They Were Counted (40 page)

Dinora stopped beside them and, putting her hand on his shoulder, spoke to Adrienne: ‘He’s very sweet, this Balint! I know him … and he talks beautifully! Nobody can talk like him!
And
he’s kind and good, not like the others. I know! I can recommend him!’

She smiled at Adrienne and moved lightly away. Her words, which could have sounded bitchy coming from anyone else, were not vicious, not from her. From Dinora they came from the heart, a gift for Adrienne who, unlike the others, had gone out of her way to be kind to her all the evening. Dinora’s simple, kind heart had been deeply touched when Adrienne had spoken to her at the buffet, taken her by the arm and asked her to eat at her table whereas the other ladies, after listening to Aunt Lizinka’s
malicious
gossip, had seemed to take pleasure in cutting her,
ostentatiously
turning away if she approached. She had nothing else to give Adrienne so she offered her old friend.

Dinora’s coming back had broken the spell that until then had separated Balint and Adrienne from the rest of the world. Adrienne did not take in what Dinora had said, but the fact that someone else had spoken to her brought her back to reality, to the fact that she was in the Assembly Rooms of the Casino,
attending
the Mardi Gras Ball and that gypsy music was being played in the ballroom next door. Dream-like she came back from a world of dreams.

When the csardas came to an end several couples started to drift back to the supper-room. Isti Kamuthy, after seeing that his partner was seated among friends and noticing that Abady was already sitting there with Countess Uzdy, same over to greet them, eager to hear the latest news from the capital.

‘Tho you’re back from Budapetht? What’th new in Budapetht?’

Balint replied politely but non-committally. Then they got up and moved back to the ballroom, still in a dream of their own …

As they arrived a waltz was just beginning. They stood for a moment in the doorway, Adrienne looking at Balint with her wide eyes, golden in the candle-light like those of a lioness, looking deeply into his. Then, putting her hand on his shoulder she leaned towards him, her eyes closed. Neither spoke; their movements were natural, inevitable and, as Balint put his arm round Adrienne’s waist, they moved out on to the dance floor, gently turning and yielding themselves to the rhythm of the music in mute
tenderness
, each of them conscious of nothing but the other. Though surrounded by a milling crowd, once again they were alone.

After the waltz they separated and, after agreeing to sup
together
at the following evening’s ball, they each went their
separate
ways, even trying to keep apart, Adrienne by instinct and Balint consciously, not wishing that they should give any occasion for gossip by the hawk-eyed old ladies. But their efforts were in vain. Wherever they were, on the dance floor, at the buffet, in the drawing-room, every few minutes they seemed to come together again automatically as if an invisible thread bound them always to each other. And, whenever this happened, they would exchange a few banal phrases – ‘Isn’t it a lovely ball?’ – ‘How sweet little Dodo looks tonight!’ – ‘I love this old tune, don’t you?’ – ‘What a good organizer Alvinczy is!’ or some such trivial remark that could be overheard by anyone without a malicious
interpretation
being possible. Yet all the time a secret current flowed
between
them, isolating them from all others, creating for them a world of their own as private as if they had been alone on a desert island. No matter what words came from their lips, for both Adrienne and Balint they could have only one meaning: ‘You! You! You!’ and whenever one caught sight of the other it was with a kind of happy surprise at the discovery of their new-found bliss.

Balint and Adrienne were so wrapped up in this new little world of their own that it was with a shock of surprise that they found it was eight o’clock when the ball came to an end. In the entrance hall a crowd of waiting footmen helped the girls and their chaperones to find their wraps and the young men were busy collecting the cotillion favours and flowers of the girls with whom they had flirted the night away.

Adrienne called for her sisters. Margit came at once but they had to look for Judith, who was found talking to Wickwitz in a dark corner. Their party now left escorted by a whole band of admirers: Wickwitz, the ball’s two organizers, Baron Gazsi and Farkas Alvinczy, as well as Adam Alvinczy and Pityu Kendy. Adrienne was on Balint’s arm. Well wrapped up against the fierce cold of the morning, they waited just inside at the head of the steps until the noise of the carriages and the hurried entrance of a footman announced that their carriage was at the door.

