They Were Divided (2 page)

B
ALINT ABADY STEPPED QUIETLY
into the family box at the theatre at Kolozsvar. Even though he knew it well, for the Abadys like all the other old families in the district rented the same box every year, he still had to grope his way in the darkness to hang up his coat. Still somewhat blinded by the light from the stage he sat down in the best seat facing the stage, for his mother had stayed at home at Denestornya. Balint himself had driven up from the country, just for one night, because he wanted to see the gala performance of
Madam
Butterfly
that was being given that evening, and especially the Butterfly herself, the famous Yvonne de Tréville, who often came from the Opéra Comique to sing in Kolozsvar.

He was late and the great love duet that closes the first act was just beginning. The music throbbed with passion, with love and desire; the sweet tones of the violins carried Puccini’s soaring melodies and above it all was the pure smooth voice of the French diva.

Balint was on the point of surrendering to the music when he felt himself overcome by a strange feeling of agitation, as if he were in the presence of an overpowering force, a force even more potent than the storm of emotion that was being enacted before him on the stage. It was like an electric shock to his
nervous
system and something, he knew not what, made him turn round.

Adrienne Miloth was sitting in the next box, almost directly behind him.

He was startled to see her there because he had heard that she had gone to Switzerland with her daughter and he had not thought she would have returned so soon. This evening he saw that she and her sister Margit were guests in the kindly old Countess Gyalakuthy’s box. There she sat; and though she was so close she seemed as insubstantial as a phantom.

Her face was lit only by the moonlight from the stage which cast the faintest glow on her delicately aquiline nose, her cheeks and her generous mouth. Balint could just see the pale sheen of her skin where the neck and shoulders merged into the deep
décolleté of her silver dress. Everything else was hidden in the darkness of the theatre.

She was looking straight ahead, quite motionless, as still as a marble statue. In the reflection of the cunningly contrived
moonlight
on the stage Adrienne’s eyes shone emerald green; and she sat there rigidly, without moving a muscle, though he could hardly believe that she had not seen him come in because he had sat down just in front of her. They were so close that with only the slightest movement their arms would have touched.

Balint felt that he could not stay there another moment. It would be impossible for him, for them both, to sit next to each other and behave as if they were strangers. How could they listen together to that passionate music which spoke so eloquently of desire and love and desperate yearning? No! No! No! He must not stay! He could not stay!

The memories of their love so overwhelmed him that he found himself trembling. He got up silently and slipped out of the box, reeling slightly like a man who has been struck a heavy blow.

Though he could not sit next to her he still could not leave the theatre in which she sat; so he descended the great stair, crossed to the other side of the auditorium and, with his coat on, stepped through one of the doors and stood at the side of the stalls in the shadow of the balcony. No one would be able to see him there, he thought, so he would remain until the act came to an end and then slip out before the lights went up. From there, too, he could gaze at Adrienne whom he had not seen for more than a year: and even then it had been a mere glance from afar.

She did not seem changed. Maybe her face was a little thinner, perhaps there was a trace of bitterness about the lines of her mouth, but she was still supremely beautiful, every aspect of her as lovely as when she had been his love, his friend, his companion in body and spirit, in those days when they had planned to become husband and wife. But an implacable fate had separated them.

In his imagination he saw her stripped of that shining metallic gown, bright as a suit of armour, standing naked before him as she first had five long years before in Venice, then so often
afterwards
in their little hut in the forest, or at the Uzdy villa, or at her father’s house at Mezo-Varjas, or in Budapest, indeed
anywhere
their homeless love could find refuge. Balint’s heart
contracted
with bitterness when he thought once again of how he had been forced to abandon her and how she had ordered him to marry Lili Illesvary whom she herself had picked out for him.

Adrienne had then made her conditions: their affair must cease, and she would not even meet him socially unless he got married and so erected a barrier between them. He had found he could not comply and so they had not seen each other again.

The love duet continued, growing ever more intense, more impassioned. For a moment its message of love and desire was overshadowed by two brief echoes deep in the orchestral texture of the music with which the Shinto priest had cursed the lovers’ happiness; and when he heard it Balint felt most poignantly that it symbolized the story of their own doomed love. However this sad reflection did not last long, for that song of yearning flowed out from the stage, stronger than ever, irresistible and triumphant. It was as if the whole wide world was composed of spring and
moonlight
, blossom and sublime melody. As the music mounted to its stormy climax Balint felt as moved and shattered as by the climax of love. It was the music of their past, now forever denied them.

The curtain fell to a tornado of applause, and Balint slipped quietly out.

The October night air was already cold. The sky was clear and the pavements glistened from the light rain that had fallen that afternoon. Without thinking where he was going Balint started to walk towards the centre of the town. He walked at
random
, with no object except to be alone, alone with the torment of all those thoughts by which he had been assailed that evening. Glancing at his watch he saw that it was just a quarter past nine. This gave him nearly three hours of freedom, for at
midnight
he was expected to go to supper at the house of the Prefect, who, as general director of the Kolozsvar theatres, was giving a party after the performance in honour of the French diva. For three hours, then, he could try to walk off his chagrin, to master that surge of bitterness that had been stirred up by the sight of Adrienne sitting so close to him.

