She was silent for a while. Then she went on in a different tone:
‘When I married him I believed I could be useful by helping him with his work, that I would be the companion, the friend he needed. He often spoke about it. He would tell me how lonely he had been with no one close to him, in whom he could confide, with whom he could work. But afterwards, the day after we were married, the very next day, he was quite different. Everything he had said … what was it? Moonshine, just moonshine!’
Adrienne was silent again. She looked away, into the far distance, thinking back to the days when she was a young girl full of rebellion. She thought about all the conventions that ruled her life at home and which, after the years of freedom in a foreign boarding-school, had seemed so unbearable, so humiliating. There had been the prohibition of any book, any play more serious than musical comedy, the impossibility of escaping alone, away from the ever-present chaperon; and never, ever, had she been able to escape from being watched. She, a grown girl, was still treated as a small child who needed constant supervision and control. She remembered one small incident that had weighed heavily with her when she was deciding to accept Pal Uzdy. Adrienne had been invited to tea with the Laczoks. After lunch Countess Miloth, who always took a siesta, fell asleep. The old governess, Mile Morin, had been ill and Adrienne, left on her own and not liking to disturb her mother, had climbed into the waiting family carriage and accompanied only by a footman had had herself driven to her aunt’s house. It had taken a bare five minutes.
The awful boldness of this adventure had unexpectedly serious results.
Her mother had accused her of all kinds of depravity, accusations that remained partly veiled only because in front of an unmarried daughter, she could not bring herself to say the word ‘whore’. Her father, too, had shouted at her, echoing her mother’s wild and hysterical accusations; not because he believed them, but because he loved to shout whenever he could. It was then that she had finally decided to marry Uzdy. She knew him to be a serious man who worked hard and who did not often come to town to carouse with the gypsies like the other young men. She had not been in love with him, but she had yearned to be free of the tyranny of her old-fashioned home, to be her own mistress, to carry some responsibility and to have duties of her own.
Recalling this, she said to Balint:
‘I know you never understood why I married Pali! Don’t deny it! I felt it whenever we met. But I couldn’t go on living at home, I couldn’t stand it. And I really did feel that I was needed, that I could help. I believed that I had found a vocation.’ She paused for a moment, and then spoke again. ‘I soon found that I was nobody there either, but at least I can read when I please, and I can go for walks alone in the woods! Do you know the country where we live, the woods beside the Almas? It’s beautiful there.’
‘Poor Addy!’ said Balint softly. He picked up the hand that lay beside him and slowly caressed the long fingers, the palm, the wrist. Adrienne did not resist. She was like a trusting child whose hurt could be comforted by being petted.
With her hand still in his, Adrienne went on: ‘I’ll have to go. I could refuse but it wouldn’t be worth it! Mama knows they’ve called me home. She wouldn’t give me a moment’s peace. Oh, it’s so good to be here with the girls! I can forget how lonely I am.’ Balint could hardly hear the last words which Adrienne had whispered almost to herself.
She looked steadily and calmly into the distance. Though she did not break down, Balint could see that her eyes and thick lashes were clouded with tears.
Deeply moved, Balint started to tell her everything that he had always felt for her. He told her how unique she was, how unlike anyone else he had ever known, how even when she was still a girl how different he had found her from all the others. And, as he spoke, many new feelings, hitherto unrecognized even by himself, pushed themselves forward demanding to be put into words, the heralds of an emotion which he did not even try to analyse.
He spoke for a long time, his hands still caressing Adrienne’s in slow rhythm with his low-spoken words, moving along the arm up to the elbow and down again to the hand and the fingertips. At first he spoke only as a good friend, understanding, consoling but, as he poured out his love and sympathy and as his fingers moved over her flower-petal skin, even though she offered no noticeable response to his caresses, he became increasingly aware of what was really in his heart. His words meant more than friendship, and the movement of his hands was no longer merely soothing. Both voice and hands became the instruments of a new passion, the words became words of love and homage and, as he spoke, they were punctuated by kisses, on the fingers, on the wrist, on her palm and slowly up her unresisting passive arm. As he spoke the meaning of his words changed; sympathy became desire and friendship demanded its reward. Of all the feelings that had poured forth from him only passion remained as he spoke of her beauty, of her lips, her hair, her skin … of death, and of redemption and fulfilment.
