They Were Found Wanting (Writing on the Wall: The Transylvania Trilogy)
Page 51
The sloping garden had been made in horizontal terraced beds each about five paces wide. In each there was now a mass of tulips and narcissus in full flower and at the sides there were standard roses, as tall as small trees, which were just coming into bud. The garden was symmetrical and was bounded on three sides by clumps of lilac and on the fourth by the house. The garden was like those in French chateaux of the eighteenth century and had presumably been laid out when the old fortified slope had been terraced and the baroque manor-house, with its high double roof and stuccoed ceilings, erected in a style so much more sophisticated than the rough-hewn portico and the simple outbuildings the other side of the courtyard.
It was a sheltered garden, peaceful and smiling, and it seemed to reflect the tranquil personality of its very singular owner. And yet it could hardly be he who lavished all that care upon it, though it was obvious that someone did, for it was laid out with skill and a most individual taste.
How gardens could betray their creators, reflected Adrienne as she thought back to the one at Almasko where Uzdy would not allow a single flower, and where the lawns were so carefully cut and weeded that not even a daisy dared open its petals!
‘Excuse me, my Lady. Tea is on the table,’ said a voice behind her.
It was Marisko, who gestured to the table where the meal had been laid. It was a feast, with a splendid Kuglhopf cake, biscuits and hot scones in covered silver dishes, and several kinds of cold meats. Next to the teapot was a large jug of coffee, with some buffalo milk; for though Absolon himself drank only china tea Marisko had thought that perhaps this unknown lady might prefer coffee. She offered Adrienne a chair. ‘Please to sit, my Lady.’
Adrienne sat down but did not eat. ‘I’ll wait for my uncle,’ she said.
‘Don’t do that, my Lady,’ said the housekeeper. ‘You see the Master is telephoning to someone and it may take some time. He would be very angry with me if I didn’t make you start without him,’ she added with an indulgent maternal smile. She pronounced the word ‘Master’ as if it were written in capital letters.
Adrienne, when she heard that Absolon drank tea, chose coffee, for she realized that it had been made specially for her and would otherwise be wasted. Marisko stood at a slight distance, leaning silently against the door-post. Her rounded peasant’s body was well-formed and was set off by the simple grey bodice and skirt worn by the prosperous countrywomen of the district. She looked kind and sympathetic. Adrienne liked her at once and, as she knew that Marisko had been her uncle’s mistress for many, many years, she wished to be friendly and so started to chat with her. At first she just praised the cakes and then the wonderful display of spring flowers beneath the terrace. Marisko had answered all Adrienne’s questions briefly and with a correct smile, but it was clearly only out of politeness.
‘And who looks after the garden?’ asked Adrienne. ‘I’ve rarely seen anything so pretty, and so well laid-out.’
‘Ah, my Lady, that’s one of my jobs,’ and Adrienne’s obvious appreciation softened her hitherto somewhat reserved manner and she became quite talkative.
She had learned about gardening, she said, from an old man of eighty who had worked all his life as gardener at Borbathjo but who had been retired for years when she first arrived. She loved the work, especially as the Master, though he’d never say so, was very fond of flowers. She’d found the gardens, oh, very neglected, almost abandoned, but she’d soon put a stop to that, she couldn’t stand such neglect and laziness … and then suddenly she fell silent, alarmed at the thought that she might be stepping out of her place. Silence, she thought, was more appropriate for housekeepers.
‘Why don’t you sit down?’ suggested Adrienne. ‘It would be much less, less awkward … for us both,’
‘Oh, no! Not for the world! I really could not, my lady. I’m not used … I could never get used to that!’
Marisko spoke nothing but the truth. She never sat when meals were served, not even when alone with her master. She would bring in the tea, serve it and leave the room. At lunch-time or dinner she would stand by the sideboard like a butler of the old school and keep an eye on the footmen who served the meal. She herself never ate with Absolon but retired to the kitchen when he had finished. When everything had been washed up and put in its proper place by the cook and the maids, then and only then, and also if there were no visitors, would she rejoin her master and sit with him quietly and diligently getting on with some embroidery, crochet-work, knitting or even just doing the mending. This was how the countrywomen behaved, as she remembered from her childhood in her father’s house.
