Miklós Bánffy - They Were Found Wanting

They were sitting in the big oval drawing-room after lunch. Adrienne was doing some needlework and her mother-in-law sat, as she always did, stiffly upright on the sofa with a table in front of her. Uzdy was pacing about the room from the stove to the windows and back again. It was the same as any other day and, like any other day, no one spoke. The habitual silence was broken only by the sound of his footsteps on the wooden floor.

Adrienne did not look up from her work but she was still able to see that every time her husband passed in front of them he darted a piercing look at his mother. This went on for a long, long time, until Adrienne became convinced that something strange and terrible was about to happen. It was as if the air under that high coved ceiling might suddenly transform itself into a menacing cloud above their heads. If the old lady felt it too she gave no sign. Her face was in shadow and her high-piled hair was edged with silver from the light behind her.

When Uzdy returned from what seemed like the hundredth time he had paced the room he stopped behind his wife’s chair, grasping it with both hands which Adrienne could sense were trembling uncontrollably.

‘I should like to ask,’ he said to his mother, ‘why you are spying

‘I have no idea what you mean!’ she replied.

Uzdy laughed, with menace in his voice. ‘You? You have no idea? All right, I’ll tell you! For some time now I have seen dark figures skulking under my windows. They march to and fro, stopping, spying and sneaking away. Then they come back again … What about that?’

‘It must be the night watchman,’ said Countess Clémence icily. ‘As far as I am aware, that is what he is supposed to do.’

‘So that’s it, is it? The night watchman? Well! Well! Well!’ Uzdy leant forwards so that his chest brushed against Adrienne’s hair. ‘The night watchman, eh?’ Then, suddenly, he shouted, ‘It’s a lie, a lie, a lie!’

Countess Clémence did not answer, but just shrugged her shoulders. Then her son spoke again and this time his tone was more controlled. ‘I went out myself last night, just to be sure. I walked round the garden, and I saw … do you hear me? I saw! All right, you’ll say “the night watchman” … They were everywhere. Lots of them. Behind every tree … everywhere, whispering together. Of course they were hiding, but I saw them and I know!’

He paced up and down the room several times more, quickly and excitedly, so much so that the soles of his shoes slid perilously on the parquet. While he moved he said nothing but then he came back to the table and started again. ‘I know, I tell you! I know only too well. You sent them to spy on me. Well, just watch out! Just watch out! And I know some more too; they put things in my wine … and in my food. You see, I know. Don’t deny it! I know!’

The old lady answered drily, ‘How could anyone do that? We all eat and drink the same things.’

‘Will you shut up!’ shouted Uzdy, banging his long arm down on the table. ‘Shut up! I tell you. Shut up and listen! I know you, and I say,’ his voice rising, ‘just watch out!’ Then he straightened up his long thin body, waving his arms in the air, his fists clenched. ‘Just you watch out! Watch out! Watch out!’ he cried in a high thin scream like an animal in pain.

Then he spun round, like a spring just released, and slid over to the main door, wrenched it open and stormed out slamming the door behind him.

The two women sat for an instant as if turned to stone. Then Countess Clémence rose and, calm and erect, with head held high, her cold glance directed ever straight ahead of her, stalked out of the room. Adrienne was left alone.

The first thing Adrienne thought about, as soon as the first shock had passed away, was how deeply painful all this must have been for that proud spirit; and for the first time in her life she almost felt sorry for the old lady. She had known her for an enemy since she first announced her engagement to Pal Uzdy and only now, in their common anxiety, common to both perhaps but not shared, did Adrienne begin to feel compassion rise in her. And, as her instinct was always at once transmuted into action, act she did. She jumped up from her chair and thinking only that somehow she must express what she felt, she made her way to Countess Clémence’s room which she had not entered more than twice or three times since she had come to Almasko.

The room was dark, with a little light filtered through the slats in the shutters and for a moment Adrienne was startled to find that it also appeared to be empty. She looked around. To the right was that picture of Christ with its face turned to the wall. The tiny hanging light before it was not lit, and the prie-dieu was pushed away in a corner. Adrienne recalled that the old lady had decided not to be on speaking terms with God since he had taken her husband away from her, and was just about to withdraw when a voice quite close spoke from somewhere at her left. ‘Well, what do you want?’

Adrienne could now make out that her mother-in-law was lying stretched out on a sofa covered in black velvet and, as she was always dressed in black herself, she could hardly be seen except as an insubstantial black shadow, especially as her head was turned away towards the window and her tall white coiffure covered by a widow’s cap. She lay on her stomach with her elbows on the sofa and her head held up by tightly clenched fists, and Adrienne suddenly felt that there was something infinitely touching in her position, so like someone lying on a coffin and protecting it with her body.

‘I came,’ she started, ‘just to say how dreadful it was. We must do something …’ and then she stopped. She had thought she would reveal what until then she had kept to herself, namely that Dr Kisch’s visit had been no chance accident but that she had asked him to come; and she was now going to propose that they send for him at once. However she was so put off by the old lady’s abrupt manner, and also, though she hardly knew why, embarrassed, that the words would not be spoken.

Countess Clémence appeared not even to have heard what Adrienne had started to say and interrupted her curtly. ‘This is my business, mine alone! Whatever I decide to do I shall certainly not tell you! Tell you !’ and her tone was one of barely contained hatred.

To Adrienne it was as if she had been struck in the face. All feeling of compassion for the old lady fled and was instantly replaced by deep resentment and dislike for the old tyrant. However, before she could reply, she was met with a torrent of words. ‘Tell you , who have brought all this upon us!? You, who have brought a curse upon the house and who have poisoned my son against me, who have seduced him with your girlish white skin. Yes, you! I knew it from the first moment. Go away! Get out of this room at once! Get out!’

She said all this without moving, hissing the words from her thin lips while her eyes glistened like those of a madwoman.

There was nothing more that Adrienne could say: the mother seemed as mad as her son. Her anger evaporating, Adrienne went out into the clean daylight of the corridor and from there straight into the great entrance court and stood, with her back to the house, gazing into the distance.

The tree-covered mountainside beyond the lawns was dark, so much so that the forest seemed almost to be moving towards the castle and blanketing out the sky. Adrienne felt that the trees were blocking out the whole world and that she would be kept for ever in that dreadful prison.

That same evening everything was back to normal. Until dinner-time Adrienne had seen no one, then she went into the big drawing-room, where the family always assembled, and was sitting there in silence with her implacable mother-in-law when the door opened and Uzdy came in, apparently in high good humour.