They Were Counted (38 page)

T
HE
MARDI GRAS BALL
at Kolozsvar was the most
important
social event of the whole Carnival season. It was held in the Assembly Rooms of the Casino and so strong were the
ancient
traditions that some men still wore, for this occasion, the mulberry-coloured tailcoats and grey trousers that had been the fashion in the 1830s. The ball, which naturally began on the
evening
of Shrove Tuesday, went on well into the morning of Ash Wednesday.

It was also the tradition that even the oldest ladies turned out for Mardi Gras, dressed as if for an imperial reception, and
wearing
all the family jewels they could find a place for. Even those who had kept away from all the other dances turned up on this special night and it was only young girls who did not wear
imposing
tiaras.

By ten o’clock the rooms were already filling up, carriage after carriage drawing up at the Casino portico to discharge their
cargoes
of soberly-dressed men and sumptuously-dressed women and girls. Adrienne arrived with her husband and her two sisters and the three women moved slowly up the steps holding their long skirts with one hand and clutching their furs to them with the other.

Pal Uzdy did not wait for them. He hated walking slowly so rather than matching his pace to theirs he hurried up the steps and was already waiting at the door by the time that Adrienne and the others were only halfway up. Uzdy was a tall,
thin-shouldered
man who stood a head taller than most. He had
inherited
this feature from his mother, an Absolon, whose brother, whom Uzdy resembled, had been a well-known Asian explorer. But while the uncle had been a large well-proportioned man with massive muscular shoulders, the nephew, long and narrow, seemed more like those emaciated bronze statuettes of
Mephistopheles
which became popular after Gounod had produced his
Faust.
Pal Uzdy’s head, however, had a marked oriental look, with a high forehead, olive-brown almost green skin, with high cheekbones and hair growing from a widow’s peak on his
forehead
. With a small pointed beard and close-cut moustaches with long drooping waxed points in the Tartar manner, his triangular face had a satanic look, unusual and interesting. Though he dressed with impeccable care his clothes were unfashionably cut as if to underline that their wearer was too distinguished to care about anything so trivial as fashion. Condescendingly he shook hands with Farkas Alvinczy and Gazsi Kadacsay, who were
waiting
to conduct the ladies to the ballroom; and while he did so stood watching the approach of his wife.

Adrienne came slowly up the steps, a smile on her face,
conscious
that she was looking her best and knowing that others thought so too. She knew how well the diamond stars set off her for once carefully dressed dark hair. She had put on her newest and most ravishing dress, which was cut princess-style in one flowing line from bust to flaring hem. Of flame-coloured shot silk, its folds glistened with subtly changing shades of colour as she moved; and she knew it would cause a sensation when she
removed
her cloak.

She was smiling, too, for another reason. She was pleased with a piece of news related to her by her youngest sister Margit – she who always knew everything – namely that Balint Abady had
arrived
that morning and so she would have someone to talk to who was more than a tailor’s dummy and who knew how to dance. At the same time a fleeting thought crossed her mind, a thought which also carried an unanswered question; did she have any
reason
to be made happy by this news? Did not the fact that he had not joined them at the skating rink show that he was avoiding her? It was only a passing doubt, so transient that she was still smiling when she joined her husband at the top of the steps.

‘What are you smiling at?’ he asked.

‘I’m just happy … happy to dance.’

But though this was what she said, her smile faded and she looked at Uzdy with a hostile light in her eyes. Her mouth turned down and her half-opened lips closed tightly as she moved away from him, her head held high, to accept Baron Gazsi’s arm.

 

The dowagers all sat in a line on the sofas ranged along the long wall of the Assembly Room. A few of the older men sat with them, among them the three Kendys – Crookface, Dani and Uncle Ambrus – though the last still occasionally took the floor. The most strategic point, opposite the gypsy band and from where she could watch both the doors to the card-room and to the
billiard
-room, which tonight had been transformed into a
supper-room
, had been selected by Aunt Lizinka. Huddled as usual into a large armchair with her feet tucked up under her, a
long-handled
tortoiseshell lorgnette in her right hand, she chose this place as the best from which she could gather grist for her gossip. Turning her sharp vulture nose in every direction, never missing a detail of who came and went, she kept up a constant stream of malicious stories about everyone she saw.

‘My dears, it’s a real scandal! She keeps him with her all the time. The scoundrel’s actually living in the house at Szilvas, and that idiot of a husband doesn’t even seem to mind. Perhaps he can’t do it himself!’ and she laughed spitefully as she unfolded her version of the story of Baron Wickwitz and the pretty little
Countess
Abonyi.

Prompted perhaps by her own memories, her old eyes flashed with glee as she said: ‘Of course women in our time used to have lovers, but nobody kept them in their own stables, like a stallion at stud!’ Then she turned to Countess Kamuthy, who was
well-known
to have had more than one lover in the past and who even now was rumoured to take an interest in young actors, and went on: ‘Isn’t that true, my dear?’ Countess Kamuthy murmured something noncommittal; she did not mind the insinuation but did not take kindly to the words ‘in our time’, for although she was now acting as chaperone to one of her granddaughters, she was at least ten years younger than old Lizinka.

