They Were Counted (83 page)

Balint’s superficial calm had the effect of making Adrienne
calmer
too. Slowly, but without revealing the bare skin of her shoulders, she took one hand out from under the bed-clothes and held it out to him. For a moment he held it.

This was the time to leave. He bent down, his face still
expressionless
, to kiss her mouth. For a brief instant he saw the alarm in her eyes but this vanished at once when Balint kissed her
carefully
, coolly, almost like a brother. Then he went swiftly to the door and turned, speaking for once in English just as she had ended her last letter to him: ‘Sincerely yours,’ he said, but he said it as if the old formal letter-ending phrase symbolized eternal fidelity.

In the corridor he was dazzled by the brightness of the
morning
. He felt he would go blind, not, however, from the myriad
reflections
of the sun through the windows but from the even brighter image that would now never leave him: the image of an Egyptian face framed by unruly black curls and two huge eyes, lovely, frightened and frightening, glowing like topazes in the darkened room.

Balint got back to his room without being seen by anyone. Then he went to look for the old countess and by the time he found her he had sufficiently recovered his equilibrium to be able to chat insipidly with her until the butler announced that the
carriage
at the door.

Then he took his leave, leapt into Uzdy’s
bricska
and was whisked rapidly away towards Banffy-Hunyad. It was only now, when he was past all danger of discovery and the American
carriage
horses were racing him up-and downhill, through the
valleys
and over the mountainous ridges, that the passion raging within him started to abate. He felt that he was flying with wide spread wings high above the world, above woods, forests,
meadows
, rivers, his lungs full of ozone, his blood racing. He felt that he had just quaffed an enchanted potion whose venom fanned flickering flames in his veins that burned away all sense of caution and forever freed him of that restraint which his inner voice so
often
told him he must obey. Now he was once again that primeval being who knows only how to follow his instincts, the predator who seeks his mate and for whom no obstacle, law or convention will be allowed to obstruct the natural course of his desire, that animal in whom passion rages unchecked and who, if need be, will kill to achieve his object.

And Balint’s mind was suddenly filled with disturbing erotic fantasies.

I
N THE AUTUMN OF
1905, as in other years, the social scene came slowly back to life. A few theatres opened their doors, a few concerts were announced. Among the first to return to their town houses was Countess Beredy, who had little liking for the country and even less for her husband’s country house. She would never stay there a day longer than was necessary. On arrival in the capital Fanny immediately resumed her Wednesday dinners; for her court, Szelepcsenyi, d’Orly and the others, knew what was required of them and were already back in Budapest when she arrived.

Fanny now had one guest fewer, for she did not trouble to
replace
Warday. The ritual was the same, except that now it was Laszlo who would take his departure before the other guests, murmuring some excuse and leaving the room about half an hour before the others. He would put his coat on at the top of the
staircase
and then slip through a little door covered by a curtain just opposite the head of the stairs. Behind was an anteroom with doors to left and right: the left led to a servants’ staircase, the right to Fanny’s apartment. Laszlo would step quickly through Fanny’s door and, once inside, bolt it carefully, for Fanny had given instructions that had to be obeyed most faithfully. The
reason
was that under no circumstance must he be seen by anyone, and if the bedroom door had not been bolted it was always
possible
that Fanny’s maid might have wished to come in for some
reason
. If she did she would find him there and know for certain that Fanny had a lover.

This was unthinkable and could be very dangerous for Fanny, for though her husband had made it very plain that she was free to do as she liked and that he was not interested, this was strictly on condition that no one, not he himself, nor the servants, nor anyone else, should know of it, and if ever the smallest indication of her infidelities were to reach his ears, then he would take
immediate
action against her. He had made this perfectly plain
several
years before when they had stopped living as man and wife, and, though the subject had only been mentioned once, Fanny knew her husband well enough to realize that nothing would give him greater pleasure than to throw her out if ever she gave him the opportunity. Even now, after eight years of going their own ways, she would shudder when occasionally he looked at her with his cold reptilian eyes, his thin-lipped mouth closed tightly giving him an expression even more merciless than usual.

