They Were Counted (75 page)

When she could no longer be seen Balint and Adrienne also left the orchard and followed the path through the wood.

For a few moments they walked together, side by side without speaking.

Under the century-old trees last year’s fallen leaves made a soft carpet underfoot. When they reached a twist in the path Adrienne stopped, looked swiftly around her, and then offered her mouth to be kissed. Their embrace lasted only a brief second but never before had Addy kissed him with such fervour and such abandon. Not, however, that this wild kiss was a kiss of love or surrender; rather it was an act of revenge or defiance, as if it gave her some savage satisfaction quite unconnected with him. After a second or two she pushed him away and walked on, her head held high, and her close-knit brows giving a serious and
somewhat
sad expression to her face. As they stepped out of the shadow of the trees into the sunlight of the meadow she turned once more towards him. ‘It’s so good that you came, AB. You don’t know how good it is!’

They started to mount the winding path to the terrace.

‘That awful wing jutting out there!’ said Balint. ‘It completely spoils the lovely old baroque house.’

‘It was my father-in-law. He did it. Of course it’s hideous, but, you know,’ and Addy lowered her voice even though no one could possibly have overheard what she was saying, ‘you know that he was mad, and later … I’m sure you’ve heard …’ She broke off without saying the words that in that house were taboo.

Balint did know. Many years before he had been told by his mother that Domokos Uzdy had died insane in his own house where his wife had kept him locked away in secret so as not to let the outside world know about it.

‘Yes, I did hear.’

‘That – er – butler … you’ve seen him already, old Maier, was his keeper, his nurse. They brought him from somewhere, I don’t know where, and afterwards, well, he just stayed on.’ For a little while she did not speak, then, with a little dry laugh, she said: ‘He might be needed again some time!’ and the bitterness in her voice made him realize that she was thinking that it would be for her.

When they arrived at the base of the solid Swiss wing a footman was just carrying a tea-tray down the stairs which led from the wooden gallery above.

‘Which room is Count Abady in?’ Adrienne asked the man.
Before
he could reply a voice was heard coming from a window high above their head. It was Pali Uzdy, saying: ‘My mother has put him in the main guest room upstairs. That’s his room!’ and he laughed meaninglessly before going on: ‘I’ll welcome him, too, of course, but I’m still busy. In the meantime look after him,
entertain
him, take him for a walk!’ The mirthless laughter went on for a moment above them.

It was disconcerting to hear that disembodied voice coming out of the air above their heads. The invisible presence of Count Uzdy, disquietingly and in some way menacing too, was
everywhere
around them, next to them, between them …

Adrienne and Balint sat down on a bench at the foot of the vaulted pillars that held up the covered balcony outside the salon. They sat where they could be seen from every angle and they talked of nothing but trivialities, so strongly did they both have the feeling that they were being watched by invisible eyes, and
overheard
by invisible ears, from every barred window in the fortress wing and from behind every shutter of the great house above.

 

Dinner was served at eight o’clock in the big dining-room. The table was immense and they were seated far away from each other. The room was lit by paraffin lamps hanging from the
ceiling
. Countess Clémence made polite conversation when she had to, Adrienne barely spoke, and it was Pali Uzdy who kept
everything
going and led the talk in the direction he wished. It was the same after dinner in the oval drawing-room. The shutters, of course, remained closed, as they had been in the afternoon, and outside the wind had got up and could be heard howling round the house. Afterwards Balint could not recall what they had talked about: all he could remember was the flickering of the table lamps which had thrown agitated shadows on the high carved plaster of the ceiling and that his host had suggested that Balint should go out after roebuck at dawn with one of the forest guards. The man would call him early, said Pali, and went on: ‘They tell me there are some fine buck in my woods. I don’t know anything about it myself as I don’t shoot game, but if it would give you pleasure I should be very pleased. It’s high time some of them were shot!’

Abady said he had not brought his guns.

‘That doesn’t matter! There’s everything here you could
possibly
need. A Schonauer? A repeater? Or would you rather try a Mauser?’ Then, seeing that Balint looked puzzled, he said: ‘I do a lot of target shooting. That’s why I only have high precision weapons. We can try that too, tomorrow if you wish …
naturally
, of course, of course!’

Once again he went into peals of his strange, meaningless laughter until the sides of his long moustaches were pulled apart like two giant inverted commas.

Balint did not really enjoy shooting but thought it would be churlish to refuse.

 

Dawn was just breaking when Abady was called in the morning. The forest guard took him out past the upper forecourt until, some way further on, they left the road and took to the woods walking a long way between carefully tended parcels of
woodland
, each marked at the corners with little whitewashed posts bearing boards marked with a number. Balint noticed at once how well-looked-after the Uzdy plantations were and thought that this was how things ought to be in his own forests.