‘Now, Adelma, you must know all there is to know about it,’ continued Lizinka, turning to Countess Gyalakuthy who sat on her right. ‘After all, it’s going on in your part of the world, under your very nose!

Countess Gyalakuthy, kind and charitable as always, merely replied: ‘All I know is that he’s training Abonyi’s horses this
season
. That’s why he’s staying there: Abonyi himself invited him.’

‘He! He! He!’ Old Lizinka cackled, ‘why, he’s a regular Chef Pali!’

‘Chef Pali? What
do
you mean?’

‘It’s an old story. My great uncle Teleki had a head cook called Pali who had a pretty young wife. One day someone told my uncle that every night one of the footmen was sleeping with the cook’s wife. So my uncle sent for the man and told him this must stop. “But, your lordship,” said the footman, “Chef Pali agreed!” – “Well, if Chef Pali agreed I don’t mind either!” said Uncle Teleki; and so it was settled. Therefore I say that Abonyi’s a Chef Pali! Then, with mock solicitude she turned again towards
Countess
Gyalakuthy.

‘I do feel for you, dear, I know he used to come over often to see you. Of course men will be men and it would be silly to mind that! And I don’t really care what she does either, but then
I
don’t have marriageable young daughters to protect. If I did I
certainly
wouldn’t like to let loose such a light-bottomed little thief among them!’

‘Light-bottomed thief?’ said Countess Gyalakuthy, genuinely puzzled.

‘Thief That’s what they call people who steal, don’t they? … and just as some people are light-fingered, other women steal their men by waggling their backsides at them.
That’s
why I call her a light-bottomed thief!’

And Aunt Lizinka went on in the same strain for the entire time she stayed at the ball.

By the time that Adrienne and her sisters arrived there was
already
quite a crowd on the dance floor. Aunt Lizinka watched through her lorgnette as they were immediately surrounded by a band of young men eager to greet them and carry them off to dance. Judith and Margit were soon whirled away, and almost
immediately
Adrienne moved on to the floor with Adam Alvinczy. They made an impressive pair. Adam, tall and well-built like all the Alvinczys, was a handsome man with a straight somewhat Greek profile, short nose and high forehead. He danced well and his dark blue evening suit brought out the highlights in Adrienne’s dress, which glittered like fire as she whirled in his arms.

‘Heavens! Look at that!’ cackled old Lizinka as loudly as a pea-hen. ‘What kind of a dress d’you call that? It ought to be
forbidden
, it’s nothing but a shift! God in Heaven, I don’t believe she’s wearing a corset. In my time she’d have been run out of town for less! Scandalous!’

Adrienne heard it all and as she turned and glided across the floor in Adam’s arms she looked straight at Aunt Lizinka with a smile in her amber eyes, her head held high, conscious that
nothing
the malevolent old lady could say would dim the radiance of her youth and beauty.

 

By the time that Balint had taken leave of his mother it was already quite late and when he arrived at the ball they had just finished the second quadrille and were striking up for the last waltz before supper. He entered the great hall of the Assembly Rooms and, slipping past the group of men who clustered round the door, kissed the hands of the old ladies sitting nearby. He did not stay there long – too many couples came bumping into him as they waltzed by – but, glancing round the room until he caught a glimpse of Adrienne, who was now dancing with Pityu Kendy, he moved on to the next room where a group of older men were clustered round the fireplace talking politics while they waited for supper. Balint, fresh from Budapest and presumed to be fully
informed
as to what was going on, was given a warm welcome. Everyone hoped that he would confirm their own ideas and
prophecies
, and turned to him to judge who was in the right. The first were Abonyi, who declared that the only hope lay in a
Government
under Andrassy’s leadership; and fat lisping Kamuthy, who cried that ‘thith wath treathen and everyone who doth not
demand
Perthonal Union’ ith a traitor to hith country’. Kamuthy’s fat cheeks were red with excitement.

‘Yeth, yeth, we accept only Perthonal Union!’ he shouted as if his was the only voice that mattered. Since running for
Parliament
, his self-confidence had grown enormously, even though he had lost the seat by a small margin.

‘Why didn’t you come skating that day?’ asked Adrienne.

Balint guessed that she had waited until they were alone before asking this question. They had danced several times, met more than once at the buffet and sat together at one of the large tables with some of the younger dancers. Only now, he noticed, did she ask this question when the csardas, which was always the first dance after the supper break, had started and most of the others had gone back to the ballroom.

Adrienne asked the question simply, not in anger or
resentment
, but in much the same tone and with the same smile as when she had sat talking gaily with Adam and Pityu at supper. It was an ironic smile, only mildly provocative, and as the tone of her voice had in no way changed since the light-hearted chatter at supper Balint realized that the real significance of her query lay in the fact that she had waited until then to ask it.

‘That afternoon? Before I went out to our forests?’

‘Yes. You never came! I waited a long time, and was late
getting
home, just because of you!’

She was still smiling, but her eyes were grave, with the calm gravity of a lioness in repose.