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By Root 466 0

the pastor should arrange a sensible price with the gilder because he did not want money wasted on anything that was not necessary. Then he had asked the estate manager to bring in the accounts, checked them through himself and drew a line across the last page just beneath them. Then he had written ‘I have found everything in order up to this point’ and added the date and his signature. Then he had turned to other estate matters, saying that the young calves that had been selected for the market should not be disposed of at once because the current prices were too low. They should wait until the new grass started to sprout in the meadows. On the other hand the buffalo cows should be sold soon before their milk dried up. Up on the Botos, where it was too cold for wheat, they should sow barley and, if the fields of rye which had been sown the previous autumn proved to be full of thistles in the spring, they should be carefully weeded. All these orders he had given in the calmest manner. Occasionally, as he had been speaking, he had glanced at the clock as if he were expecting someone or had shortly been about to leave himself. Just before one o’clock he had said that he had been expecting Balint, but that perhaps he would not be coming. As he said this he had gone to his desk and picked up a small parcel carefully wrapped in newspaper and handed it to the priest, saying that it should be given to Balint if he should turn up later. If he had not arrived by the evening it should be delivered to Balint’s home. Then he had gone into his bedroom and rung for his valet.

The priest and the manager, though not understanding what all this was about, had not thought that there was any reason to be disturbed.

A few moments later Kadacsay had come back into the sitting-room, followed by the valet and a footman who carried a mattress which he had told them to lay on the floor. When the servants had been dismissed he started to explain to his astonished audience why all this had been done. He had, he told them, taken a dose of strychnine and because he knew that this sometimes caused uncontrollable cramps, he had had the mattress placed there as it would be better and easier than writhing about on the wooden floor-boards! Then he had started to give further instructions about suckling pigs and the sheep’s feed …

Shortly afterwards he had looked again at the clock and said, ‘Strange! I don’t feel anything yet, though I’ve taken enough to fell an ox!’

Those had been his last words. A moment later he had lain down and, a few seconds later, had died.

‘Is he very disfigured?’ Balint asked when the pastor and the manager had finished their tale.

‘Not at all, my lord. Please come and look.’

They entered the manor house living-room, which was long and wide and obviously served also as a dining-room. In front of one of the windows was a small writing desk and, pushed against one of the side walls, was a plain pinewood table that had served for Gazsi’s meals. In the centre of the room, where this was usually placed, there was a mattress and on this lay the dead man covered with a white sheet.

Balint kneeled down beside him and drew back the sheet from his head. He looked at his friend’s face for a long time.

Nothing seemed to have changed and if he had not been as pale as wax Balint would have thought that he was merely playing some trick on them. His mouth held his usual mocking smile, his woodpecker nose was tilted slightly to one side and his eyebrows slanted upwards just as they always had when Gazsi had been telling a joke. One could almost believe that at any moment he would jump up roaring with laughter as he had so often done. And yet there was a difference. Gazsi’s face now held an expression of majestic calm, comprised of a dignity quite new to him – and of contempt, but mainly of contempt.

Balint was struck by the strangeness of it all, for this was not the Gazsi he had known in life. The dead man lying there was someone he did not know, someone who had appeared only in death.

He covered him again with the white sheet and