They Were Divided - Miklos Banffy [50]
Between the house where Laszlo lived and the road was some wooden-plank fencing but only on each side, running from the road to the little stream that ran at the bottom of the slope behind the house. On the left there was only a hedge between, a piece of vacant land between Laszlo’s little house and the Bischitz’s shop; while on the right, between it and the grounds of Laszlo’s old manor house, Azbej had added a fence of dry sticks near the bank of the stream. There, as the place was sandy and close to water, he had also placed his new hen-run. Azbej had started to raise Orpingtons whose brown eggs were so popular that he hoped to export them even to England. A long hen-house had been built with a flat sandy yard between it and the stream. At the far end, just under the slope of the hill on the top of which had been built the manor house itself, the new owner had built a house for the farm overseer. It was all neat and clean and new – a model chicken-farm – and the yard was filled with big golden hens who scratched disconsolately at its sterile surface where no insects, or worms, or other favourite morsels were to be found. Their eyes darted from left to right as they searched in vain. Their only excitement came, twice a day, when their feed would be brought in … and that was all. They were bored. Every so often one would approach the dry-wood fence and peck its way along searching for some way of escape to the Paradise Garden beyond.
Late one afternoon Laszlo strolled down to the bank of the stream near to where old Marton was cutting up a fallen alder tree. The first snows had come and gone and it had been dry freezing weather ever since. That day it had clouded over and Laszlo went down to ask the old man if the snow was coming again, because if so it would be a good moment to set the traps in the woods and he would have time to do it before it got dark.
Marton stopped his work, leaned on his axe and threw back his head. He wiped the sweat from his face and from his long moustaches, and sniffed the air.
‘No snow today!’ he said laconically.
Laszlo stood there for some time watching the old man as he worked. He felt thoroughly out of temper because he had set his mind on going to the woods that evening. Finally he turned and started slowly to walk back to the house.
The branches of the fallen tree had blocked the garden path so Laszlo was forced to make a detour along the hedge beyond which Azbej had erected his fence. Until that moment Laszlo had been thinking of nothing but his annoyance that the weather was so contrary but now, seeing before him the new wooden fence, the neat poultry-yard, the farm beyond it and, high on the hill behind, the white manor house itself, with its new pink roof shining through the bare winter trees, a fresh thought struck him. For a moment his face darkened with anger as he looked at everything that had once been his and then slowly a wicked smile appeared on his face. Between the laths of the poultry-yard paling he could see a few hens peering at him and all too clearly searching for an opening through which they could reach the tempting worked soil with its wealth of fallen seeds that was waiting for them on the other side.
Laszlo looked around. There was no one in sight, and even old Marton had his back to him.
It was obvious that he would only need one snare, and that the hedge would hide him as he set it.
He hurried back to the house, collected a snare, and a steel screwdriver from the gun-case, and in a moment or two was back by the fence. He bent down and with a swift turn of the screwdriver forced one of the wooden palings out of its lower socket. Then he grasped a live twig from the hedge in front of the opening he had just made, bent its end back in an arc and attached his snare to it. All this was done so swiftly that in a couple of minutes he was back beside the house apparently just idly looking up at the sky. For a while he stood there, every nerve taut. He listened hard. Dusk was falling and this was the moment when all the birds usually found