Miklós Bánffy - They Were Found Wanting

Only Gaszton Simo from Gyurkuca took a more positive view. He was now riding even higher than he had been before. He was on terms of intimacy with the Prefect, who was his cousin, and he never let anyone forget that his uncle was a Court Chamberlain. It had only been due to an unlucky stroke of fate that he himself had never risen above the status of a country notary — just before his final examinations there had been some little difficulty, some prank, concerning the debating society’s petty cash, but it had all been hushed up and smoothed over by his family. So here he was, a gentleman, independent, doing the job of a notary in a country district where such a man, in such a post, could be a real pasha. And this year his sense of his own importance had been further swollen by his election as chairman of all the notaries in the district. Simo was no fool.

All his life he had given his allegiance to whoever had been in power. After the days of Kalman Szell it had been Istvan Tisza. Now he bowed the knee to Ferenc Kossuth, just as recently he had done to Kossuth’s one-time sworn enemy, Gyula Justh.

‘I’ll see that this gets done all right!’ he said confidently, his little button-like eyes gleaming shrewdly beneath his bushy eyebrows. ‘I’ll round up as many people as you want for the co-operative! How many do you think will do?’ he asked Abady in a familiar tone.

Balint found Simo every bit as antipathetic as he had each time he had met him in the past.

‘It’s not a question of what I want. The people must come in voluntarily, because they want to. We have to explain to them that it’s to their own advantage. We must start with some of the more intelligent among them. It doesn’t matter if they are poor or in debt because that’s why the whole movement has been started — to get them out of the money-lenders’ clutches. It is this that we have to make clear to them. If one approaches them with understanding and kindness we are sure to have results. Look what happened last year. One of those money-lenders on the mountain got himself killed during the winter. What was his name? Rusz Pantyilimon, wasn’t it? Such a thing would never have happened if all the villagers had joined together.’

Gaszton Simo laughed, but his expression was surly enough. ‘Yes, yes. That Rusz got himself beaten to death.’

Simo’s expression clouded over, not, however, because he was thinking of the Rusz’s fate, but because he knew Balint had alluded to the matter only to remind him that Abady suspected he had been implicated in the money-lending traffic which had led to the hated usurer’s murder. As a disciplined civil servant, however, he did not allow himself to be upset by the allusion but merely signified his agreement with everything that the government had seen fit to command. Discreetly he winked at the Prefect.

By the time the meeting ended it had been decided that the first co-operative would be started in three villages where there were Romanian as well as Hungarian farmers, and that it would also be open to those living in smaller settlements in the mountains nearby.

That afternoon Abady drove up to the forest. It would be the first time that he had come to his newly built log cabin in the meadow near to where the Abady lands marched with those of Count Uzdy.

In the evening he sent his men away and remained alone.

He dined at a little table set in front of the cabin, sitting there for a long time afterwards and watching the night fall. Hardly a sound could be heard except for a soft rustling of leaves as if, in some mysterious way, the forest itself were breathing.

Finally he dragged himself to bed, knowing that he could not expect Adrienne to come before morning. Maybe as early as dawn?

Had she received his few formal scribbled lines … would she be able to slip away … perhaps she had changed her mind … would everything go as they had planned it?

As he waited every nerve in Balint’s body was racked with yearning.

‘I’ll have to go back now,’ said Adrienne. ‘It’ll look strange if I’m out in the forest too long.’

She walked across to the little window which opened to the east and flung back the shutters. A golden shaft of sunlight shot into the cabin and marked out a clearly defined square on the beaten clay floor until, all at once, the inside of the little cabin, previously so mysterious in the half light, lost its magic in the sober glare of morning.

It was the simplest and most ordinary of dwellings. It was exactly like any other refuge built in the mountains for the use of the hunter. The sides were made of round logs while the crevices between them were filled with a mixture of earth and moss to keep out the wind and the light. It contained only an iron cooking-stove in one corner, a zinc wash-stand and a simple wide bed of planks on which had been thrown a mattress filled with sweet-smelling hay instead of the usual coarse straw. Hooks had been fixed into the walls so that Balint could hang up his clothes, gun and cartridge bag. There were no luxuries, but it was all they wanted. Careful not to do anything to draw attention to themselves, Balint and Adrienne cared little for what their refuge contained or looked like, provided it was somewhere they could celebrate their re-found love. For both of them the real world was to be found only in this humble little cabin.

For some time before Addy started for home they sat side by side on the wooden bed holding hands.

Finally she started to say something, her golden onyx-like eyes not looking at him but staring straight ahead. Very slowly, almost heavily, she said, ‘You will have to come over to see us at Almasko soon. Uzdy heard that you were in the district in May — but you didn’t come then — and as soon as he returns home he’ll get to know you’re here again… and it won’t look right if you don’t come over. He’d find it strange.’

Adrienne was deep in thought, thinking what she had not told Balint, about the way in which her husband had already mentioned the subject.

About two weeks before they had been having coffee in the drawing-room after lunch, the Countess Clémence in her usual place on the sofa, Adrienne sitting in an armchair nearby and Uzdy walking up and down the room with his usual heavy affected tread. Suddenly he had stopped.

He had been directly in front of Adrienne’s chair. Looking down at her from his great height he said sharply, ‘Did you know Abady was in the neighbourhood?’

Adrienne had not known how to answer. For a moment she considered the alternatives: if she said ‘No’ and then Uzdy later found out she had seen Balint it could lead to his death; yet if she said ‘Yes’ it might lead to so many embarrassing questions about who had told her and where and when she had seen him, that she was sure to get entangled in a web of untruth from which she could not escape.

Better deny it, come what may! She looked up and met his eyes and at once said, ‘No, I didn’t know.’

‘Just so! Just so! Of course, of course! But it seems he was here in May and spent several days in the forests quite close to us without so much as honouring us even once with his august presence. Honouring my mother and myself, and you, of course. Mainly you, but the rest of us too.’

Adrienne made no reply. Then her husband walked slowly once or twice up and down the room again before stopping once more in front of her.