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

by Bánffy, Miklós

  The camp was well sited, a low stone wall forming a semicircle under an outcrop of rock. In the centre a pillar made of a tree trunk supported a roof thickly covered by fir-boughs. Below, beds of more fir-boughs neatly tied together, were ready for the rugs that would be thrown over them. Firewood, long dry branches, had been laid against the entire length of the stone wall. When lit these would have to be fed all night so that those inside the shelter would not freeze to death.

  Even before they had finished unloading the horses and bringing their supplies into the shelter, Zsukuczo, who knew better than the others how to arrange the dry sticks, feed the young flames slowly and intersperse them with strips of resiny bark so that the flames spread evenly, had had the campfire started. In ten minutes it was burning merrily.

  It was Zsukuczo, too, who had chosen the site. As a former poacher he knew the whole forest even better than the others and he knew, too, how important was the protection offered by the rock-face and where the nearest spring of sweet water bubbled up among the rocks. No man bred to the mountains would ever camp on an open site or far from water.

  Darkness fell and Zutor handed out the bread, bacon and onions that were to be their evening meal. The men, knowing their station in life, settled near the fire a little away from the place accorded to the master; and when Zutor gave out the large tin cups generously filled with brandy, they all drank noisily, with much clearing of throats, which was the way of mountain folk when they wanted to show their appreciation that so little water had been added to the spirit.

  As soon as Balint got into his sleeping bag he fell into a deep sleep partly because he was so tired but also because everyone slept well in the sharp mountain air. At about eleven, however, he woke up, conscious that around the campfire his party was entertaining visitors. Three men had joined the group, as is the custom in the mountains where men will walk three hours and more if they see a camp fire where they can come and talk the night away exchanging news and discussing their problems.

  As everyone thought that the Mariassa was asleep they talked freely without restraint. They spoke in Romanian, and one of the visitors, an old shrivelled man squatting on his haunches, who was facing Balint, was recounting a long and mournful tale of injustice concerning a house, money, lambs, loans and interest, and cheese. The words domnu Notar occurred frequently and there was some reference to the Romanian priest at Gyurkuca. Even more frequently he repeated a name, Rusz Pantyilimon, and each time he did so he spat contemptuously into the fire.

  Balint raised himself on to his elbow trying to hear what was being said, but even though he could remember a few words of Romanian from his childhood, he could not grasp the details of the old man’s tale of woe. He understood, all the same, that the others commiserated with him and nodded their heads in sympathy.

  At one moment Zsukuczo got up from where he was sitting to stir the dying embers of the fire with his axe-handle. When all was arranged he threw on some new dry branches and, as the flames sprang up, he noticed that Balint was awake. Quickly he turned away and said something to the others who fell silent.

  Balint watched as the campfire blazed into life again. The thick logs on which it had been built were already half consumed, and a multitude of tiny white flames glowed round the dark stumps at the heart of the fire. Every now and again, stirred by some internal gust of air there stretched out long tentacles of orange flame, dancing with apparent life, which rose up in moving arabesques only to vanish and die as quickly as they had appeared. He watched for a long time, feeling that he had never before seen such beauty, such a raging desire for life, and as this thought came into his mind he was reminded of Adrienne flying over the ice. Did she not have the same restless thirst for movement, for life? Was it not of a flame that she had then made him think, as she fluttered, bending and gliding from one partner to another, her half-opened mouth red and burning with life?

  Thinking now once more of Adrienne, he felt that at last he knew what she was really like and that she, like the fire, was driven by some fatal force of which she herself could barely be aware but which, powerful and uncontrollable, must, in the end, prove fatal.

  Balint felt relieved that he had at last understood the truth behind her mystery, and said to himself that he was lucky to have realized this before he was tempted to start an affair with her. Driven by this demonic passion Adrienne was not a woman with whom one could amuse oneself for a few hours, with whom one could have a light-hearted adventure and then part to remain light-hearted friends. Ah, no! It would be wiser not to start anything. Of course it would have been different if he had been in love with her, but he wasn’t. Better leave well alone, far better …

  And then he went back to sleep.

  When Balint awoke it was already dawn. It was bitterly cold and he was shivering. He felt better after a mug of hot tea laced with rum, and better still when he had eaten the bacon that Krisan prepared for him, roasting it on a split of wood over the embers of the fire. As he ate the men started loading up the horses and soon they were on their way again.

  When the track passed small open meadows Balint could occasionally get glimpses of the distant mountains as they had the day before, but though now all was bathed in the same dazzling clear light, the morning colours were not at all the same. Where yesterday had been in varying shades of cobalt, today the faraway mountain ridges glowed with a lilac tint shaded by patches of pale green, and in the dawn light the snow seemed pink. They reached a place where their route was crossed by another.

  ‘We’ll pass by here again tomorrow when we return from Gyurkuca,’ said Zutor, and he went on, pointing to the south: ‘If your Lordship wishes we can then go on down into the valley of the Retyicel, or perhaps turn by the waterfall at the Burnt Stone and go down to Szkrind.’

