Miklós Bánffy - They Were Counted

If Judith Miloth was spared the town’s gossip, poor little Dinora Abonyi was not, and her part in the Wickwitz débâcle was quickly the talk of Kolozsvar.

Outside the family the only people to know the truth — Abady, Gyeroffy and Kadacsay — kept their mouths shut and said nothing. And yet, within the space of two weeks everyone knew all about Dinora and her promissory notes.

Aunt Lizinka’s overheated and airless drawing-room was the Solfatara — the sulphurous volcano — from which most of the poison gas was distributed abroad. Recently the old Countess Sarmasaghy had occupied herself principally with the so-called ‘Tulip Drive’. This was the new craze from Budapest where a number of grand society ladies had started a movement to buy only Hungarian-made articles. Though everyone convinced themselves that thereby they were striking a body-blow at the industries of Austria, and the capital rang with patriotic speeches and fervent leading articles in praise of the movement, the fact remained that it had little practical effect. Shopkeepers cunningly pretended that all their fabrics were made in Hungary, whether or not the silk was really manufactured at Lyons and woollens and linen in Austria. In Transylvania the vogue did not catch on as it did in the capital, for everyone had always bought their rich trousseaus and grand dresses in Vienna as things were cheaper there than in Budapest, and they were not going to change just because someone in Budapest said they should. In the past, Aunt Lizinka had done the same. However, learning that her archenemy Miklos Absolon bought his boots from Goisern, his suit-lengths from Tyrol and his sporting guns from Springer, she threw herself into the Tulip Drive principally so that she could accuse him publicly of being a traitor to his country.

The Wickwitz affair came as a godsend to Aunt Lizinka, who promptly dropped the hopeless cause of the Tulip Drive for the infinitely more delectable task of stirring the cauldron of local scandal. She applied herself to this with tremendous energy, serving up daily to the old ladies who frequented the Sarmasaghy drawing-room new slices of scandal-cake, each more titillating than the last and new draughts of witches’ brew strong enough and shocking enough to go to anyone’s head. Lizinka made the very most of such a tasty affair and stirred up the biggest storm she could: a storm in a teacup it might be, but a tempest to those who lived in a teacup — and poor little Dinora drowned in it. It was not long before Aunt Lizinka had ferreted out all the facts, and everything she discovered she immediately broadcast using an assumed moral indignation to mask her enjoyment of such lurid and sordid details. She became a sort of dirt volcano whose daily eruptions splattered all within reach. Apart from the central figures, Wickwitz, Dinora and poor Tihamer Abonyi, there were plenty of others who suffered from Lizinka’s gossip factory. Jeno Laczok and his banker friend Baron Soma Weissfeld were given a good smear as it had been their establishment that had first accepted Dinora’s notes when presented by the Austrian baron: ‘What a disreputable action by a bank, my dears, downright shady I call it to accept such things’; Laszlo Gyeroffy: ‘my precious nephew, you know, the reckless gambler’; young Dodo Gyalakuthy, because Wickwitz had once pursued her; Baron Gazsi, because he was Wickwitz’s companion in arms; Abady: ‘Remember how he used to run after that little whore!’; and even Miklos Absolon, though all she could think up to say about him was: ‘I can’t say anything now, but you’ll all soon find out that that old liar is mixed up in it too!’ Everyone came in for their share of Lizinka’s brand of innuendo and self-righteous condemnation.

Abonyi, though much against his will for he owed his social position to his wife, found himself obliged by convention to sue for divorce and, when this was granted, retired sadly to his own property in the Vas district where he counted for nothing.

Poor little Dinora was socially ostracized and cut by everyone. She found herself with a mountain of debts, but she somehow managed to survive and remain cheerful, for being possessed of very little brain she never really understood what had happened to her.

In every great upheaval there is always someone who comes out a winner: and this time it was Kristof Azbej, Countess Roza Abady’s cunning little man of business.

A few days after the Wickwitz affair had set the town by the ears, Azbej received a telegram from Gyeroffy asking him tersely to come to see him at Kozard.

As Countess Roza was still at Portofino, Azbej was free to do as he wished. He replied that he would obey at once. At the station at Iklod a carriage was waiting for him which took him swiftly to Laszlo’s manor-house at Kozard. As he drove, Azbej had a careful look at the fields beside the road: they were loam-rich meadows which bordered the river. On arrival an unkempt old man led Azbej into the house. From a small entrance hall a staircase without a hand rail led to the low first-floor rooms under the sloping roof. The walls were only whitewashed for the Kozard manor-house had not been finished when Laszlo’s father had shot himself and the big reception rooms on the ground floor had not even been plastered for decoration. Laszlo had therefore installed himself upstairs, as his parents had before him. Here everything gave the impression of being temporary, even improvised, the furniture placed at random with no attempt at order or convenience. Laszlo’s bed, which stood in one corner of the long room, was unmade and the remains of the previous day’s meal were still on a tray together with a half-empty bottle of plum brandy.

When the little hedgehog-like attorney waddled into the room he found Laszlo pacing up and down impatiently. Laszlo stopped briefly to shake hands and then at once started again to walk up and down as he had done for several days.

‘Here I am…’ said the lawyer, and pushing aside a pile of clothes from the chair on which they had been thrown, he sat down without further ceremony, ‘…at your Lordship’s service.’

The young man did not answer at once but continued marching up and down the room. Then he stopped and said in a stern voice: ‘I need eighty-six thousand crowns … at once!’

‘Ah,’ said the attorney with a sigh, ‘that is a very large sum, a very large sum indeed!’

‘I know. I’ve tried every way I can think of but I can’t raise it. I don’t understand these things. That is why I sent for you.’

The fat little attorney closed his bulging, prune-shaped eyes.

‘How large is the estate?’ he asked, his lips hardly moving behind his untrimmed beard.

‘The cultivated part is eight hundred acres.’

‘Is it mortgaged?’

‘Yes. For sixty thousand.’

‘I see! I see!’ repeated Azbej, seemingly deep in thought. After a long pause he said: ‘When do you need the money?’

‘I’ve told you already. Now! At once!’ cried Gyeroffy. ‘I can’t wait. I can’t stand it any more!’

‘Excuse me. Please…’ said Azbej apologetically. ‘I don’t quite know … if your Lordship would permit me, perhaps I could just have a look round, and then … then maybe I could think up some solution to your Lordship’s problem.’ Bowing obsequiously, he backed out of the room.

In an hour he was back, still bowing as obsequiously as before. He sat down and now the words poured from him.