For how long did Balint pour out his feelings? Neither of them could have said. Adrienne listened, silent and motionless, seeming to respond to the music of the words rather than to their meaning. But when the man’s lips pressed deeper into the curve of her elbow, she suddenly came alive again. She pulled her arm away violently and jumped up.
‘So! Even you! You want only that! You, of all people, only that! I thought I had a friend, but I have no one, no one!’
She looked at him with hatred and, straightening her slim back, started to walk stiffly away.
‘Addy! Please, Addy! Forgive me!’
But she just went on, her head held high, her whole body rigid with anger and hurt. They walked back to the house in silence, side by side but worlds apart. Abady left that afternoon.
Trying not to show his hurt, he said lengthy goodbyes to all the family. He shook hands warmly with Adrienne’s father, with the girls, the old French governess and with Zoltan; and he tried hard to have a few words with Adrienne herself. His eyes followed her wherever she went, meek with humility, silently begging forgiveness. But she avoided all contact until, just before he was due to enter his carriage and she could no longer remain completely aloof, she allowed him merely to kiss her fingertips. Then she swiftly pulled her hand away and turned back into the house without looking at him.
As the carriage moved off, he looked back to the veranda. Judith and Margit waved back gaily; but Adrienne was nowhere to be seen.
They drove slowly down the steep slope to the road by the lake, the same road by which, gay, carefree and full of hope, he had arrived only the day before. Today his heart seemed to beat in his throat.
He felt that he had lost Adrienne for ever.
PART TWO
Chapter One
WHEN LASZLO GYEROFFY returned to his two-roomed furnished flat in Budapest he started to work in earnest and hardly ever went out. It was a modest little apartment that his guardian, old Carrots, had found for him when he had transferred from the University of Kolozsvar to the Academy of Budapest a few months before. There was just a small living-room with two windows giving onto the garden of the Museum and an even smaller bedroom that looked into the dark courtyard behind. The furniture was worn and shabby, typical of that to be found in the sort of small furnished flats whose rents could be afforded by students. Laszlo had brought with him only two things of his own; a photograph of his father in Hungarian costume taken when he was an usher in the Coronation in 1867, and his guns in a fine leather case which had been placed on the chest of drawers. A drawing board placed on one of the window-sills served as a writing desk.
Laszlo had taken his cousin Balint’s advice to heart. While they had been together in Vasarhely, and in the train until they separated at Maros-Ludas, Balint had tried hard to make Laszlo understand the problems he would have to face now that he had chosen music as a career, problems that would never be solved unless Laszlo contrived to be freed of his debts. Balint advised and, because he loved and admired his cousin, Laszlo had listened and was now tryi
ng hard to put that advice into practice. He worked hard, he cut himself off from all social life and he was determined as soon as possible to catch up with the other students who had entered the Academy of Music immediately they had received their baccalaureate.
The experience of the last year had had an important effect on Laszlo, who, deeply ambitious, had resented finding himself no longer among the leading students. To be second-best was hateful to him.
The few weeks he had stayed in Transylvania before returning to Budapest had been spent in raising money. As his guardian refused point-blank to accept Laszlo’s ideas about the forests, and because he had only a short time available before he had to be back in Budapest to register at the Academy, he had mortgaged the property along the banks of the Szamos river that he had inherited from his father. He had only been able to raise a few thousand florins more than he owed to the money-lenders, but at least he now had something in hand and could live, without worrying and without having always to apply cap-in-hand to his guardian for every penny he needed.
