They Were Found Wanting (55 page)

Abady had no choice but to tell the full tale, leaving nothing out and mentioning all the names. Happily he made no mistakes as, in matter-of-fact tones, he related names, dates, sums of money – the whole sad little tale. This dispassionate approach had a remarkably cooling effect on the Independence Party members, not a few of whom remembered some of the
circumstances
. But on Abady’s own supporters the effect was the
opposite
. Instead of the artificial laughter with which they had greeted such an insignificant tale they now took it up as a real scandal and, with equallly insincere indignation, called out, ‘There you are! Didn’t we tell you? Monstrous! Outrageous!’

Ordung rang his bell for order. In his powerful voice he called for silence, threatening, if he were not obeyed, to take disciplinary action against those who disturbed the dignity of the meeting. With hatred in his eyes he turned to Abady and asked, ‘I would like to ask the speaker if he has anything further to say?’

‘I have,’ said Abady; and in a few words he outlined his
original
proposition. Then he sat down.

‘As this proposal does not figure on the agenda,’ ruled the Prefect, ‘it cannot now be discussed. It shall be passed to the
committee
of the Orphans’ Court.’

Abady got up and left the room. He fled, not from the anger of the party whose representative had been attacked, but rather from those who had rallied to his side. This they had done, he was forced to accept, not because they thought he was right or that justice ought to be done, but solely out of party interest, for to them nothing else mattered.

Abady’s intervention had unexpected consequences.

Two days later an article appeared in the Independence Party’s local newspaper; it was signed by the lawyer Zsigmond Boros. The subject was Abady’s words ‘the Orphans’ Court should inspect more closely the manner in which the orphans’ assets have been invested.’ Balint had phrased it in those words so as not to impugn Bartokfay’s personal integrity. Boros used this phrase to attack Abady.

He wrote that he did not doubt the widow Olajos had believed everything she had recounted to Count Abady. He wished only to elucidate the facts. Five years earlier the mill and the land had indeed been worth 50,000 crowns, as he personally had confirmed when Bartokfay had asked for his professional opinion. This he would declare to the whole world. The problem, as he saw it, was that Olajos had defaulted on his mortgage payments, which had amounted to some 12,000 crowns, and had completely neglected the maintenance of the mill. He, Boros, could hardly be held responsible for that! There followed a few well-turned sentences, designed to touch the hearts of his readers, about how the old chairman was now incapacitated by illness and attacked when he could no longer defend himself. Then followed a number of equally well-turned but poisonous phrases about the thoughtless aristocrat who was rash enough to meddle with things he knew nothing about.

Balint was taken by surprise by this unprovoked attack. He had no idea that such a prominent man as Boros had been in any way connected with procuring that dubious property for the Olajos boy. Reading the article, it was now clear that Boros had come out into the open only because he had assumed that Balint had, for some purpose of his own, withheld the lawyer’s name and so, with this counter-attack, he hoped to forestall the
criticism
that might follow further revelations. After all it was not easy to prove the value of property especially after the passage of years.

It was a clever article, self-assured, authoritative and calm in tone and its venom was partially concealed by the manner adopted, the patronizing manner of an older and more
experienced
man telling the facts of life to a blundering youth.

Balint felt unable to ignore this now personal attack, and so he sent a short statement to the newspaper maintaining
everything
that he had said at the meeting.

From such a trivial and inadvertent incident was started the avalanche that finally brought about the downfall of the mighty Dr Zsigmond Boros.

Countess Roza developed another persistent cold that autumn and again decided to follow her doctor’s advice and spend the winter by the Mediterranean. This time she went to Abbazia which had been suggested by Balint who was unhappy about the course of international events and thought it better that she should remain on Austro-Hungarian soil. Though naturally he had said nothing to his mother about the possibilities of war and its inevitable consequences, the old lady had understood.

