They Were Found Wanting (77 page)

Then followed three dreadful days.

Dr Kisch had arrived but he did not visit the sick man so as not to excite him. He said that he would see him soon enough when the time came to take him away; for, after hearing all the details, Kisch had realized that Uzdy would have to be closely confined. It had been immediately obvious to him that Uzdy was too far gone to be left alone in the freedom of his own home: it was too dangerous for him, and for everyone else.

On the fourth day Adrienne was on duty. It was the hour of dawn, but it was still dark. A small night-light flickered on the window sill and Uzdy, propped up on several pillows, was
apparently
asleep. His wife was sitting in a chair at the foot of the bed, and not a sound was to be heard, except for the ticking of the clock.

The hours crept slowly by, terribly slowly, because she was haunted by the thought that at eight o’clock that morning Dr Kisch would come to Uzdy’s room to take him away. The Red Cross ambulance wagon had been there since the previous day, hidden in the stable court. Two nurses had come with it, and they were going to take the patient to the clinic for nervous diseases in Kolozsvar – which was always referred to as ‘The House with the Green Roof’ – and there he would be kept in close confinement.

For Adrienne it was the end of everything for which she had yearned, waited, and struggled for so many years. It was the end of her dream of freedom, just when it had seemed so very close. It was the end of any chance of happiness, of anything which for her would make life worth living. It was the end of that dream for which Balint had given up his home and it tolled the death-knell of any chance of a free honest life, of having another child, and especially of that longed-for, oh, so-often-imagined boy who had never been born and who never now would be born! She felt as if, when in half an hour they would take her husband away as
hopelessly
mad, her love for Balint would die or at least be subtly transformed into unending frustrated pain. Now she would have to remain in that hateful house for ever, chained to an absent
husband
she had always loathed, living in hell with an estranged daughter and a half-crazed mother-in-law.

She had thought of nothing else during the past few days, but it had never assailed her with such force as it did that morning just as she was waiting for the final stroke of fate which would throw her life into havoc. Right up until this last minute she had felt that there might be some hope, that something, anything, would happen … some miracle that would cure him. She had been like a drowning man clutching at imaginary straws.

So she sat there, her head hanging low and her face covered by her hands. She could feel the pulse throbbing in her throat, and she looked back dismally at the seemingly endless sorrows of her life. She had been really happy only once, during those four short weeks she had spent with Balint in Venice; and even then, though dazed by the happiness of passing her nights in his arms, she had been menaced by the thought of that self-destruction she had thought to be a price worth paying for the fulfilment of their love. Now she thought she should have killed herself then. At least she would have been saved this present suffering.

Tears rose in her eyes and suddenly she was racked with sobs. No matter how hard she tried she could not control them. Leaning forward as if mourning the dead she cried … and cried … and cried … her tears falling through her fingers onto her blouse and into her lap.

Then a voice said, ‘Are you crying, Adrienne?’

Uzdy was looking up at her from his pillows. She had no idea how long he had been awake. Now he was staring at her with
surprise
in those strange slanting eyes. She looked back at him, unable to reply. His expression was amazingly peaceful. She had never seen him look like that before.

Uzdy did not move his head, and his long hair lay on the pillow like a dark wedge reaching up on each side of his face in strange peaks, his eyebrows and sharply pointed beard making him more than ever like everyone’s idea of Mephistopheles. Only now there was nothing satanic about him and on his lips was a slight, apologetic smile.

‘Why do you cry?’ he asked gently. ‘Surely not for me? Why should you cry for me?’ He spoke slowly as if he were really only talking to himself. ‘I know you were never happy with me,’ he went on, ‘so why should you cry for me now?’

He paused, and then went on, ‘Perhaps I oughtn’t to have … I know I should have behaved differently, quite differently … but I didn’t know how. It was a mistake, a terrible mistake. My own mistake, of course, but then I didn’t know …’

Adrienne was again racked by sobs, so much so that she pressed her fists into her temples and put her head between her knees. Now she was crying silently, her blouse quivering as her back shook with her sobs. When she was at last able to look up she saw that he was looking intently at her, probably waiting to say
something
more. When he did speak it was very quietly, like a voice from another world, ‘No matter what happened, no matter why, or how … I must tell you I loved you very much!’ he said, and closed his eyes as if infinitely weary.

He did not open them again, not even when daylight flooded the room and the clock chimed the hour of eight, nor when the door opened and Maier came in. His eyes were still closed and he seemed to be asleep when Adrienne rose and brushed her
husband’s
locks with her long, cool fingers.

In the corridor outside, behind the Saxon doctor, two dark
figures
moved forward carrying an iron stretcher.

Adrienne slipped quietly to the stairs, thinking she would flee to her own room so as not to see anything of the terrible scene that would be enacted below when those fateful figures bore down upon poor Uzdy. Try as she would she could not go more than a few steps. Her legs seemed as if made of lead and she found herself forced to remain, leaning against the wooden walls of the stairway. From downstairs she could hear the sound of a door opening and footsteps. Then her husband’s voice, full of
surprise
, called out, ‘No! No! No!’ quite strongly. And then nothing. Nothing!

The silence frightened her. Then there were more steps, and this time they had something of a military ring. The glazed door leading to the garden opened and she could just hear some sort of command. They must have gone out, thought Adrienne, and rushed down the stairs. In the bright sunlight before her she saw a little group of men carrying a stretcher and on it lay Pal Uzdy, his body covered by a white sheet like a shroud. She supposed they must have given him some quick-acting injection. His face looked as pale as if sculpted in wax.

Adrienne’s knees buckled and she tried to support herself on the bars of the window by which she stood. And once again she wept, but this time it was not for herself. They were the tears of pity.

A
DRIENNE WROTE TO BALINT
, not from Almasko but from Kolozsvar where she had gone the day after they took Uzdy away. There were so many things that had to be done.

On the first three pages she related the bare facts, as drily as possible, recounting what had happened day by day, like a
historical
chronicle. She wrote in short sentences, each like the
hammer
-blows of Fate, and the last one read: ‘…
and
the
day
before
yesterday
they
brought
the
poor
man
to
Kolozsvar
.’ After that her writing became more confused, with broken sentences and words scratched out and replaced by others.