They Were Divided (33 page)

Eager newsmen were standing outside beside the pillars of the portico, and each group of three or four arrested men paused on the threshold as they came out, their guards flanking them, and moved on, only to have their place taken by the next group, as soon as all the cameras had clicked.

Soon it was the turn of Marton Kuthenvary, who had had more experience of newspaper men than most. He knew exactly what was needed and asked his escorting policemen to take him out into the sun before stopping for the picture-taking ritual. He wanted to be sure that the picture was a good one and knew that anything taken in the shadow of the portico might be too obscure for the ‘victim’ to be immediately identified.

The police, whose orders, it turned out, had been only to escort the recalcitrant Members to the door but no further, demurred, but Kuthenvary insisted, cunningly pointing out that the
colonnade
of the entrance was an integral part of the building and that they would not be infringing their orders if they came with him as far as the outer pillars. The argument was reinforced with a couple of good cigars, and the astute Kuthenvary got his way.

The published picture was one of the best. There the ‘victim of tyranny’ stands framed by agents of authority, the very picture of outraged, dignified righteousness. Since he was being forcibly removed from the building Kuthenvary had asked the policemen to hold both his arms as if pinioned and, even when the
photographers
were on the point of getting their distances right, he had stopped everything, crying ‘Wait!’ as he took off his hat and handed it to one of his attendants. This done, he had again struck a pose and said, ‘All right, I’m ready now!’

The result was everything Kuthenvary could have wished. His flowing hair, cut to look like that of the great poet-patriot Petofi, waved dramatically in the wind and his tall figure looked at its most impressive between two little short men in uniform.

Balint reached the square just as the photograph was taken. Then Kuthenvary came down the steps.

‘Hello! Balint, my dear fellow!’ he called out. ‘I’ll send that to my constituents in Csik … a hundred copies … it’ll be excellent propaganda, don’t you think?’

From that afternoon the Parliament building was surrounded by a police cordon.

Nevertheless, three days later one of the excluded members, an obscure, little-known MP called Gyula Kovacs, managed
somehow to climb in over a balcony, jump into the Chamber, fire three shots at Tisza and aim a fourth at himself.

Tisza was unhurt and remained standing calmly at his place. Seeing his assailant fall and assuming that he had killed himself, he continued what he was saying, adding in his precise everyday manner:

‘This is just the doing of some poor miserable madman, who has himself anticipated his just punishment. We should all look upon his action, and his fate, with the compassion due to those who lose their wits.’

From that moment the opposition members did not even try to attend the House. They had a ‘Manifesto of Protest’ published in the papers; but it was received by the general public with lethargy and indifference.

The session was brought to an end as soon as some amendments had been made to the House Rules and some minor legislation passed, unanimously of course. Then followed the summer recess.

Balint did not wait for the official end of the session. He went home to Transylvania.

T
HE STEAM-SAW’S RHYTHMIC WHIRRING
could be heard all over the sawmill compound, through the
mountains
of sawdust, through the neat stacks of prepared planks which rose in high regular blocks beside the tar-covered roofs of the motor-shed, the canteen and the manager’s offices, through the dense pine forests which covered the surrounding hillsides, and far down into the valley of the Retyicel at the head of which the Abady sawmill had been built. The timber-fenced compound was as large as a mountain village.

It was midday and the sun’s bright rays were almost
perpendicular
. There was no shadow anywhere and on the smooth
pillar-like
trunks that had been stripped of their bark in the forest the sunlight glinted with a shimmering yellow glow. The newly cut planks could have been made of yellow-gold velvet and the piles of sawdust were like saffron-coloured snow … and, as always wherever a steam-saw is in action, everything looked as clean as if it had just been scrubbed.

About half an hour before, Abady had ridden down from the ridge of the Fraszinet where he had been inspecting a new
plantation
in the forest. There, the forest-manager, Winkler, and the head forest guard, Andras Zutor (Honey), had walked the
plantations
with him. A few hundred yards away was the forest lodge of Szkrind where they would all eat before starting off for the mountain pass of Kucsulat. Balint’s tent was already on its way with two other foresters – the
gornyiks
–
and a supply of fresh horses because they would have a long way to go if they were to arrive that evening near to the source of the Beles which rose just below the southernmost part of the Abady forests on the slopes of the Ursoia. Balint was to start after the others, and with his fast horse he expected to catch them up about halfway; but in the meantime he had come down to the sawmill where he had to meet one of the directors of the Frankel enterprise to whom Balint was contracted to sell all his timber.

