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

by Bánffy, Miklós

  Adrienne came slowly up the steps, a smile on her face, conscious that she was looking her best and knowing that others thought so too. She knew how well the diamond stars set off her for once carefully dressed dark hair. She had put on her newest and most ravishing dress, which was cut princess-style in one flowing line from bust to flaring hem. Of flame-coloured shot silk, its folds glistened with subtly changing shades of colour as she moved; and she knew it would cause a sensation when she removed her cloak.

  She was smiling, too, for another reason. She was pleased with a piece of news related to her by her youngest sister Margit – she who always knew everything – namely that Balint Abady had arrived that morning and so she would have someone to talk to who was more than a tailor’s dummy and who knew how to dance. At the same time a fleeting thought crossed her mind, a thought which also carried an unanswered question; did she have any reason to be made happy by this news? Did not the fact that he had not joined them at the skating rink show that he was avoiding her? It was only a passing doubt, so transient that she was still smiling when she joined her husband at the top of the steps.

  ‘What are you smiling at?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m just happy … happy to dance.’

  But though this was what she said, her smile faded and she looked at Uzdy with a hostile light in her eyes. Her mouth turned down and her half-opened lips closed tightly as she moved away from him, her head held high, to accept Baron Gazsi’s arm.

  The dowagers all sat in a line on the sofas ranged along the long wall of the Assembly Room. A few of the older men sat with them, among them the three Kendys – Crookface, Dani and Uncle Ambrus – though the last still occasionally took the floor. The most strategic point, opposite the gypsy band and from where she could watch both the doors to the card-room and to the billiard-room, which tonight had been transformed into a supper-room, had been selected by Aunt Lizinka. Huddled as usual into a large armchair with her feet tucked up under her, a long-handled tortoiseshell lorgnette in her right hand, she chose this place as the best from which she could gather grist for her gossip. Turning her sharp vulture nose in every direction, never missing a detail of who came and went, she kept up a constant stream of malicious stories about everyone she saw.

  ‘My dears, it’s a real scandal! She keeps him with her all the time. The scoundrel’s actually living in the house at Szilvas, and that idiot of a husband doesn’t even seem to mind. Perhaps he can’t do it himself!’ and she laughed spitefully as she unfolded her version of the story of Baron Wickwitz and the pretty little Countess Abonyi.

  Prompted perhaps by her own memories, her old eyes flashed with glee as she said: ‘Of course women in our time used to have lovers, but nobody kept them in their own stables, like a stallion at stud!’ Then she turned to Countess Kamuthy, who was well-known to have had more than one lover in the past and who even now was rumoured to take an interest in young actors, and went on: ‘Isn’t that true, my dear?’ Countess Kamuthy murmured something noncommittal; she did not mind the insinuation but did not take kindly to the words ‘in our time’, for although she was now acting as chaperone to one of her granddaughters, she was at least ten years younger than old Lizinka.

  ‘Now, Adelma, you must know all there is to know about it,’ continued Lizinka, turning to Countess Gyalakuthy who sat on her right. ‘After all, it’s going on in your part of the world, under your very nose!

  Countess Gyalakuthy, kind and charitable as always, merely replied: ‘All I know is that he’s training Abonyi’s horses this season. That’s why he’s staying there: Abonyi himself invited him.’

  ‘He! He! He!’ Old Lizinka cackled, ‘why, he’s a regular Chef Pali!’

  ‘Chef Pali? What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s an old story. My great uncle Teleki had a head cook called Pali who had a pretty young wife. One day someone told my uncle that every night one of the footmen was sleeping with the cook’s wife. So my uncle sent for the man and told him this must stop. “But, your lordship,” said the footman, “Chef Pali agreed!” – “Well, if Chef Pali agreed I don’t mind either!” said Uncle Teleki; and so it was settled. Therefore I say that Abonyi’s a Chef Pali! Then, with mock solicitude she turned again towards Countess Gyalakuthy.

