They Were Divided (26 page)

The car turned into the narrow road that led to Gazsi’s village. The road curved round one more snow-covered hillside and ahead, a little higher up, could be seen the roofs of the village and on one side, surrounded by tall elm-trees, Gazsi’s old manor house.

As Balint drove on towards the hedge that bordered Gazsi’s property and the gates, which would shortly appear, he found himself passing several little groups of village people all going in the same direction, one ahead of the other as in Indian file. They were walking in silence and with the heavy tread of the Mezoseg people. He sounded his horn and as the men and women drew to one side, some of the men raised their caps in respectful
greeting
. Balint wondered why they all seemed to be going to the manor house, and why they all looked so sad.

A moment or two later he had arrived in front of the portico with its wooden Grecian pillars that framed the entrance to the house. Three steps led up to it and standing at the top were two men, Gazsi’s estate manager and the local Protestant pastor.

‘Where is Baron Gazsi?’ asked Balint.

‘He died, just an hour and a half ago!’ said one of them.

Balint felt his legs giving way under him and he staggered to a bench beside the wall.

Then they told him what had happened.

Baron Gazsi had been writing something all morning. When he had finished he had folded up the sheets of paper and sealed them. A little later he had walked down to the stables and looked into every box giving a lump of sugar to each horse as he always had. Just as the clock chimed the hour of midday he sent for the pastor and the estate manager, sat them down in the sitting-room and gave them his orders. To the priest he had given instructions that the church organ, which had been in bad repair for some time, should be put in order and told them that he accepted the estimate of 500 florins and that he wanted it done at once. He had discussed many small details of the work, told them that when it was done they must send for a man to apply the gold leaf and
specified
that it should be old Kas from Kolozsvar because he was the best. The elaborate decorations above the organ-pipes, which
were a disgrace, must be properly restored and he insisted that before that work was started the pastor should arrange a sensible price with the gilder because he did not want money wasted on anything that was not necessary. Then he had asked the estate manager to bring in the accounts, checked them through himself and drew a line across the last page just beneath them. Then he had written ‘
I have
found
everything
in
order
up
to
this
point
’
and added the date and his signature. Then he had turned to other estate matters, saying that the young calves that had been selected for the market should not be disposed of at once because the current prices were too low. They should wait until the new grass started to sprout in the meadows. On the other hand the buffalo cows should be sold soon before their milk dried up. Up on the Botos, where it was too cold for wheat, they should sow barley and, if the fields of rye which had been sown the previous autumn proved to be full of thistles in the spring, they should be carefully weeded. All these orders he had given in the calmest manner. Occasionally, as he had been speaking, he had glanced at the clock as if he were expecting someone or had shortly been about to leave himself. Just before one o’clock he had said that he had been expecting Balint, but that perhaps he would not be coming. As he said this he had gone to his desk and picked up a small parcel carefully wrapped in newspaper and handed it to the priest, saying that it should be given to Balint if he should turn up later. If he had not arrived by the evening it should be delivered to Balint’s home. Then he had gone into his bedroom and rung for his valet.

The priest and the manager, though not understanding what all this was about, had not thought that there was any reason to be disturbed.

A few moments later Kadacsay had come back into the
sitting-room
, followed by the valet and a footman who carried a mattress which he had told them to lay on the floor. When the servants had been dismissed he started to explain to his astonished
audience
why all this had been done. He had, he told them, taken a dose of strychnine and because he knew that this sometimes caused uncontrollable cramps, he had had the mattress placed there as it would be better and easier than writhing about on the wooden floor-boards! Then he had started to give further
instructions
about suckling pigs and the sheep’s feed …

Shortly afterwards he had looked again at the clock and said, ‘Strange! I don’t feel anything yet, though I’ve taken enough to fell an ox!’

Those had been his last words. A moment later he had lain down and, a few seconds later, had died.

‘Is he very disfigured?’ Balint asked when the pastor and the
manager
had finished their tale.

‘Not at all, my lord. Please come and look.’

They entered the manor house living-room, which was long and wide and obviously served also as a dining-room. In front of one of the windows was a small writing desk and, pushed against one of the side walls, was a plain pinewood table that had served for Gazsi’s meals. In the centre of the room, where this was
usually
placed, there was a mattress and on this lay the dead man
covered
with a white sheet.

Balint kneeled down beside him and drew back the sheet from his head. He looked at his friend’s face for a long time.

Nothing seemed to have changed and if he had not been as pale as wax Balint would have thought that he was merely
playing
some trick on them. His mouth held his usual mocking smile, his woodpecker nose was tilted slightly to one side and his
eyebrows
slanted upwards just as they always had when Gazsi had been telling a joke. One could almost believe that at any moment he would jump up roaring with laughter as he had so often done. And yet there was a difference. Gazsi’s face now held an expression of majestic calm, comprised of a dignity quite new to him – and of contempt, but mainly of contempt.

