They Were Counted (20 page)

At the princess’s side sat one of the principal guests, Field
Marshal
Count Kanizsay, who commanded the national cavalry
regiments
, a heavy old man who had been a hero of the Bosnian occupation. He came from an ancient Hungarian family and was descended from the Kanizsay who fell with Zrinyi at the siege of Szigetvar. His ancestors had played a great part in the wars against the Turks, always serving the Habsburg interests, and in recognition of this service the Kanizsay coat of arms bore the motto
Perpetuus
in
Komarvar
and the head of the family was made hereditary military governor of that little Bosnian fortress. In spite of his family’s great national past the old soldier only spoke broken Hungarian, having spent all his life in German-speaking regiments of the Austro-Hungarian army. Although the field marshal had long retired from active service he always wore
uniform
, a grey tunic with a collar of gold braid, countless medal
ribbons
and one order, the Maria Theresia Cross, gleaming white on his still powerful chest.

Sitting on the silken sofa on her hostess’s left was the wife of the field marshal, a massive, boring old German lady who was very conscious of her own importance in being related to the Wittelsbachs by a morganatic marriage; and the Countess Lubianszky, who had brought her two pretty daughters with her from Somogy. Opposite them sat the young and beautiful
Countess
Beredy, the lovely Fanny, who was obliged by her rank to seat herself with the old ladies even though she longed to be in the red salon with the young.

The hostess and her principal guests sat in a circle round the tea table, where everything from the silver to the hot muffins and thin sandwiches was arranged in the fashionable English style. Beside the door to the adjoining salon the butler, Szabo, stood motionless with the face of a Roman emperor, together with a bearded man in the livery of a Kollonich
Jäger
. Two tall footmen in tailcoats served the guests, moving from one to another as
silently
as shadows.

At a second table sat Klara and her two brothers, her cousins Stefi and Magda Szent-Gyorgyi, the two Lubianszky girls and a somewhat older young man, Fredi Wuelffenstein, who was Fanny Beredy’s younger brother.

As Laszlo and Balint had passed through the red salon, and again as they had greeted their hostess and the others present, Laszlo could not help noticing his cousin’s calm assurance. Though every bit as polite and deferential as the occasion
demanded
, every movement, every word showed that he belonged to these circles; that he knew himself to be in every way their equal and in no way an intruder. Laszlo watched him with envy, wondering if he had acquired this air of smooth distinction while
en
poste
abroad, and wondering too if he could ever attain the same ease, he to whom every greeting, every nod and handshake seemed fraught with condescension, as if he were no more than a humble serf tolerated by consciously superior beings.

He knew he had no reason for this sense of inferiority; no one present was better born than he, indeed his own family was older than theirs, the Gyeroffys having been noble in the Middle Ages; and his own estate, though small and only bringing him a modest measure of independence, was an ancient freehold rather than a modern donation from the crown. He knew, too, that the
grandeur
of the Kollonich family dated only from the end of the
seventeenth
century when one of them had become a cardinal, while the great wealth they now displayed, indeed everything they owned – the great castle and estate, the palaces in Budapest and Vienna – had all been purchased by his cousins’ grandmother, the daughter of a banker called Sina, a Greek who had spent his life polishing the seat of his office desk. Why then, he wondered, did he, the descendant of conquering Magyar warlords, feel that his relations were grander, better, more distinguished, than he?

All these thoughts vanished the instant that he held Klara’s soft hand in his and when he looked into her wide-open greenish-grey eyes and saw her warm smile of happiness and welcome.

 

After exchanging a few words of polite conversation with
everyone
in the room, Balint Abady, who had not been at Simonvasar for several years, asked where he could find his host. Uncle Louis was in the smoking-room, replied Stefi, as their aunt did not allow cigars in her drawing-room. Indeed since the state rooms had been redecorated, Stefi went on in a low voice, Aunt Agnes hardly tolerated even cigarettes.

Passing through a side door Balint and Laszlo went down a long, wide carpeted corridor which followed the horseshoe curve of one of the castle’s side wings. At last, at the far end, they reached the smoking-room, a vast tobacco-coloured apartment whose walls were covered with hunting trophies, stuffed heads of deer, chamois, wild boar, bear and buffalo, and countless sets of antlers on shield-shaped plaques of polished mahogany. The
furniture
, in contrast to that of his wife’s rooms, was heavy,
comfortable
, even shabby, with plenty of deep leather-covered chairs and ancient sofas.

Uncle Louis cared nothing for fashion and when the Princess Agnes had spent a fortune in redecorating every other room in the castle he had allowed her her way providing that his own comfortable room was left untouched.

