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

by Bánffy, Miklós

  ‘Your father will give you an ample dowry so you wouldn’t be dependent on your husband. Really, Klara, everything would be for the best! Why you’d be the first lady of Vienna!’

  Klara got up, turned away slightly and walked a few steps. She was searching for an answer that would sound convincing.

  ‘Yes, Mama. Everything you say is true, of course, but somehow … well, I don’t know.’

  ‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’

  ‘Somehow, in spite of all that … I don’t want it!’

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘Somehow …’ and she spread out her arms in a wide gesture, wiggling her fingers in the air as if trying to clutch at the right word to express the confusion of her thoughts, ‘Somehow I’m just not interested.’

  The princess moved her still beautiful if somewhat massive shoulders in a little shrug of disdain. ‘Not interested? Why not, may I ask? He is very elegant and very handsome. What’s more, he’s in love with you!’

  ‘Perhaps … but I’m not interested,’ repeated the girl, happy to have found even this inadequate reply.

  ‘Strange! Almost unnatural in the young healthy girl!’ Then, as a new suspicion crossed her mind, ‘You’re not in love with anyone else, are you? Then I’d understand.’

  ‘Oh, no, Mama. How could you?’ replied Klara, a little too quickly, and then, to correct the impression such a swift denial might have, she went on, ‘but I could never decide … I wouldn’t want to decide, not so quickly and so suddenly. It’s such a great decision!’

  ‘But you don’t have to decide yet! Of course not! But in the mean time do show just a little interest. Keep him warm. I don’t have to tell you that he’ll only propose when you want him to. That always depends on us women!’ And she laughed softly, with feminine superiority. Then she rose and went to her stepdaughter, put her arms round her and kissed her. Her voice became warm and cajoling:

  ‘My darling little Klara! I only want the best for you when I tell you these things. You must remember that such a chance as this doesn’t come twice. Young men today don’t seem to think much of marriage; they’re getting almost cunning, and if you miss this chance? You’re past twenty-three, don’t forget, and it’s high time you were married. Isn’t it so, my little Klara?’

  Her last words were spoken softly and lightly, but they were meant to tell. And her laugh, equally light, was as full of warning as it was of practical feminine wisdom.

  Klara blushed but did not answer.

  ‘You promise you’ll be nice to him?’

  ‘All right! I promise! Only that! Nothing more.’ Her hand turned the knob and as she went out the princess called after her:

  ‘Your father wants this very much too!’

  Klara went out and closed the door. The older woman’s last words had spoiled in an instant any effect that their talk might have had, because Klara knew from long experience that her father only did what his wife wanted and that everything always happened in the way the princess had decided; though by that time the prince had usually decided it was what he had always wanted. What worried Klara was that if her father did not get what he had come to believe was his own will he could become very angry indeed.

  Why must she menace me with Papa? thought Klara mutinously as she descended the stairs, though by the time she reached the bottom step she had consoled herself with the thought that she had only promised to tolerate Montorio’s courting. She had not bound herself to anything that might affect … No! She could not harm anyone by that!

  And so that evening, she flirted lightly with Montorio at dinner and afterwards: and on the last two days of the shoot she often went to stand beside him.

  But she did not allow things to go any further.

  Chapter Five

  ON THE AFTERNOON OF THE THIRD DAY Balint found himself at the end of the line. It was a quiet stand with few birds coming his way, and it was where he nearly always found himself for, as a comparatively near relation, second cousin to the hostess, and an indifferent shot, he had no claims to a better place and he was not needed to ‘help’ the guests of honour.

  Although the beaters were rattling away furiously in the distance the birds were all being directed to the far end of the line where guns were going off as rapidly as in battle. Where Balint stood only a few wise old cocks moved quietly about in the brush having discovered that they should never run in the direction they were being herded and, above all, that they should never leave the ground. They strutted in two’s and three’s not far from Balint, only occasionally putting out their emerald-green necks, waiting for a good moment to run to the next block of cover.

