Lately Countess Roza had been having sudden attacks of dizziness. She had done her best to prevent anyone knowing, but Balint had divined her secret and was sure that something of the sort must have occurred the previous night, for in the morning she had sent him a message saying that she would not be going to church with him but intended to spend the morning in bed and to get up only at lunch time. There had to have been a serious reason for this, for Roza Abady, when at Denestornya, laid great store on being seen in her pew every Sunday morning. Balint had questioned her maid but the girl had not seemed to know anything and, though he had tried to see his mother himself, she had merely sent word that she wanted to sleep until midday and did not want to be disturbed.
Now all his thoughts were concentrated on what would become of her if there was a general mobilization and he had to go to war. If that happened he would certainly be away for several months, with no news of her and in a constant state of worry.
He was so agitated that he got up and walked about the room for a while before sitting down and taking up the newspapers again. He could find only one item that seemed even slightly reassuring. Sir Edward Grey had offered to mediate in the dispute and try to find a formula for restoring peace. That England was prepared to take this line seemed, at least, hopeful.
Then he turned to the home pages, but found nothing reassuring there.
Since Parliament had reassembled in mid-September, the loose coalition of the parties in opposition had changed its tactics. While most of its members had absented themselves from the summer debates, now they reappeared in force, for in their private meetings held in early autumn it had been all too clear that their policy of boycotting Parliament had passed almost unnoticed in the country. Something else would have to be tried. They were now again present in force, making provocative declarations which they read out with a lot of noise, scandalizing the more conservative members with noisy interruptions, blowing whistles and toy trumpets before again retiring en masse. Their well-publicized attitude was that all the sessions held since June 4th had been illegal and therefore invalid, and so there was nothing scandalous about their repeated clashes with whoever presided at the debates and with the parliamentary guards. On one occasion a large band entered the Chamber so tightly clasped together that they were able to occupy the floor of the House without the guards being able to reach those who should have been excluded. They stood there, between the ministers’ seats and the stenographers’ desks, from noon until the evening; and this heroic opposition lasted until eight p.m. when they decided to leave.
Later they tried something else. The guards had become more adept at keeping out those who were proscribed by the exclusion decrees, so the opposition cliques started to search for new ways round them. Someone found out that the kitchen staff could move freely in and out of the Parliament restaurant where no guards were posted. The plan was soon made: into the building by the kitchen entrance and up in the kitchen lift, which carried the paprika chicken and the veal fricassee to the restaurant floor close to the Chamber itself! What a surprise for everybody! There they’d be, and there they’d stay until in due course they were hustled out again, as they undoubtedly would be; but what did that matter when the great Tisza, to his shame and annoyance, would for once have been outwitted? The plan was put into action at once … and failed. They were seen sneaking in, it seems, or perhaps one unwisely talkative member let out the secret which reached the officials in time. Whatever the reason, they were stopped before getting to their places, and the escapade was the talk of the day just when the Serb army was standing before Durazzo and the spectre of a world war was stalking the Danube basin and the foothills of the Carpathians.
At this same time other absurdities were being perpetrated in the Hungarian capital, and the newspapers lost no time in passing on the news to their readers.
The opposition leaders – Kossuth, Justh and Andrassy – seemed suddenly to become aware that all was not as it should be in the Balkans and felt they owed it to the people to make public their point of view. The opposition had to have a voice, they said; to make a stand, let their views be known. And in this they were, of course, right to recognize that they had gained nothing from their passivity and their refusal to attend debates. The general public had failed to appreciate the great moral lesson of their abstention and had not even realized that in this great dispute the opposition itself was really the injured party! It was, of course, the same realization that had brought them back into Parliament, which had prompted the renewed rash of obstructionist tactics, and led Zoltan Desy openly to attack Lukacs claiming that the Minister-President was the ‘world’s biggest “Panamist”’, though few people knew what he meant by the epithet except that it was rude. This had all been good clean fun and, they said, completely justifiable, even heroic … until now, when the Balkan crisis seemed to deserve something more.
The opposition had to have a voice, they said; to take a stand, make a speech! Some cogent expression of opinion was necessary, something to show how original they were and how different from the government in power, how statesman-like, how much more intelligent and understanding!
It would not be enough merely to take part once more in the parliamentary debates on foreign affairs, and in any case if once they gave Tisza an opportunity to allow their members to speak it would be tantamount to recognizing his authority, to accepting his appointment as Speaker and his right to interpret the Rules of the House in his own way, all of which they had until now steadfastly refused to do. Why, someone might even interpret such a move as accepting the legality of Tisza’s position, and that was unthinkable.
Instead they searched around to find another solution which, to them at least, appeared very droll and witty.
The opposition therefore proclaimed that ‘Parliament’ – their own self-styled Parliament, not the one that met in the official House – was the only true parliament and would hold its sessions in the ballroom of the Hotel Royal. There, they declared, the real Parliament would meet, complete with Speaker and Legal Authorities seated on a dais high above the members, a President, two Vice-Presidents and other necessary Officers of State.
