They Were Divided (24 page)

The final proof of all this was that Torkut Pasha had been doing all he could to close the Montenegrin border! It was this last move which had meant that the only route left open was to the north through the lands of the Miridiots.

‘Wouldn’t it be better from the South?’

‘Perhaps, but one has to pass the Malissor territory above Elbasa …’

At this the whole group burst into a storm of laughter for ‘
elbasa
’
in Hungarian means nothing less than ‘Fuck off!’

From time to time one of his listeners, bolder than the others, had ventured some mocking pun if only to make fun of the
newcomer
. The general restraint did not last long. Each time Tamas used some outlandish foreign name they did not know, someone would seize upon it, mispronounce it, and turn it into an obscene joke. And after the last remark they were almost falling out of their chairs with laughter, the same men who, a few moments
earlier
, had been making abstruse political arguments with such deadly seriousness that they were ready to fight one another to prove a point. The sad truth was that all of them found anything that did not concern their own country fit only for mockery and laughter. To them such matters were as remote from reality as if they had been happening on Mars; and therefore fit only for schoolboy puns and witty riposte.

Laczok looked round angrily and was about to castigate his audience when the door opened and a waiter came in.

‘Dinner is served, gentlemen. The ladies are already on their way to the supper-room.’

Everyone started to get up and the discussion was over. Most of those present hurried to the door for they were hungry after all that talk and laughter, and no one wanted to keep his wife waiting. For a brief moment Stanislo Gyeroffy stayed behind and went over to speak to Tamas; but it was not kindness or good manners that prompted the gesture. In a haughty, pompous tone, he said:

‘Personally I found what you were saying not without interest. If you’ll sit with us at dinner you could perhaps tell us more?’ and without waiting for a reply he strode out of the room, his orange wig resembling nothing so much as a banner of reaction.

For his part Tamas muttered an obscene expletive and started angrily to roll himself a cigarette.

It was then that he noticed that he was not alone. From a chair behind him he heard a faint whimpering sound, and turning he saw that old Count Adam Alvinczy was lying sprawled in his chair. It was obvious that he had tried to get up to follow the others when he had been stricken by a heart attack. He had fallen back onto the edge of the chair and only his head and shoulders
touched the back-rest. His face was ashen and covered with beads of sweat, and his wide-open eyes held a look of terror.

Quickly Laczok reached his side.

‘Here … here …’ gasped Alvinczy with a rattle in his throat, ‘… on this side … my drops … in waistcoat …’

Tamas acted swiftly. He snatched the vial from the waistcoat pocked, ran to the washroom for some water and a glass, and while hurrying back poured in the medicine. Then he helped the sick man to swallow it, pulled him up into a sitting position,
loosened
his collar and shirt-front, and, soaking his handkerchief with more water, pressed it to old Adam’s heart. Then he sat down and waited.

He waited in silence, watching old Alvinczy closely.

The medicine acted fast. The old man relaxed as the pain
subsided
, his contorted face returned to its normal smoothness and he closed his eyes. His breathing was still rapid but he was no longer gasping for breath as he had been when the attack struck him.

Perhaps I needn’t call a doctor, thought Tamas, as he took the old man’s wrist and searched for his pulse. Then rhythmically he started to stroke the back of Alvinczy’s hand.

For some time he sat there without either of them speaking.

Out in the corridor he heard doors being opened and closed and the sound of people walking about and talking. It must be the card-players, thought Tamas; and, no doubt, the other man’s two sons, Farkas and Akos, were among them not knowing that in the next room their father lay near to death.

Then again there was silence.

Much later Tamas heard the music being struck up again and realized that the supper must be over. Alvinczy seemed to be asleep and Tamas wondered if now he could go too; but he did not want to leave the other alone. Then, in a weak voice, Alvinczy started to speak, ‘I don’t know how to thank you … but I do … very much. If … if you hadn’t been there I’d probably be dead by now.’

‘Nonsense!’ replied Tamas, though he too had thought the same thing.

‘Perhaps it would have been for the best,’ said Alvinczy,
pursuing
the thought. Then after a long pause he said, ‘Oh yes! It would have been better that way.’

‘What sort of talk is that?’ replied Tamas roughly, though with kindness in his tone.

‘You don’t know, you can’t know,’ the old man said several times in a low voice; and then, almost as if he were talking to
himself
, he went on brokenly, telling of his great sorrow and his
disappointment
in his sons.

He had been careful all his life, he said, denying himself any indulgence, any little luxury, so that when he died his four sons would inherit enough to keep them in the style to which his family had always been accustomed. They would not have great
fortunes
, but they would be able to live well if unostentatiously. He had looked carefully over his widely scattered estates and divided them into four units. Then, little by little, he had improved them by constructing new stables and farm buildings, and he had made them profitable. And what had happened? Before his eyes his sons had begun to undo his life’s work. They had spent money recklessly, drinking and gambling as if there were no tomorrow. For years now he had lived in dread of what it would all come to, for hardly a month went by without one of them coming to him with debts to be paid – sometimes huge sums, thousands of crowns at a time – and each time he had paid up, though to do so he had to raise mortgages on most of his property. His finances were in confusion and he too was deeply in debt. Now, if there were any more demands on him, he would have to start selling
everything
that was left …

‘Perhaps it is my own fault. If I had brought them up better perhaps they wouldn’t have turned out like this. I’ve got four sons, you know, and all of them … well, three of them … have proved worthless. They are as bad as each other!’

