They Were Divided - Miklos Banffy [114]
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.
Chapter Three
THE 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