Laszlo did not concern himself with such matters. One morning as he was walking to the academy, he encountered the workers’ march on its way to the Parliament building — thousands upon thousands of silent men in dark shabby clothes, moving relentlessly in rows of eight which took up the entire street. It was quiet and peaceful and inexpressibly sinister, but, impressive though this unheard-of demonstration was, to Laszlo it meant nothing. He lived in a world of his own, clothed, indeed insulated by his music and his own internal bitterness from everything that went on about him. He ignored the political discussions in the Casino, and barely noticed when people came up to him and told him (‘just between us, of course’) of some new political menace, or when he overhead others sounding off with treasonable intent about the need to rebel against the Emperor.
Laszlo frequently lunched or dined with the politicians, listening with disdain to their discussions and arguments. His silence was taken by them merely as aristocratic indifference to such mundane matters and as a result his social reputation remained untarnished. The truth was that his indifference sprang only from the strange mindless lassitude with which he was now imbued. It was as if he had donned the cap of forgetfulness which weighed him down like a leaden cloak.
Even his afternoons of passion with the beautiful Fanny gave him no relief. Often, when leaving their little apartment her kisses still wet upon his lips, he would pause at dusk on the embankment of the Danube. In front of him thousands of saffron-coloured strips illuminated the dark water, reflections of the lamps which lit the riverside boulevards; while above, the great dome of the Parliament building hung in the evening sky, veiled in smoke and silence, the silence of a city about to come alive when dusk fell. Laszlo would lean against the iron railings of the Margit Rakpart gazing sightlessly over the surface of the wide slowly-moving river on which gulls and other waterbirds would float, serene and calm.
Laszlo never gave a thought to the love-making he had just left behind him, never conjured up the image of the woman who had just kissed him goodbye, never tried to recall the look in her beautiful cat-like eyes or the lines of her mouth so wise in the ways of love; nor did he think of that smooth flesh clothed only in the five long strings of pearls that she never removed even at their most intimate moments. Knowing how much the glowing whiteness of those pea-sized pearls enhanced the beauty of her body and of her pink skin, Fanny would tie these long strings round her waist or neck, in festoons over her generous breasts, and even like fetters between her thighs where they glowed like an iridescent frame around the golden moss that covered the mound of Venus, underlining her nakedness by this most ephemeral of coverings. But she would never take them off. The Beredy pearls were worth a fortune and Fanny had worn them from the day her husband had offered them to her as a wedding present, and it was perhaps because of this constant contact with her skin that they remained so magically alive and glowing. But for Laszlo all these things were as if they had never been. Nothing penetrated his solitariness, nothing drove away that forlorn sense of having been abandoned in a meaningless, hopeless world. Many times he thought it would be far better just to die.
He would stand looking over the Danube for a long time before slowly making his way back to the Casino where he would take a bath, change, read the newspapers, dine and pass the rest of the evening at cards, playing always until there was no one left to play with. He was always among the last to leave the club, usually out of pocket, for the game hardly interested him any more than did that beautiful loving woman with the lithe body of a panther, who that afternoon had been driven wild with pleasure by his embraces.
Several weeks went by, weeks which for Laszlo were utterly without significance except for those unexpected moments when he would suddenly be wounded by some minor incident that provoked a sharp flash of pain. For example, one day he had gone to the upholsterer’s to order some more cushions for their modest little meeting-place and suddenly found himself being shown with pride a set of new furniture which had been ordered by Imre Warday. The worst moment was when he received a beautifully engraved wedding invitation: ‘Louis Kollonich, Prince of Kraguvac and Knin, and his consort Agnes, of the Counts Gyeroffy of Kis-Kapu, have pleasure in announcing that the marriage of their daughter and stepdaughter, the Duchess Klara Kollonich, will take place on October 14th …’ and when, the same day, he overheard Wuelffenstein and Niki Kollonich planning to go together to Simonvasar for the wedding. Then a pang went through him disturbing, for an instant but only for an instant, that thick shell of indifference in which he had so carefully encased himself.
And still the days went by, each the same as the last.
One morning towards the end of October Countess Beredy woke early. Though the windows of her room were hung with thick silken curtains, here and there a ray of early morning sun would find its way into the room and gleam softly on the gilded curves of one of the bed legs or on one of the rose-pink flowers of the brocade bed-cover.
Fanny woke with a strange feeling of unease. She felt restless and her throat was constricted by some unknown anguish. There was no reason, no cause.
How odd, she thought; it must be unusually early! She raised herself from the silken pillows until, supported on one elbow, she could see her tiny jewelled clock: it was only half-past six. Fanny decided to go back to sleep but, though she snuggled down among the warm silken bedclothes, sleep would not come: she could only think of Laszlo. Poor dear Laszlo, how unhappy he was! Even though she did everything in her power to cheer him up, to make him forget Klara, nothing could remove the gloom in which he was enveloped. Recently, reflected Fanny, she had been doing more than was wise or prudent.
Ten days before, on the day of Klara’s wedding she had risked doing something that would have previously been unthinkable for her: she had spent the whole day with him so as to be sure that he wouldn’t be alone. They had gone on an expedition to the shrine of Maria-Besnyo, leaving early in the morning on the local train as if they were making a pilgrimage. Fanny had told Laszlo that they must go early because the forests were so beautiful at that time of year and Laszlo had docilely agreed to everything she suggested. On arrival they had dutifully said a prayer at the miraculous image of the Virgin and then they had gone to an inn for luncheon, where she made sure he had plenty of wine to drink.
Afterwards they had walked in the forest, Fanny chattering away about how beautiful were the red leaves of the beeches and how the branches of hornbeam seemed to her to be the colour of lemon-peel. Deep in the woods they rested, Fanny sitting at the foot of a tree and Laszlo lying with his head in her lap. Here she made him sleep, stroking his luxuriant wavy hair as if he were a weary child to be calmed and comforted. When the day ended they returned to the inn, where Fanny ordered a good strong red wine and a flask of brandy and, though she had never liked it when Laszlo drank too much and she could smell the liquor on his breath, on this day she had made him drunk with a purpose, and it was successful.
Slowly the tense, sorrowful expression on his face relaxed and the hard line where his eyebrows met was smoothed away. It was true that Laszlo’s eyes had become somewhat dull with a glassy, sightless look; but at least he had relaxed and was calm, even if he was indifferent to where he was and what he was doing. In the end he had even laughed and joked with her. Though nearly everything he said had been, perhaps, a trifle silly, and from time to time a little drop of saliva had formed at the corner of his mouth — something that would have revolted the normally fastidious Fanny at other times or in other men — she had rejoiced and been happy that she had made her lover forget, even if only for a brief moment, the sorrows that beset him. It had not mattered that it was not she herself, nor her beauty, her love, nor her solicitude that had wrought this miracle, but merely the quantity of strongly laced red wine that she had poured into him. No, that did not matter in the least, for what really was important was that somehow she had managed to make him forget that at Simonvasar it was the day of Klara’s wedding … and of her wedding night; and when Laszlo had nearly reached a state of insensibility she could take him home to his flat in Museum Street, quietly, by hired carriage, and leave him there to sleep. After Fanny had dropped him she had had herself put down at the Gisella Square, where she had changed carriages and then been driven back to her house near the Palace.