They Were Divided Read online

  ‘Do you know this collection?’ Lili had asked when Balint had come up to her and leaned beside her on the table. ‘It is very rare. It’s the record of a journey to Egypt by a Hungarian, a Count Forray. Aren’t these coloured engravings lovely? Do look! Look at this one! Isn’t it beautiful?’ and as she had looked up at him the question in her wide open violet-blue eyes had had nothing to do with the pictures on the table.

  Together they had turned the pages slowly; and as they did so sometimes their arms or their fingers had touched and sometimes they had exchanged a word or two: ‘This must be Malta!’, ‘Do look at the camel-driver!’, ‘The Khedive’s palace …’, words without any real meaning whose purpose had only been to break the silence.

  Several times Balint had thought that the moment had come to speak the words for which she was waiting. He had only to take her hand and murmur a few short sentences and with that simple action he would have wiped out the past and started a new era in his life. Adrienne had wanted it that way and had expected it of him; but somehow the right words had never come, only those banal phrases about the engravings in the album on the table before them. And yet, as he was saying something obvious about the temple at Karnak and how large its stones were, he had been wondering if he ought then to have said ‘I love you’, which would have been a lie, or whether all that would have been needed was ‘Will you be my wife?’ until the moment had passed and they had been obliged to get up and go into the drawing-room where the other guests had started to gather.

  Lili had then got down from the chair on which she had been kneeling and slowly straightened up. Balint remembered that he had wondered then if she thought he might have been embarrassed to speak under the bright glare of the electric chandelier above them, especially as she had walked straight over to one of the deep window embrasures, where the thickness of the old walls would have made them invisible to the guests in the other room. She had gone right up to the window and then, with her face close to the glass, and clearly to find another reason for the move, she had murmured ‘Do look at the frost. It is like flowers made of ice!’ and then she had turned and glanced back at him.

  But Balint, who had followed her only as far as the beginning of the deep window embrasure, had just stood there still looking at the vast library.

  The walls were lined with wooden bookcases almost to the ceiling, all curved and convoluted with elaborate carved and gilded decorations and divided by twisted columns of different precious woods. Above the elaborate cornice were metal conch shells and gilded putti brandishing highly-coloured heraldic shields, all in the most sophisticated manner of the Viennese baroque. The atmosphere of abounding opulence was overwhelming, and when Balint had watched the slim girlish figure of Lili stepping so elegantly across the inlaid parquet floor he had suddenly felt that all this was her proper background, where she truly belonged. This somewhat foreign luxury, itself so truly Austrian, was her birthright; and yet it was alien and strange to anyone with his downright Transylvanian background. How could he uproot her and carry her off to his own so different home? Even if she were in love with him, he had thought, would she not feel herself transplanted into an alien, possibly hostile, soil. For all its size and grandeur, Denestornya in its simple Hungarian way could not compare with this sophisticated splendour, just as the way of life in Transylvania could hardly be compared with what Lili was used to. All this had flashed through Balint’s mind as he had stood there looking at her, and it was like a sudden draught of cold air in his face. More, it had been just one more inhibition to be added to the others.

  ‘It must be icy outside.’

  ‘It was six below zero at dusk.’

  ‘How bright the moonlight is!’

  ‘That’s why it’s so cold. The sky is quite clear now.’

  With these and other meaningless, inane phrases they had filled in the gaps between pauses that seemed endless to them both. At length Lili had turned away from the window. For an instant she had looked straight into Balint’s face and then, seeming to glide across the floor, she had returned to the drawing room without saying another word.

  Knowing now that he had finally lost her, Balint had followed her slowly, his heart filled with sadness: and yet it had been a mild sadness and on his face had been the slight ironic smile of someone who had had to forgo a pleasure he had never really expected to be his.

  What madness it had been to throw all that away!

