Miklós Bánffy - They Were Found Wanting

Nowadays there was still an element of this to be seen in him, but it was modified by the coarseness of his new companions. Laszlo, somewhere deep down, still thought of himself as a Fairy Prince under a spell, who had become a slave of his own will and who revelled in the mud to which he had condemned himself. He mocked himself and also those who mocked him; but this self-deceptive euphoria did not long survive the onslaught of brandy after brandy. Nowadays he could no longer carry his wine as he had before … and in no time he would become sodden with drink.

As Sara was watching one of the revellers in the crowd got up holding his braces in his hand. He stepped over to Gyeroffy, and winking to his friends as it were to show what a good idea he had had, he said, ‘Could his noble Lordship dance as well if I tied his knees together?’ and he laughed maliciously. A roar of laughter greeted the suggestion. Someone shouted, ‘This’ll be worth watching!’ while another offered Laszlo a litre of wine if he could dance without stumbling. Laszlo stopped for a moment and gazed around him as if he took nothing in. Then he laughed stupidly and mumbled, ‘All right. Of course. I can do it any way you like … any way…’

Something stirred deep inside the handsome Mrs Lazar. Whatever it was, pity or a sense that mercy should be shown, something moved her deeply as the men crowded forward and started to bind Laszlo’s knees together. At this point Gyeroffy was staring straight at her and, though no one could have told if he could really see her or not, Sara read this look as a cry for help. The gleam of moisture at the corners of his eyes may have been nothing more than the inadvertent tears of the very drunk, but to Sara they seemed like the mute plea of an animal led to sacrifice. Of course she already knew Laszlo by sight, for he had sat for a long time at the liquor stall just in front of her stand at the charity bazaar, and he had been drunk then too. At that time she had found the sight mildly disgusting and had not thought of him since. Now, however, some latent maternal tenderness took over and she was ashamed of the unthinking cruelty of men who mocked the weak and helpless.

Without stopping to think and guided entirely by instinct, she stepped quickly over until she was by Gyeroffy’s side.

‘Take that off at once!’ she said in a commanding voice to the man who was kneeling at her feet and strapping Laszlo’s knees together. ‘Take it off! At once, I tell you. You ought to be ashamed!’

Everyone was stunned into silence. Sara’s voice was so full of command, her whole demeanour so severe and her large plum-shaped eyes so full of anger and disdain, that no one dared utter a sound. And when she took Gyeroffy by the hand and led him away people jumped up from their seats and made room for her to pass.

All Sara said, as they walked towards the door, was, ‘You come with me now!’ and he followed her meekly without saying anything.

And so it was that they walked out together through the two lines of now silent revellers, out from the courtyard of the inn, the tall stately woman who walked like a queen and, led by the hand like a little child, Laszlo Gyeroffy.

Once outside she had to push him into the carriage. Then she had the roof raised so that she would not be seen driving away with a young man sodden with drink at her side.

Laszlo fell asleep almost at once.

Soon it began to get dark, for it had been a cloudy day and now rain was beginning to fall.

The horses trotted slowly. Laszlo was still asleep, lying back awkwardly on the cushions. How tormented he looks now that he is sleeping, she thought. In her hand Sara held Laszlo’s hat which had fallen over his face when he went to sleep. She looked at him for a long time, thinking how pale he was and noticing how his eyebrows met in the middle and how there they were slightly raised as if he were still silently and unconsciously complaining of the sad life that was his lot.

He was like a lost child who no longer even looked for the way home.

At first Sara did not think far ahead. All she had wanted to do was to rescue him from that terrible place where everyone made fun of him. When they passed through Kozard — where she knew he lived — she thought she would wake him and drop him off. There would surely be someone at his house who would be able to look after him. But the rain fell ever more strongly and they were well past the village before she noticed it. And then she realized that she did not care. It would really have been most awkward to stop and throw this drunken young man out of the carriage, to explain and give orders. She did not even know where the Gyeroffy manor-house was, apart from the fact that it was somewhere near the village; and by now it was getting late. Sara remembered that she had to get home, for today was already Tuesday and on Wednesday she must appear at the County Court; and, what’s more, she still had a long way to get back to Dezmer. Sara found no end of arguments to justify her going straight home, as one always does when instinct takes over from logical thought.

The strongest argument for Sara was that Gyeroffy would only have begun to sleep off his drunkenness by the time that they got back to Dezmer; but there at least he would be able to get out of the carriage with some semblance of normality. He could then sleep in the ground-floor guest-room; and the following day he could go home by train.

It was, perhaps, just as well that she had recently sent off her young son to learn German at the college at Szeben. It would not have been easy to explain to him why she had picked up a drunken young aristocrat at the market. Of course she could explain it — and after all there was nothing much to explain. Two years before it had been easier, and of course quite different, when Wickwitz used to visit her. Although he had been her lover, he was also well known to her son who admired the good-looking young soldier-sportsman and thought of him as a friend. That he was far more than a casual visitor the boy had had no idea. Sara was far too careful — though of course now there was no question of anything like that. After all, what she was doing for young Gyeroffy she did out of pure pity. Still it was better, she thought, that that large growing boy who was now almost a man would not be at home. Better! Far better!

This had all happened on Tuesday. When Laszlo awoke on Thursday morning, the sun was high in the sky and shone in golden lines between the wooden laths of the shutters. The room itself seemed if anything darker than it was because of the brightness of those strips of light. Some tiny autumn flies made a faint buzzing and it was this that Laszlo first noticed.

He sat up in bed and looked around. He had no idea where he was and when he tried to remember there was only the faintest recollection of being drunk and playing in the inn at the Tuesday Fair at Ujvar, but no memory at all of what had happened and how he had got to wherever he was. He could just remember playing something that was funny, though he could not recall what. There had been many people around him, people who were laughing, people with big, big heads and wide-open mouths that laughed, and laughed and laughed … He had some memory, he thought, of a tall dark-haired woman who had suddenly stepped between him and the laughing heads. Huge coal-black eyes had looked hard at him and then someone — had it been the same woman? — had said something. And afterwards, then what? Nothing. Nothing at all until he had awoken with a jolt and seemed somehow to be in front of a house he did not know. At least he thought he did not know it, but it had been dark and as he was still very drunk he had not been able to see it properly.