They Were Divided - Miklos Banffy [13]
Then, as abruptly as she had begun, she fell silent again. After a moment or two she had given a light laugh and said, ‘Oh dear, how I do run on! Prattling away like anything … and such nonsense too. All that chatting about the past has made your old aunt think of … well … so many things.’
So this was what she had wanted to tell him, and for which she had had to prepare herself. She had spoken only so as to be of some help and consolation to him, so as to reassure him that although she had seen at once that he had failed to ask Lili to marry him and that he felt guilty about it, she at least sympathized and did not blame him. Somehow she had made it clear to him that she had understood his reasons perhaps even more clearly than he himself, and that somehow she knew not only that he was still in love with someone else but also that he instinctively thought of the charming Lili as an alien creature from another world. Balint had been deeply touched by his aunt’s delicacy and finesse and even more by the obvious love and goodness that had made her speak of such things. It had been a bitter hour for him and he had needed help and affection: he had been all the more grateful because he had sensed that for him, and him alone, Countess Szent-Gyorgyi had revealed something so intimate of her life and feelings that she would never had admitted to anyone else; and she had done it only because she knew that he had needed help.
Aunt and nephew stayed together for a long time in the cosy intimate little sitting-room, all cushions and soft upholstery, that Countess Elise had made for herself. The carpets were deep and soft, and the furniture comfortable and unpretentious. The walls were covered in some dark material. It was in complete contrast to the grandeur of the rest of the castle where the huge white and gold rooms were filled with elaborate baroque furniture much of which had been gilded. Everything at Jablanka was perfect of its kind, as well as being very grand … but it was also, perhaps, a trifle cold. In the little private sitting-room where the mistress of the house had made her nest, everything, whether large or small, was a souvenir of her Transylvanian girlhood. Most of the quantity of pictures came from her old home at Szamos-Kozard and she even had two little oils of the old manor house before her brother had rebuilt it. There were watercolour portraits of her Gyeroffy parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles; and innumerable little pictures of children, mostly relations, were scattered all round the room, on tables, window sills, and on hanging shelves, along with countless small objects, photographs and miniatures, all of which held for her some memory of times long past and cousins long since departed. All of this had spoken unequivocally to Balint of his aunt’s deep and ineradicable love for her homeland … and also of the spiritual barrier she had never really vanquished that stood between her real self and this grandiose westernized world in which she had lived so many years. That evening, for the first time, Balint had understood the little room’s almost symbolic meaning.
A year had gone by since that last evening at Jablanka and yet, as he wandered along the dark streets in the drizzling rain, he could now see it all in his mind and relive everything that had then happened to him. Once again he saw the two of them sitting in that slightly over-heated room which was so different from everything else in the house. It was like a tiny island, he thought suddenly, which Fate had one day wrenched away from its parent Transylvania and deposited there so far from home.
Reliving those bitter memories during those hours of aimless wandering did nothing to alleviate Balint’s deep-rooted bitterness, so much so that he now felt he could not face a happy social gathering in his present mood. For a moment he wondered if he could make some excuse so as to get out of going altogether, perhaps sending word that he had developed a bad headache, or some such lie, but then, he thought, how could