As he wandered aimlessly along the dark streets he was assailed so fiercely by a torrent of haphazard memories that he felt like a man pursued by the Fates from whom it was impossible to hide. And yet hide he must! It had been the same the previous summer, on the only other occasion that he had seen Adrienne since their parting.
Then he had just been leaving the hospital, after bringing in one of the stable lads from Denestornya, when he caught sight of Adrienne through the bars of a tall iron fence. He had shrunk back into the shade of the doorway so that he shouldn’t be seen; but from there he followed her with his eyes as, with head held high and looking straight ahead of her without a glance to left or right, she strode determinedly up the path which led to the lunatic asylum or, as most people euphemistically called it, the House with the Green Roof.
Off to see that mad husband, Balint had thought bitterly, he whom she had never loved and who had never loved her.
His heart had swelled, like that of an exile who catches a glimpse of his forbidden home from far away.
As he had hidden then, so he felt impelled to run now, to escape from the theatre and wander anonymously through the town. Without realizing where he had been heading Balint found himself in the main square, and here he was almost overcome by a strange lassitude. It was as if that impulse which had hurled him out of the theatre had sapped all his reserves of energy.
He walked on, without taking note of where he was going, until, at the corner of the market place, he almost knocked over the charcoal grill of an old woman roasting chestnuts. Ashamed of himself, he stopped and in an attempt to pull himself together, and to make amends for his clumsiness, he bought a paper cone of nuts that the woman held out to him. As he started absentmindedly to peel them he remembered that he had been invited out to supper and had better not arrive with stained fingers. Abruptly he shoved the warm paper cone deep into one of his coat pockets, deciding to give it to the first child he might meet; but although he passed several hanging about near the iron bridge or in front of the cinema, by then the chestnuts had been forgotten.
Of course, he reflected, he ought to have married Lili Illesvary. Everything would then have been different. He could have met Adrienne and, with no constraint between them, talked of their by now shadowy past in a way that could provoke no comment if overheard. They could have met as old friends, if nothing more. At least it would have meant that he would have seen her from time to time and touched her hand as he kissed her fingers. Also he would have had a home of his own, and a family to return to, instead of wandering aimlessly with nowhere he wanted to go. That was what he ought to have done, yet he had carelessly thrown away even the half-happiness such a marriage would have brought him. Now he had nothing; no love, no family, nothing!
It had been entirely his own fault. The opportunity had been there, at Jablanka in the middle of December, and if he had failed to take the opportunity offered he had no one but himself to blame. But he had done nothing.
His host, Antal Szent-Gyorgyi, and his sons had welcomed him as warmly as ever, without being over-demonstrative which in that house was thought to be not very good form. His cousin Magda’s greeting was a shade more enthusiastic, for she gave him a teasing smile and pressed his hand a little harder than was usual. His aunt Elise, Countess Szent-Gyorgyi, received him with maternal warmth and tenderness and somehow, though without ever alluding to the matter, contrived to let him know how much she approved of, and would encourage, his marrying Lili. It was clear to Balint that they all knew that that was why he had come to Jablanka, and that everyone was in favour. Canon Czibulka, or Pfaffulus as he was nicknamed in that house, an old and intimate friend of the Szent-Gyorgyis, also discreetly showed that he approved the match by giving a special antenna-like movement of his bushy eyebrows when he first shook Balint by the hand. Pfaffulus had already been at Jablanka for several days as the shoot had been held unusually late and, as Advent had already begun, he came over daily from Nagy-Szombat to say mass in the castle chapel. The priest’s tacit approval warmed Balint’s heart for it made him feel that in that house everyone knew about and looked kindly on his plans to ask Lili to marry him.
All the same he did not see her until all the guests assembled in the lofty stucco-decorated drawing-room which had been the monks’ refectory before the former monastery became the Szent-Gyorgyis’ country home. She came in from the library, which was at the opposite end of the room from where Balint was standing, seeming almost to glide weightlessly across the highly polished wooden floor. She was dressed in a flowing white tulle gown and she moved with that quiet assurance natural to girls brought up in the highest society. As she crossed the room she nodded to those other guests she had already seen and went up to greet two new arrivals, the guests of honour who had just come from Vienna. Once again Abady smiled as he admired the impeccable way in which she moved, reflecting how perfectly she fitted into those grand surroundings and what a perfect background was formed for her by the great white hall-like room, the crimson and gold furniture and the huge family portraits in their elaborate frames. For all the apparent frailty of the girl, as she moved slowly round that luxurious room in her diaphanous creamy white dress, her step as light as that of any butterfly, one could still sense that inner core of steel that was the mark of her race.
So this, thought Balint, is the girl who is going to be my wife! Infinitely well-bred, the scion of countless generations whose sons and daughters, being always rich and independent, had never needed to marry some ugly ducking for her dowry or accept anyone second-rate for his money. Now she had nearly come up to where he stood. She did not increase her speed nor for a moment change her demeanour; and yet there was something special in the movement she made in putting out her hand to him, in the yielding softness with which she took his, and in the joyful flash of her corn-flower blue eyes.
