Miklós Bánffy - They Were Found Wanting

He had been told this several times by his mother. He did not really believe that this was what she would now do, but it was by no means impossible, for he knew how implacable she could be once her mind was made up. Now that she had been deeply hurt, her anger might lead her to interpret her late husband’s instructions in just such an unforgiving fashion. It was for this reason that he had said his goodbyes before he told his mother that he was going ahead with his plans to marry Adrienne.

Now that he was leaving the sense of loss and the pain of farewell were doubly poignant. The car was moving swiftly to the east along the crest above the village. Below him he could see the church and the square block of his grandfather’s old manor-house. Beside them the giant trees of the park stretched out towards the plain. There too was the winding course of the Aranyos river, the great wheat-fields to the west and the gallops where they had trained the young horses. Then, all of a sudden, they had turned a corner and everything was lost to sight. A few moments later they had descended towards the Keresztes meadows and from there the car sped onwards to the north.

Then, briefly, the great castle could be seen again, immutable and ageless on its slight elevation above the plain-lands, the long western wing golden in the afternoon sunlight, the copper roofs of the sturdy corner towers glinting green against the blue sky. He could even see the veranda where he used to breakfast with his mother. Balint had hardly taken it all in when the vision disappeared once again, shrouded from his view by the intervening trees. For a while longer the roofs and the towers could still be seen etched solid above the sea of green leaves but soon they grew ever more distant, further and further away, until at last for ever unattainable.

Even so Balint still looked back. With death in his heart it was like gazing into some deeply loved face he would never see again.

Now they were driving through the street of little houses which was the village of Gyeres. Denestornya might have been a thousand miles away.

THE RAIN FELL STEADILY, sometimes more and sometimes less, but it never stopped.

Abady had come up to the mountains three days before.

When he had so painfully torn himself away from home he had had only one idea: to see Adrienne. Accordingly, after packing up all his things at the Abady house in Kolozsvar, he had driven to the forests near Hunyad. He had left the car at the top of the ridge and come down alone and on foot; and there it was that they met, in the little cabin that Balint had built, and had spent just a brief hour or two together, for Adrienne could never get away for longer, and there they had sheltered together against the insistent rain and against the whole world.

When Adrienne had gone back to Almasko Balint had not known what to do nor where to go. After all the storms of the last few days he longed for peace and solitude. He needed time and quiet to concentrate all his thoughts and decide what he would do next; so he had come up to the high mountains where the could be alone, and there, too, he would be close enough to get news quickly from Adrienne if she too came to a decision.

‘Honey’ Andras Zutor had soon found horses and a baggage wagon, the saddle-ponies were already at Skrind with the gornyiks , and Balint’s tent was brought up the next day from Beles.

They went straight up to Balint’s favourite camping site on the highest slopes of the Prislop.

There was something essentially soothing in the quietly drizzling rain which seemed like a silken veil whose function was to soften the harsh outlines of reality. Through its barely visible threads one could only just make out the saffron leaves of the maple trees or the green of the other deciduous trees whose colour had not yet started to turn. Here and there was a group of hawthorns or a wild plum which had already acquired a faint blush-like tint, and the low hanging branches of the nearby pines were shining brightly as if lacquered.

Everywhere there was silence apart from the soft murmur of the raindrops on the canvas roof of the tent. No birds sang, neither the kingfishers’ tiny piping, nor the songs of blackbirds or mountain jays; the birds of prey no longer called hoarsely to each other and at night even the owls were keeping their own counsel. Everywhere there was silence, as of infinity or death.

Balint barely moved from his tent. He who was usually so passionately interested in everything that lived or grew or moved on the mountain now lay passively on his trestle bed doing nothing and seeing nothing. Even when Honey brought in his reports, Balint hardly seemed to notice his presence. Not even the news that the dishonest notary Simo had now gone too far in his oppression and abuse of the people of the mountain brought any definite reaction from Balint. The information that Honey brought was enough, if brought out into the open, to have Simo dismissed — which would automatically have freed the peasants from his tyranny and acquisitive ways. It was a complicated matter of a tax-fraud; but fraud there had been and if Balint had stood by the oppressed and demanded a full-scale investigation from the county magistrates, the problem of Simo would have been settled once and for all. At any other time Balint would have been fired with zeal to put matters to rights and he would have rushed to the aid of those poor mountain people, at once planning a line of attack and the best way of doing good for others. Now he just read the report and then put it away in his knapsack, deciding nothing except perhaps that he would look at it some other time.

Some of the day he would sit at the door of the tent, gazing out in front of him but seeing nothing but the images of Denestornya … and of Adrienne … and thinking of nothing but them.

How wide her eyes had opened when he told her that he had broken with his mother! And how scared she had looked! ‘You really did that?’ she had said. ‘You did that terrible thing?’ And he realized that Adrienne had been frightened because she knew at once what a great burden this placed on her, she for whom the sacrifice had been made. And Balint had not spared her when he told the tale. He had underlined everything, cruelly repeating his mother’s words, and his own, consciously doing it (though hating himself for it), so that she would feel obliged, at last, to break with her husband.

With her mouth she had given him her kisses and she had held him tightly in her arms as she had given her body to him for consolation, but she had known then that this was not enough and that she could no longer repay him with caresses but only with her whole life; and diamond tears had glistened on her long, dark lashes.

Later, when it was already long after noon, the clouds lifted slightly and the rain slackened.

On the old hornbeam tree opposite Balint’s tent, two blue-tits started to chatter, chirping merrily as they flew from branch to branch. Somewhere a siskin could be heard and below the little camp the rushing of the stream was now louder than the rain, though before there had seemed to be a universal silence. From the bed of the valley little streams of vapour started to rise and float lightly on the hill-slopes. Very slowly the weather cleared.

The man in the tent saw little of this. His thoughts were still in the recent past and his heart was bitter.

Always he had assumed that it was certain what would happen when he told Adrienne of what he had done for her. He had known that naturally then she really would make up her mind, accept what he had done for her and publicly tell everyone that she was suing for divorce. But it had not happened like that at all, and perhaps it never would happen. What had she said? ‘I can’t do it yet!’ she had cried. ‘It’s impossible! It’s horrible, but I still can’t do it! I can’t!’ And she had gone on repeating, over and over, ‘I can’t! I can’t!’ There was despair in her voice, but that was what she had said. And she had told him again how the doctor had said that any sudden shock would have a terrible effect on her husband. If she demanded a divorce now it could provoke no one knew what awful reaction. It was a terrible responsibility and she alone must carry it. It was she who was responsible, responsible for everyone. Then she had added those words she had not known would hurt him the most: ‘And then there’s my daughter’.