Miklos Banffy - They Were Divided

Sometimes when she disappeared from the store her father and mother would start calling for her, and then she would sneak home, making sure that she always appeared to be coming from somewhere quite other than where she had really been. When she went to Laszlo’s she would cross the piece of empty land between the houses through the gate that her father had put in the hedge when he had rented it some years before; but she would never come back the same way, for if she had she knew her parents would guess where she had been. A moment or two after they started calling she would reappear as if coming from the stream, or from the roadway, or even from the house opposite; and even though she sometimes got a slap on the face she never let on where she had been.

Her love for Gyeroffy was like that of a faithful hound.

Of course she was still a child and the deep love she felt for the young man was utterly innocent, though she experienced all the ecstasy and suffering of a grown woman. If Laszlo spoke to her she was happy, and she suffered and felt excluded when he talked to other people.

She loathed Fabian. On those occasions when Laszlo and Fabian went into Ujvar together and did not come back until the next morning, she knew instinctively that they had been enjoying themselves with other women — horrible, coarse creatures, no doubt — and she was consumed by jealousy and hurt rage and cried all night. The following day she would try her best to be angry and not keep glancing at Laszlo’s house; and she would decide not to go if he should call out for her. But a single word or a casual glance from him was enough to make her forget all her resentment, and then she would once again be his faithful doglike slave. And yet, behind this unthinking bondage, there was something else — a young girl’s perennial curiosity about what the act of love was really like. On the days after his trips to the town Regina did all she could to get close enough to him, either in his own house or else in her father’s shop, to be able to look closely at him, to study his face and hands and how he moved; and she would lift her delicate straight little nose and sniff the air around him: and when she thought that she had seen or sensed some legacy of that night spent away from home, a strange scent or a bite-mark on his skin, she would become strangely upset and her throat would constrict. It was unspeakably painful … and yet mysterious and attractive too.

Just after the New Year a covered carriage drew up outside Laszlo’s house. It was nine o’clock at night, and Fabian had come to celebrate his Saint’s Day. With him he had brought a huge cold turkey, some savoury biscuits and sweet cakes and a large hamper of brandy and cheap champagne. He also brought two women. The village gypsy musician was sent for at once and he played standing in the kitchen doorway as there was no place for him in Laszlo’s room where the four of them dined and danced and sang. Fabian himself always needed plenty of space, for he loved to jump up and hurl himself about, sometimes dancing with both women at once, throwing himself about with wide-flung arms and all the time yodelling at the top of his voice.

News of the party spread quickly through the village and soon there was a group of neighbours gathered near the house to listen to the music and find out what was going on. They were mostly women, and they cross-questioned the driver about the loose women he had brought and were deliciously scandalized by what he had to tell. Some of the younger boys and girls started dancing on the frozen snow-covered ground; but it was bitterly cold and soon they all went home.

After dinner was over the Bischitz family always sat in the large room behind the shop in which the family lived and ate. Here the shopkeeper kept his account books and also any special delicacies such as sugar and spices and dried figs which might have absorbed the smells of dried fish or pipe tobacco if these had been kept in the store-room next door. On this evening old Bischitz sat reading a newspaper while his fat wife dozed in an armchair, worn-out from the heavy labour of the daily chores. Regina had already put her younger brothers and sisters to bed and was folding away the tablecloth and napkins when their servant Juliska rushed in and disturbed this peaceful domestic scene with the scandalous news of what was happening over at The Count’s house. Neither of the old people were in the least impressed, and indeed the shopkeeper himself, angered at the thought that the drinks had not been bought from him, bawled out the servant for having left the washing-up to go sight-seeing, promised her a good slap, chased her back to the kitchen and then turned to his wife and said: ‘Come on, bedtime!’

Regina stood by the cupboard rigid with shock. She was very pale and her parents had to call her twice before she heard them.

Regina lay quite still next to her sleeping six-year-old sister, but she could not sleep. One o’clock went by, and two o’clock, and still she lay there, her ears straining for the faint sound of the violin music. At length that stopped and for a long time she could hear nothing, not even the sound of her parents’ breathing.

What was happening over there? What could be happening?

At length Regina could stand it no more. She slipped out of bed, very carefully so as not to wake her sister, felt for her clothes and somehow managed to get into them in the dark. Then she felt for her mother’s shawl which was always hung on a hook behind the door, wrapped it round her and stole to the front door.

It was a dark night with no moon and all that could be seen was a faint bluish glow on the snow. So as not to wake anyone in the house with the sound of her steps on the wooden floor, she put on her shoes only when she was already outside and on the last rung of the veranda steps. The shoes she wore were a pair of once fashionable high-heeled but sadly worn ladies’ button boots which would have reached up to mid-calf if most of the buttons had not been missing. They had previously been worn by her mother until it had not seemed worth mending them any more.

Regina moved slowly across the frozen yard, her feet skidding on the hard-trodden surface of the snow. She reached the corner of the woodshed and, from the gate in the fence, looked across the empty field towards Laszlo’s house. There was a light in the window, a sinister reddish light; and to the girl it seemed as if the wicked flames of hell were beckoning to her and calling for her to come and look.

Clutching the heavy shawl around her she stumbled across the field in which her father had been growing potatoes. Where these had been lifted the earth had been left in uneven little mounds and ridges and holes so that, as the young girl headed straight for the light in the window, she stumbled and slipped and fell frequently to her knees, as her thin, dark figure made its tortured way across. If anyone had been watching it would have looked as if she were battling against a hurricane, staggering to left and to right as she struggled on through the dark night.

Finally she got there. There was not a sound to be heard and only the light that filtered out through the flower-like hoarfrost on the window-panes showed that anyone was still awake inside.

Regina crept up and pressed her face against the lowest pane, despite the fact that it was almost opaque from the ice-crystals that had formed an incrustation of dense arabesques on the glass. Obsessed by the need to know what was happening inside she would have broken the glass itself if that had been the only way. She had to know, she had to! That was why she had come. She started to breathe on the window-pane and then to rub it with a corner of the shawl. Several times she had to repeat the process until at last a small patch at the centre began to come clear as she managed to melt a square no larger than her own little hand.