They Were Divided

by Miklos Banffy

  The final proof of all this was that Torkut Pasha had been doing all he could to close the Montenegrin border! It was this last move which had meant that the only route left open was to the north through the lands of the Miridiots.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be better from the South?’

  ‘Perhaps, but one has to pass the Malissor territory above Elbasa …’

  At this the whole group burst into a storm of laughter for ‘elbasa’ in Hungarian means nothing less than ‘Fuck off!’

  From time to time one of his listeners, bolder than the others, had ventured some mocking pun if only to make fun of the newcomer. The general restraint did not last long. Each time Tamas used some outlandish foreign name they did not know, someone would seize upon it, mispronounce it, and turn it into an obscene joke. And after the last remark they were almost falling out of their chairs with laughter, the same men who, a few moments earlier, had been making abstruse political arguments with such deadly seriousness that they were ready to fight one another to prove a point. The sad truth was that all of them found anything that did not concern their own country fit only for mockery and laughter. To them such matters were as remote from reality as if they had been happening on Mars; and therefore fit only for schoolboy puns and witty riposte.

  Laczok looked round angrily and was about to castigate his audience when the door opened and a waiter came in.

  ‘Dinner is served, gentlemen. The ladies are already on their way to the supper-room.’

  Everyone started to get up and the discussion was over. Most of those present hurried to the door for they were hungry after all that talk and laughter, and no one wanted to keep his wife waiting. For a brief moment Stanislo Gyeroffy stayed behind and went over to speak to Tamas; but it was not kindness or good manners that prompted the gesture. In a haughty, pompous tone, he said:

  ‘Personally I found what you were saying not without interest. If you’ll sit with us at dinner you could perhaps tell us more?’ and without waiting for a reply he strode out of the room, his orange wig resembling nothing so much as a banner of reaction.

  For his part Tamas muttered an obscene expletive and started angrily to roll himself a cigarette.

  It was then that he noticed that he was not alone. From a chair behind him he heard a faint whimpering sound, and turning he saw that old Count Adam Alvinczy was lying sprawled in his chair. It was obvious that he had tried to get up to follow the others when he had been stricken by a heart attack. He had fallen back onto the edge of the chair and only his head and shoulders touched the back-rest. His face was ashen and covered with beads of sweat, and his wide-open eyes held a look of terror.

  Quickly Laczok reached his side.

  ‘Here … here …’ gasped Alvinczy with a rattle in his throat, ‘… on this side … my drops … in waistcoat …’

  Tamas acted swiftly. He snatched the vial from the waistcoat pocked, ran to the washroom for some water and a glass, and while hurrying back poured in the medicine. Then he helped the sick man to swallow it, pulled him up into a sitting position, loosened his collar and shirt-front, and, soaking his handkerchief with more water, pressed it to old Adam’s heart. Then he sat down and waited.

  He waited in silence, watching old Alvinczy closely.

  The medicine acted fast. The old man relaxed as the pain subsided, his contorted face returned to its normal smoothness and he closed his eyes. His breathing was still rapid but he was no longer gasping for breath as he had been when the attack struck him.

  Perhaps I needn’t call a doctor, thought Tamas, as he took the old man’s wrist and searched for his pulse. Then rhythmically he started to stroke the back of Alvinczy’s hand.

  For some time he sat there without either of them speaking.

  Out in the corridor he heard doors being opened and closed and the sound of people walking about and talking. It must be the card-players, thought Tamas; and, no doubt, the other man’s two sons, Farkas and Akos, were among them not knowing that in the next room their father lay near to death.

  Then again there was silence.

  Much later Tamas heard the music being struck up again and realized that the supper must be over. Alvinczy seemed to be asleep and Tamas wondered if now he could go too; but he did not want to leave the other alone. Then, in a weak voice, Alvinczy started to speak, ‘I don’t know how to thank you … but I do … very much. If … if you hadn’t been there I’d probably be dead by now.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ replied Tamas, though he too had thought the same thing.

