They Were Counted (70 page)

Lord, how many times I fell! thought Balint as he gazed once more along the familiar grass-covered
allée
and remembered those frisky mischievous little ponies with minds of their own who were all the more wilful for being overfed and under-exercised. He recalled Croque-en-bouche, his first pony, who always shied at that gnarled old tree in front of him and then bucked,
especially
when Balint was being made to ride without stirrups and with just a blanket strapped on in the place of a saddle. And, at that huge lime-tree with the split trunk, his second pony had
always
stopped in her tracks and refused to budge until given a sharp reminder by his instructor’s long-lashed hunting crop.

Balint wandered slowly down the centre of the
allée
where the branches of the old trees had long since met to form a leafy vault. Over his head the foliage murmured as a light breeze touched the tops of the trees, though down below nothing moved and Balint was left undisturbed with his memories of childhood. How long the avenue had then seemed, especially when he had been given his first horse, a reliable old stallion called Gambia and had been allowed to canter the whole length on his own, free at last of the
é
cuyer
and the leading rein!

Today it was only a few moments before he reached the end of the planted line of trees where flowed a branch of the Aranyos river which had artificially been diverted below the mill-reach many years before. He went on until he found himself opposite a sizeable island called the Big Wood – Nagyberek – which had
always
held a special mystery and attraction for him, as it was a wild and untamed and exciting place quite different from the trim lawns, weeded paths and carefully pruned flowering hedges of the gardens that clustered round the castle terrace. Here he would wander for hours fancying himself an explorer in an
undiscovered
wilderness and here he would play at Cowboys and
Indians
all by himself – he, of course, was always an Indian – crawling invisibly on hands and knees in the waist-high hemlock, spying on bands of marauding braves or fleeing from his pursuers. Here he would climb a branch to ambush his chief enemy or shoot arrows at the hated paleface; just as he had read in the pages of James Fenimore Cooper.

Just to walk once again in this once so familiar spot brought all these old memories crowding back.

Crossing the great meadow, Balint went to find the thickets on the other side which bordered the meandering twists and turns of the river’s main stream and here and there grew in the swamps and bogs created each time the river flooded and over-flowed its banks.

The hundred-acre hay meadow was the farthest one could see from the castle terrace before the dense plantations of trees closed the open vista with a mass of impenetrable growth. These were mostly of black pine, planted some thirty years before by Balint’s father not, however, as standing timber to be felled later, but rather as decoration and cover for the deer. At their roots more lilac bushes had been placed and these too were now in full bloom beneath the rose-coloured trunks of the pines and the deep green, almost black sheen of the clusters of pine needles above. The pines too, seemed to be in bloom, for the tips of all their branches were covered with tiny dark-red embryonic cones, though these could only be distinguished from close at hand.

So magical and mysterious, so still and yet so full of resurgent life, did the meadow seem that Balint stopped for a moment to contemplate its mystery, and wonder at the fact that even the
distances
did not seem real and stable and fixed. The park seemed to have no end but to continue for ever into the distance as if it comprised the whole world and the whole world was the park of Denestornya and nothing else. As Balint stood there, motionless, rapt in a new sense of delight and exaltation, seven fallow deer appeared slowly from a group of pines. They were wading
knee-high
through the morning haze, two does with their fawns and three young females, and if they saw Balint they did not take any notice of him but just walked quietly and sedately on until, after a few moments, they disappeared again into the shadow of the trees. Their sudden appearance in the distance in front of him, and just as sudden disappearance a moment or two later
contributed
strongly to Balint’s sense of wonder and enchantment.

He pulled himself together and went on. And, suddenly, it seemed Adrienne were walking at his side.

