They Were Counted (The Writing on the Wall: the Transylvanian Trilogy)

by Bánffy, Miklós

  I must now offer grateful thanks to Patrick Leigh Fermor who started by offering me the most helpful advice when we embarked on this project, went on with invaluable textual suggestions, and who has now written such a graceful foreword. Rudi Fischer, of Budapest, was also very helpful and I received much encouragement from Professor István Nemeskurty and also from Professor Mihály Szegedy-Maszák, of Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, who in 1996 printed extracts from our translation in Hungarian Studies, the journal of the International Association of Hungarian Studies (Nemzetkösi Magyar Filológiai Társaság). My thanks are also due to Dr Richard Mullen for publishing my articles on Bánffy and his works in the Contemporary Review (which, incidentally, is mentioned in the text of They Were Counted).

  My deepest thanks are reserved for my co-translator, Kathy Bánffy-Jelen, who has patiently suffered endless questioning from a collaborator largely ignorant of her native language and even accepted with a good grace those textual losses from her beloved father’s great work that proved unavoidable if our labours were ever to appear in print.

  Tangier, 1998

  Patrick Thursfield was born in 1923, educated at Charterhouse and Christ Church, Oxford, and served in the RNVR (combined operations) 1942–6. He joined the staff of The Times in 1949 and later wrote scripts for television and articles on literary and other subjects. From 1971 he made his home in Tangier, where he died in 2003.

  ‘And it came to pass that the King commanded a great feast in the Palace and there was feasting and dancing and much drinking of wine. And each man praised his own gods of gold and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood and of clay, mocking and quarrelling with one another because of them.

  ‘In the same hour came forth the fingers of a man’s hand and wrote in letters of fire upon the plaster of the wall of the King’s palace, slowly, until there shone brightly the word: MENE – The Lord hath counted thy kingdom …

  ‘But no one could see the writing because they were drunken with wine and wrath with one another, each man praising his own gods made of gold and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood and of clay.’

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  THE RADIANT AFTERNOON SUNLIGHT of early September was so brilliant that it still seemed like summer. Two larks were soaring high into the air, pausing a few seconds and then diving to skim the surface of the fields before rising ever higher into the blue sky.

  On the ground everything seemed green. Even in the stubble-covered fields the gold was veined with moss, shining like green enamel, with, here and there, a few late poppies glowing crimson. On the soft rolling hills of the Maros valley the fruit trees were still covered with leaves, as were the woods crowning each summit. Between the water-meadows, which bordered the river and the orchards, ran the road to Vasarhely, white with the dust which also coated the late-flowering yellow pimpernels, the wild spinach and the spreading leaves of the burdock which grew so profusely on the sloping verges of the road.

  Many carriages and peasant carts had travelled that way in the morning, all hastening to the Sunday races at Vasarhely, raising clouds of dust in their wake. Now in the early afternoon all was still. The dust had settled and the road was empty.

  A single vehicle approached slowly from the direction of the town. It was an open hired fiacre drawn by three horses. Sitting back in the passenger seat was a young man, Balint Abady, slim and of medium height, his long silk dustcoat fastened up to his chin. When he took off the wide-brimmed felt hat that had become the fashion throughout Europe after the Boer War, the sunlight caught reddish glints in his wavy hair and made his blue eyes seem even lighter in colour. His features had a faintly oriental cast, with a high forehead, wide cheekbones and unexpectedly slanting eyes. Balint had not been at the races. He had come direct from the station and was heading for Var-Siklod, the country place of Count Laczok who was giving a recepton after the races, which in turn would be followed in the evening by a dinner and dance.

  He had come by train direct from Denestornya even though his mother had offered one of her teams of carriage horses. He had refused the offer, warmly as it had been made, because he sensed she had hoped he would. He knew how much she loved the horses she raised and how she worried over possible hardship for them. In strange stables they would catch cold or be snagged by other horses. So, with a smile, he had told her that it would be too much for them to drive the fifty kilometres from Denestornya to St George’s Meadow beyond Vasarhely, back to the town again and then out to the Laczoks’. They would have to be put to, unharnessed again, fed at an inn … no, he would rather go by train. In that way he would arrive early and maybe have an opportunity to discuss local affairs with the politicians who were sure to be there.

  ‘All right, my boy, if that is what you prefer – though you know I would give the horses willingly’, his mother had said; but he knew she was glad he had not accepted. So now he was on his way to Siklod, travelling slowly in the old fiacre, with its jingling harness and its ancient springs. He enjoyed the leisurely pace along the lonely road with the dust rising like the lightest of veils carried by an almost imperceptible breeze over meadows where doe-eyed cows lazily looked towards the carriage.