  ‘Perhaps it would have been for the best,’ said Alvinczy, pursuing the thought. Then after a long pause he said, ‘Oh yes! It would have been better that way.’

  ‘What sort of talk is that?’ replied Tamas roughly, though with kindness in his tone.

  ‘You don’t know, you can’t know,’ the old man said several times in a low voice; and then, almost as if he were talking to himself, he went on brokenly, telling of his great sorrow and his disappointment in his sons.

  He had been careful all his life, he said, denying himself any indulgence, any little luxury, so that when he died his four sons would inherit enough to keep them in the style to which his family had always been accustomed. They would not have great fortunes, but they would be able to live well if unostentatiously. He had looked carefully over his widely scattered estates and divided them into four units. Then, little by little, he had improved them by constructing new stables and farm buildings, and he had made them profitable. And what had happened? Before his eyes his sons had begun to undo his life’s work. They had spent money recklessly, drinking and gambling as if there were no tomorrow. For years now he had lived in dread of what it would all come to, for hardly a month went by without one of them coming to him with debts to be paid – sometimes huge sums, thousands of crowns at a time – and each time he had paid up, though to do so he had to raise mortgages on most of his property. His finances were in confusion and he too was deeply in debt. Now, if there were any more demands on him, he would have to start selling everything that was left …

  ‘Perhaps it is my own fault. If I had brought them up better perhaps they wouldn’t have turned out like this. I’ve got four sons, you know, and all of them … well, three of them … have proved worthless. They are as bad as each other!’

  What on earth, he wondered hopelessly, would become of them? The only one he did not worry about was Adam, for he had married a sensible wife and seemed to work hard. He alone was saved.

  ‘But, my God! What will happen to the others? Let me not live to see it! Let me be spared standing by while they destroy themselves!’

  This was the only time old Alvinczy had bared his heart to anyone. Now he talked for a long time, but he had never before uttered a word of what was plaguing his heart. And it was strange that when he did so it should be to a man who was almost a stranger, someone he had seen perhaps three times in his life. His sorrow was something he had always kept to himself, holding his head high, alone in his dignity and despair. He had never spoken before because he had felt that to do so might harm his sons; but the iron discipline on which he had prided himself was, just this once, broken down by the pain and fear brought on by the heart attack. Even now, as soon as he had finished, he suddenly regained his confidence, straightened up, turned again to this stocky man he hardly knew, and with every sign of shame, said, ‘I beg you, Sir, to forget all I’ve just been saying. I was exaggerating … I just blurted it all out.’

  Tamas interrupted him. ‘The important thing is that you’re better now. Come along, I’ll go home with you,’ and he stood up, helped the old man to his feet, and led him to the door. They walked slowly down the corridor: Count Alvinczy, tall, elegant and distinguished-looking and Count Laczok, stocky and somewhat absurd in his old-fashioned evening coat.

  When they reached the foot of the stairs Tamas asked for Alvinczy’s cloakroom ticket and went to fetch his coat while the other rested on a sofa by the wall.

  ‘You do
n’t have to come with me,’ protested the old man. ‘I can quite well get home by myself.’ But he seemed quite relieved when Tamas would not hear of it and said, ‘Don’t talk nonsense!’

  When he had paid off the cab, woken Alvinczy’s valet and seen that his companion was safely in bed, Tamas set off on foot for his home at Bretfu. After an hour or two in that smoke-filled room in the hotel it felt good to be walking through the cold air of a March night.

  He walked in high good humour, pleased with the success of his outing, for had he not been able to torment his old enemies? He imagined that this joyous feeling sprang only from his having been able to annoy and embarrass his aunt, his brother and that rascally banker. As he chuckled to himself he thought how astonished they would all have been if they had seen him in the role of the Good Samaritan, he whom they had only known, especially his brother, in the role of the heartless old reprobate. Looking only at the ironic side of what had happened that evening it had never occurred to him that his feeling of well-being had sprung from the basic goodness which had prompted his care of the man whose life he had saved.

