They Were Divided

by Miklos Banffy

  Until death do us part.

  Chapter Three

  BALINT NEVER GAVE JULIE LADOSSA’S MESSAGE to Crookface Kendy. In fact he had never intended to, but his conversation with the ‘Contessa’ did have one other result.

  When the former Countess Gyeroffy was asking him about her son, Balint felt ashamed that he could tell her nothing about Laszlo except for a few generalities and ashamed that he had not thought about his cousin and childhood friend for many months. It was true that this was not his fault but Laszlo’s, who had rebuffed every gesture made towards him. The latest rejection had come when Balint had sent him a telegram to let him know that Countess Roza had just died and to offer to send over a car so that Laszlo could attend the funeral. Laszlo had not replied, not even with a message of condolence, nothing. Balint had been so offended by this that at the time he had felt he would never be able to forgive the cousin who had once been such a close friend. Now, however, he decided to bury his resentment and go over to see Laszlo and try once again to become friends with him.

  As soon as he got home to Denestornya he drove over to Kozard. The weather, as so often in Transylvania at the beginning of December, was sunny and mild.

  He arrived about midday at the little house in which he knew Laszlo was living. The door of wooden laths that led through the crumbling fence was open. It looked as if it was never closed. Balint walked straight into the house. The first room he entered was the kitchen, and through this could be seen a room in total disorder, an unmade plank bed at one side, a rough wooden table nearby, a country cape of rough cloth hung on one wall and under it lay an ancient pair of peasant’s boots. None of this, thought Balint, could have belonged to Laszlo, so he walked through to the next room.

  This was not much better, though the pinewood furniture had at least been polished. It looked as if it had come originally from one of the servants’ rooms at the manor house. On the chest of drawers lay a gun-case of ornate brass-bound leather engraved with Laszlo’s name inaccurately spelt ‘Count Ladislas Gieroffy’. This room had been tidied, the floor properly scoured and the windows opened to let in the air.

  Balint walked round the house hoping to find Laszlo sitting on the sunny side. He wasn’t there. There was no one there. Then Balint saw that there was a girl standing at the far end of the garden, an adolescent girl who was washing laundry in the stream. He walked down to where she stood on the bank dipping the clothes in the water, soaping them and then scrubbing what she held on a little wooden board.

  The girl was astonishingly lovely, so beautiful that Balint was lost for words when he finally came face to face with her. She had large doe-like eyes fringed by dark lashes and her long eyebrows were so fine they might have been painted on with a brush. Her face was a perfect oval and her skin both pale and rose-coloured. Her red lips were full, as red as blood, and she was as slim as a reed. The sleeves of her dress were turned up to the elbow and her smooth satiny arms were as rosy as her face and neck. Only her hands were roughened by hard work. She wore a kerchief tied round her head like all the peasants of that region, but her clothes had been made to be worn in the city, even if now they were worn and patched. Her apron was in rags and her bare feet were slipped into an old pair of ladies’ button boots which would have reached to mid-calf if most of the buttons had not disappeared years before. No matter how old and dirty her clothes the girl was so beautiful that one forgot everything but that.

  Balint greeted her and then said, ‘I’m looking for Laszlo Gyeroffy. Do you know where I can find him?’

  The girl looked at him with a scornful expression on her beautiful face.

  ‘What do you want of him? Why are you looking for him?’ she asked sullenly.

  ‘I am his cousin, Balint Abady.’

  The girl made a little curtsy, as good manners demanded.

  ‘I am Regina Bischitz.’ Then she added, ‘My father owns the village shop.’

  ‘Well, now we know each other,’ said Balint with a light laugh, ‘perhaps you could tell me where Laszlo is?’

  Regina shrugged.

  ‘He’s not here. They took him to Szamos-Ujvar.’

  ‘They took him?’

  ‘Yes. That Fabian, he took him …’ and grabbing a shirt that was both filthy and torn, she held it up for a moment before her and then plunged it into the stream, wrung it out and started to rub it with soap.

