They Were Found Wanting (74 page)

Sometimes he would include something more trivial. One day, for example, he had run across little Lili Illesvary. It had been a chance meeting just as she was passing through Budapest with the Szent-Gyorgyis, and he had dined with them that night. During the evening he had again been invited to Jablanka and Lili had smiled at him saying, ‘I will be there too!’ Afterwards it had occurred to Balint that he might be able to use this to make Adrienne jealous and so in his next letter he had told her of that occasion in the summer when they had played ‘Up Jenkins’ at the Park Club and he had found himself physically excited by her. He had gone on to praise the girl, saying how sweet and pretty and desirable she was and quoting her words which had seemed then like a caress. It was cruel of him, he knew, but perhaps it would bring some reaction.

Mostly, however, he wrote about that son for whom he longed so much, until his letters spoke of almost nothing but that. Over and over again he wrote how vital it was to him that this boy, his and hers, should be born to them, and how he could think of
nothing
else but his need for an heir who would be the ultimate bond between them. In his later letters even his desire for Adrienne became merged with his yearning for their boy until the image of this unborn child melted into that of Adrienne herself. It was her body, her beautiful, desirable body, that now became the instrument forged only to bring forth the ultimate object of their love.

Adrienne’s replies, on the other hand, gradually became
shorter
and shorter. At first she tried to convince him by argument, and, though by no means sure of herself, to explain herself, to
convince
him that at present it was impossible to come to a decision, to make a definite break. She wrote that she had a great
responsibility
but that … well, one day … And though her letters became ever more brief and incoherent, through her faltering words there throbbed a passion as affecting as a heartbeat. Finally all she could say was ‘
I
think
of
you
all
the
time
…
Don’t
tor
ture
me
…
You
can’t
possibly
know‚ you
can’t
know
…’ and nothing more. For some time she had not mentioned her daughter, and Balint instinctively felt he had chosen the right course and went on writing those cruel letters, though his heart bled for her each time he did it.

On November 10th the post brought him a letter; and this time it was a long one.

‘
I
can’t
stand
it
any
more!
’ she wrote. ‘
I
can’t
stand
it!
’ Then, with almost businesslike dryness she said that she had made up her mind to ask for a divorce at once, no matter what happened as a result. She had written to Absolon to come to Almasko and she would give him a letter to hand to her husband announcing that she was going home to her father’s house at Mezo-Varjas whence she would start proceedings. She could trust no one else and old Absolon was only to give Uzdy the letter after she had left the house. Balint was to stay in Budapest and on no account to move from where he was, nor write her a single line, not even of thanks, because she wouldn’t be able to stand it. ‘
It
is
because
w
hat I do
now
–
this
reckless
chance
I
must
take
–
must
be
done
for
myself
alone
and
not
also
for
you.
If
a
catastrophe
follows
it
must
be
I
alone
who
am
responsi
ble
!’
Only in this way, she wrote, could it be possible, and only in this way was there a chance of success. ‘
I
will
let
you
know
at
once
if
there
are
any
developments,
important
developments.
Don’t
be
impatient
because
it
will
be
at
least
10
or
12
days
before
I’ll
be
able
to
tell
you
anything
‚’

At the end of the letter there was a short postscript. ‘
Uzdy
seems
quieter
now.
’
And then there was a single word, twice
underlined
: ‘
Maybe??’
 

‘
M
AYBE
??’ These five letters and the double question-mark encapsulated the anxiety and spiritual turmoil that had been Adrienne’s lot ever since Dr Kisch had made his first visit to Almasko. It was only now, three months later, and especially since the doctor’s second visit at the beginning of September, that Adrienne had begun to understand the full meaning of those
careful
deliberate words with which Dr Kisch had given his opinion. He had repeated much the same thing when he came again in September, and it was now clear to Adrienne that what the
doctor
had been saying implied that her husband, if not already mad, was certainly on the verge of madness.

They had been married for nearly ten years and she had often thought of him as eccentric and cranky. To herself she used the word ‘crazy’ but not in this sense, not pathologically. She had never thought of him as incipiently clinically mad. The thought had never occurred to her. Now she had to face reality, to face the fact that he was menaced by that monster insanity, which could wreck her whole future – for if he really did go off his head she would never be able to divorce him, such was the law.

Adrienne was careful to keep this appalling thought to herself. She did not even mention it in her letters to Balint, telling herself that she did not want to worry him further. Subconsciously she was bowing to the superstition that if the thing was put into words then it would become so, as if the words themselves could conjure up the fact. She hardly even admitted it to herself, though now she watched anxiously every word and movement her husband made. Of course she had always watched him, but now it was different. In their first years of marriage she had had to be on the alert whenever they were together, but this was to protect herself from his violence and unpredictability; later, when she had learnt from Balint what love really was, she feared for her lover’s safety. Now her vigil was more clinical and she watched over Uzdy more as his nurse, dispassionately, without ill-feeling.

