They Were Divided - Miklos Banffy [95]
‘Pouf! The French don’t bother about little things like that! I’ll bet you anything you like that something is about to break there; and all the more so since they’ve sent in Lyautey from Algeria. I knew him when he was a mere captain, and I can tell you he’s a tough one!’
Old Tamas then went on to talk about North Africa and all its problems. He talked well because he knew his subject. No matter how complicated the issue Laczok understood it and knew the real facts. Abady listened fascinated as his host unravelled the involved politics of Algeria and Morocco with the same clarity as a few days earlier he had talked about Albania.
It was dark when Abady finally took his leave. Tamas accompanied him to the door, saying, ‘Wait a moment! There’s a little path round the side of the house. It’ll get you down dry-shod,’ and he called through to the kitchen, ‘Lajko! Lajko! Come out here!’
A slender gypsy boy, about seventeen years old, came running out. His beard had hardly sprouted and he wore an assortment of discarded gentleman’s clothes – a shabby smoking-jacket and a patched pair of striped trousers – and his feet were thrust into an old pair of tennis shoes. Under the jacket his chest was bare. And on his finely carved Egyptian features was a sly smile of mock humility.
‘At your service?’ It was a question.
‘You can show this gentleman down the side path.’
The youth started off but, noticing that Balint was not following him, stopped a few paces away.
Laczok, seeing the surprise in Balint’s face, gave a roar of cynical laughter.
‘Elle affirme que c’est son frère, mais je ne le crois pas – she says he is her brother, but I don’t believe it!’
He gave a hefty slap to Abady’s shoulder, and then bade him goodbye.
Abady and the gypsy descended the hill, the lad leading the way. He had all the litheness and grace of a panther and the quick, neat movements of his nomadic forebears. After swiftly taking five or six paces he stopped and looked back and waited for Abady to catch up. For a moment his white eyeballs gleamed in the smooth dark face and then he turned and went on down as if barely able to curb his youthful impatience.
Abady descended the path at his own pace. The city’s myriad lights glowed down in the valley and for a moment Abady found himself almost blinded by the arc-lights of the station at the foot of the hill. For a moment or two he paused to gaze at the beauty of the great spread of tiny lights in the dark night; and, as he stopped, he was thinking what a strange man Tamas Laczok was. He knew so much, he was filled with esoteric knowledge, he had gazed at wide horizons and not been dazzled, and he was also a man of culture and refinement. But he had used none of it: he had just let it go to waste, burying himself here in a ramshackle cottage with a little gypsy whore, and yet he showed all the signs of being a happy man.
Balint thought of poor Gazsi Kadacsay, who had killed himself in despair because he could not acquire what Count Tamas had carelessly tossed away. He wondered if Gazsi’s fate would have been different if he had managed to learn all that Tamas had learned; and would Laczok be so carefree and merry if, with all his knowledge, he had not abandoned his origins and turned his back on power and worldly success? Was it some inborn wisdom that had given him the strength to throw all that away, or would he have been just as happy if fate had not made him leave his own country and go away to learn about the world elsewhere? Would he have been as jovial and contented if he had merely stayed at home, living in idleness and easy ignorance?
Was a man formed by his experience or by his natural talents? Can a man only give up calmly what he is already sure of possessing, and never what he has vainly longed to acquire?
PART THREE
Chapter One
LATE IN THE AFTERNOON of March 7th, 1912, there was an exceptionally large crowd of people milling about in the spacious reception rooms of the National Casino Club in Budapest.