Balint sensed it all at once and knew exactly what it meant.
During the three days of shooting Lili was often to be found beside him and remained with him for the whole of the most important beat on the third day when once again Balint found himself allotted the place of honour at the extreme right hand end of the line of guns. They somehow seemed to spend hours together, and even on those long afternoon walks on which, of course, they were never alone but always accompanied by several other young people, the two of them often seemed to be left to walk some twenty or thirty paces behind the others. And then Lili, who otherwise was lively and talkative, would remain silent, leaving it to him to decide what they would talk about. She was hoping he would propose: and that is when he ought to have done so, either in the long hornbeam avenue or else when coming back from visiting the thoroughbred mares.
Recalling that moment Balint conjured up in his mind the thin layer of powdery snow that covered the frozen ground and which had crackled under their feet. The others had lingered by the fences of the paddocks and that is when he should have spoken. It was there that he ought to have uttered those few banal words that were the classic form of suggesting marriage. And yet for some reason he had held back and said nothing. Stupidly he had said nothing. Had he felt that in that wintry landscape his voice would sound too matter-of-fact, too cold and businesslike, too unspontaneous? But of course he knew then, just as he knew now, that it would not have mattered how he had said it, for the girl had only been waiting for him to speak.
Balint stopped at the bridge over the mill-stream. For a moment he thought of going on into the park, which at that hour would be completely deserted, and he walked on a few steps before reflecting how silly it would be to get his patent leather evening shoes all muddied just before he went to the Prefect’s evening party. Far better to go where he could stay on the side-walk, where the slight humidity from that afternoon’s rain would have left few traces. So he continued along the road which led to the railway station.
As he wandered so aimlessly in the night Balint thought back to that time a year before when he had spent so many autumn evenings just wanderin
g about the streets as aimlessly as he was now doing. Anything, he had thought, to keep on the move and quiet his growing anxiety as he waited for Adrienne’s letter, that letter which would at long last announce that she had started the business of her divorce. Until then every little note she had sent him had just been one more excuse for delay: ‘… it is impossible now’, or ‘Not yet, we have to wait, wait, wait!’ That was what she had written, and then he had not understood the dreadful dilemma in which she had been placed, fearing to make any move that might push her sick husband into insanity, that insanity that had come all the same and forever destroyed their hopes.
He wondered if Adrienne was still sitting in Countess Gyalakuthy’s box at the opera or whether she too had left the theatre devastated, as he had been, by the cruel chance that had brought them physically so close after so long apart. Had she too been shattered by that cruel game the Fates seemed to be playing with them?
Somehow, he thought, he must arrange that this should never happen again. He would leave Kolozsvar the next day, indeed if it had not been for that stupid supper party, he would have gone that very night.
In the morning he would go back to Denestornya, to his mother and to that old home which was the only place in the world where he could find peace. My home, he thought, with its age-old beauty and magic, where, though always enveloped in a veil of sadness, there were only the two of them to wander in that enormous house: he and his old mother. And now there always would only be the two of them. There was no one else, there never would be anyone else. There was no future and no young life to follow.
Had he proposed to Lili at Jablanka then at least he might have had that hope. What madness had prevented him?
It had been quite clear that the Szent-Gyorgyis, in their typically unobtrusive way, had made sure that there would have been no obstacles in the path of such a marriage. They had even thought about the difference of religion and, with a tactfulness that amounted almost to an art, had taken pains to let him know that his being a Protestant would create no difficulties
The memory came back to him with sudden clarity, perhaps because it had all been so surprising.
On the afternoon of the second day of the shooting party Balint had just changed and was on his way to join the others in the drawing-room when he met Pfaffulus in the passage. He had the impression that the priest had been waiting for him.
‘I was just on my way to the chapel,’ said Canon Czibulka in his slight Slovakian accent. ‘If you’ve never seen it perhaps you’d like to come with me? It’s really very fine, well worth seeing.’
They walked together to that part of the former monastery that formed the rear part of the cloister-court and faced the main entrance over which was the refectory now transformed into the main drawing-room. In the centre of the first floor gallery which encircled the court was a massive stone doorway, whose carved and ornamented architraves framed the door-posts which bordered a pair of huge doors inlaid with many different kinds of precious woods in the full opulence of ecclesiastical baroque.
Pfaffulus pushed open the doors which swung back noiselessly. They went in.
The chapel was the size of a church and the semi-circle of windows behind the altar must, Balint had realized, have projected out towards the mountainside. Although darkness had nearly fallen there was enough evening light to cast a soft mystical radiance in front of which the lines of the baldaquin over the altar stood out as if etched in black on grey. Then Pfaffulus had switched on the electric chandeliers and the chapel blazed with light. It was indeed beautiful.
