They Were Divided (34 page)

It was quite a distance to the high ridge of the Kaliniassa. They had to go up the valley of the Szamos and through the Valko estate lands, and even then there was another ridge to pass. It was dusk before Balint’s little group arrived on the Ursoia and
darkness
had fallen by the time his tent had been erected. Then Honey Zutor and the
gornyiks
set off once again for the Kaliniassa with strict orders not to move from there or wander about in the forest until Balint came down himself. At the Kaliniassa there was a log cabin and a barn where the horses could be stalled, for after the news that wolves were in the area it was too dangerous to turn them loose to graze in the forest meadows. On the way wolf tracks had been seen, though it was impossible to say if they were new or a few days old.

When Balint was alone he dined by the light of a small lamp off the bread and bacon he had brought with him and then sat outside the opening. He did not light a fire, but just sat there quietly. It was a glorious starlit night with the countless stars of heaven shining brightly in the dark sky. He thought he had never seen so many, and the Milky Way was like a vast river of light, its darker patches like islands, that wound its way from one
horizon
to the other. The great constellations were like letters of fire in the sky and, in Balint’s imagination, seemed to be making their way ever closer to him so as eventually to disclose some ageless secret message even to that worm-like creature that was man, the secret, perhaps, of life and death … and of eternity …

The distant horizons could still just be made out, especially where it seemed that some tiny reddish star could be glimpsed trembling through the tips of the sharp fang-like pines that
covered
the mountain ridges in front of him. Occasionally, and very far away, a dog could be heard barking in the valleys below. Then silence, only silence: but it was not the silence of an empty room, solitary and deadly; rather was it a living silence, a silence that pulsated with the life of the great forests.

Balint stayed where he was for a long time, alone outside his tent in the cold quiet night. His soul was filled with the beauty by which he was surrounded; and he fancied that he could almost hear Adrienne’s light steps as if she were already hastening towards him along forest paths paved with stars. Though they would not be together until the following day it was as if their desire for each other throbbed in unison on the mountain ridges that lay between them.

Two days before Adrienne had arrived at Margit’s little lodge. She was not the only guest. Pityu Kendy was already there and making himself extremely useful because, with the family there, there was too much work for the forest guard who found himself not only having to look after the two ponies, scythe the grass and bring it in for their fodder and bedding, but also to go down to Albak to fetch milk and poultry and Margit’s letters. So Pityu was at once put to work cutting wood and splitting kindling for the fire, cleaning the horses’ tack and also, which was far more important, pushing the perambulator along the mountain paths, seeing that it was first in the sun, then in the shade, and then in the sun again. Here in the mountains this was no longer women’s work, for there were more stones than soil on the rough tracks
round the lodge. Pityu did everything he was asked with joy in his heart, for since he had transferred his hopeless love for Adrienne into an even deeper devotion to Margit, he was in total bondage to her. It was a happy bondage because Margit never teased him, as her sister had done, or saddened him by seeming to flirt with other men, as Adrienne had, but just accepted his
hopeless
devotion and listened to his litanies of love with an almost motherly tenderness and sympathy. Sometimes she would scold him, taking him to task for his tendency to drink too much, but she always treated him as a human being worth scolding and not as some sort of toy, which was how Adrienne had treated all her admirers. And the more she scolded the happier he was, because it meant that at least she had some use for him even if it was only splitting logs. As a result Pityu was happy; and it did not matter to him that he had to sleep at the other end of the barn from the forest guard, nor that he had to wash at the well as he was not allowed in the house until the rooms had been cleaned.

Adrienne’s coming did not make him any happier, for it was difficult for him to forget that, before Margit had married Adam Alvinczy, both men had vied with each other in their
protestations
of eternal love for her elder sister. Pityu was always
embarrassed
when he found himself in company with the two sisters together. He was afraid that Adrienne would laugh at him. He was afraid to open his mouth in front of her, afraid to remain silent, and afraid even to look at Margit lest his love for her should be too obvious. He felt very awkward.

It was a great relief to Pityu when, on the second day of Adrienne’s stay, a little mountain pony arrived from the Szamos brought by a lad employed as a servant by one of the Gyurkuca farmers. The boy said that the pony had been hired down in the valley for some
doamna
–
lady – so that on the following day she could ride down to the Beles where her carriage would be waiting.

A relief that Adrienne would be leaving? Yes, thought Pityu; but that night, lying in the darkness of the barn, the dismaying thought came to him that of course he would be expected to act as Adrienne’s escort and so it would be most impolite of him if he did not at once offer to go with her.

What a disaster! Two precious days of his stay with Margit would be lost, for he certainly wouldn’t be able to get back before the evening of the next day at the earliest. It was also a very long walk. Not so bad while they were going downhill, but afterwards,
climbing up again – why, it would take at least six hours! Pityu was all too conscious that with his increasing girth and short fat legs he was no mountaineer. Moreover he would probably get lost; and even if he didn’t he would be dog-tired by the time he got back. Worse than that was the realization that he would have to spend hours alone with a woman with whom for years he had
fancied
himself in love and to whom he had spoken only of love. What could he do now? What could he say to her? How should he behave? Should he try to justify his desertion in favour of her sister? It seemed to him that whatever he might say would only be an admission that all those sighs of love and years of adoration had been no more than moonshine and empty rhetoric!

