They Were Divided (16 page)

Just after the New Year a covered carriage drew up outside  Laszlo’s house. It was nine o’clock at night, and Fabian had come to celebrate his Saint’s Day. With him he had brought a huge cold turkey, some savoury biscuits and sweet cakes and a large hamper of brandy and cheap champagne. He also brought two women. The village gypsy musician was sent for at once and he played standing in the kitchen doorway as there was no place for him in Laszlo’s room where the four of them dined and danced and sang. Fabian himself always needed plenty of space, for he loved to jump up and hurl himself about, sometimes dancing with both women at once, throwing himself about with wide-flung arms and all the time yodelling at the top of his voice.

News of the party spread quickly through the village and soon there was a group of neighbours gathered near the house to listen to the music and find out what was going on. They were mostly women, and they cross-questioned the driver about the loose women he had brought and were deliciously scandalized by what he had to tell. Some of the younger boys and girls started dancing on the frozen snow-covered ground; but it was bitterly cold and soon they all went home.

After dinner was over the Bischitz family always sat in the large room behind the shop in which the family lived and ate. Here the shopkeeper kept his account books and also any special delicacies such as sugar and spices and dried figs which might have absorbed the smells of dried fish or pipe tobacco if these had been kept in the store-room next door. On this evening old Bischitz sat reading a newspaper while his fat wife dozed in an armchair, worn-out from the heavy labour of the daily chores. Regina had already put her younger brothers and sisters to bed and was folding away the tablecloth and napkins when their
servant
Juliska rushed in and disturbed this peaceful domestic scene with the scandalous news of what was happening over at
The Count’s house. Neither of the old people were in the least impressed, and indeed the shopkeeper himself, angered at the thought that the drinks had not been bought from him, bawled out the servant for having left the washing-up to go sight-seeing, promised her a good slap, chased her back to the kitchen and then turned to his wife and said: ‘Come on, bedtime!’

Regina stood by the cupboard rigid with shock. She was very pale and her parents had to call her twice before she heard them.

Regina lay quite still next to her sleeping six-year-old sister, but she could not sleep. One o’clock went by, and two o’clock, and still she lay there, her ears straining for the faint sound of the
violin
music. At length that stopped and for a long time she could hear nothing, not even the sound of her parents’ breathing.

What was happening over there? What could be happening?

At length Regina could stand it no more. She slipped out of bed, very carefully so as not to wake her sister, felt for her clothes and somehow managed to get into them in the dark. Then she felt for her mother’s shawl which was always hung on a hook behind the door, wrapped it round her and stole to the front door.

It was a dark night with no moon and all that could be seen was a faint bluish glow on the snow. So as not to wake anyone in the house with the sound of her steps on the wooden floor, she put on her shoes only when she was already outside and on the last rung of the veranda steps. The shoes she wore were a pair of once fashionable high-heeled but sadly worn ladies’ button boots which would have reached up to mid-calf if most of the buttons had not been missing. They had previously been worn by her mother until it had not seemed worth mending them any more.

Regina moved slowly across the frozen yard, her feet skidding on the hard-trodden surface of the snow. She reached the corner of the woodshed and, from the gate in the fence, looked across the empty field towards Laszlo’s house. There was a light in the
window
, a sinister reddish light; and to the girl it seemed as if the wicked flames of hell were beckoning to her and calling for her to come and look.

Clutching the heavy shawl around her she stumbled across the field in which her father had been growing potatoes. Where these had been lifted the earth had been left in uneven little mounds and ridges and holes so that, as the young girl headed straight for the light in the window, she stumbled and slipped and
fell frequently to her knees, as her thin, dark figure made its
tortured
way across. If anyone had been watching it would have looked as if she were battling against a hurricane, staggering to left and to right as she struggled on through the dark night.

Finally she got there. There was not a sound to be heard and only the light that filtered out through the flower-like hoarfrost on the window-panes showed that anyone was still awake inside.

Regina crept up and pressed her face against the lowest pane, despite the fact that it was almost opaque from the ice-crystals that had formed an incrustation of dense arabesques on the glass. Obsessed by the need to know what was happening inside she would have broken the glass itself if that had been the only way. She had to know, she had to! That was why she had come. She started to breathe on the window-pane and then to rub it with a corner of the shawl. Several times she had to repeat the process until at last a small patch at the centre began to come clear as she managed to melt a square no larger than her own little hand.