Along each side wall stood the carved wooden stalls where the monks had sat for worship, the panelling divided by columns which supported a carved rococo veil that seemed to swirl with an almost musical rhythm towards the altar. All along its border were placed winged angels’ heads and surmounting all this splendour was the monastic order’s symbolic bird, a raven carrying bread in its beak, huge and gilded, like an emphatic exclamation mark floating above the mellow brown woodwork of the canopy itself. Over the tabernacle the baldaquin, fringed with golden tassels and supported by twisted columns, supported a picture of the Virgin surrounded by a golden sun-burst. On each side angels dressed identically in blue and gold, with gilded wings, knelt in the exaggerated attitudes so beloved in the baroque era.
A thick floral carpet covered the stone flags on the floor.
‘It is beautiful, isn’t it?’ Pfaffulus had said; and he took Balint round showing him the carvings on the stalls and explaining the reliefs, all of which commemorated some miracle or incident in the life of the holy Saint Paul the Hermit, founder of the order.
Then he crossed in front of the altar, genuflecting swiftly as he did so, to show Balint the Abbot’s stall and a series of holy pictures by well-known artists. They had almost returned to the chapel doors when the priest stopped and sat down, a thoughtful look on his fine expressive face. It was as if he had just remembered something.
After nodding appreciation at Balint’s words of thanks he looked up at the younger man and, seemingly unable to keep to himself what had come so strongly to his mind, grasped Balint’s arm and pulled him down to sit beside him. As he did so he said:
‘Do you know what this chapel means to me? I love it as if it were a living human being, not only because of its beauty but also because of so many things that have happened to me within its walls.’
He explained that it was at Jablanka that he had started his professional career, as tutor to Count Antal Szent-Gyorgyi. Later, after several years spent in Rome, he had returned as the castle’s resident priest; though he had never accepted any parish of his own even though the Count was patron of several rich livings and pressed him to take the best of them. He told Balint that he had preferred to remain quietly where he was and continue his studies in canon law.
Then he gave an especially sweet smile and went on:
‘I have another very dear memory. It was in this church that I officiated at the wedding of Count Antal’s other sister, the Countess Charlotte who married a Swede, Count Olaf Loewenstierna.’ As he said these words Pfaffulus’s thin pointed nose seemed to grow even longer and he raised his eyebrows expressively. ‘It was very bold on my part, as the bridegroom, of course, was a Protestant and I should not really have performed the ceremony without the promise that the children should be brought up as Catholics. But what could I do? The old Count gave his orders and said that one could not ask such a thing of a Loewenstierna, who was descended from one of Gustavus Adolphus’s generals; and anyway he would despise the young man if he abandoned his family traditions. If he, as a good Catholic father, did not demand it, then I should not either. Naturally I did as he wished.’
Here the round little priest had leaned forward and spoken confidentially into Balint’s ear.
‘Of course I had committed a fault; even perhaps a sin, yes, a sin. And yet it was my sin, and mine alone, because in such circumstances only the priest can be at fault. I went straight afterwards to see the Prince-Cardinal. It was then Monsignor Simor. To him I confessed my fault, my crime. I knelt before him and he gave me a thorough scolding and some pretty harsh penances with which to atone for my lapse. Then he invited me to eat with him. Afterwards he had said: “You were wise, my son, not to ask for guidance because no permission would ever have been given. Yes, you did the wise, the clever thing. The family of Szent-Gyorgyi have done much for our church for several centuries and so they fall into a very special category. I am sure that this is how the Roman Curia would regard the matter too.”’
Czibulka had then fallen silent, gazing ahead as if conscious only of his own memories. Then he had got up and looked at Abady as if excusing himself for having burdened the young man with such personal reminiscences.
‘You must forgive my idle chatter,’ he said. ‘I seem to have gone on at length about things which only concern myself. But this chapel, you see, means so much to me.’
Then he had made another quick genuflection towards the
altar, switched out the lights, and escorted Balint out of the chapel. They walked back together to the drawing-room where everyone was gathering for tea.
They had thought of every way to encourage and reassure him, and so everything had depended on him and on him alone. And then he had let the moment pass and so thrown away his chances, if not of love then at least of a kind and loving wife, of a family, and of a nest to come home to.
It had been on the last evening of his stay that he had let the final opportunity escape him.
He had dressed for dinner early and when he had entered the drawing-room he had found it deserted. Then, through the open doors to the library, he had seen Lili, who for some reason of her own had also dressed before the others. She had been kneeling on a chair drawn up to a long table in the centre of the room, leaning forward with her bare elbows reflected on the polished wooden table top as she turned the pages of a large album of engravings. She had seemed totally engrossed in the pictures before her.
At that moment he had instinctively known that she had come down early to the library with a single purpose, and that that had been, if possible, to give him one final occasion on which to make his proposal, final because it had been the last night of that gathering at Jablanka to which he had been invited just for that purpose.
They Were Divided Page 2