As Balint emerged from the labyrinth of woodpiles a young man appeared, somewhat stealthily, less than a hundred paces away where the compound almost touched the surrounding woodlands. It was Kula, whose full name was Lung Nyikulaj, the grandson of the old headman of the village of Pejkoja whose
inhabitants
Balint had for some time been trying to protect from the extortions of the local officials. He was a well-intentioned youth and for some time had been Abady’s confidential informant.

Kula had hurried down from his village and disappeared across the willow-fringed stream marking the boundary of Pejkoja into the dense woodlands behind. He did not go directly to Meregyo, which was his ostensible objective, but had started from home saying that first he had to visit the canteen manager at Szkrind who wanted to buy some cheeses. From there he would go on to Meregyo to see the judge who had two horses for sale. All this was because everyone in the mountains knew everything about
everyone
else, and had he been seen at Szkrind without good reason, especially when he was supposed to be going to Meregyo, news of this unusual detour would have spread abroad just as if it had been reported in the newspapers. And nobody must get to hear that he had had a clandestine meeting with the
mariassa
–
the lord – for, in that part of the mountains where all the peasants were of Romanian stock, a Hungarian land-owner who was also an aristocrat was inevitably an object of suspicion.

Because of this, Honey Zutor and Kula had concocted the plan between them that the only way such a meeting could be
kept secret was if it should take place, apparently by accident, in an alleyway between those towering blocks of wood where nobody would see them. The
mariassa
would stroll casually out from the side of the mill and Kula would come in from the other side. The day and exact time were settled in advance and, as at midday the Fraszinet ridge could be clearly seen from Pejkoja, all Kula had to do was to keep watch and set out as soon as he saw Balint leave the ridge. Everything had gone according to plan and Kula was already there waiting among the trees when Balint rode into the sawmill compound.

Young Kula was taking a great risk. What he had to tell Abady concerned the nefarious activities of Gaszton Simo, the Hungarian notary for the Gyurkuca district, whose unscrupulous dealings had caused much misery and hardship for the men of the mountains, and who saw to it that no one crossed him with impunity.

Among those who had suffered most were the people of Pejkoja. What Simo had done, and was still doing, was to give aid to the money-lenders so that they exacted extortionate rates of interest when the villagers had had a bad year and needed money to tide them over. Then when they could not repay the loans, he arranged foreclosures. In this he was partnered by the rascally Romanian
popa
,
the parish priest of Gyurkuca. Some years before the worst of the money-lenders, one dark snowbound night, had been brutally murdered, and his house, with all his papers, burnt to the ground. Despite this setback Simo had not ceased to
plunder
the ignorant peasants in the mountain villages, until most of the poor people of Pejkoja had been dispossessed of their land and had been forced to pay rent for what had formerly belonged to them. Abady had tried his best to protect them and had offered to take up their case himself and pay any legal costs, but the
villagers
had refused, partly because they did not trust the
mariassa’s
motives and partly out of fear of the priest. Even so Abady had tried to take the matter into his own hands and file a complaint against Simo, which, he had hoped, would lead to the notary being transferred elsewhere. This had failed because Simo’s superiors in the county town had told Abady that he had no legal grounds on which action could be taken. So, until now, all his well-intentioned efforts had been in vain.

Most of this had happened more than six years before. Since then Abady had not let up in his search for evidence which would condemn the rascally notary, but so far he had not been able to
find anyone among the men of the mountain who dared provide him with what he wanted.

Now it appeared that something else, nothing to do with the money-lending racket, had at last come to light.

For many years it had been the custom for the peasants to pay their taxes to the notary’s office, a practice which Simo had always maintained was not an obligation on his part but merely a service he was glad to be able to provide. Recently there had begun to be trouble and several of the mountain farmers had received ‘reminders’ from the tax office that the last demands had not been paid. Simo told everyone concerned that this must be due to some clerical error and that he would take care of the
matter
for them. No one knew what he had done, but at least the threatened bailiffs did not appear. Now, suddenly, the situation got worse and in Pejkoja alone three men found themselves faced with having their belongings seized and auctioned if they did not immediately disgorge what they had already handed over to Simo. One of them was Kula’s grandfather.

