Balint and his cousins were shown into the private room where they found only Fredi Wuelffenstein, who had been invited by Zalamery. Fredi, who was also a member of the delegation, was admiring his tall, slim figure in the wall mirror. With his padded shoulders, pale blond hair and the face of a white negro, it looked as if he had been trying to emulate the statesmanlike poise he had so admired in Berchtold that afternoon.
Then Stefi Szent-Gyorgyi came in and they all started to talk. At first Fredi tried hard to get them onto politics but this did not suit either Balint or the Kollonich brothers. First of all each one of them wanted to know why the others were in Vienna. Stefi, it seemed, was going to England to hunt, while Peter and Niki were on their way back to Hungary after a visit to Upper Austria where they had been invited for the pheasant-shooting. At first the talk was all about guns and horses and game-birds, but it was not long before they started to talk about La Pantera and Kristof Zalamery. They all knew that Kristof had fallen madly in love with the dancer the very first night she appeared; and since then the whole town had been talking about the fortune that he had been spending on her, and especially about the diamond dog-collar necklace that he had added to her famous collection. Every detail was known to the good people of Vienna. It had been bought at Klinkosch’s in the Mehlmarkt and had cost sixty thousand crowns. It was also known that he was ferociously jealous and guarded her like a dragon, and so, though he liked to show her off, he never left her side.
‘At this very moment he’s waiting in his carriage at the stage door of the Ronacher. He’ll stay there until she’s changed and then,’ said Peter, ‘he’ll bring her straight here thereby making sure she doesn’t meet anyone else on the way!’
Niki laughed. ‘What an ass that Kristof is! All that money spent on the girl and all that trouble keeping an eye on her … and she cuckolds him every night!’
‘That can’t be possible! Why, he lives with her at the Imperial Hotel!’
‘Oh yes, but they have separate rooms divided by a sitting-room. Kristof can stay with her only until three a.m. Then she sends him away saying she has to get her sleep if she’s going to be able to dance properly the following night. That’s when the others come in!’
‘What rubbish you do talk!’ said Peter, who was always upset by his brother’s love of making mischief. ‘That’s far too complicated. Why would anyone else be there, ready and waiting? Where are they? In the corridor? In the hall? It’s absurd: nothing but the usual lying Viennese gossip!’
‘Not a bit of it. La Pantera has a confidante, half-secretary, half-procuress. She is older than the dancer and goes everywhere with her. Everyone calls her “Contessa”, probably because it sounds well. Anyhow you strike your bargain with her, and you wait in her room, which is next to La Pantera’s, until the coast is clear!’
‘And how do you know all this?’ asked his brother angrily.
‘How do I know it? How? Everyone in Vienna knows it!’
‘Everybody is … everybody is nobody.’
‘Well, if you really want to know,’ chuckled Niki, ‘it’s because I did it only yesterday. It wasn’t even very expensive, only five hundred crowns. It was worth it just for the fun of it all. I rather like making a fool of that good old Kristof!’
Abady felt slightly nauseated.
He got up to leave, but it was too late. Just at that moment the door opened and Zalamery entered with the dancer upon his arm.
The man was built like a Hercules, though slightly balding and beginning to run to fat. He was a heavy man and though his dinner-jacket had been made by one of London’s most famous tailors and was a perfect fit, on Zalamery it looked as if it had been rented from a stage costume shop. It was like this with everything he did. He owned a large stable of racehorses … but never won a race. His forests in Marmaros were endless … but he never shot a stag himself, though it was true that his guests had some good sport. He was a good-hearted man, but vain. He liked to be admired, and he liked to show off the splendour of his possessions. This was why he felt impelled to bring his mistress for his friends to see.
The woman was truly beautiful. She was tall and slim. Under a helmet of raven-black hair her face was one of classical beauty and her eyes sparkled under the thickest of black lashes. Her hands, feet and legs were perfectly formed, but her glory was her walk. She moved like one of the great cats, a puma or a jaguar, who seemed always ready to pounce. It was presumably from this quality that she had been named La Pantera, the leopard. Her look was cold as ice, like that of a wild beast.
She wore a dress of dark blue silk with wide sleeves. It was tied at the waist by a sash of the same material and seemed to be half evening dress and half tea-gown. She wore only one piece of jewellery, the diamond collar that Kristof had given her. This was just to please the donor: the rest she only wore when she danced.
Introductions were made and she offered her hands for the men to kiss.
There was nothing to show that she even noticed Niki, and it is possible that she did not even remember him for it was obvious to Balint at least that she was not really interested in other people. To her everything was reduced to business, her dancing, her diamonds, her beauty and her fixed icy smile.
She talked coolly about all sorts of bland cosmopolitan subjects. Her manners were impeccable.
Saying that she was tired after the performance, she asked only for a glass of champagne and a little cold fish, nothing more.
‘We won’t be staying long, will we?’ she asked Zalamery humbly, as if to underline to the other men that she regarded Kristof as her lord and master. She then told how she had a rehearsal at midday because she was preparing a new number, a Russian dance which was very difficult but which would be very beautiful. She would have to work hard at it, she said, because she was going to do it at St Petersburg in three weeks’ time. It would be just right for a Russian audience, and she was sure they were going to love it.