He could almost see her, striding with long steps next to him, her head held high over her thin girlish neck and her dark hair fluttering around her face in a mass of unruly curls, just as he had seen her that time at Mezo-Varjas when together they had chased a runaway farmhorse. The image was so clear: Adrienne, walking beside him, holding herself very straight with her wide-open, topaz-coloured eyes looking unwaveringly ahead of her as she walked, silently and forever at his side …

Balint stopped abruptly, shaking his head to rid himself of her image and mentally shouting No! No!, as if the words, even
unspoken
, could dispel her ghostly presence. Then, quickening his pace, he hurried towards the trees remembering that somewhere thereabouts was an ancient poplar, one of the most venerable of all the trees in the park, and that it stood on the edge of a small clearing. In a few moments he had found it. This king among trees was still alive; though one of its great side branches had
fallen
, presumably blown down in some April storm. Even so, the fallen branch was covered in sticky buds about to burst into leaf.

Balint went up to the tree, touched its bark as if saluting an old acquaintance. ‘So, my friend, you are still all right – even if they have roughed you up a bit!’ said Balint out loud as he sat down on the broken stump and looked around the little clearing.

This was where he had come when he had been allowed to ride beyond the limits of the lime
allée.
It was here that he would play at camping in the wild, dismounting and hitching the reins to the stub of a branch. Properly tethered, no rustler could steal his faithful steed. He would have liked to loosen the girth as well, for he knew that this was one of the first rules when resting during a trek, but at that time he hadn’t had the strength to do it by himself.

Balint sat there for a long time. All around him was infinite peace, and, strangely, for the air was alive with the song of birds, a feeling of infinite silence, the more tangible for the melodies that filled his ears. There seemed to be hundreds of different calls, of which he could distinguish only the
si-si-si
of the blackbirds, the chirping of the blue tits as they fluttered from branch to branch around him, the harsher notes of the golden orioles as they swooped low over the clearing with their distinctive swaying flight, the twittering of the sparrows that massed in the reed thickets by the river edge, and, through it all, the varied cries of shrikes as they perched on the trees’ branches watching for the
insects
or small lizards that would be their next meal. In the
distance
he could still hear the calls of the nightingales from the trees and shrubs nearer the castle, and all these sounds, so varied and yet so harmonious, somehow underlined and heightened the
general
sense of untouched virginal silence.

The trees had too many leaves, the thickets too many weeds; there were too many flowers in the grass and, as if nature could not contain its own richness, the air was filled with ethereal wisps of white fluff carrying the seeds from the almost invisible flowers of the poplar trees. High in the branches of the great poplar above Balint’s head a pair of wild doves started to coo and, to the young man below, the sound was the purest expression of love and happiness.

How wonderful it all is! How lovely! thought Balint as he
surrendered
himself totally to enjoying the richness and splendour around him. It was a pity no one else was there to see it, no one with whom he could share his own sense of euphoria. At once Adrienne’s face floated before him, saying: ‘What about me? I’m here! I’d understand!’

Balint got up, annoyed with himself, irritated that even here he was pursued by an obsession from which he had tried so hard to free himself. ‘I don’t want this!’ he muttered as he got up and entered the thicket, leaving the clearing that had conjured up the memory of Adrienne.

Why was he doing this to himself, Balint wondered, why was he for ever thinking of a woman who, after all, was still only half awakened and so complex? It was madness. He had far better things to do, his work and his mission to aid others. One day he would get married – of course, he would have to – and then he’d found a home and a family and carry on his work tranquilly and in peace. Why stir up a tempest when there was no need, no
reason
? Why?

Balint had been walking so swiftly along the narrow path that, angry as he was, he had noticed nothing of where he was going and what was all around him. Here it was almost completely dark, for overhead the branches of the trees were so thick that not a ray of sunshine penetrated beneath. The willow-shoots were four or five times the height of a man and were tightly intertwined with the thick-leaved elders and other forest shrubs and, as if that were not enough, the branches were hung with creepers of many different kinds, while valerian and hemlock, angelica and a host of other plants rose from the forest floor to mingle with the
lichen-covered
branches of the trees. Hidden in all this riot of vegetation were thorns that scratched, burrs that attached themselves to whatever brushed against them, wild hops that festooned shrub and tree alike tying fantastic cat’s cradles of creeping tendrils. Everywhere there were flowers, some tiny and budlike, as yet unopened, others, like the convolvulus, huge but insubstantial, hanging from above like motionless butterflies floating freely in the air. Across the path spread treacherous bramble shoots
covered
with thorns but carrying also the latent promise of a summer harvest.