  ‘I do feel for you, dear, I know he used to come over often to see you. Of course men will be men and it would be silly to mind that! And I don’t really care what she does either, but then I don’t have marriageable young daughters to protect. If I did I certainly wouldn’t like to let loose such a light-bottomed little thief among them!’

  ‘Light-bottomed thief?’ said Countess Gyalakuthy, genuinely puzzled.

  ‘Thief That’s what they call people who steal, don’t they? … and just as some people are light-fingered, other women steal their men by waggling their backsides at them. That’s why I call her a light-bottomed thief!’

  And Aunt Lizinka went on in the same strain for the entire time she stayed at the ball.

  By the time that Adrienne and her sisters arrived there was already quite a crowd on the dance floor. Aunt Lizinka watched through her lorgnette as they were immediately surrounded by a band of young men eager to greet them and carry them off to dance. Judith and Margit were soon whirled away, and almost immediately Adrienne moved on to the floor with Adam Alvinczy. They made an impressive pair. Adam, tall and well-built like all the Alvinczys, was a handsome man with a straight somewhat Greek profile, short nose and high forehead. He danced well and his dark blue evening suit brought out the highlights in Adrienne’s dress, which glittered like fire as she whirled in his arms.

  ‘Heavens! Look at that!’ cackled old Lizinka as loudly as a pea-hen. ‘What kind of a dress d’you call that? It ought to be forbidden, it’s nothing but a shift! God in Heaven, I don’t believe she’s wearing a corset. In my time she’d have been run out of town for less! Scandalous!’

  Adrienne heard it all and as she turned and glided across the floor in Adam’s arms she looked straight at Aunt Lizinka with a smile in her amber eyes, her head held high, conscious that nothing the malevolent old lady could say would dim the radiance of her youth and beauty.

  By the time that Balint had taken leave of his mother it was already quite late and when he arrived at the ball they had just finished the second quadrille and were striking up for the last waltz before supper. He entered the great hall of the Assembly Rooms and, slipping past the group of men who clustered round the door, kissed the hands of the old ladies sitting nearby. He did not stay there long – too many couples came bumping into him as they waltzed by – but, glancing round the room until he caught a glimpse of Adrienne, who was now dancing with Pityu Kendy, he moved on to the next room where a group of older men were clustered round the fireplace talking politics while they waited for supper. Balint, fresh from Budapest and presumed to be fully informed as to what was going on, was given a warm welcome. Everyone hoped that he would confirm their own ideas and prophecies, and turned to him to judge who was in the right. The first were Abonyi, who declared that the only hope lay in a Government under Andrassy’s leadership; and fat lisping Kamuthy, who cried that ‘thith wath treathen and everyone who doth not demand Perthonal Union’ ith a traitor to hith country’. Kamuthy’s fat cheeks were red with excitement.

  ‘Yeth, yeth, we accept only Perthonal Union!’ he shouted as if his was the only voice that mattered. Since running for Parliament, his self-confidence had grown enormously, even though he had lost the seat by a small margin.

  ‘Why didn’t you come skating that day?’ asked Adrienne.

  Balint guessed that she had waited until they were alone before asking this question. They had danced several times, met more than once at the buffet and sat together at one of the large tables with some of the younger dancers. Only now, he noticed, did she ask this question when the csardas, which was always the first dance after the supper break, had started and most of the others had gone back to the ballroom.

  Adrienne asked the question si
mply, not in anger or resentment, but in much the same tone and with the same smile as when she had sat talking gaily with Adam and Pityu at supper. It was an ironic smile, only mildly provocative, and as the tone of her voice had in no way changed since the light-hearted chatter at supper Balint realized that the real significance of her query lay in the fact that she had waited until then to ask it.

  ‘That afternoon? Before I went out to our forests?’

  ‘Yes. You never came! I waited a long time, and was late getting home, just because of you!’

  She was still smiling, but her eyes were grave, with the calm gravity of a lioness in repose.

