Miklós Bánffy - They Were Found Wanting

‘You can’t mean it? Fight with a bandit like him? C’est absurde! ’

‘Don’t be unkind about bandits! In China it’s a highly respected profession and qualifies its members for decapitation by the sword — a noble and beautiful death!’

At this point Balint intervened. ‘Have they really started proceedings against him?’ he asked, because he remembered that Dinora had had Maros-Szilvas and her new flat put in Boros’s name.

‘Certainly!’ Laczok was delighted that at last he had a chance of showing what he brought with him. ‘Voila! Here it is! I brought the telegram to show you. It happened five days ago.’

The next day, quite early, Balint walked slowly to Szemelynok Street, wondering as he went what he could do for poor Dinora and feeling rather guilty that he had only now realized how much she might be suffering because of all this. He was afraid too that Dinora might believe that he had broken his word to her even though he had really meant to act as she wished. Needless to say it was fairly clear now that what had driven Boros to suicide was the knowledge that proceedings were starting in Transylvania: this, and the establishment of the Court of Honour.

In the entrance hall there was no sign that anything untoward had happened there; everything was in perfect order. All Balint could see was that there had been a recent repair to the top part of the wire mesh surrounding the lift shaft. He supposed that this had been where the heavy trunk had torn a hole.

He rang for the hall porter.

‘Take me up to Countess Malhuysen, if you please,’ said Balint. ‘I believe it’s the fifth floor?’

‘The Countess left three days ago,’ the man said; so Balint explained who he was and, hoping to induce the porter to talk, slipped a crown into his hand. Eagerly the man told the whole story to Balint, every detail of the ‘sad accident’, everything which he himself had thought and done (which didn’t interest Balint in the least), and then what had happened since, which was what Balint had come to find out. The day after Boros’s death his family arrived, first the widow and the two sons and then later they were joined by another gentleman. After an hour in the lawyer’s flat the widow and sons went to the cemetery while the other gentleman stayed behind. When they had gone, he went down to call on Countess Malhuysen. What happened in her flat he did not know. Only that late that night they had to bring down her luggage and the Countess left, accompanied only by her elderly maid.

‘Did her Ladyship leave a forwarding address?’

‘No, your Lordship, she didn’t leave anything.’

Balint found all this very upsetting. He imagined that the unknown man had presented himself because of the writ against Boros and wanted to make sure of what Boros owned in the capital. Obviously he had scared little Dinora so that she left in a hurry. Now it would surely turn out that the property she had put in his name would be seized with any other assets he might possess and then be sold to pay his innumerable creditors. And so it turned out. Nothing remained either for Dinora or for his family; everything had to go to pay Boros’s debts and his family was left in poverty.

But what had happened to Dinora? For a long time Balint was haunted by the thought of her fate and he pitied her from his heart. How could such a bird-brained, helpless little creature survive in this hard, hard world? For weeks she was often in his thoughts.

One day something happened to cheer him up.

He had gone to Vienna to attend an international congress and in the evening joined a party of friends at Ronacher’s Variety Theatre. He saw her at once, sitting in a box on the other side of the theatre with a rich young Viennese banker. She seemed happy and gay … and ablaze with diamonds so huge that their sparkle could be seen right across the theatre.

AT THE TIME OF BOROS’S SUICIDE another tragedy was following its appointed course, that of Laszlo Gyeroffy.

The causes could be traced back several months, to St Hubert’s Day when that poisonous innuendo ‘free bed … and breakfast!’ was so maliciously thrown at him by Uncle Ambrus.

The words were like a poison slowly eroding his emotional balance. Outwardly he seemed to go on as before. In the evening he would play the piano or violin for Sara and in the daytime he would perform whatever little tasks she gave him.

Perhaps it was no longer with the same enthusiasm as before, but at least he still did whatever she asked. Perhaps he was quieter, less talkative, but then he never had had much to say. If there was a change it was nothing you could put your finger on — yet Sara’s female intuition told her that something was worrying him, and so she tried to swaddle him with even more kindness and protection.

It was for Laszlo’s sake that she made a sacrifice which cost her dearly. Christmas was approaching and she made careful arrangements to be sure that her schoolboy son should not come home this year but stay on with the family of the schoolteacher with whom he lived. It was a great treat for the boy, who had written some weeks before asking permission to go on a skiing tour with some friends in the Hetbirak forests. He did not know, of course, that his mother had planned this herself, writing to the teacher who had charge of him and suggesting this arrangement as she knew how fond the boy was of all sports. All the same his absence was a great sadness for Sara, especially as her conscience was troubling her.

It could hardly have been otherwise, unless she had sent Laszlo away instead, for it was unthinkable that she should have celebrated Christmas as one of a threesome consisting of herself, her son and her lover. And she could not bear the thought of Laszlo, who had no one, being forced to go home alone.

Even so their Christmas Eve festivities were sad enough and Sara sat by her little tree in the darkened sitting-room, silently thinking of her son. She had long realized that Christmas would not be the same when he had grown up and gone his own way — but this time she had chased him away herself.

Laszlo too was thinking of all those past Christmases spent with the families of his aunts, where giant trees reached the ceiling even in those palatial houses, with presents heaped round them on the floor, and with the merry laughter of his cousins, especially with Klara … Klara, who was so good to him, who always took his side, and who had been his friend, his pal, his love … Klara, whom he had lost through his own folly.

So this Christmas he reached even more often than usual for the brandy bottle, and Sara did not even try to stop him as she had in the past weeks. Before that it had not been necessary, and for two happy months Laszlo had kept off the bottle. Recently, however, it seemed that he could not get enough brandy inside him, so much so that Sara had had to lock up all the liquor in the house.

Then Laszlo started going more and more often to his dilapidated property at Kozard, and when he returned he always smelled of brandy. Sara did not say anything, she didn’t dare. Instinctively she realized that he was labouring under some stress, some emotion, which she could not recognize but which threatened their life together. The more convinced of this she became the more she relaxed her precautions.

At the same time she tried hard to keep him occupied. She asked the neighbours to invite him to shoot, and she bought a horse as she hoped it would be a distraction if he could ride around the countryside. Then, each day, she would suggest he canter over to check on whether the wood-cutters or some other labourers were doing what they should.