Accordingly, she arranged her life with great discretion. Her lovers would visit her only on the evenings when there were dinner parties at the Beredy Palais. Most of the servants went to bed as soon as their work was finished and only the door-keeper remained on duty in his little cabin near the main entrance. When someone rang the bell he would pull a cord to open the glazed outer doors of the mansion, and so the departing guests would find their own way out. The doorman himself never saw who was leaving, nor did he know whether the guests left in a group or alone. If, when the last time the bell rang, it was only just after midnight there was nothing to suggest that anything unusual had occurred, nothing, that is, that flouted the social conventions of the day. Fanny’s guests would mostly take their leave soon after eleven o’clock and her lover soon after twelve; so for an hour, just one hour, Fanny was free to make love in her wide luxurious bed with whoever was her choice of the moment. It was a wild happy hour, an hour in which she would drape
herself
in her most provocative negligé, for she knew well that like this she appeared infinitely more seductive than when crudely stripped naked.

Fanny took particular delight in these stolen moments, not only because of the purely sensuous pleasure of being embraced by an handsome young lover in surroundings designed just for that purpose – the huge bed, soft carpets, cunningly placed
mirrors
and sugar-pink lighting – but also because of the secret
satisfaction
of feeling that by doing this in her husband’s house she was wreaking her private vengeance upon him. When, after sixty minutes of rapture, the little alarm clock sounded it’s warning and her lover would dress and leave her, she would stretch herself out in triumph and go to sleep on that storm-tossed bed which had witnessed so many other illicit embraces.

When Laszlo came into her life this brief weekly meeting did not seem enough, and so they decided to find somewhere else. Laszlo’s little apartment in Museum Street was not only in a large block in a district where many of their friends and
acquaintances
lived – which meant that Fanny might be recognized in the street or even on the stairs of the apartment house itself – but was also inconveniently distant from the Beredy Palais. It was
obvious
to both of them that she could not visit him there and that their secret love-nest would have to be somewhere in the old quarter, close to the royal palace and close, therefore, also to Fanny’s own home. Then she would be able to slip in unnoticed when everyone thought she was out for a short walk. Laszlo soon found the ideal place in a small house in one of the streets of old Buda. It had two entrances, one leading directly to the apartment and the other, on a lower level, which led to a room where a little dressmaker lived. This was perfect, for if Fanny should need an alibi no one would wonder about her visiting a local seamstress. The apartment was dingy and in need of redecoration but Fanny swiftly solved this by covering the walls with material so that it resembled a tent. The walls, curtains and covers were all hung with the same iron-grey material; and the thick carpet was of the same colour because she knew well that it set off her rosy flesh and blonde hair. It was very pretty and was in total contrast to the shabby furnished rooms where Laszlo still lived, even though he was always promising himself he would find something better.

The rent was expensive – more than four thousand crowns – but Laszlo did not care. One won at cards, or one lost. It was good if one won, but it did not really matter any more than it mattered if one lost. At this time Laszlo had plenty of money. That excellent fellow, Countess Abady’s useful lawyer Azbej, had so menaced old Stanislo with legal demands to ‘terminate
community
interest’ that his ex-guardian had agreed to buy out Laszlo’s interest in the Gyeroffy forest lands. This had brought in such a handsome sum that Laszlo had been able not only to pay off his debts but was also left with a tidy sum in hand. Indeed this Azbej was wonderful, even though some people said that Laszlo had sold very cheaply. This, thought Laszlo, was very possible; but still he had the money in his hands and that was the most
important
thing. Anyway the money lenders’ interest charge would soon have swallowed up the difference. All in all, therefore,
everybody
was happy; Laszlo, Stanislo and also, no doubt, Azbej himself.

On Fanny’s insistence Laszlo again enrolled himself at the Academy of Music, but though he attended the lectures and
followed
the set courses he did so without any of his former
dedication
. Somehow it seemed that without the stimulus of his love for Klara, for now that she was irrevocably lost to him, his passion for music had evaporated. His head no longer surged with melody as it had when every experience had at once been transformed into music, and; though his days were spent in a world of music it was always for the music of others that he lived, not for that
compulsion
to rise early and work, to devote all his days to study and creation. Laszlo’s way of life sapped his creative energies. He would wake up late, still sleepy and half asleep. Without zest he would play his piano for an hour or two. If he had no rendezvous with Fanny that day he would go to the Casino or to the Park Club hoping to find someone who would make up a poker game, for it was too early in the season for the
chemin
de fer
games in the baccarat-room to have restarted. He would stop playing only for dinner, and each evening he would drink more and more,
hoping
vainly that the alcohol would drive away his increasing
remorse
and obliterate all memory of what might have been. The drink was like an opiate, and so were the cards.

