Miklós Bánffy - They Were Found Wanting

Countess Elise grasped her nephew’s hand more strongly than before as she turned again to him and asked, ‘How is Laci?’ and her voice held a deeper note than was usual for her. There was a catch in it for she was deeply moved.

Balint was not taken entirely by surprise for he had already sensed that the memory of Laszlo was floating in the air around them, waiting only for the right moment to be expressed in words, challenging the silence and the dying questions, ready to blaze out in open rebellion. At last his name had been spoken, but Balint still answered, slowly and with hesitation, ‘Poor Laszlo, I’m so worried about him. I see him so seldom, almost never, in fact.’

‘Tell me, please tell me!’ cried Countess Elise. ‘I know absolutely nothing, and I’ve heard nothing since, since … since it all happened. I’ve written to him twice, once just after — you know … and again last year; but he didn’t answer. And Antal, well, Antal’s so severe about these things. But I love him so much, just the same as always, and I would like to help him if I could.’

At the first mention of Laszlo’s name Klara had got slowly to her feet. She rose with difficulty and at Countess Elise’s last words she went silently out of the room.

Fanny Beredy, however, stayed where she was, and this bothered Balint who would have preferred her to leave too. He looked over towards her. The beautiful woman’s long catlike eyes were almost closed but he could just make out between her lashes a little gleam of moisture. She sat quite still, but for one hand that moved up to her throat and touched the string of giant pearls that encircled her bare shoulders, dipped down between her breasts and fell into a pool in her lap, a pool of frozen tears, a fabulous jewel that somehow had a life of its own — and a past. Apart from this faint movement as Fanny caressed her pearls she was as motionless as a puma in a cage, oblivious of her present surroundings as she dreamed of life in a long-lost wilderness.

Balint had to answer, so he told all he knew about everything that had happened to Laszlo. He told it, perhaps, in a slightly toned-down version, for how could he speak frankly in front of a stranger? Still, he did tell everything and behind the bland phrases it was not difficult to sense the distress, the spiritual hurt. One felt, he said, that Laszlo believed himself to be a pariah and somehow this obsession never got better, only worse. He told them of the financial situation at Szamos-Kozard, which would probably soon have to be put up for auction and then Laszlo would own nothing, not even the roof over his head. Then Balint remembered his talk with Sandor Kendy who had said that the only solution would be to make Laszlo a ward of court, and so he told them about this too, hoping that maybe Countess Elise would be able to do something on those lines.

Balint talked for a long time, and when he came to the saddest parts, like the ruin and impending loss of the Szamos-Kozard estate, which of course had been her childhood home, the old lady pressed his hand with a force he would never have believed her to possess. It was clear that she was very much hurt and moved even though she had not been back for more than thirty years.

‘I will write to him again,’ she said when Balint had finished his tale. ‘That business of guardianship … I don’t know anything about such things, but perhaps that’s just as well. I’ll recommend it anyhow. I’ll write at once and you’ll take it to him yourself, won’t you?’

‘I can’t take it until after Christmas, Aunt Elise, because I have to stay in Budapest until then.’

‘It doesn’t matter. Perhaps things aren’t too urgent, but I still want you to deliver it personally.’ And she got up and went over to her little desk where there was hardly room for the morocco-leather letter-case, so covered was the tiny sécrétaire with little objets d’art and photographs of the countess’s father and mother, husband and children. Once at the desk she sat down and switched on the table lamp.

Fanny and Balint left the room.

They walked in silence through the vast library which, in contrast to the cosy luxury of Countess Elise’s friendly little sitting-room, was furnished only with great ecclesiastical oak manuscript chests on which the gilded baroque carving was cold and impartial.

They had almost reached the doors of the drawing-room when Fanny suddenly stopped. She turned towards Abady, her lips slightly parted and her eyes closed shut. They stood like this for just a moment, but it was a moment of eternity, for Balint, like everyone else, was quite unaware that Fanny and Laszlo had been lovers. So he stood there surprised, expecting at every moment that she would say something; but nothing came, not a sound emerged from her lips. At last two huge tears forced their way through her closed lashes and rolled slowly down her face to her bosom where they joined their sisters petrified into ropes of pearls.

Slowly Fanny walked into the drawing-room and over to the piano. She opened it and sat down, running her fingers over the notes in soft roulades . Then her host came over and stood near her, suggesting that maybe Countess Beredy would honour them with a few songs, as she had often done on previous evenings.

‘Do sing us something! It would be so nice of you,’ he said.

But she only shook her head, turning her face away, and once more her hands just wandered four or five times over the notes before she jumped up saying, ‘Oh, no! It’s far too late! I for one will now go to bed!’ and as Szent-Gyorgyi bent to kiss her hand, she murmured, with a sad and somewhat ironical smile, ‘You were quite right … what you said about this house. Oh, yes, quite right!’

LATER, when already dressed for bed, Magda and Lili came to see their cousin Klara. This was quite easy as her room was next to theirs, ‘right side of the chapel’, in the family apartments, the same room she had always had as a child. Her aunt had wanted her here, rather than on the other side in the guest rooms next to her husband. Aunt Elise was anxious to have her near her so that she would be able to go to her room and look after her without having to pass along those freezing corridors.

The two girls slipped out of their adjoining rooms just down from Klara’s. They wore light dressing gowns, and both wanted to have the intimate girls’ gossip for which they had had no opportunity during the day.

Magda wanted a chance to give rein to her annoyance. For a long time she had kept up a flirtation with Klara’s older brother, Peter; and then this dreadful thing had happened — her father had invited one of her younger half-brothers, Louis, but not Peter.

Lili came too, partly because she was no longer a child and shouldn’t be treated as if she were, and so, though she was already in bed and half asleep when Magda came in to suggest they visit Klara’s room, she jumped up at once — for wasn’t she grown up and able to stay up if she wished? — and anyhow she felt like a good talk. What about? Well, that didn’t matter; just to talk would be enough, talk a bit, listen a bit. She might learn something… about that Abady, for example. Who was he, always so serious and somehow different — well, different from the others — and how strange he was!’

So they sat by Klara, Magda on the edge of the bed where Klara sat up supported by a mountain of lacy pillows because she found it easier to breathe that way, and Lili in an armchair at the foot of the bed.

An alabaster night light spread a filtered glow throughout the room so that the silken wraps of the girls melted into the pink satin which covered the walls, the bed and all the upholstered furniture.