This was unthinkable and could be very dangerous for Fanny, for though her husband had made it very plain that she was free to do as she liked and that he was not interested, this was strictly on condition that no one, not he himself, nor the servants, nor anyone else, should know of it, and if ever the smallest indication of her infidelities were to reach his ears, then he would take immediate action against her. He had made this perfectly plain several years before when they had stopped living as man and wife, and, though the subject had only been mentioned once, Fanny knew her husband well enough to realize that nothing would give him greater pleasure than to throw her out if ever she gave him the opportunity. Even now, after eight years of going their own ways, she would shudder when occasionally he looked at her with his cold reptilian eyes, his thin-lipped mouth closed tightly giving him an expression even more merciless than usual.
Accordingly, she arranged her life with great discretion. Her lovers would visit her only on the evenings when there were dinner parties at the Beredy Palais. Most of the servants went to bed as soon as their work was finished and only the door-keeper remained on duty in his little cabin near the main entrance. When someone rang the bell he would pull a cord to open the glazed outer doors of the mansion, and so the departing guests would find their own way out. The doorman himself never saw who was leaving, nor did he know whether the guests left in a group or alone. If, when the last time the bell rang, it was only just after midnight there was nothing to suggest that anything unusual had occurred, nothing, that is, that flouted the social conventions of the day. Fanny’s guests would mostly take their leave soon after eleven o’clock and her lover soon after twelve; so for an hour, just one hour, Fanny was free to make love in her wide luxurious bed with whoever was her choice of the moment. It was a wild happy hour, an hour in which she would drape herself in her most provocative negligé, for she knew well that like this she appeared infinitely more seductive than when crudely stripped naked.
Fanny took particular delight in these stolen moments, not only because of the purely sensuous pleasure of being embraced by an handsome young lover in surroundings designed just for that purpose — the huge bed, soft carpets, cunningly placed mirrors and sugar-pink lighting — but also because of the secret satisfaction of feeling that by doing this in her husband’s house she was wreaking her private vengeance upon him. When, after sixty minutes of rapture, the little alarm clock sounded it’s warning and her lover would dress and leave her, she would stretch herself out in triumph and go to sleep on that storm-tossed bed which had witnessed so many other illicit embraces.
When Laszlo came into her life this brief weekly meeting did not seem enough, and so they decided to find somewhere else. Laszlo’s little apartment in Museum Street was not only in a large block in a district where many of their friends and acquaintances lived — which meant that Fanny might be recognized in the street or even on the stairs of the apartment house itself — but was also inconveniently distant from the Beredy Palais. It was obvious to both of them that she could not visit him there and that their secret love-nest would have to be somewhere in the old quarter, close to the royal palace and close, therefore, also to Fanny’s own home. Then she would be able to slip in unnoticed when everyone thought she was out for a short walk. Laszlo soon found the ideal place in a small house in one of the streets of old Buda. It had two entrances, one leading directly to the apartment and the other, on a lower level, which led to a room where a little dressmaker lived. This was perfect, for if Fanny should need an alibi no one would wonder about her visiting a local seamstress. The apartment was dingy and in need of redecoration but Fanny swiftly solved this by covering the walls with material so that it resembled a tent. The walls, curtains and covers were all hung with the same iron-grey material; and the thick carpet was of the same colour because she knew well that it set off her rosy flesh and blonde hair. It was very pretty and was in total contrast to the shabby furnished rooms where Laszlo still lived, even though he was always promising himself he would find something better.
The rent was expensive — more than four thousand crowns — but Laszlo did not care. One won at cards, or one lost. It was good if one won, but it did not really matter any more than it mattered if one lost. At this time Laszlo had plenty of money. That excellent fellow, Countess Abady’s useful lawyer Azbej, had so menaced old Stanislo with legal demands to ‘terminate community interest’ that his ex-guardian had agreed to buy out Laszlo’s interest in the Gyeroffy forest lands. This had brought in such a handsome sum that Laszlo had been able not only to pay off his debts but was also left with a tidy sum in hand. Indeed this Azbej was wonderful, even though some people said that Laszlo had sold very cheaply. This, thought Laszlo, was very possible; but still he had the money in his hands and that was the most important thing. Anyway the money lenders’ interest charge would soon have swallowed up the difference. All in all, therefore, everybody was happy; Laszlo, Stanislo and also, no doubt, Azbej himself.
On Fanny’s insistence Laszlo again enrolled himself at the Academy of Music, but though he attended the lectures and followed the set courses he did so without any of his former dedication. Somehow it seemed that without the stimulus of his love for Klara, for now that she was irrevocably lost to him, his passion for music had evaporated. His head no longer surged with melody as it had when every experience had at once been transformed into music, and; though his days were spent in a world of music it was always for the music of others that he lived, not for that compulsion to rise early and work, to devote all his days to study and creation. Laszlo’s way of life sapped his creative energies. He would wake up late, still sleepy and half asleep. Without zest he would play his piano for an hour or two. If he had no rendezvous with Fanny that day he would go to the Casino or to the Park Club hoping to find someone who would make up a poker game, for it was too early in the season for the chemin de fer games in the baccarat-room to have restarted. He would stop playing only for dinner, and each evening he would drink more and more, hoping vainly that the alcohol would drive away his increasing remorse and obliterate all memory of what might have been. The drink was like an opiate, and so were the cards.
Passions ran high that year in the world of politics. One day everyone was full of hope, the next day brought despair. On a Monday the ‘Bodyguard’ (‘Lackey’) government would appoint new ministers, and on the Tuesday they would resign. The new party programme would be published and within three days its authors would find themselves once more in the wilderness. There was general rejoicing when the King summoned some of the leading parliamentarians to Vienna, but dismay and anger when His Majesty merely read out to them some severe and comminatory paragraphs condemning their actions. It gradually became clear to everyone that a stalemate had been reached, from which there was no escape without one side or the other being publicly humiliated. In the middle of September the announcement of the imminent imposition by Vienna of general suffrage in Hungary inspired a huge and unprecedented demonstration of some forty thousand workers, who gathered before the Parliament building in Budapest, menacing the established order like a thundercloud.