And so she rattled on. Everything she said was impersonal, even mechanical, and Balint was sure that this was how she talked in every city she visited, with hundreds and hundreds of adoring men whose names she may never have learned and whose faces she forgot at once. Then she would move on to another capital and to other men. If she had not been so beautiful she would have been essentially boring. As it was her movements were so fluid and so alluring that to watch them was such a joy that no one noticed the banality of her conversation. Her hands, her fingers, her arms moved always in perfect harmony with the tilt of her head and the line of her shoulders. The picture seemed to have no flaw. It was as if a great artist had designed every pose she adopted.
Balint was wondering whether she had studied her effects, or whether they were natural and inborn, when across the room from him he saw an elderly woman come in and stand by the door of the apartment.
She was of middle height and rather thin. She wore a dress of smooth black silk. Her hair must once have been light brown but there remained now only a few strands of this colour: the rest was bluish silver and there was a great deal of it piled in two thick tresses into the form of a crown much in the style that can be seen in portraits of the Empress Elisabeth, Queen of Hungary. On each side of her face some tiny short curls framed her high slightly oriental cheekbones. It was an interesting face, pale and elegant, and its pallor was accentuated by a startling pair of black eyebrows that just met in the middle. Though obviously no longer young, she held herself very straight, and so distinguished was her bearing that beside her the splendid La Pantera might have been just a pretty chambermaid.
She greeted no one and did not seem to expect to be greeted herself. She was like a soldier, on duty and waiting for orders.
‘J’ai tout rassemblé, madame – I’ve collected everything. Here they are, il ne manque rien – there is nothing missing,’ and she passed her hand over the sizeable morocco-leather bag that hung from her arm. It was clear that she was speaking of the diamonds which were always in her charge. ‘Do you need anyth
ing else?’
‘No. Not now. You can go back to the hotel, Contessa … No, wait a moment! Take this with you, please!’ replied La Pantera. Then she turned to Zalamery and said: ‘You won’t mind if I take this off now, will you?’ as she touched the diamond dog-collar he had given her.
‘Would you undo it for me?’ she asked and bent her lovely neck to Zalamery’s broad chest.
It was not easy for him, and a few moments passed before his thick fingers managed to release the clasp.
While this was happening the Contessa stood quietly by without moving. Only her eyes moved as she looked round the table and Balint felt that they lingered for a moment when they came to him. It was almost as if she would have liked to look longer at him. He was attracted by her looks and by those light grey eyes set under the dark eyebrows. He felt he had somewhere seen that glance before, but it was only a fleeting impression and soon passed away.
Kristof handed the diamond collar to the Contessa. The lock of the leather bag clicked to; then she looked once more at Abady and for a moment stared hard at him. Then she turned back to the dancer and said, ‘Bonne nuit, madame. Bonne nuit, messieurs,’ and with a slight inclination of her head with its massive crown of silver hair, she left the room.
Balint was not sure if he had imagined it, but it had seemed to him that when the Contessa was saying goodbye to the men in the room she was really only saying it to him. Who was she? Who could she be? Had he ever seen her before?
All around him the conversation started up again, but Balint could think of nothing but the woman who had just gone out.
A few moments later a waiter came in and handed a visiting card to Abady. On it was printed the name ‘Comtesse Julie Ladossa’ and on the other side had been written a few words in Hungarian, ‘Please come out for a moment’. Julie Ladossa! She was Laszlo Gyeroffy’s mother!
He went out at once and found her sitting on one of the sofas that lined the walls of the ante-room. The morocco-leather bag was on her knees and resting on it were her hands, long narrow aristocratic hands that were still beautiful even if lined with age. They were an artist’s hands, Laszlo’s hands. Balint sat down beside her.
‘Please don’t be offended that I asked you to come out. It is such a long time since I talked to anyone from my own country. I recognized you at once – you’re so like your father – and so as to be sure I asked the head waiter if it really was you.’
‘What can I do for you?’ asked Balint, but he found himself too embarrassed by the encounter to go on. It would have been absurd to greet Laszlo’s mother with some polite formula like ‘How do you do?’ especially as he had met her acting as someone’s servant, or was it worse than that?
He wondered what terrible times she had been through until she had finally ended up like this.
It was true that she showed no signs of degradation, no traces of the life she must have led unless, perhaps, it was to be seen in a faint cynical turn at the corner of her mouth, a little bitter smile that suggested that there was nothing and no one she did not despise, least of all herself. A wilful, stubborn line rose where her eyebrows met.
Then she was asking him all about Transylvania, about her old acquaintances, about the Alvinczys, the Laczoks, whom she referred to by their full names as if they were no relation to her and as if they had not all been her childhood friends and playmates. Obviously she wished to make it clear to him that she no longer belonged to that world, that she no longer deserved to and would not presume even to think so.
All this was said in a calm conversational and conventional matter as if they were talking about matters that did not really in any way concern them. After a while she fell silent.
Then in a deeper tone, very softly but with an underlying force of barely suppressed passion, she asked, ‘How … how is my son?’
