They Were Found Wanting (3 page)

The Uzdy villa was a large building that stood alone
surrounded
by a vast garden. On each side of the main house were wings which had originally been designed as servants’ quarters and in one of these wings were Adrienne’s apartments. The
musicians
entered the forecourt and stopped in front of the glazed
veranda
behind which they knew was Adrienne’s bedroom. They all walked on tiptoe as quietly as possible, and exchanged only a few words in low whispers while the double-bass player took extra care that not a throb should be heard from his instrument; for it was an unwritten law that serenades should come as a
surprise
and that the music alone should awaken the sleeping inmates of the house. Everything was carefully done and the table, chairs, glasses and wine were all in place – and the men seated round the table – when the musicians started to play.

On the way the young men had drawn lots as to who should have the first turn with the musicians. Thus it was decided that Uncle Ambrus should be first and the others would follow. Ambrus stood facing the windows in front of the table on the side nearest the house, the others further back on the other side. The band started softly, playing his own tune: ‘
Do
come
when
I
call
you
…’ and then, somewhat more loudly‚ Adrienne’s song. After these two there followed some mood music and, as soon as they could all see a glimmer of light from the window giving onto the glass veranda, Ambrus began to sing. He had a good baritone voice, even if it was by then somewhat vinous in quality. The other men sat round the table drinking their champagne in the background. Song followed song until, after a rippling csardas, Uncle Ambrus signalled to the gypsies to stop. At this point he should have stepped back as it was the turn of Pityu’s serenade. However he did not do so but had a chair brought forward to the place where he had stood in front of the window and sat down, glass in hand; and there he stayed.

Ambrus was in an awkward position, because if he had retired to the other side of the table, as he ought to have done, he would have had to abandon his pose of the triumphant successful lover. So he stayed where he was, playing the Devil-may-care wooer in front of the other men, but only showing to Adrienne, who might have been peering unseen through the window curtains, a face less ferocious than the others would ever have imagined.

So he stayed there, conscious – as it was a clear moonlit night, that he was in full view of the window, and every now and again he would sing again with the musicians, even though he no longer had the right as it was not his music that was being played. As their leader, Ambrus assumed more rights than the others, but even so Pityu did not like it. He said nothing because he was a
modest
young man, a weaker bough than most on the strong ancestral tree of the Kendy family. This could be seen in his appearance. He was thinner, frailer than other members of the clan and in him the famous Kendy nose which so resembled the beaks of birds of prey‚ eagles‚ falcons and hawks, had dwindled in Pityu’s case to the less ferocious but none the less exaggerated of some exotic jungle bird. With Pityu’s weak chin his face seemed to consist entirely of a huge hooked nose and two sad-looking black eyes.

The serenade was nearly over when there was heard behind them a loud clatter of horses’ hoofs.

A carriage drawn by a team of four horses raced into the
forecourt
and drew up barely an inch from the back of the
cymbal-player
. The first two horses snorted but remained otherwise motionless but the gypsies quickly scattered.

Uncle Ambrus started to swear in his usual masterly and
complicated
fashion but he was forced to break off when he saw that it was Pali Uzdy, Adrienne’s husband, who jumped down from the high travelling carriage. So he rearranged his face into a smile of welcome and cried out, ‘
Servus
‚
Pali! Where do you spring from at this late hour?’

Uzdy walked over to the serenaders with his usual measured tread. His thin figure, like a dark tower, seemed even taller than usual in his ankle-length double-breasted fur coat and, as he was narrow-shouldered as well as exceptionally tall, he
somehow
gave the impression of having been whittled away the further up you looked. With his elongated pale face framed in the fur collar, long waxed moustaches and goatee beard he looked for all the world like one of those tall bottles of Rhine wine whose wooden stopper has been crowned with the caricature of Mephistopheles.

Towering above the others he replied, ‘I’ve just come from home‚ from Almasko. I like to come and go without warning … and sometimes I get quite a surprise, as now, though this, of course, is a very agreeable surprise!’ Pali emphasized each last word in his usual ironic manner. He shook hands with each in turn.