  Thinking back to the past Balint stamped his feet in momentary anger and quickened his pace. In a few moments he found himself in the square in front of the station, which was full of bustle and noise for the express from Budapest had just arrived. Several luggage-laden motors passed him on their way to the city centre and this sudden rush of activity brought Balint to a halt. For a moment he hesitated, trying to choose between continuing on the muddy pavement in front of some warehouses, or crossing the road which was even muddier. Neither seemed sensible.

  As he stood there motionless for a moment newsboys ran forward offering the capital’s midday papers. Thinking that anything might be a distraction from his self-torment, Balint stopped one, took a paper at random, pressed a coin into the lad’s hand, stuffed the paper into one of his greatcoat pockets and, without waiting for the change, turned away and started to walk back to the city centre. I’ll go to a café and pass the rest of the time reading, he said to himself; but he had only gone a few steps before he had already forgotten what he had just decided.

  At dinner on the last night of his stay at Jablanka they had discussed the problem of Croatia. The Friedjung trial had been brought before the Viennese courts at the beginning of the month, December, and the Austrian newspapers had arrived at the castle that afternoon. They had all written about the case, and almost everything that had been printed had been disagreeable and critical.

  It had all started when Professor Friedjung had written a most controversial article, which had been published in the Neue Freie Presse at the end of March 1909. The subject had been the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and in it the Professor had named some fifty Croatian politicians whom he had accused of belonging to a irredentist organization supported by the government of Serbia. It had been fairly obvious from the start that Friedjung’s revelations had been inspired by the Austrian Foreign Office, for the material for the article could only have been provided by the Ballplatz. That these accusations should have been broadcast to the world’s press in this way had shown the whole affair to have been part of a plot by which the Dual Monarchy was to be forced into sending an ultimatum, with impossible terms, to Belgrade and then, when Serbia inevitably refused to comply, declaring war.

  Some trouble had been gone to in order to prepare the world diplomatically for these developments. Germany had already confirmed her solidarity with Vienna; Russia, though reluctantly and with a bad grace, would not intervene, and various other European powers had made it clear to Belgrade that Serbia would receive no support from abroad.

  The article in the Neue Freie Presse had appeared on March 25th, which had also been the date planned for the ultimatum, though this had never materialized because on the same day the Grown Prince of Serbia, George Karageorgevitch, had resigned his post as head of the pro-war party. A few days later Serbia showed herself willing to accept any terms offered her. Nevertheless the incendiary article had appeared and events later showed that, no matter what had transpired in Belgrade, the Friedjung article was part of a far-reaching plan hatched in Vienna and would have been published anyhow. A month later the monarchy’s Prosecutor-General arraigned another group of fifty-four Croatians, all accused of treason. This had been brought about by Baron Rauch, the Coalition-nominated Ban of Croatia, who was as anxious to see irredentism wiped out in Zagreb as were the Austrian politicians to stop Serbian irredentist activities in Vienna. The Zagreb trial had lasted five months and had ended that October with thirty-one of the defendants found guilty. Appeals had been launched, and it had been fairly obvious that they were
likely to succeed since the whole prosecution had been based on the weakest of cases. The Zagreb trial had provoked a most disagreeable anti-Austrian feeling abroad and the French press had written about the ‘Death of Justice’ in Vienna. The strong reaction abroad and the indecisive results of the Zagreb trial now gave new heart to those who had been pilloried by the Friedjung article and so they had accused him of slander.

  This trial had opened at the beginning of December and Professor Friedjung had at once declared that he could prove the truth of everything that he had alleged; and he presented documents to support his accusations. These, of course, had been provided by the Ballplatz and sent secretly to the famous and respectable historian. Then, as the trial entered its second week, things began to go wrong; some of the documents had been shown to be forgeries.

