They Were Divided - Miklos Banffy [84]
‘Personally I found what you were saying not without interest. If you’ll sit with us at dinner you could perhaps tell us more?’ and without waiting for a reply he strode out of the room, his orange wig resembling nothing so much as a banner of reaction.
For his part Tamas muttered an obscene expletive and started angrily to roll himself a cigarette.
It was then that he noticed that he was not alone. From a chair behind him he heard a faint whimpering sound, and turning he saw that old Count Adam Alvinczy was lying sprawled in his chair. It was obvious that he had tried to get up to follow the others when he had been stricken by a heart attack. He had fallen back onto the edge of the chair and only his head and shoulders touched the back-rest. His face was ashen and covered with beads of sweat, and his wide-open eyes held a look of terror.
Quickly Laczok reached his side.
‘Here … here …’ gasped Alvinczy with a rattle in his throat, ‘… on this side … my drops … in waistcoat …’
Tamas acted swiftly. He snatched the vial from the waistcoat pocked, ran to the washroom for some water and a glass, and while hurrying back poured in the medicine. Then he helped the sick man to swallow it, pulled him up into a sitting position, loosened his collar and shirt-front, and, soaking his handkerchief with more water, pressed it to old Adam’s heart. Then he sat down and waited.
He waited in silence, watching old Alvinczy closely.
The medicine acted fast. The old man relaxed as the pain subsided, his contorted face returned to its normal smoothness and he closed his eyes. His breathing was still rapid but he was no longer gasping for breath as he had been when the attack struck him.
Perhaps I needn’t call a doctor, thought Tamas, as he took the old man’s wrist and searched for his pulse. Then rhythmically he started to stroke the back of Alvinczy’s hand.
For some time he sat there without either of them speaking.
Out in the corridor he heard doors being opened and closed and the sound of people walking about and talking. It must be the card-players, thought Tamas; and, no doubt, the other man’s two sons, Farkas and Akos, were among them not knowing that in the next room their father lay near to death.
Then again there was silence.
Much later Tamas heard the music being struck up again and realized that the supper must be over. Alvinczy seemed to be asleep and Tamas wondered if now he could go too; but he did not want to leave the other alone. Then, in a weak voice, Alvinczy started to speak, ‘I don’t know how to thank you … but I do … very much. If … if you hadn’t been there I’d probably be dead by now.’
‘Nonsense!’ replied Tamas, though he too had thought the same thing.
‘Perhaps it would have been for the best,’ said Alvinczy, pursuing the thought. Then after a long pause he said, ‘Oh yes! It would have been better that way.’
‘What sort of talk is that?’ replied Tamas roughly, though with kindness in his tone.
‘You don’t know, you can’t know,’ the old man said several times in a low voice; and then, almost as if he were talking to himself, he went on brokenly, telling of his great sorrow and his disappointment in his sons.
He had been careful all his life, he said, denying himself any indulgence, any little luxury, so that when he died his four sons would inherit enough to keep them in the style to which his family had always been accustomed. They would not have great fortunes, but they would be able to live well if unostentatiously. He had looked carefully over his widely scattered estates and divided them into four units. Then, little by little, he had improved them by constructing new stables and farm buildings, and he had made them profitable. And what had happened? Before his eyes his sons had begun to undo his life’s work. They had spent money recklessly, drinking and gambling as if there were no tomorrow. For years now he had lived in dread of what it would all come to, for hardly