They Were Divided - Miklos Banffy [179]
He had already welcomed the chief judge of the district and the doctor from Iklod and led them towards the ramshackle barn that stood in a corner of the manor house grounds.
That morning the coffin had been brought there and set up on a bier, according to Dr Simay’s instructions. He had ordered it so because there would not have been enough room for the mourners to pay their last respects in Laszlo’s little cottage. The inside of the barn had been decorated, again on Simay’s orders, with branches of pine cut from the woods that Mihaly Gyeroffy had planted but which now belonged to Azbej, as the little lawyer did not fail to point out so as to show everyone what a generous fellow he was.
When Abady arrived with Julie Ladossa, Azbej hurried forward on his short legs to greet them, bowing obsequiously, the image of grief-stricken sorrow, even though he had no idea who the lady was that Balint had brought with him. ‘Such a blow! Such a terrible blow!’ he whispered with his tiny mouth, holding his hat in one hand and with the other repeatedly wiping his eyes with a huge handkerchief. Backing before them with more bows and protestations of devotion to the deceased noble Count, he led them to the barn. They could see little more of him than the top of his round bristling pate of black hair.
At the door two gendarmes in full-dress uniform stood at attention. They were there not only for good form but because the coffin had not yet been closed. Its lid was leaning against the barn wall. The Chief Judge and the doctor stood together by the hedge smoking and nearby were the dark-clad employees of the funeral director.
Only Dr Simay was inside the barn. He had had the chairs from Laszlo’s house brought there and placed in a line in front of the open coffin. He was sitting on one of them.
When Balint and Julie Ladossa came in he stood up and went to greet them. Suddenly he stopped in his tracks and with both hands touched his glasses as if he could not believe what he saw. Julie Ladossa stopped too. For a few moments they stared at each other, then Simay bowed coldly. She nodded in acknowledgement.
Now they stepped forward to the bier, Abady and the unknown lady to one side and Dr Simay to the other. He stood there for a moment at the head of the coffin and then, with a hard glance at Julie Ladossa, suddenly grabbed the shroud and disclosed the body.
There was something vengeful in the quick movement as if to say ‘See, this is your doing! This is what became of the son you abandoned!’
Julie Ladossa did not move. She looked for a long time at the prematurely aged man with the thin wasted face and parchment-like skin and grey hair at his temples. It was the face of an Egyptian mummy, but who was he? Could it be the same being she had remembered through so many long self-accusing nights, only as a baby, as a three-year-old, a growing boy who still kept the round rosy features of babyhood? She had had to imagine him as a youth, counting the years so as to guess what the growing man had looked like … but this, this skeletal corpse, with a razor-sharp aquiline nose and long moustaches, dressed in a morning coat and starched collar and patent-leather shoes? There were no memories which tied him to her. In his petrified calm he was as strange to her as some unknown inanimate object.
She tried to force herself to kiss his face, but she couldn’t do it; so she made the sign of the cross with her finger on the dead man’s forehead and then stepped back beside Balint who had previously placed his wreath at the foot of the bier.
From outside came the sound of a powerful car. It was Dodo Gyalakuthy. She was followed by Mrs Bogdan Lazar from Dezsmer. Both of them brought wreaths which they placed beside Balint’s, and both of them said a short prayer beside the coffin. And to them too the dead man was a stranger, seeming to bear no resemblance to the Laszlo with whom they had