  Balint had never been an ambitious or even very eager shot and now he welcomed his quiet corner as it gave him time to think.

  He was still troubled by the talk he had had with Slawata. Whenever he had been alone in the two days that had followed, the Counsellor’s indiscreet confidences came constantly to his mind insisting that he decide where he stood. That much was clear: the whispers about the Heir were true; he was planning the breakup of the old Hungarian constitution.

  Balint pondered the programme outlined by Slawata: centralization, rule by an Imperial Council, the ancient kingdom of Hungary reduced to an Austrian province, and national boundaries to be re-arranged statistically according to the ethnic origin of the inhabitants! Why all this? To what purpose? Slawata had given him the answer: Imperial expansion in the Balkans so that feudal kingdoms for the Habsburgs reached the Sea of Marmora; and it was all to be achieved with the blood of Hungarian soldiers and paid for by Hungarian tax-money! So it was merely to help Vienna spread Austrian hegemony over the nations of the Balkans that Tisza was to be helped to build up the Hungarian national armed forces.

  It seemed now to Balint that both parties in Parliament were fighting instinctively, but without a clear understanding either of their motives or of the inevitable results of their policies and strategy. While Tisza battled to strengthen the army, he could have no inkling that, once strengthened, it would be used to suppress the very independence it was designed to assure – and when the opposition delayed the implementation of Tisza’s policy by petty arguments about shoulder-flashes and army commands, they were unaware that, inadvertently, they were providing ammunition for those very arguments that in the near future would threaten the integrity of the constitution.

  How simple everything could seem if one looked only at the figures, those cold statistics that took no account of people’s feelings and traditions. How much would be destroyed if men were to be treated as robots! What of the myriad individual characteristics, passions, aspirations, triumphs and disappointments that together made one people different from another? How could anyone ignore all the different threads of experience that, over the centuries, had formed and deepened the differences that distinguished each nation?

  How would anyone believe that any good was to be obtained by adding the Balkan states to the already unwieldy Dual Monarchy and so increasing the Empire to a hundred million souls with differing traditions and cultures? Of course armies could be recruited and young men could die, but great States evolved only through centuries of social tradition and mutual self-interest; they were not imposed by bayonets. To believe the contrary would be as mad as the folly which had put the Archduke Maximilien on the throne of Mexico.

  Balint had been taken so unawares by Slawata’s disclosures that he had not known how to reply to the the diplomat’s proposals. This distressed him because it revealed to him his own chronic failure ever to know the right answers. He needed deep reflection before he could make up his mind what to say.

  Seated on his shooting stick at the end of a quiet shoot, everything became clear to him, not in any ordered sequence of words or arguments that like tiny pieces of mosaic gradually revealed a finished picture, but rather as a painter, before he put paint to canvas, envisages the finished effect.

  ‘Why, you look just like Rodin’s Penseur!’ The mocking voice came fr
om Fanny Beredy who, a smile on her beautiful face, had come up and stood beside him. Balint offered her his seat.

  ‘What deep, interesting thoughts am I disturbing? I hope you’re not cross!’ she said, accepting the stick.

  ‘Very!’ laughed Abady, who only now realized that the first beat was finished and that he must wait for the second line to start. He sat on the ground at Fanny’s feet.

  ‘I have to ask. With you Transylvanians it’s so difficult to know where you are! One’s never sure of one’s welcome!’ She laughed, and when Balint protested, she went on, quite seriously: ‘But it’s true! You can’t see it, but I can. You’re quite different from the rest of us here. You’re an individual, not moulded out of one pattern as we are – the group here that is. One can never be sure what your reaction will be, or why!’

  ‘Perhaps from living with bears?’

  ‘Oh, they are sweet! Nice clumsy bumbling little bears. Oh, no, it isn’t that. The only two I know are you and Gyeroffy, and you two are much more amusing animals.’