With searching eyes she looked round the room, her body rigid with emotion and excitement, her hand tightly grasping the window-ledge. She stretched up her neck with the folds of the shawl falling like mourning bands on each side of her face.

She was very pale, except for her blood-red lips, and it was some time before she was able to see clearly what was happening in the room. It was even longer before she realized what it was, and longer still before she really understood.

For a long time she stood where she was, as if turned to stone. Then, overcome by deep disgust, she started shuddering and at length was able to force herself to turn away. Then she reeled from the window and started to run for home, heedless of how she fell and stumbled and tripped in mindless panic. She ran with eyes wide open as if by so doing she could run far away from what she had seen. She ran as a deer pursued by hounds …

In Regina’s head was nothing but the thought of escape. She clattered up the wooden steps of her father’s house, fell against the door and then, though somehow she succeeded in opening it, fell senseless across the threshold.

Regina was ill for days and during all this time, though her
parents
looked after her with loving care, they never discovered where she had been that night. As it happened they never even asked her for they assumed that it was all the result of a fright she had had for, either as a result of being over-excited, or from the
effects of her fall, that night she stopped being a child and became a woman.

As for Laszlo he hardly noticed Regina’s absence. For some days after that evening’s drinking he had lazed about, tired and listless. Fabian had left behind three bottles of brandy, perhaps on purpose, perhaps merely from forgetfulness; and so Laszlo had enough to drink without going to the shop. For some weeks he did not think about setting his traps and so had no need of Regina.

Now he started to cough rather more than before.

When Regina got better their relationship was unchanged. Once again she was ready to do anything he asked but she was, if anything, quieter than before. She was also very pale, and her large brown eyes seemed framed in some bluish dew.

T
HE GENERAL
PEACE
that Europe had known since 1878 finally came to an end in the summer of 1911. The year began without any apparent change but then gradually a few hardly noticeable signs appeared whose significance was only understood much later and then only by those whose business it was to search out the truth of what had occurred. Though these little signposts were so scattered and apparently trivial, for the few who understood such things they showed only too clearly that the general air of calm throughout Europe was at best only an illusion. They were like the faint grey mist on the horizon at
sunset
or the soft mysterious murmur that precedes an earthquake.

Nothing that happened early that year seemed to suggest that the general confidence in a perpetual peace was not entirely
justified
. When Prince Nikita celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his reign by declaring Montenegro to be a kingdom, and the
monarchs
of Italy, Bulgaria and Serbia all attended the festivities, it seemed to be no more than a family get-together … and there was nothing to foretell the coming alliance. A few months later there was another outbreak of unrest in Albania – but no one thought there might be any connection with what had transpired in Montenegro, for was there not always unrest in Albania? When, from the other end of Europe, the news came that the Dutch, that most peaceable of nations, were fortifying Vlissingen, there was a universal outcry, with the English press seeing the
sinister hand of the Emperor Wilhelm, who no doubt envisaged a new base for his growing fleet that was only an hour or so from the coast of Great Britain and the English Channel. And when, some months later, the Dutch government countermanded their orders, it was everywhere said that this was forced on them by strong protests from England and France. Accordingly when this little tempest blew itself out, just as had the much bigger one
provoked
by the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina a year or so before, it seemed that all such affairs were but storms in teacups which were bound, sooner or later, to be settled amicably by all concerned. A few discussions over a green baize table, an exchange of diplomatic letters, and all was as it always had been. Even most of the diplomatists thought of international affairs in this way and so it was natural for the general public to follow their example. When it was announced in Vienna that the army was to be increased and the navy given a grand new ship-building programme, most people read the news with indifference,
believing
it all to be little more than just one more manifestation of
folie
de
grandeur
on the part of the Emperor Franz-Josef.

In the Budapest Parliament all went smoothly enough, and even the prolongation until 1917 of the Austro-Hungarian banking law passed off with little more than the expected public bickering between Justh and the People’s Party on one side and the Economic Minister Lukacs and Ferenc Kossuth on the other. However, as this all seemed merely part of the aftermath of the Coalition period, nobody showed any interest. That these old rifts in the former Coalition were now seeing the light of day for the first time, and were shown to be little more than the private disputes of professional politicians, once again only proved to most people that what the former leaders of the Coalition said and what they did were quite different matters.