If Absolon was in the mood and felt like talking she would answer most eagerly; and she loved to listen, time and again, to all his traveller’s tales. Even so she would never start a conversation, not even about how the estate was run, though it had been she who organized everything so efficiently and who gave the farm manager his instructions. All this she did with care and intelligence, which was just as well as old Absolon knew nothing of such matters and never bothered his head about them. Perhaps he imagined that there was not much to be done as the Borbathjo property was comparatively small – only a few hundred acres – and because his fortune all came from the husbanding of the Absolon forests, which was done by a qualified manager.
Marisko disappeared as soon as Absolon came back.
The sun began to set, sinking behind the distant mountain peaks. A golden glow spread over the landscape and the light fleecy clouds were tinged with pink in the pale-green sky. The shadows on the nearby hillside glowed yellow as if lit by some hidden fire and even the whitewashed walls of the veranda turned deep orange.
A cold breeze got up, as it always did here at the foot of the Gorgeny mountains when the sun went down, and the spring evenings were surprisingly cool.
‘We’d better go in now,’ said Absolon. ‘It isn’t good to stay too long out of doors!’ He said this only out of concern for his niece. With his iron constitution he could have stayed there until midnight without coming to any harm.
Inside the house the rooms were ablaze with light, for Absolon had ordered that all the gas-lamps and chandeliers should always be lit at dusk. In this way he resembled those nomadic chieftains who would live for months in the desert in the greatest simplicity but when they came to Samarkand, or Peking, or Isfahan, and settled there, had to be surrounded by every luxury the age provided.
Absolon’s house too showed the same oriental taste. The walls were whitewashed and the age-old wide floorboards scoured until the knots stood out. But they were covered with the rarest of Eastern carpets, some of them made of silk and interwoven with golden threads. Divans were strewn with silken fabrics from Bokhara and cushions covered with Chinese embroidery, each one a miracle of skill and beauty. Absolon rarely sat on them himself, though he did occasionally lie down and take a brief nap there on sultry afternoons in summer.
His favourite seat was an ordinary bentwood Thonet armchair whose air of practical simplicity seemed quite out of place among all that sophisticated luxury; but then Absolon was concerned only with comfort and not with impressing visitors with the purity of his taste.
The walls of the large drawing-room, under the baroque plaster scrolls on the ceiling, were hung with more hunting trophies. These were the best in his collection, unlike the massed legion out on the entrance portico. What hung here were real treasures and some were so rare or so exceptionally large that their equal was nowhere else to be found, though Absolon had never bothered to advertise the fact; these were his private solace, not symbols of achievement to dazzle the world.
There were the heads of three gigantic mountain-goats from Kuen-Lun, a mountain ram from the high Pamir plateau, some weirdly-shaped yaks’ horns, and the stuffed neck and head of a wild camel which was already slightly moth-eaten. These bizarre trophies were placed sparsely on the white walls of the great room. Two other objects stood out, perhaps because they were not also the harvest of far-flung hunting forays.
The other object was more spectacular. It was an exceptionally long sword, beautifully wrought and decorated. It was hung horizontally above a sofa in the middle of the wall. Adrienne had exclaimed with astonishment when she first saw it.
‘Yes, it is a good one,’ said Absolon modestly. Then he laughed and said, ‘I don’t know of another like it, even in the East. Wait a moment, I’ll take it down.’
He unhooked it from the wall and handed it to his guest.
The sword was purely ornamental and was more than four feet long and completely straight. The hilt and the mounts of the scabbard were of enamelled gold studded with precious stones and between the metalled parts the rest was covered with cherry-coloured velvet, so vivid that if there had not been some slight signs of wear anyone would have taken it for new.
‘How beautiful!’ cried Adrienne and then repeated the word ‘beautiful’ several times.