  ‘Monkeys, perhaps? They can be amusing!’

  ‘Oh, no! More like birds of prey, hawks, always gazing into the far distance, to the horizon, and never noticing what lies at their feet, what is close at hand.’

  ‘And what is close at hand?’

  Fanny gave him a rapid sideways glance, and then looked away. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I just said it not meaning anything in particular,’ she continued, chatting lightly and jumping from one subject to another, perhaps so as to deflect his attention from what she had just said.

  ‘Cocks to the right! Cocks to the right!’ The beaters’ cries brought Balint back to his feet, shooting what he could of the sudden rush of birds in the sky above. He also bagged a few hares on the ground.

  As suddenly as it had begun the beat was over. While the fallen birds were being collected, most of the guns went back to the waiting carriage. Balint waited until only he and Fanny, the two Lubianszky girls and Laszlo remained behind.

  ‘Gyeroffy’s a cousin of yours, isn’t he?’ asked Fanny. ‘He said he’d accompany me and I had my music sent over yesterday, but somehow he seems to have forgotten.’

  ‘How boorish of him! I’ll remind him.’

  ‘No! Don’t say anything about it! It’s not important. It was just seeing him there in front of us …’ She quickened her pace and moved forward between the rows of beaters carrying the bag to the game carts.

  Abady, following behind her, noticed her strange swaying walk. Fanny placed one foot precisely in front of the other and Balint realized that if she were walking through snow she would make a single line of tracks like a wild cat.

  As the guests gathered in the red drawing-room Balint turned to Laszlo and asked: ‘Are you going back tonight?’

  ‘I think so. If I start at half past nine I can catch the midnight milk train.’ Laszlo spoke somewhat uncertainly. He did not look at his cousin as his eyes were fixed the end of the room where Montorio and Klara were sitting on a sofa and sipping tea.

  Klara had chosen this place so that her stepmother, from her chair in the next room, could see how well she was obeying orders.

  ‘I asked because Countess Fanny mentioned her singing. I think that she’s a trifle hurt that you didn’t play for her yesterday. Perhaps you should say something to her?’

  ‘Oh, Lord! I completely forgot. Well, maybe I’ll stay on; it would be churlish not to. One night more or less won’t make all that difference.’

  Balint looked sharply at his cousin. He regretted immediately that he had given him a reason for staying on as he sensed that Laszlo had taken advantage of this pretext even though his real reason was something quite different. Noticing how tense and tormented his cousin looked, and how his gaze always returned to the sofa at the end of the room, Balint realized that what he had always assumed was a mere cousinly flirtation had taken on for Laszlo a fatal seriousness: fatal for Laszlo, for Balint grasped what apparently his cousin had not, that there would be a thousand obstacles standing in the way of any happy fulfilment to such a dream. He wondered if Klara returned Laszlo’s love and, if she did, whether she had the determination and stamina to overcome what lay ahead. Dismissing these thoughts from his mind, he said: ‘We can leave together if you like, tomorrow morning?’

  ‘Why not? We came together, we go together,’ and his look made the words into a promise. Then, to justify what he was doing, Laszlo went over to the chair where Fanny was sitting and started to talk about what she would like to sing that evening.

  The long Bösendorfer grand stood at one end of the music-room and in its curve, leaning back against the mellow walnut sheen of the piano, stood Fanny Beredy, conscious that her pose showed her supple figure at its best and that her salmon-pink dress and golden honey-coloured hair stood out advantageously against the apple-green of the walls and the ivory and dove-grey of the panelling. Apart from Fanny herself, everything in the room was in pastel shades, even the furniture standing around the walls and the cherry-wood parquet floor. High above, only the stucco swags of flowers that bordered the ceiling were in stronger shades of angry blue and gold.

  Candles burned in two three-branched candelabra on the piano for, when electric light had been installed, no one had thought to put a point nearby.

