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

by Bánffy, Miklós

  Over the years the original outer ramparts had all disappeared, leaving only the main building to which had been added, at different times and in different styles, a series of later wings. The long rectangle of the main building was closed at each corner by massive stone towers which presumably had been added as a defence against the first cannon. Where the outer walls had stood, later Abadys, freed from the threat of siege, had planted flower-beds and lawns.

  The last of the medieval defensive outworks, the tower over the gatehouse, had stood as late as the eighteenth century when the father of that Abady who had become Governor of Transylvania, pulled it down because the arch and drawbridge below had not been wide enough to allow his imposing new coach to pass. At first they tried to widen the narrow gateway, but in so doing the structure was weakened, dangerous cracks appeared in its masonry and the whole structure had to be demolished, leaving an empty space where once the great gatehouse had marked the entrance from the moat to the castle’s defended outer courts.

  Here Count Denes Abady built a horseshoe shaped forecourt, on the right of which he erected stables for thirty-two horses, while on the left there was a covered riding-school. In the apex of the horseshoe curve that joined these two buildings was an imposing gateway to the inner court through which could pass the largest carriages with all the parade of outriders and postillions. Over the doorway gigantic titans of carved stone lifted boulders menacingly as if they were always ready to hurl these down on anyone bold enough to venture that way; while towering above these giants was the figure of Atlas bearing the globe upon his back. On each side of the new great entrance were carriage-houses, tack-rooms, baking ovens to make enough bread for a hundred persons, a laundry furnished with a cauldron large enough to hold the dirty linen of a small town, and apartments for the equerries, footmen, coachmen, porters, grooms and huntsmen. The horseshoe court was built in rococo style between the years from 1748 and 1751, as an inscription over the door arch tells all those who pass below. The parapet, which half-hid the low curving roofs, was decorated on the outer side by large ornamental vases while on the inside, five metres apart, were placed statues of ancient gods and mythological figures, each with their traditional attributes and all writhing and twisting as if in ceaseless movement.

  The Count Abady who created all this grandeur and fantasy had clearly been a great builder, for it was he who had also created the great stair with its stone treads, carved marble balustrade and stuccoed ceiling. And it was he who had also replaced the simple conical roofs of the four stone towers with elaborate double cupolas.

  When the gatehouse had been removed the two long wings which had formed the side of the original inner court of the medieval castle had been left like legs attached to a seated body. Fifty odd years after the rococo court had been built these two wings were re-faced in the neo-classical style of the Empire period, while, even more recently, Balint Abady’s maternal grandfather had added a Gothic Revival veranda to the western side of the medieval walls from which he could enjoy the truly majestic view across the Keresztes grasslands, up to the big cleft above Torda and finally to where, high in the sky, hung the snow-clad peaks of the Carpathian Mountains.

  So, with time, the great house grew and was transformed and spread itself with new shapes and new outlines that were swiftly clothed with the patina of years, so that when one looked at it from afar, from the valley of the Aranyos or from the hills even further away, the old castle with its long façades, cupola-capped towers and spreading wings and outbuildings, seemed to have sprung naturally from the promontory on which it stood, to have grown of itself from the clay below, unhelped by the touch of human hand. All around it, on the rising hills behind and in the spreading parkland in front, vast groves of trees, some standing on their own while others spread like great forests, seemed like soft green cushions on which the castle of Denestornya reclined at its ease, as if it had sat there for all eternity and could never have been otherwise.

  Balint Abady did not return home until the first days of June. After leaving Budapest he had gone straight to Kolozsvar and remained there to attend to his estate business, even though nearly everyone he knew there had already left the town for the country. After his prolonged absence in the capital there was a great deal that needed Balint’s attention.

  First of all there was much that had to be discussed with his mother. Then there were consultations with Azbej and with the new forestry manager, with whom he had to make a contract before the man went up to the mountains. The first problem to be settled was where the new manager should be based and, though in all the discussions in Countess Roza’s presence Azbej supported Balint’s ideas with enthusiasm – and his zeal was not faked because he was determined to keep Balint so embroiled in the management of the mountain forests that he would have no time to investigate matters nearer home – a new complication arose since the old forest superintendent, Nyiresy, adopted a policy of passive resistance and non-cooperation. As a result, matters were so delayed that it was ten days before Balint could send his new manager to the mountains and himself follow his mother to Denestornya, arriving late at night in pouring rain.

  The next day Balint awoke soon after sunrise to find that it was a beautiful morning. The windows of his room in one of the round towers faced east and through the louvred shutters horizontal rays of sunlight filtered through the room’s semi-darkness and picked out the gilded bronzes on the commode opposite as might the glow of firelight. Outside a nightingale sang in almost crazed ecstasy.

  Balint jumped out of bed and went to the window. With one movement he flung open both shutters and the sunlight was so brilliant that for a moment he stepped back, reeling.

