Miklos Banffy - They Were Divided

‘So you see what the situation is. I have to make a choice and it is only natural that I should choose to stay with my child.’

‘But there’s no reason why we shouldn’t marry? Why should all this stand in our way? I’d stay up here with you if I had to.’

Adrienne interrupted him.

‘You know that is absurd!’ she said. ‘For you to give up everything, all your work, your home, everything that you have created and live for … just to live up here moving from one sanatorium to another. It’s impossible! I wouldn’t accept it! I couldn’t!’

‘Why not, if I wanted it?

‘No! Never! Not that!’

Adrienne now started speaking more softly, and as she did so she reached across the table and took Balint’s hand in hers.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘There are other things too, things we have to think about if we marry and live together here. We’d still have the same awful worry, always fearing what we both crave for, what our bodies crave for! I could never go on like that! Could I give birth to your child here? Here, surrounded by all these consumptives?’

Balint bowed his head without saying anything. For a while he gazed out over the valley. Then he turned to her and said, very slowly: ‘How can this sacrifice make any sense? You say she only has a few years; so what does it matter if it is five or six, or ten, or twelve? If there is no hope of her ever getting better, if sooner or later — it may sound heartless but I have to say it — if there is no chance of recovery why do we have to destroy ourselves when there is no hope? It would all be in vain. If that is to be her fate, does it matter if it’s sooner or later?’

‘Don’t think I haven’t thought about it, though it’s a dreadful thing for a mother to do. Oh, yes! The thought came, though I wish it hadn’t … but it’s impossible! How could I leave her here knowing that I’d be responsible for her death? For she will die soon if I go away, if I abandon her … and just think, think! If we were to have children of our own we’d never be free of the memory of what we’d done. Every time we looked at our children, every time we kissed and caressed them, I’d remember that it had been for them that I’d forsaken this fatherless child and left her here to die alone. No! No! No! The horror of it!’

For some time they sat there without speaking, both with their own sombre thoughts. Finally Balint broke the silence between them.

‘You would throw away your happiness for someone who doesn’t love you and never has loved you?’

‘It’s true,’ she replied softly, almost as if she were ashamed of admitting it. ‘It’s true enough, but I have to do it, it is my duty. You see, I know that she’s clinging to me now because she believes that only I can help her.’ Now Adrienne raised her voice until she was almost shouting at him. ‘What else can I do? Every night she clutches at me and cries, “You won’t let me die, will you? You won’t let me die?”. I have to stay with her. What else can I do?’

Balint stood up and walked over to the balustrade of the terrace and leaned on it looking into the distance. After a moment Adrienne joined him there. For a long time they just stood side by side without speaking. The daylight faded into evening and soon the valley below was in complete darkness. Only the mountain tops were still lit by the dying sun. Now and again one of them would say something, a few disjointed words that were little more than punctuation to what they left unsaid.

Then Balint said: ‘Why should we separate now? Why do we have to decide? Why now? Something will come up … we can wait.’

Much later Adrienne murmured: ‘I will always fight for what we want, in every way I’ll do everything I can,’ and fell silent again. After a long time she said: ‘It may be a very long time. With proper care she may live for ten years.’ Several minutes later she murmured: ‘To wait so long? We’ve waited so many years already; and I am so tired.’

‘I’ll wait for ever! Until the time …’

For a long time they did not speak. It was now quite dark and a few stars appeared in the sky.

‘I’ll have to go back soon. I’m afraid she’ll be waiting for me, that she won’t sleep until I come. And she has to sleep a lot. It’s important for her … I have to go!’

But she did not move and Balint realized that she still had something to tell him, something that was even more painful for her than what had already been said. She was a long, long time making up her mind to speak and, when she did, it was very softly as if she were talking to herself, though none the less determined:

‘We are no longer young enough to make plans for the future. You are thirty-six, I will soon be thirty-four. Time passes; and you cannot wait for a long, long time,’ she said with renewed emphasis. Then she paused again before saying: ‘It would add to my grief if I knew I had forced this waiting on you … made you so … so … lonely. That is why I have to know you are free and … and not thinking any more about me.’

Balint did not answer but hid his face in his hands. The night grew colder as they stood there silently together.

All around them the snow-clad peaks glimmered softly in the light of a crescent moon. Below them, as far as they could see, stretched the frozen clefts of a great glacier. There was nothing to see but ice and snow, only ice and snow, a petrified world where there could be no life. Ice everywhere, like the frozen inferno of Dante’s seventh hell. Even the sky seemed carved from ice, clean, majestic … and implacable … and even the stars held no mercy.

In front rose the ink-black outline of the Matterhorn, seeming more than ever like a claw, Satan’s claw, reaching for the Heavens. The great peak was no longer a natural pyramid of rock but rather some fatal razor-sharp milestone threatening death to the sky above — a milestone that pointed to the end of the world.

The next evening Balint left the express at Salzburg. Later he had no memory of the journey. He had bought a ticket for Budapest, but on impulse got out at Salzburg instead.

He felt he could not possibly go home to Hungary. In Budapest he would meet so many people he knew; and it would be the same in Transylvania. And if he went to Denestornya he would everywhere be reminded of so many fruitless plans and of all those hopes and dreams which had come to nothing. People would greet him and talk to him, and he would be forced to reply hiding his hurt behind a face of stone and pretending that he was still interested by the farce of everyday life. He decided he wanted to see no one and speak to no one; for all he now desired was to hide, to creep into some concealed corner and die.

He left the train and had himself driven to some small anonymous hotel near the station where he could be alone without the risk of seeing anyone he knew.

He did not count the days but passed his time sitting aimlessly at his hotel window hardly hearing the trains that rumbled past, neither the goods trains that shunted to and fro, nor the slow-moving passenger trains that sometimes stayed half an hour or so at the station before moving leisurely on, nor even the fast expresses that hurtled into the nearby station, brakes screaming with senseless haste, and then almost at once clattering over the points as they hastened away. At dusk the lamps started to glow, little points of white or red light, some of which moved and vanished and then returned and some which remained constantly in place. Whistles shrilled and shrieked, some short and some long drawn-out, until it seemed as if the very engines were crying out in pain.