They Were Divided (51 page)

Gornergrat, 3, 300
metres
above
sea
level
.

O
N A NARROW RIDGE OF GRANITE
there stood a small hotel built of wood on stone foundations. A broad terrace stretched across the front of the building, looking over a deep abyss. All around there was perpetual snow and, directly beneath, glaciers. Beyond these was a further immense valley shaped like a giant cauldron, so deep that from above it seemed almost unreal and the occasional houses as small as grains of rice. Beyond the cauldron was a wall of mountains over which towered the Matterhorn, a solitary peak which shot high in the air with an almost perpendicular rock-face culminating in a narrow
granite
spike so sharp that it was like some giant claw reaching out to the sky above.

The hotel could only be reached by cable-car. Balint had arrived at midday, called there by Adrienne who had chosen this place because, in the middle of July, there would be few other guests, for in those days tourists only came to such high altitudes in August. And also because it was little more than an hour’s drive from Montana where was the sanatorium to which her daughter had been taken when she became ill at school. Adrienne had been there since February.

Balint spent his time wondering why she had sent for him and what it was she wanted to tell him. Her telegram had included the words ‘
there
are
decisive
matters
we
must
discuss
…’

His heart had constricted. What did she mean by the cold
formal
phrase ‘decisive matters’? What could there be that she was not able to write in a letter, that she had to tell him herself? What sort of danger could be threatening them now? In her last letter Adrienne had written that her daughter had suffered a lung hæmorrhage. It had been a short letter, and then there had been nothing for two weeks, though before that she had written nearly every day.

Then, five days ago before had come this telegram with every detail of their meeting carefully planned.

For what seemed an eternity Balint waited alone for Adrienne
to arrive, alone with dismal thoughts and nagging distress and foreboding.

He must have walked up and down the terrace at least fifty times before he was able to pull himself together and force himself to think about other things. Otherwise I shall go crazy, he said to himself.

There were plenty of other matters to worry about.

At the end of June the Heir had been assassinated at Sarajevo, in a double tragedy which had taken the life not only of Franz-Ferdinand but also of his wife, the only being he had ever loved and probably the only person who had ever loved him. At the news of his death the Hungarian people had breathed more easily, for they all knew he was no lover of their country and no one, as yet, had imagined that his murder might lead to war. In this their feeling was reinforced by the general indifference with which the Heir’s death had been greeted in Vienna itself. He had even been buried with far less ceremony than his rank would
normally
have demanded and Balint had been one of the few
politicians
in Budapest who judged that this was a grave error, for if Austria-Hungary was to maintain her position as a great power it should at once have realized that the assassination had been the direct result of a Serbian conspiracy hatched in Belgrade and should have been treated as such. To those farsighted few the future seemed full of foreboding.

The prospects were indeed dark. Any military retaliation would inevitably explode into war, that war that had already twice seemed inevitable; once in 1908 after the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and then again, in the previous year, when the Balkan conflict had started.

There seemed to be only one hope. A royal prince had been brutally murdered and it was unlikely that any European
monarch
would wish to side with those who had killed the heir to a brother kingdom.

If the Ballplatz were to be sufficiently adroit to exploit this aspect of the crisis and demand satisfaction without raising the spectre of official Serbian complicity, if it were possible to do this without giving rise to the assumption that Austria was seeking an excuse to invade and annex Serbia, then perhaps war might be avoided.

This was not impossible. With skilful diplomacy it might just be achieved, but the crucial question still remained – was this what Berchtold really wanted and was he sufficiently able to
bring it off? So far his handling of the Balkan problem did not give rise to hope. Maybe he could do it … maybe …?

It had never seemed that he wanted war, and indeed until now he had managed to avoid it, even if only by dint of shameful concessions. Would it be the same now?

But if he failed, what then? What would be the fate of Hungary, unprepared as she was, with an antiquated army and a leadership composed only of those who had always been bitterly opposed even to discussing anything that concerned the defence of the nation?

Balint tried to force himself to think only about such matters, to drown his personal worries in analysing the world’s problems; but he failed. Subconsciously he could not shake off a sense of some deep personal tragedy and his heart seemed to beat at the back of his throat.

Adrienne did not arrive until after four o’clock.

‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t start when I wanted to.  Clemmie was so restless that I had to wait until she calmed down.’

She was very pale. There were dark shadows under her eyes, and she was worn out after a succession of sleepless nights. She had lost weight and the skin was stretched tight over her
cheekbones
. Her chin seemed sharper, perhaps because she was so much thinner, perhaps because of what she had decided she must tell him. She seemed unusually solemn, and her manner was distant.

They sat down facing each other at one of the tables on the terrace.

‘What is it … what is it you have to tell me?’ asked Balint
hesitantly
. He felt so self-conscious that he could hardly get out the words.

Adrienne’s eyes opened wide and her golden irises gazed straight at Balint. After a few moments’ silence she started to speak, very slowly: ‘We can never get married! I have to take back my promise.’

‘But that is ridiculous!’ he cried, almost jumping out of his seat.

‘Wait a minute! You must let me explain.’

‘Explain? How can you explain such a thing?’

‘Be patient with me, Balint … and please don’t interrupt, it’s difficult enough without that!’