  Walking swiftly along the empty streets he went through the Hidelve district and past the railway station, his fur hat pushed back and his short jacket swinging as he went. His thick country boots made a clatter as he stumped along happier than he had been for some time.

  And as he went, he sang. It was an old Parisian music-hall song that had been popular in the days of his youth:

  ‘Moi j’m’en fou

  J’reste tranquillement dans mon trou!

  Pourquoi courir ailleurs

  Pour nepas trouver meilleur …

  Moi j’m’en fou …’

  On he went, swinging his arms and singing at the top of his voice just as if he had been on the stage … but, as he had forgotten the rest of the once risque little ballad, all that came out was ‘Tara tara, tara tara, tara tara tara …’

  The supper had ended long before with everyone in a good mood: everyone, that is, except Pityu Kendy. At supper he had sat next to Margit Alvinczy, with whom he had fancied himself in love just as previously he had swooned after Adrienne.

  Then he and his bosom friend Adam had been able to pour out their mutual but hopeless passion for Adrienne, discuss her heartlessness and bewail her cruelty while all the time enumerating her perfections. But since Adam had married Margit, Pityu had transferred his affections to his friend’s new wife – for somehow it seemed only natural to imitate him in everything even to pursuing another unattainable woman. And so it was now to Margit’s husband that he poured out his woes, complaining of his hopeless love in much the same words as they had both used previously in discussing her elder sister. And Adam just listened, serene in his own happiness, not minding at all that Pityu now sighed forlornly after his own wife. Nothing had changed. They still talked about the sadness of loving someone who scorned the adoring lover: only the object of adoration was not the same. Adam did not know the meaning of jealousy, but Margit’s reaction was quite different from that of her sister. Whereas Adrienne had treated Adam and Pityu as if they had been dolls incapable of real feeling and had teased them both with the same remote playfulness that she had treated all the other men who had run after her, and then promptly forgot them, Margit decided to take Pityu in hand and make a man of him. Principally she wanted to wean him from the bad habits of drinking and gambling. In so far as the gambling went, she succeeded; but the drinking was another matter. Here her influence failed.

  That had been the source of some trouble during the ball. Pityu drank too much at the supper-table, and by the time they served the ices she had firmly turned her back on him. When the music of a csardas sounded from the ballroom upstairs and everyone started to get up, she turned back to Pityu and issued her orders.

  ‘You’re drunk again! Either stay here and stop drinking or go home! I don’t want to see you in the ballroom!’

  With that she got up, gathering her skirt behind her, and ran up the stairs. In a few moments she had disappeared among the dancers. What could Pityu do? Nothing would induce him to stay alone in the deserted supper-room; so he went sadly to the cloakroom, collected his coat and headed for home.

  Strangely enough, though his head was swimming from the quantity of brandy he had consumed, there was no trace of resentment in his muddled thoughts. What a woman she is! What an angel! But, oh, so cruel, so cruel! And he repeated the words to himself until he reached home.

  None of the happy throng that went back to dance after supper had noticed that old Count Alvinczy was no longer among them nor had any idea that he had been taken ill.

  Balint, who had been supping with Adrienne, escorted her upstairs with the others. When they arrived at the doors of the ballroom she left his arm and for a moment they stood side by side. Balint looked at her questioningly and almost imperceptibly she nodded. Her lips moved, but she said nothing that even he could have heard. Then she moved slowly on alone.

  Balint remained at the head of the stairs until the last couple had come up from the supper-room. Then he hurried down, collected his fur coat and left on foot.

  Chapter Five

  IT WAS WELL AFTER MIDDAY. Through the wooden laths of the shutters the sunlight cast long narrow flame-coloured lines over the carpet, across the polished parquet floor and even vertically some way up the door. The room was filled with a golden radiance.

  Balint awoke, rang for his valet and ordered his bath to be run. Then he closed his eyes again and sank into a half-slumber filled with tender recollections.