  It was this that had been the principal subject of conversation that last night at Jablanka. It had been the considered opinion that the professor had been right in principle and that those he had accused, especially Supino, the author of the Fiume Resolution, had certainly been Serbian agents, but that the Austrian Foreign Ministry had carelessly failed to verify all the material produced by their own spies. It had been clear that, unfortunately, there had been more than mere muddle or justifiable human error. What had emerged was no less than intentional falsification. It had been generally accepted that this was always to be expected when recourse had to be made to common or garden spies, who were often paid by both sides, and especially in this case where some of the secret agents had been Serbs who, no doubt, had received the false documents from Belgrade with the full knowledge of the Serbian government!

  Naturally this had been discussed frequently during the three days’ shooting at Jablanka and whenever the scandal had been mentioned it had always been in that bland, well-informed, unexaggerated, half-spoken, half-insinuated manner which was the well-bred style adopted by the Szent-Gyorgyi circle. On the last evening it had seemed to Balint that they could talk about nothing else and though, the year before, he had been fascinated by the political discussions in his cousins’ house, now his own inner turmoil prevented him from taking any interest in what they were saying. On that last evening he felt he could no longer stay talking politics with the group round the drawing room fire; and so, as soon as everyone had drunk their coffee, he left the room and went to see his aunt. It was, of course, right that he should do so as he would be leaving at dawn to catch the Budapest express and would have no other opportunity of taking his leave. But his hurried flight to Elise Szent-Gyorgyi’s own sitting-room was really because he could not bear to remain in the same room as little Lili whom he had just hurt so much. To reach his aunt’s rooms he had to pass once again through the library, and there, on the table, still lay the album of Forray’s travels, slightly askew, just as it had been left when Lili had pushed it aside and gone to the window. The big red and gold leather-bound volume glittered under the savage glare of the chandelier overhead and had seemed to him the corpus delicti – the proof of the crime he had just committed against both himself and her. His heart had constricted when he saw the book lying there in front of him.

  His aunt Elise had been sitting in her usual chair which was protected from any draught by a glass screen. In front of her were two women guests from Vienna. Before he had come in they had talked only of unimportant Viennese society gossip but this had stopped when Balint entered the room. Then she had grabbed his hand in her own and forced him to sit down on a sofa beside her chair. For a moment neither aunt nor nephew had spoken. The two Austrian visitors had grasped at once that their hostess wanted a few words alone with Count Abady and so, after a few desultory sentences, uttered only so as not to make it look as if it were his arrival that had caused their departure, which would not have been polite, they took their leave saying that they hoped the Countess would forgive them but that they were expected at the bridge tables and had then disappeared from the room.

  ‘It is nice of you to come to me so early,’ said Balint’s aunt, who had been born a Gyeroffy in far-off Transylvania, and she looked closely up at him with her large brown eyes. ‘I love to talk to you. When you’re here I don’t feel quite so far from home!’

  She had smiled and put her hand on Balint’s arm. He lifted it at once and put it to his lips. For a few moments neither had spoken and then Elise Szent-Gyorgyi had started enquiring after all her old friends and relations, starting with Balint’s mother. She asked after people she had not seen for more than twenty years and told her nephew little anecdotes about them, things that had happened during her girlhood, tales of country balls and May Day festivals and picnic outings to the forests of Radna. She asked after the father of the four Alvinczy boys because he had once been her favourite dancing partner – very handsome he had been, she said, and admitted having something of a crush on him while she was still in the schoolroom; and also after old Uncle Daniel Kendy, even then too fond of the brandy, who had been so much admired by all the young girls because he had been so good-looking and elegant and they had heard that he had cut a dash at the court of the Empress Eugénie and so was the first homme du monde any of them had ever met.

  And so she had gone on reminiscing about her youth and her own home and letting Balint tell her everything he could recall that had happened to her old acquaintances. From time to time she had paused for a moment and imperceptibly the little pauses had grown longer. Balint had had the impression that behind her very real interest in everything he could tell her had lain something else, something that she had been turning over in her mind, uncertain, perhaps, how she could bring up the subject.