Balint and Adrienne still moved like figures in a dream, for the fact that in a few hours time there would be another ball at which they would naturally meet again and which would give them the opportunity to pass another whole evening in each other’s company, was enough to remove any sting from this morning’s parting.

Everyone said goodbye; the men shook hands with the girls and, as with the other married ladies, they bowed to Adrienne and kissed her hand. Balint was the last. Adrienne had not yet put on her gloves and, when he took her hand, the feel of her bare skin went up his arm with the power of an electric shock. He paused, bending over her, holding her hand in his for a fraction longer than was usual. Suddenly, speaking so low that no one else could hear, he said: ‘Not where the others did!’ and turning her hand quickly over he buried his face in her palm. Adrienne made no
resistance
, and in a second Balint had straightened up again. No one had noticed.

The ladies climbed into their carriage, the doors slammed and the horses were quickly whipped away in a fast trot.

Most of the young men ran quickly back up the steps to say goodbye to other friends, but Balint stood motionless with closed eyes, suffused with a happiness he had never known before. Then he pulled himself together and returned to the Casino, bounding up the steps two or three at a time.

Quickly finding his fur coat, he returned and hurried down into the open street. Outside it was a bright sunny morning with a few inches of fresh untouched snow covering everything in sight. He walked slowly home, his narrow patent leather dancing shoes leaving sharp tracks in the virgin snow. It was like walking in cold water, cool, refreshing, somehow wonderful. He was entirely alone in the deserted streets. He was happy.

A
DRIENNE LEANED BACK
in her corner of the carriage so absorbed in her own thoughts that she did not notice that Judith also remained totally abstracted. The two of them, wrapped almost to the eyes in their furs and shawls, had the same closed expression on their faces, the same taut line round the mouth, and they both shut their eyes as if they had secrets that must be protected from the outside world. Only Margit, sitting opposite them, was her usual merry self, keeping up a stream of chatter and excitement.

The carriage stopped at the Miloth’s town house. Briefly wishing Adrienne goodnight and saying they’d see her again that evening, the girls hurried indoors.

Over the freshly fallen snow Adrienne’s carriage moved silently as it made its way along the Monostor road. Even the hoofbeats of the horses were muffled to a mysterious murmur.

Finally they turned into the forecourt of the Uzdy villa, a large two-storeyed house flanked by long low wings which were fronted by glazed galleries to keep out the cold. The carriage stopped at the entrance to the wing on the right, where the young Uzdys lived. Only the old countess, Pal Uzdy’s mother, lived in the main house with Adrienne’s little daughter and her nanny. At this
moment
however the old countess and her grandchild were not there; they had left Kolozsvar for Meran ten days before.

The house was an old one dating from the eighteenth century, with tall rooms and long windows. The wing where Adrienne and her husband had their rooms, though the windows had a marvellous view across the park to the river, must originally have been designed as servants’ quarters for, with one exception, all the rooms were small and linked by a long narrow vaulted
gallery
. The exception, right at the end of the wing, was a large room which Adrienne had furnished as a drawing-room. It had once been the kitchen where meals could be prepared for a hundred people.

The entrance to Adrienne’s apartment was in the centre of the glassed-in gallery and, as she hurried inside, the carriage turned and drove out again through the entrance gates as the stable-yard and coach-house were reached through a separate gate further along the main road.

As she went towards her room, Adrienne glanced at the
windows
of her husband’s room which also led off the gallery. The door was open and the place was obviously being aired. This
surprised
her, for Uzdy was not usually an early riser.

‘Is the Count already up?’ she asked the maid who was
carrying
the basket of favours and flowers, an elderly grey-haired little woman who had once been her nanny, ‘… or didn’t he go to bed at all?’

‘His Lordship didn’t go to bed, my lady. He just changed his clothes and left for Almasko before dawn.’

Adrienne was not altogether surprised at this news since Uzdy often came and went unexpectedly without telling anyone of his plans in advance. He kept a post-chaise always ready in town, and a four-horse carriage at his farm in Szentmihaly, halfway to Almasko. By doing so he could make the trip quickly, only
stopping
long enough to change the horses, without having to make arrangements in advance. He liked to arrive unannounced: it kept everyone on their toes! Adrienne said nothing, but a close observer could have told from the way her body relaxed that she was relieved to hear the news.

