They Were Counted (101 page)

She wondered afterwards if it might not have been better to have given only one reason – two was perhaps protesting too much – but Margit, cleverer and brighter than the others, had merely replied unconcernedly: ‘You’re right! I’ve noticed that she’s still rather resentful of you. Far better not to be around all the time.’ However, when Adrienne moved out of their hotel and had boarded the launch that would take her to the Danieli, Margit walked slowly back from the quay. As she did so little
secret
smile played round the corners of her mouth.

The Ponte Canonica is only just behind St Mark’s and can be reached either through the basilica itself or by way of a narrow street behind the hotel. It is a bridge of white marble, arched in the centre, with shallow flights of steps leading down to the canal. Balint had his gondola tied up on the side by the little church so that he would be able from afar to see Adrienne as she came to their rendezvous.

The seven o’clock chimes from the nearby Campanile had just sounded when she appeared in the distance, her distinctive walk as elegant as ever. The lines of Adrienne’s long legs were clearly etched beneath the thin green silk of her spring dress. Balint did not wait to greet her but returned swiftly to his gondola. In a few minutes she had joined him.

Their gondolier, one Riccardo Lobetti, did not have to be told that Balint and Adrienne’s meeting was a romantic tryst. He knew it instinctively and so off he went only asking where he should go when they were well away from the meeting place and were gliding down a lonely stretch of canal bordered by high walls.

‘To the Lagoon!’ ordered Balint.

The slight splash made by the single oar made a slow gentle rhythm behind them and the long craft swayed slightly at each movement. They glided through deserted canals where the low tide had revealed festoons of river moss that covered the
foundations
of the tall houses on each side. All around it was quiet with no sound other than the soft swishing of Riccardo’s long oar just behind their little curtain-hung cabin. Only sometimes, as they approached the junction with another canal did they hear the long-drawn-out call of the gondolier ‘
Saa
…
aa
…
i.i.i
…
!
’ and from around a corner the answering cry from another as yet
unseen
boatsman. Their gondola glided on, so skilfully handled by their own invisible oarsman that they never even touched another boat, or the sides of the canals, not even when the passageway was at its narrowest and they met huge heavily-laden barges. No sound, no touch; everything passed as silently as in a dream. To Balint and Adrienne, seated side by side under the flimsy canvas tent of the gondola’s tiny cabin, it was like a God-given dream of unexpected ecstasy.

They leant back on the soft cushions, their hands clasped, not speaking, not moving, almost in a trance, as slowly their little craft emerged from the haunted shadows of the canal into the shining radiance of the lagoon itself where the horizon seemed to be at an infinite distance, the late afternoon sun glistening in a thousand reflections on the smooth waters over which they floated. Everything was marvellously pale, in iridescent shades of grey and pearl, with only the faintest hints of the softer shades of the rainbow. The sky was greyish-blue and the waters
bluishgrey
, so alike that it was difficult to tell where one began and the other ended. Everything melted into everything else, fusing all they could see into one uncertain, vaporous abstraction. Far in the distance there was what might have been the outlines of an island with, in front of it, other smaller islands identifiable only by the
unexpectedly
dramatic vertical lines of black cypress trees which looked like distant exclamation marks on a faded parchment.

There was nothing around them but water. Nothing else. Water, only water; and it was as if they were utterly alone in a world of their own, floating over the waters of the lagoon just as their minds floated over the mystery of their love. Adrienne took off her wide-brimmed straw hat and, holding it in her right hand, nestled her left shoulder into Balint’s. However, when he bent down to kiss her, she demurred gently but firmly, with a gesture that somehow was not really denying him but only waiting for the right moment. Her brows came together, her eyes looked at something far, far away. She was thinking. Balint sensed that she was remembering all those things that had happened to them both in the past and had now led to this moment when, as they lay in each other’s arms, they both knew that very soon their love would be fulfilled. Adrienne went over in her mind all she could remember of the turbulent course of their meetings and she knew that they were now approaching the great turning point in their mutual fate, a turning point that she both ached for and yet feared. They were on the threshold of something ineffably
wonderful
… and yet, reviewing in her mind all that had happened in the past, Adrienne was suddenly overcome by a feeling of bleak uncertainty, of terror at the thought of the unknown future. Balint felt it too. Looking at Adrienne’s pensive face, he recalled the terrible words of the letter she had written admitting the
reality
of her love for him but begging him to leave her alone because of what the consummation of their love would force her to do.

He wondered if she still felt the same way. Was she still obsessed by that terrible decision? Was she really prepared to sacrifice her life to pay for these few weeks of happiness? And would he, knowing this, accept the gift of her body? Her soul was already his, so why should he pay such a price to possess her body as well? Because that was what all this amounted to, what it all meant. If they were to have this month of happiness together and then Addy killed herself, it would be far more terrible than dying
himself
. He could never live on if he carried with him the knowledge that he had allowed it. It would be as if he’d committed murder.

Obsessed and confused by these thoughts Balint knew that now, somehow, all this must be made clear and that he had to
extract
a promise from her that she would never do anything as
terrible
as she had threatened. Her ear was close to his mouth, so close that he didn’t have to bend down when he whispered: ‘May I come to you tonight?’