  Bending towards her, and looking deeply into those strange onyx eyes, Balint said, very slowly: ‘I was there.’

  ‘You were? But then why …?’

  ‘Why? I watched you for a long time, and you seemed different, a new Addy, someone I’d never seen before. I saw you immediately I passed the entrance, but I couldn’t come any closer. I just had to watch. You seemed to be someone I didn’t know, a stranger, not my Addy at all, but someone different.’

  ‘Different? In what way someone not myself?’ Her smile faltered as she caught the intensity in Balint’s voice.

  ‘You showed me something I’d never seen before, a new side to yourself … Besides those others were there. I couldn’t intrude, I could only stand and watch. You were so beautiful …’ Then, so as not to sound too commonplace, he added: ‘… so beautiful to watch. Suddenly I felt that I saw many things that I’d never seen before – things about you that I’d sensed and wondered about, but which had never been clear to me. It was the way you moved.’

  ‘While skating?’

  ‘Maybe it was the skating that showed me. But it was in the way you moved that I sensed an Addy driven across the ice, by an uncontrollable force of nature, swept along by a power greater than herself, yearning, searching for something … something outside herself …’ He looked steadily into her face, his whole expression a question.

  ‘Oh no!’ said Adrienne lightly, her dark brows contracting somewhat. ‘I’m not searching for anything!’ Then she smiled again, thinking back to the evening on the ice. ‘But, you know, AB, when I’m skating I’m not myself. I go crazy with the movement, I think of nothing else. I just want to go faster and faster, more and more! Oh, how wonderful never to stop!’

  ‘That’s what I saw, that’s what I sensed, something inside you that had to break out, that needed only the vortex of speed, something from deep down surging from depths you knew nothing of, an unconscious urge that had to be obeyed no matter where it led you. When I was up in the mountains I sat alone by a great fire whose flames erupted into the sky, seemingly impelled by a power that would never be quenched. Was that real, or was it just the effect of the colour and the light? Could it be explained by a chemical formula? Where did the impulse come from which made the fire seem like a volcano, which made the leaping flames seem to reach out for an unknown, infinitely unobtainable goal? Where does it come from, this urge to run, to fly, to strain after achievement without even asking what it is one is seeking to achieve? Nobody can answer this question. You can only feel that it’s there, true and eternal in all of us. And look,’ he added playfully, ‘what a coincidence! You’re wearing a flame-coloured dress!’

  Adrienne laughed. ‘Don’t think I was aware of all this; and it isn’t just for you, AB!’

  ‘Of course, but I am a part of it all the same. There is a connection, for you as well as for me, even if you weren’t thinking of me when you chose the dress, even if you weren’t thinking of anybody. You had an impulse that made the choice for you, just as in all nature where natural impulses further nature’s own purposes. That impulse made you choose this dress, just this one, no other – perhaps because you like it and know it suits your dark hair and white skin. Be honest; didn’t you think, when you put it on, that all the men’s heads would turn and that all the women would be jealous?’

  ‘And how do you know I didn’t think of you when I chose it?’

  Adrienne intentionally threw out this flirtatious remark in the same tone with which she had chatted with her other admirers at the ball, consciously trying to diminish the tension that was building up between them, to trivialize a conversation that had by now gone beyond the superficial. It was not so much Balint’s words but the intensity with which he spoke that impressed and at the same time confused her. Balint’s voice, so warm and passionate, expressing everything that normally she tried to avoid, disturbed her because, for once she felt herself moved and, instead of resenting it, had even felt a kind of warm response when he had dared to speak of something so personal as her skin … her skin!

  Balint refused to notice her change of tone. Once more he looked into her eyes, then asked: ‘Have you read Bölsche?’

  ‘Yes! It’s a wonderful book. Why?’

  ‘Bölsche has written everything I’m trying to say. In springtime all nature’s creatures put on ornament and parade themselves. Members of the same species vie with each other to become the most beautiful, the most desirable. This isn’t planned, it’s instinctive, emanating from some unconscious inner command from … well … Lebensbejahung if you will. Look at me!’ he went on jokingly. ‘When I tied my white tie tonight, wasn’t I doing the same as the cock pheasant in spring when he grows two extra little feathers on each side of his head?’