‘Just put the flowers in water, Jolan, and don’t wake me ’til five. I want to sleep. You can go now, I don’t want anything.’ Adrienne always dressed and undressed herself. She did not like having people hovering round her.

‘I’ll bring in the breakfast,’ said the old nanny.

The big room was bathed in light, sun streaming in through the three long windows which gave over the park, casting over the white painted walls a faintly bluish tinge from the reflection of the snow. It was the same shade as the colour of the shadows on the outside of the house here in Kolozsvar and on the banks of the Szamos.

Adrienne moved over to the tall french doors that looked over the park and leant against the moulded window-frame, her mind devoid of thought, her eyes narrowed in the blinding morning light. She stood there staring outside but seeing nothing, feeling nothing, thinking nothing. She did not hear her maid come with the breakfast, nor her murmured farewell when she left. For a long time she stood there, weary with a faintly sensuous languor that kept her from thinking of what had happened that evening. Everything was in a hazy confusion in her mind, but a confusion tinged with nameless happiness.

A sudden sound recalled her to herself: it was the crack of a burning log in the fireplace which had fallen into the centre of the fire. Adrienne turned to look and, as she did so, the sight of the flames reminded her of what Balint had said about her dress. Slowly she looked down at her bare arms and shoulders and
half-concealed
breasts, and at the shimmering panels of silk that flowed from them down to the floor. In the brilliant sunlight she felt naked and exposed. Turning quickly she almost ran through the dark bedroom into the bathroom beyond and undressed. Her movements were automatic and when, a few moments later, she returned to the bedroom and lay down, she thought that she would certainly not be able to sleep. Somehow she did not even want to, for in this unusual feeling of being remote from all thought, all reality, there was a sort of magic which Adrienne would have liked to go on for ever. She lay with her eyes open, the only light in the darkened room coming from narrow spaces where the closed shutters did not quite meet. It was only a few minutes before she sank into a deep dreamless sleep which wiped away every image, thought and memory.

 

Adrienne awoke as three o’clock struck on the church clock in the town nearby. For a few seconds she stared into the darkness before being gripped by a nameless fear. She did not know why, but she was so terrified that she sat up looking wildly around her and clutching her knees tightly to her chin.

What was it? What had happened at the ball?

And then it all came back to her quite clearly. As she slept the impressions of the evening, which had been so confused and vague when she went to bed, had sorted themselves out in her mind. Everything now fell into place with a clarity that appalled her. Repeating to herself the astonishing words, ‘I am in love! In love! In love!’, all the consequences of this reared up in her. It wasn’t possible. She had a husband, a child. She couldn’t. She was tied, bound to the duty that she herself had chosen and husband she had accepted. She was no longer free, so what could it all come to? Balint’s love was no mere
Schwärmerei,
no little girl’s crush, brought on by propinquity and moonshine. In his words rang the deep sincerity of a real emotion, not the light cajolery of mere
flirtation
. He wanted her … and there would be no bargaining.

With an aching heart Adrienne realized that she had not only listened to everything that Balint had had to say, but that she had also accepted it. Not in so many words, of course, for she herself had hardly spoken, but with her eyes and her expression as she
listened
to him, with her body when she danced with him, in her
silent
acquiescence to his words, her acceptance of his hand twined in hers, and with the pressure of her fingers when he kissed her palm on the steps. She had never for a moment held back,
resisted
, never protested or rebuked him or even given the smallest indication that his ardent demands were not welcome and might not be accepted.

Adrienne shuddered to think how far she had let him go, she who had never allowed Adam Alvinczy or Pityu Kendy to sit too closely beside her or to hold her tightly when they danced, and who had always frozen anyone into silence if they dared to flirt too outrageously or make even the mildest allusion to sexuality between men and women. Of course it had been easy with the others. Their attentions were all play-acting. Even if Pityu and Adam fancied themselves in love with her, she treated such
attentions
as a joke, to be shrugged off as lightly. It was easy because it meant nothing. With such friends she did not care, so she played with them as if they were outsize dolls made only for her amusement. If they tried to go further and tell her of their feelings with tears in their eyes, pleading to be taken more seriously, she only joked with them the more and teased them and made fun of them with careless coquetry.