‘After midnight. Before that there are people in the hall …’

Balint squeezed her fingers. He paused for a moment and then said, very softly: ‘If… if we should … if it happened, would it mean what you wrote?’

She did not answer and he had to repeat the question. Then she replied in broken uncertain phrases: ‘Why should you care? Don’t ask me that. Don’t think about it.’

‘Look, Addy, this cannot be. Things aren’t like that …’ and he started to say in simple words all that had been torturing him ever since he had her letter. He spoke for a long time, repeating himself over and over again, saying that to make love to her knowing what price had to be paid was unthinkable, cruel and wrong. At that price, never! He spoke warmly, begging her,
saying
over and over again: ‘Not at that price! Not at that price!’

Adrienne did not reply. She only shook her head to show that her mind was made up. He felt her soft curls brushing his face.
Finally
, when he had talked for a long, long time she said: ‘I couldn’t live on like that. You, and the other … But it isn’t a
sacrifice
for me, I’ve thought about it so often.’ So Balint started again: but all that Adrienne would say was: ‘I can’t divorce, you know that. So don’t wish me to live. I couldn’t …’

They were floating far out in the lagoon. Darkness had fallen and already the lamps were being lit on the three-legged water beacons. Riccardo somehow sensed what was required of him and turned his gondola back towards the town. In the darkness of their little cabin Balint’s voice was hoarse with emotion and grief: ‘But then I couldn’t go on living either! There would be nothing left! I, too … You can be sure of that.’

Adrienne sat up abruptly and, looking hard into Balint’s face, cried: ‘No! No! That’s not the same at all! That you, who love life … That’s not for you!’

‘What else would be there for me? What choice would I have?’ Balint really meant what he said, though subconsciously he also hoped that maybe this at least would break Adrienne’s resolution. But all she now said was: ‘That is something I can’t accept. Very well then, there is only one solution. Go away! Leave! Then there’ll be nothing to torture ourselves about!’

‘There is no other way?’

Once again there was silence between them as they sat together surrounded by the darkness of the night, feeling that endless
sadness
had spread over the murmuring waters. This was the end. Definitely, finally, for ever, the end. As the gondola edged its way into the narrow entrance of the little canal and dark shadows of great palaces close round them, Balint said: ‘I’m too late to catch the night express. Can I come and talk to you, just the way we
always
have … and tomorrow, in the morning, I’ll go away.’

‘All right. Just as we always have …’

 

When Balint went to Adrienne that night there were no lights in her room. She had purposely not allowed the lamps to be lit for she had cried for a long time and did not want him to see this in her face. It was not completely dark, for the light from the lamps that illuminated the quay outside cast a faint glow through the soft folds of the white net curtains and it was reflected from the ceiling on to the bed like the first light of dawn. The room was heavy with the mingled scent of the woman and that strange
aroma
from the lagoon, composed equally of the salt of the ocean and the decay of the city.

Balint sat down beside her, leaning against the cushions behind her head. They started to talk, but not coherently, both of them uttering short broken phrases that had no beginning and no end. Their faces came ever closer to each other, their mouths not just touching as they whispered to each other sad words of farewell, goodbye … goodbye … goodbye. As they did so, from time to time their lips met in a tender kiss, a caress that was sorrowful rather than passionate. And slowly, for Adrienne, it was as if her mouth, her hands, her hair and skin, had a separate life, totally independent of her will. She herself felt that she was dreaming and around her head the thick black curls fell tumbling over her face released by some magic power from the tight coils and knots into which she had bound them earlier that evening. Like Medusa’s snakes, the curls of Adrienne’s unruly hair moved
mysteriously
over her face, covering her eyes, her mouth and having a life of their own, leading her of their own volition to madness and abandon. Her fingers, long, slender and searching along his back, his neck, pressed him to her as if she needed to be reassured that he really was there, and all the while her wide, swelling lips kissed Balint’s face and hands, kissed the curls that fell between their mouths like a curtain, and even kissed the air. In Adrienne that great, latent force of nature, so long suppressed, was now at long last set free so that she was totally possessed by that joy of life which Balint had seen in her so long ago at the skating rink. Now her back was arching, as it had then, and her legs moving rhythmically, her arms flung wide until, a little later, softly, so softly that he hardly heard her words she asked, in wonder: ‘What am I feeling? What is this? What is this?’ with the astonishment of one who, for the first time experiences a marvel whose existence until then was unimagined.

The young man leaned above her, his approaching fulfilment pulsating through him like great waves of intoxicating fever. Now there was nothing left of the hunter, the coarse human stalking its mate; these had been wiped out by the terrible reality of a
primeval
, eternal emotion that had swept over him with the
inexorable
force of a tropical storm. In one tiny corner of his conscious mind, however, there still lurked the memory of their talk that afternoon, the knowledge that in four weeks’ time all this joy must be paid for … Gently, but urgently, he whispered in her ear: ‘Do you want to? Now?’ fully aware to what he was committing them both. And when Addy did not answer in words, but flung her arms around him, drawing him down upon her, opening wide her mouth to receive his ardent kisses, surely she knew it too?’