They Were Divided (43 page)

Balint would have liked to reply that, long before the
Hungarians
arrived in the ancient province of Dacia, Transylvania had
repeatedly been overrun by Goths, Vandals, Gepids, Avars and other barbarian tribes and a full six hundred years had passed between the time when the Emperor Aurelian withdrew his legions and the arrival of the Hungarians. And during these six hundred years the history of Transylvania had only been that of a highway whose path was trodden by countless nomads who came that way and then passed on. He would have liked to add that there existed no records and no traces of any indigenous culture, but he stopped himself because when Timbus dropped his handkerchief in his lap Balint saw that it was stained with blood, not just a drop or so but large spreading stains. Blood! The poor man was coughing blood, and Balint was stopped in his tracks by pity for the unhappy young fanatic.

‘This is all very ancient history,’ he said in a soothing voice. ‘These things happened over a thousand years ago, so what good does it do to argue about it now? The truth is that only two
peoples
who are not Slav or Germanic live in the Danube basin now and those are the Romanians and the Hungarians; and they would do well to learn to live with each other. It is in the interest of both nations and we should never forget that. Of course mistakes have been made and are still being made, but it is surely the duty of every man of good faith to work for reconciliation. It will never be easy, because crimes have been committed and there are many wrongs to be righted. But all this hatred, this hatred that has built up over the centuries, must somehow be washed away. It must be!’

In the heat of his own conviction Balint managed to find many arguments he felt to be convincing. It was the first time he had tried to express in an organized way what he had long felt.

He ended by saying, ‘I am sure that the time will come when all these past wrongs are forgotten and your people and mine will no longer be kept apart by hatred and resentment, but will live side by side together like brothers.’

Timbus, who had been listening in silence, now jumped up and shouted, ‘Never! Never that! Never! Never!’ He stood there trembling, with burning eyes.

‘Why not?’ answered Balint gently. ‘To me it is a historic
necessity
. Our two peoples – and I ignore the Slavs and Germans –have no other true relations in this part of Europe. We must come together and trust each other if we don’t both want to find
ourselves
the slaves of our neighbours. It must happen if we are to survive.’

‘Maybe it’s so … maybe!’ muttered Timbus. ‘Maybe … some day…’ Then he raised his thin arms in the air, gesturing with those emaciated talons, his hands, and a high scream, full of hatred, broke from him, ‘But first … first we’ll pay you back
tenfold
… a hundredfold, and after that … No! Not even then … Never! Never!’

Reeling, he turned about, ran to the door, wrenched it open and disappeared slamming the door behind him.

Balint did not attend the court. After Simo’s lawyer, Dr Todor Farkas, had thundered out his accusations against Kula and Zutor, Abady’s lawyer got to his feet; but instead of addressing the court he merely went up to the presiding judge and, without comment, handed up Gaszton Simo’s letter and the draft of old Juon’s recantation. This brought the case to an end with shame to the accusers and complete vindication and acquittal for Kula and Zutor. When the judge read out his findings he addressed scathing words to Dr Farkas, reprimanding him for unforgivably unprofessional conduct in writing the draft at all, and then for his audacity in declaring to the court that it was dictated by old Juon with no help from anyone else. The intimidation of the old man was so obvious that little more had to be said. It was the end of Dr That-is-to-say’s career. He managed somehow to avoid
disciplinary
action from the lawyers’ association, but he never again appeared in any but unimportant and insignificant cases.

Simo was dismissed from his post at once. To save him from prison some influential relations somehow found the money to repay not only what he had embezzled from old Juon but also many other sums which came to light as soon as his dealings were investigated. He was then sent far away to Borod where he earned a meagre living as a humble scribe paid by the day. That was the end of his self-created little kingdom in the mountains.

An honest notary was now sent to Gyurkuca. He had been recommended by Balint, and his appointment was made so as to honour Count Abady and thus show the world that the past was now forgotten.

This was the work of the Chief Judge, who was a clever man.

F
ROM THE DAY THAT ROZA ABADY HAD HER STROKE
Balint hardly moved from Denestornya. If he had to go to Kolozsvar for an evening he would spend the night there but always returned early the following morning so as not to be too long away from his mother’s bedside. The longest time he ever stayed away was the day and a half that he had to spend in town dealing with the affair of Gaszton Simo.

At this time he was completely preoccupied with his mother’s illness.

Every day Countess Abady spent more and more time asleep. Even when she was awake she could rarely pay attention for more than half an hour to anything Balint came in to tell her. He would recount news of the horses, or the fallow deer, or, in early February, of the newly born lambs and litters of piglets – every day something different and always something cheerful and amusing, something funny or unexpected, a little joke at which his mother might smile and even occasionally give a little laugh. It always had to be good news or some minor success, but even so she tired fast, and then her attention faded and soon she would again close her eyes.

