Miklós Bánffy - They Were Found Wanting

Sara’s large eyes filled with tears. She did not answer, but turned away, so that he should not see how hurt she was, and tried hard to get control of herself. Then, as calmly as she could, she said, ‘Please, Laszlo, don’t talk like that. Not here, not in the hotel,’ she added imploringly.

He came downstairs with her and they got into the carriage and started for home. Outside the town they met a strong northwest wind, cold and gusty with rain and snow. They had the hood put up and well-anchored onto the mudguards, and huddled together as far back as possible.

Sara was reminded of that other ride home on St Hubert’s Day, when they had sat back clinging to each other, though not then so estranged and hostile. Nevertheless it was from that day that Laszlo had started to change and Sara’s road to Calvary had begun.

For the woman it was a dreadful ordeal to sit there together in hostility and silence. Finally she could stand it no longer and made a great effort to speak, fighting all the time against breaking down in tears. ‘Why are you so horrid to me? I haven’t done anything to harm you!’ she said sadly, neither angry nor offended. She spoke only in sorrow from the depths of her rejected maternal love.

Gyeroffy hardly seemed to notice her and answered coldly and unconcernedly, ‘Oh, shut up! I’ll tell you later, when we’re back at the house,’ and his voice trailed off as he stared ahead of him, seeing nothing but going over and over in his mind what he had been thinking about for the last three days.

After collecting Sara’s pig money from the pork butcher in the Hidelven district he was walking back into town along Bridge Street when he had seen old Crookface Kendy coming towards him. In the last few months, if Gyeroffy had caught sight of anyone he knew, he would take avoiding action by turning into a side street or going into a shop, anything not to have to greet somebody. He did this instinctively without even giving himself a reason, for always lurking somewhere near the surface of his mind was the disagreeable memory of that unfortunate meeting with Uncle Ambrus on St Hubert’s Day when the older man had laughed at him with insulting innuendo with the words ‘Free room and board, eh? Bed … and breakfast!’. He didn’t want to repeat that experience.

He never consciously thought about that cruel jibe and whenever the words swam into his mind he chased them away by thinking of other things. Still, they were never far away and he was tortured by the thought that they might be true. To himself he explained this urge to avoid old friends merely as a desire to break entirely with his former life. Of course it was a lie and deep down he knew it, though he did all he could to delude himself.

Earlier he had been pressed by the pork butcher to drink a toast and very soon he had had another and then another until before long he had drunk at least five good measures of strong brandy. Then the time came to return to the hotel where the carriage was waiting. One the way he stopped at a bar and downed a few more, for once he had started it never seemed possible for him to stop. Tipsy, and swaying from side to side, he left the bar to walk to the hotel; and by now his first humble, obliging, indeed almost obsequious manner had been submerged by swagger and arrogance.

He had been in that state when he saw Crookface coming towards him not fifty steps away. As it was now lunch-time there was no one else on the street.

If Laszlo had not been drunk he would have turned into the nearest shop or, if there had been no possible way of escape, he would have greeted the older man with humble respect and hurried away. This is what he had done each time he had seen Kendy since that day a year before when he had spoken to him so kindly. But now he was drunk, and not only drunk but also proud and grateful; and it suddenly occurred to him that he must, at once, do something to express that gratitude. So he stopped in his tracks and standing sharply to attention swept off his hat with the same grandiloquent gesture with which actors playing Spanish grandees salute their king.

Laszlo’s was just starting this majestic formal greeting, when old Crookface made a half-turn and crossed to the other side of the street. He was only about thirty paces away. Then he disappeared into a shop.

Had he recognized the young man coming towards him, and had he deliberately turned away because he had seen that Laszlo was drunk, or perhaps because he had heard that he was now being kept by a woman? Was it pure chance, and did he really have some business in that shop? Laszlo was never to know; but the mere fact that it had happened at all had a terrible effect on him.

Laszlo found himself left standing there, with his arm extended in an incomplete and meaningless gesture. He was filled with consternation, and his face contorted with horror. In the few moments that it had taken old Sandor Kendy to cross the street, Laszlo had sobered up completely from the shock at what had just happened.

Then he put on his hat and walked slowly back to his hotel.

As soon as he reached Mrs Lazar’s carriage he told the coachman to go home and himself entered the hotel and booked a room. An hour later he rang and, when the servant came, told him to send someone at once to the Abady house, find out where the lawyer was, and ask him to call on Count Gyeroffy at the hotel. A quarter of an hour later they reported that Mr Azbej was out of town, at Denestornya. Laszlo sent off a telegram: ‘PLEASE COME AT ONCE!’

Laszlo stayed alone in the hotel. He did not go out because he might have met someone he knew and that he did not want, indeed he was afraid of it. No one should see him! No one! Surely they would all act like Crookface who had refused to accept his salute, and turn away at his coming. He asked himself over and over again: how could that kind old man have done it, he who had been like a father to him, who had tried to set his life in order and who had offered his help with so much friendliness and warmth? If Count Sandor Kendy cut him then he must have been right to do so, completely right: for did they not both know that Laszlo was a man without honour!

It had not been at all the same when, three years before, he had been thrown out of the Casino Club in Budapest because he could not pay his gambling debts. Then he had been let off lightly and allowed quietly to resign. Even though a public scandal had been avoided it was still a black mark against him, an invisible mark of shame; and yet he had not himself felt it as such. Even if no one but he knew it, he himself was proudly aware that he had obeyed an even higher rule of honour. Then he could have paid up and, in the eyes of the world, remained a gentleman, one who settled his card debts. He had preferred then to incur the obloquy of everyone who knew him rather than default on redeeming Countess Beredy’s pearls, which she had pawned to save him the last time he had lost more than he could afford to pay. That would have been a private dishonour, a burden he was not prepared to carry, and so he had chosen, cold-bloodedly, to commit social suicide, an act of self-destruction in which the suicide himself lived on to experience damnation in this world rather than in the next. For Laszlo this had always been a heroic decision, a grandiose act which, though it did little to compensate for the social ostracism it entailed, at least left his self-esteem untouched. It was different now; whichever way he turned, he could not avoid knowing that his dishonour was real and could not be argued away.

He could not deny that now he was being kept by a woman and that Uncle Ambrus’s cruel jibe was all too justified. The words rang in his ears — ‘Free room and board! Bed … and breakfast!’ — and they were true. Did she not cook him delicious meals, and have his linen washed and ironed, and sleep with him and buy him horses to ride? He knew that she had only bought the animal for his sake and then had invented errands in town to keep him occupied. He had long known that he was not really useful and that she only did it to obscure the real truth, which was, quite simply, that she was keeping him just as streetwalkers supported their pimps. Why, it was a miracle that she hadn’t offered him money; but then this was probably only so that he shouldn’t spend it on other women. But if he’d asked, then to be sure she would have given him even that. It was a mercy that somehow he hadn’t yet fallen so low! But if it went on, wouldn’t it soon come to that too?