  How good it was to be back in his own country after so many years away, to be back home again and to be carried so peacefully and gently to a place he loved and where he would meet so many old friends. It was a long time since he had seen them; since, after his years at the Theresianum in Vienna and afterwards at the University of Kolozsvar, he had had to go back again to Vienna to prepare his diplomatic examinations and, after his military service, he had been posted abroad for two years. Now he was back. How much better this was, he thought, than the diplomatic service where there was no hope of earning money and where the small allowance, which was all his mother could afford, barely covered his living expenses. He did not grudge the meagreness of his allowance. Though her holdings were large – sixteen thousand acres of pine forest on the slopes of Vlegyasza, three thousand at Denestornya, rich farmlands between the Aranyos and the Maros, three-quarters of the great lake at Lelbanya, and smaller holdings here and there – he knew his mother never had any spare money, however hard she tried to save.

  It was far better to come home, where he could live cheaply, and where, with his experience and qualifications, he could perhaps make himself useful in his own country.

  When, therefore, he was at home on leave in the spring of 1904 and the Prefect of the district had come to Denestornya asking him to stand for the vacant parliamentary seat of Lelbanya, he had accepted without hesitation. He had only one condition; he would be an Independent, free of party ties. Even when abroad he had read in the newspapers of the fierce parliamentary battles in Budapest which had swept away two governments in as many years and, to Balint, the idea of being tied to a party line and obliged to follow a party whip was infinitely distasteful.

  The Prefect, somewhat to Balint’s surprise, had raised no objections. He agreed to the Independent label provided that Balint would respect the 1867 Compromise with Vienna, that agreement which ensured the independence of Hungary. What the Prefect did not say was that for him the only important thing was to keep out the opposition and to be sure that Lelbanya should not be represented by some ‘foreigner’ who had bought his seat from the party leaders in Budapest. Although Lelbanya, once a royal town, had declined until it had become a mere country market town with barely three hundred votes, it still had the right to elect a member of Parliament. For some time the elections had been rigged. Aspiring politicians, with money in their pockets, had come from the capital to win the seat. They would be welcomed, and their pockets emptied, by the Prefect and his friends, to an apparently vicious contest with a loud-mouthed demagogue who, spouting the revolutionary principles of 1848, had been employed to contest the seat. On one occasion the rich candidate from Budapest had tired of paying and retired; and, to the province’s shame and embarrassment, the phoney candidate had been elected.

&nbs
p; If young Count Abady would stand, the Prefect knew that nothing would go wrong. Since the town’s mine had stopped being worked many years before and the soil of the district only offered a poor living, the inhabitants of Lelbanya had lived chiefly by gathering and working the reeds of the lake, which was Abady property. Against the owner of the lake no ‘foreign’ candidate stood a chance, for if Count Abady decided to sell the reeds elsewhere, the citizens would lose their livelihood.

  Of course the Prefect said none of this to the young man. He spoke only in general terms, of the need for a sense of duty, of patriotism and, in Countess Abady’s presence, he spoke, with an air of understanding and sympathy, of how she and her people would benefit from the young count’s presence in his own country. He spoke too, temptingly, of the salaries earned by Members of Parliament which, though low enough, would be useful. He emphasized that there would be no embarrassing contest and that the election would be almost unanimous. Only when Balint and his mother had been convinced did he visit the countess’s agent, Kristof Azbej, and tell him that it would be wise to send a stranger to Lelbanya who would, in a most obvious manner, assess the autumn’s reed crop as if Count Abady were considering selling elsewhere. The electors would get a good fright and when, as in previous years, the crop was still made available to the town Count Abady would be elected. And this is what happened; even though Balint had no idea why the electors cheered him so heartily. Balint’s innocence stemmed not only from his straightforward nature and an upbringing that had shielded him from dishonesty and greed, but also from the fact that the protected years at the Theresianum college, at the university and even in the diplomatic service, had shown him only the gentler aspects of life. He had lived always in a hothouse atmosphere where the realities of human wickedness wore masks; and Balint did not yet have the experience to see the truth that lay behind.

  None of this was in Balint’s mind as he travelled slowly towards Siklod in the old hackney carriage. Leaning back in his seat, he thought only of how good it was to be home again and to have the chance to put to good use what he had seen abroad, how he could pass on the benefits of what he had seen in Germany of the new trade unions, of their methods of property administration, of tied-cottages and small holders’ rights. Though he had already spoken of such things to the electors, they were still not clearly defined in his mind. In the meantime, the sun was beautiful, the countryside smiling and the sky clear and blue.

  A big old-fashioned travelling coach came up behind. A closed carriage with tightly shut windows making a rhythmic jingle of harness drew alongside. It was drawn by two large bay mares, so fat that they were either in foal or had been fed too much hay. On the box was an old coachman wearing a threadbare cherry-red coat – a fashion of the sixties and on his head was a round hat with an ostrich feather now no more than a tuft. He sat, crooked as a folding knife, nodding his head as if answering the horses’ silent questions. As the coach passed, Balint saw a little maid sitting on the front seat with a basket on her lap and, in the rear, propped up with cushions, a tiny shrivelled-up old lady. He recognized her at once and bowed, but the old lady never saw him. She gazed directly in front of her, squinting under knitted brows into the distance, into the nothingness over her maid’s head, her mouth puckering as if she were whistling.

