Laszlo stood behind her for a few moments and Klara knew it, every nerve in her body signalling that he was there, trembling with surprise, disappointment and indignation. She forced herself not to turn round and give him a smile of encouragement and consolation as if it were merely an unlucky chance that things had turned out; but she did not do so. Instead she slowly pulled off her long gloves and placed them carefully on the table beside her. But all her attention was fixed on listening until she was sure Laszlo was no longer there.
At last — it had seemed like eternity — she heard the young man’s footsteps as he moved away. Then she felt that something between them had been torn apart.
It was already daylight when the ball came to an end. Laszlo, by dint of his office, had to remain until all the guests had left, but Klara went home early. Filled with gloom, hatred and spite, Laszlo danced almost to breaking point, so as to tire himself out, and when dawn was breaking, drank a great deal to help him sleep — and indeed he did sleep, in a deep, dreamless slumber that lasted until the afternoon.
When he finally awoke he was filled with the sense of having suffered some great calamity. Slowly he went over in his mind all that had happened on the previous evening and then he was suddenly struck, as with a sledgehammer, by the realization that Klara had deliberately avoided him, coldly, icily, cruelly avoided him. She had intentionally broken the tacit agreement that they had had since the beginning of the Carnival season, that they should always sit together at supper; and now she had shown that she didn’t even want him at her side but preferred to sit by Warday, of all people. She had shown him that it was Warday she wanted near her, Warday! She had therefore broken the understanding that, though never put into words, had been such a strong link between them. Of course this had to mean that everything was finished, that it was all over!
After what seemed like hours of self-doubt, and while more and more demons of jealousy and speculation had chased themselves round and round in the darkening room, Laszlo got up and dressed and went to the Casino.
It was dinner-time when he arrived and he sat down at a crowded table between Arzenovics and Zalamery. When these two, after coffee and several glasses of liqueur, went straight up to the baccarat-room, he went with them.
This time Laszlo did not wait to be asked but sat down immediately at the table and joined the game. From the start he played very high indeed, for should his banks prove disastrous and his loses huge it would somehow be a vengeance on Klara for breaking this agreement. That he himself was breaking his solemn word never for a moment crossed his mind. Though Laszlo had had plenty of wine at dinner and had continued to drink steadily all evening, he felt completely sober, stone cold sober. The only effect the wine had had on him was to deepen his resentment until his body seemed aflame with it. Once again, at the card-table, he felt this same strange sixth sense which told him when to say ‘Banco!’ and when to pull out. He bet very high and, apparently, wildly, but his winnings piled up in front of him umtil he was surrounded by gleaming little walls of chips.
No one noticed the passing of time.
The Steward came round at one o’clock with the players’ signed chits. Some were settled at once in cash, others by the return of winning chips, while the big gamblers, if they were on a losing streak, had their debts added to their running accounts. The game went on undisturbed.
The boards on the landing outside the card-room creaked. Someone was coming up. Laszlo, who was sitting opposite the doorway, looked up: it was Louis Kollonich!
He came straight over to and stood with the onlookers directly in front of Laszlo. He stood there in silence, puffing at the Havana cigar that drooped from his mouth.
What does he want here, why has he come, he who was never seen in the gaming-room? Of course, it was obvious! He had come to spy, stalking Laszlo as if he were a rogue deer, sent probably by Aunt Agnes — or could it have been Klara? That idea filled Laszlo with dismay and horror. Could Klara really have gone so far as to involve her parents in the sacred pact between them, using her father to bear witness against him so that she would have cause and justification for abandoning him for Warday? Well, if that was what she wanted, here goes!
The pack reached Laszlo. With both hands he quickly pushed all his chips to the centre of the table, the carefully built piles of iridescent mother-of-pearl spilling in profusion over the baize cloth.
‘The bank is twenty thousand!’ he said. ‘Faites vos jeux!’
About twelve thousand was put on the table. Laszlo dealt deliberately, slowly. He looked at his own card with apparent calm: it was a five. ‘Je donne!’ he said dryly. His opponent replied: ‘Non!’ Laszlo took a card, glanced at it, saw that it was a three, and spread his hand upon the table: eight! Picking up the remaining cards, Laszlo raked in his winnings with the small ivory rake and again uttered the cool, formal phrase: ‘Faites vos jeux!’ All this was done with an absolutely straight face, without a flutter of the eyelids, wooden-faced, wooden-voiced, under control, as he had seen Neszti Szent-Gyorgyi do it so often. Since his Uncle Louis was so good as to come to the chemmy game and so descend to spying on him, he might at least be given his money’s worth!
Old Louis stood there for only a few minutes, looking quietly at the scene with his tiny pig-like eyes. Then he turned and walked slowly back to the doors. The stairs creaked as he went down. He had gone.
As this was happening Laszlo dealt another coup, which he lost. In correct order he paid each winner, for his sense of discipline never wavered, and then leaned back in his chair racked by a pain so terrible and implacable that he almost fainted from dizziness. It’s all over now: everything is finished! he said to himself. Suddenly a veil of cobwebs was spun over his eyes so that he could hardly see what was going on in front of him; everything, the table, the players’ faces, the room itself, disappeared into a fog of nothingness. For a long time he sat without moving until, when the pack returned to him, he pushed it away mechanically, murmuring: ‘Passe la main!’ Then he got up and left the table.
As Laszlo moved towards the door, reeling unsteadily, someone behind him said: ‘Gyeroffy’s drunk as a lord!’ but he himself heard nothing. Somehow he reached the stairs and, clinging for support to the banister rail, slowly managed to get down, carried by his feet alone, for he knew not what he did. At the bottom of the stairs someone helped him into his cloak and hat and from there he walked out into the night like a somnambulist, unconscious of what he was doing or where he was going. For hours he walked the streets aimlessly, walking, walking, walking. He felt like an empty husk … and inside the shell of his brain and body and spirit there was nothing, no thought, no feeling, no life, no pain.
At dawn he found himself wandering in the Nepliget, the People’s Park, with no idea how he came to be there. He was terribly tired, and his thin patent-leather evening shoes were filthy and split. After a while the first tram came rumbling by, its lamps still lit. Laszlo boarded it and went home.