They Were Counted (13 page)

Balint began to feel with increasing urgency that he must say something common-place that would break the silence between them and release Adrienne from whatever sorrow or
disappointment
it was that seemed to hold her so firmly. In a low voice, almost a whisper, as if he were afraid to break the magic by a harsh note, he murmured:

‘What a lovely night it is!’

‘Yes. Yes indeed. It’s lovely.’ She too spoke quietly, not daring to raise her voice, ‘… but what a lie it all is!’

‘What do you mean, a lie?’

Adrienne remained motionless, looking away into the distance. Then, very slowly, choosing her words hesitantly and carefully, she started:

‘It’s all untrue. A lie. Everything beautiful is a lie, a deception. Everything one believes in, or wants. Everything one does
because
one believes it to be helpful, or useful. It’s all a snare, a well-baited trap. That’s what life is,’ and we are stupid enough to be taken in, to be duped. We swallow the bait, and “click!” – the trap is sprung.’ She gave a little half-uttered laugh, but her eyes remained serious, gazing ahead. Then she turned to Balint and said: ‘What are you going to do now that you’ve come home? What are your plans?’

But Balint was thinking only of what she had said previously:

‘I don’t believe that, that in our lives everything beautiful must be a lie. No! No! The opposite is true. Beauty is the only eternal truth there is! Beauty of purpose, of deed, of achievement. That is the only thing worth seeking for, what we must all try to find. Other ethical arguments are false, this is the only real one. Why? Because you can’t define it or classify it, put it down in black and white. We’ve talked about this before. Do you remember, back at Kolozsvar?’

‘Oh yes, I remember, I remember it well. And then I think I believed it.

Balint wanted to ask, why only then, why no longer? But he felt she would say no more if he dared approach whatever secret pain lay behind her words.

For a few moments they spoke no more. Then Adrienne started again.

‘People
say
nice things, nice words and so on, but …’ She
narrowed
her eyes in a search for the right words to express what she wanted to say but her instinct told her should remain hidden. She took refuge in parable.

‘Look how beautiful that distant hillside looks, soft, undefined, lovely but uncertain. We don’t know what it’s made of, what it’s really like. Is it mist, or cloud, or is it just a dream? Pure beauty, as you were saying? It looks as if one could dive into it and
become
a part of it, vanish inside it as into a fog; but only now, and from here in the deceitful moonlight. It’s really just an ordinary hillside, made of hard yellow clay, poor grass and dead thistles. It’s not even a real mountain of clefts and rocks. When dawn breaks we can see it’s land fit only for sheep and goats. Useful, of course, but all we can say then is how many ewes and lambs can graze there. She laughed again and added: ‘You see what a dull dour farmer I’ve become!’

Balint went on, in the same low voice as before but in more
fervent
tones.

‘Maybe it’s no more than a farmer’s stock-in-trade. Perhaps
tomorrow
we will see it for what it really is, a common pasture with dumb sheep bleating and aimlessly leading their lambs from place to place. But tonight it isn’t!
Now
it isn’t! I don’t care about tomorrow. Tonight, tomorrow does not exist! Tonight,
everything
is beautiful and that beauty which fills our eyes, your eyes, mine, remains ours for ever. Nobody, nothing can take it away from us. We can lock it in the steel tower of our memory where no one can touch it, and there it will remain, like the Sleeping Beauty in her magic castle, until we – and we alone, – can bring it back to life again. You and I. No one else.’

‘Not all memories can be wished back. There are others too, unwanted ones, but no Sleeping Beauties!’

‘How we feel ourselves is all that matters. Nothing outside can touch us. Hurt and joy come from inside. Conscience is our only judge. That is our secret, and we can neither change nor control it.’

‘Maybe …’ Adrienne spoke so low he could hardly hear her. Resting her head in her hands, she still looked away from him, away from the world. It seemed that she could not find the words to define what it was she found so hard to express. Balint waited. She must speak first or he would never know what was in her mind. He hardly dared look at her lest she should be disturbed, so he kept his eyes fixed on the garden.

The walls of the courtyard and the wings of the great house were in deep shadow, a shadow whose outline was a sharp as if drawn by a ruler. Outside this shadow the parterre shone with a blue light, and the paved circle in the centre gleamed with a
myriad
little points of light, each pebble seeming to sparkle like hoar-frost or snow and at its heart the grass lawn too seemed to shine, each blade distinct and separate. Only the lilies remained dark and velvety, the deep red flowers black in the moonlight and the russet leaves like ink-stains spreading on the ground.

Balint looked up at the right-hand wing of the house. Lamps burned behind the long french windows, etching long strips of
yellow
light between the grey vertical lines of the columns. Looking further round, past the seemingly ethereal little tower at the
corner
of the walls, Balint’s gaze came to rest on the steps under the ramparts, where he could just make out a sitting figure. In spite of the darkness he recognized him at once. It was Andras Jopal, the tutor. He had changed his evening coat for a pale linen jacket.

The young mathematician was seated, almost crouched, on one of the bottom steps, his legs pulled up under him. He seemed to be gazing fixedly at the moon oblivious of the beauty of the night, lonelier now and even more solitary than he had seemed at dinner when, of all those present, he had been the least affected by the general high spirits. Balint decided to seek him out later. Now he turned back to Adrienne wondering when she would
decide
to speak again.

