They Were Divided - Miklos Banffy [115]
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.