Poor Pityu did not know which way to turn; and it weighed on him all the more that he did not want to admit to himself that neither the old love nor the new had ever been real, that it was all a pose, and a habit. When he and Adam made such a
performance
of being in love with Adrienne, they could console each other with mutual complaints about how cruel she was to them both. Even now, when the adoration had been transferred to Adam’s wife Margit, he could still pour out his heart to Adam who was not in the least jealous any more than he had been when they both fancied themselves in love with her sister. If he were now to face up to reality he would have to admit to himself that none of it had ever been more than play-acting. Poor Pityu lay awake racked with the impossibility of finding any solution to his problems, and logical thought was not made any easier firstly because at the far end of the barn the forest guard Gligor was snoring loudly, and secondly, because though the straw bed was comfortable enough, the old blanket that covered him stank of stale sweat and there was an equally noisome smell from the boots of the boy from Gyurkuca that were hanging up to dry nearby.

It was so difficult to think straight in these uncomfortable
surroundings
that Pityu found himself repeatedly reaching under the drinking trough for the sizeable flask of old brandy that he had hidden there. It had had to be hidden because Margit had
forbidden
him to touch a drop while he was there; but it was his only comfort, and after several generous swigs he finally fell asleep – though still without finding any solution to his woes.

He was up at dawn. His first job was to rub down the newly arrived pony, brush it and prepare the animal just as he had been taught during his period of military service as a hussar. When
Adrienne’s bags were brought out from the house he fastened them with professional skill to the wooden saddle and then stood there, in hob-nailed boots and with a rucksack on his back,
waiting
for Margit and Adrienne to come out. Gligor, also dressed ready for a journey, and the boy from Gyurkuca, waited with him.

It was eight o’clock before the sisters came out of the house and walked over to where the pony was waiting.

Pityu at once offered to go with Adrienne. He begged her to accept his services, perhaps a shade too fervently for during the long wait he had paid several swift visits to the barn to get some Dutch courage from the clandestine brandy-flask.

Margit did not give Adrienne time to reply but answered swiftly, ‘Certainly not! You’re not leaving here!’ Then she laughed and said, ‘What an idea! Leaving two women alone without a man to protect them! It’ll be quite enough if Gligor goes.’

‘I don’t need him either,’ said Adrienne. ‘The boy knows the road; he came up it only yesterday.’

But Pityu insisted. ‘Impossible! Going alone through the forest with some lad you don’t know! I can’t allow it, I can’t! I can’t possibly let you go like that, I can’t!’ And, holding his beaky nose high in the air, he started gesticulating wildly.

Margit turned sharply towards him and said, ‘What a way to talk! If I didn’t know there was no liquor in the house anyone’d think you’d been drinking!’

Brought up short by such a suspicion Pityu stopped insisting at once, and from then on concentrated so hard on being careful that he hardly said another word.

The sisters said their goodbyes and Adrienne set off on foot along the ridge. The forester went first, followed by Adrienne and behind them the boy leading the pony.

Margit waited until they reached the second turning on the path and then called out after them, ‘Addy! When you get to the top, send back Gligor if you don’t need him any more. The post arrives today and I’d like him to go down to the village.’

‘All right, I’ll send him back,’ called Adrienne, and the little band disappeared from view. Young Countess Alvinczy gazed after them for a moment or two, a tiny smile on her face. Then she turned abruptly to Pityu and said roughly, ‘Well? What are you standing about here for? Take off that rucksack and split some wood. No lunch for anybody who doesn’t work!’

Clumsily the young man started to take the bag off his back, and as he did so Margit looked hard and suspiciously at him.

Balint had been waiting since dawn at Piatra Talharilor – the Thieves’ Stone – just where the Abady forests met the
common-lands
of Valko and the district of Ambak. The four towers of rock dominating the steep hilltop meadow gave the place its name.

He stood there watching the little road which started far away down by the bed of the Aranyos, wound its way along the ridge which marked the watershed between the valleys and, about two kilometres from where he stood, dipped suddenly down beside the edge of the sheep pastures and disappeared towards the upper stream of the Beles. With his binoculars he could see a long way.

Finally, at about ten o’clock, what he was waiting for appeared: there, in the far distance, was Adrienne riding the pony, and the lad from Gyurkuca was leading the way.

He left the rock and met them on the saddle of the ridge. After a brief greeting, Adrienne dismounted and Balint led the boy and the pony to the shepherds’ hut at the bottom of the
meadow
and told him to wait there until they came to fetch him in the morning. Then he came back to Adrienne and at once they started upwards on the mountain path which wound its way ever higher, round a dense stand of pines which covered the upper slopes, through labyrinths of huge rocks and scattered junipers, until they arrived at the summit of the Ursoia.