Miklós Bánffy - They Were Found Wanting

‘I have nowhere to tie him up,’ said the youth sulkily. Balint had quickly to make up his mind. The obvious thing was somehow to reach the Kendy house, yet for some reason he was reluctant to try this. It was well-known that the gruff old man was not inclined to be hospitable and never asked anyone to come to his house in the country. Also to arrive at this late hour would be awkward, especially as Balint had never met Crookface’s wife.

Some ten years before, when Sandor Kendy was already well advanced in age, he had suddenly and unexpectedly found a wife in Sepsis-Szentgyorgy. She had been a stenographer, or something of the sort, the daughter of an employee in the tax office and was called Alice Folbert. Crookface had never taken her anywhere with him, never introduced her even to his closest relations, but had brought her home at once to Kis-Keresztur and kept her there ever since. All this was strange enough, especially as rumour had it that Alice Folbert had been quite deaf when Crookface had married her. Apart from this the gossips had been unable to find out anything more about her and soon, as no one ever saw her since she never left her husband’s country house and as he led the life of a bachelor in town, she was soon as forgotten as if she had never existed.

The coachman walked the carriage slowly through the village and then down a road on one side of which was a wooden paling set between stone pillars. Eventually they reached an open gate — open because in those days life in the country was so secure that a closed gate signified either unfriendliness or else that the owners were away from home. A short avenue of lime trees led to the stone-columned portico of the house.

Balint got down and stepped into the dimly-lit entrance hall. From above he could hear the sound of a piano. Someone was playing a nocturne by Chopin, accentuated perhaps with rather too much emotion but brilliantly executed all the same. How amazing, thought Balint, that the deaf lady should be a musician. It did not occur to him that anyone else in the house could be playing.

A footman appeared now from somewhere. Abady explained who he was and was at once led through the large entrance-hall that divided the house in two halves and up a wide staircase at the far end.

At the top of the stairs he found himself in a corridor that was closed on the hall side by a glass partition that had been constructed so that people could go from one side of the house to the other without entering the hall. This corridor was in darkness, but from where he stood the brightly-lit drawing-room could clearly be seen through double glass doors. The walls were white and on them was hung just one large portrait. The furniture was of stiff dark ebony upholstered in blue and white striped chintz, of a style much favoured in Transylvania at the beginning of the nineteenth century. On a large round table in the centre of the room stood a lamp and by its light the young Countess Kendy was busy working at her tapestry-frame. Close to the tall dark windows, seated before a giant grand piano, was old Crookface. It was he who was playing.

Balint caught his breath, so taken by surprise was he that it should be the coarse-spoken, rough-mannered, hard-eyed old roué who was playing Chopin with such delicacy. Balint felt that he had been vouchsafed a glimpse of some forbidden secret, for he was sure that no one else could know that the much-feared old man would pass his evenings in playing sentimental ballades and nocturnes.

And yet there he was, his powerful torso motionless, his bald head a faint gleam in the semi-darkness, his hooked eagle’s nose barely visible. He was looking straight ahead, into nothingness, the notes singing under the light touch of his fingers, and it was as if he himself were a thousand miles away. He must have played these melancholy tunes a hundred times; and he played only for himself, for his wife was stone-deaf and could hear nothing. Just for himself; this sweet old-fashioned music, the music of his youth, played by memory at the dark end of a vast but sparsely-furnished room.

Balint touched the footman’s arm. ‘We’ll wait until Count Sandor finishes,’ he murmured.

When Crookface had played a couple of preludes he got up and walked with a heavy tread towards where his wife was sitting.

Balint and the footman now came in as if they had just arrived. Kendy turned towards them in welcome.

‘Where the Devil have you sprung from at this time of night?’ he cried, and gave a big good-humoured laugh with his lop-sided mouth. Then he turned to his wife, smoothed his moustaches upwards, and, making no sound but merely mouthing the words, said, ‘This is my cousin, Balint Abady!’

Countess Kendy rose dutifully and shook hands with the visitor. There was something essentially humble in her manner. It was as if she were not in her own house, indeed as if she were not even the wife of the noble Count Kendy but was still no more than a little typist. Very softly, in the hardly perceptible whisper of the deaf who have no means of judging how loudly they speak, she murmured, ‘Welcome, I’m sure. So pleased!’ Her face was lit by a serene smile.

It was a beautiful face, interesting and pale-complexioned, with full red lips and grey eyes that were fringed with thick dark lashes. Her black eyebrows nearly met over the bridge of her nose and this gave her glance an unusual and mysterious look, as if she were peering at one from a great distance. Her hair was light-brown in colour, wavy and very thick, with two great tresses wreathing her head in the same manner as one saw in portraits of the beautiful Queen-Empress Elisabeth.

She looked at her husband with the unspoken question as to whether she was doing right and then, with a slow, solemn, almost lazy movement, gestured Balint towards an armchair beside her.

He sat down. He told how it was that he came to be there, how he had been making for Segesvar so as to catch the express train home and how the carriage-horse had fallen lame just as they reached the outskirts of the village. Crookface interrupted him once or twice with brief questions: Where was the carriage now? Was the horse being cared for? Had Balint dined on the road? Then he rang for the footman and gave orders for Balint’s coachman and his horses to be properly looked after. When this was done he turned once more towards his wife, again brushed back his moustaches and mouthed something silently to her. Immediately she rose and started to leave the room. Balint involuntarily watched her as she went. She had a beautiful walk, like that of oriental dancers, whose hips and shoulders swayed to an individual rhythm, a rhythm that ought to be accompanied by slow syncopated music. Like a mirage she disappeared silently through the doorway.

She did not return, but in a few moments servants brought in two more lamps, a small table and a cold supper. Balint ate ravenously, for his dinner at Udvarhely seemed a long time ago.

Crookface asked about the meeting at Homorod and Balint told him what he could, but the conversation dragged as the host was a silent man by nature who normally only let drop the occasional four-letter obscenity from the corner of his mouth and the rest of the time merely sat puffing at his cigar.

As he was eating Abady looked up at the large picture on the wall in front of him. Only now did he begin to notice it and realize that it must be a portrait of his host’s young wife. It had the same figure, not tall but well-proportioned, and the same face. There were the mysterious grey eyes in their frame of black lashes, the same eyebrows, the same lustrous hair wound round the head in the double crown made famous by the wayward Empress. Only one thing was different, startlingly different. The dress in which she had been depicted was nothing like that of today, or even of the recent past, but was in the style of the seventies, with long narrow sleeves, plunging décolleté and a bell-shaped skirt decorated all over with different coloured little ruffles and bunches of artificial flowers in the rich confusion of the fashion of those days. It was beautiful and harmonious, but strange.