  The road wound slowly downhill. Coming up along the same track were three buffalo carts but this time Krisan Gyorgye did not run forward and order them out of the way as he had done when they met the woodcutters the previous day. These were men of the Kalotaszeg, people with whom no one trifled.

  Balint stared at the buffaloes with interest. He had never seen these animals in the winter when, unlike other wiser beasts, they shed their ragged stringy fur to reveal sleek coats of shiny black hair. Because of this reversal of the normal process buffalo owners would provide their animals with quilted blankets made of sackcloth and so fitted that they covered the animals from neck to tail and were tied under their chests with a wide girth.

  The buffaloes moved slowly, dragging behind them carts laden with cut wood for hut-building, and though their sad, long-lashed eyes had a wary look as they approached Balint’s horses, they did not waver in their solemn progress. There were three men and two boys with the carts. All were dressed in the same way as Honey Zutor in leather waistcoats and blue shirts, leggings and boots; except for the boys who wore sandals, even in the deep snow. The men did not speak as they showed their wood-cutting permits to Zutor but, after he had checked that they were in order, the Kalotaszegi lifted their hats in polite and dignified greeting and went silently on their way.

  Balint had decided that as the air was so cold he would walk rather than ride. The track at this point was an easy one, a far gentler slope than any they had so far encountered. Once again the only sound to be heard was the faint crunch of the horses’ hoofs on the snow, until, as before, there came the faint sound of someone cutting wood. At first they could hear only one repeated knocking, but slowly, as they moved forward, this seemed to come from several different directions. Balint asked Zutor why this was, and if the cutters were allowed to fell trees wherever they liked.

  ‘Not exactly, my Lord, but once they have got their permit from the forestry office they can fell anywhere they like on this side of the mountain.’

  ‘Who decides how much they can fell?’

  ‘They can cut as much as they like, but they can only take out what it says on the permit.’

  ‘What a waste! What disorder!’ thought Ba
lint. He turned again to Zutor. ‘Haven’t they heard of forest planning?’

  ‘Oh, yes, my Lord, but they don’t do it.’ And he went on to tell Balint how, twenty years before when he was still a boy, he had gone to the forest with one of the estate engineers and spent two months with measuring tapes, signposts, planning how the forest would be developed for years ahead. ‘That’s when I first learned to love the mountains,’ he said, ‘and afterwards, in the spring, he took me to Beles when he presented his reports. It was many years ago, just after Count Tamas died. Nobody’s worked like that for a long time!’

  When dusk fell Balint’s party left the long watershed and descended to the valley of the river Szamos, where they found a clearing at which feed could be bought for the horses.

  The men started to build a shelter on a slope above the river and in front of it a campfire which was already ablaze by the time the shelter was ready.

  As on the previous night the food was cooked and shared out, the brandy handed round and, as the little band finished their meal and the Mariassa retired to his makeshift bed, other men joined them for the company and the news of the outside world. Though somewhat restrained in front of Balint they seemed to relax as soon as they thought he was sleeping; and once again the talk was all about the notary and the priest – the popa of Gyurkuca – both of whom they seemed to detest equally, though their real curses, as the night before, were reserved for the man they called Rusz Pantyilimon who should be ‘damned to Draku!’

  In the morning they struck camp early, and by ten o’clock they came to the outlying cottages of the village of Gyurkuca, the main part of which was built on a low hill surrounded by steep cliffs that rose almost like an island in the centre of a wide bend in the river. Here a makeshift bridge had been thrown across the river. It was supported by two high pillars, one on each side with a third in the middle of the river, and in between were fixed some narrow wooden planks set three to four metres above the level of the water. At each end loose planks that bent with every step were placed to lead up to the bridge itself. These were left loose so that they could be replaced with longer ones should the river rise in the spring floods.

  Three men were waiting at the foot of the bridge. In the middle stood the priest Timbus, the popa, a fat man with a little black goatee that did nothing to hide his double chins, wearing his clerical frock and a fur coat and, on his head, the wide-brimmed hat that was normally brought out only when the bishop came on a pastoral visit. On each side stood one of the town elders, both in their best clothes with sheepskin hats, their hair tied in braids over their ears. These two took off their hats and all three started bowing obsequiously when Balint was still a hundred yards away. When he approached the priest stepped forward and respectfully requested his Lordship to dismount and honour their church with a visit, saying that the community needed his help.

  Balint got off his horse and as he did so the two old men came nearer, knelt before him and kissed the hem of his coat. The priest, too, made a show of deference in trying to kiss the hand that Balint held out to be shaken. This Balint naturally did not allow, knowing that these gestures were symbolic – the ritual greeting of respect traditional in the mountain country – and were not to be taken as a sign of obsequiousness. This done, he moved towards the bridge.

  The first to climb up was the popa, then came Krisan, holding out his axe-handle to pull his master up the steep planks. The tall Todor Paven and Juanye Vomului stood on either side of Balint until he had reached the pillar, and then walked on with their arms outstretched so as to catch him if he fell. To do this they had somehow to get across the river bed which meant scrambling over snow-covered rocks or plunging their feet in the shallow water that ran between the ice-floes.

