Miklos Banffy - They Were Divided

He took her to the Central Hotel and saw her to her room, saying that he would fetch her in his car at eight-thirty the following morning.

‘Are you taking anyone else?’ she asked.

‘No. Only you, Aunt Julie.’

At that last word she turned her head away abruptly. Then, very quickly, she muttered, ‘Goodnight!’ and disappeared into her room.

Balint returned home on foot. As he went he was assailed by many memories of childhood and of his years at school when he and Laszlo had lodged together at the Theresianum in Vienna. His heart contracted with sorrow and he was so overcome that tears filled his eyes. He longed for Adrienne’s comforting presence, but she had had to leave again for Lausanne some five days before as they had wired her that her daughter was ill again and that she should come to be with her. If Adrienne had been at home he could have gone straight to her and told her of his sadness, and she would have listened and understood and comforted him; but she was not there and he had no one to whom he could pour out what was in his heart.

He walked on until he reached the Abady town house, but when he reached the entrance he stopped, knowing that he would not sleep. Perhaps a long walk would help calm him, he thought, and so, even though a slight rain had started, he turned away and quite involuntarily headed for the Monostor road, towards the Uzdy villa. For a long time he stood there, by the bridge that led to the park, and then, after wandering for a while down the tree-lined alleys, he made his way back to the centre of the town. He had been walking for more than an hour and a half.

As he entered the market square he stopped, startled. A tall dark woman was standing on the sidewalk in front of the church. She just stood there without moving, apparently staring at the main entrance, lit up by one of the streetlights.

Balint had recognized her at once: it was Julie Ladossa.

Holding her voluminous coat tightly around her, she stood there like a figure of stone; and Balint wondered how long she had been there and if, like himself, she had been wandering about in the dark night ever since they had parted earlier that evening.

He turned swiftly away in case she should catch a glimpse of him and think that he was spying on her. Balint now took a turn through the streets of the old town and when he finally found himself in the passage beside the Town Hall which gave onto the market square, he looked again towards the church.

The dark shape was still there, just as before, motionless in the slight drizzle. Was she going to stay there all night?

The street in front of the little house at Kozard had been deserted when Balint had arrived the previous day: now it was thronged with people. All the village folk were standing there waiting.

The road was muddy, but the rain had stopped and so everyone could wait without getting wet.

The Bischitz husband and wife were there, dressed in all their finery as if for the Sabbath; and Fabian was strutting about giving orders in a stentorian voice. Old Marton was hovering disconsolate near the house. Only Regina was nowhere to be seen.

The entire Azbej family had turned up — Mrs Azbej, short, fat, full-bosomed, with several double chins; the Azbej children, short and dark, with eyes like tiny black plums, the image of their father; and the dishonest little lawyer himself, all self-importance, strutting about playing the host and receiving the eminent mourners as they arrived.

He had already welcomed the chief judge of the district and the doctor from Iklod and led them towards the ramshackle barn that stood in a corner of the manor house grounds.

That morning the coffin had been brought there and set up on a bier, according to Dr Simay’s instructions. He had ordered it so because there would not have been enough room for the mourners to pay their last respects in Laszlo’s little cottage. The inside of the barn had been decorated, again on Simay’s orders, with branches of pine cut from the woods that Mihaly Gyeroffy had planted but which now belonged to Azbej, as the little lawyer did not fail to point out so as to show everyone what a generous fellow he was.

When Abady arrived with Julie Ladossa, Azbej hurried forward on his short legs to greet them, bowing obsequiously, the image of grief-stricken sorrow, even though he had no idea who the lady was that Balint had brought with him. ‘Such a blow! Such a terrible blow!’ he whispered with his tiny mouth, holding his hat in one hand and with the other repeatedly wiping his eyes with a huge handkerchief. Backing before them with more bows and protestations of devotion to the deceased noble Count, he led them to the barn. They could see little more of him than the top of his round bristling pate of black hair.

At the door two gendarmes in full-dress uniform stood at attention. They were there not only for good form but because the coffin had not yet been closed. Its lid was leaning against the barn wall. The Chief Judge and the doctor stood together by the hedge smoking and nearby were the dark-clad employees of the funeral director.

Only Dr Simay was inside the barn. He had had the chairs from Laszlo’s house brought there and placed in a line in front of the open coffin. He was sitting on one of them.

When Balint and Julie Ladossa came in he stood up and went to greet them. Suddenly he stopped in his tracks and with both hands touched his glasses as if he could not believe what he saw. Julie Ladossa stopped too. For a few moments they stared at each other, then Simay bowed coldly. She nodded in acknowledgement.

Now they stepped forward to the bier, Abady and the unknown lady to one side and Dr Simay to the other. He stood there for a moment at the head of the coffin and then, with a hard glance at Julie Ladossa, suddenly grabbed the shroud and disclosed the body.

There was something vengeful in the quick movement as if to say ‘See, this is your doing! This is what became of the son you abandoned!’

Julie Ladossa did not move. She looked for a long time at the prematurely aged man with the thin wasted face and parchment-like skin and grey hair at his temples. It was the face of an Egyptian mummy, but who was he? Could it be the same being she had remembered through so many long self-accusing nights, only as a baby, as a three-year-old, a growing boy who still kept the round rosy features of babyhood? She had had to imagine him as a youth, counting the years so as to guess what the growing man had looked like … but this, this skeletal corpse, with a razor-sharp aquiline nose and long moustaches, dressed in a morning coat and starched collar and patent-leather shoes? There were no memories which tied him to her. In his petrified calm he was as strange to her as some unknown inanimate object.

She tried to force herself to kiss his face, but she couldn’t do it; so she made the sign of the cross with her finger on the dead man’s forehead and then stepped back beside Balint who had previously placed his wreath at the foot of the bier.

From outside came the sound of a powerful car. It was Dodo Gyalakuthy. She was followed by Mrs Bogdan Lazar from Dezsmer. Both of them brought wreaths which they placed beside Balint’s, and both of them said a short prayer beside the coffin. And to them too the dead man was a stranger, seeming to bear no resemblance to the Laszlo with whom they had both been in love. Then they took their seats beside Julie Ladossa and waited.