What on earth, he wondered hopelessly, would become of them? The only one he did not worry about was Adam, for he had married a sensible wife and seemed to work hard. He alone was saved.

‘But, my God! What will happen to the others? Let me not live to see it! Let me be spared standing by while they destroy themselves!’

This was the only time old Alvinczy had bared his heart to
anyone
. Now he talked for a long time, but he had never before uttered a word of what was plaguing his heart. And it was strange that when he did so it should be to a man who was almost a
stranger
, someone he had seen perhaps three times in his life. His
sorrow
was something he had always kept to himself, holding his head high, alone in his dignity and despair. He had never spoken before because he had felt that to do so might harm his sons; but
the iron discipline on which he had prided himself was, just this once, broken down by the pain and fear brought on by the heart attack. Even now, as soon as he had finished, he suddenly regained his confidence, straightened up, turned again to this stocky man he hardly knew, and with every sign of shame, said, ‘I beg you, Sir, to forget all I’ve just been saying. I was exaggerating … I just blurted it all out.’

Tamas interrupted him. ‘The important thing is that you’re better now. Come along, I’ll go home with you,’ and he stood up, helped the old man to his feet, and led him to the door. They walked slowly down the corridor: Count Alvinczy, tall, elegant and distinguished-looking and Count Laczok, stocky and
somewhat
absurd in his old-fashioned evening coat.

When they reached the foot of the stairs Tamas asked for Alvinczy’s cloakroom ticket and went to fetch his coat while the other rested on a sofa by the wall.

‘You don’t have to come with me,’ protested the old man. ‘I can quite well get home by myself.’ But he seemed quite relieved when Tamas would not hear of it and said, ‘Don’t talk nonsense!’

When he had paid off the cab, woken Alvinczy’s valet and seen that his companion was safely in bed, Tamas set off on foot for his home at Bretfu. After an hour or two in that smoke-filled room in the hotel it felt good to be walking through the cold air of a March night.

He walked in high good humour, pleased with the success of his outing, for had he not been able to torment his old enemies? He imagined that this joyous feeling sprang only from his having been able to annoy and embarrass his aunt, his brother and that rascally banker. As he chuckled to himself he thought how
astonished
they would all have been if they had seen him in the role of the Good Samaritan, he whom they had only known, especially his brother, in the role of the heartless old reprobate. Looking only at the ironic side of what had happened that evening it had never occurred to him that his feeling of well-being had sprung from the basic goodness which had prompted his care of the man whose life he had saved.

Walking swiftly along the empty streets he went through the Hidelve district and past the railway station, his fur hat pushed back and his short jacket swinging as he went. His thick country boots made a clatter as he stumped along happier than he had been for some time.

And as he went, he sang. It was an old Parisian music-hall song that had been popular in the days of his youth: 

On he went, swinging his arms and singing at the top of his voice just as if he had been on the stage … but, as he had
forgotten
the rest of the once risque little ballad, all that came out was ‘
Tar
a
tar
a,
tar
a
tar
a,
tar
a
tar
a
tar
a
…’

The supper had ended long before with everyone in a good mood: everyone, that is, except Pityu Kendy. At supper he had sat next to Margit Alvinczy, with whom he had fancied himself in love just as previously he had swooned after Adrienne.

Then he and his bosom friend Adam had been able to pour out their mutual but hopeless passion for Adrienne, discuss her heartlessness and bewail her cruelty while all the time
enumerating
her perfections. But since Adam had married Margit, Pityu had transferred his affections to his friend’s new wife – for
somehow
it seemed only natural to imitate him in everything even to pursuing another unattainable woman. And so it was now to Margit’s husband that he poured out his woes, complaining of his hopeless love in much the same words as they had both used
previously
in discussing her elder sister. And Adam just listened,
serene
in his own happiness, not minding at all that Pityu now sighed forlornly after his own wife. Nothing had changed. They still talked about the sadness of loving someone who scorned the adoring lover: only the object of adoration was not the same. Adam did not know the meaning of jealousy, but Margit’s
reaction
was quite different from that of her sister. Whereas Adrienne had treated Adam and Pityu as if they had been dolls incapable of real feeling and had teased them both with the same remote playfulness that she had treated all the other men who had run after her, and then promptly forgot them, Margit decided to take Pityu in hand and make a man of him. Principally she wanted to wean him from the bad habits of drinking and gambling. In so far as the gambling went, she succeeded; but the drinking was another matter. Here her influence failed.