Miklos Banffy - They Were Divided

Early in the afternoon Balint’s car drove the full circle of the horseshoe-shaped entrance court with its enclosing walls topped by baroque stone statues, and rumbled swiftly through the arched gateway.

He was driven so fast that in ten minutes they had reached the main road, but there they had to slow down, for the highway was crowded with people from Torda and wagons loaded with bales of hay. They too were on their way to the railway station at Aranyos-Gyeres.

From time to time the throng was so thick that the car had to be stopped. Everyone on the road was a reservist who had been called to the colours. They were mostly in groups of between fifty and sixty men, but sometimes they were much larger, perhaps of more than a hundred. They marched in military fashion, four to a row, and on each side of the road stood women and girls crying as they waited to see their menfolk, husbands, sons and lovers, on their way to the station. Among them were some old men looking for the last time at their grandsons. Some of the young men carried bundles or trunks, others had piled their luggage on little one-horse carts.

At the head of each group there marched gypsy bands and men carrying banners. Some of the newly mobilized soldiers carried flasks of country brandy, others danced gaily in front of the bands singing as they went. But no one had drunk too much, and indeed most of the men had a dignified, serious mien, soberly doing with good-natured calm what they knew to be expected of them.

Balint had put on his uniform, and every time he passed one of these groups they would break out into enthusiastic cheering.

‘Hurrah for the war!’ they cried. ‘Hurrah for the war!’

Some of them recognized him, and then they called out: ‘Hurrah for Abady!’ and again ‘Hurrah for the war!’ They all felt full of courage, and were gay and confident: only the women sobbed quietly and dabbed at their eyes.

Balint saluted every band, his heart constricting with pain each time he did so; but he could only acknowledge their greetings and be touched by their simple confidence. He could not echo their cheers, but sat upright with his hand to his cap as he drove past group after group.

It was difficult to get through Torda, for there was an immense crowd in the market-place selecting mountain ponies — pretty little animals, mostly dapple-greys with tiny hard hooves, hardy and willing, crossed with Arab blood. They were needed to draw the machine guns and man the mountain batteries on the Bosnian front. What marvellous animals, thought Balint, and not one will return. They’ll all perish, every one.

When he finally got through the town the sun was already low in the sky.

The car raced up to the Dobodo Pass. Here they had to stop again for at the junction with the main road there came all the people from Torda-Turia and Szentmarton, with banners and music like the others. Now there were many more women as well as old people and children, who Balint thought had probably come because they knew they could have a rest at Torda before finally saying goodbye to their men.

Balint got out and sat at the edge of the road looking down the valley of the Aranyos river. It was bathed in sunshine and when he took up his binoculars he found he could even see the bend of the Maros far away. There he could just glimpse a small stand of pine trees, dark indigo-blue in the pale-blue distance.

It was the garden at Maros-Szilvas, which had once been the property of Dinora Malhuysen. As a very young man he had often ridden over to visit her, usually at night. What a long time ago it had been — almost twenty years! He wondered what had become of her, what Fate had held in store for poor little Dinora?

To his right, beyond the shining ribbon of the Aranyos, on the edge of the Keresztes-Mezo lowlands, lay Denestornya.

The hill on which the castle stood was covered with trees and shrubs. Here and there could be seen parts of the long walls and something seemed to be glistening in the reflected sunshine. Balint wondered if it was part of the western facade, perhaps the glazing on the upper veranda, but he could not be sure and even thought that it might be only his imagination. The green patina of the conical copper roofs of the corner towers was plain to see, and these, no matter from what distance they could be glimpsed, gave a clear impression of the size of the vast building. It was like a great stone peninsula jutting out from the wave-crests of the surrounding trees. The long walls spread out in beauty, and the thin white strip to the right formed by the enclosure of the horseshoe court, and the little rectangle of the church half hidden among the confused roofs of the village seemed strangely small between the massive proportions of the castle and of his grandfather’s manor house nearby.

Balint again bade farewell to all that lay before him, to the beauty by which he had been surrounded since his childhood, and to all those dreams which had come to such a sad end.

By now those merry bands of eager young men had passed on their way. Gone were the farm carts and baggage. Balint was alone. He returned to the car and drove on.

The road descended steeply into the valley, which was now in deep shadow. He crossed a bridge and then there came a sharp bend.

Here too he was assailed by memories, for it was just there that two years before, on returning to Denestornya, full of happiness after the evening when he had seen Adrienne again at the performance of Madam Butterfly at Kolozsvar, he had met Gazsi Kadacsay. Once again he fancied he could see Gazsi as he cantered towards him on his well-fed little pony. Poor Gazsi! His house was not visible from there, that house where his unhappy friend had killed himself from despair at his wasted life and because the culture for which he had yearned had seemed forever beyond his reach.

Banishing such thoughts, he drove on, determined not to waste time regretting the past.

When he reached the foothills of the Felek the car was again delayed because the road was everywhere encumbered by droves of white oxen and bullocks on their way to the slaughterhouse where they would be killed to feed the army.

He drove on slowly, for he often had to stop because the road was so crowded. About a hundred yards from the next pass the engine boiled — white steam spurting out of the radiator. As there was no water to be had nearby the chauffeur went back down the road to find a well. Balint walked on up to the summit to wait there until rejoined by the car.

In front of him lay a wonderful landscape in the centre of which was Kolozsvar. To the right the Szamos curved away until, at Apahida, it disappeared to the north. On his left lay the valley of Gyalu and beyond it a range of snow-capped mountains.

Behind him the sun went down below the horizon. But there was still light enough to see what lay before him.

He leaned against the stone wall by the road, still consciously bidding farewell to all he saw.

Not far away below there was a butter-yellow building beside the Monostor Road. It was the Uzdy villa, and beside it Balint could make out the break in the palings of the garden, just where lay the little gate to the bridge through which, in happier times, he had so often passed on his way to visit Adrienne.

Not far away was the green-tiled roof of the asylum where Pal Uzdy had died and, a little to the right, was the theatre from which he had fled so precipitously on finding Adrienne in the next box on the night of the opera. There too was the hill of the Harzongard where he had walked with Adrienne in the first spring of their ten years of love for each other.