It was typical of that long period of international calm that one of the French princes, Gaston d’Orléans, Comte d’Eu, should choose that moment to launch an anti-duelling league! To round up support he travelled all over Europe, stopping in every
provincial
capital where he thought a branch should be founded. Anyone who joined had to pledge themselves to take any affair of honour to some predetermined court and to abstain from having recourse to sabres or pistols.

The idea was sensible and the prince’s motives commendably lofty.

Gaston d’Orléans himself was an eminent and distinguished personage whose wife would have become Empress of Brazil if her father, Pedro II, had not been overthrown by the ungrateful Brazilians. He was received everywhere with the courtesy and ceremony to which his rank entitled him; and wherever he went a branch of his anti-duelling league was founded at once with its full complement of president, general secretary, statutes and plans for regular meetings. It was of course most flattering to be able to refer to this royal prince, the grandson of King
Louis-Philippe
no less, as one’s colleague and chief, and it was nice to be known to share the opinions of such an eminent person. The Comte d’Eu lived in Paris and no doubt, if under his wing, one would soon find oneself received in the most select houses in the Faubourg St Germain.

In Budapest the League was headed by some impressive names and, through the Countess Beredy’s influence, her brother, Fredi Wuelffenstein, was made the general secretary. From Hungary the prince was going on to Bucharest and so it was arranged that he should stop on the way at Kolozsvar so as to found the Transylvanian branch of the Anti-Duelling League.

There too he was received with honour and on the evening of his arrival a ‘brilliant reception’ (as the newspapers called it) was given for him at the Casino. It was followed by a banquet. Everyone with any pretensions to social prominence in Transylvania took care to be there.

An enormous U-shaped table had been set up in the hall. In the centre of the top table sat the prince flanked on one side by Sandor Kendy (Crookface) wearing the Cross of St Istvan, and on the other by Stanislo Gyeroffy (Carrots) who, when he had briefly been a member of Szapary’s cabinet, had managed to be awarded the Grand Cross of Alexander for having participated in the negotiations which had led to the signing of a trading
agreement
with Bulgaria. In addition to the cross itself Gyeroffy was swathed in the wide red, green and white ribbon of the order. By right of these impressive decorations, which entitled their
possessors
to be addressed as ‘Excellency’, Crookface and old Gyeroffy had the places of honour on each side of the royal guest and they, in turn, were flanked by all the other local notabilities placed according to the strictest rules of precedence. Among them were the Prefect and his immediate predecessor, the Sheriff, the Mayor, the Rector of the University and various prominent churchmen, as well as most of the provincial titled folk. They
made a fine display and as background to the top table had been hung a magnificent Gobelins tapestry.

Facing the guest of honour were the other Sandor Kendy (known as ‘Wiggles’), the elder Adam Alvinczy and Major Bogacsy, now retired from the army and acting as chairman of the orphans’ Court of Chancery. These were the official hosts.

Now that Bogacsy was no longer a serving officer he was dressed in civilian evening dress and the only thing left to remind one of his belligerent past was an enormous pair of moustaches which resembled nothing so much as a large black pudding
suspended
over his mouth. He wore the insignia of the Order of Maria-Theresia, which had been awarded him for some deed of bravery in the Bosnian war though what that had been no one knew, for he never alluded to it himself. When Bogacsy did talk about his past he only referred to his prowess at innumerable duels where he had always been much in demand as a second.

Bogacsy was very angry. No one had told him why Transylvania was being honoured by the visit of this foreign prince and until he had arrived in the hall all he knew was the name of the guest in whose honour the town was giving a
banquet
. As a director of the Casino he had naturally taken his place at the head of the stairs to welcome the distinguished visitor and then, as they were waiting for the dinner to be announced, stood for a while chatting with him in the smoking-room. The Comte d’Eu was at his most affable as he talked to the three official hosts and then, in tolerably good German, he started talking about the League for which he was seeking support:

‘
Es
ist
eine
verachtenswürdige
Sache,
dass
man
in
unserem
aufgeklärtem
Jahrhundert
noch
immer
duelliert.
Das
Duell
ist
pure
Barbarei
–
nicht
wahr?
Und
ausserdem
auch
ein
schrecklicher
Blödsinn!
Das
ist
wohl
auch
ihre
Meinung?
–
it is a disgraceful thing that in this enlightened age men still go in for duelling. The duel is pure barbarism, is it not? Apart from being frightfully stupid! I’m sure you agree, don’t you?’

