After passing through Maros-Ludas they had to climb a long steep ridge, from the summit of which several small paths led down to the little mining town. When travelling on the high plateau one always went along the tops of the ridges, whether on foot or on horseback, for the winding valley roads took much longer. Half way up Balint and the groom dismounted and led their horses by hand.
As they moved slowly up the hill a man came towards them from one of the paths from the ridge. He was on foot and his short spare figure could be seen from afar silhouetted against the sky. He was dressed in town clothes and he too walked slowly, but as if tired from having come a long way.
When Balint arrived at the top of the ridge he paused for a moment to admire the view, which to him was poignantly beautiful. Down below could be seen the meandering course of the Maros river. From where Balint stood it was as clear as if drawn on a map. Across the valley the rolling hillsides were covered with forest trees while on this side of the river the bare cliffs of yellow clay were cleft by innumerable steep ravines washed out by rain and wind.
The foot-traveller reached the main road just as Balint was about to remount his horse. ‘Hey! Hey! Stop!’ he called to Abady, who already had one foot in the stirrup. Balint turned round in surprise.
‘Don’t you recognize me?’ cried the stranger. ‘Andras Jopal! But perhaps you don’t want to know me anymore?’
It was not easy to recognize the former tutor to the Laczok boys in this travel-worn stranger. Jopal, formerly so spruce and dapper, was unshaven, with several days’ growth of beard on his face. His clothes were torn and filthy, the soles of his boots were flapping against the uppers and his bare toes could be seen through the slits on both sides. But his face was so unusual, with its wide cheekbones, square jaw and the staring eyes of a fanatic, that Balint would have recognized him without any introduction. His first impulse was to shake hands with the man, but then he remembered the insults which had been shouted after him when he had left old Minya’s house the previous September, which had been all the thanks he had received for his well-intentioned offer to aid Jopal to develop his ideas for a flying machine.
Rather coldly he said: ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I was on my way to find you at Denestornya. I’m in luck to run across you here.’
‘To find me?’ asked Balint, astonished.
‘Yes, indeed. I owe you something, and I wished to repay my debts, as I have all the others, all of them!’
‘What debt? You don’t owe me anything.’
‘Indeed I do! I offended your Lordship, stupidly. I only realized it afterwards and I wouldn’t like you to remember me only by that. What I owe you is an apology. So now I must ask your Lordship’s forgiveness.’
‘With all my heart, please say nothing more about it!’ said Balint and offered Jopal his hand. To prove that he bore the man no grudge he called to his groom to bring him food from the saddle-bags.
‘Take something too,’ he said to the lad, and to Jopaclass="underline" ‘Let’s go and sit down over there.’ They sat down together on the grassy slope that bordered the road.
‘Won’t you join me!’ said Abady, unwrapping the parcel of bacon, bread and salami.
‘With pleasure. Thank you!’ said Jopal, and for a few moments they ate in silence.
‘How is your great-uncle, old Gal?’
‘Poor man, he died three weeks ago.’
‘I’m sorry. If I’d known I’d have come to the funeral. That’ll be a great loss for you, surely?’ said Balint, looking sadly at Jopal’s torn clothes and ruined shoes.
‘That’s of no account. It doesn’t matter anymore. I’m finished anyway!’ Abady looked at him enquiringly, trying to fathom what the man meant. With a sudden burst of anger, Jopal went on: ‘Didn’t you hear? It’s all so meaningless! This April, Santos-Dumont flew in Paris, from the lawns of the Château de Bagatelle. And he did it with my machine, with my machine, I tell you; with my machine exactly. It was the same, or almost the same. So my work’s finished. It’s the end of everything I’ve ever worked for. I built my life on it. And could have done it, if I’d had the money for the proper equipment. I was ready in the autumn; I could have flown then, before everyone else, but I didn’t have the money! If I had, then all the glory and fame and wealth would have been mine, mine! Everything for which Santos and the Wright Brothers are now suing each other! Mine!’
Balint suddenly remembered having seen a copy of the French review L’Illustration with photographs of Santos-Dumont when he succeeded in taking up his machine for two or three hundred yards a few feet from the ground. So the problem of flying had at last been solved. He was sorry now that he had forgotten the Transylvanian inventor and the theories he had expounded in the yard of old Minya Gal’s house. He felt deeply sorry for the man beside him.
‘If only I hadn’t been so pig-headed and stupid! If I’d accepted your offer…’ Jopal’s face was contorted with misery. His lips curved back from his prominent teeth and his eyes narrowed with pain. For a moment he seemed close to tears, but then he straightened up and said: ‘If my uncle had died a few months ago and I’d had his little legacy in the autumn, perhaps I could have done it!’ He tightened his hand into a fist and banged it down on his knee: ‘But what for, I ask you, what for?’ Then he laughed bitterly and went on: ‘So what did I do? I paid my debts, all of them, every penny that I’d begged and borrowed for my invention. I paid them all back. Only your Lordship remained and now I’ve done that too and so I can be on my way!’
He laughed again, folded his knife and replaced it in his pocket, and got up.
Balint remained where he was.
‘Don’t go,’ he said. ‘With your abilities you shouldn’t despair. I’m sure there are other problems to be solved with which you could prove yourself. There’s so much to be done.’
Jopal struck the air with his closed fist. ‘I don’t want anything to do with it!’ he said. ‘Goodbye!’ and, turning swiftly on his heel, he went off down the hill. When he had gone about twenty paces he turned back and called: ‘The violin! My uncle left it to your Lordship. You can collect it from the house. It’s there with the girl Julis. She’ll give it to you!’
Then he hurried away and soon left the road and took a little goat-path which seemed to lead down towards the river Maros. In a few moments he had disappeared below the cliffs.
Balint and his groom were soon mounted and on their way. After a while they found themselves on a soft grassy lane which led them, still on a high ridge, deeper into the rolling grassland country where it was rare for any small hills to rise above the general level of the prairie. All around them was a sea of rolling grassland whose faint ridges were like the swell of a petrified ocean on the crest of which they were no more than tiny Lilliputian figures. The air was dry and clean. In the far distance to the north could be seen, like a distant shore across the ocean, cloud-grey in colour, the peaks of the snow-covered Besztercey mountains. There, slightly to the left were the Cibles, three peaks shining white and sparkling from the fresh snow with which they had been covered since the last rains.
At last Lelbanya could be seen a little way off, and now they had to leave the track and make their way down from the grassland prairie to where, in a cleft in the hills, stood the little town on its salt-flaked bank of clay and, beside it, the dark lake, now almost covered by the reeds and canes from which the townsfolk earned their living. Though invisible from where Balint was riding, the surface of the lake was dotted with wild duck and moorhens whose broods were brought up in safety in the cover of the reeds.