They Were Counted (82 page)

Balint was still searching for that knowing ironic phrase which would tell Adrienne that he had understood the change in her and that no one was going to make a fool of him. The right words would not come, and though he tried to force himself to speak lightly, as if it were all a huge joke, what came out sounded hard and slightly offensive. ‘And for what joyous family feast is this little present intended?’

‘Present? For whom?’

‘Why, for your beloved husband I presume!’

‘No! No! No!’ Adrienne burst out laughing. ‘You thought that … You thought … You really believed … for Pali Uzdy?’

‘But in your letter, you wrote that you wanted to surprise him.’

When she finally managed to control her laughter Adrienne turned back to Balint. Looking straight at him she put the little weapon carefully away in its case and then said: ‘I only meant it would be a surprise for him. Of course I see it could be understood differently, but I had to be rather vague. You would never have bought it for me if … well, if I had written the truth!’

‘I don’t understand.’

Adrienne was now deadly serious. The pupils of her amber eyes narrowed to pinpoints as she looked out over the shining valley of the Almas and across the wooded hills to the faint bluish line of the distant mountains beyond. She leaned her chin on her closed fist forcing her mouth into a sulky, discontented line, sad and stubborn.

Then she spoke again, softly, in broken phrases, as if it were
difficult
for her to find the right words. ‘I have decided that I will not bring any more Uzdys into the world. Why should I? They’d only be taken away from me like the first one. No! Never again! Never! Am I to be only a brood mare, a cow in calf? No! If it happens again …’ She was silent for a while, and then went on slowly with great determination: ‘If I can find no other way I will shoot
myself
.’ She laughed again, even more bitterly than before and behind her bitterness Balint could sense a certain malicious delight. ‘That is going to be the surprise for Uzdy that I wrote to you about!’

Balint listened to her words. He felt he had been turned to stone and he was filled with terrible foreboding and a deep pity for the girl who had been brought to this dreadful decision. His eyes filled with tears.

‘Addy! My darling Addy! You must never do that! Never!’

He took her soft yielding hand in his, that hand which he had so often held before and whose fingers were so lissom they might have had no bones in them; and he stroked her arm until he wanted above all things in the world to draw her close to him. At once she stiffened and her hand tightened round his with sudden strength and violence. Then she pushed him away: ‘Not that! Not now! You must not touch me now.’ She got up and started to walk towards the tower, chatting light-heartedly as if she was
determined
to make him forget the harshness of what she had just said. They walked together in the ruins for some little time and the sun was already beginning to set when they started for home.

When they had crossed the grassy slope just below the tower they started down the rocky hillside on separate paths: Balint chose the higher, while Adrienne set off on another, slightly lower down, which soon turned a corner of the cliff-face. She was
walking
very close to the edge, too close, thought Balint, for there was a sharp fall on the outer side. He was just about to call out a warning to her when Adrienne suddenly flung up her arms and disappeared into the abyss, It looked as though she had jumped deliberatedly, for she had made no sound, not a word, not a cry of terror or surprise. No stones followed her fall.

After a moment in which he was too stunned with horror to move, Balint leapt down from the path above and scrambled across the rocks to where he had last seen her.

Crazed with anguish he looked over the edge to see Adrienne on her feet on a grassy shelf not far below. She was wiping the palm of one of her gloves for she had muddied it when she fell. She laughed, looking guiltily up and lied: ‘It’s too silly, I slipped! It’s lucky the ground is so soft here. No, no, I didn’t hurt myself … I didn’t fall very far. The cliff’s not very high. We used to jump far further in the gymnastic class. You know when I was at school I could always jump farther than any of the others,
always
…’ And she gabbled on, making a joke of it. But Balint saw that she was very pale and did not regain her normal colour until they were almost home.

Adrienne did not come down for dinner that night.

‘My daughter-in-law isn’t feeling very well,’ explained
Countess
Clémence in her cool, formal manner. Uzdy seemed worried and unusually distracted, with a deep crease between his slanting devil’s eyebrows. Nevertheless, he kept the conversation going and even essayed a mild joke or two; though Balint had the
impression
that his perpetual sardonic smile stayed on his face only through force of habit. Twice in the course of the evening he left the drawing-room for short periods. Later a carriage could be heard being swiftly driven away from the castle, its wheels crunching over the gravel as it raced out of the forecourt. No one spoke in the drawing-room and Balint could hear the clatter of the horses’ hoofs as they faded into the night. About ten o’clock everyone went to bed.

Balint lay down but could not sleep. With teeth tightly clenched he tried to sort out in his mind what he had discovered that day. Only now did he understand that what she had feared had already happened. Poor, poor Addy! How desperate and how determined she was. He saw everything clearly now. Poor Addy!

Towards midnight he again heard the sound of a carriage, this time coming back to the castle. There was the sound of whispered conversation in the passage and hurried steps. Presumably the doctor had been sent for and had just arrived. Then there was deep silence again and it was so quiet that the young man fancied he could count the seconds by the beating of his heart.

Balint was deeply distressed and worried, but there was
nothing
he could do.

Poor Addy! It was nearly dawn before he fell asleep and at some moment when he must still have been half awake he heard again the sound of a carriage driving swiftly away.

 

Despite everything that had happened Balint awoke early, though without feeling rested. Someone could be heard moving about the corridor outside his room and Balint looked to see who it was. It was Maier, the butler, with one of his underlings.

