Miklós Bánffy - They Were Found Wanting

Sometimes in Balint’s letters he referred to the themes he had taken up in his unfinished treatise ‘Beauty in Action’, when he tried to show that all the beauty in the world stemmed from a law of nature. Then he had been under the influence of the first mutual declaration of their love for each other. Now, that Beauty was to be the beauty of their future lives together when they could declare their love to the world and live freely and frankly without lies or pretence. And the culmination of this freedom would be the birth of an heir, who would carry on his race and all that his parents held sacred. This heir would love everything they loved, their honour, traditions and the family home where these had been nurtured. He in turn would pass it all on to the next generation, and the next, and the next, for an infinity of human tradition in which Balint saw himself merely as a link in that never-ending chain which tied the past to the future. In this way his love for Adrienne, which had begun as desire to possess the woman he loved, was gradually transformed, by the idea of this longed-for birth of a son, into the adoration for the most beautiful and graceful of mothers.

After his return to Budapest Balint went once or twice to visit his mother at Abbazia, but he never stayed more than a few days lest the joy of seeing each other again should wear thin and the suppressed enmity between them be allowed to surface again.

One day at the end of February when he entered his hotel on returning from Abbazia, the hall porter told him that a Mr Frankel, the managing director of a timber firm that handled the produce of the Abady forests, had come twice to see him. Balint assumed that he wanted to discuss some matter relating to his own affairs and, as he was rather pressed to complete writing the speech in which he would support a new bill in Parliament concerning the co-operative societies, he decided for the moment to delay telling Frankel of his return.

He was sitting at his desk, surrounded by charts and tables and other statistics, when at about noon the door was quietly opened and Dinora Malhuysen slipped into the room.

‘What are you doing, Little Boy?’ she asked from the door. ‘Working hard, I suppose. My! How important we’ve become!’ She laughed as she came towards him. Then she lightly tapped his cheek and sank down into an armchair, opening as she did so the soft chinchilla collar round her throat. She leaned back.

‘Dear Dinora, what an unexpected pleasure!’

‘Unexpected? Naturally! Anyway, you can talk! You never once came to see me! It wasn’t at all nice of you. You’ve never even seen my lovely new flat in Szemelynok Street. You can’t spend all your time at that boring Parliament. Couldn’t you spare a moment to come and see me … or don’t you want to?’

Balint smiled. ‘Of course I do. I love seeing you!’

‘Well then? But, seriously, I’ve always thought of you as my best friend, perhaps the only one. That’s why I came … I have something important to ask you. Will you do it, Little Boy? Do you remember “Little Boy”?’ and Dinora’s sensuous lips framed the little phrase with special significance because it had been her special nickname for him when they had been lovers. Even so her eyes revealed how anxious she was.

‘If you tell me what it is, and if I can, then I will, of course.’

‘I knew you would! Well, it’s like this, Zsig … Zsigmond Boros, you know who I mean, well, he’s been very good to me, and I want to ask you — please don’t do anything to harm him. You won’t, will you? Please don’t! It’d be such a little thing to you, but to me it’s very important. And he’s not a bad man, not really. You won’t do anything, will you? For my sake?’

Balint frowned. He realized that it must have been Boros himself who had sent his mistress to plead for him, that darling foolish scatter-brained little Dinora; but as he had no intention of pursuing Boros anyway he promised to desist quite easily.

‘Don’t worry, darling Dinora, I won’t hurt him. You can rely on that.’

She jumped up and pressed her lips to his and kissed him repeatedly, saying each time, ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you!’

When he was finally able to disentangle himself Balint said, ‘You know I never said anything about Boros at that meeting at Vasarhely. I didn’t even know that he was in any way involved in … in that sort of thing.’

‘Oh, you are good! Good and kind! I’m so relieved, so glad,’ and she started to twirl about the room in a little light-hearted dance of joy. Then she stopped and looked coquettishly back at Balint, ‘You know … if ever you’re bored I’m always … well, I wouldn’t hold you to anything…’ and her eyes made it clear that this was the only way she knew to express her gratitude.

‘Thank you, my sweet Dinora, but at present I am not bored,’ he said with a smile, though the truth was that indeed he was, bored and unhappy; but to share her with someone like Boros? It would be better, he decided, to avoid her for a little while.

‘That’s quite all right. I only said it so that you’d know and … Well, goodbye now, goodbye.’ And she went out as swiftly as she had come in.

That same afternoon the porter rang up to say that Mr Frankel had called. Balint, who was tired from all the work he had been doing, was only too pleased to be interrupted and so asked for him to be sent up.

Frankel had not come to discuss the affairs of the Abady forest holdings. He came for something quite different, and he brought with him a whole stack of official-looking papers. These proved to be copies of documents and correspondence between the Ministry of Trade and the State Railways concerning the monopoly contract signed by the Minister with the Eisler Timber Company. There was also one other paper; it was a photograph of a receipt for 100,000 crowns given to Dr Boros by Eisler and Company.

‘I am aware,’ said Frankel, ‘that your Lordship has already referred publicly to Dr Boros’s activities. That is why I have made so bold as to bring these documents for your perusal. Should your Lordship feel disposed to take up this matter, which is of the greatest possible interest both to forest owners and to the timber trade, both of which feel that a most unfair irregularity has been committed and that the contract would be sure to be cancelled if the whole truth were known.’

For a moment Balint did not answer. He looked through the documents that Frankel had brought, and as he did so he realized why it was that Dinora had so hurriedly come to see him that morning. It could only have been that Boros had somehow heard that the timber merchants had got something on him and were about to appeal to Abady for help, and that he had sent Dinora hotfoot to forestall them.

The papers that Frankel had brought were irrefutable proof of the irregularity and dishonesty of the official proceedings and Boros’s signed receipt spelt professional death at that time when to be found out was the ultimate sin.

‘Why,’ asked Abady as he handed back the dossier, ‘do you come to me? There are many other Members who speak more frequently than I do and whose words carry more weight. Any one of them would handle this matter far better than I would. I … I … am really not the best man for it.’

Frankel shook his head.

‘Only your Lordship could do this properly. Dr Boros has a high position in the Independence Party and the deal was signed by Kossuth. No one in the party would handle it and there is no one who has left the party who would be taken seriously. Almost no one would be likely to come forward from the Constitution or People’s Parties because the only person capable of achieving their policies as regards the general franchise or the banking question would be Kossuth, and he is clearly as much out of the running as Justh. What we need is someone who is truly independent, who has no party ties and who cannot be suspected of any motive of personal gain. Your Lordship owns forests, it is true, but they do not produce timber suitable for railway sleepers. Everyone would know that Count Abady spoke only in the public interest.’