They Were Divided - Miklos Banffy [77]
Countess Ida, who never thought or spoke ill of anyone and who found herself forced to listen only because she could find no excuse to move away, now started to close her ears from boredom and looked round the room to find some distraction. And the first person she saw was her brother-in-law himself, standing quite close and clearly able to hear everything that was being said.
There he was, the spitting image of her husband Jeno, if perhaps not quite so plump. He had the same Tartar features with a single tuft of hair on his otherwise bald pate. With his slanting eyes almost buried in folds of fat, with his wide-spread eyebrows which gave him the air of perpetual enquiry, he resembled more than anything one of those soapstone figurines to be found in oriental bazaars. In this he was even more like than his brother Jeno, for while the latter sported only a pair of imposing moustaches, Tamas also wore a long thin beard twisted to the shape of a lyre. He stood there, just in front of Ida, quite straight on his shortish legs, with his hands in his pockets, smiling up at her.
‘Tamas!’ she cried out in surprise. ‘Where on earth did you spring from?’
‘Servus – greetings!’ he replied.
Everyone looked round, and Aunt Lizinka choked in mid-sentence. Then she too stammered out, ‘You? You here? You! How did you get in here?’
‘Because, my dear aunt, I am still at liberty to go where I please! J’ai voulu vous tranquilliser à ce sujet – I just wanted to reassure you about that!’ and he mounted the platform, pulled up a chair and sat down beaming all around him in good-fellowship and high good humour.
Faced with such a fait-accompli there was nothing that the others could do. Then Tamas turned to Baroness Weissfeld and, carefully choosing his words, slowfully said, ‘Not everyone gets to prison who deserves it, as your good husband must know.’ Then he turned to Ida and went on, ‘How is my brother? I heard he was suffering from a slight Thief’s Cold.’ After this, with the others speechless, he addressed himself directly to old Countess Sarmasaghy.
‘My dear aunt, have you heard of my latest troubles? Oh, nothing to do with that tale about the gypsy girl, nothing whatever. No, it is all because my second foreman has just got himself sent to gaol for slander. It’s really been most annoying for he was such a good worker and I don’t know how I’ll manage without him. The fool said something scandalous about the head foreman and as he said it in front of several of his work-mates, one of them denounced him and the idiot found himself hauled before the court. Three witnesses swore that they had heard the slander and the judge believed them, saying that there was little he could have done if only one man had spoken but that three he was bound to believe. What an idiot the fellow was to spread slander in front of three other people!’ and he gestured towards his sister-in-law, Countess Kamuthy and Baroness Weissfeld. ‘They shut him up, my dear aunt, and you can imagine the trouble that has caused.’
For a moment or two he paused, a wicked look in his eyes as he looked at each of the ladies in turn. Then he rose and said, ‘Well! As I’m here I might as well have a look round. Ma chère tante, je me prosterne devant votre bienveillante attention – my dear aunt, I submit myself to your ever-vigilant goodwill.’
Then he bowed and went on his way.
As soon as he had left all three women rose hurriedly and fled in different directions, and Aunt Lizinka was left to suffocate in her own venom.
Farkas Alvinczy, who had been the previous dance leader, and a Member of Parliament until the year before, stood in a small doorway behind the gypsy musicians. To emphasize the fact that he was not really attending the ball he had come dressed not in evening dress but in ordinary day clothes. This was to show everyone that he had now renounced the frivolous pleasures of the world. It was his pose that a man like him with a brilliant past, who had been the envy of all other men and the favourite of the