Miklós Bánffy - They Were Found Wanting

She had thought of nothing else during the past few days, but it had never assailed her with such force as it did that morning just as she was waiting for the final stroke of fate which would throw her life into havoc. Right up until this last minute she had felt that there might be some hope, that something, anything, would happen … some miracle that would cure him. She had been like a drowning man clutching at imaginary straws.

So she sat there, her head hanging low and her face covered by her hands. She could feel the pulse throbbing in her throat, and she looked back dismally at the seemingly endless sorrows of her life. She had been really happy only once, during those four short weeks she had spent with Balint in Venice; and even then, though dazed by the happiness of passing her nights in his arms, she had been menaced by the thought of that self-destruction she had thought to be a price worth paying for the fulfilment of their love. Now she thought she should have killed herself then. At least she would have been saved this present suffering.

Tears rose in her eyes and suddenly she was racked with sobs. No matter how hard she tried she could not control them. Leaning forward as if mourning the dead she cried … and cried … and cried … her tears falling through her fingers onto her blouse and into her lap.

Then a voice said, ‘Are you crying, Adrienne?’

Uzdy was looking up at her from his pillows. She had no idea how long he had been awake. Now he was staring at her with surprise in those strange slanting eyes. She looked back at him, unable to reply. His expression was amazingly peaceful. She had never seen him look like that before.

Uzdy did not move his head, and his long hair lay on the pillow like a dark wedge reaching up on each side of his face in strange peaks, his eyebrows and sharply pointed beard making him more than ever like everyone’s idea of Mephistopheles. Only now there was nothing satanic about him and on his lips was a slight, apologetic smile.

‘Why do you cry?’ he asked gently. ‘Surely not for me? Why should you cry for me?’ He spoke slowly as if he were really only talking to himself. ‘I know you were never happy with me,’ he went on, ‘so why should you cry for me now?’

He paused, and then went on, ‘Perhaps I oughtn’t to have … I know I should have behaved differently, quite differently … but I didn’t know how. It was a mistake, a terrible mistake. My own mistake, of course, but then I didn’t know …’

Adrienne was again racked by sobs, so much so that she pressed her fists into her temples and put her head between her knees. Now she was crying silently, her blouse quivering as her back shook with her sobs. When she was at last able to look up she saw that he was looking intently at her, probably waiting to say something more. When he did speak it was very quietly, like a voice from another world, ‘No matter what happened, no matter why, or how … I must tell you I loved you very much!’ he said, and closed his eyes as if infinitely weary.

He did not open them again, not even when daylight flooded the room and the clock chimed the hour of eight, nor when the door opened and Maier came in. His eyes were still closed and he seemed to be asleep when Adrienne rose and brushed her husband’s locks with her long, cool fingers.

In the corridor outside, behind the Saxon doctor, two dark figures moved forward carrying an iron stretcher.

Adrienne slipped quietly to the stairs, thinking she would flee to her own room so as not to see anything of the terrible scene that would be enacted below when those fateful figures bore down upon poor Uzdy. Try as she would she could not go more than a few steps. Her legs seemed as if made of lead and she found herself forced to remain, leaning against the wooden walls of the stairway. From downstairs she could hear the sound of a door opening and footsteps. Then her husband’s voice, full of surprise, called out, ‘No! No! No!’ quite strongly. And then nothing. Nothing!

The silence frightened her. Then there were more steps, and this time they had something of a military ring. The glazed door leading to the garden opened and she could just hear some sort of command. They must have gone out, thought Adrienne, and rushed down the stairs. In the bright sunlight before her she saw a little group of men carrying a stretcher and on it lay Pal Uzdy, his body covered by a white sheet like a shroud. She supposed they must have given him some quick-acting injection. His face looked as pale as if sculpted in wax.

Adrienne’s knees buckled and she tried to support herself on the bars of the window by which she stood. And once again she wept, but this time it was not for herself. They were the tears of pity.

ADRIENNE WROTE TO BALINT, not from Almasko but from Kolozsvar where she had gone the day after they took Uzdy away. There were so many things that had to be done.

On the first three pages she related the bare facts, as drily as possible, recounting what had happened day by day, like a historical chronicle. She wrote in short sentences, each like the hammer-blows of Fate, and the last one read: ‘… and the day before yesterday they brought the poor man to Kolozsvar .’ After that her writing became more confused, with broken sentences and words scratched out and replaced by others.

With this everything is over! I can never get a divorce and so you can’t marry me, never, do you understand? Never! Not whilehe’s alive … and he may live for years. He could even outlive me. We can’t count on Uzdy’s dying, even though that would give us our freedom. We can’t! And even less on his getting better. So you see everything we’ve planned is impossible.

All sorts of other things must be over between us too. The life we used to lead is impossible now. Don’t deny it, you’ve said it yourself many times. I’veall your letters here infront of me. Remember when you wrote ‘What sort of a life do we lead,always pretending, lying, hiding like thieves — and that of courseis what we are because we steal our meagre ration of happiness, sometimes for a few hours, rarely for a whole night together, always taking precautions, watching to see we are not discovered, like convicts on the run’? Every word you wrote is true, utterly, absolutely true. In another letter you said ‘ … so don’t you see howdegrading, how humiliating our life is now? We are forced to treat as a shameful secret what we should blazon to the whole wide world.’ You then went on to say ‘ This can’t go on!’

I never answered those words before, or I would have said you were right. Perhaps I thought it wasn’t necessary, but I’ve always known it — I sensed it in Venice, remember? That’s why I wanted everything to end, to die rather than come back to this slavery. It’s just as true for me as for you. We can’t go on … I couldn’t stand it again!

There’s a lot more too, things you didn’t write about, but which I felt all the more, perhaps. Our child? To be afraid of having a child when it’s what I long for above everything. Always to be afraid, knowing the disasterit would be if we weren’t ready, when it should be our greatest joy. That has always been with us, but think what it would be like now! Is this what we’ve got to look forward to, for ever and ever? Even if I wanted to I couldn’t do it, not now. Supposing it happened? Could we destroy it before it was bornor bring it into the world and then hideit … our son? Even if I could accept that, for his sake how could we burden him with the shame? Once again I have to quote your own words, words you have written to me in your letters: ‘I want a successor who bears my name. Not a day passes when I don’t long for it more than ever. I am now 32 years old and I suppose this yearning is true for all men at that age. It is at the root of all religions, in ancient days as much as in our own. It has been true for Christians, Jews and Chinese, all these have wanted descendants who will remember and revere their forebears. The curse of Jehovah lay on those who had no sons: and I am the last of my line. Without an heir my family dieswith me. I amnow the last linkinthe chain … and if that chain is broken?’ All this you wrote to me yourself.You also said ‘I want to pass on to him our traditions so that, with faith and decency, he will accept the responsibilities so gladly shouldered by my father and grandfather’. And then you went on ‘It is the only hope of immortality in this world, and I cannot renounce it!’