They Were Divided - Miklos Banffy [89]
Balint tried to go over in his mind everything that Gazsi had ever said to him and as he did so he tried to remember some words that might have been more reassuring. Try as he would he could not think of anything. On the contrary, thinking back to those discussions when Gazsi had asked him to be his executor, and also when he had arranged that Balint would take in his beloved mare, Balint now realized there had been a double meaning in every word that Gazsi had uttered.
For a brief moment Balint half closed his eyes so as to concentrate better, and as he did so the sunlight through his eyelids seemed rose-red and all his worries disappeared as he saw in his mind’s eye the image of Adrienne as she had been in the firelight, with her parted lips and wide open eyes, with her expression of almost painful anticipation of that moment when all space and time were wiped away, when there was no past and no future and when time itself became an eternity. Her beautiful face, framed in those wildly tumbling curls, could have been that of Medusa or the Tragic Muse herself, and for a moment Balint saw only this and felt only the surge of renewed desire …
An instant later he was able to banish the thought as he forced himself once more to think about his friend and pray, as he sped towards him through that countryside halfway between winter and spring, that Gazsi had only written to him in that equivocal manner as a result of some passing fancy or fit of depression at being delayed in some ridiculous fashion, and that he was even now at home, laughing at his own stupidity, with his crow’s beak of a nose tilted to one side as it always was when he was telling a droll story about himself and when nothing was seriously wrong.
The car turned into the narrow road that led to Gazsi’s village. The road curved round one more snow-covered hillside and ahead, a little higher up, could be seen the roofs of the village and on one side, surrounded by tall elm-trees, Gazsi’s old manor house.
As Balint drove on towards the hedge that bordered Gazsi’s property and the gates, which would shortly appear, he found himself passing several little groups of village people all going in the same direction, one ahead of the other as in Indian file. They were walking in silence and with the heavy tread of the Mezoseg people. He sounded his horn and as the men and women drew to one side, some of the men raised their caps in respectful greeting. Balint wondered why they all seemed to be going to the manor house, and why they all looked so sad.
A moment or two later he had arrived in front of the portico with its wooden Grecian pillars that framed the entrance to the house. Three steps led up to it and standing at the top were two men, Gazsi’s estate manager and the local Protestant pastor.
‘Where is Baron Gazsi?’ asked Balint.
‘He died, just an hour and a half ago!’ said one of them.
Balint felt his legs giving way under him and he staggered to a bench beside the wall.
Then they told him what had happened.
Baron Gazsi had been writing something all morning. When he had finished he had folded up the sheets of paper and sealed them. A little later he had walked down to the stables and looked into every box giving a lump of sugar to each horse as he always had. Just as the clock chimed the hour of midday he sent for the pastor and the estate manager, sat them down in the sitting-room and gave them his orders. To the priest he had given instructions that the church organ, which had been in bad repair for some time, should be put in order and told them that he accepted the estimate of 500 florins and that he wanted it done at once. He had discussed many small details of the work, told them that when it was done they must send for a man to apply the gold leaf and specified that it should be old Kas from Kolozsvar because he was the best. The elaborate decorations above the organ-pipes, which were a disgrace, must be properly restored and he insisted that before that work was started