Miklós Bánffy - They Were Counted

Glancing round he saw a woman near the right hand corner. It was Adrienne Miloth. She stood motionless against the glow of the night sky and the light behind her was so strong that her face, bare arms and shoulders seemed scarcely lighter in hue than the deep-green silk of her dress.

Adrienne stood quite still, erect and alone, gazing out into the distance. Balint was reminded of the days when she would stand beside the newly lit lamp, her chin up, her arms clasped behind her back, her stillness recalling the half-repressed rebelliousness of her youth. It was perhaps because of this surge of memory within him that Balint, instead of avoiding her, approached softly and leaned on the balustrade beside her.

She moved slightly, tacitly acknowledging Balint’s presence and seeming to approve of his coming, as if she had said aloud that she needed sympathy, kinship and spiritual understanding. Relaxing from the unbending pose she had adopted, Adrienne leaned forward, slowly and quietly resting her hands on the balustrade. Balint thought of the silent movements of a panther, solitary and dark in the blackness of the night. Like Adrienne, panthers moved in slow harmonious symmetry and grace. And, like Adrienne, they gazed into the distance with their golden eyes.

For some time neither of them spoke. The faint sound of the dance music from the castle behind them barely disturbed the silence of the night, indeed its muted tones and faintly heard rhythm deepened the infinite stillness. Occasionally they could hear a dog barking far in the distance.

Balint began to feel with increasing urgency that he must say something common-place that would break the silence between them and release Adrienne from whatever sorrow or disappointment it was that seemed to hold her so firmly. In a low voice, almost a whisper, as if he were afraid to break the magic by a harsh note, he murmured:

‘What a lovely night it is!’

‘Yes. Yes indeed. It’s lovely.’ She too spoke quietly, not daring to raise her voice, ‘… but what a lie it all is!’

‘What do you mean, a lie?’

Adrienne remained motionless, looking away into the distance. Then, very slowly, choosing her words hesitantly and carefully, she started:

‘It’s all untrue. A lie. Everything beautiful is a lie, a deception. Everything one believes in, or wants. Everything one does because one believes it to be helpful, or useful. It’s all a snare, a well-baited trap. That’s what life is,’ and we are stupid enough to be taken in, to be duped. We swallow the bait, and “click!” — the trap is sprung.’ She gave a little half-uttered laugh, but her eyes remained serious, gazing ahead. Then she turned to Balint and said: ‘What are you going to do now that you’ve come home? What are your plans?’

But Balint was thinking only of what she had said previously:

‘I don’t believe that, that in our lives everything beautiful must be a lie. No! No! The opposite is true. Beauty is the only eternal truth there is! Beauty of purpose, of deed, of achievement. That is the only thing worth seeking for, what we must all try to find. Other ethical arguments are false, this is the only real one. Why? Because you can’t define it or classify it, put it down in black and white. We’ve talked about this before. Do you remember, back at Kolozsvar?’

‘Oh yes, I remember, I remember it well. And then I think I believed it.

Balint wanted to ask, why only then, why no longer? But he felt she would say no more if he dared approach whatever secret pain lay behind her words.

For a few moments they spoke no more. Then Adrienne started again.

‘People say nice things, nice words and so on, but …’ She narrowed her eyes in a search for the right words to express what she wanted to say but her instinct told her should remain hidden. She took refuge in parable.

‘Look how beautiful that distant hillside looks, soft, undefined, lovely but uncertain. We don’t know what it’s made of, what it’s really like. Is it mist, or cloud, or is it just a dream? Pure beauty, as you were saying? It looks as if one could dive into it and become a part of it, vanish inside it as into a fog; but only now, and from here in the deceitful moonlight. It’s really just an ordinary hillside, made of hard yellow clay, poor grass and dead thistles. It’s not even a real mountain of clefts and rocks. When dawn breaks we can see it’s land fit only for sheep and goats. Useful, of course, but all we can say then is how many ewes and lambs can graze there. She laughed again and added: ‘You see what a dull dour farmer I’ve become!’

Balint went on, in the same low voice as before but in more fervent tones.

‘Maybe it’s no more than a farmer’s stock-in-trade. Perhaps tomorrow we will see it for what it really is, a common pasture with dumb sheep bleating and aimlessly leading their lambs from place to place. But tonight it isn’t! Now it isn’t! I don’t care about tomorrow. Tonight, tomorrow does not exist! Tonight, everything is beautiful and that beauty which fills our eyes, your eyes, mine, remains ours for ever. Nobody, nothing can take it away from us. We can lock it in the steel tower of our memory where no one can touch it, and there it will remain, like the Sleeping Beauty in her magic castle, until we — and we alone, — can bring it back to life again. You and I. No one else.’

‘Not all memories can be wished back. There are others too, unwanted ones, but no Sleeping Beauties!’

‘How we feel ourselves is all that matters. Nothing outside can touch us. Hurt and joy come from inside. Conscience is our only judge. That is our secret, and we can neither change nor control it.’

‘Maybe …’ Adrienne spoke so low he could hardly hear her. Resting her head in her hands, she still looked away from him, away from the world. It seemed that she could not find the words to define what it was she found so hard to express. Balint waited. She must speak first or he would never know what was in her mind. He hardly dared look at her lest she should be disturbed, so he kept his eyes fixed on the garden.

The walls of the courtyard and the wings of the great house were in deep shadow, a shadow whose outline was a sharp as if drawn by a ruler. Outside this shadow the parterre shone with a blue light, and the paved circle in the centre gleamed with a myriad little points of light, each pebble seeming to sparkle like hoar-frost or snow and at its heart the grass lawn too seemed to shine, each blade distinct and separate. Only the lilies remained dark and velvety, the deep red flowers black in the moonlight and the russet leaves like ink-stains spreading on the ground.

Balint looked up at the right-hand wing of the house. Lamps burned behind the long french windows, etching long strips of yellow light between the grey vertical lines of the columns. Looking further round, past the seemingly ethereal little tower at the corner of the walls, Balint’s gaze came to rest on the steps under the ramparts, where he could just make out a sitting figure. In spite of the darkness he recognized him at once. It was Andras Jopal, the tutor. He had changed his evening coat for a pale linen jacket.

The young mathematician was seated, almost crouched, on one of the bottom steps, his legs pulled up under him. He seemed to be gazing fixedly at the moon oblivious of the beauty of the night, lonelier now and even more solitary than he had seemed at dinner when, of all those present, he had been the least affected by the general high spirits. Balint decided to seek him out later. Now he turned back to Adrienne wondering when she would decide to speak again.

She was still leaning on the balustrade. The silk wrapper that had been round her shoulders had slipped down, showing that she had become even thinner, almost gaunt, with hollows under her collar-bones. Her long neck was as firm as ever, but her early leanness was more pronounced with her chin joined to her neck in the stylized angle of an old Greek statue. She was still the girl he had known before, but marriage had not given her the soft roundness that often comes with motherhood. The bud was still a bud, unopened; the flower was still a promise, and Balint was surprised for he knew that her little daughter was already two. The unresolved conflict between her girlish appearance and the experience of motherhood was perhaps the reason for the faintly bitter note he thought he detected when she spoke.