Clemmie, she said, had been brought up to the sanatorium at Montana after her first hæmorrhage. She had needed careful round-the-clock nursing and had to be watched every minute of the day and kept to a strict régime of meals and rest-times and lying in the sun. It had not been easy for the little girl was wilful and rebellious and would not listen to anyone except her mother. The doctors and nurses alone could do nothing with her if her mother was not there beside them. It seemed that the girl had confidence only in her. At first she had even been suspicious of Adrienne, but as her condition had improved so had her trust in her mother.

After a while it had seemed that the child was getting better. She had put on weight and her recurrent fevers had diminished and they had even said that maybe soon she would be able to come down to a milder climate. Then came a second haemorrhage. A new lesion had opened on the other side of the lung. This was usually fatal and Adrienne had been told that if she left the sanatorium the child would be dead in a few weeks. It would be by staying where she was and strictly obeying the
doctors
’ orders that her life could be prolonged. If she did that then she might live for a few years – perhaps five or six, perhaps ten or even twelve – but no more. That was the verdict of the specialist, and everything that Adrienne had read told her the same thing. And even this would only be if she stayed in the high mountains with the most expert nursing.

‘So you see what the situation is. I have to make a choice and it is only natural that I should choose to stay with my child.’

‘But there’s no reason why we shouldn’t marry? Why should all this stand in our way? I’d stay up here with you if I had to.’

Adrienne interrupted him.

‘You know that is absurd!’ she said. ‘For you to give up
everything
, all your work, your home, everything that you have created and live for … just to live up here moving from one sanatorium to another. It’s impossible! I wouldn’t accept it! I couldn’t!’

‘Why not, if I wanted it?

‘No! Never! Not that!’

Adrienne now started speaking more softly, and as she did so she reached across the table and took Balint’s hand in hers.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘There are other things too, things we have to think about if we marry and live together here. We’d still have the same awful worry, always fearing what we both crave for, what our bodies crave for! I could never go on like that! Could I
give birth to your child here? Here, surrounded by all these consumptives?’

Balint bowed his head without saying anything. For a while he gazed out over the valley. Then he turned to her and said, very slowly: ‘How can this sacrifice make any sense? You say she only has a few years; so what does it matter if it is five or six, or ten, or twelve? If there is no hope of her ever getting better, if sooner or later – it may sound heartless but I have to say it – if there is no chance of recovery why do we have to destroy ourselves when there is no hope? It would all be in vain. If that is to be her fate, does it matter if it’s sooner or later?’

‘Don’t think I haven’t thought about it, though it’s a dreadful thing for a mother to do. Oh, yes! The thought came, though I wish it hadn’t … but it’s impossible! How could I leave her here knowing that I’d be responsible for her death? For she will die soon if I go away, if I abandon her … and just think, think! If we were to have children of our own we’d never be free of the
memory
of what we’d done. Every time we looked at our children, every time we kissed and caressed them, I’d remember that it had been for them that I’d forsaken this fatherless child and left her here to die alone. No! No! No! The horror of it!’

For some time they sat there without speaking, both with their own sombre thoughts. Finally Balint broke the silence
between
them.

‘You would throw away your happiness for someone who doesn’t love you and never has loved you?’

‘It’s true,’ she replied softly, almost as if she were ashamed of admitting it. ‘It’s true enough, but I have to do it, it is my duty. You see, I know that she’s clinging to me now because she believes that only I can help her.’ Now Adrienne raised her voice until she was almost shouting at him. ‘What else can I do? Every night she clutches at me and cries, “You won’t let me die, will you? You won’t let me die?”. I have to stay with her. What else can I do?’

Balint stood up and walked over to the balustrade of the terrace and leaned on it looking into the distance. After a moment Adrienne joined him there. For a long time they just stood side by side without speaking. The daylight faded into evening and soon the valley below was in complete darkness. Only the mountain tops were still lit by the dying sun. Now and again one of them would say something, a few disjointed words that were little more than punctuation to what they left unsaid.

Then Balint said: ‘Why should we separate now? Why do we have to decide? Why now? Something will come up … we can wait.’

Much later Adrienne murmured: ‘I will always fight for what we want, in every way I’ll do everything I can,’ and fell silent again. After a long time she said: ‘It may be a very long time. With proper care she may live for ten years.’ Several minutes later she murmured: ‘To wait so long? We’ve waited so many years already; and I am so tired.’

‘I’ll wait for ever! Until the time …’

For a long time they did not speak. It was now quite dark and a few stars appeared in the sky.

‘I’ll have to go back soon. I’m afraid she’ll be waiting for me, that she won’t sleep until I come. And she has to sleep a lot. It’s important for her … I have to go!’

But she did not move and Balint realized that she still had something to tell him, something that was even more painful for her than what had already been said. She was a long, long time making up her mind to speak and, when she did, it was very softly as if she were talking to herself, though none the less determined:

‘We are no longer young enough to make plans for the future. You are thirty-six, I will soon be thirty-four. Time passes; and you cannot wait for a long, long time,’ she said with renewed emphasis. Then she paused again before saying: ‘It would add to my grief if I knew I had forced this waiting on you … made you so … so … lonely. That is why I have to know you are free and … and not thinking any more about me.’

Balint did not answer but hid his face in his hands. The night grew colder as they stood there silently together.