Timisan laughed again. It was not a pleasant sound. Then he said: ‘Your Lordship will understand from what I have said that I can be of no help to you and, if you will forgive the presumption, I would advise your Lordship not to bother with such matters!’
Balint rose from his chair and shook hands automatically. He was perturbed and upset by what he had just heard. Then the old man spoke again, his voice now full of compassion, fatherly, concerned, as if he himself were moved.
‘I tell you all this because I am an old man with much experience. And I am filled with pity for your goodwill, which is so very rare …’ He walked to the door to show Balint out.
‘Thank you for your visit,’ he said.
Chapter Four
KOLOZSVAR WAS AT ITS BUSIEST in the autumn because that was the time of the hunting in the Zsuk country and of the steeple-chases which were held on three Sundays. The Hubertus Hunt met every day except Sunday, usually on the hilly grasslands that lay between the valleys of the Szamos and Fejer rivers and sometimes on the right bank of the Szamos in the country bordered by the districts of Mocs, Gyulatelek and Szuk. Those young men who did not live in country houses nearby or who did not put up in the Hubertus Hunt building itself stayed in Kolozsvar and went to the meets by train or in their own carriages. And because wherever a goodly quality of eligible young males were to be found, mothers would find some excuse to bring their unmarried daughters, so they too would come to town at this season. As a result there were plenty of dances and grand balls, evenings of gypsy music and other entertainments. The provincial capital in autumn was even gayer than it was in the Carnival season after Christmas.
Balint too went to Kolozsvar that year, encouraged by his mother even though it was a great sacrifice for her to send him away and remain alone herself in the great house of Denestornya. Countess Roza had several reasons for making this decision, among them her ambition to see Balint shine socially and take what she considered was his rightful place in Transylvanian society. Also she felt that it was important that he should have every opportunity of meeting suitable girls, one of whom might perhaps take his fancy, for she knew from what she had been told by her old housekeepers that Adrienne, whom she had come more and more to distrust as a bad influence on her son, would not be coming to Kolozsvar that season.
There was also another reason. Countess Roza was immensely proud of her horses and she wanted them to be shown off and admired. She was sure that she bred the best mounts in Transylvania and she wanted everyone else to know how beautiful they were, how fast, good-natured, well-proportioned, strong, triumphant and splendid. Nevertheless, it was with a pang of regret that she made the decision to let herself be separated for eight to ten weeks from those beautiful animals whose welfare and training she supervised daily and who, every morning, she would visit and caress. She would miss them every bit as much as she would her son. So it was with tears in her slightly protuberant eyes that she stood in the horseshoe-shaped forecourt, fed lumps of sugar to the three horses she had decided to send with Balint and watched them clatter away through the great entrance gates. A dray-cart rumbled out after them laden with blankets, saddles, bandages, sacks of oats and special fodder and a hundred other things so that they should want for nothing while away from home.
Riding in hilly country was a new experience for Balint, who was not accustomed to having to spare the horses when climbing steep hillsides lest they should get winded, nor to galloping at full speed downhill so as not to let the hounds get away from him. However he soon got into the run of things by following the example of Gazsi Kadacsay, who this year was acting as gentleman whipper-in and who could race down any slope, no matter how steep or slippery, as swiftly as the wind. During the days in the hunting field Balint became much closer to many of the other young men of his own age with whom previously he had not been particularly friendly. Apart from Gazsi himself, there was Pityu Kendy and the four young Alvinczys, and with all of them new ties of friendship sprung up through their daily meetings and participation in a sport they all loved. It was a carefree life, and the hard physical effort brought with it an agreeable and languorous tiredness. The desire for Adrienne that had always overwhelmed him whenever he was alone, began to fade and, though it never left him, was no longer the feverish yearning which had so tormented him ever since his last visit to Almasko.
So passed the month of October and the first half of November. Since coming to Kolozsvar Balint had engaged a university student to give him lessons in Romanian every evening. The vital need to speak that language had been brought home to him not only by his talks with Timisan, but especially by the difficulty of communicating properly with the people in the mountains. Balint also wanted to be able to read everything that the Romanian-language newspapers said, and not merely those extracts which the Hungarian papers thought fit to reproduce. If ever he was to get to the bottom of all those complicated problems, and thereby form his own unbiased opinion, then he must know what the other side was saying. Audiatur in altera pars.
In mid-October Balint went again up into the mountains and this time he took with him to Pejkoja a young Romanian-speaking lawyer who, after much searching, had been found in Banffy-Hunyad. The man was well spoken of, had undertaken several similar cases and seemed in every way suitable.
The atmosphere at Pejkoja was not at all what Balint had expected. Despite the fact that old Juon Lung aluj Maftye had managed to get a small group of ten men to meet the Mariassa, they listened sullenly to what he had to say, shrugged their shoulders with apparent indifference, and found all sorts of excuses not to sign the power of attorney which would enable the lawyer to act for them. Only one man refused openly and that was the terrible-faced Turturika, who greeted their proposals with mocking laughter.
The meeting broke up without Balint having achieved anything. Just as he was riding down the hillside thinking that the whole expedition had been nothing but a waste of time, old Juon’s grandson, Kula, stepped out from behind some hazel bushes and waylaid them. Balint realized that the boy must have taken a shortcut so as to catch up with them and, thinking that probably Kula had brought a secret message from his grandfather, he let the others ride ahead so that the boy could speak to him privately. Kula jumped up onto the steep bank so that he could whisper directly into Abady’s ear.
‘I’ve come to report,’ he said, ‘what happened after the Mariassa’s last visit.’ Then he told, with much detail, how one day the notary Simo had ridden into the village with two gendarmes, declared that the sawmill constituted a fire hazard and had it closed down. Further, he had call-up papers served on one of the young men of the village who had been exempted from military service because he was the only bread-winner in the family, and had renewed a charge against three farmers for some forestry offence long since dropped and forgotten. He had fined Kula’s grandfather for the trivial reason that he had moved his farm wagon to the left of the road rather than the right when he had met the notary’s carriage on its way to Mereggyo; and he had taken several men aside and had menaced them privately with his own vengeance unless they all kept quiet about what had been going on in the village. He had told everyone that if any action was brought against Rusz Pantyilimon, he, Gaszton Simo, would personally testify that they truly owed the money. He had made it clear that his word was law as he had been appointed by the government. Finally, the notary had called up the whole village for community service on the roads just at the time of the maize harvest.