He told nobody of his return to Budapest, not even his Kollonich or Szent-Gyorgyi relations. He did not go near the Casino, of which he had become a member in the spring, in case the news of his presence in Budapest would get around the town; and when he went to concerts in the evening he sat in the gallery so as to be sure he would not be seen by anyone who knew him. In the daytime he studied, went to classes and ate his meals in the sort of small eating houses only frequented by students.
If the mornings were beautiful, so were the evenings. Sometimes, when Laszlo returned to his little flat after supper, and before his newfound discipline sent him to bed so as to be ready to rise early the next morning, he would go to the window and gaze out over the tranquil gardens of the museum. He did not do this often because, he knew not why, it reminded him of the carefree, frivolous life he had led as a law student. It made him hanker after the life to be led in the country. But it was not of Transylvania that he thought, nor of the little country house of Szamos-Kozard that his father had started to build but never finished and which he had never known. Nor was it for the Transylvania of his barely-remembered childhood that he longed; rather it was for Nyitra, the Szent-Gyorgyis’ country place, where the sugar-beet fields were rich in coveys of pheasants waiting to be shot, and the woods of the lower Carpathians filled with wild boar to be stalked. Even better, how wonderful it would be to find oneself at Simonvasar, the Kollonich place in Veszprem. That would be the best. How marvellous to ride over the soft Veszprem hills with his Kollonich cousins, with Klara, to play tennis with her and the boys and, in the evenings, to play the piano to her in the long dark music-room, weaving long romantic fantasias to which she would listen in silence with dilated eyes, drinking in every sound of the music he was creating just for her. That would be the most wonderful of all.
One Sunday, completely immersed in his studies, Laszlo worked from midday until it was almost dark and even in the light of the window embrasure it became hard to see clearly enough to read. Still Laszlo did not break his concentration until, all at once, the doorbell rang … and rang again and again, four or five times. Laszlo, angry at being interrupted, got up at last to open the door. Two of his Kollonich cousins, Peter and Niki, erupted into the little room.
‘So here you are! Why have you been hiding like this! When did you get back! Anyhow, we’ve caught you now!’ Shaking his hand, slapping his shoulders, and both talking at once, they filled the little room with their high spirits and good fellowship. With their English-made clothes, their well-brushed hair and general air of ease and elegance, Laszlo felt that his cousins put to shame the shabbiness of his little student’s lodging. He was glad it was so dark that they could hardly see it, and he weakly resolved to move and have his own furniture brought to Budapest. Why should he feel ashamed when his relations dropped in unexpectedly?
‘This is preposterous,’ said the oldest, Peter, a chubby young man with very fair hair. ‘We’ve been looking for you all over Transylvania, sending wires everywhere, and here you are all the time!’
While Peter was a full brother to Klara, being the son of Prince Kollonich by his first, Trautenbach, wife; his half-brother Niki was so much a Gyeroffy in looks that he could have been Laszlo’s brother. Peter went on: ‘Even at the Casino no one had heard of you. We wired to Balint, who told us you’d left ages ago. What’s this all about. What’s the big secret?’
‘You see, I was right! I said he’d gone to ground and we’d have to dig him out,’ said Niki, who loved to use old Hungarian hunting language since the rest of his family, in his view, had become too Germanized.
‘I’m working hard, that’s all. I’m studying.’
‘Nonsense! That’s no excuse! One always passes examinations one way or another,’ said Peter, who then, to show off his use of fashionable English, continued, ‘besides, that’s no reason to “cut” us. Anyhow now we’ve caught you, I’ll tell you why we’ve been looking for you. Our first shoot’s next week. The guests arrive on the 20th, for three days as usual. You’ve got to come!’
Laszlo demurred. He used all the arguments that Balint had rehearsed for him; he couldn’t leave his studies, he said, and he started going into lengthy detail about his work, but his cousins remained unimpressed. To their way of thinking music or any other studies were only of secondary importance. You could pass the time studying, and maybe you could learn something useful, after a fashion, but a pheasant shoot, one of the best in the country and which only lasted three days – to miss that was incomprehensible. Unless there were some other, unspoken reason. It was Niki who gave voice to the only plausible explanation, ‘To be sure, there’s a woman behind this! Don’t deny it, Laszlo. Give us a week and we’ll find out who she is!’