 

Passions ran high that year in the world of politics. One day everyone was full of hope, the next day brought despair. On a Monday the ‘Bodyguard’ (‘Lackey’) government would appoint new ministers, and on the Tuesday they would resign. The new party programme would be published and within three days its authors would find themselves once more in the wilderness. There was general rejoicing when the King summoned some of the
leading
parliamentarians to Vienna, but dismay and anger when His Majesty merely read out to them some severe and
comminatory
paragraphs condemning their actions. It gradually became clear to everyone that a stalemate had been reached, from which there was no escape without one side or the other being publicly humiliated. In the middle of September the announcement of the imminent imposition by Vienna of general suffrage in Hungary
inspired
a huge and unprecedented demonstration of some forty thousand workers, who gathered before the Parliament building in Budapest, menacing the established order like a thundercloud.

Laszlo did not concern himself with such matters. One
morning
as he was walking to the academy, he encountered the
workers
’ march on its way to the Parliament building – thousands upon thousands of silent men in dark shabby clothes, moving
relentlessly
in rows of eight which took up the entire street. It was quiet and peaceful and inexpressibly sinister, but, impressive though this unheard-of demonstration was, to Laszlo it meant nothing. He lived in a world of his own, clothed, indeed insulated by his music and his own internal bitterness from everything that went on about him. He ignored the political discussions in the Casino, and barely noticed when people came up to him and told him (‘just between us, of course’) of some new political menace, or when he overhead others sounding off with treasonable intent about the need to rebel against the Emperor.

Laszlo frequently lunched or dined with the politicians,
listening
with disdain to their discussions and arguments. His silence was taken by them merely as aristocratic indifference to such mundane matters and as a result his social reputation remained untarnished. The truth was that his indifference sprang only from the strange mindless lassitude with which he was now imbued. It was as if he had donned the cap of forgetfulness which weighed him down like a leaden cloak.

Even his afternoons of passion with the beautiful Fanny gave him no relief. Often, when leaving their little apartment her kisses still wet upon his lips, he would pause at dusk on the embankment of the Danube. In front of him thousands of saffron-coloured strips illuminated the dark water, reflections of the lamps which lit the riverside boulevards; while above, the great dome of the
Parliament
building hung in the evening sky, veiled in smoke and silence, the silence of a city about to come alive when dusk fell. Laszlo would lean against the iron railings of the Margit Rakpart gazing sightlessly over the surface of the wide slowly-moving river on which gulls and other waterbirds would float, serene and calm.

Laszlo never gave a thought to the love-making he had just left behind him, never conjured up the image of the woman who had just kissed him goodbye, never tried to recall the look in her beautiful cat-like eyes or the lines of her mouth so wise in the ways of love; nor did he think of that smooth flesh clothed only in the five long strings of pearls that she never removed even at their most intimate moments. Knowing how much the glowing
whiteness
of those pea-sized pearls enhanced the beauty of her body and of her pink skin, Fanny would tie these long strings round her waist or neck, in festoons over her generous breasts, and even like fetters between her thighs where they glowed like an iridescent frame around the golden moss that covered the mound of Venus, underlining her nakedness by this most ephemeral of coverings. But she would never take them off. The Beredy pearls were worth a fortune and Fanny had worn them from the day her husband had offered them to her as a wedding present, and it was perhaps because of this constant contact with her skin that they remained so magically alive and glowing. But for Laszlo all these things were as if they had never been. Nothing penetrated his
solitariness
, nothing drove away that forlorn sense of having been
abandoned
in a meaningless, hopeless world. Many times he thought it would be far better just to die.

He would stand looking over the Danube for a long time before slowly making his way back to the Casino where he would take a bath, change, read the newspapers, dine and pass the rest of the evening at cards, playing always until there was no one left to play with. He was always among the last to leave the club, usually out of pocket, for the game hardly interested him any more than did that beautiful loving woman with the lithe body of a panther, who that afternoon had been driven wild with pleasure by his embraces.