It was from this time that she found her hatred for him
diminishing
, for it was no longer her husband who was the enemy, but rather that dreaded sickness which if allowed to strike would utterly destroy everything she lived for. She found that she could even think of the onslaught of madness as something alien, some malignant superhuman force that came from God knows where.

Everything that Uzdy now said or did was for her merely a symptom to be studied, analysed and interpreted – but it was all so contradictory, so confusing, that the more she watched the more confused she became herself. One day she would be filled with hope, the next with despair.

On the surface nothing had changed. Uzdy lived as he always had and behaved as he always had, one day arrogant and ironic, another disdainfully polite; and yet there was always that latent ferocity lurking behind the
of normality. He continued to work at those wondrous tables of figures that he believed would one day transform the world, indeed more devotedly than ever since Dr Kisch had praised his endeavours. He barely seemed to notice Adrienne’s presence and mercifully never came to her room at night, though this might have been due to exhaustion after long hours of work in his study or even to those soothing medicines the Saxon doctor had prescribed. Superficially
everything
was normal until something happened which seemed to
disturb
him. There should have been nothing in it, and its effect was only gradually noticeable.

It was after Countess Clémence came home from Meran that Adrienne began to notice that her husband seemed, though
without
any obvious reason, to be annoyed with his mother. He would pick on her, taking any occasion to reprimand her,
sometimes
with an insolent rudeness that had never before been the old lady’s lot. Adrienne did not remember his ever doing this before, though she admitted to herself that she might not have noticed in the summer and only did so now because she was watching him so carefully.

And, as soon as she did notice, she saw that the habit was
growing
. The first obvious clash came when the new young French governess arrived and Countess Clémence made her senior to the old English nanny. In those protocol-ridden days this was quite correct since the governess was an educated woman with an
official
diploma. Uzdy did not protest but lost no opportunity of humiliating the girl, all the while gazing maliciously at his mother. Then there was a host of unusual little incidents, all essentially trivial. Uzdy would suddenly start cross-questioning his mother as to why she had sent the carriage somewhere, or he would demand a detailed explanation for the replacement of one of the under-gardeners; he even expostulated with her for sending a basket of plums to the priest from Nagy-Almas who came each Sunday to say mass at Almasko. He, who had never bothered his head with anything to do with the daily running of the house, now took his mother up about all sorts of little everyday details of housekeeping. And when he did so one could tell from his tone of voice that, though he was making an effort to control himself, he now used with her that ironic insulting manner which would end in angry shouts when he lost control.

When this happened Adrienne felt herself go rigid with
anxiety
. What, she asked herself, could be the reason for this suddenly revealed resentment? What was the cause of this latent hostility which seemed as if he were demanding expiation for some secret offence? What could it be that had made Uzdy change so much towards his mother when for so many years he had always taken her part against her daughter-in-law? Why did he now turn against and ill-treat the one person he had always seemed to love and revere?

And why did the old lady take it all without a murmur?

Countess Clémence, faced with this inexplicable change in her son, would reply to him, giving the shortest possible answers in a calm but ice-cold manner. As always her expression showed no emotion and was as stiff as ever; her face might have been made of marble and her eyes of glass. She did not look at her son, but at something far, far away in space … or perhaps in time?

There was no regular pattern, no continuity. Sometimes ten days or a fortnight would pass without incident, and then
suddenly
a stormy scene would interrupt their calm. In the middle of October one such scene disturbed Adrienne greatly.

They were sitting in the big oval drawing-room after lunch. Adrienne was doing some needlework and her mother-in-law sat, as she always did, stiffly upright on the sofa with a table in front of her. Uzdy was pacing about the room from the stove to the windows and back again. It was the same as any other day and, like any other day, no one spoke. The habitual silence was broken only by the sound of his footsteps on the wooden floor.

Adrienne did not look up from her work but she was still able to see that every time her husband passed in front of them he darted a piercing look at his mother. This went on for a long, long time, until Adrienne became convinced that something strange and terrible was about to happen. It was as if the air under that high coved ceiling might suddenly transform itself into a
menacing
cloud above their heads. If the old lady felt it too she gave no sign. Her face was in shadow and her high-piled hair was edged with silver from the light behind her.

When Uzdy returned from what seemed like the hundredth time he had paced the room he stopped behind his wife’s chair, grasping it with both hands which Adrienne could sense were trembling uncontrollably.

‘I should like to ask,’ he said to his mother, ‘why you are spying

‘I have no idea what you mean!’ she replied.

