They Were Divided

by Miklos Banffy

  None of this seemed likely. Gazsi would never have written like that if he were just setting off on some everyday little trip. It had to be something else, something infinitely more serious. Balint thought back to their last conversation at the banquet and it occurred to him now that Gazsi had seemed unusually disillusioned and depressed, that most of his talk about his future plans could have been interpreted in more than one sense, and that everything he had said might perhaps have referred to his imminent death rather than to some imaginary voyage. After all, Balint reflected, had it not been he himself, rather than Gazsi, who had talked about going on his travels and who had even proposed it? Brushing away such morbid thoughts Balint once more convinced himself that obviously Gazsi had wanted to consult him further about possible travel plans. And yet this did not seem like his friend. No! It was far more likely that before going away he wanted to entrust something to Balint, to make some arrangement about the management of his horses or the administration of his property … that would be it! That was why he had asked for him; and Balint believed in this happy solution because he was so happy himself that this was what he wanted to believe. All the same a little pin-prick of anxiety remained.

  Whatever the reason it was obvious that he must answer the summons at once, and ten minutes later his car was speeding along the highway that led up the valley of the Felek.

  It was a day of radiant sunshine even though Spring had not yet come. The snows had recently melted on the hillsides and now all the south-facing meadows and slopes looked as if they had just been washed. There was not a speck of dust anywhere and it was too early for the weeds to have started springing up. Everything had been sluiced clean by the melting snow, as if the countryside had just been prepared for some joyous feast. On the north-facing slopes the snow still lay, gleaming white in the sun and, as it too was now slowly melting away, everything that might have soiled its surfaces had sunk to the earth and from its edges tiny rivulets of water were now beginning the seasonal change that the sun had already achieved on the other side of the valley.

  Balint fancied that he could already smell the first scents of Spring.

  The car purred effortlessly up the last incline in the road. Balint knew he would be at St Marton in another fifteen minutes and that very shortly afterwards he would be at Gazsi’s place.

  Once again he wondered what on earth it was that Gazsi could have wanted so urgently as to send for him like that. As he drew nearer and nearer to his destination all Balint’s suppressed anxieties rose up and assailed him once more; and no matter how much he tried to reassure himself that he was being stupid and unreasonable he was unable to banish them entirely. Again and again he found himself thinking of those words in the letter ‘I do not expect to be back for a long time … Sorry to inconvenience you. It will be the last time, I promise!’ Had he not also written: ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever be back.’ What strange words they were! In themselves they may have seemed banal and without great significance, but knowing Kadacsay’s bitter indictment of himself, Balint felt they must have some other meaning, ominous even if not obvious. He remembered too that Gazsi had once said to him that in the life of a man troubles and joys are usually equally balanced, but when something occurred to so upset the balance that nothing was left but trouble and misery then the only answer was to kill oneself. Of course when he had said this Gazsi had seemed unusually disheartened and miserable.

  Balint tried to go over in his mind everything that Gazsi had ever said to him and as he did so he tried to remember some words that might have been more reassuring. Try as he would he could not think of anything. On the contrary, thinking back to those discussions when Gazsi had asked him to be his executor, and also when he had arranged that Balint would take in his beloved mare, Balint now realized there had been a double meaning in every word that Gazsi had uttered.

  For a brief moment Balint half closed his eyes so as to concentrate better, and as he did so the sunlight through his eyelids seemed rose-red and all his worries disappeared as he saw in his mind’s eye the image of Adrienne as she had been in the firelight, with her parted lips and wide open eyes, with her expression of almost painful anticipation of that moment when all space and time were wiped away, when there was no past and no future and when time itself became an eternity. Her beautiful face, framed in those wildly tumbling curls, could have been that of Medusa or the Tragic Muse herself, and for a moment Balint saw only this and felt only the surge of renewed desire …

  An instant later he was able to banish the thought as he forced himself once more to think about his friend and pray, as he sped towards him through that countryside halfway between winter and spring, that Gazsi had only written to him in that equivocal manner as a result of some passing fancy or fit of depression at being delayed in some ridiculous fashion, and that he was even now at home, laughing at his own stupidity, with his crow’s beak of a nose tilted to one side as it always was when he was telling a droll story about himself and when nothing was seriously wrong.

  The car turned into the narrow road that led to Gazsi’s village. The road curved round one more snow-covered hillside and ahead, a little higher up, could be seen the roofs of the village and on one side, surrounded by tall elm-trees, Gazsi’s old manor house.

  As Balint drove on towards the hedge that bordered Gazsi’s property and the gates, which would shortly appear, he found himself passing several little groups of village people all going in the same direction, one ahead of the other as in Indian file. They were walking in silence and with the heavy tread of the Mezoseg people. He sounded his horn and as the men and women drew to one side, some of the men raised their caps in respectful greeting. Balint wondered why they all seemed to be going to the manor house, and why they all looked so sad.

  A moment or two later he had arrived in front of the portico with its wooden Grecian pillars that framed the entrance to the house. Three steps led up to it and standing at the top were two men, Gazsi’s estate manager and the local Protestant pastor.