As he wandered aimlessly along the dark streets he was assailed so fiercely by a torrent of haphazard memories that he felt like a man pursued by the Fates from whom it was impossible to hide. And yet hide he must! It had been the same the previous summer, on the only other occasion that he had seen Adrienne since their parting.

Then he had just been leaving the hospital, after bringing in one of the stable lads from Denestornya, when he caught sight of Adrienne through the bars of a tall iron fence. He had shrunk
back into the shade of the doorway so that he shouldn’t be seen; but from there he followed her with his eyes as, with head held high and looking straight ahead of her without a glance to left or right, she strode determinedly up the path which led to the
lunatic
asylum or, as most people euphemistically called it, the House with the Green Roof.

Off to see that mad husband, Balint had thought bitterly, he whom she had never loved and who had never loved her.

His heart had swelled, like that of an exile who catches a glimpse of his forbidden home from far away.

As he had hidden then, so he felt impelled to run now, to escape from the theatre and wander anonymously through the town. Without realizing where he had been heading Balint found
himself
in the main square, and here he was almost overcome by a strange lassitude. It was as if that impulse which had hurled him out of the theatre had sapped all his reserves of energy.

He walked on, without taking note of where he was going, until, at the corner of the market place, he almost knocked over the charcoal grill of an old woman roasting chestnuts. Ashamed of himself, he stopped and in an attempt to pull himself together, and to make amends for his clumsiness, he bought a paper cone of nuts that the woman held out to him. As he started
absentmindedly
to peel them he remembered that he had been invited out to supper and had better not arrive with stained fingers. Abruptly he shoved the warm paper cone deep into one of his coat pockets, deciding to give it to the first child he might meet; but although he passed several hanging about near the iron bridge or in front of the cinema, by then the chestnuts had been forgotten.

Of course, he reflected, he ought to have married Lili Illesvary. Everything would then have been different. He could have met Adrienne and, with no constraint between them, talked of their by now shadowy past in a way that could provoke no comment if overheard. They could have met as old friends, if nothing more. At least it would have meant that he would have seen her from time to time and touched her hand as he kissed her fingers. Also he would have had a home of his own, and a family to return to, instead of wandering aimlessly with nowhere he wanted to go. That was what he ought to have done, yet he had carelessly thrown away even the half-happiness such a marriage would have brought him. Now he had nothing; no love, no family, nothing!

It had been entirely his own fault. The opportunity had been there, at Jablanka in the middle of December, and if he had failed to take the opportunity offered he had no one but himself to blame. But he had done nothing.

His host, Antal Szent-Gyorgyi, and his sons had welcomed him as warmly as ever, without being over-demonstrative which in that house was thought to be not very good form. His cousin Magda’s greeting was a shade more enthusiastic, for she gave him a teasing smile and pressed his hand a little harder than was usual. His aunt Elise, Countess Szent-Gyorgyi, received him with maternal warmth and tenderness and somehow, though without ever alluding to the matter, contrived to let him know how much she approved of, and would encourage, his marrying Lili. It was clear to Balint that they all knew that that was why he had come to Jablanka, and that everyone was in favour. Canon Czibulka, or Pfaffulus as he was nicknamed in that house, an old and
intimate
friend of the Szent-Gyorgyis, also discreetly showed that he approved the match by giving a special antenna-like movement of his bushy eyebrows when he first shook Balint by the hand. Pfaffulus had already been at Jablanka for several days as the shoot had been held unusually late and, as Advent had already begun, he came over daily from Nagy-Szombat to say mass in the castle chapel. The priest’s tacit approval warmed Balint’s heart for it made him feel that in that house everyone knew about and looked kindly on his plans to ask Lili to marry him.

All the same he did not see her until all the guests assembled in the lofty stucco-decorated drawing-room which had been the monks’ refectory before the former monastery became the
Szent-Gyorgyis
’ country home. She came in from the library, which was at the opposite end of the room from where Balint was
standing
, seeming almost to glide weightlessly across the highly polished wooden floor. She was dressed in a flowing white tulle gown and she moved with that quiet assurance natural to girls brought up in the highest society. As she crossed the room she nodded to those other guests she had already seen and went up to greet two new arrivals, the guests of honour who had just come from Vienna. Once again Abady smiled as he admired the
impeccable
way in which she moved, reflecting how perfectly she fitted into those grand surroundings and what a perfect background was formed for her by the great white hall-like room, the crimson and gold furniture and the huge family portraits in their
elaborate
frames. For all the apparent frailty of the girl, as she moved
slowly round that luxurious room in her diaphanous creamy white dress, her step as light as that of any butterfly, one could still sense that inner core of steel that was the mark of her race.