  Balint then walked up the hill with the priest and the two old men while his travelling companions stayed below. The snow on the hillside had been cut into steps. At the top was the priest’s house, standing on stone foundations on the sloping hillside thereby giving the impression from below that it was two stories high, though from higher up it could be seen that the back of the house was sunk into the hillside. A covered veranda ran the length of the house, leading directly from the front door into the family living-room, and, leaning over the balustrade waiting for the distinguished visitor, stood the priest’s two beautiful, doe-eyed daughters. Near them Balint’s attention was drawn to a thin young man, still barely more than a youth, who was lying in the sun on a long wicker chair covered in cushions. He was wrapped to the chin in a sheepskin coat so that all that could be seen of him was an emaciated face with tell-tale red patches on his cheeks. His mouth was tightly shut and his glance was both curious and hostile as he watched Balint pass in front of him.

  Balint lifted his hat in greeting but the boy did not respond. He only watched in silence, hatred and distrust in his eyes.

  ‘He’s a foolish boy, very foolish,’ said the priest Timbus, apologizing for the rudeness of his son in not returning the master’s salute. ‘He’s not like other people and causes me much trouble! He’s very, very sick …’

  They had to walk round the church to find the entrance which, since the Orthodox custom demanded it should be on the west, was situated on a narrow shelf that faced the steep abyss below.

  They stepped in through a small doorway. The little church was built of wood, and inside the walls had been plastered and were covered from floor to ceiling with mural paintings; scenes from the Old Testament on the right and from the New on the left. The colours were faded but clear. The paintings were naïve and primitively executed in the old Byzantine style by a travelling painter who had come to Gyurkuca some eighty years before. The first thing Balint noticed was the story of Elijah on the right. The prophet was shown ascending to heaven in a Transylvanian peasant’s cart surrounded by vivid orange flames; and every detail of the vehicle, even down to the carved cart-pole and the masterpins that held the harness were lovingly and faithfully represented. Turning, Balint saw that the whole wall above the entrance, facing the iconostasis and the altar, was covered by a Last Judgement in which huge devils with fearsome faces were busy swallowing mouthfuls of sinners, ten or twenty at a time. Balint was cynically amused to note that the sinners were all Hungarians and clearly distinguished as such by their large moustaches, boots and clothes decorated with elaborate braiding. On the other hand, the saved, who were being transported by angels to the Land of the Just, were dressed in the traditional Romanian belted shirts that hung to their knees.

  Balint would have liked more time to examine the paintings but Popa Timbus, anxious for the master’s aid, drew him away and started to explain what he wanted. The building was too small, the congregation had doubled in size and there wasn’t room for half of them in the church as it was. They wanted to build an extension on the western front. Only forty beams would be needed; forty beams and twenty rafters, no more; but the community had no funds, no money at all, so if these beams could be found …?

  ‘What will happen to the Last Judgement if you enlarge the church? Will it be destroyed?’

  The light ironic smile with which Balint had looked at the damnation of the Hungarians had not escaped the popa’s notice.

  ‘Oh, that! Never mind that! It’s a bad painting anyway, bad, very bad!’ And taking Balint by the coat sleeve he led him outside to continue his explanation. ‘Here, on the new front, we’ll carve an inscription on the wood that the enlargement of the church was made possible by the generous gift of Count Abady. Everyone will see it! It will last for ever!’ he said, thinking that this would clinch the matter and be for Balint an irresistible inducement. He smiled slyly, congratulating himself on his own cunning when Balint promised him the wood, little realizing that this is what the Count had already decided to do and had only delayed giving an answer until he was himself at Gyurkuca, and could do it himself without the good offices of the notary.

  On their way down the hill they again passed the priest’s house where the tubercular youth lay
on his cushioned bed. This time the popa admonished the boy and told him to greet the Count, who had just given the wood for the church. The boy nodded but did not speak. In his look burned the same hatred as before and his eyes followed Abady as he passed.

  Below, at the bridge across the frozen river, Balint took his leave of the popa and the two grey-haired elders and, looking back up at the priest’s house he saw the sick boy still staring intently at him.

  From Gyurkuca the road followed the river Szamos down to Toszerat where Balint owned a sawmill. Krisan Gyorgye lived nearby. From there they continued on their way uphill to the next watershed, but before they arrived at the top they decided to turn off and make a detour to see the famous waterfall.

  The valley was narrow but so thickly wooded that no view of the other side was possible from the road until they came to a place where the strong winds had cut a wide swathe in the forest. On the opposite side of the valley a few small peasants’ houses could be seen and, about a quarter of a mile above them, a square stone house with a roof of tiles rather than the stone shingles usual in the mountains. The windows were heavily barred and the plot of land on which the house stood was surrounded by high stone walls now almost submerged by snowdrifts. Even from across the valley Balint could hear the barking of three ferocious guard-dogs.