Three men sat at ease in a corner of the vast, barely lit
apartment
. They were the host, a chubby man of middle height dressed in Austrian hunting clothes with a pair of carpet slippers on his feet; his brother-in-law, Antal Szent-Gyorgyi, beside him; and, sprawled in an ancient armchair facing them, the huge form of Pali Lubianszky. The prince was telling a seemingly endless and complicated story about an incident during the last deer stalk, and Pali Lubianszky was having difficulty in concealing his impatience.

With every turn and twist of the story the host made sweeping gestures, imitating now the spread of the great antlers of the red deer, now the warning snorts and nervous movements of the fawns; and with every gesture he heaved himself from side to side so that the springs creaked under him, and with every sound it made it seemed as if the chair would collapse, as indeed it often had. Antal Szent-Gyorgyi looked silently on with a faint ironic smile as if that were what he was hoping would happen.

The two brothers-in-law were extreme opposites – a greyhound and a pug. Szent-Gyorgyi was tall and thin, with a long narrow face and bluish-grey hair; Kollonich was fair with a round face, a tiny nose and small eyes almost buried in the fat of his cheeks, and he wore a moustache and a short round beard like the
Emperor
’s. Beneath Szent-Gyorgyi’s acquiline beak was a thin
moustache
clipped in the English style.

Lubianszky did not conceal his pleasure when Balint and Laszlo came in, partly because it put an end to Prince Louis’ stalking tale – and sportsmen are rarely interested in any stories but their own – but principally because he was deeply interested in politics and wanted to hear from Balint the truth about the recent developments in Budapest, of which until now he knew only what he had read in the newspapers. Szent-Gyorgyi was also interested, but from a less nationalistic point-of-view, being a court official, Master of the Horse to the Emperor, and a natural courtier.

The prince lit a new cigar as the others started to ply Balint with questions about what had happened in Parliament. Had he been present? What was the real truth? Who had said what? He must stay with them, sit down and recount all he knew.

Laszlo took his leave and went to rejoin the girls, and Balint
began
his tale.

The session of Parliament on the 18th of November was all that interested the four men in the smoking room.

 

In Budapest things had been far from calm.

When the House reassembled in November it was in an
atmosphere
of such tension that it was clear to all that a real storm was brewing. The Minister-President, Count Tisza, immediately
submitted
proposals for the reform of the House of Representatives and asked for the appointment of a committee to study them and, if necessary, submit amendments. Even this moderate suggestion met with fierce obstruction from the demagogues, who tried every trick, every subterfuge to block agreement and talked out the Government’s proposals so as to prevent any progress toward their acceptance. In this mood of obstruction and artificially
engendered
resentment, the Leader of the Opposition announced his total rejection of the Tisza proposals.

Then came the 18th of November.

 

Since the previous day, a series of simultaneous though parallel meetings had been in session and on the afternoon of the fatal 18th, the opposition met behind closed doors. Late in the evening session of the House, members of the Government party started appearing in force and when Tisza finished speaking, with only occasional interruptions from the thirty-odd opposition members present, some Government supporters stood calling for an
immediate
vote. ‘Put it to the vote!’ they cried in increasing
numbers
. ‘A vote! A vote! Put it to the vote now!’ they cried from every corner of the Chamber; and in the bedlam the Speaker rose, waving a paper and mouthing words that no one could hear above the uproar.

Balint told the story coldly, recounting what he had seen and heard that day as briefly as he could, suppressing all his personal impressions, keeping to himself much of the detail and all his own outraged feelings. But he had heard and seen everything that had happened and he would never forget it.

What had really happened was this. After the closed meeting had ended, Balint went into the dark Chamber and stood behind the last row of benches facing the Speaker’s raised desk. Suddenly the supporters of the Government party started flooding in; they had all been in the bar waiting for the closed meeting to come to an end. They had rarely been present in such numbers and never in such a belligerent mood.

Tisza rose to speak. His tall virile figure seemed etched in black before the upturned well-lit faces of the deputies seated behind him. In a firm voice, with strength and power and passion he warned the House what would happen if order was not restored to their debates. Speaking like one of the prophets of old his words became ever more impassioned, as once again he foretold the
catastrophe
that Hungary would face if all progress were to be blocked by petty party politics. Would only a great national
upheaval
, he asked, disastrous to everything they held dear, fatal to the greatness of the Hungarian nation, bring them to their senses? He begged, exhorted, commanded them to listen before it was too late. The left-wing members listened in silence, stone-faced. They stopped their interruptions and their clamour: it was as if they were under a spell.

From time to time some members on the right jumped up and cried, ‘Put it to the vote! Vote!’ and started stamping their feet, but Tisza waved them back, determined to be heard to the end. And he went on despite the increasing noise and confusion, only barely keeping order by the authority or his voice and gesture, an authority increasingly challenged until, at his last ringing words, ‘Let the comedy end!’, his party rose in a body all crying out, ‘Vote! Vote! Vote!’ If any members of the opposition had shouted back no one could hear them; they were drowned in the roar of several hundred government voices.