They Were Divided - Miklos Banffy [44]
But not little Regina.
She never gave a thought as to whether it was true or not. She did not care. For her it was all as magical and as real as fairyland: the great golden rooms, the velvet-covered furniture, the mountains of flowers, the lovely elegant women in silk and satin who floated in the arms of slim-waisted men in traditional Hungarian costume or officers in full-dress uniform, kings, queens, princesses and princes. It was all far more beautiful than any other tales she had read or been told. And for her, Laszlo, sitting before her, thin and wan, often unshaved and unkempt, his once elegant clothes and expensive shoes now worn and mended, was a prince of legend, doomed by some horrid spell to a life of squalor and misery, but nevertheless still the true ruler of all that splendour of which he had formerly been the central figure.
Whenever he came into the store she would lean on the counter drinking in every word he uttered. Her Titian-red hair surrounded her beautiful but still girlish face like an aureole of flame. Her doe-like brown eyes, fringed by long curving lashes, opened ever more widely as she listened and her mouth, with lips startlingly red against her pale skin, was slightly open as she feasted on all he had to tell. For Regina it all had the effect of some wondrous magic potion, and when Laszlo stopped, as he occasionally did, she would at once refill his glass with brandy and push it towards him, for she knew that he could only go on as long as he was properly supplied with his own brand of magic potion.
From time to time she would ask him some question, as if she hadn’t understood something he had said; and then he would tell her even more fabulous details of footmen in gold-braided liveries, carriages lined with silk, tables covered in gleaming plate and porcelain all laden with extraordinary food, and finally of the jewels, giant pearls and rubies, diadems and tiaras sparkling with diamonds of the finest water.
She never wanted to hear tell of anything else and, as Gyeroffy never wanted to talk of anything else, for Regina the great world consisted only of this fabulous luxury and pomp.
Several years before, when she had still been quite a small child, some inborn curiosity had drawn her to ‘The Count’, as he was called by everyone in the village. It had been enough simply to catch a glimpse of him from where she stood half-hidden inside the shop doorway, or from across the street or over the fence of the manor-house demesne. More recently it had been a great joy for her to be able to help nurse him when he was sick, but none of this had counted for anything compared with the ecstasy of being alone in the shop, with The Count sitting before her and telling his tales only to her. This was a joy so magical and so mysteriously exciting that her young spirit was completely conquered. All the grandeur and glitter of which he spoke was to her little more than the natural background to the fairy prince who sat there with her. For her the only reality was the young man himself, and everything that she heard from him was like some metaphysical halo with which he was crowned but of whose existence only she, Regina, was privileged to know, and which only she could see. It seemed to her, too, that this dream prince sought her out, waiting to come to the shop when he would be sure of finding her alone. He would keep watch until her father left the shop on some lengthy errand such as going in to Szamos-Ujvar