  The sun was already high above the farthest hilltops beyond the Maros. These hills looked so ethereal that they might have been formed only of vapour and mist, that same pale cobalt-blue mist that rose from the river valley and spread over the surrounding countryside, softening the outlines of the poplar plantations, and rising until even the lines of the far horizon were blurred and uncertain. The river Maros itself could not be seen; it was too far away and its banks too thickly wooded. In the far distance the silver-grey leaves of the poplars shone with a creamy whiteness in the early morning sun while nearer to the house the Canadian variety, giant trees whose trunks glowed pale lilac, cast long shadows over the cropped grassland of the park and over the newly-mown lawns. These shadows held none of the harsh shade of the forest but were dim, hazy and bluish in colour, hardly darker than the grass beneath.

  Balint stood at the window watching the light spreading slowly between the groves of trees, lighting up the paler leaves of a shrub, catching the white glow of a may-tree’s blossom which was like the lace of a girl’s summer dress, bringing colour to the lilac flowers, and delving eagerly and inexorably to uncover the secrets of the forest undergrowth. As the sunlight grew stronger so the carmine of the Japanese cherry-trees flamed into glowing colour until it was as if the whole of nature blushed with joy and love, quivering with delight at the sweet secrets of spring. It was there in the song of the nightingales and the antiphonal chorus of all the other song-birds who called triumphantly from the clumps of jasmine, from the ivy-coloured walls, from the pastel fronds of the little groups of trimmed thuja and, above all, from the great horse-chestnut trees whose branches were now richly covered with white and pink flowers.

  Balint dressed quickly and went out, stopping for a moment on the north terrace to take a new look at the parkland in front of him before starting down the hill to follow the avenue of tall Hungarian oaks whose stately branches were almost as dense as those of cypresses. On both sides the grass was filled with crowsfoot and dotted with the golden stars of buttercups. All the way down the slope from the castle’s corner tower to the avenue below there were thickets of lilac bushes, now so heavy with scented flower panicles that hardly any leaves were to be seen. And everywhere the nightingales were singing, only falling silent for a moment as Balint passed the bushes in w
hich they were concealed and then starting up again as if unable to contain their joy.

  The young man reached the bank of the millstream near where the outer wooden palisades had once stood. He crossed over what was still called the Painted Bridge, even though every vestige of colour had long since disappeared, to the place where the wide path divided and led either to the left or the right, while ahead the view stretched across the park interrupted only by the clumps of poplars, limes or horse-chestnuts. In this part of the park the grass was quite tall, thick and heavy with dew. It was filled with the feathery white heads of seeding dandelions, with golden cowslips, bluebells, waving stalks of wild oats and the trembling sprays of meadow-grass, each bearing at its extremity a dew drop that sparkled in the sun. So heavy was the dew that the grasslands, as far as the eye could see, were covered with a delicate shining liquid haze.

  For Balint this pageant of wild flowers was something new since, during his long years at school, at the university and later when he was always abroad serving as a diplomat, he had never managed to get home before the end of June and so had never before seen the ancient park in all the bloom of early summer. The radiance of this early morning, when spring was just merging into summer, was so inviting that Balint left the path and started to walk across the meadow. The grass was high and so wet that it was almost like walking through a stream, and each time that his knees touched the spears of grass and wild oats a tiny shower would fall before the blades straightened up as if proud that they had been brushed by the legs of the master.

  After a while Balint, soaked to the knees, reached the avenue of lime trees which bordered the far side of the meadow and was immediately filled with memories of his childhood. This was where he had been taught to ride when very young, in the old avenue that had been planted so long ago. It was almost two hundred years since the Abady of those times had laid out three wide allées which fanned out, star-shaped, from where the predecessor of the Painted Bridge crossed the millstream a little higher up than the later bridge and thus directly in front of the castle façade. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the fashion for informal ‘English’ gardens was spreading all over Europe, Balint’s grandfather had had the central avenue cut down so as to plant the lawns directly below where the castle stood. He wanted to have the view from the terrace as open and informal as possible, with a wide view to the distant plantations; for it was well understood that in English landscaping all straight lines were forbidden. Even so, the avenue that remained was still between five and six hundred metres long and, as the earth between the lines of trees was a soft loam, it was there that the Groom of the Stables, as the castle’s head écuyer was called, would put the boy on his tiny pony and gallop him up and down, ten, twenty, thirty times until he no longer fell off.

  Lord, how many times I fell! thought Balint as he gazed once more along the familiar grass-covered allée and remembered those frisky mischievous little ponies with minds of their own who were all the more wilful for being overfed and under-exercised. He recalled Croque-en-bouche, his first pony, who always shied at that gnarled old tree in front of him and then bucked, especially when Balint was being made to ride without stirrups and with just a blanket strapped on in the place of a saddle. And, at that huge lime-tree with the split trunk, his second pony had always stopped in her tracks and refused to budge until given a sharp reminder by his instructor’s long-lashed hunting crop.

  Balint wandered slowly down the centre of the allée where the branches of the old trees had long since met to form a leafy vault. Over his head the foliage murmured as a light breeze touched the tops of the trees, though down below nothing moved and Balint was left undisturbed with his memories of childhood. How long the avenue had then seemed, especially when he had been given his first horse, a reliable old stallion called Gambia and had been allowed to canter the whole length on his own, free at last of the écuyer and the leading rein!