  ‘Fabian? Who is this Fabian?’

  ‘Ugh!’ said the girl. ‘He is a bad man, that Fabian! He always takes him with him … and there he makes him drink, and … and carouse … and it is so bad for him. He’s a worthless scoundrel, that Fabian!’

  ‘If I knew where he was at Szamos-Ujvar I’d drive in and find him.’

  ‘You can’t go there, not there! It’s terrible!’ cried Regina, and her eyes filled with tears. ‘That Fabian, he takes him to see bad women, wicked women … that’s how he’s ruining him. The Count is so ill, so very ill and that’s why … and he makes him drink and drink … and …’

  She stopped without saying the last word but balled up her hand into a fist and made as if she were hitting someone with it. Then she picked up the shirt again and started to rub it with such fury that if it had been the hated Fabian it would have been as if she were doing her best to choke all life out of what she held in her hands.

  She turned away from Balint and, as she did so, she bent forward and huge tears fell from her face like a rain of large diamonds on the wet cloth she was holding so fiercely.

  There was a fallen tree-trunk facing the girl. Balint sat down on it and waited for quite a long time. Finally the girl finished her work and stood there panting in front of him. Then he asked again when Laszlo would be back.

  ‘It’s no use waiting for him,’ said the girl. ‘Even if he does come soon he’ll be in a dreadful state, dreadful. He’ll mess up the room again … and I scrubbed it this morning early. Oh, I can do it! I do everything, the washing-up, the scrubbing, the airing, everything!’

  She seemed overcome with sorrow. Then she sat down on the edge of a little bench, with her back very straight and her head inclined, staring at nothing.

  ‘Doesn’t he have any other servant?’

  ‘I am not his servant, I … I do it because I want to. I can’t bear to see … to see a gentleman like the Count … such a great gentleman … to see him … so uncared-for …’

  ‘Didn’t he have an old man called Marton looking after him? What happened to him?’

  The girl waved her hand in the air.

  ‘He’s useless. He just cooks and cleans the Count’s boots, nothing else. He’s gone off again now, probably to lay snares in the woods. It’s the only thing that interests him. I do everything here because I can’t bear to see the filth he’d live in if I didn’t. No one knows I do it. It has to be in secret. I can only come when my father isn’t around and can’t see me leaving the shop. I can work here today because he’s gone to Kolozsvar. Most times I can only do it at night, or very early in the morning, because if he catches me I get a beating.’

  She stopped and again looked straight ahead of her.

  The kerchief fell from her head and her long Titian hair fluttered in the slight breeze. Sitting on the bench she was like a statue with her firm breasts straining the thin cloth of her blouse. She was very beautiful, a rose of Sharon not yet fully open but no longer a bud. Tears brimmed under her long lashes and then again rolled down her cheeks.

  ‘How old are you, child?’ asked Balint, trying to distract her from whatever she was thinking.

  ‘Fifteen,’ she muttered, but still went on staring in front of her. Then suddenly she broke out in a wail of complaint, though Balint could not tell whether she had sensed the sympathy in him or whether she was so filled with sorrow that she could not keep it to herself.

  She spoke in broken phrases, with no words directly connected.

  From her poured the story of how, some five years before, when Laszlo had been confined to his bed with pneumonia,
she had watched by his bedside and nursed him back to health. Since then she had done everything for him, even stealing brandy when his credit at her father’s shop had been exhausted. Soap too, and paraffin.

  She did everything. Always more and more, but always in vain, quite in vain.

  ‘In vain? What do you mean, in vain?’ asked Balint in astonishment.

  ‘Just that! In vain. He doesn’t speak to me … except when I bring him brandy. Then he just says “You’re a good little girl, Regina!” or “I’m glad you came, Regina!” But it’s not praise for me. It’s all he says, ever … and it’s only for the brandy, not for me.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sure all right. He accepts everything I do, but I never get a word of thanks. To him it’s nothing more than his due, nothing out of the ordinary that I should clean for him, tidy him up when he’s dead drunk, rub his arms and his legs with that horrid black ointment he has to have for that … that trouble he caught in Szamos-Ujvar.’

