They Were Counted (18 page)

After dinner they all sat in the countess’s sitting-room and
listened
to Akos Miloth’s stories of his days with Garibaldi. He was happy to have someone there to whom he could recount all over again the tales his family had heard so many times already. He loved to recall those days and the stories had been well polished with retelling. He had fought in Sicily with the Thousand and had had many adventures which were fascinating to anyone who had not heard them before. Count Miloth told them well, with humour and without conceit.

His daughters grew impatient and soon fled back to the dining-room where they had laid out a jigsaw puzzle, which was then all the rage and which they had brought back from the party at Siklod. Soon they became completely absorbed.

‘Come on, AB, come and help us,’ they called after a while. But Balint, out of politeness to his host and because he was so
interested
in the tales he was hearing, did not obey until Adrienne came back into the sitting-room and, laughing, took his hand, dragged him up from the sofa and led him into the adjoining room.

The next morning Balint was woken by voices calling to him. Someone knocked on the shutters of his room and called out: ‘Come on, lazy-bones, get up! We’ve been up for hours!’

In fifteen minutes he had joined them on the long veranda where they were having breakfast. The girls and young Zoltan had already finished and could hardly wait for Balint to drink his coffee and buffalo milk. Then they all walked up through the
garden
, laughing and talking until they found a small meadow with a haystack, up which young Zoltan immediately climbed and started pretending to be an Indian chief doing a war-dance.

‘Come down, you idiot, you’ll spoil the hay!’ they shouted at him, but the boy just jumped about all the more, hooting
war-cries
.

At once the others joined the game and started besieging young Zoltan in his fort. Not that they took the war seriously, for as soon as Adrienne succeeded in getting to the top she changed sides and joined the enemy. Now the battle became more equal, two against three, and the outcome less sure; but suddenly one side of the haystack collapsed and Zoltan came tumbling to the ground, leaving only Adrienne on top clinging precariously to the
stackpole
. For a moment she hesitated, high above the ground, but, as Balint extended his arms towards her, Addy cried ‘Catch me!’ and flung herself into the air laughing. Somehow Balint did so, and for a moment she clung to him, her arms round his neck, knees bent, like a little girl hanging round her grandfather’s neck.

Her warm, shapely body pressed against Balint’s, her bare arms encircling his neck in a cool embrace, or at least what would have been an embrace if it had not been a game and their
closeness
unintentional. In those few moments, before she moved, while her slender female body was pressed to his, Balint felt desire welling up inside him, all his being crying out to go on holding her close, to kiss her warm naked shoulder, to make her his. He wanted to stay like that for ever, oblivious to everything and everyone around them; but Adrienne just laughed
unconcernedly
, and put her feet to the ground, apparently unconscious of anything but the merriment of their game.

They continued their walk all talking at once, teasing each other in easy comradeship, though Balint found it difficult to fit into their mood.

One of the maids ran up with a telegram for Adrienne. ‘Excuse me, it was the Countess who opened it,’ she explained as she handed the envelope to Adrienne.

Adrienne read the telegram. ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘you can go back to the house now.’ Her expression showed only that she was controlling herself with a certain effort. She tucked the folded telegram into her waistband and turned to the others.

‘Where shall we go now?’ she queried. Zoltan suggested that they visit the cowsheds where there were some newborn calves. Everyone agreed and off they went, petted a few cows, stroked the heads of the farm dogs, teased the turkeys and chased the ducks into the pond. But however light-hearted they seemed, a cloud had come over their merriment. Even though only Adrienne knew what was in the telegram, its arrival had spoilt their mood and everyone seemed depressed. At long last it was time to return for lunch and they all went back to the manor house with dampened spirits.

 

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.

For how long did Balint pour out his feelings? Neither of them could have said. Adrienne listened, silent and motionless, seeming to respond to the music of the words rather than to their meaning. But when the man’s lips pressed deeper into the curve of her elbow, she suddenly came alive again. She pulled her arm away violently and jumped up.

‘So! Even you! You want only that! You, of all people, only that! I thought I had a friend, but I have no one, no one!’

She looked at him with hatred and, straightening her slim back, started to walk stiffly away.

‘Addy! Please, Addy! Forgive me!’

But she just went on, her head held high, her whole body rigid with anger and hurt. They walked back to the house in silence, side by side but worlds apart. Abady left that afternoon.