In many places the vegetation was so thick that Balint could pass only with difficulty even though he tried to follow the old path. Away from the track it would have been impossible. The main stream of the river was close at hand and a dim light was just visible through the dense foliage.

Soon he came to a boggy patch thickly grown with weeds and canes. At every step the ground squelched under his feet. He still could not see the river which was hidden by the high wall of last year’s growth of rushes. Just when he felt he would never arrive at his goal he found himself on the river bank walking over a strand of pebbles that had washed up on the inner curve of the river while, on the other side, the water’s flow had cut a vertical line in the soft earth. An old tree-trunk lay half-buried in the stones.

Balint stopped beside it. Surely the shallow ford he had so often used in the past must be somewhere hereabouts. It was this way that he had ridden when taking the short-cut to Maros-Szilvas to visit Dinora. He knew the way well, having so often done it on the darkest of moonless nights. Perhaps that would be the answer … to visit little Dinora and start again with her. After all she had invited him! In Budapest he had not been so tormented by memories of Adrienne: There the thought of her had sometimes come to him, but not so insistently, so intrusively, as here in
Transylvania
. Dinora was so sweet and no one knew better than he how soft her skin was, how tantalizing her scent and with her he would never feel that sense of revulsion which so often came to him when making love to girls in the capital. Little Dinora.

He thought of Nitwit. Well, he didn’t matter; and anyway Dinora had said that it was now over and, even if it that were not true, he still wouldn’t matter, for Dinora had never been exactly exclusive.

Balint turned in the direction of home. It was already past eight o’clock and he would have to hurry if he wanted to be back in time to have breakfast with his mother. He had wandered a long way from the house.

Thinking now more calmly and more prosaically, Balint again went over what he had just decided, and again he thought how sensible it would be to take up once again with Dinora; sensible, and clever. Then that inner critic who never slumbered for long but who was always alert to danger, spoke up saying: And don’t go to Almasko lest you start again with Addy! It was no use. His other self, reckless and contrary, at once found a hypocritical
answer
: But I promised Pal Uzdy to go. It doesn’t matter about Adrienne, but her husband would find it strangely discourteous if I didn’t! Anyhow there would be no chance to be alone with her, what with the husband and mother-in-law always about.

And so Balint struggled with his conscience, a battle between desire and common sense; but he reached no conclusion for just then he met the stud-groom and two lads coming back from the gallops in the eastern part of the estate. They had been exercising their three mounts and were now headed back towards the
avenue
of lime-trees and the stables. Balint beckoned them over to him.

‘The old ford in the copse? Is it still passable?’

The stud-groom dismounted. ‘It was washed away by last year’s flooding, your Lordship, but we’ll find another if your Lordship wishes it.’

‘Indeed? Washed away, was it? Well, it isn’t urgent, but you might as well put it in hand when you have time. Yes, do it when you can!’

Balint stroked the glossy neck of the stud-groom’s horse and they walked back together. On their way they passed the road that led to the paddock where the brood mares were kept. Balint longed to see them followed by their new foals, but did not turn that way as he knew how upset his mother would be if he had not waited until she could show them to him herself. Her stud farms were Roza Abady’s greatest joy, and it was with love and pride that she would show off her beautiful horses and explain her breeding strategy. Balint knew that this would be one of the first things his mother would want to do now that he had come home; and so he hurried back through the avenue of tall
pyramid-shaped
oaks to reach his room and change quickly so as not to
arrive
in his mother’s presence all wet and muddy from his early walk.