This was said directly to Bogacsy, and the prince then went on to explain how utterly idiotic duelling was: the winner was naturally the man who was a better shot or who knew best how to wield a sword, and what had this to do with who was in the right? It was stupid and unworthy of sensible men and a shameful legacy of the past!

Bogacsy was outraged and almost apoplectic with rage. It was not for him to start contradicting such an eminent guest and yet
he knew that everyone within earshot was watching his reactions and with their true Transylvanian sense of the absurd were inwardly laughing at his predicament. Despite the restraint that was imposed by good manners Bogacsy was so angry at the thought of all that silent mockery that surrounded him that he would have exploded in protest if dinner had not then been announced. A difficult moment was somehow avoided; but the duelling major was still so upset that he could hardly touch any of the delicious dishes put before him, even though he had had to fork out twenty-five crowns for his dinner, which even then was by no means cheap.

At the end of one of the wings of the great U-shaped table was seated old Daniel Kendy. Remembering that he spoke French
fluently
as a result of having once been an attaché in the
Austro-Hungarian
Embassy in Paris in the last years of the Third Empire, the organizers had decided that he ought to be invited so that when dinner was over they could introduce him to the prince who would therefore be able to talk to someone who knew Paris well. As the old man had no money his nephew Crookface Kendy paid for his ticket, but as a broken-down old fellow of no
importance
he was seated some away from the guest of honour. It was important to see that old Uncle Dani did not, as he usually did, drink too much. On this occasion the old man swore that he would not, and indeed was full of good intentions, so happy was he at the thought of coming again into his own and being made much of as the old social lion who had once been a favourite at the court of the Empress Eugénie and well known as a
man-about
-town in Paris in the years that followed. He decided that this night he must do all in his power to be at his best.

He had shaved and dressed with great care, and indeed the effect was impressive. Count Daniel Kendy for the first time in years looked truly distinguished and many eyes were upon him. His slightly thinning silver-white hair was parted in the middle and set off his jet-black eyebrows and aristocratically aquiline nose. His moustaches had been curled for the occasion and beneath his lower lip was an elegant little goatee. The whiskers on each side of his face were long but neatly trimmed, and with the low folded collar, wide lapels and broad starched white shirt and old-fashioned evening suit, he seemed the perfect evocation of the dandified
boulevardier
of a half a century before. His
appearance
was so striking that the prince immediately asked who he was; and when told his name and history by Crookface, at once
declared that he remembered him well from the days when the French royal family had first returned from exile abroad. ‘of course!’he cried. ‘Le Comte Candi!’ (which is what all the
susceptible
ladies in those Parisian drawing-rooms had called him). The name still seemed to have a dreamy, erotic ring to it.

Uncle Daniel also recognized the prince, but he could not remember if he had seen him at the Rochechouarts’ or at the Princesse de la Moskowa’s. At that time Daniel Kendy was a young man with great expectations for whom everybody
predicted
a brilliant future. If he had not wasted his fortune on drink he too would have been addressed as ‘Your Excellency’ today. He would have been seated at the right hand of the royal guest, covered in orders and ribbons and distinctions, and not where he now found himself, in an insignificant place amid a noisy rabble of ill-behaved young men. Looking up at the notabilities in the place of honour, all resplendent in their decorations with the noble Gobelins tapestry behind them, Uncle Dani’s heart was filled with sorrow and remorse.

As the dinner progressed he became sadder and sadder and sadder.

And what does one do when one’s heart is filled with sorrow? One drinks: there is nothing else. And so the old man drank and, once started, he did not stop and the inevitable happened. When the time came for that meeting to which he had so much looked forward and they called to him to come up and be
presented
, the old man was already so drunk that he could hardly put one foot in front of the other. Then, once again, the sad thought of what he had once been and what, through no one’s fault but his own, he had thrown away, once more pierced his poor fuddled brain and all that he was able to do was to stagger towards the prince, weaving from right to left and bending
double
at every step in a humble parody of a bow, waving his arms, and stammer out sorrowfully in Hungarian,‘K-K-Kendy! …
n-n
-nothing more … K-K-Kendy … n-n-nothing more …’