  It was the old Countess Sarmasaghy, in this part of the world Aunt Lizinka to almost everybody. Through her numerous brothers and sisters she really was aunt to two generations of all the families of the district, and the sight of her, silent and alone in her old-fashioned coach, reawakened in Balint the memories of his boyhood in Kolozsvar. Even now he could recall the airless room in which Aunt Lizinka sat in a wing-chair with its back to the tightly closed windows, windows that were never opened for although in perfect health the old lady dreaded catching cold. Between her and the windows were two glass screens as an added protection. She had been huddled into a confused mass of shawls, plaids and scarves, and on her head had been a little lace bonnet under which a small knitted cushion was tied to her forehead. The bonnet was fastened under her chin by a tangle of silken bows. Of her face all that could be seen were her glittering eyes, a sharp eagle-beaked nose and thin colourless lips covered in star-shaped wrinkles. He had been terrified of this shrunken witch-like figure who seemed to have no body at all but only a narrow face and beaky nose, just as he had read in the old fairy books. Balint’s mother had pushed him forward. ‘Now, Balint, kiss your aunt’s hand properly!’ and he had kissed the little shrivelled camphor-smelling claw as he was told. He had hated it, but worse was to come. The gnarled little hand had grabbed him and pulled him towards the scarves and shawls with a force that nobody would believe, and then the old lips, unexpectedly moist, had planted a wet kiss on his forehead. For some time after being released from this terrifying embrace he could feel the cold saliva drying on his head; but he had been too strictly brought up to be caught wiping it off.

  As the old woman passed in her coach Balint thought that even then she had looked as old as she looked now and he remembered, too, many other things things that she had told him about herself or that he had been told about her by his grandfather, old Count Peter Abady, who was her first cousin.

  He smiled to himself as he recalled one of her escapades.

  In 1848, during the revolution, Countess Sarmasaghy, born Lizinka Kendy, was a young bride. Her husband Mihaly was a major in Gorgey’s army (everyone was a major then) fighting for Hungary’s independence and she was so much in love with him that, against all tradition, she followed the army everywhere in her carriage. She was at Vilagos when Gorgey surrendered and, ardent patriot that she was, she went immediately up to the Castle of Bohus, burst into the great hall where all the Hungarian and Russian officers were collected, brushed them aside until she faced General Gorgey and yelled at him in her sharp shrill voice ‘Governor! Sir, you are a traitor!’

  Nothing had ever daunted her, and she was never afraid to say what she thought. She also had a cruel and merciless tongue. She had loathed Kossuth, and every time that his name was mentioned she would tell the story of him at the National Assembly in Debrecen. The Russians were approaching and no one knew what to do. According to Aunt Lizinka, Kossuth rose to speak and said, ‘There is no need to panic! Mihaly Sarmasaghy is on his way with thirty thousand soldiers!’ And great cheering broke out, even though Mihaly Sarmasaghy, accompanied only by his tiny wife, was actually sitting in the public gallery above. As Aunt Lizinka told the tale she made it seem that everyone knew that her courage alone equalled an untold number of fearless soldiery.

  After the revolution, during which her husband had been imprisoned, it was she who handled the appropriations crisis which nearly bankrupted her husband’s family. She took their case to every court, she fought against the enforced leasing of their lands, mines and properties, and she got her husband released from his captivity at Kufstein. First she mastered all the legal intricacies of the new decrees, laws and amendments, the complications of Austro-Hungarian imperial patents, and the commercial methods of running the family mines; then she fought their case from Vasarhely to Vienna, and won.

  All this Balint recalled as the old lady’s coach passed his, and this made him think, too, of his grandfather, her cousin, to whom she paid regular visits every year. He could see the two of them now, sitting together on the open veranda of the mansion at Denestornya where his grandfather had lived. Aunt Lizinka, almost submerged in her shawls and scarves, her knees pulled up, curled like a lapdog in a huge cushioned armchair; Grandfather Abady, facing his cousin in a high-backed chair, smoking cigars, as he did all day long, from a carved meerschaum holder. Aunt Lizinka would, as always, be recounting gossip about their friends, neighbours and cousins. All that Balint would understand, and remember, was his grandfather laughing ironically and saying, ‘Lizinka, I don’t believe all these evil stories: even half would be too much!’ And the old lady would declare: ‘It’s true. Every word is true. I know it!’ But the old count just smil
ed and shook his head, disbelieving, because even if the old countess said things that were mischievous and untrue at least she was funny when she did so.

  At Denestornya Count Peter had not lived in the family castle, but in a large eighteenth-century mansion built by his own grandfather at a time when the two main branches of the Abady family had become separated and the family lands divided. The big castle had been inherited by Balint’s mother, together with three-quarters of the family estates, and it had therefore been a great event when she married Peter Abady’s son and thus reunited the family domains of Denestornya and the estates in the Upper Szamos mountains.