This time she did not protest or need to be persuaded, as had been the case two years before when she had been to Portofino. Ever since the scene that had occurred when Balint had told her of his plans to marry Adrienne, relations between mother and son had remained cold. Whatever signs of love or trust they sought to display both knew it was mere play-acting; for the truth was that whenever they were together Adrienne’s invisible presence was always there too, an adored picture in the son’s eyes, a baleful and hated vision in the mother’s. And so she left willingly and without demur, knowing that if she were to remain in Kolozsvar she would inevitably hear daily the name of the hated woman she believed to have enticed and seduced her beloved son. To remain therefore might have led to another disagreeable scene between her and Balint and the idea of wintering at Abbazia came as a welcome solution, an escape that neither could have construed as surrender. Her son accompanied her on the voyage. After a few days in Budapest they took the express train to Fiume, and it was a sign of those troubled times that it was delayed for five hours on the way. The immediate cause was the movement of troops, for the long military transport trains were too much for the small provincial stations where they had to wait. When these had been constructed there had been peace for so long that no one had thought of anything but ordinary civilian traffic. Balint was filled with misgivings when his train stopped and he found himself face to face with crowds of young reservists who had been called back to the colours. He felt only slight
reassurance
when he recalled Tisza’s words about the possibility of a peaceful solution.

They stayed at a hotel by the sea and Balint remained with his mother until after the New Year. The tension between them was unabated but he had no reason to remain at home that year. Young Margit’s wedding had been on December 10th, celebrated with much pomp, with hundreds of guests many of whom, like the bridal couple, had worn traditional Hungarian festive dress. Balint, of course, had been invited but Adrienne had asked him not to come as too many people’s eyes would be upon them. As soon as the wedding was over Adrienne wanted to be free to start making plans for her divorce and she felt it would be better to take every precaution to avoid furnishing food for gossip. Also, to make things even more difficult, Adrienne, who had to act as mother of the bride, moved from the Uzdy villa on the Monostor road to the Laczoks’ town house from which Margit was to be married. This meant, of course, that they would not be able to spend the nights alone together. Directly after the wedding it was planned that Adrienne should go to her father’s place, where they would be joined at Christmas by the young couple and in this strictly family reunion there would be no place for Balint.

When Balint left his mother he went first to Denestornya. There he found a huge pile of letters waiting for him, far more than usual. Most of these came from people unknown to him, from such places as Csik, Gyergyo and Maros-Torda. Some of these letters merely wanted to congratulate him on his stand against injustice, but many of the others contained complaints and
accusations
and complicated accounts of problems for which his help was asked. And almost every single letter told him something more about Boros, about some abuse which had resulted in loss to the writer. One envelope contained merely two newspaper
cuttings
describing some lawsuit to do with a dispute about
forest-lands
together with an anonymous accusation that Boros had dishonestly approved an agreement which was against his client’s interests. Nauseated, Balint threw it away.

It was clear that his speech at the meeting had been the root cause of all this, and yet no one would have believed that Balint had taken up the issue almost by accident and would have had no idea that Boros was in any way implicated if the lawyer himself had not taken up the cudgels and protested his innocence so publicly. Now all those who had suffered from Boros’s dishonest dealings saw in Balint a messiah who had been sent to smite the hitherto mighty and untouchable lawyer.

Among the more serious letters there was one from Tamas Laczok, the renegade younger brother of Count Jeno Laczok of Var-Siklod, who was now working as an engineer in a
Szekler-owned
railway company. His letter was peppered with phrases in French, for it had been in Paris that he had obtained his
professional
diploma after many years of thoughtless dissipation and it had been in the French colonies that he had gained his experience.

It started off ‘
Très
cher
ami
…’ and went on to congratulate Balint on taking issue with Boros. After a few light-hearted remarks he turned to facts and figures and his subject was the same forestry matter that had been reported in the newspaper cuttings. It seemed that in the Gyergyo district a pine forest had been bought by the Laczok Timber Company which had been founded by ‘my darling brother Jeno’ and the banker Soma Weissfeld to exploit the Laczok forests. Somehow, they had arranged matters so that Count Jeno and the banker lived like kings on their dividends while the younger brother, who held a one-third share, received almost nothing. The company also bought timber from a communally-owned forest nearby and this was brought to the works by train. One day a spark from the engine set the forest on fire and about three thousand acres were destroyed. The loss amounted to millions of crowns. The
community
took the company to court, claiming damages and the cost of replanting the trees. Zsigmond Boros was appointed lawyer for the communal owners with power of attorney to settle in their best interests. Boros had used his powers to obtain a settlement out of court, even though it was most disadvantageous to the community who had lost so much of their forest. Despite protests at the community’s next meeting the settlement had been
reluctantly
accepted, largely owing to the persuasive oratory of the famous lawyer. The letter went on: