They Were Divided - Miklos Banffy [51]
For what seemed like an eternity he heard nothing. Then there was a sudden brief fluttering of wings, and then again nothing. The trap had been sprung.
It was almost more than he could do not to run down excitedly. Nevertheless he managed a lazy stroll and, sure enough, from the branch he had so cunningly bent so as to be sprung by the snare, a fine fat Orpington hen was hanging, as dead as anyone could wish. Laszlo unhooked it swiftly, hid it under his coat, and then he did run, as swiftly as possible, back into the house. He felt no remorse at all for having caught one of Azbej’s birds, and that what he had done was nothing less than common theft never even passed through his mind. If he thought of it as anything at all it was as a simple act of revenge and as such gave him the satisfaction of paying back in his own coin someone who had robbed him. The moment that this occurred to him Laszlo’s heart took a great leap of joy and triumph; and if he had somehow regained all his lost inheritance it would have made him no happier than he was at that moment.
From that day on Laszlo set his hen-trap every eight or ten days. He always did this on his own for it was obvious that old Marton wanted nothing to do with it. He never spoke his mind, or indeed said anything at all on the subject, but Laszlo sensed that in his book wild game was God’s gift to whosoever might catch it but that poultry belonged to the man who raised and fed it. Accordingly, though he would cook any bird that Laszlo took, he would not eat it. He was even reluctant to pluck and draw such birds, so Laszlo found that he had to call upon young Regina to get this done. She came eagerly. All Laszlo had to do was to give the girl a little private nod when he was drinking his tot of brandy in the shop, or a discreet wave from over the hedge, and she would somehow contrive to come at once, no matter what she was supposed to be doing. Though no one could have noticed that she was doing it, Regina somehow managed to keep a permanent watch on Laszlo’s house and on him if he were out of doors. For her any reason was enough if she could be near him.
Sometimes when she disappeared from the store her father and mother would start calling for her, and then she would sneak home, making sure that she always appeared to be coming from somewhere quite other than where she had really been. When she went to Laszlo’s she would cross the piece of empty land between the houses through the gate that her father had put in the hedge when he had rented it some years before; but she would never come back the same way, for if she had she knew her parents would guess where she had been. A moment or two after they started calling she would reappear as if coming from the stream, or from the roadway, or even from the house opposite; and even though she sometimes got a slap on the face she never let on where she had been.
Her love for Gyeroffy was like that of a faithful hound.
Of course she was still a child and the deep love she felt for the young man was utterly innocent, though she experienced all the ecstasy and suffering of a grown woman. If Laszlo spoke to her she was happy, and she suffered and felt excluded when he talked to other people.
She loathed Fabian. On those occasions when Laszlo and Fabian went into Ujvar together and did not come back until the next morning, she knew instinctively that they had been enjoying themselves with other women – horrible, coarse creatures, no doubt – and she was consumed by jealousy and hurt rage and cried all night. The following day she would try her best to be angry and not keep glancing at Laszlo’s house; and she would decide not to