Miklós Bánffy - They Were Found Wanting

Though she did not understand she still did what she was told, though once there she found no peace. She was haunted by that strange transformation she had seen in her husband in the course of a mere hour and a half. What did it mean, that humbleness towards the doctor, for humbleness was utterly alien to his character? Also the memory of his terror when he came to seek her out in the wood filled her with pity and anguish. No matter how hard she tried to remain calm, her agitation increased and she felt that some unknown horror was creeping up to take her unawares. Without knowing why, she started to listen for some unusual sound. It was instinctive and lasted perhaps a few minutes only, perhaps a bare quarter of an hour. And, as she listened, her heart beat ever louder and louder.

Then, as if in answer to her waiting, there came a long drawn-out howl from some distant part of the house.

Adrienne ran swiftly out into the corridor. There was nobody there, nor anywhere else, it seemed. The castle might have been deserted with no one outside in the courtyard and no one in the halls either. The door to the drawing-room was open and she ran quickly in.

There on the floor, most unexpectedly, she saw her husband lying with old Maier kneeling beside him, trying to loosen his collar. An armchair was overturned and beside it was lying a long bare oak-log. Adrienne at once wondered how it had got there from the woodpile in the storeroom. Standing behind the sofa was old Countess Clémence and her face seemed paler even than the ash-grey colour of the wall against which she was leaning. Adrienne took all this in at once, and also that the old butler was saying to her, ‘Bitte einen Diener rufen, bitte schnell! Der Herr ist ohnmächtig —Please call for a servant, quickly please! The Master has fainted!’

That old Maier had unconsciously reverted to German meant that he was deeply worried. Adrienne ran out and called the footman. Then she ran to the pantry and fetched a glass of water. When she got back to the drawing-room Maier had lifted Uzdy’s head and shoulders onto his lap and the footman had put his arms under Uzdy’s knees. Together they raised him from the floor and started to carry him out.

‘Here’s some water,’ cried Adrienne. ‘Put some on his forehead!’ but Maier merely said, ‘Not now. When we get the Master to his room!’

As they carried him out Uzdy’s arms and legs hung down like a broken puppet. Adrienne now saw that his temple was covered in blood.

‘What’s happened? For God’s sake tell me what’s happened?’ she cried, turning to her mother-in-law.

The old woman had remained motionless with closed eyes until Adrienne spoke. Then she slowly opened them, wider and wider as if she were seeing some terrible vision. Then she put back her shoulders and walked stiffly out of the room, closing the door behind her with determined quietness.

It was only later that Maier told her what had happened. He had been cleaning the silver when Count Uzdy came back into the house, on tiptoe, with that oak-log in his hand. Maier had immediately sensed trouble and had tried to intercept his master, but Uzdy had been too quick for him. Countess Clémence had been in the drawing-room waiting for the doctor to make his report to her and sitting at her usual place on the sofa. Her son had rushed at his mother, raising high the oak-log to strike her. Luckily the table had been between them and so Maier had been able to grab his master, catching his wrist in that vice-like grasp taught to male nurses, and tripped him so that he fell to the floor. Maier had learned the technique while working in the lunatic asylum at Graz where he had also been taught that it was almost impossible to subdue a violent patient in the grip of madness and that it was far better not to try to wrestle with them but rather to pin them down when dazed by a fall. All went as he had planned except that Uzdy had hit his head on the heavy wooden back of an armchair, split his temple open and passed out from the resulting concussion. Maier at once thought it best not to attempt to bring him round where he was but to get him quickly back to his own room. If he came to in different surroundings the memory of what had happened would probably fade all the more quickly. Now, as Maier told all this to Adrienne, her husband was lying quietly in his own bed with a cold compress on his temple. He was not likely to want to move for the time being; but later it would be different. Count Uzdy would have to be under constant surveillance.

That afternoon Absolon arrived at Almasko and Adrienne at once told him the whole story. Then they held a family council and agreed that someone must always be by the sick man’s bedside. Only four people could be relied upon to undertake this vigil, Adrienne, Absolon, Maier and the English nanny. His mother must be kept away from him, for when Maier had told him that Countess Clémence had been enquiring after her son, Uzdy had clenched his fists and such hatred glinted in his look that Maier had had quickly to change the subject. No doubt the sight of his mother would provoke another fit of rage.

Although Countess Clémence had sat with Adrienne and her brother while they discussed what course to take, the decisions were taken by them alone. The old lady sat there without even opening her mouth. Her face seemed as if turned to stone and they were not sure she even heard what they said. Then they decided to send for Dr Kisch and let him advise them what to do next.

Then followed three dreadful days.

Dr Kisch had arrived but he did not visit the sick man so as not to excite him. He said that he would see him soon enough when the time came to take him away; for, after hearing all the details, Kisch had realized that Uzdy would have to be closely confined. It had been immediately obvious to him that Uzdy was too far gone to be left alone in the freedom of his own home: it was too dangerous for him, and for everyone else.

On the fourth day Adrienne was on duty. It was the hour of dawn, but it was still dark. A small night-light flickered on the window sill and Uzdy, propped up on several pillows, was apparently asleep. His wife was sitting in a chair at the foot of the bed, and not a sound was to be heard, except for the ticking of the clock.

The hours crept slowly by, terribly slowly, because she was haunted by the thought that at eight o’clock that morning Dr Kisch would come to Uzdy’s room to take him away. The Red Cross ambulance wagon had been there since the previous day, hidden in the stable court. Two nurses had come with it, and they were going to take the patient to the clinic for nervous diseases in Kolozsvar — which was always referred to as ‘The House with the Green Roof’ — and there he would be kept in close confinement.

For Adrienne it was the end of everything for which she had yearned, waited, and struggled for so many years. It was the end of her dream of freedom, just when it had seemed so very close. It was the end of any chance of happiness, of anything which for her would make life worth living. It was the end of that dream for which Balint had given up his home and it tolled the death-knell of any chance of a free honest life, of having another child, and especially of that longed-for, oh, so-often-imagined boy who had never been born and who never now would be born! She felt as if, when in half an hour they would take her husband away as hopelessly mad, her love for Balint would die or at least be subtly transformed into unending frustrated pain. Now she would have to remain in that hateful house for ever, chained to an absent husband she had always loathed, living in hell with an estranged daughter and a half-crazed mother-in-law.