They Were Divided - Miklos Banffy [87]
In his mind he could see again a bright fire burning on the hearth, a fire which had thrown an almost blinding light on the deep-piled white carpet on which he lay but which left most of the rest of the room in mysterious shadow. He had lit the fire while waiting.
All at once the door had opened and Adrienne had stood before him, the shining paillettes on her dress reflecting the bright flames of the fire with a reddish glow which spread up over her shadowy breasts, under her chin and past the dark lines of her brows until it shone like a spotlight on the golden flowers of her oriental diadem. There she had stood, lit as if on a stage …
For a moment she had not moved, until as Balint knelt before her and started to kiss the hem of her skirt she had spread her arms wide waiting for his lips to reach hers. Then, bending slightly, she had taken his head in her soft hands and bent down until their lips met. As her mouth, so vividly red and slightly open, met his in a long ecstatic kiss, the jewelled chains of her crown fell in a cascade over his face and ears and shoulders.
When the man returned to tell Balint that his bath was ready he announced also that a letter had just been delivered from Baron Kadacsay. ‘A stable-boy brought it, my Lord. I have put it on your Lordship’s desk.’
‘Very good,’ said Balint, his head too full of the memory of his time with Adrienne to take in properly what he had been told. Then he sank into the hot water still thinking only of his mistress.
Around her slender ankles the dress, so like the scales of a snake, had lain in shining coils, from which had risen her alabaster figure, the fire etching every part of it with its roseate glow touched here and there with misty lilac-coloured shadows. To Balint she had seemed like some Hindu goddess, Parvati, Maya, or Brahmanaspati, crowned in gold with a shower of rubies and other stones falling over her breasts. And though she had said nothing she had been smiling in happiness and triumph.
She had been like some sculptor’s masterpiece, a statue that somehow exuded joy as he knelt before her raising his hands in supplication and adoration. Later, as she had lain on the rug that so resembled the skin of a polar-bear, naked but still crowned with that jewelled head-dress spread in a wide arc around her jet-black curling hair, she had still seemed in some strange way statuesque. The fire had exploded with its own ecstasy as the flames reached the pine-cones within it as if it too were consumed with the passion that enveloped the lovers who lay in front of it. As each new shower of sparks exploded, faster and faster, so had the passion of the two lovers as they moved together in a crescendo of love.
‘When was the letter delivered?’ asked Balint when he had dressed and gone into his sitting-room.
‘Yesterday, my Lord. Quite late, after ten o’clock. A boy brought it on horseback.’
A letter from Gazsi? Sent quite late at night … by a man on horseback? It had to be something exceptionally urgent, something really serious.
‘Why didn’t you bring it to me at once? You knew where I was.’
‘The boy just said to hand it to your Lordship. I asked if it was urgent and if something was wrong, but he just said that Baron Gazsi had not said anything in particular and had seemed to be quite well. There was nothing out of the ordinary at home, the boy said.’
Balint hurried over to this desk. The letter lay there, an ordinary grey envelope with his name scribbled in Gazsi’s awkward writing, and on the back were scrawled a few words that Gazsi had presumably added as an afterthought ‘I stupidly sent this to Denestornya, believing you would still be there – Gazsi’.
The letter itself read:
‘Dear Balint,
Before I leave I would like to talk something over with you. Could you come over here tomorrow before one o’clock … to Bukkos St Marton, as I shall be leaving then and do not expect to be back for a long time. Sorry to inconvenience you – it will be the last time, I promise!
So long … Servus!’
What on earth could all this be about, Balint wondered.