servant Juliska rushed in and disturbed this peaceful domestic scene with the scandalous news of what was happening over at The Count’s house. Neither of the old people were in the least impressed, and indeed the shopkeeper himself, angered at the thought that the drinks had not been bought from him, bawled out the servant for having left the washing-up to go sight-seeing, promised her a good slap, chased her back to the kitchen and then turned to his wife and said: ‘Come on, bedtime!’
Regina stood by the cupboard rigid with shock. She was very pale and her parents had to call her twice before she heard them.
Regina lay quite still next to her sleeping six-year-old sister, but she could not sleep. One o’clock went by, and two o’clock, and still she lay there, her ears straining for the faint sound of the violin music. At length that stopped and for a long time she could hear nothing, not even the sound of her parents’ breathing.
What was happening over there? What could be happening?
At length Regina could stand it no more. She slip
ped out of bed, very carefully so as not to wake her sister, felt for her clothes and somehow managed to get into them in the dark. Then she felt for her mother’s shawl which was always hung on a hook behind the door, wrapped it round her and stole to the front door.
It was a dark night with no moon and all that could be seen was a faint bluish glow on the snow. So as not to wake anyone in the house with the sound of her steps on the wooden floor, she put on her shoes only when she was already outside and on the last rung of the veranda steps. The shoes she wore were a pair of once fashionable high-heeled but sadly worn ladies’ button boots which would have reached up to mid-calf if most of the buttons had not been missing. They had previously been worn by her mother until it had not seemed worth mending them any more.
Regina moved slowly across the frozen yard, her feet skidding on the hard-trodden surface of the snow. She reached the corner of the woodshed and, from the gate in the fence, looked across the empty field towards Laszlo’s house. There was a light in the window, a sinister reddish light; and to the girl it seemed as if the wicked flames of hell were beckoning to her and calling for her to come and look.
Clutching the heavy shawl around her she stumbled across the field in which her father had been growing potatoes. Where these had been lifted the earth had been left in uneven little mounds and ridges and holes so that, as the young girl headed straight for the light in the window, she stumbled and slipped and fell frequently to her knees, as her thin, dark figure made its tortured way across. If anyone had been watching it would have looked as if she were battling against a hurricane, staggering to left and to right as she struggled on through the dark night.
Finally she got there. There was not a sound to be heard and only the light that filtered out through the flower-like hoarfrost on the window-panes showed that anyone was still awake inside.
Regina crept up and pressed her face against the lowest pane, despite the fact that it was almost opaque from the ice-crystals that had formed an incrustation of dense arabesques on the glass. Obsessed by the need to know what was happening inside she would have broken the glass itself if that had been the only way. She had to know, she had to! That was why she had come. She started to breathe on the window-pane and then to rub it with a corner of the shawl. Several times she had to repeat the process until at last a small patch at the centre began to come clear as she managed to melt a square no larger than her own little hand.
With searching eyes she looked round the room, her body rigid with emotion and excitement, her hand tightly grasping the window-ledge. She stretched up her neck with the folds of the shawl falling like mourning bands on each side of her face.
She was very pale, except for her blood-red lips, and it was some time before she was able to see clearly what was happening in the room. It was even longer before she realized what it was, and longer still before she really understood.
For a long time she stood where she was, as if turned to stone. Then, overcome by deep disgust, she started shuddering and at length was able to force herself to turn away. Then she reeled from the window and started to run for home, heedless of how she fell and stumbled and tripped in mindless panic. She ran with eyes wide open as if by so doing she could run far away from what she had seen. She ran as a deer pursued by hounds …
In Regina’s head was nothing but the thought of escape. She clattered up the wooden steps of her father’s house, fell against the door and then, though somehow she succeeded in opening it, fell senseless across the threshold.
Regina was ill for days and during all this time, though her parents looked after her with loving care, they never discovered where she had been that night. As it happened they never even asked her for they assumed that it was all the result of a fright she had had for, either as a result of being over-excited, or from the effects of her fall, that night she stopped being a child and became a woman.
As for Laszlo he hardly noticed Regina’s absence. For some days after that evening’s drinking he had lazed about, tired and listless. Fabian had left behind three bottles of brandy, perhaps on purpose, perhaps merely from forgetfulness; and so Laszlo had enough to drink without going to the shop. For some weeks he did not think about setting his traps and so had no need of Regina.
Now he started to cough rather more than before.
When Regina got better their relationship was unchanged. Once again she was ready to do anything he asked but she was, if anything, quieter than before. She was also very pale, and her large brown eyes seemed framed in some bluish dew.
Chapter Two
THE GENERAL PEACE that Europe had known since 1878 finally came to an end in the summer of 1911. The year began without any apparent change but then gradually a few hardly noticeable signs appeared whose significance was only understood much later and then only by those whose business it was to search out the truth of what had occurred. Though these little signposts were so scattered and apparently trivial, for the few who understood such things they showed only too clearly that the general air of calm throughout Europe was at best only an illusion. They were like the faint grey mist on the horizon at sunset or the soft mysterious murmur that precedes an earthquake.
