Miklos Banffy - They Were Divided

Under the shoes was a thick envelope, quite small, only about three inches wide, wrapped in yellowing paper, tied with string and sealed at every flap with black wax. On it was written ‘ To be burned after my death ,’Above the words was a cross and the date: 1837. The writing was Count Peter’s.

They must be letters, a woman’s letters, for their edges could be felt through the paper covering. Inside could be felt something else, which seemed to be a little oval frame with a glass front. Balint felt sure it must be the miniature of the letter-writer. Now he recalled what his grandfather’s old school-friend, the actor Minya Gal, had told him. Though it had been ten years before, he remembered it well. In guarded terms the old man had told the story of Peter Abady’s first love, of a tragic passion that had been shattered by an enforced parting, and how after it his grandfather went off on his travels and no one had heard from him for nearly three years.

It had been an ancient romance whose relics were imprisoned in that carefully fastened envelope, and one that had no doubt ended in a death, which was perhaps what the cross had signified.

It was lucky that he had managed at last to open the drawer for now Balint would be able to ensure that the old count’s long-kept secret could be kept from the prying eyes of strangers. He would see to it that his grandfather’s wish was respected. Putting the slippers in his pocket he gathered up the packet of letters and the few documents of his own that he wanted to destroy and made his way up to the castle.

He decided to wait until the evening when the fire would be burning well.

The windows were open and outside it was dark. Balint’s lamp was set down far from the draught and where he sat all light seemed to come from the fire.

First Balint threw all his own writings into the flames and, when these were blazing up, he threw on top the slippers and his grandfather’s envelope, which did not seem to want to catch fire but only just smouldered at the edges. Taking up the poker he tried to push a hole in the envelope so that air would get in. The flames caught, ran along the string and the envelope opened of itself. A tiny coloured miniature slipped out and fell into the embers below. The glass shattered, the metal frame curled up in the heat and in the few seconds before it was consumed by fire he could see the face of a charming young woman who seemed to be smiling up at him.

Balint sat by the fireplace for a long time. He waited until everything had been reduced to ashes, until there was no trace left of the throbbing of two young hearts almost a century before nor of their secret love and hidden tragedy. The likeness of his grandfather still hung on the wall of the small sitting-room — an early Barabas in an Empire frame — but that of the other had just been burnt and it had smiled at him before crumbling to ashes.

The next morning he woke early; it was the last morning he would spend in his ancestral home for a long time, perhaps for ever.

He went to say goodbye to his favourite animals, firstly to the horses out at grass in the hillside pastures, then to the young stallions and then to the mares in their separate paddocks in the park. To each he gave some sugar as a token of his farewell and became very moved by the affection of his old hunters, and especially when Honeydew, Gazsi Kadacsay’s thoroughbred, came up and rubbed his face with her soft velvety muzzle.

He made the round of the gardens and then walked up to the summerhouse on the hill above the castle. From there he toured the kitchen gardens and the orchards.

Finally he returned to the house and went into almost every room in that vast building, including his mother’s apartments, which had been left unchanged since her death. Everywhere he went, he stopped in front of all of the treasures of art and ancient pieces of furniture, and, above all, stared hard at the many family portraits. In the billiard-room were hung great-grandfathers and great-great-grandfathers in their wigs and powdered hair, great-grandmothers holding tiny bunches of flowers or a little mirror in their delicate tapering fingers. There were also many of more distant relations, young and old, and some of children, boys little more than toddlers, clad in silken skirts but already sporting Hungarian fur hats.

He went the round of the mirror-fronted bookcases in the library and locked up two of them that had been left open so that the magic circle of looking-glass in that round tower room should remain unbroken.

From the billiard-room he passed into the great first-floor dining hall. Through five of the tall windows the sun shone blindingly bright on the polished wooden floor and glinted on the gilded surface of the showcases and the ormolu feet of the Chinese lacquer cabinets that stood by the walls. The contrasting shadows in the ceiling threw the baroque carved plaster into high relief. Balint stopped in front of one of the pair of copper samovars that stood on the wide serving tables and caressed it lovingly. Then he gently stroked the little white porcelain figure of one of his great-great-uncles in Hungarian gala dress. He looked into the showcases with their heterogeneous collection of many little objects, greeted the china pug and the dancing girl, and then went on through the blue salon to the yellow drawing-room; and everywhere he went he murmured a soft farewell, to the four famille verte K’ang Hsi plates that had been set in gilded bronze in the seventeenth century, to the clusters of glass grapes in the early Murano chandeliers, to the sets of Delft vases and above all to the full-size portrait of Denes Abady, painted by Mytens in the green and gold uniform of the King’s Master of Horse; and then to those of his immediate forebears, his father and mother and grandmother, that gazed at him from every wall.

And all the time he said goodbye to many childhood memories. It was on the sharp corner of this table that he had banged his head when only five years old and he had stood just there when his mother had swiftly pressed a silver coin to his forehead. It was on the corner of that carpet that he had tripped, upset the lamp and nearly caused a fire. Here, in this armchair, his grandfather had always sat, with crossed legs, when he came to lunch at the castle every Wednesday. Balint had sat on the floor at his feet and played with his tin soldiers, and from there he had first noticed that Count Peter wore soft half-boots under his trousers and how amazed he had been by the sight, not then knowing that it had been the fashion until the first half of the nineteenth century.

He opened a door at the far end of the room. It led to a small staircase and, beyond this, to the wing that he had started to modernize in the spring. The work had been well under way until he had had it stopped by telegram from Salzburg. He stopped there, feeling he could not bear ever again to see those rooms where he would have lived with Adrienne, to gaze upon anything associated with those dreams of happiness, the spacious bedroom, the day and night nurseries for those heirs of his body that would now never be born.

Resolutely, but with a sombre air, he turned and walked quickly away, back through the drawing-rooms and the dining-hall. Then he descended the wide stone stairs, with their rococo stucco ceiling and ancient faded Gobelins tapestries. It was a stairway fit for kings.

He went down very slowly, keeping very carefully to the very centre of the carpet; step after step, solemnly and slowly until he arrived in the dark gloom of the entrance hall, stone-faced, like a man entering his own tomb.