She was still leaning on the balustrade. The silk wrapper that had been round her shoulders had slipped down, showing that she had become even thinner, almost gaunt, with hollows under her collar-bones. Her long neck was as firm as ever, but her early leanness was more pronounced with her chin joined to her neck in the stylized angle of an old Greek statue. She was still the girl he had known before, but marriage had not given her the soft
roundness
that often comes with motherhood. The bud was still a bud, unopened; the flower was still a promise, and Balint was surprised for he knew that her little daughter was already two. The
unresolved
conflict between her girlish appearance and the experience of motherhood was perhaps the reason for the faintly bitter note he thought he detected when she spoke.

Adrienne pulled the silk wrap up around her shoulders,
perhaps
sensing Balint’s eyes upon her bare skin. It was a shy, almost girlish movement and, after wrapping herself still more firmly she turned, leaning back against the parapet, and said: ‘I love to hear you talk, AB. You’re so confident about life. It’s good for me, perhaps even necessary. Please go on. Tell me more.’

So Balint went on, with renewed confidence, in a low dreamlike voice, as if someone else were speaking through him. He spoke long and intensely, and Adrienne listened, only occasionally
interposing
a word or a question. And when she spoke, ‘Oh, Yes! Yes! It’s possible. Perhaps, but you really believe then …?’ she no longer looked into the night but gazed deeply into his eyes. Her eyes were the colour and depth of yellow onyx.

Balint could have continued for ever, but all at once the door of the ballroom burst open and a stream of dancers flowed out onto the terrace, the rushing melody of a popular galop filling the air with its gaiety and rhythm.

Farkas Alvinczy, who had been leading the dancing all
evening
, was the first. Bent almost double in his haste and dragging his partner after him, he ran, followed by the others, all holding hands, stumbling, tumbling and whirling round the terrace in giddy speed, the men in their black tail-suits, the girls in silks and satins of every colour, down the paths, round the stone balusters, rushing with careless abandon until they all vanished once more into the house.

The last in the chain was young Kamuthy, his feet scarcely touching the ground as if he were a child’s top at the mercy of a whip. He bumped into the columns and into the stone balusters and stretched out his hand to Adrienne as he swept by. She stepped back, and on he flew, in a tremendous arc of movement, crashing into anything and anybody in his way, twice into the stone balustrade and finally into the door-post. Then he too was swallowed up once more into the vortex of the ballroom.

It only lasted a few moments, and then Balint and Adrienne were suddenly alone again. From inside they could hear the music change from the madness of the galop to a slow waltz and, through the great doors they could see the chain of dancers break up and dissolve and divide once more into pairs, each couple swaying gently to the music, turning and gliding in each other’s arms.

The magic that had made Balint and Adrienne forget time and place, everything but their own existence and thoughts, was broken. Without speaking they moved slowly back to the castle. As she went in someone asked Adrienne to dance; and she turned and disappeared into the crowd with all the others.

 

Balint did not dance. He stood near the wall for a few moments, needing time to come back to reality after the dream-world
created
by his talk with Adrienne. He thought of Jopal sitting alone beneath the tower and he decided to go and seek him out and talk. It would be better than returning to the ball for which he was no longer in the mood.

He left the ballroom and went slowly down the great staircase into the entrance hall where the bar had been placed, out through the entrance doors and down the few steps to the moonlit garden, and on towards the corner tower; but there was no longer anyone there. He paused and listened in case he should hear the sound of footsteps. Maybe Andras Jopal would come into sight; but no one moved.

Towards the east a faint strip of light heralded the dawn. Balint walked slowly along the path in front of the castle wing where lamplight steamed out from the library windows.

Inside the long narrow room two card tables had been set, one at each end, and at the smaller of these, Crookface, gruff as ever, was playing tarot with his host, the prefect and Tihamer Abonyi. Their table was lit by four candles and they played in a silence which was only occasionally interrupted by Abonyi who as always liked to show off his superior knowledge, and so
remarked
from time to time that things were done differently at the National Casino Club in Budapest and in Vienna. As no one paid any attention, he was soon forced to give up and play on in silence.

The other table was much noisier. Uncle Ambrus had got a
poker
game together. He had gone round the ballroom slapping the young men on the back and crying heartily, ‘Come and have a shifty at the Hungarian Bible, sonny’ or, ‘You can’t hide behind skirts all the evening,’ or even ‘A man needs some good Hungarian games, my boy, not
German
waltzes,’ adding, for good measure, ‘They serve some damned good wine downstairs!’ He had
gathered
together quite a number of the brighter, more dashing young sparks, to whom he was still a hero and who looked to him as their leader, even if he always did prefer a poker game to a ball.

Not that they guessed the whole truth, which was that the older man was no longer spry enough for dancing and preferred to rest his feet under the card-table. This was also profitable, as he
usually
took quite a lot of money from younger players less experienced than himself.

At Uncle Ambrus’ table, next to which trays of tall glasses and delicate Bohemian crystal decanters had been placed on a side-table, sat the two middle young Alvinczys, Adam and Zoltan, together with Pityu Kendy and Gazsi Kadacsay. This was a family party, since Ambrus’s mother had been an Alvinczy, while Pityu was his second cousin and Kadacsay was Uncle Ambrus’s brother-in-law’s son. But Ambrus never let kinship stand in the way of his winning a little money and, sometimes, more than a little. No one was a better player than Ambrus. He was a great gambler and the younger players could never guess what he was up to. Sometimes he would bet high on a single ace or throw in a winning hand. Sometimes he would act coy and complaisant, as if he were holding good cards, and then egg the others on with loud-mouthed hints that he held nothing – but no one ever knew whether he really had a good hand or not. He would complain to the heavens of his bad luck and swear
obscenely
and then tease them, saying: ‘Don’t go on, son, I’ll have the pants off you!’ And his resounding laugh and avuncular good humour made the young almost glad to lose to him.