‘What for? You’ll send it, won’t you, Bischitz? It won’t be the first,’ said Laszlo in a mocking tone.
Now they really did start to go back to Laszlo’s house.
They did not say much to each other on the way. Balint was racking his brains as to how to get Laszlo out of all his trouble and how, too, to wean him from this solitary drinking. Only when they reached the house and had gone up to the former salon of the manor-house, which now served Laszlo as a bed-sitting-room, did he take out Countess Elise’s letter to her nephew. Before he handed it over he told Laszlo how lovingly they all thought about him at Jablanka, Aunt Elise, Magda, Pfaffulus, everybody … but he did not mention either Klara or Imre Warday.
A little stove had been installed in front of the French marble chimney-piece. A fire was burning in it and the smoke and fumes were led into the chimney by a rusty black metal tube. Laszlo stood beside the stove without saying a word, his eyes fixed upon the window and on the grey wintry sky beyond. He said nothing during Balint’s long story about his cousins, and he still said nothing when Balint came to the end of his tale and handed over the letter. For a moment he held the envelope in his hand, then he waved it twice in the air before his face before grabbing it with both hands and tearing it to pieces unopened. With his boots still covered with snow he kicked the bits of paper into the fireplace surround.
This was such a surprise that Abady jumped up in protest, only to find that Laszlo was quite calm, saying, ‘I’ve done with that world for ever, do you understand? I don’t want anything from it and I don’t want to hear anything from it. Nothing! Nothing at all! For me those people no longer exist. For all I can care they may be dead, or they may never have existed. Never! Never!’
‘Why do you reject everyone who loves you and wants to help you?’ asked Balint gently.
‘I don’t want anyone to help me! Why can’t you all leave me in peace? Especially all those, those … there in Hungary!’ Laszlo was shouting now, and getting increasingly agitated as he whirled about the dirty, untidy room where every piece of furniture was piled with filthy unwashed articles of clothing and the ragged sofa covered in old books and papers.
His cousin felt deeply sorry for him and so he moved across the room and joined him. ‘All right! All right! Nobody’s forcing you to anything,’ he said, and then, so as to give Laszlo time to simmer down, took him by the arm and started walking up and down the room, chatting trivially about a number of other subjects. As they did so they passed several times the corner of the room where there stood a delicate old glass-fronted vitrine. Its dusty velvet-covered shelves were now almost empty. In one corner there was an old chipped Meissen coffee-pot and beside it a matching sugar bowl with a long crack on one side, things no one would buy. In several places imprints on the velvet, less dusty than elsewhere, showed where other objects had once been placed. So this is where the governor’s cup came from! thought Balint, and realized why even today the shopkeeper had been in such a hurry to hide something. With his usual instinctive urge to help others Balint, without thinking, stepped over to the vitrine and said, ‘You’ve been selling the china, haven’t you?’
Laszlo did not reply.
‘Look, my dear fellow, if you really have to part with family things it’s absurd to give them away for practically nothing to the village store. My mother and I would be only too pleased to have a valuation made and give you the proper price. Far better than let it go to waste!’
Laszlo screamed at him, ‘Leave me alone, all of you! I don’t need telling how to run my life. If I want to go to hell, I’ll go to hell. And I’ll sell what I please to whom I please and when I want to. As for you, you can stop sticking your nose into other people’s business!’
Now it was Abady’s turn to get angry. He turned away and left the room without saying another word.
Laszlo followed him out slowly. Only now did he realize how offensive he had been to the only man who had been a faithful friend to him as long as he could remember. He wanted somehow to make amends, but was not quite sure how. By the time Laszlo reached the head of the stairs his cousin had almost reached the bottom, so he called out, ‘My love to Aunt Roza! As soon as I get some money I’ll come over to pay my respects. Do forgive me, Balint, please. I’ve become such an ill-tempered bear these days,’ and he turned and went back to his room. Despite the implied olive branch he still could not resist the temptation to slam the door behind him.
WEEKS WENT BY and it was the end of March before Balint was able to get back home to Kolozsvar. Parliament had now been adjourned after a winter session made monotonous by a series of futile verbal battles, mostly about the proposed new House Rules. The only serious piece of legislation to receive the assent of the House was the motion concerning land reform in Transylvania. This was the first tangible result of the Szekler congress at Homorod. It was only a modest beginning to what Balint was anxious to bring about, but at least it was a first step. The rest of the debates were given over to meaningless obstructive measures put forward by those who wished to embarrass the government; or resentful echoes of matters the Hungarian representatives had discussed in Vienna, particularly a proposition made there by the Hungarian Minister of Defence concerning army officers’ pay.
There seemed to be some connection, though no one was quite sure what, between these events and the reappearance on the political scene of Kristoffy. At the beginning of March his banner arose again when he presided over a political meeting called to announce the formation of a new so-called ‘Radical’ party. Since his resignation from office Kristoffy had been in close touch with the Heir and the party which surrounded him. When he had been a Minister he had, of course, been a faithful servant of the old King, but now he had transferred his allegiance.
The Radical party itself existed only on paper. It was a sort of slogan to be brandished only by those few university professors, do-gooding intellectuals and the recently-formed Galileo Circle made up of cranky university students who described themselves as ‘citizens of the world’ or ‘superopeans’. The group was of thoroughly bourgeois character and as it included neither socialists nor anyone of the working class, it was not taken seriously by the general public, particularly as Kristoffy, as a former member of the unpopular Bodyguard government, was generally thought of as politically tainted. Nevertheless, though of course it was not then realized, it was from these sources that flowed the current that, ten years later, would lead to revolution. Neither, of course, was it then known that Kristoffy had sold his soul to the Belvedere Palace.
For Balint these weeks passed slowly. He went to meetings, to sessions of Parliament, to dinners and evening parties, but he felt his life to be meaningless and empty. He tried to take up once again the half-philosophical, half-doctrinal treatise that he had started to write under the spur of his love for Adrienne but which he had dropped when it seemed that this love was doomed never to be fulfilled. Then it had been a song of love, for Addy had not yet been his and his yearning for her had inspired every line.
Now that he had not seen her for several months his desire for her had in some way been strengthened and he determined not to put off any longer serious plans for their future life together.
While they had been able to meet frequently this thought had not been so compelling. Even when they had had to take extra care in planning their secret meetings — and days had often gone by without any opportunity of seeing each other — the intervals of separation had never been prolonged and this gave them both the feeling of belonging to each other, almost indeed of their living together with his absences caused only by his work. The previous spring, summer and autumn had passed in this manner. Balint had often had to absent himself for political reasons, for his work for the co-operative projects or simply to look after the Abady lands and interests at Denestornya and in the mountains; but all this time, because they both knew that they would soon be together again, these absences did not seem to matter. But for the last three months, three long months, things had not been the same. They had had no opportunity to meet at all and their situation was far from happy. There was no way now that they could meet; they were inexorably shut off from any contact. If Adrienne had fallen ill he would not have been able to go to her or help her in any way. He could only wait in the hope of perhaps hearing something by chance gossip just as if he were a stranger. It was dreadful and deeply frustrating. Adrienne managed occasionally to write and this was how he learned that her daughter’s attack of measles had developed complications, that the girl’s convalescence would be slow and that she could not leave her side until the child was completely recovered. Waiting …waiting … waiting …
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