They Were Divided - Miklos Banffy [193]
Resolutely, but with a sombre air, he turned and walked quickly away, back through the drawing-rooms and the dining-hall. Then he descended the wide stone stairs, with their rococo stucco ceiling and ancient faded Gobelins tapestries. It was a stairway fit for kings.
He went down very slowly, keeping very carefully to the very centre of the carpet; step after step, solemnly and slowly until he arrived in the dark gloom of the entrance hall, stone-faced, like a man entering his own tomb.
Early in the afternoon Balint’s car drove the full circle of the horseshoe-shaped entrance court with its enclosing walls topped by baroque stone statues, and rumbled swiftly through the arched gateway.
He was driven so fast that in ten minutes they had reached the main road, but there they had to slow down, for the highway was crowded with people from Torda and wagons loaded with bales of hay. They too were on their way to the railway station at Aranyos-Gyeres.
From time to time the throng was so thick that the car had to be stopped. Everyone on the road was a reservist who had been called to the colours. They were mostly in groups of between fifty and sixty men, but sometimes they were much larger, perhaps of more than a hundred. They marched in military fashion, four to a row, and on each side of the road stood women and girls crying as they waited to see their menfolk, husbands, sons and lovers, on their way to the station. Among them were some old men looking for the last time at their grandsons. Some of the young men carried bundles or trunks, others had piled their luggage on little one-horse carts.
At the head of each group there marched gypsy bands and men carrying banners. Some of the newly mobilized soldiers carried flasks of country brandy, others danced gaily in front of the bands singing as they went. But no one had drunk too much, and indeed most of the men had a dignified, serious mien, soberly doing with good-natured calm what they knew to be expected of them.
Balint had put on his uniform, and every time he passed one of these groups they would break out into enthusiastic cheering.
‘Hurrah for the war!’ they cried. ‘Hurrah for the war!’
Some of them recognized him, and then they called out: ‘Hurrah for Abady!’ and again ‘Hurrah for the war!’ They all felt full of courage, and were gay and confident: only the women sobbed quietly and dabbed at their eyes.
Balint saluted every band, his heart constricting with pain each time he did so; but he could only acknowledge their greetings and be touched by their simple confidence. He could not echo their cheers, but sat upright with his hand to his cap as he drove past group after group.
It was difficult to get through Torda, for there was an immense crowd in the market-place selecting mountain ponies – pretty little animals, mostly dapple-greys with tiny hard hooves, hardy and willing, crossed with Arab blood. They were needed to draw the machine guns and man the mountain batteries on the Bosnian front. What marvellous animals, thought Balint, and not one will return. They’ll all perish, every one.
When he finally got through the town the sun was already low in the sky.
The car raced up to the Dobodo Pass. Here they had to stop again for at the junction with the main road there came all the people from Torda-Turia and Szentmarton, with banners and music like the others. Now there were many more women as well as old people and children, who Balint thought had probably come because they knew they could have a rest at Torda before finally saying goodbye to their men.
Balint got out and sat at the edge of the road looking down the valley of the Aranyos river. It was bathed in sunshine and when he took up his binoculars he found he could even see the bend of the Maros far away. There he could just glimpse a small stand of pine trees, dark indigo-blue in the pale-blue distance.
It was the garden at Maros-Szilvas, which had once been