Miklós Bánffy - They Were Found Wanting

Now the road turned towards the bridge over the river. Laszlo did not notice as mindlessly he put one tired foot in front of the other, his head bent under some intolerable and unknown weight. Every conscious thought had been wiped from his mind by exhaustion and alcohol; but still, like a hunted animal, he somehow managed to go on.

Then, quite suddenly, there was no ground beneath his feet, and he fell into nothingness, into what was, in fact, a deep ditch half-filled with snow and slush. In this he lay with the upper part of his body spread-eagled face downwards on the sloping bank.

And so he remained, unconscious of the snow which fell ever more thickly on his back.

MIKLOS ABSOLON sat at his ease between two columns on the veranda of Borbathjo, his elegant baroque manor-house in the largely Szekler district of north-eastern Maros-Torda. His bald head was covered by a tiny velvet skullcap embroidered with pearls that he had brought from Bokhara and the collar of his soft silk shirt was open round his thick bull-like neck.

It was May and the sun was shining. Absolon had nothing whatever to do and he was just sitting there, barely even allowing himself to think. His attitude was that of an inscrutable oriental sage, content merely to contemplate. After all, it was warm and the sun was bright. The view from where he sat was not particularly interesting but stretched into the far distance, right across the Kukullo river, which here was only a meandering stream, surrounded by water-meadows bright with the yellow of buttercups and the lime-green of young grass, up to the valley where the hillsides were covered with forests of beech, pine and hornbeam, all now in bud, and, still further to the south, to the peaks of the eastern Carpathians.

The view was so familiar to him that now he barely noticed it. He had known it from his childhood before the days when his restless urge to travel had carried him to the farthest and most unknown parts of Asia. Of course he had come home from time to time, until that day when he returned with a crippled leg and could roam no more.

If Absolon was thinking of anything at all it was to reflect that, after all, everything, everywhere, was much the same. What essential difference was there between squatting on a rock at Kuen-Lun disguised as a pilgrim and apparently watching the goats outside a Tibetan monastery, or lying at ease in the shade of a Kirgiz tent in the Taklamakan desert, and sitting here at Borbathjo, in the heart of the Szekler country, on the veranda of the house in which he was born?

Life could be beautiful, thought the old traveller, wherever you were — provided that, if there was no reason to travel, one was content to sit still and enjoy it, unlike those city folk who always seemed so fretful and nervous. This was his philosophy, though he rarely thought about it in such simple terms and never discussed such things with other people.

After sitting there serenely for a good hour and a half, during which time he only moved to throw away the butt of one cigar and light another, he noticed a carriage driven by four horses coming towards him from the road to the west. This was most unusual, for even in the height of summer few people used the lonely road which ran from the little country town of Szasz-Regen to the natural mineral springs at Szovata. In spring it was nearly always deserted but for the odd Szekler peasant’s cart or the light gig of some neighbouring landowner. What he saw now was an open travelling carriage.

With the sharp eyes of a hunter he could make out that the carriage was drawn by four excellent chestnut horses and that the leader had a white blaze. Inside the carriage there sat a lone woman.

Absolon wondered who it could possibly be, as he knew everyone who lived in the district and most of them at one time or another used the road which ran directly below his grounds. All the same his appraisal was not based on any real curiosity — for what did it signify what one looked at? — but rather on that mild interest aroused by the unusual. It happened, so he watched: that was all.

The carriage came nearer and nearer winding through the three sickle-shaped curves that skirted the base of the hills to the right, until at last it was coming straight towards the high bank which marked the boundary of the Borbathjo park.

Now Absolon could see the driver more clearly, an old man with imposing moustaches and elaborate braiding on his long Hungarian driver’s coat. The driver’s high seat partially concealed the woman behind him, and all that could be seen from where Absolon sat was the white parasol which blossomed above her like a giant mushroom.

Quite suddenly, it seemed, the carriage was close at hand and now disappeared behind the ivy-covered wall which surrounded Absolon’s property. It could still be heard for a few moments and, to the old man’s surprise, then came the sound of wheels and hoof-beats on the wooden bridge beyond the vegetable garden which had to be crossed by anyone coming to the manor-house. Then he could hear the horses panting as they trotted laboriously up the slope to the house. It was the most unexpected thing — someone was coming to see him, and it was a woman, alone.

A large hand-bell had been placed on the veranda balustrade. Absolon rang it vigorously and almost at once a plump middle-aged woman with a pretty face stepped out of the house. She walked swiftly towards the old man who was still gazing outwards, stopped just behind him and put her hand on his shoulder. ‘At your service, my Lord,’ she said.

It was Marisko, Absolon’s housekeeper and mistress of many years’ standing. It was she of whom Aunt Lizinka had spread so many malicious tales, saying that she was nothing more than a ‘crack-heeled servant, no better than she should be, the slut!’

Like all such calumnies there had once been a grain of truth in what the old gossip had said. It was true, for example, that Marisko had started as a kitchen-maid at Borbathjo at the time when Absolon had returned from his wanderings. She was from the next village, sixteen years old, had never worked anywhere else and had never been known to be flighty with the young men. It was quite untrue to say, as Aunt Lizinka often had, that she was ‘a bad one!’.

Absolon, though crippled, had still been a man in his prime and had no sooner seen the girl than he had lusted after her; so he did as the Tartars did, took her to bed and the following day sent generous presents to her father. In the East it had been the custom and so he had done the same. That very morning he had sent over four magnificent oxen which had at once been accepted, not as the price of shame, which would have been the case with money, but as a generous gift from one free man to another. Four oxen! That was indeed a worthy gesture.

Marisko had stayed at Borbathjo ever since, for it was not in her nature to betray her master with anyone else. By nature she was utterly faithful and upright, with a straightforward, open expression in her velvet-dark eyes and a ready smile. And whenever she looked at her lover and master, as now, her eyes caressed him with loving kindness.

‘A visitor has arrived,’ said Absolon. ‘The carriage has just turned into the drive. Someone must go down to greet them. And you,’ he went on, ‘must make some tea.’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘At once!’

The powerful old man heaved himself up and stood still for a moment. Then, with his cigar clenched between his teeth, he pressed his short crutch to his bad leg and with surprising speed hurried so fast through the house that he was already standing in the portico of the entrance when the four-in-hand entered the courtyard.

This portico was unique to Borbathjo. It was a kind of open hall with a roof supported on wooden pillars, and it joined the main house to the rest of the manor’s buildings. It was simply paved with ordinary brick and the pillars were roughly hewn. It was furnished only with two long wooden benches, but on the walls were hung the old explorer’s hunting trophies. Heads, horns, claws and fangs of all the fauna of Asia looked down on Absolon as he stood there, leaning on his stick and waiting for his guest to arrive. A servant stood at the foot of the steps below him.