Balint went to see her just two or three times a day; at midday before luncheon, again in the afternoon when they would have tea together on the glazed-in upper veranda, and sometimes in the early evening when she had been lifted from her wheelchair and put to bed. A young doctor was kept in permanent attendance because had there been any emergency or change in her condition it would have taken too long to get the country physician to drive over from Gyeres. Since the beginning of January there were also two trained nurses, one for the day and the other to watch at night. The two housekeepers, Mrs Tothy and Mrs Baczo, hardly ever left their mistress’s side, for only they could understand her
occasional
mumbled words. Besides, they knew her habits.

There was little for Balint to do. Indeed his mother seemed not always to notice when he came and went. She never sent for him or spoke about him and often it seemed that she would not notice if he had been absent for several days. All the same he did not dare go away as he was convinced that if he did something dreadful would happen, as when he had gone to the Szekler country in December.

During these long months he cut himself off from the world. All the Co-operative business was done by letter, and the Simo affair, serious and ominous as it had been, was the only thing to have dragged his thoughts away from his mother’s condition.

Everything seemed unreal and remote. He even read the daily papers with the same indifference, only glancing superficially at what was reported each day, which at any other time would have interested him deeply.

The political situation in Budapest grew ever more fraught and potentially dangerous. Party hatred exploded into personal feuds and even Tisza found himself obliged to fight several duels with political opponents who had insulted him. It was always they who were wounded and retired, for Tisza was a better swordsman than most and always emerged unscathed.

Laszlo Lukacs was attacked even more frequently than Tisza. Zoltan Desy in a speech at a public banquet again unloosed the epithet ‘the world’s greatest Panamist’, which everyone now knew to mean ‘scoundrel’ or ‘unscrupulous crook’, at which Lukacs, as Minister-President, took him to court. Whereupon Desy told the world that Lukacs, when Minister of Finance in 1910, had renewed a bank’s salt-shipping contract in return for a donation of several million crowns to Lukacs’s party funds, that he, Desy, knew all the gruesome details, and that this payment had financed Lukacs’s election campaign. In turn Lukacs replied that the renewal of the bank’s contract had in no way added to its profits, that the
contribution
to party funds had been from simple goodwill and political conviction and that furthermore he, Lukacs, never had, nor ever would have, profited by a single penny.

The publicity did no one any good, even though Lukacs’s
personal
integrity had been confirmed when Desy lost the case.

But that was not the end of the affair.

The very day the verdict against Desy was proclaimed, Andrassy, Apponyi and Aladar Zichy endorsed everything Desy had said; and the scandal thus reached monumental proportions. Even the foreign press reported the matter in full, though no one at home seemed to pause for a moment to consider how Hungary’s reputation abroad was being damaged. All these patriotic politicians seemed to think of was getting even with their opponents who had forced Parliament to accept the army estimates. Party passions obscured everything else.

From then on no one in the House would speak on any subject other than the salt-contract scandal. In vain did the government
try to introduce a bill for wider suffrage. The waves of personal hatred and malice were so strong that no progress could be made. One day in March the opposition appeared in force in the Chamber, and Lovaszy, backed by some seventy or eighty
supporters
, shouted out ‘Stop for a moment!’ and in the brief silence that followed all those behind him started calling out ‘Salt! Salt! Salt! Salt!’ Of course Tisza suspended the session and ordered in the guards. These were at once rounded on by the rebellious members, who tried to wean the guards from their duty by explaining to them that their military oaths were not valid and did all they could to get them too to mutiny and disobey orders.

This was the first time that these so-called politicians, who made great play of their patriotic duty, tried to incite mutiny. It did not succeed.

Now they looked around for new allies and even went so far as to make common ground with the most left-wing of the Galilei Club, with whom they organized a big meeting in the Vigado. At this rally the public were regaled with the unusual sight of the otherwise reactionary Apponyi and Aladar Zichy sitting side by side with Jaszi and Kunfi who some years later were to play a leading part in the October Revolution and the Bolshevik regime which followed it. Everything was forgotten except party hatreds and opposition to the government.

At the same time as this was happening at home the situation abroad was growing ever more serious.

Diplomatic activity had never been so frenzied. In London a conference was convened to heal the wounds and lead to peace, but it was held in vain. Even though Turkey accepted most of the great powers’ proposals, peace seemed as elusive as ever. The much-vaunted disinterestedness of the great powers was clearly shown for what it really was by their insistence on Turkey’s
ceding
the Aegean Islands to their own jurisdiction – a concession that was immediately granted but which led only to the peace talks being abandoned. Adrianople remained under siege while Montenegro never paused for a moment in the shelling and
encircling
of Scutari, cynically disregarding the fact that the London Conference had just confirmed Albania’s right of ownership.