And now?

Last night she had given everything to Balint that she had
denied
the others. She saw herself listening, captivated by the magic of his words and the strength of his passion. How sweetly what he had said had sounded in her ears, how welcome, how
fascinating
. And she had not flinched at the passion, the desire, which pulsated through everything he had said. His yearning for her could not be disguised. His meaning was so clear, so direct, that even when they had exchanged nothing but otherwise
meaningless
banalities, his words had only reflected his desire to love her. It was obvious what he was speaking of when he told her about the fire or the waterfall and his voice, so low and seemingly
devoid
of passion, and his look, which gave a new significance to otherwise innocent words, rang with the force of his inner
feelings
. Finally, when after a long pause he had said, ‘I love you, Addy!’, had she tried to stop him uttering the words that should never have been said? No! On the contrary she had drunk in his words with silent joy, sitting there with her hand in his, her heart beating; it had been as if they were alone in the world and existed only for each other. Lying now in her darkened room she stretched languorously at the memory of those magic moments until, all at once, she seemed to come to her senses, alert and
conscious
of a reality which almost made her jump out of bed. Adrienne shuddered as she realized what little Dinora must have seen in her face. What had she said? That Balint was ‘sweet and good’, that she ‘recommended him’! How shameful! And with horror she suddenly grasped the appalling implication.

‘How hateful! How mean! How vile I am! Now AB himself must believe that I’d be willing … with him … Oh, that
revolting
act! He’s a right to believe…’ Even in thought she couldn’t bring herself to put her revulsion into words.

Adrienne was filled with horror. It was not only that the
situation
was so complicated, that she was a married woman who had given herself irrevocably to a man she did not love and who would never let her go, not only because of their child but also
because
, in his disgusting way, he loved her. Neither was it the thought of the social consequences, the menace of shame and
exposure
she would risk by falling in love with him. No! There was something much deeper in her woman’s consciousness that tore at her nerves and demanded, loath as she was, to be faced and
accepted
, a truth from which she recoiled with every fibre of her being. She had married without love, without even thought of love. She had longed to be free of her parents’ house; and when Pali Uzdy had courted her even he had not spoken of love but only of his loneliness, his desire for a partner in his work and his life, his longing for someone to help and support him. Their
desires
met and merged, seemed mutual, compatible. He had kissed her only once before their marriage, a brief passionless embrace under her ear, on her neck, at the moment she had accepted him, and he had released her quickly. Now, knowing him better, Adrienne realized that this was probably because he knew that he could not control himself. When, after the marriage ceremony, they had travelled by carriage to Almasko, and throughout the evening until it had been time to go to bed, he had maintained
always
his easy, calm, friendly manner though – or was it only afterwards that she had been conscious of it? – in his eyes had lurked the same watchful glitter as that with which a beast of prey would stalk its victim.

The memory of that night still made her sick with fear and
disgust
. She had gone to bed, nervous and frightened, but nothing had prepared her for the horror that followed. As soon as Uzdy had come to her bed he had flung himself upon her, tearing at her with his hands, his teeth clenched in mindless passion as he
assaulted
her and, brutally forcing her legs apart, entered her with all the power of a battering ram. He subjugated her, defamed her, taking his pleasure how and when he wished, with never a word of tenderness or thought for his victim – and he went on
until
morning when he abruptly left her without a word as dawn
began
to show through the curtains. And every time since it had been the same. Never once did Uzdy make the smallest attempt to arouse in his wife any tenderness, to awaken any response to his passion, to allay her fear. He seemed, on the contrary, to glory in the terror that he must have sensed in her, as if, by some
atavistic
instinct, he himself was only aroused by resistance in the
female
. From that very first night, whenever Adrienne had seen that tell-tale glitter in her husband’s eye, she had felt as if she were being stalked by hired assassins.