They Were Found Wanting (8 page)

When, after Balint had left her and she had stood at the
window
gazing sightlessly over the great lagoon, she had felt that she had already died, that her life was over, and that in promising her lover that she would not now take her own life she had merely done so to comfort him. In reality she had decided that she would do nothing for some weeks, or even months, so that no one would make any connection between her death and the man in whose arms she, for the first and only time in her life, had been made happy.

Afterwards she had not changed her intention.

When her husband arrived in Venice she had greeted him with as much interest as if she were walking in her sleep. She had been kept busy with arranging the details of their return and above all with caring for her sick younger sister, Judith.

It was concern for Judith which had kept Adrienne sane in the first days after Balint had gone away. Poor Judith! What a sad fate hers had been! The trip to Venice had been arranged by the family to give the girl a change of air and to take her far away from the place where she had been shocked into mental withdrawal when her lover was proved a villain and ran away without giving her a thought. Maybe, the family had hoped, the change would help bring her to her senses.

As it had turned out Judith had already been nearer to a
complete
breakdown than anyone had realized; and the final blow that thrust her over the edge had come in Venice, at the Lido, when her own love-letters were sent back to her by an unknown woman in whose house Judith’s lover had left them. Until then Judith had not realized the full extent of the betrayal, thinking her lover as much sinned against as sinning, and the shock of this new knowledge had completely unhinged her. Her mind, already disturbed, had then become so totally withdrawn that she was hardly conscious of her surroundings and had to be tended, with great gentleness, as if she were a backward child.

Afterwards there had been the trip to Vienna to consult nerve specialists and also to visit the sanatorium where her mother had been for some time. And when they had returned at last to her father’s home at Mezo-Varjas Adrienne had found that it was she who had to take charge of everything, for her father, though full of goodwill, was capable of little more than shouting at the servants and creating confusion wherever he went. The responsibilities had helped Adrienne to get through the first five weeks after Balint had had to leave her.

All this time Adrienne had lived only for other people and it had seemed to her that her own life did not exist, that she had become a mere abstraction, a will, whose only function was to keep her family from breaking up.

With these burdens upon her shoulders Adrienne had spent almost all her time at her father’s house where she had found
herself
obliged to manage everything. It was to her that the estate manager came for all decisions, discreetly and without letting Count Miloth see that he was doing so; and it was Adrienne who had seen to it that the heavy cost of her mother’s stay in the Austrian sanatorium was paid promptly and in full.

As for Judith, it had been obvious that she could no longer
continue
to share a room with her younger sister, Margit. Accordingly Adrienne had decided she would be better off
isolated
at the far end of one of the wings of the old one-storey manor-house where she would not be disturbed by the noise of her father shouting at the servants.

Adrienne had chosen two unused rooms, furnished them, and installed Judith in one while in the other she placed a kindly old serving woman who had lived at Varjas all her life and who had known Judith since she had been a child.

One day Adrienne had noticed that the sight of some small domestic animals had awakened some sign of interest in Judith’s muddled brain and she had, accordingly, arranged for her a little domestic poultry yard at the corner of the house with a few hens and some rabbits. This had been a great success. Judith had seemed overjoyed when she was first shown this new toy and ever since she had spent much of her time here, feeding and tending her new pets.

All this at last made Adrienne more independent of the
authority
of her mother-in-law and of her husband. This was a duty, and before such a duty her husband and his mother had had to yield. Furthermore it had provided a wonderful excuse to escape frequently from her husband’s house, Almasko, where Adrienne had had nothing to do and where it was as if she were a guest in her own home. There it was the old countess who ran the
household
and supervised the upbringing of Adrienne’s little daughter – and in both she brooked no interference from Adrienne. For the rest, Pal Uzdy did everything, himself attending to the smallest details of the running of the estate and the forests. Adrienne had tried to interest herself in the gardens and orchards but it had soon become obvious that the others despised her for it, tolerating such activity with condescending smiles as if it were a mere
pastime
, the futile and meaningless games of a child.

But now everything was different, for Adrienne’s family responsibilities were real. Until now Pal Uzdy had always treated his wife as if she were some sort of bought slave who had no other function in his house but to look beautiful, act obediently, and be there whenever he desired her. Now it was as if some new recognition had dawned in Uzdy, as if, however dimly, he had become aware that she might just be human – and it even appeared, in some strange way, as if he took pride in her being of use to her family.

This, however, was only upon the surface, for their marital relations remained the same as before. Adrienne still felt only fear and disgust when Uzdy came to her bedroom, and, with the
blissful
memory of her nights in Venice with Balint, she felt that she had stepped back from heaven into hell, a hell to which she had sentenced herself.

As the weeks – and then months – had gone by Adrienne thought more and more of what she had denied herself when she had banished Balint from her life. As she did so it had seemed that the arguments by which she had convinced herself she was doing right had dimmed into pale insignificance.

Whatever she did she was haunted by the memories of those weeks of joy and happiness, and hardly a day passed without her mentally reliving the love they had known together.