What impertinence! said the great powers. This cannot be tolerated, they muttered indignantly: but six weeks went by until it was already the end of March before they managed to agree upon any practical action. A resolution was made summoning Nikita to explain himself. Nikita refused to appear. Then, at the
beginning of April, the Allied fleets demonstrated before Antivari. Still Nikita refused either to budge or to restrain his army. Then an international blockade against tiny Montenegro was declared; but even this had no effect upon Nikita, who
scornfully
ignored it while his armies occupied Scutari.

And they stayed there, regardless of the menaces launched from the London Conference. Nikita must have had secret
knowledge
that Russia stood behind him despite her ambassador’s public support for the sanctions agreed in London.

The Dual Monarchy now found herself forced to take the initiative. In London she declared that she could not tolerate the Montenegrin presence in Scutari and would therefore ‘act independently’.

War, which had been coming nearer and nearer for two months, now stood before the door.

Balint read all this in the newspapers, but he was not as affected as he used to be; for his anxiety was personal and near at hand. There was, firstly, his mother’s uncertain condition, and then, for a while, the impending trial. Though this faded with the collapse of the prosecution, it did not alleviate Balint’s anxiety. Indeed it rather increased it for now Balint had something else to worry about.

Only this was real to him: this and the beauty of Denestornya in spring.

By the middle of March the snow had vanished but for a few patches on the northern sides of the nearby hills. For a while some lingering traces of white remained on the banks of the streams but, when these disappeared, on the riverbanks and beside the paths, young grass started to shoot up and, in meadows which had lain asleep all winter, violets bloomed in their thousands.

One afternoon in early May Balint returned from a visit to the mares who had been put out at grass in the meadows near the
castle
until the summer grazing paddocks were ready for them.

On the steps of the main entrance he found the old butler Peter waiting to tell him that Countess Roza had been repeatedly asking for her son.

‘Where is she? She isn’t feeling any worse, is she?’ he asked.

‘Not at all, my Lord,’ replied Peter. ‘On the contrary she seems suddenly to be better. In fact her Ladyship is expecting you on the veranda. She has already asked for her tea.’

Balint ran up the stairs, passed through the billiard-room and
there, on the glazed-in veranda, sat his mother in her wheelchair. At first he could not see her face, for she was sitting with her back to him, but as soon as he took his place on the sofa beside her he saw an unexpectedly joyful radiance in her eyes. When the old lady saw him sitting beside her she put out her left hand – the only one she could move – and took his in her own.

‘Ah!’ she said. ‘Here you are! Here you are!’ The words were not quite clear, indeed they sounded more like ‘He-y-Ga!’ though to Balint’s ears they seemed clearer than for many months. Her still half-frozen face was irradiated with a happy smile.

‘Where have you been? I’ve been waiting for you … waiting for you so long…’ and her smile seemed to suggest that she had been awaiting him for years, since time immemorial.

Balint did not quite know what to make of this, for he had been with his mother two hours before, just after lunch. And not only that but for some weeks she had received him with such
indifference
that this sudden warmth made him wonder in surprise whether she had really recognized him at all. Whatever the
reason
for the change he was overjoyed and started to tell her about the mares grazing in the meadow and how the new grass was already growing lush and appetizing, with plenty of clover in it. Everything he told the old lady was happy and encouraging, and she would squeeze his hand and interrupt, saying, ‘Oh, I am so happy, so happy!’, while the repeated little pressures of her fingers seemed to pulsate to the rhythm of his words.

As he spoke the nurse Hedwig offered the old lady the special cup with a spout from which she could drink her coffee and
buffalo
’s milk. Roza Abady allowed the spout to be put in her mouth and then, when she had drunk her fill, her lips to be wiped with a white napkin. On this day she let this be done for her without
protest
, though on all other days she had let them know that she hated to be helped and would herself hold the cup to her mouth with her left hand. Now she was using her left hand to hold Balint’s and did not let it go for an instant. As soon as possible she turned towards Balint and gazed hard at his face as if she could never see too much of him. Soon, however, she started to tire, and then it was clear what had rejoiced her heart.

Countess Roza closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the pillow. Then, just before dozing off, she murmured, ‘Tamas! I am so happy … so happy that you came back! Tamas, my Tamas!’ And she spoke quite clearly without even the hint of a slur.

For a moment Balint did not fully understand; but then it
came to him – Roza Abady had thought that it was not he but his father Tamas who had sat beside her and held her hand; Tamas, who had died twenty-five years before, had come back; and that was what had made her so happy.