The first member to speak was Albert Apponyi. In a speech redolent of sweet reason, he outlined recent political events in the capital and declared that all those gathered together that day in the hotel ballroom were the country’s true representatives and that in their name, and that of the Hungarian nation, he saluted the heroic struggle of the Serbs, Greeks and Bulgarians. He talked about the right of all nations to determine their own affairs, and of the right to independence, and he therefore proposed that Hungary should make a noble gesture to those enslaved peoples and stretch out the ‘hand of friendship’ to Belgrade. This was the tenor of the motion he urged the delegates to accept.
Other speakers followed him. Among them Lovaszy and Lajos Hollo went even further. Both had for some time been outspoken critics of Austria-Hungary’s foreign policy. Now they came out as outright partisans of Serbia, stating that Viennese pretensions to the status of a world power were ridiculous and based on nothing but foolish vanity. It was nothing to Hungary, they said, how affairs in the Balkans were settled; and nothing but folly to intervene in any way: it would be mere meddling in other people’s affairs. It was here that it was stated for the first time, although still in somewhat veiled terms, that the alliance with Germany was a harmful one and served only Germany’s interests. The general feeling that surged through all the speeches, and which was expressed in vague terms of brotherly sympathy for oppressed nations, was that the Hungarians were loved throughout the Balkans while the Austrians were universally loathed. Apponyi’s motion was accepted unanimously, and everyone thought that by doing so they had made a ‘heroic’ protest against the pretensions of Vienna.
Balint put down his paper with a gesture of contempt, deeply shocked by everything that he had read. This pseudo-Parliament was crazy, he thought, and it was nothing short of sheer folly to act so lig
htly when at any moment Hungary might be involved in a war and the nation forced to fight for its very existence.
It was unbelievable, Balint reflected, that those so-called political leaders, Apponyi, Kossuth and Andrassy, could have been so irresponsible as to permit such a declaration without realizing what an effect it was bound to have abroad. It was tantamount to an invitation to Russia to attack their beloved country, and it would encourage all the petty Balkan states to underrate the power of the Dual Monarchy and to scorn its warnings and authority. And in Paris and St Petersburg it would look as if the Austro-Hungarian empire was on the point of disintegration with a revolution in Hungary as the first step. How was it possible that none of them had paused to think of such consequences?
Balint got up again, went over to the window and opened it. He stood there for a long time without moving and allowing the cool air to circulate round him and calm him down.
Outside the dew still lay on that part of the grass that the sun could not reach, and there, too, the unmelted hoarfrost lay like milky glass. Elsewhere the lawn was dotted with fallen leaves, coppery-red from the plane-trees and butterfly-yellow from the maple. The leaves were still falling, very slowly and floating in the air like a light mist of golden smoke in front of the open window … But Balint saw nothing of this. He merely stood there, staring sightlessly before him.
He came to himself only when the door opened and Aron Kozma and Ganyi entered the room. They gave him their report of the Co-operative meeting and told him that the book-keeping was in order and that they had found no faults in the society’s management. Then Kozma outlined the present state of the problems attendant on the distribution of the newly acquired farmland, and said he was glad to report that the former muddles had been satisfactorily cleared up. Owing to the diligence of the more reliable members, the late-payers had been obliged to settle their debts and so the society was now in a position to repay the few thousand crowns that Abady had advanced. Kozma explained all this in great detail because he was anxious to make Balint understand how much trouble he had caused by his well-meaning but thoughtless intervention.
Balint nodded and seemed to be listening. Now and then he said something to show appreciation of what had been done, but though he was as polite and considerate as ever, his mind was not in it. All the time that Kozma was speaking Balint was still seeking to understand what lay behind that pseudo-parliamentarian debate that had so angered him.
Soon he believed that he had discovered what had led people who should have known better to act in that ridiculous way. It was nothing more than the almost universal belief of Hungarian politicians that their voices could only be heard inside their own country. Their whole conception of politics was based on this, and nobody for a moment believed that their actions and words were watched or heard by anyone abroad, not even Apponyi whose brother-in-law was ambassador in London and who presumably wrote home from time to time, nor Andrassy, whose father was close to Franz-Josef’s intimate circle and who had for a while been a diplomat himself. In the heat of domestic passions it had never occurred to them to think of such matters as anything but the skirmishes of party politics which no one outside Hungary could for a moment understand or even be interested in. To these men the horizon extended no further than Vienna and outside this circle, this little Hungarian globe, there was nothing! The motion passed in the Hotel Royal’s ballroom was not in reality meant even for the Balkan states, but only for the government in Budapest, or at best, for the monarch so that he might see how discontented its authors were.
The general public, which for centuries had had no interest in world affairs and had never even grasped the importance of the Balkan conflict, now showed no more interest in the opposition’s motion, and in any case would never have believed that any reaction outside the country could have any more relevance than if it happened on the moon.
While these matters were passing through Balint’s mind, he had been nodding approval of everything Kozma told him but in fact paying less and less attention to what was actually said. So now, when Kozma suggested that when they made their next tour together Balint should not only refrain from accepting any personal financial responsibility but should promise him never in any circumstances to do such a thing again, because such an action was the very negation of the idea of self-help and co-operation, Balint, who had heard only the last few words, at once replied, ‘Of course I’ll promise … of course, you’re quite right!’ and Kozma grinned at the secretary in triumph as if saying, ‘You see how easily he can be convinced! He has even given his promise!’
