Miklós Bánffy - They Were Found Wanting

Now the first load started to come up. It was the document chests, as Boros had ordered. The lift stopped with the passenger cage practically at the ceiling and the freight compartment on a level with the floor. Boros and the porter started to unload the chests, first the smallest, then the next and finally the largest, which was so heavy that they could hardly get it out of the lift. In the end they succeeded but only so far that the lift itself could descend but the shaft gates could not be closed. The porter wanted to pull it further away but Boros told him to leave it for the moment. He himself, he said, would try and in the meantime the porter could take the smallest chest into the back room of the flat. ‘Can you manage it on your own?’ he asked. ‘It must be about fifty kilos, I imagine!’

‘Of course I can. Leave it to me,’ said the man eagerly, grabbing the handles and, leaning backwards to keep his balance he staggered into the flat.

Boros rang the bell and the lift started slowly to descend, making clicking noises as it passed each floor.

The lawyer straightened up, his pale handsome face apparently as imperturbable as ever, the silvery electric light reflected on his smooth bald head.

He took a small flask from his pocket, swallowed its contents and threw it away. Then he bent down, down towards the lift shaft, and, grabbing the trunk with all his force he pushed it over the yawning chasm before him and fell with it.

Brave and manly, he had planned the ‘accident’ down to the last detail; and so died Dr Zsigmond Boros, lawyer and Member of Parliament.

Balint only learned about Boros’s death on his return to the capital, and read the account of the funeral. First of all the Speaker announced the death in solemn and moving words. Then came the funeral itself. There was an enormous crowd in the procession to the cemetery. Everyone of any importance in the Coalition government was present — everyone, that is, except those ministers who were in Vienna bravely discussing the army concessions and the banking problems; and Kossuth, who was ill in bed.

There was no lack of speeches made by members of the Independence Party, representatives of Boros’s constituency and even the Minister of Finance himself because Boros had once, very briefly, been an under-secretary there. Then the procession started which was to end at a special Tomb of Honour donated by the city fathers. Behind the coffin walked the widow and his two sons, the elder of whom had just started his legal studies.

After the family came his political colleagues, including those who had opposed him on the banking question, for it was an unwritten law on such occasions that, particularly in view of the tragic manner of his death, everyone had to bend over backwards to bear witness to the solidarity of the party and to acknowledge its authority and power even in the wake of the funeral catafalque. These sentiments had been the principal theme of the pre-funeral speeches; and they were repeated again by the graveside to such effect that here was born the legend of Zsigmond Boros, heroic defender of the people’s liberties. Now he was compared to the ancient Hungarian champions of civil rights and even to the martyrs of Arad. That this noble man should so suddenly have been taken from them was accounted a catastrophe for the nation, and the tale that he met his death by an accidental fall down a lift shaft was believed by everyone who had no reason to think otherwise.

Even so there were those who tried to make out that the impending duel was somehow symbolic of a wicked intrigue against this noble man — as if some evil plot had taken him unawares and somehow contrived his death before he could rise and smite those who traduced him. What a fate … and how unfair it was!

All the speeches were so moving that there was hardly a dry eye among those present; and when the gypsy band started to play his favourite tune — ‘Once I too would drive the coaches of lovely women …’ there were loud sobs from the crowd, despite the fact that some of those women who knew all about his womanizing thought this reference verged on the indelicate. Few people noticed, but at this moment his widow seemed somehow to draw her skirts back from the graveside.

The Coalition papers all printed fulsome accounts of the obsequies and obituary notices resounding with such words as ‘dauntless warrior in the cause of right’, ‘hero’, ‘champion’, and many other fine-sounding phrases.

In the face of such competition an important speech made by the German chancellor von Bülow, which told the world of Germany’s solidarity with Austria over the Bosnian question, was practically ignored by the Hungarian papers. Nevertheless these days saw the death-throes of the annexation crisis, for the Serbian Prince George, who had headed the war-with-Austria party, gave up his right of succession to the crown of Serbia and, as a result, the government in Belgrade promised to be good boys and stay faithful friends of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy; and so Aehrenthal’s policy proved to have been right all the time.

Abady was happy enough when he read the news from abroad; but he was still concerned about some of the more exaggerated aspects of Boros’s funeral and all the eulogies that had been spoken and written about him. It made him wonder if he should not still protest and yet, on more careful analysis, it seemed nothing had been said of any real importance — it was all pompous froth. All the same he decided to consult Alvinczy and be guided by what he thought Balint should do.

From outside the door of Alvinczy’s room he could hear the noise of a heated argument. Inside he found four men — Alvinczy himself, Bogacsy, Absolon … and Tamas Laczok.

Laczok had come to persuade Absolon and his seconds to make public a set of documents which he had just brought with him from Transylvania and which, having only now realized there would be no Court of Honour, he felt the others should see. He was furious because of all the rubbish he had read about Boros in the newspapers.

‘ C’était un infâme coquin, tout comme mon cher frère — he was an infamous rascal, just like my dear brother,’ he shouted. ‘Why should we put up with all this ridiculous praise? We ought to show them all what nonsense it is.’

The little room echoed with the sound of his anger. His long beard waved in the air as he jumped about in his wrath — but, of course, he was not really outraged by what had been written about Boros; he was angry because his death meant that he could no longer discredit his brother by telling the Court of Honour the truth about the lawyer!

‘It’s up to us to show the world what that fellow really was, and that he deliberately killed himself. I hear that the word’s going around here now and I know that they were on his tracks back at home. A writ of seizure has been issued. That’s why he did it, the coward!’

Bogacsy and Alvinczy demurred politely but Absolon only found the angry little man a source of amusement.

‘I for one don’t think he was a coward,’ he said, principally to annoy Laczok. ‘He certainly did it in style. I’m really quite sorry about it.’

‘Sorry? You?’ shouted Laczok.

‘Of course,’ the other answered. ‘Only once in my life have I seen a more beautiful act of self-destruction, in Japan — a hara-kiri. Now I know that he was worthy of having my bullet in his gut!’