  In his mind he could see again a bright fire burning on the hearth, a fire which had thrown an almost blinding light on the deep-piled white carpet on which he lay but which left most of the rest of the room in mysterious shadow. He had lit the fire while waiting.

  All at once the door had opened and Adrienne had stood before him, the shining paillettes on her dress reflecting the bright flames of the fire with a reddish glow which spread up over her shadowy breasts, under her chin and past the dark lines of her brows until it shone like a spotlight on the golden flowers of her oriental diadem. There she had stood, lit as if on a stage …

  For a moment she had not moved, until as Balint knelt before her and started to kiss the hem of her skirt she had spread her arms wide waiting for his lips to reach hers. Then, bending slightly, she had taken his head in her soft hands and bent down until their lips met. As her mouth, so vividly red and slightly open, met his in a long ecstatic kiss, the jewelled chains of her crown fell in a cascade over his face and ears and shoulders.

  When the man returned to tell Balint that his bath was ready he announced also that a letter had just been delivered from Baron Kadacsay. ‘A stable-boy brought it, my Lord. I have put it on your Lordship’s desk.’

  ‘Very good,’ said Balint, his head too full of the memory of his time with Adrienne to take in properly what he had been told. Then he sank into the hot water still thinking only of his mistress.

  Around her slender ankles the dress, so like the scales of a snake, had lain in shining coils, from which had risen her alabaster figure, the fire etching every part of it with its roseate glow touched here and there with misty lilac-coloured shadows. To Balint she had seemed like some Hindu goddess, Parvati, Maya, or Brahmanaspati, crowned in gold with a shower of rubies and other stones falling over her breasts. And though she had said nothing she had been smiling in happiness and triumph.

  She had been like some sculptor’s masterpiece, a statue that somehow exuded joy as he knelt before her raising his hands in supplication and adoration. Later, as she had lain on the rug that so resembled the skin of a polar-bear, naked but still crowned with that jewelled head-dress spread in a wide arc around her jet-black curling hair, she had still seemed in some strange way statuesque. The fire had exploded with its own ecstasy as the flames reached the pine-cones within it as if it too were consumed with the passion that enveloped the lovers who lay in front of it. As each new shower of sparks exploded,
faster and faster, so had the passion of the two lovers as they moved together in a crescendo of love.

  ‘When was the letter delivered?’ asked Balint when he had dressed and gone into his sitting-room.

  ‘Yesterday, my Lord. Quite late, after ten o’clock. A boy brought it on horseback.’

  A letter from Gazsi? Sent quite late at night … by a man on horseback? It had to be something exceptionally urgent, something really serious.

  ‘Why didn’t you bring it to me at once? You knew where I was.’

  ‘The boy just said to hand it to your Lordship. I asked if it was urgent and if something was wrong, but he just said that Baron Gazsi had not said anything in particular and had seemed to be quite well. There was nothing out of the ordinary at home, the boy said.’

  Balint hurried over to this desk. The letter lay there, an ordinary grey envelope with his name scribbled in Gazsi’s awkward writing, and on the back were scrawled a few words that Gazsi had presumably added as an afterthought ‘I stupidly sent this to Denestornya, believing you would still be there – Gazsi’.

  The letter itself read:

  ‘Dear Balint,

  Before I leave I would like to talk something over with you. Could you come over here tomorrow before one o’clock … to Bukkos St Marton, as I shall be leaving then and do not expect to be back for a long time. Sorry to inconvenience you – it will be the last time, I promise!

  So long … Servus!’

  What on earth could all this be about, Balint wondered. Where was he going? And what a strange little note. He looked at the time; it was already half past one, so if Gazsi had kept to his plan he would have already gone.

  Could he have caught the one-thirty express to Budapest? He hadn’t said anything about it; and anyhow if that had been his plan he would probably have ridden over himself instead of asking Balint to come to him. Perhaps he had had some mishap on the road and gone straight to the station.