Uzdy laughed, with menace in his voice. ‘You? You have no idea? All right, I’ll tell you! For some time now I have seen dark figures skulking under my windows. They march to and fro,
stopping
, spying and sneaking away. Then they come back again … What about that?’

‘It must be the night watchman,’ said Countess Clémence icily. ‘As far as I am aware, that is what he is supposed to do.’

‘So that’s it, is it? The night watchman? Well! Well! Well!’ Uzdy leant forwards so that his chest brushed against Adrienne’s hair. ‘The night watchman, eh?’ Then, suddenly, he shouted, ‘It’s a lie, a lie, a lie!’

Countess Clémence did not answer, but just shrugged her shoulders. Then her son spoke again and this time his tone was more controlled. ‘I went out myself last night, just to be sure. I walked round the garden, and I saw … do you hear me? I saw! All right, you’ll say “the night watchman” … They were
everywhere
. Lots of them. Behind every tree … everywhere,
whispering
together. Of course they were hiding, but I saw them and I know!’

He paced up and down the room several times more, quickly and excitedly, so much so that the soles of his shoes slid perilously on the parquet. While he moved he said nothing but then he came back to the table and started again. ‘I know, I tell you! I know only too well. You sent them to spy on me. Well, just watch out! Just watch out! And I know some more too; they put things in my wine … and in my food. You see, I know. Don’t deny it! I know!’

The old lady answered drily, ‘How could anyone do that? We all eat and drink the same things.’

‘Will you shut up!’ shouted Uzdy, banging his long arm down on the table. ‘Shut up! I tell you. Shut up and listen! I know you, and I say,’ his voice rising, ‘just watch out!’ Then he straightened up his long thin body, waving his arms in the air, his fists clenched. ‘Just you watch out! Watch out! Watch out!’ he cried in a high thin scream like an animal in pain.

Then he spun round, like a spring just released, and slid over to the main door, wrenched it open and stormed out slamming the door behind him.

The two women sat for an instant as if turned to stone. Then Countess Clémence rose and, calm and erect, with head held high, her cold glance directed ever straight ahead of her, stalked out of the room. Adrienne was left alone.

The first thing Adrienne thought about, as soon as the first shock had passed away, was how deeply painful all this must have been for that proud spirit; and for the first time in her life she almost felt sorry for the old lady. She had known her for an enemy since she first announced her engagement to Pal Uzdy and only now, in their common anxiety, common to both perhaps but not shared, did Adrienne begin to feel compassion rise in her. And, as her instinct was always at once transmuted into action, act she did. She jumped up from her chair and thinking only that somehow she must express what she felt, she made her way to Countess Clémence’s room which she had not entered more than twice or three times since she had come to Almasko.

The room was dark, with a little light filtered through the slats in the shutters and for a moment Adrienne was startled to find that it also appeared to be empty. She looked around. To the right was that picture of Christ with its face turned to the wall. The tiny hanging light before it was not lit, and the prie-dieu was pushed away in a corner. Adrienne recalled that the old lady had decided not to be on speaking terms with God since he had taken her husband away from her, and was just about to
withdraw
when a voice quite close spoke from somewhere at her left. ‘Well, what do you want?’

Adrienne could now make out that her mother-in-law was lying stretched out on a sofa covered in black velvet and, as she was always dressed in black herself, she could hardly be seen except as an insubstantial black shadow, especially as her head was turned away towards the window and her tall white coiffure covered by a widow’s cap. She lay on her stomach with her elbows on the sofa and her head held up by tightly clenched fists, and Adrienne suddenly felt that there was something infinitely touching in her position, so like someone lying on a coffin and protecting it with her body.

‘I came,’ she started, ‘just to say how dreadful it was. We must
do
something …’ and then she stopped. She had thought she would reveal what until then she had kept to herself, namely that Dr Kisch’s visit had been no chance accident but that she had asked him to come; and she was now going to propose that they send for him at once. However she was so put off by the old lady’s abrupt manner, and also, though she hardly knew why, embarrassed, that the words would not be spoken.

Countess Clémence appeared not even to have heard what Adrienne had started to say and interrupted her curtly. ‘This is my business, mine alone! Whatever I decide to do I shall certainly not tell you! Tell
you
!’ and her tone was one of barely contained hatred.

To Adrienne it was as if she had been struck in the face. All
feeling
of compassion for the old lady fled and was instantly replaced by deep resentment and dislike for the old tyrant. However, before she could reply, she was met with a torrent of words. ‘Tell
you
, who have brought all this upon us!? You, who have brought a curse upon the house and who have poisoned my son against me, who have seduced him with your girlish white skin. Yes, you! I knew it from the first moment. Go away! Get out of this room at once! Get out!’