Miklos Banffy: They Were Divided

Naturally this had been discussed frequently during the three days’ shooting at Jablanka and whenever the scandal had been mentioned it had always been in that bland, well-informed, unexaggerated, half-spoken, half-insinuated manner which was the well-bred style adopted by the Szent-Gyorgyi circle. On the last evening it had seemed to Balint that they could talk about nothing else and though, the year before, he had been fascinated by the political discussions in his cousins’ house, now his own inner turmoil prevented him from taking any interest in what they were saying. On that last evening he felt he could no longer stay talking politics with the group round the drawing room fire; and so, as soon as everyone had drunk their coffee, he left the room and went to see his aunt. It was, of course, right that he should do so as he would be leaving at dawn to catch the Budapest express and would have no other opportunity of taking his leave. But his hurried flight to Elise Szent-Gyorgyi’s own sitting-room was really because he could not bear to remain in the same room as little Lili whom he had just hurt so much. To reach his aunt’s rooms he had to pass once again through the library, and there, on the table, still lay the album of Forray’s travels, slightly askew, just as it had been left when Lili had pushed it aside and gone to the window. The big red and gold leather-bound volume glittered under the savage glare of the chandelier overhead and had seemed to him the corpus delicti — the proof of the crime he had just committed against both himself and her. His heart had constricted when he saw the book lying there in front of him.

His aunt Elise had been sitting in her usual chair which was protected from any draught by a glass screen. In front of her were two women guests from Vienna. Before he had come in they had talked only of unimportant Viennese society gossip but this had stopped when Balint entered the room. Then she had grabbed his hand in her own and forced him to sit down on a sofa beside her chair. For a moment neither aunt nor nephew had spoken. The two Austrian visitors had grasped at once that their hostess wanted a few words alone with Count Abady and so, after a few desultory sentences, uttered only so as not to make it look as if it were his arrival that had caused their departure, which would not have been polite, they took their leave saying that they hoped the Countess would forgive them but that they were expected at the bridge tables and had then disappeared from the room.

‘It is nice of you to come to me so early,’ said Balint’s aunt, who had been born a Gyeroffy in far-off Transylvania, and she looked closely up at him with her large brown eyes. ‘I love to talk to you. When you’re here I don’t feel quite so far from home!’

She had smiled and put her hand on Balint’s arm. He lifted it at once and put it to his lips. For a few moments neither had spoken and then Elise Szent-Gyorgyi had started enquiring after all her old friends and relations, starting with Balint’s mother. She asked after people she had not seen for more than twenty years and told her nephew little anecdotes about them, things that had happened during her girlhood, tales of country balls and May Day festivals and picnic outings to the forests of Radna. She asked after the father of the four Alvinczy boys because he had once been her favourite dancing partner — very handsome he had been, she said, and admitted having something of a crush on him while she was still in the schoolroom; and also after old Uncle Daniel Kendy, even then too fond of the brandy, who had been so much admired by all the young girls because he had been so good-looking and elegant and they had heard that he had cut a dash at the court of the Empress Eugénie and so was the first homme du monde any of them had ever met.

And so she had gone on reminiscing about her youth and her own home and letting Balint tell her everything he could recall that had happened to her old acquaintances. From time to time she had paused for a moment and imperceptibly the little pauses had grown longer. Balint had had the impression that behind her very real interest in everything he could tell her had lain something else, something that she had been turning over in her mind, uncertain, perhaps, how she could bring up the subject.

Balint had thought that she would probably ask about her other nephew, Laszlo Gyeroffy; but this time her mind had been on something else …

After a little time Countess Elise had fallen silent and had then seemed lost in her own thoughts. Then suddenly she had said, ‘You can have no idea how good it is to hear all this!’ and turning again to her nephew she took his hand and kept it in hers. She seemed to be looking into the far distance.

‘Do you know,’ she had gone on softly as if confiding in him some carefully guarded secret. ‘Do you know that after all these years I still feel that Transylvania is my real home, not here in Northern Hungary. I feel at home there; not here! The people there are my own kind, but here they are somehow like foreigners, like Austrians, like Viennese. Don’t misunderstand me, I am very happy here and my life with Antal beside me has always been a happy one. But that is because I have always loved him so much. We married for love, and I would have married him, and no one else, no matter how poor he might have been or what sort of life he led.’ Then she had paused for a moment before going on: ‘… but all this …’ and she made a wide circular gesture with her hand which somehow embraced, as clearly as if she had spelt it all out, the castle at Jablanka, the vast estates, their assured position in society, ‘all this … this is still not really me. It has always been strange. This world is not my world and has never really become so. Now that I look back on my life I can see that it has been our great love, and only that, which has made our marriage so happy. Not only my love, but his also. It is that which has made everything right and harmonious for both of us. It’s true. It is love, true love, which is the only thing which makes it possible to endure everything and which absolves everything. If we had not had it ours would have been a life of disagreements and bitterness for both of us.’

Then, as abruptly as she had begun, she fell silent again. After a moment or two she had given a light laugh and said, ‘Oh dear, how I do run on! Prattling away like anything … and such nonsense too. All that chatting about the past has made your old aunt think of … well … so many things.’

So this was what she had wanted to tell him, and for which she had had to prepare herself. She had spoken only so as to be of some help and consolation to him, so as to reassure him that although she had seen at once that he had failed to ask Lili to marry him and that he felt guilty about it, she at least sympathized and did not blame him. Somehow she had made it clear to him that she had understood his reasons perhaps even more clearly than he himself, and that somehow she knew not only that he was still in love with someone else but also that he instinctively thought of the charming Lili as an alien creature from another world. Balint had been deeply touched by his aunt’s delicacy and finesse and even more by the obvious love and goodness that had made her speak of such things. It had been a bitter hour for him and he had needed help and affection: he had been all the more grateful because he had sensed that for him, and him alone, Countess Szent-Gyorgyi had revealed something so intimate of her life and feelings that she would never had admitted to anyone else; and she had done it only because she knew that he had needed help.

Aunt and nephew stayed together for a long time in the cosy intimate little sitting-room, all cushions and soft upholstery, that Countess Elise had made for herself. The carpets were deep and soft, and the furniture comfortable and unpretentious. The walls were covered in some dark material. It was in complete contrast to the grandeur of the rest of the castle where the huge white and gold rooms were filled with elaborate baroque furniture much of which had been gilded. Everything at Jablanka was perfect of its kind, as well as being very grand … but it was also, perhaps, a trifle cold. In the little private sitting-room where the mistress of the house had made her nest, everything, whether large or small, was a souvenir of her Transylvanian girlhood. Most of the quantity of pictures came from her old home at Szamos-Kozard and she even had two little oils of the old manor house before her brother had rebuilt it. There were watercolour portraits of her Gyeroffy parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles; and innumerable little pictures of children, mostly relations, were scattered all round the room, on tables, window sills, and on hanging shelves, along with countless small objects, photographs and miniatures, all of which held for her some memory of times long past and cousins long since departed. All of this had spoken unequivocally to Balint of his aunt’s deep and ineradicable love for her homeland … and also of the spiritual barrier she had never really vanquished that stood between her real self and this grandiose westernized world in which she had lived so many years. That evening, for the first time, Balint had understood the little room’s almost symbolic meaning.