The proof of Simo’s guilt was what he now handed to Abady. It consisted of a receipt signed by Simo, the order for seizure and sale from the bailiff’s office, and a power of attorney for Balint on which old Juon aluj Maftye had put his mark.

The midday siren had just sounded when Balint bade farewell to his employees at the sawmill, mounted his dappled grey horse and trotted swiftly away. In half an hour he had arrived at the pass.

He had gone alone without a groom or forester, partly because he knew the mountains so well he did not need a guide, and partly because no mountain pony could have kept pace with his horse. He always did this when not on official business or out stalking, for the forests seemed to him at their most beautiful when he rode through them alone. So he would send the packhorses on ahead and follow at his own speed.

On this day the ostensible reason for the expedition was to hunt wolves. Reports had been received from shepherds grazing their flocks on the clearings high on the Ursoia that wolves had been seen prowling at night and that they had already done much damage. It was true that this report was ten days old when it reached Balint in Kolozsvar and that wolves rarely stayed for long in any one district. Still, it was just possible that they might still be there and so Balint had thought it worth a try.

It was sheer chance that wolves had been reported on the Ursoia at that moment, but there was nothing haphazard about Balint’s desire to spend a few nights alone in the mountains. If this pretext had not come his way he would have thought up something else … anything that could be used to camouflage his real reason for going there which was simply to meet Adrienne where they could be alone in a place they both loved.

They had planned a visit to the mountains long before, but every time they had talked of it, it had been as of some
unrealizable
dream, some bliss that the unknown future might hold for them; for until recently they could find no way of arranging it without news of their tryst in the mountains being everywhere noised abroad. Now, at the beginning of summer, an opportunity had suddenly and unexpectedly presented itself.

Since Margit Miloth had married Adam Alvinczy and moved to a small manor house her father owned at Magyar–Tohat, she had begun to poke her sharp little beak of a nose into the running of her father’s estates. Old ‘Rattle’ Miloth, as he did about
everything
, complained loudly, shouting to all and sundry that he was being robbed by his own daughter; but Margit took no notice and arranged for her husband to look over all her father’s holding explaining that Adam must have some occupation and that this was as useful as any. As a result she had discovered that Count Miloth owned some forestland high in the Upper Aranyos, not much, a mere 900 acres, mostly of apparently unprofitable mixed beech forest. Of course Adam had to go and inspect it and it proved to be quite a nice little forest with a lot of handsome beech-trees, which had little value up there, but there was also a smallish stand of pine, most of it young, for the local peasants had long ago taken to stealing any timber worth felling. This, Margit decided, must be changed and the Miloth forests properly guarded. It was, she declared, a wicked waste to abandon their property like that, and if not properly guarded the next thing would be that the young saplings would be stolen for sale as Christmas trees. A forest lodge was built on her orders and an experienced forest guard was engaged and installed there.

All this had happened the previous year.

At the beginning of May Margit’s small son developed
whooping
-cough and the doctor recommended that as soon as he was well enough he should be taken to the mountains for a change of air.

Margit had seen no reason to go to some expensive resort miles away when they had their own little lodge at Albak which,
at an altitude of twelve hundred metres, was certainly high enough. The little house there was clean and new, and it had a marvellous view. They would be able to stay there for two or three weeks, which would cost them nothing, breathing in
mountain
air that was as clean and fresh as any in the high Alps.

And so it turned out that at the end of June Margit and her son, together with the maid, who was also the child’s nurse, and the cook, moved to the lodge for two or three weeks. The forest guard went to sleep in the stable, and a summer oven was built close to the house. The lodge only had two rooms and a little kitchen, but it was quite enough for the three women and the child.

It was Margit’s visit to the mountains which had made it
possible
at long last for Balint and Adrienne to make their dream come true. Adrienne would go up to visit her sister for a few days and then, saying that she wanted to go on directly to Almasko, which would take her by way of the Beles and Banffy-Hunyad, she could easily slip over to meet Balint on the Ursoia which was near the source of the Beles and only some three hours’ walk from the Upper Aranyos. There she would be able to sleep in Balint’s tent, and the following day walk down through the Valko woods to the government mill on the Szamos river where the
carriage
from Almasko would be waiting for her.

They had just worked it all out when news came that wolves had been seen on the Ursoia. This delighted Balint as it gave him a perfect reason to go up the mountains and to go alone … for it was still important that Adrienne’s name should be protected from common gossip.