‘I’ll bring your Lordship’s breakfast at once,’ he said, and
hurried
away to the pantry. In a few minutes he was back with a tray.

‘Is Count Uzdy up?’ asked Balint, simply for something to say.

The butler’s big grey eyes seemed even sadder than usual. ‘His Lordship left at dawn, my Lord.’

‘Left?’ said Balint, astonished.

‘Before dawn, my Lord. He’s gone to his estate at Bihar.’

Balint hesitated. He wanted to ask after Adrienne but could not find the right words, so that it was not until Maier had almost left the room that he said: ‘The young Countess … tell me …?’

The butler answered only with a silent gesture. He raised his right hand, shrugged his shoulders to indicate that he knew
nothing
, and left the room.

This was terrible, thought Balint. He would be leaving that morning and it was unthinkable that he should go not knowing how she was or what had happened in the night. He had to know. He had to find some way of discovering the truth. For a few
moments
he thought, and then a plan began to form in his mind. He could hardly ask Countess Clémence; and even if he did she would not tell him anything. He had already tried Maier. It would be beneath his dignity to question the other servants. What, then? Indeed, why? As Balint paused, not knowing quite what to do, he was torn between his conflicting feelings for Adrienne, between the emotions of a faithful friend motivated by old acquaintance and pity, and those of the lover whose motives were far from selfless. For a moment Balint understood himself, but he soon chased away the thought, telling himself that if he had to see Adrienne it was out of pure compassion. He knew that he must see her and he knew, too, how to arrange it. He sat down at the writing table, pulled out a sheet of paper and scribbled a few words. He wrote:

Then he found an envelope, slipped the note into it and sealed it firmly.

When he had finished dressing Balint packed his bags and stepped out into the corridor. He walked up and down,
apparently
aimlessly, but he was waiting for Adrienne’s maid, Jolan, whom he had known in Kolozsvar and who was sure, sooner or later, to pass down the corridor on her way to her mistress’s rooms. At last she appeared.

‘If you would be so good, please give this to the Countess, if she’s well enough, of course. If her Ladyship has an answer I shall be here, I shan’t move from this spot.’

The maid disappeared down the corridor. While waiting, Balint went over to one of the windows and looked out. All he could see was Countess Clémence walking in the gardens. That, at least, was a relief. The old woman was out of the way.

He had almost begun to lose hope of a reply when Jolan
suddenly
appeared at his side. She brought back the opened envelope on which Adrienne had scribbled in pencil: ‘
In
half
an
hour
’,
no more. He glanced at his watch, and continued doing so every few minutes until the half-hour had passed. Then, trying hard to walk slowly and composedly, he started towards the bend in the
corridor
. There was a door at the end of the wide passage and in front of this stood the maid, Jolan. When he reached it she opened the door swiftly and silently and Balint entered.

The shutters of the room had not been opened and the curtains too were drawn. The room was in almost complete darkness, a scented darkness which reminded Balint of the natural smell of
almonds
or carnations. It was strong but not artificial, not a
manufactured
perfume but rather the intimate female scent that both maddened and intoxicated, making Balint for a moment as giddy as if he had just swallowed a draught of strong liquor. After a few more moments his eyes became accustomed to the gloom and he could make out the outlines of Adrienne’s bed which was set between the dim vertical rectangles of two long windows.

The bed was very low and very wide, like a huge couch. It was covered with lace which fell in festoons to the floor on every side. Against the creamy-white of the bedclothes Adrienne’s
loosened
hair stood out like two raven-black triangles on each side of her face. Thus framed, Adrienne’s head had an oriental, almost Egyptian appearance. The bedcovers were pulled up to her chin so that her face seemed to float ethereally above the cascading froth of the lace pillows.

Balint had to muster all his will-power to keep control of
himself
. He had commanded himself to appear cool and matter-
of-fact
  and he realized at once how necessary this was, for Adrienne’s eyes were wary, filled with a mixture of distrust, alarm, suspicion and fear that was almost menacing. So Balint spoke lightly, joked, kept his tone as natural as if he were in the presence of hundreds of other people at a ball, or chatting in drawing-rooms where wicked old ladies lurked trying to overhear something to gossip about.

‘What a scare you’ve given us all! How could you? You must have been a little crazy!’

A little smile crossed Adrienne’s face and she replied so softly that her words were like a reproachful caress: ‘Would you have preferred the more final solution?’

They went on talking for a few moments, but Balint was never afterwards able to recall what was said. It took all his strength to prevent Addy from seeing the force of the desire for her that raged within him. Somehow he managed to remain outwardly calm, for if he had for one moment allowed himself to show any real concern, he knew that he could not have contained himself. He saw the outlines of her body beneath the silken sheets and, so as not to shatter the spell, he made himself mask his desire by looking at her only through half-closed eyes. He tried to read her face, understand what that strangely joyous yet troubled
expression
really meant. She seemed filled with some unconscious joy that he found hard to interpret. Was she perhaps conscious all the same of how beautiful she was lying there – a mixture of
happiness
and sorrow, infinitely desirable, infinitely unattainable, forming a picture that he would never be able to forget but which would enslave him for ever and ensure that he never again thought of abandoning his pursuit? All this was mirrored in the huge amber-coloured eyes, the pale forehead and generous red lips. It would have been better if she had never let him into the
intimacy
of her room to see her lying there in bed, for she must have known that nothing would give him more pleasure than to
remember
her like that. Behind every other conscious feeling lay the unconquerable female instinct to attract and, at the same time, to reject.