It was difficult for Balint to find the right words with which to answer. If only she had still used the light, somewhat distant tones with which she had asked all her other questions he would probably have told her the cruel truth quite openly. He would have said that her son had turned into a depraved drunkard and was bankrupt. He would have told her in the baldest terms – perhaps out of anger, or resentment, or the desire for revenge – that Laszlo’s tragic life had begun that day in his early childhood when he had been deserted by his mother. But Julie Ladossa had spoken to him in that passionate voice, that voice which came from somewhere deep inside her soul; that voice in which could be heard the echo of many years of guilt and remorse, of more than two decades of sorrow and humble acknowledgement of her own fault, and in those half-strangled tones he had recognized the force of her living tragedy.
Therefore he hesitated before answering her questions and, when he did, he did so with compassion. He told the truth, but he did it gently. He did not conceal Laszlo’s sad situation, how he had sold the house and land and now lived on a small pension in one of his former tenants’ houses at Kozard. He said that he had been ill but that Balint believed that he was now a little better, though it was some time since he had seen his cousin who had now broken off all relations with everyone he had known in the past.
‘He too!’ she whispered. ‘So it has happened to him too,’ and she stared ahead of her.
They did not speak for some minutes. Then she got up, saying: ‘From here we are going to St Petersburg. Then to Moscow, Odessa and Bucharest. We shall be in Budapest at the end of February … If you happen to be there … and wouldn’t mind seeing me again … you might perhaps have some news. I would be so grateful!’
‘Of course! I’ll see you with great pleasure!’
‘We shall probably be at the Hungaria, but I’m not sure because the agent arranges everything like that.’
Balint thought that Julie Ladossa would now put out her hand and leave; but she just stood there, without speaking, though she obviously had something on her mind. Her eyes were fixed far, far away and the vertical line on her forehead seemed even more deeply etched than before. Then, speaking swiftly and urgently, she looked at Abady and said, ‘Tell me! Tell me! Do you sometimes see Sandor Kendy, the one they call Crookface?’
‘Of course. Not often, but when I’m in Kolozsvar he sometimes comes to town.’
A strange, unexpected and cruel smile played across her lips. Then she straightened up so abruptly that she might have suddenly grown several inches taller. From under her thick lashes there flashed a look of uncontrollable hatred. ‘Well! If you see him again, tell him that we have met … and also what I’m doing now!’
Now she did put out her hand, and then, from the door, she spoke again, ‘Be sure to tell him that too … that too…’ and she laughed as she went out, a laugh that to Balint seemed filled with cruelty.
Balint stayed where he was, rooted to the spot.
What had she said? Why on earth should she want that of him?
And why did she ask after Crookface only now and not when she had enquired after all her other old friends? Why this unexpected commission … and, above all, why that demonic laughter?
How did it all fit together?
He tried to recall everything he had ever heard about Laszlo’s mother. He had never heard any mention of Sandor Kendy when people had talked about Julie Ladossa. Neither her sister-in-law, Princess Kollonich, nor even Aunt Lizinka who never left any piece of evil gossip unsaid, had ever mentioned him. It was true that no one had ever told him with whom she had eloped and it seemed that no one really knew, for Aunt Lizinka told many different stories, at one time saying it was with a hussar who happened to be riding by, or a waiter, or a tight-rope walker, but it was clear she was just improvising for she really knew nothing and her candidates for the culprit were always unknown men, never anyone they all knew like Sandor Kendy. Crookface was surely above suspicion.
This was how Balint’s first thoughts took him; but then other memories came into his mind. There had been that evening he had spent at Crookface’s manor at Kis-Keresztur where he had seen the portrai
t of a lovely young woman he had taken to be Crookface’s deaf wife when young. It was quite a logical assumption because the picture had been exactly like Countess Kendy dressed for a costume ball, for her gown had been in the style of the eighties, old-fashioned now and covered with the frills of the past. He remembered that he had asked about this but had not been given an answer.
Now he also remembered that the picture seemed at one time to have been damaged. There had been signs of a repair to a diagonal gash that had once sliced the picture almost in two, right down to the little painted bouquets on the skirt. He had noticed it then but something in the gruff old man’s manner had prevented him from asking about it. Many years before he had heard that when Julie Ladossa had bolted Mihaly Gyeroffy had slashed at her portrait and flung it out of the window. Could Crookface’s picture have been that portrait? And if it was, how had it got to Keresztur? And why?
Had Kendy married that gentle deaf girl who was not of his class just because she was so like that other who had flung out of his life with a peal of demonic laughter some thirty years before?
These were all unconnected fragments from an untold story. For a moment Balint felt almost ashamed of himself, prying into matters that did not concern him. Let it all pass into oblivion, he said to himself. Let nobody know. One shouldn’t rake up the past. If there was one thing in a man’s life that should remain strictly private, and which was no concern of anyone else’s, it was his innermost feelings. Those were one’s own: to others they should be taboo.
He thought of his own love for Adrienne, a love that had now lasted ten years, and he was filled with happiness and gratitude. They had never misunderstood each other no matter what storms had afflicted their lives. Now it seemed they had reached port at last.
They Were Divided Page 36