Neither his daughters nor young Zoltan seemed to take the smallest notice but walked quietly up to the veranda. Their father, old Rattle, went on shouting, his voice as loud as any bull bison’s, each new oath emphasized by wild gestures.
As he paused for breath, Adrienne said quickly: ‘Dear Papa. Look! AB is here!’
‘My dear friend, welcome!’ bellowed Count Akos in the same loud tones but the expression on his large mouth had changed in an instant from one of deadly wrath to a wide smile. He hurried down the steps to Balint and took his arm.
‘Welcome! Welcome!’ He shook Balint’s hand warmly and, as he did so, noticed young Zoltan at his side. His face darkening, he struck out to give him a cuff on the head. The boy dodged the blow but stood where he was as if nothing had happened.
‘You see!’ the count said to Balint, ‘look how cheeky they are!’ By now he was smiling again. ‘They steal all my clothes just for a bit of fun! But from tomorrow things will change. Just you look out!’ he went on to his children. Turning again to Balint, he said:
‘Did they offer you tea, my boy? I thought not. Really, these people!’ Then turning, he shouted over his shoulder, ‘Miska, Jozsi! Where the devil are you? Idiots!’ and, back to Balint again, he said warmly, ‘Tea or coffee?’
A tall footman appeared at the door.
‘Where have you been hiding, you ass? You should be here when guests arrive. Bring tea at once!’
The footman did not move.
‘Where does the Count want it served?’ he asked.
‘Here, on the veranda, you dolt! Can’t you see? That’s where we are!’
‘Soon it will be dark, sir. Perhaps it would be better in the drawing-room. The lamps have already been lit.’
‘Very well then. Take it there, you idiot. But hurry! Run! I want it at once.’
The man turned away with dignity and went unhurriedly back into the house.
During all this Egon Wickwitz, who had been seeing that the horses were stabled, rejoined the others. He came to take his leave as he had to return to Maros-Szilvas whence he had come that afternoon to play tennis with the Miloths. As Maros-Szilvas — which was the property Dinora Abonyi had inherited from the Malhuysens — was more than twenty kilometres away in the valley of the Maros, Wickwitz explained that he would have to start at once or he would be late for dinner.
‘Dine with us, my boy,’ said Count Miloth. ‘The moon rises about eleven.’
But Wickwitz did not accept. He told them that Count Abonyi had gone to Budapest and left him in charge of the racehorses. He would have to be up at dawn to exercise them.
‘Are you on your own then, at Szilvas?’
‘No, Countess Dinora is at home. She’ll expect me for dinner and I couldn’t leave her alone. It’s almost seven already.’
Old Rattle laughed deeply. ‘Ah ha!’ he said, ‘what an idiot that Abonyi must be to leave you alone with the little Countess, eh?’ And he dug Wickwitz sharply in the ribs.
Adrienne and the girls smiled but Balint didn’t like it. He didn’t like the joke and didn’t like, either, the way that the Austrian’s face froze for an instant while his straight athlete’s body stiffened before he relaxed, grinned sheepishly and shrugged his shoulders. Wickwitz’s handsome, calm face and dreamy brown eyes had taken on a cynical expression which Balint found inexpressibly repellent.
Wickwitz’s chariot, drawn by Count Abonyi’s pair of beautiful black Russian trotters, was already at the veranda steps brought round by the Miloth’s coachman and a stable boy. Wickwitz clicked his heels, saluted, and hurried down the steps and jumped into the open carriage. In a flash he was in the driver’s seat between the big front wheels and when his hosts leaned over the veranda railings to wave goodbye, he was halfway down the drive
‘Are you coming back tomorrow for tennis?’ they called after him, and from behind the lilac bushes that concealed a bend in the road Wickwitz’s voice came back: ‘The day after tomorrow.’
The carriage brakes screeched as he started down the slope to the village. After that they could hear the Russians’ hoofbeats die away in an ever faster and more mettlesome pace.
‘Come and have tea at once, AB,’ said Adrienne, ‘and then we can all go out again.’
‘How restless you are, Addy!’ Countess Miloth sounded as sour as ever as she sat knitting on the sofa. She looked very much like her sister, Ida Laczok. She had the same Kendy profile, the same plumpness; but while Countess Laczok’s chubby limbs seemed to radiate good humour, Countess Miloth seemed made of more ill-tempered material. And while her sister was always busy with household tasks, she herself was prone to migraine and nervous headaches and would remain idle for days, resting in a darkened room. She went on, speaking to her eldest daughter in a complaining tone, ‘… and you make everyone quite mad when you’re here. Elle les rend folles quand elle est ici,’ she added, turning to Mile Morin, the desiccated old French spinster who sat beside her on the sofa, and pointing to her younger daughters.
Mile Morin had been governess to the two Kendy sisters when they were young and had stayed on in Transylvania after they had both married. Now she was governess to the Miloth girls thus tackling a second generation even though she was really past doing the job properly.
‘Oh, mon dieu, ces enfants!’ replied the old Frenchwoman, noticing that Judith and Margit could hardly wait for their guest to finish his tea.
Adrienne took no notice of her mother or the governess but turned to Balint with sparkling eye:
‘A hedgehog comes out in the kitchen garden at about this time. We want to catch him!’
Countess Miloth, who seemed to be having difficulty with her knitting needles — she was very shortsighted — gestured to the children that they could leave the table.
Balint accompanied them as they all ran out into the garden. They slowed down in the orchard and started to move quietly so as not to disturb the hedgehog if he were there. When they arrived at the entrance to the kitchen garden they crept silently along a path between a cabbage patch and the potato beds, pausing from time to time to hide behind the blackcurrant and gooseberry bushes from where they could spy out the land.
They waited for a long time in the damp kitchen garden. Up from the village, deep in the valley below them floated wisps of sweetish smoke, that characteristic smell of the high moorland which came from burning dried cow-dung instead of the wood which was scarce in those parts.
Adrienne knelt patiently on the right of the weed-covered path and Balint, on her left, found his good humour gradually evaporating. During the long silent wait he began to ponder consciously on a theme that had hitherto lurked only in his subconscious. What was that Nitwit doing at Varjas? Why did he ride more than forty kilometres a day leaving his mistress, Dinora Abonyi, all alone? Surely not just to play tennis? He was convinced that it was a pretext to cover up a much more sinister purpose.
Balint’s instinct was not wrong. But he was not right in thinking that the Austrian lieutenant was chasing Adrienne. Wickwitz came to Varjas, not for Adrienne’s sake but to pay court to Judith. He was so good at concealing his intentions that no one, except Judith herself, noticed anything out of the usual; and even she was not sure, because Egon Wickwitz was very careful, very silent and very shrewd.
His request for long leave had been granted immediately. He had not wanted to ask for it but he had had no alternative. He had serious debts which he could not meet, and unless these were settled he would automatically be dismissed from the army in disgrace. His colonel had sent for him and said that, out of respect for Egon’s father who had commanded the same regiment, he would take no action for the moment. But he had also said that he could not avoid taking notice of the situation if Wickwitz were to remain with the regiment at Brasso. He must therefore go on leave at once and find a solution to the problem and, until he had found it, he should not return. The next day Wickwitz applied for six months’ leave. He had to find something … but what?