They Were Divided - Miklos Banffy [145]
There were those who resented Balint because he had taken the Abady forests in hand and put an end to their poaching his game, but the main cause of their dislike was that they looked upon him as a trouble-maker. This epithet, in their eyes, meant anyone who made the lazy work, who pressed them into service for the new Co-operatives, who was always having officious messages sent to them from the county offices or the Prefect demanding speedy action, whose meddling sent them on tiresome and exhausting journeys connected with infringements of the forestry and game laws, and who was continually pressing for the Land Registry Office to keep its records accurate and up to date. In a word, he ‘made trouble’ – and now there was this unnecessary affair of the notary Simo which had entailed endless paper work. Scribble. Scribble. Scribble.
It was this last which had enraged the Chief Judge, who liked to think himself sovereign in such matters. So what happens, he demanded? Along comes this young Count putting his nose in affairs which do not concern him and who does not even live here but in the county of Torda-Aranyos miles away.
This judge was known as a hard man who liked his own way and before whom the whole county trembled. If he approved of someone, they flourished; but woe betide the man who crossed him. And now there had appeared this meddlesome aristocrat who had somehow stumbled in from an adjoining county and who dared denounce one of his own trusted notaries. Further he had seen fit to denounce him in the capital, thereby by-passing the Judge’s sacred authority. It was intolerable.
The host sat in the place of honour with his long-stemmed meerschaum pipe resting on the tablecloth in front of him. He was wreathed in smiles, delighted at the way everything seemed to be going. He did not say much but sat smiling under his huge tobacco-stained white moustaches. When he did speak thick clouds of smoke coiled upwards from his mouth as from the craters of Etna; but with him the poisonous gases were replaced by words of venom.
On his right sat the Chief Judge, who was a broad-faced, thick-set man with a clipped moustache and greying hair cut to a short bristle. A vertical wrinkle separated his eyebrows, which everyone knew was the mark of a stern man. He too spoke seldom, but when he did, first slowly removing the leathery stump of a chewed cigar from his mouth, everyone else fell silent out of respect for his undoubted authority. His grey eyes were like ice, and when he smiled and showed a glint of white teeth, it seemed to stem not from merriment but only an intention to bite.
Next to him was the station-master and, across the table, Simo’s lawyer, Dr Todor Farkas, who was known in Banffy– Hunyad, though not to his face, as ‘Dr That-is-to-say’, as he used this phrase at every opportunity. Beside him was Simo and then another local lawyer, Balazs Toth. Finally there was the director of the Land Registry Office, then the Sheriff and the popa Gyula Timbus.
Of course they talked of nothing but the case and the news that Dr That-is-to-say had brought, namely that Abady himself had come forward as a witness for the defence. Simo’s lawyer had heard the news that morning in Kolozsvar and now it was being eagerly mulled over. The news was so exciting, and so unexpected, that the gypsies played in vain. Nobody listened to a note.
Everyone