His slanting almond-shaped eyes glinted with private
amusement
he sat down at the table. ‘You don’t mind if I join you?’ he asked‚ the polite words barely masking the mockery of his tone. The serenaders were extremely put out, for they had chosen that evening only because they knew that Uzdy was away. Now he had turned up and spoilt everything.

‘So? A serenade? It is a serenade‚ is it not? For Adrienne‚ of course! Very good! Very good! You are quite right! I am most flattered that you should honour our house in this way. I am only sorry I disturbed you, but I must say in my defence that I knew nothing about it. You will forgive me, I’m sure,’ went on Uzdy without giving the others any chance to reply‚ ‘… but go on! Please go on‚ and, as long as you don’t object, I’ll just sit here and listen. It’s a great joy to me to hear such beautiful music. I never get the chance at home.’

This was more than Uncle Ambrus could bear. Angrily he burst out‚ ‘Only an idiot would serenade a lady when her
husband’s
at home! Perhaps you’d like us to come and play to you when …’ Ambrus broke off when he saw that Uzdy was looking at him with a strange gleam in his eyes.

‘When …?’ he enquired icily‚ raising his long neck from the fur collar.

‘Well … when you’re asleep‚ or, or… when …’ stammered Ambrus. ‘Anyhow‚ it isn’t the custom!’ Then, to bring the
evening
to an end as quickly as possible, he turned to the musicians and shouted, ‘Well, you dolts, get on with it! Play Master Alvinczy’s song, are you daft?’ Turning once more to Uzdy in explanation he said, ‘It’s Adam’s turn. That’s what the boys agreed.’

Again song followed song, but more swiftly now as if the gypsies wanted to get it all over with and run.

Though the music continued the festive mood round the table had been extinguished. While Adam Alvinczy stood near the band-leader‚ all the rest remained seated, Ambrus still nearest to the veranda, Uzdy at the upper end of the table, Kadacsay and Pityu on the courtyard side and, at the other end of the table, rather apart from the others near to the wooden gates at the end of Adrienne’s wing which led to the garden and the Szamos river that flowed beyond it, sat Laszlo Gyeroffy. While it was obvious that Uzdy’s arrival had spoilt the evening for the others, Laszlo seemed quite indifferent. He sat very straight, staring into the night, drinking tumbler after tumbler of champagne, laced with brandy. He sat so still he might have been a robot.

Alvinczy told the gypsies to play ‘
A
hundred
candles
…’

Up to this moment Uzdy too had sat quite motionless in his chair‚ his long narrow eyes fixed on the glimmer of light that showed from behind the shutters of Adrienne’s room. His lips were drawn back, showing his broad teeth as if he were about to bite. Now‚ however‚ he straightened himself up and his hand
disappeared
into the folds of his coat. When the band came to a
climax
with the words ‘a hundred pints of wine’, his arm suddenly shot forward and, at the
fortissimo
of ‘wi-i-ine’, fired his Browning directly at the gate-post leading to the Szamos, not twenty yards away.

It was lucky that the gypsies, intent on their playing, did not hear the noise of the shot; but all those seated round the table did, as well as the bullet’s impact on the gate-post. They all jumped in their seats, Ambrus belching out ‘God damn it!’ as he snatched his head sideways.

Uzdy burst out in a roar of laughter.

Only Gyeroffy remained unmoved‚ even though the bullet had whistled straight past his nose. Without appearing to notice what had happened, Laszlo continued to look dispassionately in front of him as he raised his glass once more to his lips.

This unexpected calm seemed to impress even Uzdy.

‘Your nerves are good,’ he called to Laszlo.

‘My nerves?’ said Laszlo, his voice seeming to come from a great distance. ‘Why?’

‘This is why!’ cried Uzdy, and fired two more shots in quick succession past Laszlo’s head, but the latter merely reached for his glass and drank down his wine as calmly as before.

This brought the serenade to an abrupt end. The gentlemen, all of them now in a chastened mood but delighted to get away‚ hurried back to town grumbling among themselves about what a strange, unpredictable fellow that Uzdy was. The only exception was Gyeroffy.