  ‘Where is Baron Gazsi?’ asked Balint.

  ‘He died, just an hour and a half ago!’ said one of them.

  Balint felt his legs giving way under him and he staggered to a bench beside the wall.

  Then they told him what had happened.

  Baron Gazsi had been writing something all morning. When he had finished he had folded up the sheets of paper and sealed them. A little later he had walked down to the stables and looked into every box giving a lump of sugar to each horse as he always had. Just as the clock chimed the hour of midday he sent for the pastor and the estate manager, sat them down in the sitting-room and gave them his orders. To the priest he had given instructions that the church organ, which had been in bad repair for some time, should be put in order and told them that he accepted the estimate of 500 florins and that he wanted it done at once. He had discussed many small details of the work, told them that when it was done they must send for a man to apply the gold leaf and specified that it should be old Kas from Kolozsvar because he was the best. The elaborate decorations above the organ-pipes, which were a disgrace, must be properly restored and he insisted that before that work was started the pastor should arrange a sensible price with the gilder because he did not want money wasted on anything that was not necessary. Then he had asked the estate manager to bring in the accounts, checked them through himself and drew a line across the last page just beneath them. Then he had written ‘I have found everything in order up to this point’ and added the date and his signature. Then he had turned to other estate matters, saying that the young calves that had been selected for the market should not be disposed of at once because the current prices were too low. They should wait until the new grass started to sprout in the meadows. On the other hand the buffalo cows should be sold soon before their milk dried up. Up on the Botos, where it was too cold for wheat, they should sow barley and, if the fields of rye which had been sown the previous autumn proved to be full of thistles in the spri
ng, they should be carefully weeded. All these orders he had given in the calmest manner. Occasionally, as he had been speaking, he had glanced at the clock as if he were expecting someone or had shortly been about to leave himself. Just before one o’clock he had said that he had been expecting Balint, but that perhaps he would not be coming. As he said this he had gone to his desk and picked up a small parcel carefully wrapped in newspaper and handed it to the priest, saying that it should be given to Balint if he should turn up later. If he had not arrived by the evening it should be delivered to Balint’s home. Then he had gone into his bedroom and rung for his valet.

  The priest and the manager, though not understanding what all this was about, had not thought that there was any reason to be disturbed.

  A few moments later Kadacsay had come back into the sitting-room, followed by the valet and a footman who carried a mattress which he had told them to lay on the floor. When the servants had been dismissed he started to explain to his astonished audience why all this had been done. He had, he told them, taken a dose of strychnine and because he knew that this sometimes caused uncontrollable cramps, he had had the mattress placed there as it would be better and easier than writhing about on the wooden floor-boards! Then he had started to give further instructions about suckling pigs and the sheep’s feed …

  Shortly afterwards he had looked again at the clock and said, ‘Strange! I don’t feel anything yet, though I’ve taken enough to fell an ox!’

  Those had been his last words. A moment later he had lain down and, a few seconds later, had died.

  ‘Is he very disfigured?’ Balint asked when the pastor and the manager had finished their tale.

  ‘Not at all, my lord. Please come and look.’

  They entered the manor house living-room, which was long and wide and obviously served also as a dining-room. In front of one of the windows was a small writing desk and, pushed against one of the side walls, was a plain pinewood table that had served for Gazsi’s meals. In the centre of the room, where this was usually placed, there was a mattress and on this lay the dead man covered with a white sheet.

  Balint kneeled down beside him and drew back the sheet from his head. He looked at his friend’s face for a long time.

  Nothing seemed to have changed and if he had not been as pale as wax Balint would have thought that he was merely playing some trick on them. His mouth held his usual mocking smile, his woodpecker nose was tilted slightly to one side and his eyebrows slanted upwards just as they always had when Gazsi had been telling a joke. One could almost believe that at any moment he would jump up roaring with laughter as he had so often done. And yet there was a difference. Gazsi’s face now held an expression of majestic calm, comprised of a dignity quite new to him – and of contempt, but mainly of contempt.

  Balint was struck by the strangeness of it all, for this was not the Gazsi he had known in life. The dead man lying there was someone he did not know, someone who had appeared only in death.

  He covered him again with the white sheet and got to his feet.

  Then he looked around the room and realized that its simplicity and bareness also signified contempt. Though like every provincial manor house in Transylvania it must once have contained some good pieces of furniture, there was now nothing of value in it. It was clear that such things had meant little to Gazsi for he had given all his good things to his sister when they had divided their inheritance – furniture, carpets, porcelain, everything. For himself he had kept only a couple of threadbare armchairs and a worn sofa. But along the walls there were long low bookshelves made of bare polished planks of natural wood, and on them were great quantities of books untidily stacked, much used and obviously much read. Balint went up to examine them and found to his amazement that they were mostly philosophical works by such writers as Hegel, Wundt and Schopenhauer. There were also some historical works by Ranke and Szilagyi, and a copy of Renan missing its cover, and several volumes of some German lexicon. Most of the books were tattered and some torn in half … and all were stained and dirty as if they had been covered in candle-wax or thrown about in anger.