  Balint had thought that she would probably ask about her other nephew, Laszlo Gyeroffy; but this time her mind had been on something else …

  After a little time Countess Elise had fallen silent and had then seemed lost in her own thoughts. Then suddenly she had said, ‘You can have no idea how good it is to hear all this!’ and turning again to her nephew she took his hand and kept it in hers. She seemed to be looking into the far distance.

  ‘Do you know,’ she had gone on softly as if confiding in him some carefully guarded secret. ‘Do you know that after all these years I still feel that Transylvania is my real home, not here in Northern Hungary. I feel at home there; not here! The people there are my own kind, but here they are somehow like foreigners, like Austrians, like Viennese. Don’t misunderstand me, I am very happy here and my life with Antal beside me has always been a happy one. But that is because I have always loved him so much. We married for love, and I would have married him, and no one else, no matter how poor he might have been or what sort of life he led.’ Then she had paused for a moment before going on: ‘… but all this …’ and she made a wide circular gesture with her hand which somehow embraced, as clearly as if she had spelt it all out, the castle at Jablanka, the vast estates, their assured position in society, ‘all this … this is still not really me. It has always been strange. This world is not my world and has never really become so. Now that I look back on my life I can see that it has been our great love, and only that, which has made our marriage so happy. Not only my love, but his also. It is that which has made everything right and harmonious for both of us. It’s true. It is love, true love, which is the only thing which makes it possible to endure everything and which absolves everything. If we had not had it ours would have been a life of disagreements and bitterness for both of us.’

  Then, as abruptly as she had begun, she fell silent again. After a moment or two she had given a light laugh and said, ‘Oh dear, how I do run on! Prattling away like anything … and such nonsense too. All that chatting about the past has made your old aunt think of … well … so many things.’

  So this was what she had wanted to tell him, and for which she had had to prepare herself. She had spoken only so as to be of some help and consolation to him, so as to reassure him that although she had seen at once that he had failed to ask Lili to marry him and that he felt guilty about it, she at le
ast sympathized and did not blame him. Somehow she had made it clear to him that she had understood his reasons perhaps even more clearly than he himself, and that somehow she knew not only that he was still in love with someone else but also that he instinctively thought of the charming Lili as an alien creature from another world. Balint had been deeply touched by his aunt’s delicacy and finesse and even more by the obvious love and goodness that had made her speak of such things. It had been a bitter hour for him and he had needed help and affection: he had been all the more grateful because he had sensed that for him, and him alone, Countess Szent-Gyorgyi had revealed something so intimate of her life and feelings that she would never had admitted to anyone else; and she had done it only because she knew that he had needed help.

  Aunt and nephew stayed together for a long time in the cosy intimate little sitting-room, all cushions and soft upholstery, that Countess Elise had made for herself. The carpets were deep and soft, and the furniture comfortable and unpretentious. The walls were covered in some dark material. It was in complete contrast to the grandeur of the rest of the castle where the huge white and gold rooms were filled with elaborate baroque furniture much of which had been gilded. Everything at Jablanka was perfect of its kind, as well as being very grand … but it was also, perhaps, a trifle cold. In the little private sitting-room where the mistress of the house had made her nest, everything, whether large or small, was a souvenir of her Transylvanian girlhood. Most of the quantity of pictures came from her old home at Szamos-Kozard and she even had two little oils of the old manor house before her brother had rebuilt it. There were watercolour portraits of her Gyeroffy parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles; and innumerable little pictures of children, mostly relations, were scattered all round the room, on tables, window sills, and on hanging shelves, along with countless small objects, photographs and miniatures, all of which held for her some memory of times long past and cousins long since departed. All of this had spoken unequivocally to Balint of his aunt’s deep and ineradicable love for her homeland … and also of the spiritual barrier she had never really vanquished that stood between her real self and this grandiose westernized world in which she had lived so many years. That evening, for the first time, Balint had understood the little room’s almost symbolic meaning.