They Were Divided (9 page)

Despite the fact that she herself was as expert as any of them, Countess Roza always liked to have these two with her when these important decisions had to be made. Jäger and Szakacs could voice opinions without being asked, but Feri Rigo, the head coachman who was also always present, could only speak up when appealed to. At present he was standing some ten paces away and passing on his employer’s instructions to the other lads who were walking and trotting the young horses.

The selection took a long time and finally there were just three colts from which the pair had to be chosen. Countess Roza asked for two of them to be walked up until they were side by side facing where she was sitting, as that was how they would appear when in harness as a pair.

Roza Abady looked at them for a few moments in silence. Then she rose and walked all round them with her two
companions
close behind. The young horses stood quite still, not moving until she got close to their heads when both stretched out their necks expecting to be given lumps of sugar; but as today was one
of decision and not of cosseting, none was forthcoming. Back went their ears in disappointment. At last she spoke:

‘They are very much alike, but I fancy this one is just a trifle shorter. Young Simon, please bring me the measuring stick!’ She still called him ‘Young Simon’ – though as Chief Lad he was addressed as ‘Sir’ by everyone else – just as she had thirty-five years ago when he had been a little stable-boy and she had been almost grown up. Apart from this she had never used the familiar form of address after he had been promoted.

‘I have measured him already, my Lady … when he was brought in. He is two centimeters shorter, but he comes from a line that has always developed slowly and I’m sure that in a year or two’s time he will have caught up and then they’ll be just the same.’

‘We should still try him beside the Merges filly,’ suggested old Szakacs, waving to the lads to bring up the third choice whose name was ‘Mandula!’. Taking the halter he said, ‘
Komelo
’ – a strange word that for most people held no meaning.

Many years before Szakacs had gone to England with Countess Roza’s father who had wanted to find a thoroughbred stallion to improve the breed in Transylvania. There he had learned many things including the English way of strapping the horses with only one hand – though putting the whole body’s weight behind it – the use of flannel bandages, how to make a bran mash and what was meant by ‘blistering’. He also learned a few stable commands in English, though they became somewhat tangled when he tried to use them himself. But the stable lads, and the horses, soon understood what was expected of them; and now Mandula stepped smartly forward as if she already knew that
Komelo
meant ‘Come along!’.

Again they looked for a long time at the three possible choices and, as in all long-established studs where the breeding followed a set pattern, there was really very little to choose between them, and any one would have been a splendid match with either of the others. Finally Countess Roza turned to the coachman, Feri, and asked what he thought.

‘If your Ladyship pleases, I would be happy with any of them; still I rather think that Csujtar’s trot is the longer and that he would therefore be better for carriage-work.’

Simon Jäger’s eyes shone: ‘Mandula would look well with our other hunters’, he said. And in so speaking of the horses as ‘ours’ he was doing what everyone employed at Denestornya always
had. Everything about the great castle and the estate was known, even to the youngest and humblest stable lads, as ‘ours’, in the first person plural, in
pluralis
majesteticus
– the royal ‘we’.

They would say: this is ‘our’ lucerne, ‘our’ oats, ‘our’ meadows, mares and stallions, ‘our’ cattle, oxen and donkeys. Everyone used this majestic ‘we’ and ‘our’, from the great heights of the butler and the Chief Stud Groom, through the footmen, barn and storekeepers, huntsmen, gardeners, cooks, estate mechanics and smiths, down to the humblest scullery-maid or stable-boy. ‘Our’ carriages, ‘our’ farm-carts, ‘our’ pots and ‘our’ pans. It was even used of the Denestornya wildlife – ‘our’ deer, ‘our’ hares, ‘our’ pheasants – exactly as if it belonged to them, which in a very real sense it did, for they were intensely proud of Denestornya and everything about it as if they were in reality the owners of an estate which had no rival in the entire world.

This spirit had crystallized through many, many generations, for there was hardly a single family in the village some of whose members had not, at one time or another, done their stint ‘at Court’; and none who had not been the better for it, not only because everything was ‘found’ for those who were in the Abady employ and so those who had any money of their own could save it. Likewise if any of them thought to build, for example, a house on their own land (for nearly all the peasant families owned some land) they were freely given all the wood or quarried stone they needed. If a pig died it was replaced from the estate farms, and no one worried about sickness or old age, either for themselves or their families, because the ‘masters’ would take care to see that everything was provided. Not that anyone had, or needed, a contract, for all these things were taken for granted. A man had only to ask, and he was given as soon as he had spoken to the ‘master’ and explained his problem. The deep feeling of unity in the little village near the castle, the community spirit and the general feeling of goodwill and fellowship, sprang directly from these ancient traditions. As a result hardly any so-called ‘foreigner’ – which meant anyone from any other district,
however
close it might be – ever stayed long in the castle service. The only exceptions at that time were Countess Roza’s two
housekeepers
, who had come to her in her lonely widowhood, and who had then so ingratiated themselves with their mistress. As it was, both Mrs Baczo and Mrs Tothy were loathed and feared by the other servants, who resented the fact that the two women would always tell her whatever they might wish her to believe.

