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

by Bánffy, Miklós

  Why do I write all this? It is because I want you to marry. I command you to do so in the name of our love. Don’t argue with me. This is what you must do. If we ourselves do not erect barriers between us, we will never be able to keep away from each other – and then we’ll just be in the same intolerable situation as before. Do this now, at once! When I finally made the decision to leave Uzdy and get a divorce I knew that I was taking the awful risk that it would send him mad and that I would be responsible. That’s why I hesitated so long. You can have no idea how hard I tried to decide before; and when I did decide it was with full knowledge of what I was doing. Also all of this that I am now saying to you today – and that I now expect of you.

  Who should you marry? I have thought of that too. Lili Illesvary. She is in love with you, and you like her. The family desires it or they wouldn’t have invited you so often. She is pretty and healthy and worthy to bear the son I cannot give you.

  It would also be some slight consolation to me. It has been bad enough to shoulder the responsibility for Uzdy, but I could not live knowing that it was I who had denied you an heir. If that were so there would be only one course for me, the one I had intended in Venice. That would set you free, of course, but I don’t think you’d want it, you couldn’t! Neither can we go on … as we have till now. Oh no! We came too close to Paradise. We stood on the threshold and caught a glimpse through the door … it was a dream, radiant and full of promise. But the door was slammed in our faces. Now we can never go back to that misery, stripped of everything like beggars. No! Not that! Never ever that!

  A little further down on the page was a single phrase:

  I don’t want to see you until you’ve done what I say!

  The letter had arrived at midday; it was now early evening and the sky was dark. Balint had sat down in an armchair in the window of his hotel room to read what Adrienne had to say; and he had been lying there ever since. He was like a man felled with a sledgehammer.

  The light from the street-lamps on the Danube quays was reflected in a long rectangle on the ceiling with the glazing bars of the window casting a black cross in the centre. To Balint it was like looking up at his tombstone from the depths of the grave. The letter had fallen to the floor beside him.

  The door opened and a small woman ran to his side. It was Roza Abady, but he noticed nothing until she pulled up a chair beside him, sat down and put her hand on his arm.

  ‘It’s only me,’ she said with a gentle smile. ‘I got here at noon and heard you were at home. So I came to see you.’

  She spoke as naturally as if she had last seen him the day before and as if nothing had ever been the matter between them. She looked deeply into his face, her eyes filled with anxiety and compassion though she was trying hard not to make it look as if she had come to him at once when she had heard what had happened to Uzdy. Of course the news of his being incarcerated in the House with the Green Roof had spread like wildfire and Countess Roza had at once grasped what this would mean for her son.

  Though she was filled with joy that his hated marriage was now forever impossible, she knew what a terrible blow this would be to him and the thought of what he would be suffering soon overcame her own immense relief. Her only thought was to go to him at once, surround him with her own love and do what she could to alleviate his sorrow. There would, she realized, be nothing that she could say to him, but at least she could forgive him and take him back and restore to him everything she had so cruelly taken away. Those months of searing loneliness, when she thought that she had lost him forever, had long before cleansed her of that overweening pride that had brought it upon her; and so she had been happy to seize the first opportunity of making her peace with him without humiliation.

  ‘I am going again to Abbazia for the winter,’ she said. ‘I liked it very much last year and, as it’s so close, perhaps I’ll see you from time to time? You will visit me occasionally, won’t you? I shall not need you to take me there this time as I can travel quite well alone now. You see I’m not as helpless as I used to be,’ and she babbled on, talking about quite trivial unimportant things that had no relation to the drama that had thrown him into turmoil. She told him that she was going to stay in Budapest for a few days and, so as not to let drop any hint that she was there only to be near him, said she had decided to have a medical check-up.

  She did not switch on the light, sensing that she would never be able to get so close to him if the room were brilliantly lit. In the dark she could sit beside him, tenderly stroking his hair … and in the dark he would not have to mask his sorrow.

  They stayed together for a long time until the evening shadows darkened into night as the old lady did all she could to talk away her son’s unhappiness.

  The next few days they were constantly together, spending the mornings either at museums or in the doctors’ waiting rooms. In the afternoons and evenings they went to concerts or to the cinema, but not to the theatre as Countess Roza, who had always loved plays, did not now want to go lest it should upset Balint.†

  In the middle of the month she left for Abbazia. Balint took her to the station and settled her in her compartment, staying with her until the train left.

  ‘I’ll be with you for Christmas,’ he said, and then, after a short pause, he added with special emphasis, ‘The day after tomorrow I’m going to shoot at the Szent-Gyorgyis’.’

  Countess Roza looked up sharply. She had understood at once that something important lay behind his words. As if merely to follow his lead she then asked, ‘Who’s going to be there? The same party as last year?’