He walked now with a proud air, his previous diffidence
completely
gone, his head held high, his tall hat at the back of his head and, below those eyebrows that met so menacingly across his face, his aquiline nose was lifted in proud disdain. Laszlo’s lower lip stuck out, giving his whole face an air of arrogance. ‘Don’t stumble about like that,’ he said to Pityu Kendy when they were about fifty yards from the villa. ‘You’re in my way!’

The others whispered among themselves because they realized that he was extremely drunk.

And drunk he was, so drunk that he no longer remembered all the humiliations that he had suffered before returning to Transylvania the previous spring. Then, when he had been sober he had never been free of a nagging sense of self-accusation, never free from the knowledge that the cousin with whom he had been so in love, Klara Kollonich, had married someone else because he, Laszlo, had shown himself to be too weak of character to deserve her; never free either of the disgrace of being forced to resign from all his clubs in the capital because he could not pay his gambling debts. When sober he could never escape a nagging sense of being inferior to others. He had convinced himself that he was worthless and that he wore on his forehead a visible brand that advertised this worthlessness to everyone he met, even if they were kind to him and pretended not to see it. And if anyone showed signs of being friendly, he took it for pity.

At the moment when he had had such terrible losses at the gaming table, he would have been able to settle if he had not thought it more important to repay his mistress the money she had paid out for him on a similar occasion some months before. He had felt himself more dishonoured by being indebted to a woman, even though no one else knew of it, than by the public scandal which had put an end to his being accepted in the high society of the capital. And at the time he had felt that there was something noble and uplifting, cruel but at the same time
triumphant
, in choosing social death over private dishonour.

It was not long before the exaltation, the sense of the spiritual strength which had then given him such support, began to wither and die. Soon the recollection of his folly and weakness came back more and more strongly, to the point that he could only banish these gnawing regrets by getting drunk. And when he was drunk he went at once to the opposite extreme. Then he would become arrogant and scornful, letting everyone see that he thought
himself
infinitely superior to them. At these times he would believe himself to be a great artist, which indeed he could have been if he had not squandered his time and neglected his talent. But of this he never spoke. Even when drunk he would tell himself that they would never understand; and so confined his boasting to telling tales about his social success in grand society as if that were the only thing that would impress ‘those country bumpkins’.

His drinking companions noticed at once what was happening and so, as soon as Laszlo began to hold his head high and look haughtily down his nose at them, they would start quite
consciously
to tease him, which is, and always has been, the favourite pastime of the men of Transylvania.

Today‚ it was Baron Gazsi who went up to him and said, apparently quite seriously‚ ‘You did very well to tell off Pityu. He needs a lesson in good manners!’ And Pityu took him up by
saying
‚ ‘Indeed I’m most grateful for your telling me how to behave. You, who have always moved in the most exalted circles!’
Whereupon
Adam Alvinczy said, extremely solemnly, ‘We should all follow your commands, naturally!’ and his brother Akos chimed his agreement.

Then it was the turn of Uncle Ambrus who, taking Gyeroffy by the arm, bellowed out, ‘All these young fellows here are as raw as bear-cubs. Of course they’ve not had your advantages. They’ve never been anywhere or seen anything, unlike you who was used to hob-nobbing with all the big-wigs in Budapest!’

And they all crowded round Laszlo, bowing obsequiously and winking all the time at each other. Then someone said, ‘It must have been marvellous, that court ball you told us of – the one for the King of Serbia!’

It never occurred to Laszlo that his friend had mentioned the wrong king on purpose.

‘It was the King of Spain, not Serbia,’ said Laszlo. ‘Alfonso XIII, who is nephew to the Archduke Friedrich. You really should know these things and get them right …’ and he launched into one of his favourite subjects, waving his arms with the unsteady but self-important gestures of the very drunk.

Dawn was beginning to break as they approached the main square. They had almost reached the Town Hall when Gyeroffy stopped the whole group with a peremptory wave of his hand.

‘Now we’re here, it’s my turn to give a serenade!’ he said, and called to the gypsies to get ready and have the table and chairs put on the sidewalk.