They Were Found Wanting (Writing on the Wall: The Transylvania Trilogy)

by Bánffy, Miklós

  The little band moved off in that direction as quickly as they could. As in all forests that were well-maintained and well-guarded, the grass grew high on the tracks and the men were soon soaked to the waist. They pressed on, hoping to hear the call again, and, as the forest was now in almost total darkness they could run freely with no risk of startling the quarry and making him bolt. In half an hour they had arrived by the Burnt Rock and even in the dark they knew well where they were from the skeletal stunted trees and the gravel underfoot.

  They stopped, and from the pine trees came a few lazy drops of rain. Far below they could hear the noise of a mountain stream now swollen from the persistent rain of the last few days. For some time they heard nothing else. At last, quite close, there came a loud call, abruptly rapped out like a word of command. It was imperious, but at the same time it held something of yearning in its timbre. It was the voice of the King of the Forest.

  For some time the men stood there without moving … but they heard no more. Slowly, and walking carefully, they started to pick their way back to the campsite.

  When they arrived Balint said, ‘We must be back before daybreak. Maybe he’ll stay until morning.’ Then he gave his orders: ‘Wake me at three!’

  Everywhere there was thick fog and the little band could never have found their way if they hadn’t taken a powerful lamp. With it they advanced confidently, though with more care than they had needed the previous evening. When they were half-way there Honey stayed behind in the little meadow near the rushing stream that led into the Retyicel valley, because from there he would have a wide view of the surrounding country. Balint and the old gamekeeper picked their way carefully to the spot they had reached the day before. Thence they could command all three valleys that ran down from the mountain‚ the Retyicel, the Vale Arszna and the little one below that turned into the Vurvuras.

  By now it was half-past four, but it was still night and they had to wait patiently, without moving, for dawn, for the stag might be anywhere amongst the trailing pine branches. It was possible that he had moved on in the night, but it was equally possible that he was standing there only a few paces away.

  Zsukuczo squatted down on his heels and started murmuring something that might have been prayers but which was more likely to have been a jumble of by now meaningless words which, a thousand years before, had been some invocation to the forest gods.

  They had to wait a long time before the dawn made it possible to see their surroundings. And it was not one of those sharp sparkling dawns when a triumphant nature set the world ablaze with a myriad soft tints of colour. Rather was it hesitant, almost apologetic, with the mountain forests swathed in an ambiguous foggy light such as lamps will throw when the shades are made of some milky sanded glass.

  For most of this long wait Balint completely forgot where he was and why he had come, for his thoughts had turned once more to the bitter disillusion of the last few days. Then, out of the lightening forest came that deep booming call, deeper far than any human bass voice could achieve. It was the voice of the stag.

  It seemed to come from further up, close perhaps to the summit, and a few moments later it came again.

  ‘He’s up there!’ whispered the old gornyik excitedly. ‘There! Up there! Follow me, Mariassa – my Lord!’ and, as nimbly as any youth, the old man jumped up and made for the dense undergrowth, not in the direction of the sound but diagonally across it, for he knew instinctively how a true hunter could cut off his quarry. His old hob-nailed boots made no sound either on stones or heather; and he went swiftly forward, crouching under low branches, sliding on wet pine needles, stepping over fallen logs, always avoiding any open spaces and never ever making a sound as he went.

  Balint was hard put to keep up with him.

  They arrived at a small clearing beside a rock that resembled a saddle carved out of stone. Here Zsukuczo did not go out into the open but crouched down at the edge of the undergrowth. The fog was denser here in the open and they could barely see twenty paces ahead of them. The pine trees on the other side of the clearing were only vague shadows, barely darker than the fog, and the rocks above seemed as insubstantial as painted canvas.

  But somewhere, not far away, there was a faint rustling and then the sound of wood being struck as if the trees were being hit by a stick. Then the undergrowth to their left parted and the stag appeared, walking with long confident strides out into the open. He was enormous and powerful, the size of a horse. He carried his head high, as proudly as any monarch, and his antlers were formed of so many branches that, although he was so close to the men that they could have hit him with a lightly lobbed stone, they could not count them.

  Then the stag stopped and threw up his head so that the two thick fore-antlers – each as formidable as a Turkish sword – pointed straight up to heaven, and his huge voice boomed again with so much power, and so deep a sound, that no instrument yet invented could have reproduced it. It was the strength of the primeval call and his hot breath, as if to match the strength of his need, billowed forth like a cloud in the cold morning air.

  Then he called again, and with head still raised high went slowly and majestically back into the forest. There was no thorn, thicket, pine-branch or treacherous ground that could for an instance hinder his path, no obstacle that would not be brushed carelessly aside as he went on his proud way. Fallen branches, broken by the cutting spread of his antlers, cracked beneath his feet for here he was the master, the antlered sovereign who would never deign to pick his way through that wilderness that was his realm. For a long time the three men could hear the great animal as he went on his way through the forest towards the Munchel, where, the night before, he must have left the hinds.

