Miklós Bánffy - They Were Found Wanting

Today, however, she felt that there was something malevolent about those white walls, something that menaced her personally. The feeling came to her most strongly that she had arrived at some new and frightening crisis in her life and that her divorce was no longer just a matter of escaping from a hated husband or protecting the well-being of her lover but had somehow become the impersonal material of a medical case-history.

She was far too agitated to sit quietly waiting so she got up and walked over to the window. But once there she hardly noticed the ravishing view over the roofs of the old town, nor the ever-widening valley of the Maros which seemed to melt into the infinity of the misty blue sky above. She saw nothing of the radiance of the spring sunshine, nor the young green shoots on all the trees, nor the budding horse-chestnuts. She felt surrounded by impenetrable darkness, blinded by misery and with her whole soul torn by the agonizing question — what could it be that Absolon and Dr Kisch were taking so long to discuss?

Of course it was not really a long time and very soon the door opened and a pleasant voice said, ‘ Darf ich Sie bitten, Gnädige Frau — perhaps we could talk now, my Lady?’

It was Wolf Herman Kisch. Absolon, who had come in with him, now left them alone.

Dr Kisch was a large big-boned man, almost as tall as Pal Uzdy. Though he could hardly have been more than forty he was completely bald. He had very pale blue eyes and wore enormous glasses and on his long-jawed face his mouth was a thin line with the lips normally kept so tightly closed that deep furrows had appeared on each side. And yet his manner was so endearing and sympathetic, his smile and the way he spoke so full of understanding, that it was as if some inner magic had ironed away those deeply etched lines of bitterness and disappointment.

As soon as she saw him Adrienne’s depression lifted, her anxiety fled and she almost felt at ease as she sat there in front of him. What he now said was also reassuring.

Dr Kisch said that even though he thought it was hardly necessary for him to come to Almasko, of course he would do so because he had been asked by his dear friend Absolon with whom he often stayed in the country. Perhaps, too, it would be a wise thing to do as maybe he would be able to put his finger on something that was troubling Count Uzdy; and, if he knew what it was, perhaps too he could help in alleviating the stress it had caused. He hardly even mentioned the matter of divorce except to say that with people like her husband it was always better to act with care and circumspection. All this was wonderfully soothing to hear, not perhaps the sense of what he was saying but the sound of his voice, which was so caressing and sympathetic that Adrienne’s fears were soon allayed.

Dr Kisch’s technique was so accomplished that very soon they were talking about Adrienne’s problems with as much ease as if it were mere drawing-room chat. She felt no shyness at all and they talked for a long time, until finally the doctor rose and straightened out his long body, which was made to look even taller than it was by his narrow white coat, and escorted her back to the waiting room where Absolon sat placidly smoking a cigar. Then they discussed what they would do.

Dr Kisch said that he would not be able to get to Almasko before the middle of June when he would be taking some leave. He would definitely not arrive in a carriage as if paying a call but would come on foot, walking through the mountains and showing up as if by chance. He often went on walking tours, he said, and there wasn’t a corner of the surrounding ranges that he didn’t know well. ‘ Es wird mir eine Erholung sein — it will be a holiday for me,’ he said as if it were they who would be doing him a favour. ‘ Psychopatische Probleme haben mich immer sehr interessiert — psychopathic cases have always interested me,’ he said, and this was the only thing he did say which might have been taken as an allusion to all the sacrifices he had made when he had decided to come back home. For a moment his lips were again tightly pressed together as if in silent resignation; and then he went straight on in his natural friendly tones, ‘ Ich komme sobald ich kann … ich gebe Ihnen Bescheid — I’ll come as soon as I can. I’ll let you know.’

He went down with them to the carriage and there he said some more encouraging things to them both before he walked slowly back to the tiny little hospital which must sometimes have seemed to him, who should have been something great in the world, like the tomb of all his desires.

But Mannestreue , that old German tradition that a man must be as good as his word, did not apply only to the glamour and chivalry of medieval knights: heroism and self-sacrifice could be just as noble in the grey obscurity of ordinary people in a little country town.

Now the Miloth chestnuts were trotting briskly towards home. The lead-horse tossed his mane with eagerness and his companion lifted his muzzle as they climbed each slope as if scenting ever more familiar air. The shaft-horses leaned dutifully forward into their harness and the four of them somehow always managed to keep an even speed whether they were going up or down in that mountainous country. The sun glinted on their shining coats and they were not even beginning to sweat despite the distance they had travelled that day.

With so many of her fears allayed by the skilful Dr Kisch, Adrienne could once again appreciate the beauty of the spring landscape. Now they were already driving through the well-known and well-beloved hills of the Mezoseg country where she had been born. Each time they rode a crest in the hills a fantastic panorama was spread before them. Range after range of mountain peaks lay to the south and the west and here and there was a rocky summit towering above the others, all of which were now tinted gold by the setting sun with deep lilac shadows in the valleys between. Once, as they rounded a bend in the road, Adrienne caught a glimpse to the north of the high peaks of the Kelemen and Negoj ranges which sparkled with snow and ice all the year round. A few fleecy clouds floated high in the pale blue sky, and from time to time a glimpse could be caught of small lakes in the valleys, their shores bordered by reeds and their surfaces dotted with moorhen and wild duck. Sometimes too there could be heard the faint chorus of frogs croaking their love to potential mates.

At one turn the carriage had to stop to let by some hay-carts and here it was that Adrienne heard the song of a nightingale that must have been hidden in some thicket near the road. And at the sound every last hint of anxiety fled away from her as quickly as it had come. She no longer felt cowed and oppressed and she kept on hearing in her mind the last few words of that kind and sympathetic doctor, who had said, ‘ Seien Sie guten Mutes, Gnädige Frau,seienSiegutenMutes — be of good heart!’ And though perhaps his words had been just what he always said to his patients, Adrienne did not think of them as such. To her they were a promise, a pledge, a hope …

She felt as if she had passed the first stop on her way to freedom.

IT WAS HALF-PAST ONE. Hundreds of news-vendors streamed out into Rakoczi Street carrying great stacks of newspapers, some in baskets or canvas bags, some under their arms. They were very different sorts of people, men with one leg, bent old crones and blind men led by children, though for the most part they were made up of growing lads, fleet-footed boys in their teens who raced each other towards the fashionable and crowded Karolyi and Museum Boulevards and the streets of the inner town, all shouting the news at the tops of their voices, knowing that he who shouted loudest would sell the most copies. They skidded and slithered in front of cars and trams, defying death by their daring, and ran on regardless, some on the pavements, dodging between the passers-by, and some in the middle of the streets in front of carriages and cart-horses, bicyclists and the wheels of angry motorists who responded with a chorus of klaxon horns. And no matter where they were, running among a thousand perils, they never stopped shouting the names of their newspapers and, to entice the passers-by, the day’s sensational headline: ‘LASZLO LUKACS, HOMO REGIUS, LASZLO LUKACS …’