They Were Divided - Miklos Banffy [168]
‘Fabian? Who is this Fabian?’
‘Ugh!’ said the girl. ‘He is a bad man, that Fabian! He always takes him with him … and there he makes him drink, and … and carouse … and it is so bad for him. He’s a worthless scoundrel, that Fabian!’
‘If I knew where he was at Szamos-Ujvar I’d drive in and find him.’
‘You can’t go there, not there! It’s terrible!’ cried Regina, and her eyes filled with tears. ‘That Fabian, he takes him to see bad women, wicked women … that’s how he’s ruining him. The Count is so ill, so very ill and that’s why … and he makes him drink and drink … and …’
She stopped without saying the last word but balled up her hand into a fist and made as if she were hitting someone with it. Then she picked up the shirt again and started to rub it with such fury that if it had been the hated Fabian it would have been as if she were doing her best to choke all life out of what she held in her hands.
She turned away from Balint and, as she did so, she bent forward and huge tears fell from her face like a rain of large diamonds on the wet cloth she was holding so fiercely.
There was a fallen tree-trunk facing the girl. Balint sat down on it and waited for quite a long time. Finally the girl finished her work and stood there panting in front of him. Then he asked again when Laszlo would be back.
‘It’s no use waiting for him,’ said the girl. ‘Even if he does come soon he’ll be in a dreadful state, dreadful. He’ll mess up the room again … and I scrubbed it this morning early. Oh, I can do it! I do everything, the washing-up, the scrubbing, the airing, everything!’
She seemed overcome with sorrow. Then she sat down on the edge of a little bench, with her back very straight and her head inclined, staring at nothing.
‘Doesn’t he have any other servant?’
‘I am not his servant, I … I do it because I want to. I can’t bear to see … to see a gentleman like the Count … such a great gentleman … to see him … so uncared-for …’
‘Didn’t he have an old man called Marton looking after him? What happened to him?’
The girl waved her hand in the air.
‘He’s useless. He just cooks and cleans the Count’s boots, nothing else. He’s gone off again now, probably to lay snares in the woods. It’s the only thing that interests him. I do everything here because I can’t bear to see the filth he’d live in if I didn’t. No one knows I do it. It has to be in secret. I can only come when my father isn’t around and can’t see me leaving the shop. I can work here today because he’s gone to Kolozsvar. Most times I can only do it at night, or very early in the morning, because if he catches me I get a beating.’
She stopped and again looked straight ahead of her.
The kerchief fell from her head and her long Titian hair fluttered in the slight breeze. Sitting on the bench she was like a statue with her firm breasts straining the thin cloth of her blouse. She was very beautiful, a rose of Sharon not yet fully open but no longer a bud. Tears brimmed under her long lashes and then again rolled down her cheeks.
‘How old are you, child?’ asked Balint, trying to distract her from whatever she was thinking.
‘Fifteen,’ she muttered, but still went on staring in front of her. Then suddenly she broke out in a wail of complaint, though Balint could not tell whether she had sensed the sympathy in him or whether she was so filled with sorrow that she could not keep it to herself.
She spoke in broken phrases, with no words directly connected.
From her poured the story of how, some five years before, when Laszlo had been confined to his bed with pneumonia, she had watched by his bedside and nursed him back to health. Since then she had done everything for him, even stealing brandy when his credit at her father’s shop had been exhausted. Soap too, and paraffin.
She did everything. Always more and more, but always in vain, quite in vain.
‘In vain? What do you mean, in vain?’ asked Balint in astonishment.
‘Just that! In vain. He doesn’t speak to me … except when I bring him