  Balint felt a sense of great joy to have been able to see the stag so close in all his indifferent nobility and for the first time in days had forgotten his own sorrows. The old poacher turned game-warden, who was now accustomed to this strange lord’s perverse delight in merely looking at game when any normal man would have shot it at once, was compensated for his disappointment with a handsome tip, though he never understood why the master’s gloom had lifted as if by magic.

  Later, when they met up again with Zutor, Balint sent old Zsukuczo on ahead while he and the head game-warden sat down on a fallen tree and discussed all the information that Zutor had collected about the notary Simo. Balint was now eager to pursue the matter, and they discussed how they could arrange matters so that Balint could meet those who had been oppressed without alerting the oppressor to what he was doing.

  By now Balint had decided that he would stay up in the mountains for longer than he had originally planned. The calm, and the freedom from having to greet acquaintances and make small talk, would help him come to terms with his unhappiness and, perhaps even more important, if Adrienne by any chance should come to some sort of decision, it would be easy for her to send him a message if he remained so close to Almasko. Up here in the cold clear mountain air his tautly stretched nerves would relax and he decided that every day he would walk for miles hoping to tire himself out so that, after months of hopeless insomnia, perhaps he would also learn to sleep normally again.

  On the way back to the little camp Balint and Zutor often stopped to listen, but they heard no more calls, maybe because the stag had changed his course, or perhaps the wind had changed and the murmur of the forest blanketed all sounds.

  It was still barely nine o’clock when Balint got back to his tent.

  He was just eating the bacon he had roasted over the little fire in front of his tent and reliving the happiness that the morning’s excursion had given him, when he heard the sound of a horseman arriving at the foresters’ cabin. A few moments later Winckler, the new forest manager, came down to see him.

  He was not expected as Balint had understood he was out on the Beles part of the Abady forest holdings and had therefore made no attempt to contact him and arrange a meeting. His arrival here, thought Balint, must be just a happy chance, but w
hen he looked up at his face he at once realized that Winckler had come up on purpose and that something very serious was the matter. The young engineer had a wounded and offended air about him and so Balint, after their formal greetings, at once said, ‘Something’s the matter! What has happened? What’s wrong?’

  Winckler took off his pince-nez and rubbed each side of the bridge of his nose – which was a habit of his when angry or upset – and replied in a cold and haughty tone, ‘Wrong? Why? Nothing’s wrong! Nothing at all! A little unexpected, surprising perhaps. To me at least, for I can hardly suppose that your Lordship doesn’t know about it as I understand that it is he who gives the orders in these parts!’

  He broke off, and then remained silent as if he were at a loss as to how to continue.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Balint. ‘What is all this? What are you talking about?’

  Winckler drew a grey envelope from his inner pocket and handed it to Abady with an angry gesture.

  ‘I think you’d better read this,’ he muttered and turned away.

  It was a letter signed by Azbej, and though it started merely by saying that Countess Roza had decided to cancel Winckler’s appointment as supervisor to the Abady forests, the next sentence had a second, and to Balint, sinister double meaning. Azbej wrote that from now until Winckler’s contract expired at the end of the year his reports should be sent directly to the countess’s estate office and it was from there that he would receive all further instructions. This was to be strictly carried out.

  It was as if the world had suddenly grown dark.

  So it was not only the engineer who had been dismissed but he himself as well. Though it had been he who had found and engaged Winckler, and though it was his efforts and devoted labour that had now put their forests in order and made them pay‚ he too was now forbidden those beloved mountains, just as he had been exiled from Denestornya. The engineer, a decent man who was doing a magnificent job, had to suffer so as to reinforce Balint’s own punishment; and the unscrupulous lawyer had stoked the flames of the old lady’s anger to still further discredit the influence of the son, whose zeal might one day expose Azbej’s own speculations.

  For some time Balint could not utter a word. Then he gave the letter back.

  ‘Didn’t you read the last sentence?’ he said. ‘You surely don’t think this was my work? Don’t you see what it means?’

  Winckler re-read the letter. Then, realizing its implications, he said, ‘I’m sorry! I was so angered by what it meant for me that I didn’t take it in. It was stupid of me. Please accept my apologies. This is quite different – not at all what I thought!’ The anger faded from his face, for though choleric by nature he was at heart a kind and understanding man. Then, in a rush, he went on, ‘I was hurt, you see, and especially as I assumed that it came from your Lordship who I had always thought appreciated my work. It was only that! Now I don’t mind so much. I can always find something else, though … I was hoping to get married, but that can wait a bit … that can wait, I suppose.’

  Winckler, though he had little experience of the vagaries of human nature, had understood at once that the letter from Countess Abady’s agent was itself only a symptom of a greater and more dramatic upheaval. Since he could in no way question or comfort his former employer, he wanted somehow to show his sympathy, and the only way he knew was to cover his confusion with a flow of somewhat incoherent words. And again it was typical of him that he took off his pince-nez and started to polish them with his handkerchief.

  That evening Balint left the mountains. Disgraced, and with his authority taken from him, he felt it impossible to remain.

