They Were Divided - Miklos Banffy [47]
Of course the whole village knew and had always known, but they would never have told it either to Azbej, whom they hated as a quarrelsome martinet – and a stranger to boot – or to old Marton himself, for if they had let the old man know that everyone knew what he was up to, there would have been no more fun to be got out of it. As it was they watched everything he did. They saw when he sauntered out to the forest pretending to search for kindling, and how he staggered back under huge loads in the morning before stealing off to the next village to sell the skins. They watched the whole comedy and laughed their heads off when he was out of earshot. Even the children would enter into the spirit of the game, sometimes calling out: ‘What are you carrying, Uncle Marton?’ and when the old man merely growled back ‘Can’t you see? Wood, of course!’ or ‘Mind your own business, you little bugger!’ they would pull faces behind his back and laugh about it all the following week.
Laszlo knew nothing of all this.
But on that one day it happened that he was stone cold sober and in a foul mood because his weekly allowance had all been spent and at the shop they wouldn’t give him any more to drink. Little Regina would have given him something, but it was Friday afternoon and because of the Sabbath Bischitz would not be leaving the shop and so Laszlo would have no opportunity of getting the girl on her own. He got more and more desperate. Money had to be found somehow or he felt he would go mad. At that moment he happened to glance at the worn chest-of-drawers – a worthless piece of furniture from one of the old servants’ rooms that Azbej had generously allowed him to take from the manor house. On its top lay a long smooth leather case with triangular little canvas covers on the corners to prevent it from scuffing and a tiny elegant snap-lock. It was an English-made case for a pair of guns, though now it held only one. It had been sent after him from Desmer when Sara Bogdan Lazar had sent back everything that had belonged to him. The feeble lamp cast only a faint glow and yet the smooth hard leather and the brass of the lock and clasps on its leather straps still shone brightly. Laszlo gazed at the case as if hypnotized.
Laszlo had entirely forgotten that he still had it. He got up and looked at it more closely. There, stamped in the leather top, was his name, engraved with a slight spelling mistake – Count Ladislas Gieroffy – just as it had always been from the time, so long ago, when the pair of guns had been a Christmas present from his two aunts in Western Hungary. He stroked the letters lightly, thinking back to that Christmas in the Kollonichs’ great country house when he had been just eighteen. Christmas at Simonvasar! In the library there had been a Christmas tree that reached to the ceiling. The room had been lit by thousands and thousands of candles. Everything had been so bright and Klara had been there … in a white dress … still very slim and girlish … and he could remember her eyes, ocean-grey, and wide open with joy and happiness …
For an instant he stood still, lost in his memories. Then he shook himself and pressed back the catch almost with loathing and lifted the lid of the case until it rested against the wall. There lay the gun, its stock and barrel in separate compartments, and there lay too the place for its pair which had been sold long before. He wondered why he had kept this one, he who had no money for brandy, let alone for cartridges.
Of course he must sell it at once, and he wondered why it had not previously occurred to him to do so.