Miklós Bánffy - They Were Counted

The weather was still so fine that they had coffee on the veranda. Shafts of sunlight penetrated the vine-leaves overhead and scattered tiny spots of light which sparkled on the chairs, the tablecloth and the paved floor, almost like glow-worms did at night. Some of the vine leaves were already turning red and they glowed like hot embers in the strong sunlight.

Adrienne touched Balint on the shoulder. ‘Come with me,’ she said, and led him in silence until they reached the end of the garden, where a simple wooden seat, lilac-coloured with age, overlooked the slope of the valley below. They sat down.

‘This is my favourite place,’ she said. ‘When I was a child I always took refuge here.’

From where they sat they could see the outlines of bare mountains receding into the distance. The view was beautiful, but it was not at all the sort of romantic landscape usually considered so. Here was no picture postcard beauty of forests, mountains and soaring rocky cliffs. Strangers unused to this bare Transylvanian upland country might find it too unusual, perhaps even ugly in its austerity and wildness. Yet it was beautiful, with a grandeur of its own, chain upon chain of bare woodless mountains, rising behind each other as far as eye could see, each range seemingly identical to the last.

Everywhere there was silence.

In front of where Balint and Adrienne sat there was an old burial ground with ancient neglected headstones standing among untended grass and nettles. It was the remains of a Protestant cemetery, abandoned when the community died out. Farther down the slope of the hill, on a small ridge, could be seen the races of old walls where once a small chapel had stood.

Adrienne sat with legs crossed, motionless, with her head resting on her right hand. She looked straight ahead of her without speaking.

After some time she took out the telegram and handed it to Balint. It read, ‘COME HOME AT ONCE — UZDY’.

‘What does it mean?’ he asked

‘Nothing. Nothing that means anything. They wouldn’t send for me if the baby was ill: they wouldn’t need me. Neither then nor any other time. Six months ago when the child had a fever they locked me out of the nursery. My husband’s mother takes charge of everything. When the baby was born they took her away at once — You don’t know anything about babies! they said. They don’t believe I know anything about anything. No matter how hard I try, no matter what I do. They don’t want anything from me, anything at all. I’m only an ornament — a living toy who has only one use … that’s why I’m there.’

She was silent for a while. Then she went on in a different tone:

‘When I married him I believed I could be useful by helping him with his work, that I would be the companion, the friend he needed. He often spoke about it. He would tell me how lonely he had been with no one close to him, in whom he could confide, with whom he could work. But afterwards, the day after we were married, the very next day, he was quite different. Everything he had said … what was it? Moonshine, just moonshine!’

Adrienne was silent again. She looked away, into the far distance, thinking back to the days when she was a young girl full of rebellion. She thought about all the conventions that ruled her life at home and which, after the years of freedom in a foreign boarding-school, had seemed so unbearable, so humiliating. There had been the prohibition of any book, any play more serious than musical comedy, the impossibility of escaping alone, away from the ever-present chaperon; and never, ever, had she been able to escape from being watched. She, a grown girl, was still treated as a small child who needed constant supervision and control. She remembered one small incident that had weighed heavily with her when she was deciding to accept Pal Uzdy. Adrienne had been invited to tea with the Laczoks. After lunch Countess Miloth, who always took a siesta, fell asleep. The old governess, Mile Morin, had been ill and Adrienne, left on her own and not liking to disturb her mother, had climbed into the waiting family carriage and accompanied only by a footman had had herself driven to her aunt’s house. It had taken a bare five minutes.

The awful boldness of this adventure had unexpectedly serious results.

Her mother had accused her of all kinds of depravity, accusations that remained partly veiled only because in front of an unmarried daughter, she could not bring herself to say the word ‘whore’. Her father, too, had shouted at her, echoing her mother’s wild and hysterical accusations; not because he believed them, but because he loved to shout whenever he could. It was then that she had finally decided to marry Uzdy. She knew him to be a serious man who worked hard and who did not often come to town to carouse with the gypsies like the other young men. She had not been in love with him, but she had yearned to be free of the tyranny of her old-fashioned home, to be her own mistress, to carry some responsibility and to have duties of her own.

Recalling this, she said to Balint:

‘I know you never understood why I married Pali! Don’t deny it! I felt it whenever we met. But I couldn’t go on living at home, I couldn’t stand it. And I really did feel that I was needed, that I could help. I believed that I had found a vocation.’ She paused for a moment, and then spoke again. ‘I soon found that I was nobody there either, but at least I can read when I please, and I can go for walks alone in the woods! Do you know the country where we live, the woods beside the Almas? It’s beautiful there.’

‘Poor Addy!’ said Balint softly. He picked up the hand that lay beside him and slowly caressed the long fingers, the palm, the wrist. Adrienne did not resist. She was like a trusting child whose hurt could be comforted by being petted.

With her hand still in his, Adrienne went on: ‘I’ll have to go. I could refuse but it wouldn’t be worth it! Mama knows they’ve called me home. She wouldn’t give me a moment’s peace. Oh, it’s so good to be here with the girls! I can forget how lonely I am.’ Balint could hardly hear the last words which Adrienne had whispered almost to herself.

She looked steadily and calmly into the distance. Though she did not break down, Balint could see that her eyes and thick lashes were clouded with tears.

Deeply moved, Balint started to tell her everything that he had always felt for her. He told her how unique she was, how unlike anyone else he had ever known, how even when she was still a girl how different he had found her from all the others. And, as he spoke, many new feelings, hitherto unrecognized even by himself, pushed themselves forward demanding to be put into words, the heralds of an emotion which he did not even try to analyse.

He spoke for a long time, his hands still caressing Adrienne’s in slow rhythm with his low-spoken words, moving along the arm up to the elbow and down again to the hand and the fingertips. At first he spoke only as a good friend, understanding, consoling but, as he poured out his love and sympathy and as his fingers moved over her flower-petal skin, even though she offered no noticeable response to his caresses, he became increasingly aware of what was really in his heart. His words meant more than friendship, and the movement of his hands was no longer merely soothing. Both voice and hands became the instruments of a new passion, the words became words of love and homage and, as he spoke, they were punctuated by kisses, on the fingers, on the wrist, on her palm and slowly up her unresisting passive arm. As he spoke the meaning of his words changed; sympathy became desire and friendship demanded its reward. Of all the feelings that had poured forth from him only passion remained as he spoke of her beauty, of her lips, her hair, her skin … of death, and of redemption and fulfilment.