  What was his position? It was not even that of a tied estate-worker. How could he stay on where, until now, he had been the master on whom everything depended, where everything had been done by his orders, when he did not even know whether Azbej might not go so far as to forbid the estate foresters to supply him with pack-animals or to do anything else he might wish? There was also another reason why he should go away as quickly as possible. Soon it would become public knowledge that he no longer counted for anything in the mountains and he did not want his former dependants to start feeling sorry for him, especially as he knew how Gaszton Simo and his angry band of followers would gloat when they heard of Count Abady’s disgrace.

  He struck camp at once and rode straight to Mereggyo where Winckler left him. Here they parted without anything further being said but with a warm handshake to express their mutual sympathy. Then he rumbled down to Banffy-Hunyad in a hired farm cart. It had been a lucky chance that he had left his car there and so could continue his journey by road, because he did not want to risk meeting anyone he knew at the station.

  Night fell as he drove away from all those places he had loved so much. Now he could not see anything of that country to which he was bidding farewell, and as he drove swiftly through the dark all his attention was on the road illuminated by his headlights. The cold air was in his face and he told himself, ironically, that he was like a chicken hypnotized by the glare; and it was also with a certain tart irony that he was now able to look back on what the day had brought: at dawn, the royal stag in all his sovereignty; in the morning the arrival of the irate Winckler; and now it was he who was running as if pursued by the Fates.

  Also, he thought, what luck that rascal Simo had! Just when Abady had acquired the power to ruin him and make him pay for his oppression of the mountain people and for his arrogant swagger, chance had intervened and saved him.

  What luck that man has! he thought. And what a crazy world!

  The next few weeks were dull enough for Abady, though the political scene was lively.

  While he had been away in Transylvania the Coalition had been on the verge of collapse, and the atmosphere in Budapest ever more tense.

  All over the country the campaign for the establishment of the independent banking system had been stoked up, but at the same time that section of the Independence Party that was led by Justh did all it could to fight against the policies of Ferenc Kossuth, still their nominal leader, proclaiming that in this matter they would accept no compromise. They even went so far as to demand that Wekerle’s government should at once vote the fantastic sum of 500 million crowns for defence.

  That the army desperately needed the money at a time when all Europe was arming and Russia seemed to be preparing for a general war was true enough, especially as Austria-Hungary’s military equipment was so antiquated. It was perfectly true that the Dual Monarchy would be useless, whether as enemy or ally, unless its army could swiftly be modernized, but it was still fruitless to raise this demand at a time when the government was powerless to act. Again there was raised the spectre of the cold hand of the Heir, who was thought to be plotting to bring to power his own nominee, Laszlo Lukacs.

  Once again the government resigned and Wekerle went so far as to announce in Parliament that the Coalition had been dissolved. But the Monarch said: ‘Weiterdienen! – go back to work!’ and refused to accept the resignations.

  This was the situation that Abady found when he returned to Budapest, so he was on the spot for all that followed. The government crisis was so drawn-out that it seemed like eternity. It was complicated by a kaleidoscopic change of allegiances. At one moment there was a short-lived cabinet headed by Wlassits; just before that one led by Kossuth, and just after it another with Andrassy; but all were so brief that they passed almost unnoticed, appearing and as swiftly vanishing on that fantasy stage of politics, insubstantial as some mad nirvana. Each one had his own unreasonable reasons to excuse his failure: Wlassits had no majority; Kossuth would only remain if he could go on carrying simultaneously the banners of the independent banking system and the separation of the Austro-Hungarian Customs; and Andrassy insisted that Vienna should yield on the questions of appointing Hungarians to army commands and using the Hungarian language in army orders. He was adamant on these principles and the Crown was equally adamant in refusing, even though Andrass
y had proposed a face-saving formula by which the Hungarian army demands were accepted in theory but not put into practice. None of these contradictory moves did anything to alleviate the general malaise nor stop the decay of the Coalition.

  It was not long before the general public wearied of all the artificial excitement, and the more they were bombarded by leading articles in the Press, each party lambasting the policies of its opponents, the more the man in the street became disillusioned with the lot of them. People no longer believed a word of what they read in the Press, until all the different political elements in the Coalition had lost credit with the general public. The fundamental flaw that brought the Coalition down was that when it had first come to power its leaders had pretended that they had now won everything for which they had fought while in opposition; while the truth was that they had capitulated on almost all points. All that nationalistic nonsense that had been used to win votes before they achieved power proved to be nothing but a bag of campaign tricks once they were in office. That famous Pactum, whose very existence had been so hotly denied until the fiction could no longer be maintained – since it had become clear to everyone that it had been the price paid for getting office – and the fact that after three and a half years nothing had been done to realize the promised universal suffrage, had brought the whole political structure into disrepute with the ordinary citizen.

  The leaders of the different parties forming the Coalition fought against each other in a sort of vacuum, though they themselves still thought the battles were real and significant. They proclaimed the same slogans, for which they had once been worshipped as demigods, but now the effect was not the same. Those ideas which had once raised cheers of enthusiasm and support – the old questions of banking, customs, Hungarian sword-tassels for army officers etc. etc. etc. – now raised no more than disillusioned yawns. And the politicians were so wrapped up in their own importance that they never even noticed.