When Balint got back to old Minya’s house, the girl Julis and the wagoner were still unloading the broken parts of the model and carrying them piece by piece into a little room next to the kitchen. The mathematician stood beside the cart collecting his papers. Defiant and self-righteous, he looked at Balint with open hostility. Balint took no notice but walked over and introduced himself.
‘I think we’ve met before,’ he said, ‘at Kolozsvar, at the university. I was in the Law School.’
‘Possibly. I don’t remember. What do you want with me?’
‘Your uncle told me of your work.’ Balint pointed to a fragment of the broken model. He spoke hesitantly, embarrassed by the fact that he was about to do someone a favour. ‘He also told me what’s just happened. In our place, at Denestornya, there’s a big empty room. I know my mother would be happy for you to use it. You could work there in peace, without any interruption. If you needed anything — materials, wood — I’m sure we could find it for you. l believe a Flying Machine is possible.’
Jopal’s eyes sparkled.
‘Possible? It’s already done. I’ve created it. Yes I really have! The Wright Brothers’ experiments were all very well in their way, but their construction was all wrong.’
He started to explain what he meant. Previously every attempt to build a flying machine had been based on the mathematical formulæ worked out by Lilienthal, but these, though sound as far as they went, neglected certain important mechanical and practical factors. It was this aspect of the problem that he had been studying, for until these things were solved the theory could never be put into practice. Everything up until now had been nothing more than elementary children’s stuff, scientists’ toys, he said bitterly, thinking of Count Laczok’s insulting words.
He spoke of natural flight, of birds and their movements and proportions. At first he spoke only in general terms, as one does in popular lectures, but soon he was so carried away by his own enthusiasm that he sat down on the ground beside Balint and began to draw in the sand. With one of the broken laths he drew diagrams of the wing-spans of cranes, falcons and swallows, showing the relationship between size and weight. Alongside, still in the sand, he wrote the apposite algebraic formulæ. Soon the whole space was filled with traced shapes and figures.
Jopal’s eyes were bright with excitement and his bulging forehead was creased with perpendicular furrows. Until now, he said, no one had discovered the right coefficient to settle the problem of air-resistance. The solution was this: the formula must be based on a fifteen degree sinus-angle — and he stood up and scraped a line with the heel of his boot.
Then he stopped, and looking at Balint with a shy smile, he said, ‘But I’m afraid that I must be boring the Count with higher mathematics that are beyond the range of his studies?’
‘Not at all. I’m very interested. Though I studied law, mathematics was my second subject. That’s why I went to Martin’s lectures at Kolozsvar. So you see I do know enough to follow and appreciate …’
‘Oh! Oh!’ Jopal’s face clouded and he looked at Balint reflectively. ‘So you studied mathematics, did you?’
‘Not very much! Just the elementary aspects of these problems … Eiffel’s and Langley’s theories. Just enough to know that this problem can be solved. That’s why I would like to support your work.’
Balint was trying to be encouraging, but the effect was just the opposite.
Jopal strode up and down a few times, hurriedly stamping out the designs and formulae in the sand, looking more and more pensive and muttering to himself, ‘So! So!’ Then he stopped and turned to Balint.
‘Thank you for your offer, but I can’t accept. No! I’m sorry, but I can’t accept.’ He hesitated for a moment and then added, ‘I’ve already promised to go to a friend. I’ll go to him.’
It was obviously a lie. Clearly he didn’t want to come. Perhaps he thought that Balint planned to rob him of his secret.
For a moment they looked each other straight in the eye.
‘Then you are not coming to Denestornya?’
‘Ah! If you hadn’t admitted that you too are a mathematician. You too!’ The ideas that were crowding into his head made the arteries on his forehead swell and his lips draw back tight as if he were getting ready to bite. He bent forward and shouted in a fury of passion: ‘It’s monstrous! Unfair! You sneak back and cunningly make me talk, and all the time you only want to spy on me!’
‘I just wanted to help. Really! I had no other motive.’
Jopal interrupted him, still shouting: ‘Help me? Help me? That’s what every spy says. You think I don’t know?’ And he paced up and down pouring out more and more violent abuse and working himself up until he was completely out of control. Balint had no idea how to react. It was so absurd that he almost found himself laughing, and his initial anger faded away.
The girl Julis, hearing the noise, came to the kitchen door and looked out bewildered. Her surprise was obvious when Balint turned to her, lifted his hat and began to walk away with an ironic smile on his face. Andras was still jumping about in his rage and shouting. As Balint walked up the hill he could still hear the inventor hurling ever ruder insults after him.
Balint reflected that this was altogether too much to bear. But if he had hit him perhaps the poor man would have called for seconds and demanded satisfaction. And the idea of a duel with someone of the middle class who had never held a sword would have been too absurd. And how could he, Balint Count Abady, fight a man he had only tried to help? Why, even the seconds would have laughed. Wiser to take no notice as if it were not worth another thought. He walked quickly away and soon crested the little hill.
Still, as he walked down into the town, he could not quite shake off his vexation that his good intentions had been taken so ill.
Chapter Five
BALINT AND LASZLO left Vasarhely early the next morning. While Laszlo went to visit his land up the Szamos river beyond Kolozsvar, Balint left the train at Maros-Ludas, He had sent a telegram to his mother asking for a carriage to be sent to Ludas to meet the morning train as he intended to visit the district for a few days.
Why had he said ‘a few days’? He had nothing important to do in the Lelbanya district, but the real reason was that he did not want to feel bound to return as he would have done had his mother expected him. Without fully admitting this, Balint tried to convince himself that it was necessary for him to visit Lelbanya to start the co-operative he had always promised himself would be one of the first improvements he would inaugurate. This ought to be discussed with the people on the spot; and then there was the scheme for a cultural centre. These useful projects would justify his being their Member of Parliament.
But, deep inside himself, though he would not acknowledge the fact, he knew that this was not the real reason why he wanted ‘a few days’. During the week, in the middle of the autumn work in the fields, few of the people he wanted to see would be at home. One afternoon would be enough. The truth was that from Lelbanya he would be within an hour’s ride of Mezo-Varjas, the Miloths’ place. Adrienne had not invited him to go, but she had said that she would be there for a few weeks. She had said it: so he would go.
Uneasily aware of his own hypocrisy he made a point of visiting the mayor and the two clergymen of the district. He explained his plans to them; and very convincing they seemed, for when he started to expound his ideas the details seemed to spring to his lips as complete and detailed as if he had studied them for months. But later, when he was eating in the little restaurant, it was as if the co-operative and the cultural centre had never existed: his mind was filled with other things.