  Now, at last, she jumped up, full with rebellion. ‘But me? Why, he doesn’t even pat my cheek!’

  Balint wanted to reassure her and said, ‘I am sure that’s only because he thinks you’re still barely more than a child, Regina. He’s probably very fond of you in his own way.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’ she asked eagerly as she sat down again. Then, a shy smile came into her face and she said, ‘Yes, I suppose so, in his way. To him I’m just a sort of household pet who’s useful to him. I am the only person he talks to. He tells me – oh, so much about his life … and to me it is some little reward because he tells me about such wonderful things, and in such beautiful words.’ For a moment she seemed lost in thought, and then added sadly, ‘But since he’s got so thin he doesn’t talk much any more.’

  Taken by surprise Abady said: ‘He’s got very thin? Since when?’

  ‘Just in the last few weeks. Of course he hardly eats at all. It’s hard for him to keep it down!’

  Now Balint started to question the girl as to whether Laszlo was seeing a doctor and what were his symptoms? Did he, for example, have little patches of red on his cheekbones? Regina answered all his questions quite intelligently. The doctor, she said, came every week. The Count coughed a lot, but not more than before. Those red spots? Yes, they did appear if he had drunk a lot… but otherwise? Maybe yes, at other times too.

  Balint did not speak for a few moments. Then he said, ‘We ought to get him into a sanatorium. I could see that he was taken good care of… and he’d get trained nursing.’

  ‘Take him away? Away from here? cried Regina, distracted with fear, with terror lest they should take him away from her so that she would never see him again, never ever again. No, not that! Never that, her heart would break.

  Regina now sensed that she had said too much and that she’d somehow endangered the man who had become her only reason for living. Now, at once, she had to cover up the truth for otherwise they would take Laszlo away from her; and so the words poured out of her, swiftly trying to take the sting out of anything serious she might have said: the doctor had praised her nursing and said it was quite adequate, and not only the doctor from Iklod who saw Laszlo every week, but also the chief consultant from Szamos-Ujvar who came over from time to time; also there was somebody else who saw to it that the Count was properly looked after. Dr Simay he was called, the same man who sent her father twenty florins every week for Laszlo’s food and who also paid the chemist’s bills.

  ‘Who is this Dr Simay?’

  ‘He’s a lawyer at Szamos-Ujvar. My father writes to him whenever … whenever something is needed.’

  ‘So he really is being properly looked after? All the time?’

  ‘Oh, yes! Ever since he was ill with pneumonia,’ insisted Regina.

  Until then she had stuck fairly closely to the truth, but now she felt impelled to lie. Resolutely she then said, ‘All the doctors think he’s getting on very well and … and soon will be quite himself again.’

  Abady was surprised.

  ‘But only just now you said he was losing weight and couldn’t keep his food down and you were afraid he’d soon die?’

  Regina smiled.

  ‘Well, yes, I did say that, but I didn’t really mean it like that.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. I … I … was upset that he’d gone … gone there again… for that… and so I said more than I meant. But it really isn’t as bad as that, really it isn’t.’

  Young Regina played her chosen part so well that Balint believed her when she made out she had exaggerated everything out of jealousy and anger. Still, he did not want to leave without establishing some sort of contact with his old friend.

  ‘Look, my dear,’ he said as he took some money and a visiting card from his wallet, ‘I won’t wait for Laszlo this time, but I’m going to leave these two hundred crowns with you because I know I can trust you to use it for Laszlo if something happens and then you’ll be able to buy whatever he needs. And here is my address. If he does take a turn for the worse, or if I can be of help in any way whatever, please send me a telegram at once. You will, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course!’ she cried. ‘Of course I will; at once. I’ll send for you at once!’ and, as she spoke the words, inwardly she swore to herself, Never! Never! Never! Just so that you can take him away from me? Never that! Never ever that!

