They Were Divided - Miklos Banffy [170]
‘Look, my dear,’ he said as he took some money and a visiting card from his wallet, ‘I won’t wait for Laszlo this time, but I’m going to leave these two hundred crowns with you because I know I can trust you to use it for Laszlo if something happens and then you’ll be able to buy whatever he needs. And here is my address. If he does take a turn for the worse, or if I can be of help in any way whatever, please send me a telegram at once. You will, won’t you?’
‘Of course!’ she cried. ‘Of course I will; at once. I’ll send for you at once!’ and, as she spoke the words, inwardly she swore to herself, Never! Never! Never! Just so that you can take him away from me? Never that! Never ever that!
They shook hands near the stream. Balint had barely turned away when she was already back at work at her washing. Nevertheless she glanced covertly back at him several times, fearing that he might change his mind and wait for his cousin after all.
If he did that he would certainly take him away from her, especially if Laszlo came back dead drunk, for then it would be obvious that everything she had said about his getting better had been a lie.
She looked many times in the direction of the road until the engine had been started and the car driven swiftly away towards Kolozsvar. Only then did she relax.
Chapter Four
THAT YEAR, FOR THE FIRST TIME, Balint Spent Christmas alone, but he consoled himself by thinking that it would only be that once.
In the years to come Adrienne would be there; and, if God was kind, others too, more and more.
For the great household at Denestornya everything passed as it always had, with the same ceremonies as there had been during Countess Roza’s lifetime. Nothing had changed: the tree was placed in the centre of the dining table, around it heaps of presents on the white tablecloth that had been arranged, as before, by Mrs Tothy and Mrs Baczo. The old butler, Peter, stood by the door, as in every other year. There was one difference: Countess Roza’s throne-like gilt chair was not in its usual place.
Instead Balint stood, slightly to one side just as if his mother had still been there, and handed out the presents to the women and children who came in one by one just as they always had. He wanted no break in the tradition so that next Christmas Adrienne would continue what Roza Abady had done all her life.
When everyone had left and most of the myriad candles in the chandeliers and in the sconces had been snuffed out, Balint stayed there for a long time. He walked from end to end of the immense hall, stopping before the display cabinets, gazing deeply at all the family treasures they contained and also at the objects on the tables that had been placed in the deep window embrasures. They all had their part in his past and that of the family. He looked at everything pensively, almost absentmindedly. It was a strangely varied collection ranging from exquisite pieces of china from Meissen and Vienna to a huge ancient lock of rusty iron which had once fastened the castle’s portcullis. There were also some things which were frankly cheap or ugly, but these were souvenirs of Countess Roza’s youth and had been kept for the sentimental memories they evoked. There was a pottery figure of a girl whose skirt would oscillate if touched, a china pug with bulging eyes which had been given to his mother as a child and treasured by her ever since and so placed side by side with the precious cups of gold and silver and the pieces of fine porcelain – objects that had been handed down from generations of former Abadys.
Balint knew the history of each object: and he swore then that everything must always stay as it always had been.
After a long time he went down to the ground floor. There he put on a warm coat and went out into the dark night. Across the courtyard and down to the churchyard where a new Abady vault had been built up against the church when, at the end of the eighteenth century, there had been no