It was now getting close to lunch-time. They got up and were about to walk up to the castle when Balint realized that he had not even glanced at his mail. Accordingly he asked Kozma to go on to entertain his mother while he and the secretary went through the letters together. He would join them in a few minutes.
The first few letters dealt only with Co-operative business and so, after briefly scanning their contents, he handed them to Ganyi saying how they should be answered. The next letter was in a grey envelope and was from Honey Andras Zutor.
It concerned the notary Gaszton Simo and recounted how the young forester Kula had come to find him in the woods and had recounted that while he, Kula, had been at the market at Hunyad, the Romanian popa Timbus had gone to Pejkoja and threatened Kula’s grandfather, old Juon aluj Maftye. Angrily he had asked the old man why he had gone so far as to denounce Simo for malpractice and how it was that he had dared to appoint a Kolozsvar lawyer to represent him. The old man had been badly scared and had told the priest that he had understood nothing of what was happening, that it was all in the hands of his grandson and that, as he was very infirm and could not read or write, he had merely signed whatever had been put before him. Old Juon had apparently said that he was guilty of nothing and that there was nothing of which he could be accused. The priest had then taken out some paper and tried to induce the old man to put his mark on it, but the grandfather, despite the priest’s menaces, had resisted and had not signed. Kula now wrote that he feared the old man would not be able to hold out for long because he felt death approaching and Timbus had threatened him with eternal damnation. The young man did not know what was in the paper the priest wanted signed but thought it probably countermanded the lawyer’s appointment, though of course it might have been something else, perhaps some appreciative statement about Gaszton Simo. The old man had not been told.
‘… and this is why I am writing to your Lordship,’ ended Honey’s letter, which as usual was clear enough even if lacking in punctuation, ‘because some big trouble may come of it Kula is frightened and sure that Timbus and Simo will certainly shake the old man and he said I saw Simo yesterday he is not an easy man to deal with and he may have been going to say something else but I looked hard at him and perhaps he thought I was going to hit him but it is certain that now he is in a good mood though only three weeks ago he talked about being fed up and wanting to move away but now he doesn’t say this any more but quite different things …’
Balint’s face clouded. When he had left the mountains in August he had looked for a lawyer who spoke Romanian and who could not only plead old Juon’s case at the tax office but who could also speak with the country people when the inspectors came to make their enquiries on the spot. It had not been easy to find the right man because everyone knew that Simo and the head County Sheriff were close friends and that therefore everyone in the Sheriff’s office would move heaven and earth to protect their colleague. He had had to find someone who had no ties, either of family or friendship, with anyone in the Sheriff’s office.
Finally one such had been found and the denunciation of Simo officially deposited with the authorities. As yet there had been no hearing and though an enquiry was bound to be held sooner or later, it was obviously in Simo’s interest to do everything he could to postpone matters until he had had time to make the plaintiff withdraw. If he could achieve this then he would win the case.
It was not, however, only a case of clearing Simo’s good name. If he were to be exonerated then it would be Simo himself who would have his hands on the steering-wheel. He could then file a complaint for malicious prosecution and the honest young Kula would find himself hounded and persecuted in his turn.
Balint grew ever more depressed at this terrible thought, for it would be a heavy responsibility if the young man should get into trouble because of his confidence in Balint. Looking up from Honey’s letter Balint looked at Miklos Ganyi, sitting beside him at the desk. Through his thick black-rimmed spectacles Balint fancied he could see a look of compassion and an eagerness to be of help. It was as if Ganyi already knew what was worrying his employer, and it occurred to Balint that as the secretary had spent six years in a country notary’s office he would be sure to know exactly how such enquiries were carried out and so perhaps would have a useful idea of what the consequences might be.
Turning to Ganyi he gave him a brief account of the affair and also told him that the accused was doing all he could to persuade the plaintiff to withdraw.
Ganyi listened attentively, his long bony face tilted sideways as was his habit when listening to something important.
‘I have heard about this case,’ he said, when Abady had finished. ‘I had it from Winkler, the forest supervisor, when he was last here. Simo will certainly be dismissed if the case is proved. This is automatic in cases of tax fraud. However, if they can persuade the old man to declare that his grandson never explained what he was being induced to sign, and especially if he were to say that the receipt he produced had nothing to do with the tax demand but was for something quite different, there could then be some very serious results.’
Ganyi paused, and then went on: ‘Since the old man cannot read or write then no retribution would fall on him; but the grandson could be made to seem responsible and could be accused of slander and of falsifying legal documents. For these crimes he might well be convicted … and … and perhaps not only him. Simo is quite capable of spreading his net further and indicting Andras Zutor as an instigator of the crime, and …’ – here Ganyi again hesitated before plucking up courage to say what was in his mind – ‘… and perhaps even your Lordship.’
They Were Divided Page 29