The old man beamed with pleasure. His Tartar-like face was again creased with laughter as he said, ‘You’ve seen nothing yet! Look at the blade! There’s nothing in the world like it!’
He leaned forward and took the sword from Adrienne and, balancing it on his arm, drew out the blade.
What the old man had said was indeed true: the blade was even more beautiful than its case. Near the hilt the steel had been inlaid with a lattice-pattern in gold and its whole length was decorated with an inscription, also in gold, and the letters were interspersed with inset rubies so placed that they looked for all the world like drops of blood.
When they had both looked at it for some time Absolon put it back on the wall and then started to tell its tale.
‘Legend has it,’ he said, ‘that it once belonged to Tamberlane. This might be true, but the old paper I was able to see said nothing about it. Of course the man from whom I had it had himself acquired it in no very straightforward fashion, for it seems that his father had somehow extracted it from Timur’s tomb.
‘How did I get it? That’s another story. It’s true that I did not buy it, indeed I never have had the money to spend on such a treasure. Anyway the Kirgiz nomads would never sell such a valuable possession. Camels, women, horses, yes; but not weapons ever, they are heirlooms. No, I got this from Alp-Arslan Beg who had been my friend for some years. It’s quite a story. His tribe lived on the northern slopes of the Pamirs and in one of his frequent wars with his neighbours he was wounded and three of his sons had been killed. Only one boy remained alive, a three-year-old child. Prince Arslan fled to the mountains with him and his women, and there they were again attacked, this time by Kashmiri bandits. Arslan was wounded again, and the boy, and his mother, with the other women and all their remaining possessions, were carried off. I came upon him the next day – it was just after I had shot that big ram over there – and found his camp almost totally destroyed.
‘As it was clear that the bandits had gone off to the south, and as there was only one track, even for bandits, through the eternal snows of the road to Kashmir, it wasn’t difficult to follow them and surround them with my three faithful Tartars. The bandits had their women with them, and were also driving some stolen herds of sheep, and these had slowed them down. With my hunting rifle it was quite easy to pick them off – the wild ram was much more trouble! So I came back to Arslan with the woman, and with his son and all his other possessions. Among them was this sword. Alp-Arslan was overjoyed to get the boy back but he wouldn’t touch the sword. In fact it was quite a problem to get him to accept the sheep. The sword, he said, was mine, the rightful spoils of war. And that is how I got it.’ Absolon laughed again. ‘Paid for in blood, eh? Other people’s blood, of course! But then that was how our own wild ancestors acquired their land, was it not?’
He continued to fascinate Adrienne with the stories of his extraordinary adventures until well after dinner. Then Adrienne told her host that she must go to bed because she would have to leave for home very early the next morning.
‘I won’t keep you up,’ he said. ‘I know you have a long way to go. It was brave of you to have come all this way to take me into your confidence and I feel most honoured by your visit and by your trust in me. As you have to go in the morning perhaps you would be so kind as to take me as far as Regen? I have a little business there and I would so enjoy your company on the trip.’
‘Why, of course,’ cried Adrienne. ‘I would love it.’
Absolon himself showed her to one of the principal guestrooms. Marisko was there waiting and she explained how to turn out the lamps and showed her that there were candles, matches and water on a table by the bed. Then she turned to go but stopped at the door and said, ‘Kiss your hand, my Lady!’ and went swiftly out.
Adrienne lay back on the lavender-scented pillows and thought about what had happened that day and what was to come in the future. She was pleased about how the day had turned out and, as she recalled how well she had been received by her husband’s uncle and how kind he had been in promising to help her, something he had said when asking if he could drive with her to Regen kept recurring to her mind. Those words ‘I have a little business there’ seemed to have no particular significance and might indeed have referred to a hundred different little errands, and yet, and yet? Surely there must have been some reason for her to remember just that phrase so clearly?
Had it been that, as he spoke, he had raised one eyebrow in just the same way as he had when he had been so careful in choosing his words about the arrangements for her divorce, about her special responsibility, about Pali Uzdy? She was sure it had been that, it must have been that.