Balint was struck by the strangeness of it all, for this was not the Gazsi he had known in life. The dead man lying there was someone he did not know, someone who had appeared only in death.

He covered him again with the white sheet and got to his feet.

Then he looked around the room and realized that its
simplicity
and bareness also signified contempt. Though like every
provincial
manor house in Transylvania it must once have contained some good pieces of furniture, there was now nothing of value in it. It was clear that such things had meant little to Gazsi for he had given all his good things to his sister when they had divided their inheritance – furniture, carpets, porcelain, everything. For himself he had kept only a couple of threadbare armchairs and a worn sofa. But along the walls there were long low bookshelves made of bare polished planks of natural wood, and on them were great quantities of books untidily stacked, much used and obviously much read. Balint went up to examine
them and found to his amazement that they were mostly
philosophical
works by such writers as Hegel, Wundt and Schopenhauer. There were also some historical works by Ranke and Szilagyi, and a copy of Renan missing its cover, and several volumes of some German lexicon. Most of the books were tattered and some torn in half … and all were stained and dirty as if they had been covered in candle-wax or thrown about in anger.

Balint started to pick some of them up, but when it was announced that the doctor had arrived, along with the coroner, the prefect and the village notary, all of whom were needed to make out the death certificate, he went quickly out into the open

Outside it was a perfect day. The sky was so clear that it was almost blinding, very pale, white-grey rather than blue, and so savagely bright that it might have been trying to compete with the snow beneath.

So as not to remain surrounded by the crowd of weeping women, or be stared at by the village children who were gathered outside the house, he walked round to the side and took a path that led up the hill. It was already clear of snow and slightly muddy. After he had gone some hundred paces he found a bench under three young birch trees and sat down. Then he undid the sealed package.

Inside there were two envelopes and also a silver cigarette box with an inscription in gold: ‘The Ladies Prize, Debrecen, 1905’. He opened it and inside was a little pile of tobacco dust and a note which read ‘
I
leave
you
this
as
a
personal
souvenir.
It
is
the
only
pos
session
I
value
’
and underneath, in brackets, ‘
You
may
think
it
ugly
,
so
don’t
use
it
if
you
don’t
like
it!
Gazsi
’.

In the larger of the two envelopes there was a long paper headed
AMENDMENTS TO MY WILL
below which was a precise list of his wishes for gifts to each of his servants, some other special provisions, and the fact that he wanted 1,000 crowns to be allotted for restoring the organ. These details had not been
itemized
in the Will held by the notary, though a lump sum had been set aside for them. The next paragraph dealt with
arrangements
for his funeral: he did not wish to be buried anywhere else but to be laid to rest somewhere in the garden near the house – and there was to be no memorial or epitaph. The last section dealt with his horses. Firstly he wrote that the little speckled
gelding
who was too old to work should be shot so that he would not
fall into the hands of the gypsies in his old age. As to the
thoroughbred
mare Honeydew, Gazsi left her to Balint and asked him to take her away immediately. At the bottom of the page was that day’s date, the date of Gazsi’s death, and his signature,
written
in Gazsi’s large awkward writing.

The second letter was for Balint alone. Enclosed with it was Honeydew’s pedigree wrapped in a single sheet of writing paper, on which there were just a few lines about the mare. ‘
As you
agreed
to
let
Honeydew
foal
at
Denestornya
,’
he had written, ‘
I
hope
it
isn’t
pre
suming
to
ask you
to
keep
her
.’
Then followed a few light-hearted,
joking
phrases ending ‘…
my
sister
is
apt
to
be
somewhat
grasping,
but
I
don’t
feel
she’d
want
this
wonderful
animal
as
she
wouldn’t
have
much
use
for
her
!’
He ended with the words
‘Please
don’t
forget
your
promise
about
my
nephews.
I
don’t
want
them
to
turn
out
like
me
’.

Poor Gazsi, thought Balint. In his last moments he had been thinking of his own great unquenched thirst for culture.

Balint’s eyes filled with tears. For a long time he stayed where he was, sitting on the little bench and staring at the snow. He thought how marvellous it was as it slowly melted, disintegrating into tiny particles of ice, thousands of minute crystals gleaming like miniature mountain peaks all turned towards the rays of the sun. It was everywhere pitted with deep little crevasses like spear-thrusts from the direction of the south, deep little holes formed by the sun’s heat. And as it was slowly being destroyed by that very sun so the snow resembled white foam inexorably drawn to that relentless implacable light, to that radiance it so much desired but which was to be the source of its own
destruction
. To Balint the process was like an allegory of all existence … and he thought again about his dead friend.