Miklós Bánffy - They Were Found Wanting

On November 10th the post brought him a letter; and this time it was a long one.

‘ I can’t stand it any more! ’ she wrote. ‘ I can’t stand it! ’ Then, with almost businesslike dryness she said that she had made up her mind to ask for a divorce at once, no matter what happened as a result. She had written to Absolon to come to Almasko and she would give him a letter to hand to her husband announcing that she was going home to her father’s house at Mezo-Varjas whence she would start proceedings. She could trust no one else and old Absolon was only to give Uzdy the letter after she had left the house. Balint was to stay in Budapest and on no account to move from where he was, nor write her a single line, not even of thanks, because she wouldn’t be able to stand it. ‘ It is because what I do now — this reckless chance I must take — must be done for myself alone and not also for you. If a catastrophe follows it must be I alone who am responsible!’ Only in this way, she wrote, could it be possible, and only in this way was there a chance of success. ‘ I will let you know at once if there are any developments, important developments. Don’t be impatient because it will be at least 10or 12days before I’ll be ableto tell you anything ‚’

At the end of the letter there was a short postscript. ‘ Uzdy seems quieter now. ’And then there was a single word, twice underlined: ‘ Maybe??’

‘MAYBE??’ These five letters and the double question-mark encapsulated the anxiety and spiritual turmoil that had been Adrienne’s lot ever since Dr Kisch had made his first visit to Almasko. It was only now, three months later, and especially since the doctor’s second visit at the beginning of September, that Adrienne had begun to understand the full meaning of those careful deliberate words with which Dr Kisch had given his opinion. He had repeated much the same thing when he came again in September, and it was now clear to Adrienne that what the doctor had been saying implied that her husband, if not already mad, was certainly on the verge of madness.

They had been married for nearly ten years and she had often thought of him as eccentric and cranky. To herself she used the word ‘crazy’ but not in this sense, not pathologically. She had never thought of him as incipiently clinically mad. The thought had never occurred to her. Now she had to face reality, to face the fact that he was menaced by that monster insanity, which could wreck her whole future — for if he really did go off his head she would never be able to divorce him, such was the law.

Adrienne was careful to keep this appalling thought to herself. She did not even mention it in her letters to Balint, telling herself that she did not want to worry him further. Subconsciously she was bowing to the superstition that if the thing was put into words then it would become so, as if the words themselves could conjure up the fact. She hardly even admitted it to herself, though now she watched anxiously every word and movement her husband made. Of course she had always watched him, but now it was different. In their first years of marriage she had had to be on the alert whenever they were together, but this was to protect herself from his violence and unpredictability; later, when she had learnt from Balint what love really was, she feared for her lover’s safety. Now her vigil was more clinical and she watched over Uzdy more as his nurse, dispassionately, without ill-feeling.

It was from this time that she found her hatred for him diminishing, for it was no longer her husband who was the enemy, but rather that dreaded sickness which if allowed to strike would utterly destroy everything she lived for. She found that she could even think of the onslaught of madness as something alien, some malignant superhuman force that came from God knows where.

Everything that Uzdy now said or did was for her merely a symptom to be studied, analysed and interpreted — but it was all so contradictory, so confusing, that the more she watched the more confused she became herself. One day she would be filled with hope, the next with despair.

On the surface nothing had changed. Uzdy lived as he always had and behaved as he always had, one day arrogant and ironic, another disdainfully polite; and yet there was always that latent ferocity lurking behind the of normality. He continued to work at those wondrous tables of figures that he believed would one day transform the world, indeed more devotedly than ever since Dr Kisch had praised his endeavours. He barely seemed to notice Adrienne’s presence and mercifully never came to her room at night, though this might have been due to exhaustion after long hours of work in his study or even to those soothing medicines the Saxon doctor had prescribed. Superficially everything was normal until something happened which seemed to disturb him. There should have been nothing in it, and its effect was only gradually noticeable.

It was after Countess Clémence came home from Meran that Adrienne began to notice that her husband seemed, though without any obvious reason, to be annoyed with his mother. He would pick on her, taking any occasion to reprimand her, sometimes with an insolent rudeness that had never before been the old lady’s lot. Adrienne did not remember his ever doing this before, though she admitted to herself that she might not have noticed in the summer and only did so now because she was watching him so carefully.

And, as soon as she did notice, she saw that the habit was growing. The first obvious clash came when the new young French governess arrived and Countess Clémence made her senior to the old English nanny. In those protocol-ridden days this was quite correct since the governess was an educated woman with an official diploma. Uzdy did not protest but lost no opportunity of humiliating the girl, all the while gazing maliciously at his mother. Then there was a host of unusual little incidents, all essentially trivial. Uzdy would suddenly start cross-questioning his mother as to why she had sent the carriage somewhere, or he would demand a detailed explanation for the replacement of one of the under-gardeners; he even expostulated with her for sending a basket of plums to the priest from Nagy-Almas who came each Sunday to say mass at Almasko. He, who had never bothered his head with anything to do with the daily running of the house, now took his mother up about all sorts of little everyday details of housekeeping. And when he did so one could tell from his tone of voice that, though he was making an effort to control himself, he now used with her that ironic insulting manner which would end in angry shouts when he lost control.

When this happened Adrienne felt herself go rigid with anxiety. What, she asked herself, could be the reason for this suddenly revealed resentment? What was the cause of this latent hostility which seemed as if he were demanding expiation for some secret offence? What could it be that had made Uzdy change so much towards his mother when for so many years he had always taken her part against her daughter-in-law? Why did he now turn against and ill-treat the one person he had always seemed to love and revere?

And why did the old lady take it all without a murmur?

Countess Clémence, faced with this inexplicable change in her son, would reply to him, giving the shortest possible answers in a calm but ice-cold manner. As always her expression showed no emotion and was as stiff as ever; her face might have been made of marble and her eyes of glass. She did not look at her son, but at something far, far away in space … or perhaps in time?

There was no regular pattern, no continuity. Sometimes ten days or a fortnight would pass without incident, and then suddenly a stormy scene would interrupt their calm. In the middle of October one such scene disturbed Adrienne greatly.