As the thought came to her she drifted off to sleep.
The sturdy Miloth chestnuts trotted so eagerly in the morning air that it seemed that they had hardly set off when they were already approaching the town of Regen. Absolon had been unusually quiet on the way for he had been doing some hard thinking and felt he had to prepare himself for something unexpected. He had noticed something wrong at the time of Margit’s wedding. Although it seemed to most people that though he might be calm and wise he was also perhaps rather remote and unconcerned, it was rarely noticed what a sharp observer he was. It was the constant awareness of the hunter, still as much a part of him as it had been in those years in the wild where for more than a third of his life he had trained himself to notice everything, the faintest sounds, the slightest movement, the least sign of something out of the ordinary; for it was on such things that a hunter depended, sometimes even for his life.
Pal Uzdy had naturally been at the wedding; and his uncle, who had not seen him for some time, had been disturbed by some decidedly odd mannerisms he seemed to have developed. Old Absolon noticed, for example, how often Uzdy would adopt unusual, even awkward, poses. He could see him now, standing in a group of people, but remaining oddly still with his right hand held in front of his face with the forefinger pointed back towards his nose just as if he were inspecting something caught under his nail. The stance was utterly contrived and, apparently, meaningless. When he moved he put one foot in front of the other with concentrated deliberation as if it were only by so doing that he prevented them from running away with him. When he spoke to anyone he affected a proud, disdainful manner which suggested that he despised them all. None of this was completely new to him for his manner had always been individual and usually ungracious; but his oddnesses had never before been so pronounced. Absolon was uncomfortably reminded of his brother-in-law shortly before he went off his head. Pal Uzdy’s father had then shown much the same peculiarities as his son did now.
He had been thinking of this ever since that moment the day before when he had told Adrienne he sympathized with her wanting a divorce.
It was because of this that he had at once put through a telephone call to
Regen. It had been to the principal of the hospital and it had been to warn him to expect him the following day. Now he was trying to decide how best to reveal to Adrienne that he thought it best, before giving her any further help and advice, to consult this particular doctor and indeed to take her to meet him. Dr Wolf Herman Kisch was a most distinguished practitioner and before accepting the post of running the Regen hospital he had been a consultant specialist in nervous diseases. He had worked with the internationally renowned Kraepelin in Berlin and also spent a year with Charcot. Absolon felt that they would be better qualified to deal with this delicate problem if first they had the benefit of Dr Kisch’s advice. It was even possible that he would agree to help.
He lit another cigar and then turned to his niece. Carefully choosing his words so as not to alarm her, he said, ‘Among other things, my dear niece, it occurred to me that since we are here we might take the opportunity of calling on an old friend of mine, Dr Kisch. He might give us some good advice on how best to tackle your problem.’
‘Tell a country doctor about our private affairs? In Regen?’ said Adrienne, astonished by such an out-of-the-way suggestion.
‘Oh, he isn’t at all what you think of as a country doctor. He’s a most exceptional man and there are very few like him, not only here but in all Europe.’ Without pausing long enough for Adrienne to veto the idea he proceeded to tell her Dr Kisch’s story. He had been born, related Absolon, in the large German-speaking village of Dedrad nearby. He had been outstanding at school and after graduating at the Saxon University he had been offered a grant which would cover all his expenses to study medicine abroad if, in return, he would undertake to come back and take up any position for which they might want him. Kisch accepted. He qualified as a doctor and soon specialized in the new science of psychiatry. In this he undertook some highly important research and as a result the University of Jena offered him a professorship; but he could not then accept the offer. Just at that time, five years before, he had been called home as his sponsors wanted him to take up the direction of the brand-new little hospital at Regen. It had thirty beds and every modern improvement known to science. If he accepted it would mean giving up all idea of international fame, of time to pursue his researches, of everything for which he had seemed so uniquely qualified. Dr Kisch had stood by his word: he came back.