After an hour and a half they emerged from the trees just where the whole of the slope below them had been cleared.

‘Careful now!’ whispered the guard. ‘This is where we’ll find them.’ He moved on silently through the undergrowth at the edge of the trees. Just as he had said, in front of them a small herd of deer were grazing in the centre of the clearing, their reddish fur gleaming dully in the morning sunlight. At last the guard pointed to a fine roebuck that was reaching up to nibble the leaves on a spreading oak tree.

‘Take that one, your Lordship! That’s a fine beast for you!’

It was an easy shot, barely a hundred yards, and the buck fell at once, cleanly killed by Balint’s shot. The man went down the slope to pick up the kill and Balint sat down at the edge of the trees to wait until he returned. Then they started back.

Balint knew that his mother owned some forests somewhere thereabouts and asked the man if he knew where they were.

‘Pity your Lordship didn’t mention it a bit earlier! Just there, where your Lordship shot the buck – across the valley the top of the ridge is the boundary between the Uzdy lands and your
Lordship’s
. I could have taken you there. It’s on the way to Hunyad when we go on foot.’

They walked briskly on and, at the last crest before the house, they met Adrienne. She looked fresh and blooming with health and good spirits, her generous mouth smiling widely as she
inspected
Balint’s kill.

‘Poor roebuck!’ she said. ‘But perhaps it’s better to die like that, suddenly, cleanly. He might have been torn to pieces by wolves or caught in some poacher’s snare. Are you tired, AB?’ she asked suddenly. ‘If not, I know a beautiful spot from which one can see into the far, far distance!’

The guard left them to take the buck back to be skinned and they walked, upwards again, into the woods on the opposite side to that from which they had come. The path was narrow and winding and they had hardly taken a hundred paces before they stopped and kissed. After that they kissed and held each other tightly every thirty or so steps until they reached the top and emerged from the trees. In front of them was a superb view over wave after wave of forest until, dominating the whole scene, on a high crest, stood the ruins of the old fortress. Balint noticed none of this, for he was drunk with the nectar of Adrienne’s kisses and with the joy of holding her body tightly pressed to his. They did not sit but remained there for a long time, holding each other as if their very lives depended on it, as if they had both quaffed a
potion
that rendered them oblivious to everything except each other.

 

At midday Farkas and Adam Alvinczy arrived. They drove over in their own carriage because Farkas had a house at Magyarokerek which was only ten kilometres from Banffy-Hunyad. Even their presence did nothing to bring life to the cold and formal
atmosphere
of the Uzdy household and indeed, in some ways it had the opposite effect for both young men had been brought up in the rowdy school of Uncle Ambrus and now found themselves
constrained
in the presence of the dowager Countess, Adrienne and Pali Uzdy, none of whom would have appreciated their usual coarse speech and bad language. As a result they were awkward and stiffly formal, especially the younger, Adam, whom Adrienne jokingly called Adam Adamovich because he was in love with her and tried to hid the fact by adopting an even stiffer bearing than did his elder brother.

As a result the Alvinczy boys were unusually silent both during luncheon and afterwards, leaving Uzdy to keep the conversation going. This he did, in his habitual inconsequent fashion, while Adam and Farkas sat tongue-tied only occasionally contributing some inane triviality. Uzdy was in his element. As an
exceptionally
well-read man, cultivated and erudite, he chose his topics
today
only from the latest scientific researches and discoveries and, when it was obvious that the others did not have the smallest
notion
of what he was talking about, he would turn to one or other of them and put a question to them only to dismiss the answer with contemptuous mockery barely veiled by a veneer of good
manners
. In this same way he would wittily mix up details of the latest advances in electrical or astronomical research, until his audience was even more bewildered than before. Balint felt at once that Uzdy was showing off, though it certainly was not for his benefit, nor for that of the Alvinczys. For his wife then? Ah, that was it. It was as if behind every clever phrase rang the words: ‘See! This is me, this is how
I
am, your husband! Your beaux are nothing but country dullards, blockheads – look at me, only at me!’

Adrienne’s face gave nothing away, her eyes quite
expressionless
under half-closed lids. Countess Clémence, too, was stonily entrenched behind the wall of her inexorable politeness.

The large figure of the butler, Maier, served them in silence in the shuttered dining-room. Later, when they sat in the gloomy shade of the salon whose shutters also were still closed, he would from time to time glide silently into the room to bring coffee or to empty the ashtrays and then just as silently and unobtrusively leave it again. He appeared to ignore everyone in the room, but Balint noticed that from time to time he would raise his large sad eyes and glance at his master. Uzdy went on talking wittily but nervously well into the afternoon.