  Balint started to pick some of them up, but when it was announced that the doctor had arrived, along with the coroner, the prefect and the village notary, all of whom were needed to make out the death certificate, he went quickly out into the open

  Outside it was a perfect day. The sky was so clear that it was almost blinding, very pale, white-grey rather than blue, and so savagely bright that it might have been trying to compete with the snow beneath.

  So as not to remain surrounded by the crowd of weeping women, or be stared at by the village children who were gathered outside the house, he walked round to the side and took a path that led up the hill. It was already clear of snow and slightly muddy. After he had gone some hundred paces he found a bench under three young birch trees and sat down. Then he undid the sealed package.

  Inside there were two envelopes and also a silver cigarette box with an inscription in gold: ‘The Ladies Prize, Debrecen, 1905’. He opened it and inside was a little pile of tobacco dust and a note which read ‘I leave you this as a personal souvenir. It is the only possession I value’ and underneath, in brackets, ‘You may think it ugly, so don’t use it if you don’t like it! Gazsi’.

  In the larger of the two envelopes there was a long paper headed AMENDMENTS TO MY WILL below which was a precise list of his wishes for gifts to each of his servants, some other special provisions, and the fact that he wanted 1,000 crowns to be allotted for restoring the organ. These details had not been itemized in the Will held by the notary, though a lump sum had been set aside for them. The next paragraph dealt with arrangements for his funeral: he did not wish to be buried anywhere else but to be laid to rest somewhere in the garden near the house – and there was to be no memorial or epitaph. The last section dealt with his horses. Firstly he wrote that the little speckled gelding who was too old to work should be shot so that he would not fall into the hands of the gypsies in his old age. As to the thoroughbred mare Honeydew, Gazsi left her to Balint and asked him to take her away immediately. At the bottom of the page was that day’s date, the date of Gazsi’s death, and his signature, written in Gazsi’s large awkward writing.

  The second letter was for Balint alone. Enclosed with it was Honeydew’s pedigree wrapped in a single sheet of writing paper, on which there were just a few lines about the mare. ‘As you agreed to let Honeydew foal at Denestornya,’ he had written, ‘I hope it isn’t presuming to ask you to keep her.’ Then followed a few light-hearted, joking phrases ending ‘… my sister is apt to be somewhat grasping, but I don’t feel she’d want this wonderful animal as she wouldn’t have much use for her!’ He ended with the words ‘Please don’t forget your promise about my nephews. I don’t want them to turn out like me’.

  Poor Gazsi, thought Balint. In his last moments he had been thinking of his own great unquenched thirst for culture.

  Balint’s eyes filled with tears. For a long time he stayed where he was, sitting on the little bench and staring at the snow. He thought how marvellous it was as it slowly melted, disintegrating into tiny particles of ice, thousands of minute crystals gleaming like miniature mountain peaks all turned towards the rays of the sun. It was everywhere pitted with deep little crevasses like spear-thrusts from the direction of the south, deep little holes formed by the sun’s heat. And as it was slowly being destroyed by that very sun so the snow resembled white foam inexorably drawn to that relentless implacable light, to that radiance it so much desired but which was to be the source of its own destruction. To Balint the process was like an allegory of all existence … and he thought again about his dead friend.

  On the same day another death occurred, that of old Adam Alvinczy. He was found dead in his bed in the morning, and this news and the social excitement it provoked drew everyone’s attention away from Gazsi’s suicide.

  Since Count Alvinczy had been a prominent man there had to be an important funeral. A l
ong line of carriages and cars followed the cortege to the family vault.

  The following day the lawyer read the dead man’s will in the presence of his sons, of his daughter-in-law Margit, and of Stanislo Gyeroffy who had been made executor. It proved to be a harsh and comfortless document. The old landowner had carefully recorded all the money he had had to pay out to settle his sons’ debts and on the basis of these figures he had drawn up the inheritances of three of them in three separate columns – three because Adam had been given his share two years before when he had got married. It was a shattering experience for those who were left: Farkas was to receive only the house at Magyarokerek, with just eight hundred acres and three small forest holdings; and Zoltan the meadows near Magyar-Tohat and the house in Kolozsvar. All had been heavily mortgaged. The youngest brother, Akos, got nothing because only two months previously his father had settled debts that already exceeded his share of the family property. ‘I regret having to do this,’ wrote the old man, ‘but I cannot deprive my other sons just because of him’.

  This came as a mortifying shock to the three brothers, and most of all to Akos who, as soon as the lawyer had left the house, stammered out the confession that on the night of the charity ball he had lost sixteen thousand crowns at the gaming table and the winners had only given him an extra two weeks to pay up because of his father’s death. He now had only thirteen days’ grace. Thirteen days, that was all. If he couldn’t pay then he would be finished!

  There followed a terrible argument, long and utterly fruitless. There was no possibility of help. Farkas’s and Zoltan’s shares were both mortgaged up to the hilt, in addition to which they would somehow have to find money to pay the inheritance tax. They could do nothing. The only hope was that Adam would pay for the youngest.