Miklós Bánffy - They Were Counted

Not that any of the ladies would have guessed that they did not have her full attention. With a sweet smile on her still beautiful if rather full face, she would turn from one to another with every sign of sympathetic interest, ‘Yes, indeed, my dear. How well you put it, I do agree!’ And all the while she was thinking: Did they put the champagne on ice? Have they let the cream curdle? Did someone remember to shut up the ice pit? Was there enough beef for the guests’ coachmen’s dinner? Was Alice actually checking all these things or not? Despite the fact that her husband’s sister was so unreliable she had been forced to entrust it all to her; and until the girls got back there was nothing else she could do. But though reconciled to the inevitable, she still worried.

It was a mercy that Aunt Lizinka was there and that she never drew breath. In her high, piping, and surprisingly penetrating voice, she held all the country ladies spellbound with her version of the latest scandals. No one ever interrupted her: neither the mothers of marriageable daughters who feared her evil tongue and what she might say if she were offended, nor the country ladies who had come to pay their respects, for they knew that however frail and ancient she might seem she was still a power to be reckoned with in Maros-Torda. Only two years before she had used this power, to the whole province’s rage, to ensure the election to Parliament of its first peasant member, the demagogue Makkai, simply because she had been angered by the choice of a candidate she did not approve. People said that even Makkai’s election speeches had been dictated by Aunt Lizinka.

Her latest tirade concerned her old enemy, Miklos Absolon, who, although he hardly ever left his estates in the northern part of the province, still wielded great influence, usually in direct opposition to whatever Aunt Lizinka was trying to achieve. She never lost an opportunity of discrediting Miklos Absolon, who for many years had lived with his housekeeper, a fact well-known to everybody, and who according to Lizinka was nothing more than a ‘crack-heeled servant’. ‘And now, my dears — I know it for a fact — she’s cheating on him with every Tom, Dick and Harry! It’s true! I know it because it is so!

All this was happening while Balint was washing in the guest cloak room. As he stepped out into the hall he met again the butler Kadar carrying a large tray of glasses.

‘Where can I find Countess Laczok?’ he asked.

‘The Count should leave her be,’ replied the old man testily, ‘and go on out into the garden. That’s where all the gentlemen are.’ And without waiting for an answer, he marched on breathing heavily.

So Balint went out through the front door again. About a hundred yards away on the edge of the old moat was a gaunt old lime tree under which the men were gathered. Some of them had come from the races, while others were husbands of the ladies upstairs who had come from Vasarhely and the country around Var-Siklod to call upon the hostess. Under the tree was a round table made from an ancient mill-stone, on which had been placed decanters of wine, bottles of lemonade and mineral waters and several trays of glasses. Directly under the tree sat the host, Count Jeno Laczok. The visitors, on benches and garden chairs — and some standing — had grouped themselves according to their political allegiance; one party on his left, the other on his right.

Next to the host, on his right, sat Crookface, who had been Prefect for fifteen years during the Kalman Tisza régime, and beside him the present Prefect, Peter Kis, with Soma Weissfeld, the banker who was also a State Counsellor. This last honorary title had been obtained for Weissfeld by Jeno Laczok as a reward for having helped him run the private company which had been formed to manage the combined forestry interests of the different branches of the Laczok family. Nearby sat Beno Balogh Peter, the ambitious notary who was always being wooed by the opposition; Uncle Ambrus who, though he secretly inclined away from the party in power, gave outward allegiance to whichever policy was supported by his cousin Crookface; Adam and Zoltan Alvinczy, who followed Uncle Ambrus in everything; and, finally, Joska Kendy, who sat silently smoking his pipe. Joska never discussed politics but he had placed himself there because he had two horses to sell and planned to palm them off on the Prefect.

Here the party line was broken by a large and hairy man with a black beard, Zoltan Varju, a neighbour of the Laczoks, who was generally regarded as an irresponsible and dangerous demagogue, and who sat facing the host.

On Count Laczok’s other side sat Ordung, the County Sheriff, whose dealings with the opposition were by no means as discreet as he believed; his friend the Deputy Sheriff Gaalffy, and an elderly man, Count Peter Bartokfay, in Hungarian dress and boots, who had been Member for Maros-Torda for many years in the past. Beside the old politician sat Zsigmond Boros, an eminent lawyer in the district and one of the leading political figures in Vasarhely; and a round-faced, puffy young man, Isti Kamuthy, who was politically ambitious and so liked to keep in with anyone important.

Between Kamuthy and Varju sat old Daniel Kendy who had no political ideas of any sort, but who had chosen that place because there he was nearest to the wine. He never spoke, but just sat quietly drinking, refilling his glass the moment it was empty.

A little further away, outside the main circle, stood and sat the young men who had been asked to the ball, together with a few others who had not found places nearer the host. Among these last was Tihamer Abonyi who had placed himself beside Laszlo Gyeroffy, partly because they came from the same district and partly because of Laszlo’s grand Hungarian connections. Balint went at once towards Laszlo, his friend and cousin, rejoicing to see a kindred spirit. As he did so he recalled the words of Schiller ‘ Unter Larven die einzig ’ fühlende Brust — in all these grubs just one faithful heart’, but even as he quoted the words to himself he was seized by the Prefect, Peter Kis, who greeted him with as much warmth as if he had been the prodigal son.

Balint, who had met only the Countess Laczok, asked him: ‘Which is the host?’

‘I’ll introduce you at once, my dear friend,’ replied the Prefect, putting an arm round Balint’s shoulders and propelling him forward as if Balint were his special responsibility. They had to stoop to pass under the low spreading branches of the tree to reach the wide pine bench on which Count Jeno was sitting.

The host was a heavy-set man, fat and almost completely bald. A single lock of hair was combed over his forehead, like a small brown island in the yellow sea of his smooth shining hairless skull. There were two ridges offat at the nape of his neck and he had three double chins, and his large pale face was given distinction only by an impressive black drooping moustache and the upward sweeping eyebrows that peered out from the layers of fat. Count Laczok sat rigidly upright, neither leaning on the arms of the bench nor against the tree behind him. One of his short legs reached the ground, the other was drawn up under him, and he held his hands spread on his knees. Balint at once thought of those squat Chinese soapstone figures displayed in oriental bazaars. The Lord of Siklod, sitting hieratically under the old lime tree, seemed a reincarnation of some Szekler-hun ancestor from the distant past.

‘May I present Count Balint Abady, my latest and dearest Member?’ said Peter Kis, pushing Balint forward with a special squeeze on his shoulder as if he were thus sealing their friendship.