An unusual four-horse carriage drove up; unusual because instead of the conventional carriage horses it was driven by four stocky little mountain ponies with short strong legs, long tails and thick shaggy manes.
The coachman, and the man on the box, were dressed in long linen dust-coats and wore the high cylindrical hats of the Upper Maros. A tall man got up heavily from the rear seat of the low-slung carriage: it was Miklos Absolon, political leader of the Upper Maros region. The crowd around the coffee-house did not notice his arrival until he tried to make his way towards where everyone was sitting. Then they all jumped up and made way for him, though they knew that he was a trouble-maker and had only come in order to laugh at them and stir up what mischief he could.
Absolon immediately made for the table where the party leaders were sitting. He had a severe limp as a result of a twisted left leg that ended in a stump. He walked always with a short crutch held tightly to his thigh and now he made his way swiftly and noisily to the table where Barra was seated.
His progress was as relentless and unstoppable as that of an express train and on arrival they all rose and asked him to sit with them. ‘Good evening to you all!’ he said, and sat down, though without going so far as to shake anyone’s hand.
‘Give me a chair for my leg!’ he demanded of his neighbour, the Chief Justice Galffy, who immediately surrendered his own. When Absolon was settled he put his crutch on the table and turned to Barra. ‘Well, Samu, so you’ve come to see the fun!’ he said in a rasping voice.
Barra, instead of replying with one of the well-turned phrases of which he was such a master, merely replied, in a careful, noncommittal manner: ‘Yes, here I am!’
Balint could see old Absolon well, for his face was lit up by the lamps of the coffee-house in front of him. He looked remarkably like his nephew Pali Uzdy, with the same stylized Tartar head, slanting back eyes and wide cheekbones. His hair, too grew from a widow’s peak which was now visible as he had pushed back from his forehead the little fur-trimmed cap he always wore. This cap was from Asia, a Kirgiz cap as worn by the Gobi tribesmen in the Altai mountains, and its fur lining stood up in twin triangles on each side of his head. He was tall, though not so thin and spindly as his nephew, and he had wide muscular shoulders.
Abady was fascinated to see him. He had heard that twenty years before, during the ’80s, Miklos Absolon had travelled widely in the more remote parts of Central Asia. He had had many adventures and seen many strange things, and would talk endlessly and wittily about them; though he had never written down his experiences or made any effort to publish them. As a result many people assumed that he had made it all up and that he was an habitual mythomaniac whose tales were all lies and so, though they would egg him on to recount his ‘adventures’, it was all nothing more than a tease and they would mock him behind his back. Balint had always thought it was probable that Absolon was telling the truth, and this feeling had been reinforced when he had met an old Russian in Stockholm who had travelled with Prsevalskij and who had asked Balint how Absolon was and if he had ever published the story of his time in Tibet. The old man had said that what Absolon had to tell would have been of world interest, and he told Balint how Absolon, when trying to escape from Lhasa, which he had entered disguised as a pilgrim, had been caught at the Tibetan frontier and had his leg broken, and how his eventual escape had been a miracle of cunning and endurance.
In Transylvania, however, no one believed a word of these old stories and so, as soon as the old traveller had seated himself at Barra’s table on the Vasarhely sidewalk, someone asked, with an innocent face: ‘Is your leg hurting you?’
‘Naturally. Hasn’t the political weather changed?’ replied the Absolon with a short rasping laugh.
‘Thinth when are you wounded?’ lisped young Kamuthy.
The older man looked up sharply: he knew well he was being mocked but, in his turn, he laughed at those who tried to make fun of him, knowing, as they did not, that everything he said was true.
‘When visiting the Dalai Lama!’ he replied. This was just the sort of answer for which they had hoped. Some of his listeners laughed and others nudged each other in satisfied appreciation.
The old traveller looked around and saw Abady whom he did not immediately recognize. ‘Who are you?’ he called out. Someone explained: ‘Ah, Tamas’s son! He was a good friend of mine. I’m pleased to see you!’ Then he turned to the lawyer and said:
‘I interrupted your discourse. Please go on. I should like to learn something new!’ Boros then went back to his dissertation on common law. Absolon listened quietly for a long time as the lawyer spoke carefully and mellifluously. From time to time he nodded as if in agreement. Then he took out a short black cigar, bit it firmly with his white teeth and spat out the end.
‘That’s very interesting, very good!’ he said. ‘We need laws. Everyone needs laws, even in the desert! There, if someone steals a woman he can redeem himself with two sheep, though, of course, if he steals something valuable, a camel for instance, then he’s hanged without mercy!’
Zsigmond Boros went pale with anger. Icily, from behind his carefully trimmed spade-shaped beard, he said: ‘I don’t see the connection.’
‘Perhaps there is none!’ replied Absolon, laughing heartily.
‘But, since we were speaking about the law …’
There was some whispering in the background and someone sniggered sensing that Absolon’s apparently innocent remark might be more mischievous than it sounded, for most people had heard some rumours that Boros was in difficulties concerning a legacy from some deceased female client. However, the lawyer merely looked coldly at Absolon for a moment or two before resuming his legal discourse.
While this was happening at the coffee-house a private closed carriage, with its glass windows tightly shut, entered the square from the road that came from the mountains. It was driven by an elderly coachman and was pulled by two horses who were obviously tired after a long drive.
As soon as the carriage stopped one of its windows was let down just a crack and a young man went up to it and spoke to whoever was inside. In a moment he was replaced by another, both presumably making their reports to the person, still invisible, who was seated within. Then the Chief Justice was called to the carriage window. A minute or two later, he came back to the café table and spoke to Abady.
‘Countess Sarmasaghy would like a word with you,’ whispered Galffy, ‘She’s in the carriage over there.’ Balint found this very tiresome, but there was nothing to be done but obey.
From the darkness of the carriage a little shrivelled hand reached out to him. ‘Get in!’ said a thin, piping voice; and talon-like fingers drew him into the carriage. As soon as he was seated she ordered the coachman to drive on.