  ‘I don’t know about the guns, or even the women guests, except for my aunt and Magda … and Lili Illesvary. I know she’ll be there.’

  The old lady’s face lit up, but she didn’t say anything. Then she took his face between her chubby little hands and kissed him on the forehead.

  ‘Go now, my boy,’ she said softly, ‘and may God bless you!’

  The express train to Zsolna was getting up steam under the sooty glass roof of the Budapest-West station.

  Balint bought several newspapers and then mounted the train, put his luggage on the rack, settled down in his seat and was soon immersed in the news. For days it had been rumoured that a solution had been found to the impasse that had rendered impotent the Coalition. The rumour had been lent credence by the fact that the Minister-President, Wekerle, had managed to bypass all those who had obstructed the government by tabling an ‘indemnity’ motion which meant that the Budget voted in the previous year could be renewed for a further year without a vote. This had had, albeit briefly, the happy effect of re-animating the moribund Coalition; but it had unfortunately also led to several other less desirable results. November had seen the Independence Party split into two groups, one led by Justh and all those who stood for an independent banking system for Hungary, and the other by Ferenc Kossuth. A venomous internecine battle then began which was made the most of in the Budapest press, and soon Justh was made to resign his post as Speaker of the House because Kossuth and his followers had thrown in their lot with the party that supported the 1867 Compromise with Vienna, and had thrown him out. War-cries sounded on all sides urging the Hungarians to the fray; and more hate-filled slogans were hurled at the government even than in the times of Tisza or Fejervary. Then the ex-Speaker managed to block the ‘indemnity’ with a technical objection, and followed this up with legal demands for closed sessions and calling for a vote on any trivial matter that happened to be under discussion. Kossuth was now wrecking the Coalition by applying the same obstructive tactics which tradition had reserved for dealing with governments whose party could command a majority.

  And so the circle was closed. The Coalition had been brought into being by using those very same obstructive tactics that had destroyed one government after another. It had come in on a wave of patriotic fervour, brandishing a multitude of popular slogans and promising every chauvinistic project imaginable. That is how the Coalition came to
power, dishonestly keeping quiet about the capitulations that had had to be made on the way. And then it had to face the eternal reality of office, that the state’s interests could not be ignored. And here the Coalition had come unstuck: it could not even bring in the universal suffrage law that had been its principal battle-cry.

  During its entire term of office the Coalition had achieved nothing. From the very first all those separate parties, though still claiming that they were allies, indeed friends, had done nothing but fight each other. The public good was forgotten, submerged in a sea of party rivalry, and so the only result was to damage the dignity and prestige of that historic Parliament they had all once sworn to preserve.

  All this was in Balint’s mind as the train carried him to Jablanka. The first paper told him of the efforts of Aladar Zichy, Andrassy, and even Wekerle, and predicted that one of them would find a solution despite the obstructions offered by the bankers. Another reported that Khuen-Hedervary had been received in audience by the Monarch and appointed to be the next Minister-President with instructions to dissolve Parliament and hold new elections, presumably thereby giving the country the opportunity of voting back the very politicians they had turned against four years before!

  And so ended an era in which nothing whatever had been achieved. The balance sheet consisted only of omissions, the worst of which had been the defence of the nation. Four years had been lost; and Hungary was now less prepared even than Italy or insignificant little Serbia.

  The express had long since left the Danube. Evening came and Balint found himself still staring through the darkening light onto a sad, sooty, seemingly endless plain. The first snows had melted and it had then frozen again. The train rushed northwards across ice-covered fields. The smoke from the engine swirled overhead and from time to time, whenever the stoker opened the furnace door, bright red glowing sparks were reflected on the frozen earth outside.

  In half an hour he would arrive, get out, seat himself in the carriage which had been sent for him; and in another half-hour he would be at the Szent-Gyorgyis’ country place where he would do what he had promised in the telegram he had that morning sent to Adrienne;

  It had been his only reply to her letter, and read:

  ‘AT NOON TODAY I AM LEAVING FOR JABLANKA AS YOU HAVE ORDERED ME TO DO’

  † Translators’ note: This last phrase seems to be a Freudian slip on the author’s part for though it hardly makes sense in relation to Balint and Adrienne, it may possibly be an unconscious echo of an important moment in Miklós Bánffy’s own life when he found himself obliged to renounce his love for the well-known actress, Aranka Varady. Some years later, after his father’s death, they married and Katalin Bánffy-Jelen is their daughter.

  Copyright

  First published in English in 2000

  by Arcadia Books Books, 15-16 Nassau Street, London, W1W 7AB

  This ebook edition first published in 2011

  All rights reserved

  © Miklós Bánffy, 1937

  © Translation from the Hungarian, Patrick Thursfield and Katalin Bánffy-Jelen, 2000

  The right of Miklós Bánffy to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–1–908129–03–1