The decision had almost been taken to return Mandula to the stud to be trained later as a saddle-horse, while the other two would be paired off for carriage-work, when Countess Roza decided to take one more close look at them all. She rose and started to walk round them again when a loud blast from a
car-horn
was heard from outside the horseshoe court and, almost before the countess had time to look up, her son’s car came
rushing
through the great gates.

At the sight of the little group and the three young horses Balint slammed on the brakes, stopped the car and jumped out so quickly that it almost seemed as if he was rushing towards her before the car had stopped.

At once Countess Roza understood that something
extraordinary
had happened to her son, for it was a long time since he had seemed so young and happy and active. Here was a complete
contrast
to the sad and listless figure he had been for so long and, though she could not know what it was, she was sure that there was something and was determined to find out the reason. She peered at him with slightly screwed-up eyes, as she did when
carefully
examining her young horses, though by the time he reached her side she gave no sign that she had noticed any change in him. At once she started to tell him what she had just been doing and to ask his opinion, not that she really needed anything but his approval of the decisions she had already made. Nevertheless she went through the motions of asking a number of unnecessary questions and appearing to weigh up, once more, the arguments and reasoning which had led to her deciding to make a
saddle-horse
of the Merges filly and send the other two for
carriage-training
. Then mother and son walked back together to the castle door … and all the while she was keeping the talk going as long as she could so as to give her more time to look into his eyes and study his expression. There certainly was a difference, but what had caused the change she could only wonder.

Tea had been laid on the covered veranda outside the big
first-floor
drawing-room in the west wing.

For the countess only coffee and buffalo milk was served, but as Balint had just arrived the housekeepers quickly put out a full spread of cold meats, hot bread, sweet and savoury cakes, freshly churned butter so rich that it was practically melting on its silver dish, honey in the comb, quince jelly and three different sorts of
jam. As if this were not more than enough Mrs Tothy and Mrs Baczo reappeared every few minutes carrying in more covered dishes of hot cakes and doughnuts straight from the oven, fritters, muffins and scones; and then they stood silently to one side with huge smiles on their fat little faces as the son of the house fell on the unexpected repast with the appetite of a wolf.

Countess Roza watched it all with a secret smile that could hardly have been detected by anyone else, casting covert glances at her son’s expression as he devoured dish after dish. Not that she asked anything about what she most wanted to know, for she knew better than that. Instead she kept up a flow of small talk, recounting what had happened at home during the five days since her son had gone to the opera in Kolozsvar. Holes had been dug in the orchard where they had planned to put in some
seedling
fruit-trees; that morning there had been some early frost, but only on the lower meadows near the river; the young footman Sandor had announced that he would soon be getting married; and that very same morning they had heard a fallow buck calling from some way off in the park. And with every little tale that she told Countess Roza was wondering: what has happened? What could have happened to put him in such a good humour all of a sudden? And what could she do to find out?

By now the sun was beginning to set. The peaks of the Jara mountains turned slowly to purple and the sky above was streaked with orange and deep carmine. Here and there thin vaporous clouds were to be seen, and through them the rays from the sinking sun soared high above etching great lines of fire on the brilliant green and pale blue of the darkening heavens. The edges of the few clouds were ringed with a rosy fire and it seemed as if the whole world were bathed in a golden light that reached all around them, penetrating even the dark entrance to the Torda gorge, casting a soft glow over the distant grasslands of the Keresztes plain and on the nearby river banks, and even into the deepest recesses of the wide glazed veranda.

Blinking slightly at all this brightness Countess Roza at last tried a more direct approach. Brightly, but still carefully, she said:

‘But you haven’t told me about the opera! How was the
Madam
Butterfly
? Was it well done? Was it as beautiful as everyone expected?’

Balint gave a few banal replies saying that, oh yes, it had been lovely, very grand, very beautiful.

‘And the French singer?’

‘Excellent. Really beautiful! Superb!’

All these answers, despite their superlatives, he gave somewhat hurriedly without offering a single phrase to explain what he meant or justify his praise. It seemed that for some reason of his own he did not want to be forced into giving details and, as this was so unlike her son, who never had any difficulty in expressing himself with ease and fluency and whose descriptions of what he had heard or seen were usually vivid and to the point, Countess Roza realized at once that she was on the right track and that if something had happened at the opera she would have to feel her way with caution if she were to find out what it was.

‘They tell me it’s a most dramatic piece. What part did you find the most exciting, the most touching? How was the entr’acte before the last act?’ Having read the newspaper articles – which Balint had missed – it was soon obvious to her that she knew more about the tragic love of Cio-Cio-San for Lieutenant Pinkerton than did her son, who did not seem at all familiar with anything except the long first act love duet, for it was to that that he always returned whatever she might ask him about the rest of the work. And then he started to peel an apple and seemed so absorbed in so doing that it seemed to her better to let the subject drop.