‘You just have to come,’ insisted Peter. ‘It’s unthinkable that you shouldn’t be with us for the first shoot of the season. Papa would be very hurt if you let us down, especially this year when all the important guests are terrible shots! What’s more, with Louis up at Oxford with Toni Szent-Gyorgyi, there’ll be no good shots from the family except for us and Uncle Antal. Balint’s coming but he’s not much use with a gun. The bags will be a disaster without you. We’ve got to net at least two thousand brace, or Father will blame us for a rotten shoot. It’s unthinkable that you should let us down.’
They argued for a long time, the Kollonich cousins asking what sort of a friend and cousin he was who could abandon them just when they needed him most? And in the end Laszlo yielded, as much to his own secret desires as to the entreaties of his cousins. But he insisted that he couldn’t stay a minute more than three days.
As Peter and Niki took their leave they tried to tempt Laszlo into going with them, but Gyeroffy remained firm. He absolutely had to get up in the morning and so, defeated but content, the two cousins took themselves off happy that Laszlo had agreed to come.
When they had gone Laszlo lit the lamps and tried once again to settle to his studies, but the theories of point and counterpoint blurred before his eyes. No matter how hard he tried, he could not concentrate: serious study eluded him. At last he gave up and went over to the gun-case on the chest of drawers. It was a long, smooth case of fine leather with brass corner-guards and a patent lock. The case, with its fine pair of triggerless Purdys inside, had been the unexpectedly lavish Christmas present from his two aunts three years before. On the butt of each gun was a small golden disk engraved with the Gyeroffy arms, and on the outside of the case, embossed on the leather, was his name, with a small spelling mistake: ‘Count Ladislas Gieroffy’.
Laszlo took out one of the guns and, as he put it together, he thought how easily it handled, how beautifully it was made, like a fine clock. He peered through the long gleaming barrels, cocked the gun for the pleasure of hearing that easy, precise click. What a clean sound! After gently handling the gun for some time he dismantled it and put it lovingly back in its case.
Then he went for a long solitary walk along the banks
of the Danube.
On the 19th Laszlo travelled to Simonvasar with Balint Abady, who had come to the capital for some political meetings.
They arrived in the late afternoon, after a slow carriage drive which seemed even longer than the ten kilometres from the station to the castle because the road was so bad. The reason for this was that Prince Kollonich was always on such bad terms with whatever government was in power in the county that he rarely ever communicated with the authorities in the county town and then only through his land agent.
The carriage finally entered the forecourt of the castle, turned a half circle round the horseshoe-shaped carriage way, and drew up under the columned entrance. As they entered the house two statuesque footmen helped them out of their fur coats and a third, dressed in the blue tailcoat of the Kollonich livery, led them through the huge library, with its tall cupola-shaped roof, through the vast red drawing-room with its five windows, where some of the younger guests were already assembled, and finally through double doors into the corner saloon where the Princess Agnes always received her guests. This salon was one and a half floors high, like the library through which they had just passed but, unlike the library which was lined with tier upon tier of beautifully bound books, it was decorated with coloured stucco in light relief: all pastel colours, butter-yellow, pale lilac and a mint green simulated marble, all in the purest Empire style, even though the castle, designed by the great architect, Pollak, creator of the National Museum, had only been finished at the end of the sixties.
The princess received the new arrivals with her usual warmth and kindliness. She stroked Laszlo’s head as he bent to kiss her hand. Though she was as ever, extremely gracious, she never made it easy to forget that she was, after all, a very great lady whose every kind word was a gift and to kiss whose hand was a privilege.
They Were Counted (The Writing on the Wall: the Transylvanian Trilogy) Page 14