  They shook hands near the stream. Balint had barely turned away when she was already back at work at her washing. Nevertheless she glanced covertly back at him several times, fearing that he might change his mind and wait for his cousin after all.

  If he did that he would certainly take him away from her, especially if Laszlo came back dead drunk, for then it would be obvious that everything she had said about his getting better had been a lie.

  She looked many times in the direction of the road until the engine had been started and the car driven swiftly away towards Kolozsvar. Only then did she relax.

  Chapter Four

  THAT YEAR, FOR THE FIRST TIME, Balint Spent Christmas alone, but he consoled himself by thinking that it would only be that once.

  In the years to come Adrienne would be there; and, if God was kind, others too, more and more.

  For the great household at Denestornya everything passed as it always had, with the same ceremonies as there had been during Countess Roza’s lifetime. Nothing had changed: the tree was placed in the centre of the dining table, around it heaps of presents on the white tablecloth that had been arranged, as before, by Mrs Tothy and Mrs Baczo. The old butler, Peter, stood by the door, as in every other year. There was one difference: Countess Roza’s throne-like gilt chair was not in its usual place.

  Instead Balint stood, slightly to one side just as if his mother had still been there, and handed out the presents to the women and children who came in one by one just as they always had. He wanted no break in the tradition so that next Christmas Adrienne would continue what Roza Abady had done all her life.

  When everyone had left and most of the myriad candles in the chandeliers and in the sconces had been snuffed out, Balint stayed there for a long time. He walked from end to end of the immense hall, stopping before the display cabinets, gazing deeply at all the family treasures they contained and also at the objects on the tables that had been placed in the deep window embrasures. They all had their part in his past and that of the family. He looked at everything pensively, almost absentmindedly. It was a strangely varied collection ranging from exquisite pieces of china from Meissen and Vienna to a huge ancient lock of rusty iron which had once fastened the castle’s portcullis. There were also some things which were frankly cheap or ugly, but these were souvenirs of Countess Roza’s youth and had been kept for the sentimental memories they evoked. There was a pottery figure of a girl whose skirt would oscillate if touched, a china pug with bulging eyes which had been given to his mother as a child and treasured by her ever since and so placed side by side with the precious cups of gold and silver
and the pieces of fine porcelain – objects that had been handed down from generations of former Abadys.

  Balint knew the history of each object: and he swore then that everything must always stay as it always had been.

  After a long time he went down to the ground floor. There he put on a warm coat and went out into the dark night. Across the courtyard and down to the churchyard where a new Abady vault had been built up against the church when, at the end of the eighteenth century, there had been no more room in the crypt beneath the nave. Here were resting the remains of Balint’s grandparents, of his father and, since the previous spring, also of his mother.

  The vault was locked, but Balint had had no intention of going in. He only wanted to go as far as the door so as, symbolically, to tell Countess Roza that the Christmas Eve ceremony had been held and that he had done it, and always would do it, exactly as she had. He remained there only for a minute or two. Then he said a silent prayer and walked back up to the castle.

  Time went slowly by. Adrienne came back from Lausanne rather later than she had planned because little Clemmie had had some recurrent bouts of fever and Adrienne had not wanted to leave until the girl had been thoroughly checked by the doctors. Finally they declared that there was no cause for anxiety, that this sort of thing often occurred with growing girls and soon would disappear of itself. Nothing to worry about, they said.

  So Adrienne came home reassured.

  There was a great deal to do as soon as she was back. She and Balint had many plans to make. With their architect they worked on the detailed plans of that part of the castle in which they were going to live. Discussions were held with contractors for installing running water and electric light, hitherto unknown at Denestornya despite the family’s great means. Decisions had to be made about whether the necessary power should come from motor generators or from turbines driven by the mill. All sorts of new projects occupied them every day.