Miklós Bánffy - They Were Found Wanting

‘I turn off here! Goodbye to you!’ Balint said suddenly just as Simo was in mid-sentence, and plunged into the thicket, his men striding behind him.

Damned stuck-up aristocrat! said the Gyurkuca notary to himself as he rode on. In about fifteen minutes the road entered the dark forest. Here for a moment Simo stopped, looked around him carefully, undid the leather clasp of the holster that was strapped round his waist, and making sure that there was nothing to hinder him reaching for his gun, rode slowly into the shadow of the forest.

The path that Balint had chosen was not really suited to anyone on horseback. The little mountain ponies themselves could pass anywhere but the branches of the surrounding trees were so low that Balint found himself repeatedly lying flat in the saddle while even the horses had to duck their heads. Soon Balint decided to dismount and continue on foot.

As his pace was faster than that of the gornyik’s ponies he soon found that he had left them far behind and was walking alone in the great forest.

There were several tracks on the mountainside, all leading to the meadow on the Prislop, and soon Balint found that he had to choose between two of them, one above, one below the other. He chose the higher. Soon he emerged from the dense thicket of young pine saplings into a more open part of the timber forest where, among the more recently planted trees there were some older ones whose growth had become stunted in the rocky soil and whose branches were covered in moss. Here the sloping ground was dotted with burr-covered burdock while the young summer bramble shoots, now bright green but soon to be laden with blackberries, grew as thickly as if they had been planted by hand.

So unexpected was the dramatic contrast between the brilliant green of the brambles on the ground with the soft lilac-coloured shade of the tree trunks above that Balint stopped in wonder at the beauty of it. In the branches above hung silver-grey tassels of moss seemingly woven into veils of net. Everywhere there were only these three colours, silver, grey, and vivid green: and the more that Balint gazed around him the more improbable and ethereal did the forest seem until it was only those strands near at hand, which moved gently in the soft breeze, that seemed real while everything further off, the pale lilac shading into violet, was like clouds of vapour in slight perpetual movement as if swaying to the rhythm of some unheard music. And everywhere around, at ground level, was this green carpet, also stirred by almost imperceptible movement, from the valley below to the edges of the lilac-shaded forest above, so that Balint had the impression of a magical seascape. This was enhanced, here and there, by rigid blocks of projecting rock, grey-black slate which shone in the sunshine as if covered by invisible spray. Indeed the rocks really were wet, wet with the humidity of the mountain forest, so wet indeed that tiny droplets were constantly falling from the sharp edges of the rocks onto the damp sponge-like earth beneath. Even the thick soil of the path was damp and resilient underfoot.

Balint moved slowly on. He felt strangely trance-like, as if some hitherto unrevealed secret would suddenly be unfolded before him, as if a golden stranger would step out from the lilac strands of moss to welcome him to Paradise. And, as always when suddenly aware of unexpected beauty, he thought of Adrienne as if anything in the world that gave him pleasure must stem from her pale skin, her full lips and golden onyx eyes. He could almost see her coming towards him through the lilac and silver threads, her familiar long steps and individual tread gliding over the glittering ocean of green.

At once he decided that as soon as they were married they must come here together, at the same time of year, at the same hour … and wander, hand in hand, in the silence of this magical forest.

From his dream Balint was awakened by the faint flutter of wing-beats. Before him there rose a little bird, smaller than a quail, with a strange swooping flight. It rose in the air and then dropped again, and Balint saw that it was a young snipe, barely more than a fledgling, and still very awkward. The beak seemed disproportionately long for the body and even so it seemed as if its wings were not yet strong enough to support the little bird in anything but awkward stumbling interrupted flight. For a moment Balint watched the little bird’s efforts as twice more it flew up and then came to earth again, cowering in the grass as if too tired to try again. The man then walked swiftly on so as not to frighten, or tire further, the little snipe in its first efforts to earn to fly.

Another quarter of an hour’s walk brought Balint to the edge of a steep cliff. It was an almost perpendicular rock, some six or seven metres high, partly covered by stunted pine and young Balkan maple trees which hung down from the summit, their gnarled trunks seeming to search for light and air above the open space of the meadow below. Here, Balint saw, the little band of forest guards had already arrived and had made there a stop on the way where there was water and the grass was green and so made it a good place to rest and feed the horses before tackling the last stretch of their way to the Prislop.

Andras Zutor and his companions were sitting in the shade at the foot of the rock. They were talking excitedly among themselves and it had been the sound of their voices which had brought Balint to the edge of the cliff above them. He was just about to call out that he was there when he heard a phrase which made him stand still and hold his breath: ‘… and that’s why the notary is so frightened, and why he came this way round.’

They spoke, of course, in Romanian, but Balint could now well understand everything that was said, and he was curious to know what all this was about. The voice came from young Kula, the boy from Pejkoja who had been enlisted to look after the horses on Balint’s trip to the mountain.

‘Of course he’s frightened!’ answered old Zsukuczo, who lived on the Gyalu Botin, near the road from Beles to Retyicel. ‘Didn’t they shoot at him not far from where I live? Of course he’s frightened, wouldn’t you be?’ he said, and laughed as he did so.

‘Is that really so?’ asked Vomului, as if he were astonished by the news which he knew perfectly well already.

‘Where did this happen?’ asked Zutor.

‘I told you. Close to where I live. It was there on the hillside where the road follows the boundary line above the Korbului creek.’

‘On our side?’

‘No! No! The shot came from the village common land. I was standing in front of my house and heard it all quite clearly. And I can tell you I didn’t move for a few minutes either!’

The old man laughed again, snapping a twig between his fingers before throwing it aside. Then he went on, ‘I don’t care what happens outside our land. Besides it’s better not to know too much. Still I looked into it a bit later, just to be sure.’ And he went on to give all the details, speaking slowly, as country folk do, especially in the mountains where people rarely finish a sentence.

It seems that he saw the hated notary ride by his house. Then there was the sound of a shot. Half an hour later he went to see what he could find. There was no one about and it was clear that whoever had fired had missed his target. As an ex-poacher who could read any sign or trace left it was easy for old Zsukuczo to reconstruct what had happened. There, in the mud of the path, he could see how Simo had suddenly and sharply reined back his horse — so sharply indeed that the animal had almost fallen backwards on its rump. ‘Next I looked to see if they wanted to give him a good scare, or whether …’ Soon he found what he was looking for, a rifle bullet, lodged in a tree-trunk just beside the skid-marks. The shot had come from somewhere on the steep hillside above the path, from the cover of a group of young beech trees. Whoever the marksman had been, he was good shot, that was clear enough even if he had not actually hit the target. The old man again laughed and then, as if to show his appreciation of a good joke, spat in a wide arc.