  Laszlo was playing soft roulades while the other guests came in and sat down. Several armchairs had been placed in front of the doors into the library and here the princess and the older ladies were seated. Behind them were their husbands, who had most unwillingly been induced to abandon their cards, all except the field marshal who had chosen a sofa near the piano either because he was a little deaf or else to be closer to the beautiful Fanny.

  When everyone had taken their places Fanny moved round to Laszlo and gave him a sign that she was ready. He played the first notes and she began to sing – it was Schumann’s Mondnacht.

  She sang beautifully, with the ease of a well-trained voice, which, if not exceptionally powerful, was rich and warm especially in the lower register; and from the moment she started it was clear that she was entirely absorbed by the music. The gay, flirtatious, light-hearted Fanny that everyone knew was changed into a completely different person; simple, sincere, without either artifice or the smallest sign of self-consciousness, a transition as remarkable as it was unexpected. She stood very straight, seemingly mesmerized by the music, and her eyes, normally hooded and watchful like those of a bird of prey, opened wider and wider as if she were hypnotized by some apparition being brought ever closer on the wings of the song and only fading as the last notes died away. Then she closed her eyes with infinite resignation.

  At Fanny’s first notes Laszlo had looked up in surprise; he had not expected such perfect artistry nor such depth of feeling, and, as she sang, so he played, no longer out of politeness but for sheer love and devotion to the music.

  There was applause, the discreet, polite applause to be expected at a society gathering. Fanny bowed her head slightly in acknowledgement, but she seemed far from conscious of her audience, so wrapped up was she in the music that made her so happy. She turned to Gyeroffy and put before him the next song, Still wie die Nacht, tief wie das Meer, an old piece by Koestlin.

  Laszlo started the prelude and, as he took it slightly faster than she wanted, she placed her hand on his shoulder and with her fingers lightly indicated the slower tempo she felt to be right. Her touch had nothing sensual in it; it did not seek for pleasure, nor was it a caress, rather it underlined their mutual enjoyment of the music, that and nothing else. As Fanny continued to sing her hand remained on Laszlo’s shoulder, sometimes signalling emphasis or a change of speed, the physical link ensuring that the two musicians were as one in every detail of their performance. They were bound together by their love of the passionate music they played, and they could have been quite alone, for the candlelight on the piano acted almost as a fire-screen between them and the listeners at the other end of the hall. Other songs followed: Brahms’s Feldeinsamke
it, a Paladilhe, some more Schumann.

  They were so absorbed that they did not notice when some of the men crept quietly away to the card-tables in the library, nor when, a little later, most of the young disappeared too. To Laszlo and Fanny, only the music they made together existed until, after about an hour, the butler appeared silently at the door, like the Ghost in Hamlet, and bowed to the hostess to indicate that tea was served.

  The princess was immensely relieved after the boredom of sitting so long in silence, and sensing that most of her guests were bored too. As soon as Fanny finished the song she was then singing and started to search among her music for something to follow it, the hostess rose, swept across the room in her most regal manner and asked, with a patronizing smile: ‘Are you not tired, my dear?’ And though she received a swift denial from Fanny, she went on, ‘Tea is served. I am sure you need a cup after so much … er … singing!’

  ‘Thank you! Indeed I would,’ said Fanny. ‘I’ll join you as soon as I have collected my music’

  The princess gathered her guests and left the hall. Only old Kanizsay remained, sitting straight upright, his legs spread wide, hands on knees, appearing to see nothing. The field marshal was so deep in thought that he had not noticed the others leave.

  ‘Are you tired?’ Fanny asked Laszlo.

  ‘I’m not! But you, Countess. If anyone should be, it should be you? I could willingly go on all night, with the greatest of pleasure.’ And he sat down again at the keyboard.

  ‘Then let’s try some of these, though I don’t know them very well yet.’

  She picked out an album of Richard Strauss who was just then beginning to become famous. ‘I love these ones, but they’re rather difficult. Would you like to look them through before we try?’