They Were Divided - Miklos Banffy [92]
Balint’s eyes filled with tears. For a long time he stayed where he was, sitting on the little bench and staring at the snow. He thought how marvellous it was as it slowly melted, disintegrating into tiny particles of ice, thousands of minute crystals gleaming like miniature mountain peaks all turned towards the rays of the sun. It was everywhere pitted with deep little crevasses like spear-thrusts from the direction of the south, deep little holes formed by the sun’s heat. And as it was slowly being destroyed by that very sun so the snow resembled white foam inexorably drawn to that relentless implacable light, to that radiance it so much desired but which was to be the source of its own destruction. To Balint the process was like an allegory of all existence … and he thought again about his dead friend.
On the same day another death occurred, that of old Adam Alvinczy. He was found dead in his bed in the morning, and this news and the social excitement it provoked drew everyone’s attention away from Gazsi’s suicide.
Since Count Alvinczy had been a prominent man there had to be an important funeral. A long line of carriages and cars followed the cortege to the family vault.
The following day the lawyer read the dead man’s will in the presence of his sons, of his daughter-in-law Margit, and of Stanislo Gyeroffy who had been made executor. It proved to be a harsh and comfortless document. The old landowner had carefully recorded all the money he had had to pay out to settle his sons’ debts and on the basis of these figures he had drawn up the inheritances of three of them in three separate columns – three because Adam had been given his share two years before when he had got married. It was a shattering experience for those who were left: Farkas was to receive only the house at Magyarokerek, with just eight hundred acres and three small forest holdings; and Zoltan the meadows near Magyar-Tohat and the house in Kolozsvar. All had been heavily mortgaged. The youngest brother, Akos, got nothing because only two months previously his father had settled debts that already exceeded his share of the family property. ‘I regret having to do this,’ wrote the old man, ‘but I cannot deprive my other sons just because of him’.
This came as a mortifying shock to the three brothers, and most of all to Akos who, as soon as the lawyer had left the house, stammered out the confession that on the night of the charity ball he had lost sixteen thousand crowns at the gaming table and the winners had only given him an extra two weeks to pay up because of his father’s death. He now had only thirteen days’ grace. Thirteen days, that was all. If he couldn’t pay then he would be finished!
There followed a terrible argument, long and utterly fruitless. There was no possibility of help. Farkas’s and Zoltan’s shares were both mortgaged up to the hilt, in addition to which they would somehow have to find money to pay the inheritance tax. They could do nothing. The only hope was that Adam would pay for the youngest.
This, from the goodness of his heart, he would have been willing to do, but Margit vetoed the idea at once. They had a child to think about, she said, so Adam’s own small inheritance could not be squandered in this way. What would be the purpose of such a sacrifice, she asked? It would only be throwing money away, and in fact would not really help Akos, who would still have nothing and who could not live on thin air! He himself would not want to live for ever on his brothers’ charity, an eternal guest! It would be far more sensible, she went on, if he were to go away somewhere and start a new life. The family could, at some sacrifice, manage to raise just enough to pay for his ticket; but to cough up money just for gambling debts? No! Never!
Margit was at once attacked by Farkas and Zoltan. They said that she was mercenary and without pity and, of course, as they too were deeply in debt, they felt that they could have been as magnanimous