  ‘You always refer to animals, but we’re not animals!’

  ‘Of course we’re not. And more’s the pity, because unlike them we add so much extra to what in animals is pure and natural. All the noblest motivation exists in animals; motherhood, defence of the nest, of the young, even of the community. It’s all there in nature without having to be taught. It comes from instinct, not from big words and impressive phrases. A kingfisher will risk his life to distract a polecat from the young in the nest; a roebuck confronts a wolf that snaps at the new-born faun; and the young hinds select a stag bull not because he is rich or well born or because their mothers choose for them, but because he is the one, and the only one, they fancy.’

  Balint did not look at Adrienne as he spoke. His eyes seemed fixed on the far end of the room, but his words were spoken more softly and more slowly than before. He went on: ‘With the animals all is pure and natural. There is no foreign element, no theorizing, no prejudice, no complicated theory … and above all no speech to spoil everything. The animals all have their emotions, of course, but they’re lucky not to be cursed with ideals as well!’

  ‘Don’t you think it’s odd, you preaching about speech, AB? You, of all people! And what are you doing now? Don’t you call all this theorizing?’

  ‘Of course, but then I have to! I don’t have a great roar like a roebuck! But if I did,’ he said, laughing, ‘I assure you this hall would reverberate as from a blast from an organ!’

  Adrienne drew back a little and straightened her back. She searched for words, obviously unconvinced even if she did not know how to refute what he said.

  ‘All right. Of course there’s some truth in what vou say. Put it like that if you must, but it’s not the whole truth. There’s a plan behind it. Oh, I know there’s beauty in birdsong and deer calls and mating instincts in the spring, but you forget something … or don’t choose to mention it. Behind all this natural beauty there’s no real free will; it’s all programming. I’ll tell you a story. We came to Kolozsvar this year by road. On the way we stopped at a village. It was market day and there was a booth in front of which stood a man beating a drum and calling out, “Come along! Come along! Come and see the Sea Lion, the terrible Lion of the ocean! Come along! Only ten copeks to see the terrible Sea Lion!” So we paid and went in, and what did we find? A lonely little seal!’ Adrienne laughed bitterly. ‘But we’d paid our ten kopecs, and no one would refund us that!’

  ‘I don’t see the connection.’

  ‘You don’t? It’s quite clear to me. Everything you said so eloquently, all your wonderful sonorous beautiful words, sp
oke of only one thing. You talk of the call of nature, the truth and purity of those unconscious programmes, their seductiveness undefiled by reason or thought or speech. But that’s no more than a beginning, a hint, a promise. Only later you can see it for what it really is … a baited trap, a swindle. That’s what nature consists of, just like the busker taking our ten kopecs with a false promise!’

  Balint looked closely at her face, reminded by her words of their talk on the terrace at Var-Siklod and on the bench at her father’s house. He realized, suddenly, that he must feel his way carefully, that ‘baited trap’ was like a warning signal, and he had seen it before.

  ‘That really isn’t true, you know. Not at all. On the contrary the more you pay – and you must always pay – the more valuable the prize when you finally get it. Human beings are born to be disappointed. We complicate everything too much. We expect too much, cloak our feelings in too many words, hide behind conventions, pretend … always we pretend. Sometimes we know only too well what we are doing, but all too often we don’t, not really. We may think that we have noble reasons for our actions, we justify ourselves saying that it is for pity’s sake or for the ultimate good of others or some such cliché we’ve been brought up to believe; but it’s all nonsense, excuses or rules dreamed up by philosophers – or priests. This has nothing to do with nature. It’s all alien, imposed on ourselves by ourselves, human interference cooked up by old men sitting at desks. What you say is against all reason, it cannot be, it must not be. I was thinking about it up in the mountains.’