  Today it was only a few moments before he reached the end of the planted line of trees where flowed a branch of the Aranyos river which had artificially been diverted below the mill-reach many years before. He went on until he found himself opposite a sizeable island called the Big Wood – Nagyberek – which had always held a special mystery and attraction for him, as it was a wild and untamed and exciting place quite different from the trim lawns, weeded paths and carefully pruned flowering hedges of the gardens that clustered round the castle terrace. Here he would wander for hours fancying himself an explorer in an undiscovered wilderness and here he would play at Cowboys and Indians all by himself – he, of course, was always an Indian – crawling invisibly on hands and knees in the waist-high hemlock, spying on bands of marauding braves or fleeing from his pursuers. Here he would climb a branch to ambush his chief enemy or shoot arrows at the hated paleface; just as he had read in the pages of James Fenimore Cooper.

  Just to walk once again in this once so familiar spot brought all these old memories crowding back.

  Crossing the great meadow, Balint went to find the thickets on the other side which bordered the meandering twists and turns of the river’s main stream and here and there grew in the swamps and bogs created each time the river flooded and over-flowed its banks.

  The hundred-acre hay meadow was the farthest one could see from the castle terrace before the dense plantations of trees closed the open vista with a mass of impenetrable growth. These were mostly of black pine, planted some thirty years before by Balint’s father not, however, as standing timber to be felled later, but rather as decoration and cover for the deer. At their roots more lilac bushes had been placed and these too were now in full bloom beneath the rose-coloured trunks of the pines and the deep green, almost black sheen of the clusters of pine needles above. The pines too, seemed to be in bloom, for the tips of all their branches were covered with tiny dark-red embryonic cones, though these could only be distinguished from close at hand.

  So magical and mysterious, so still and yet so full of resurgent life, did the meadow seem that Balint stopped for a moment to contemplate its mystery, and wonder at the fact that even the distances did not seem real and stable and fixed. The park seemed to have no end but to continue for ever into the distance as if it comprised the whole world and the whole world was the park of Denestornya and nothing else. As Balint stood there, motionless, rapt in a new sense of delight and exaltation, seven fallow deer appeared slowly from a group of pines. They were wading knee-high through the morning haze, two does with their fawns and three young females, and if they saw Balint they did not take any notice of him but just walked quietly and sedately on until, after a few moments, they disappeared again into the shadow of the trees. Their sudden appearance in the distance in front of him, and just as sudden disappearance a moment or two later contributed strongly to Balint’s sense of wonder and enchantment.

  He pulled himself together and went on. And, suddenly, it seemed Adrienne were walking at his side.

  He could almost see her, striding with long steps next to him, her head held high over her thin girlish neck and her dark hair fluttering around her face in a mass of unruly curls, just as he had seen her that time at Mezo-Varjas when together they had chased a runaway farmhorse. The image was so clear: Adrienne, walking beside him, holding herself very straight with her wide-open, topaz-coloured eyes looking unwaveringly ahead of her as she walked, silently and forever at his side …

  Balint stopped abruptly, shaking his head to rid himself of her image and mentally shouting No! No!, as if the words, even unspoken, could dispel her ghostly presence. Then, quickening his pace, he hurried towards the trees remembering that somewhere thereabouts was an ancient poplar, one of the most venerable of all the trees in the park, and that it stood on the edge of a small clearing. In a few moments he had found it. This king among trees was still alive; though one of its great side branches had fallen, presumably blown down in some April storm. Even so, the fallen branch was covered in sticky buds about to burst into leaf.

&nb
sp; Balint went up to the tree, touched its bark as if saluting an old acquaintance. ‘So, my friend, you are still all right – even if they have roughed you up a bit!’ said Balint out loud as he sat down on the broken stump and looked around the little clearing.

  This was where he had come when he had been allowed to ride beyond the limits of the lime allée. It was here that he would play at camping in the wild, dismounting and hitching the reins to the stub of a branch. Properly tethered, no rustler could steal his faithful steed. He would have liked to loosen the girth as well, for he knew that this was one of the first rules when resting during a trek, but at that time he hadn’t had the strength to do it by himself.

  Balint sat there for a long time. All around him was infinite peace, and, strangely, for the air was alive with the song of birds, a feeling of infinite silence, the more tangible for the melodies that filled his ears. There seemed to be hundreds of different calls, of which he could distinguish only the si-si-si of the blackbirds, the chirping of the blue tits as they fluttered from branch to branch around him, the harsher notes of the golden orioles as they swooped low over the clearing with their distinctive swaying flight, the twittering of the sparrows that massed in the reed thickets by the river edge, and, through it all, the varied cries of shrikes as they perched on the trees’ branches watching for the insects or small lizards that would be their next meal. In the distance he could still hear the calls of the nightingales from the trees and shrubs nearer the castle, and all these sounds, so varied and yet so harmonious, somehow underlined and heightened the general sense of untouched virginal silence.