At Mezo-Varjas she would return again and again to the
garden
bench where Balint had first told her of his love and where she had been angry and offended by his passionate words of love and by the kiss he had implanted on her arm. How childish all that seemed now!

In her rooms at the Uzdy villa at Kolozsvar, where Adrienne often spent the night on her way to her father’s house, there were memories in every corner. There everything was the same as it had always been: the deep-piled white carpets in her
sitting-room
, strewn with soft cushions where, in front of the fire, Balint and she had lain so often in an embrace as chaste as if they had been brother and sister. How many times they had been there together in the first days of their love! It was there that Balint had first taught her to kiss and where he had once, on a dark evening as dusk was falling, tried to take her by force. How she had rebelled! It was in the same room, much later, when she had just started to become aware of all that true love entailed, that she had written him that terrible letter, the letter that was to have put an end to their friendship, in which she had explained that she did not want to become his mistress, that she could never ever become his mistress for ‘if that were to happen’ she felt she would have to kill herself …

It was there, in June the year before, that it had been decided with her father and younger sister Margit that they should go to Venice and where, when she had obtained the necessary
agreement
from her husband and mother-in-law, that she had first known, even though she hardly admitted it to herself, that she had taken the great decision to ask Balint to join her believing that she would never return alive.

In those days her desire had been stronger than anything she had previously known.

Even at Almasko it had been the same. Here, too, everything reminded her of her love for Balint: in her bedroom, when she had been ill and Uzdy had left the house at dawn, Balint had come to see her; in the forests where they had walked their arms enlaced; and, above all, here under the great beech which had been the only witness of their secret meeting.

Adrienne had come here often since her return from Venice. And almost every day she had stood there, alone and forlorn.

Tormented by her memories, there arose in her one over-riding desire – to see Balint again. During the long, long months of separation she had been assailed by all sorts of conflicting
emotions
, emotions that seemed to have only one thing in common and that was that they all led to one conclusion: nothing that she had previously thought sacred and unchangeable was valid any more.

Adrienne had had little news of Balint. Occasionally she had heard that he had been in Budapest, or at Denestornya with his mother; but these had been mere geographical facts – of his life she had heard nothing. She longed to know what he was doing and above all what he was feeling. Did he still remember her or had he already found some other woman with whom he could console himself? When this thought came to her the pain of
jealousy
was so sharp that she nearly cried out in despair.

Naturally she had blamed herself for these pangs of jealousy, for was it not she who had sent him away, giving him his freedom and insisting that he resign his place in her life?

Why, she wondered, had she ever done this?

Why? Because she had had to do so. It had been impossible to divorce her husband while he, in turn, would never have let her go but would coldly and ruthlessly have killed both her and her lover. She had felt then that she had no choice, for she knew that if they were to meet again she would never have been able to resist him or deny herself to him … and, then, when her husband came to her, it would be a defilement impossible to bear. This was the moral argument that Adrienne had then felt to be ineluctable. Slowly, however, as the months of longing and loneliness went by, as she suffered and jealously waited she knew not for what, this argument had somehow lost its force.

Adrienne’s once strong will had been eroded. Surely, she had begun to reason with herself, nothing had changed. Wasn’t
everything
always going to be the same? Could she really go on living like this? Was it not madness to banish from her life the only man she ever had or ever would give her heart to, to throw away the only chance of bliss she had ever known, she who had even seen her own child removed from her?

It was her mother-in-law who had done that and even here her husband had not taken her side. For Uzdy, she knew, she was merely an object with whom he could satisfy his desires, no more real than a whore. Her whole relation with her husband was a
disgrace
to human dignity, and so what would it matter if, in her slavery and subjection, she was to take what life might offer her? What difference would it make to her life? Why not? Whyever not? And it was now that she had come to believe that it was only pride and conceit and meaningless love of self that had led her to reject a double life, a rejection for which she was now paying with such anguish – and to what purpose? Surely this suffering was all for nothing?

These thoughts, so contrary to everything she had formerly held sacred, chased themselves in her brain and, though she tried hard to banish them, returned with ever-growing force, stronger and stronger. Having only herself to argue with she fought with her memories and her desire. And all the while her whole being cried out to be with him once again.

It was almost dark when they parted, but both of them knew that far from being a dismal farewell, it was the beginning of future happiness.

Balint stayed by the tree until Adrienne looked back from the edge of the woods across the valley and then disappeared along the forest path.

Then he too started back to his camp.

On the way he was thinking of what they had now agreed. Over and over again he went over in his mind the code by which they would arrange their meetings – any four numbers that might be found in their otherwise harmless letters would signify the hour and day they were to be together.

Balint decided that he would build a little shooting lodge in that meadow where his tent now stood, and from it a path for the forest guards would be cut to where they had just met; Adrienne would be able to use that whenever she could get away from her husband’s house.

Later that evening, when he gave his orders, he told them to cut several other trails as well, all of them leading to where salt blocks would be provided for the deer. This, he felt, would serve to veil his real intentions.

That night, for the first time in many months, Balint fell asleep happy and contented.