Nothing that happened early that year seemed to suggest that the general confidence in a perpetual peace was not entirely justified. When Prince Nikita celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his reign by declaring Montenegro to be a kingdom, and the monarchs of Italy, Bulgaria and Serbia all attended the festivities, it seemed to be no more than a family get-together … and there was nothing to foretell the coming alliance. A few months later there was another outbreak of unrest in Albania – but no one thought there might be any connection with what had transpired in Montenegro, for was there not always unrest in Albania? When, from the other end of Europe, the news came that the Dutch, that most peaceable of nations, were fortifying Vlissingen, there was a universal outcry, with the English press seeing the sinister hand of the Emperor Wilhelm, who no doubt envisaged a new base for his growing fleet that was only an hour or so from the coast of Great Britain and the English Channel. And when, some months later, the Dutch government countermanded their orders, it was everywhere said that this was forced on them by strong protests from England and France. Accordingly when this little tempest blew itself out, just as had the much bigger one provoked by the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina a year or so before, it seemed that all such affairs were but storms in teacups which were bound, sooner or later, to be settled amicably by all concerned. A few discussions over a green baize table, an exchange of diplomatic letters, and all was as it always had been. Even most of the diplomatists thought of international affairs in this way and so it was natural for the general public to follow their example. When it was announced in Vienna that the army was to be increased and the navy given a grand new ship-building programme, most people read the news with indifference, believing it all to be little more than just one more manifestation of folie de grandeur on the part of the Emperor Franz-Josef.
In the Budapest Parliament all went smoothly enough, and even the prolongation until 1917 of the Austro-Hungarian banking law passed off with little more than the expected public bickering between Justh and the People’s Party on one side and the Economic Minister Lukacs and Ferenc Kossuth on the other. However, as this all seemed merely part of the aftermath of the Coalition period, nobody showed any interest. That these old rifts in the former Coalition were now seeing the light of day for the first time, and were shown to be little more than the private disputes of professional politicians, once again only proved to most people that what the former leaders of the Coalition said and what they did were quite different matters.
It was typical of that long period of international calm that one of the French princes, Gaston d’Orléans, Comte d’Eu, should choose that moment to launch an anti-duelling league! To round up support he travelled all over Europe, stopping in every provincial capital where he thought a branch should be founded. Anyone who joined had to pledge t
hemselves to take any affair of honour to some predetermined court and to abstain from having recourse to sabres or pistols.
The idea was sensible and the prince’s motives commendably lofty.
Gaston d’Orléans himself was an eminent and distinguished personage whose wife would have become Empress of Brazil if her father, Pedro II, had not been overthrown by the ungrateful Brazilians. He was received everywhere with the courtesy and ceremony to which his rank entitled him; and wherever he went a branch of his anti-duelling league was founded at once with its full complement of president, general secretary, statutes and plans for regular meetings. It was of course most flattering to be able to refer to this royal prince, the grandson of King Louis-Philippe no less, as one’s colleague and chief, and it was nice to be known to share the opinions of such an eminent person. The Comte d’Eu lived in Paris and no doubt, if under his wing, one would soon find oneself received in the most select houses in the Faubourg St Germain.
In Budapest the League was headed by some impressive names and, through the Countess Beredy’s influence, her brother, Fredi Wuelffenstein, was made the general secretary. From Hungary the prince was going on to Bucharest and so it was arranged that he should stop on the way at Kolozsvar so as to found the Transylvanian branch of the Anti-Duelling League.
There too he was received with honour and on the evening of his arrival a ‘brilliant reception’ (as the newspapers called it) was given for him at the Casino. It was followed by a banquet. Everyone with any pretensions to social prominence in Transylvania took care to be there.
An enormous U-shaped table had been set up in the hall. In the centre of the top table sat the prince flanked on one side by Sandor Kendy (Crookface) wearing the Cross of St Istvan, and on the other by Stanislo Gyeroffy (Carrots) who, when he had briefly been a member of Szapary’s cabinet, had managed to be awarded the Grand Cross of Alexander for having participated in the negotiations which had led to the signing of a trading agreement with Bulgaria. In addition to the cross itself Gyeroffy was swathed in the wide red, green and white ribbon of the order. By right of these impressive decorations, which entitled their possessors to be addressed as ‘Excellency’, Crookface and old Gyeroffy had the places of honour on each side of the royal guest and they, in turn, were flanked by all the other local notabilities placed according to the strictest rules of precedence. Among them were the Prefect and his immediate predecessor, the Sheriff, the Mayor, the Rector of the University and various prominent churchmen, as well as most of the provincial titled folk. They made a fine display and as background to the top table had been hung a magnificent Gobelins tapestry.
They Were Divided Page 12
