Adrienne was also silent, though not with the tranquillity of mutual repose as when she and Balint would sit together in silence for hours at a time. Now her silence was hostile, like that of someone alone in an alien world. Her manner was unpropitiatory and antagonistic to those around her and the few words she spoke were hard and dismissive; and though she sometimes made a joke of what was being said, teasing Adam Adamovich and laughing at his attempts to entertain her, she was not natural and her laughter seemed artificial and forced.
Uzdy suddenly rose and left the salon, returning in a few moments with a silken shawl which he brought out to Adrienne.
‘This is so that you wouldn’t catch cold!’ he said.
‘Thank you, but it isn’t cold tonight. I don’t need it,’ she said, protesting, as he tried to put it round her shoulders. But despite her protests her husband still wrapped the shawl round her before turning and making his way back to the drawing-room. Did Balint imagine it, or had Uzdy given him a mocking glance as he passed?
It was such a little thing that Balint was not sure he had not been mistaken, and nothing else out of the ordinary was to happen before they all went to bed a little later. When the old lady got up from her accustomed place on the sofa the others all rose too, and those on the balcony came back into the room to say goodnight. They all left the drawing-room together and while the two Alvinczys were escorted by the butler to their rooms on the lower floor, Countess Clémence went directly to her apartments on the left of the oval entrance hall.
Adrienne, Uzdy and Balint went to the doors on the right, where Balint’s room was to be found at the beginning of the corridor leading to the Uzdy’s private wing. They stopped outside Balint’s door for a moment and said goodnight. Then Uzdy put his arm round his wife and led her away. Balint watched them until they had disappeared round the corner.
Balint turned down the light as soon as he got into bed, but he couldn’t sleep. It was hot in the room so he got up, went over to the windows and threw open the shutters.
Before him there was a beautiful view; or rather half a beautiful view, for everything to the left was cut off by the protruding wing and the wooden tower with its staircase at the far end. The windows were all dark, with no sign of light apart from that of the moon shining outside. Not a sound was to be heard.
The young man leaned out of the window thinking that though the view before him was exceptionally beautiful, it was in some mysterious way gloomy; though perhaps this was due the cold brightness of the moonlight. Round the house were low irregular hills covered with the black outlines of oak trees; closer to Balint the lawns and flowerless gardens were black too and only in the distance, seemingly just an inch away from the vertical line of the projecting tower, could be seen the twin ghostly outlines of the ruined fortress across the valley, shining now not with the brilliance of sunlight that had illuminated them as he looked from the train, but with a vapoury, ghostly iridescence that seemed fraught with forebodings of a tragic destiny.
Balint remained there for a long time, gazing out into the night and trying not to allow his memory of how Adrienne looked that evening to haunt his memory. Her face had been set in cold, hostile lines, not only for everyone else but also, and this he did not understand, for him as well. Since the Alvinczys had arrived she had made a point of devoting herself to Adam Adamovich rather than to him whom she had treated with a coquetry that was both cold and contrived. It had hurt; it was humiliating and, after those kisses in the forest that morning, utterly incomprehensible. Balint became filled with doubts and began to wonder if it were possible that in reality Adrienne was one of those calculating women who planned their conquests with cunning but with ultimate frigidity. Could she be one of those who carried on with several men at the same time, taking pleasure from making them suffer and only happy when she could laugh at their enslavement? Women like that can never really love, reflected Balint as he leaned on the cold window-sill, all they can do is rejoice when they know they are causing torment.
As he was thinking about the enigma of Adrienne the silence was interrupted by the sound of wooden boards creaking. The sound came from the staircase in the tower and from where he stood Balint could see the faint light of a candle held by someone slowly ascending the stairway within. For a moment there would be a glow at one dark barred aperture, then nothing, then again it would appear at a window farther up. At the topmost window it disappeared altogether.
Balint’s heart constricted. Uzdy was going to his wife.
Everything that had previously mystified him was now made clear. Clear, why Adrienne’s mirth had been so false and hard; clear, why she had made that flight to the covered balcony after dinner, and why she had tried to reject the wrap brought by her husband; clear, her terrified face when she said goodnight in the corridor. And, just as distinctly, Balint had seen in Adrienne’s face that evening the same agonized expression as when he himself had nearly raped her at Kolozsvar. How had he not recognized it earlier? Balint now realized that all evening she had felt nothing but loathing for everyone and everything around her because she knew, in advance, what was in store for her later.
Balint struck the window-sill with his clenched fist.
On his lips there was a little trickle of blood as he bit hard not to cry his own agony aloud to the lonely night.
The following morning it had been arranged that he should again go shooting in the woods. He did not want to go and would willingly have cancelled it had he not planned with Adrienne that they should meet in the forest as if by chance, so that he would be able to give her Judith’s letter when no one else could see him do it.
This morning Balint also wanted to see his mother’s oak forests, so what had been planned as a morning’s deer stalk was transformed into an early walk through the woods. He asked the Almasko forest guard to guide him to the ridge he had spoken of the previous day whence he could, it seemed, have a good view of his family’s property. Walking briskly it took them about three hours, and any deer that they sighted on the way were allowed to go free. The strenuous exercise and the radiant morning combined to restore his composure, so that although his face clouded when, as they neared home, he saw Adrienne approaching, he was quickly able to get himself under control. It was important to him that she should notice nothing when they met. When the guard had left them and they were once again alone in the shade of the great trees, he tried to kiss her, but Addy stepped back and put her fingertips to his lips.
‘No! Please, no!’ She spoke so low that he hardly heard her words, and as she spoke a shudder passed right down through her body starting at the shoulders. Balint’s heart missed a beat and he felt full of pity and compassion for her, for he had realized that with that involuntary movement her body had cried out to him: ‘Don’t touch me, I’m unclean!’ She used the same gesture, an arm uplifted, that lepers used to protect others from their touch; and so he at once took her hand, gently and firmly and held it until she had understood that it was merely out of sympathy and not the first movement of an attempt to kiss her. They moved slowly along the path, holding hands like two young children. They did not speak and their footfalls on the grass-covered path made no sound. The woodbirds, finches and siskins, flitted from branch to branch in the trees, and filled the air with their song.