At once the others joined the game and started besieging young Zoltan in his fort. Not that they took the war seriously, for as soon as Adrienne succeeded in getting to the top she changed sides and joined the enemy. Now the battle became more equal, two against three, and the outcome less sure; but suddenly one side of the haystack collapsed and Zoltan came tumbling to the ground, leaving only Adrienne on top clinging precariously to the stackpole. For a moment she hesitated, high above the ground, but, as Balint extended his arms towards her, Addy cried ‘Catch me!’ and flung herself into the air laughing. Somehow Balint did so, and for a moment she clung to him, her arms round his neck, knees bent, like a little girl hanging round her grandfather’s neck.
Her warm, shapely body pressed against Balint’s, her bare arms encircling his neck in a cool embrace, or at least what would have been an embrace if it had not been a game and their closeness unintentional. In those few moments, before she moved, while her slender female body was pressed to his, Balint felt desire welling up inside him, all his being crying out to go on holding her close, to kiss her warm naked shoulder, to make her his. He wanted to stay like that for ever, oblivious to everything and everyone around them; but Adrienne just laughed unconcernedly, and put her feet to the ground, apparently unconscious of anything but the merriment of their game.
They continued their walk all talking at once, teasing each other in easy comradeship, though Balint found it difficult to fit into their mood.
One of the maids ran up with a telegram for Adrienne. ‘Excuse me, it was the Countess who opened it,’ she explained as she handed the envelope to Adrienne.
Adrienne read the telegram. ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘you can go back to the house now.’ Her expression showed only that she was controlling herself with a certain effort. She tucked the folded telegram into her waistband and turned to the others.
‘Where shall we go now?’ she queried. Zoltan suggested that they visit the cowsheds where there were some newborn calves. Everyone agreed and off they went, petted a few cows, stroked the heads of the farm dogs, teased the turkeys and chased the ducks into the pond. But however light-hearted they seemed, a cloud had come over their merriment. Even though only Adrienne knew what was in the telegram, its arrival had spoilt their mood and everyone seemed depressed. At long last it was time to return for lunch and they all went back to the manor house with dampened spirits.
The weather was still so fine that they had coffee on the veranda. Shafts of sunlight penetrated the vine-leaves overhead and scattered tiny spots of light which sparkled on the chairs, the tablecloth and the paved floor, almost like glow-worms did at night. Some of the vine leaves were already turning red and they glowed like hot embers in the strong sunlight.
Adrienne touched Balint on the shoulder. ‘Come with me,’ she said, and led him in silence until they reached the end of the garden, where a simple wooden seat, lilac-coloured with age, overlooked the slope of the valley below. They sat down.
‘This is my favourite place,’ she said. ‘When I was a child I always took refuge here.’
From where they sat they could see the outlines of bare mountains receding into the distance. The view was beautiful, but it was not at all the sort of romantic landscape usually considered so. Here was no picture postcard beauty of forests, mountains and soaring rocky cliffs. Strangers unused to this bare Transylvanian upland country might find it too unusual, perhaps even ugly in its austerity and wildness. Yet it was beautiful, with a grandeur of its own, chain upon chain of bare woodless mountains, rising behind each other as far as eye could see, each range seemingly identical to the last.
Everywhere there was silence.
In front of where Balint and Adrienne sat there was an old burial ground with ancient neglected headstones standing among untended grass and nettles. It was the remains of a Protestant cemetery, abandoned when the community died out. Farther down the slope of the hill, on a small ridge, could be seen the races of old walls where once a small chapel had stood.
Adrienne sat with legs crossed, motionless, with her head resting on her right hand. She looked straight ahead of her without speaking.
After some time she took out the telegram and handed it to Balint. It read, ‘COME HOME AT ONCE — UZDY’.
‘What does it mean?’ he asked
‘Nothing. Nothing that means anything. They wouldn’t send for me if the baby was ilclass="underline" they wouldn’t need me. Neither then nor any other time. Six months ago when the child had a fever they locked me out of the nursery. My husband’s mother takes charge of everything. When the baby was born they took her away at once — You don’t know anything about babies! they said. They don’t believe I know anything about anything. No matter how hard I try, no matter what I do. They don’t want anything from me, anything at all. I’m only an ornament — a living toy who has only one use … that’s why I’m there.’
She was silent for a while. Then she went on in a different tone:
‘When I married him I believed I could be useful by helping him with his work, that I would be the companion, the friend he needed. He often spoke about it. He would tell me how lonely he had been with no one close to him, in whom he could confide, with whom he could work. But afterwards, the day after we were married, the very next day, he was quite different. Everything he had said … what was it? Moonshine, just moonshine!’
Adrienne was silent again. She looked away, into the far distance, thinking back to the days when she was a young girl full of rebellion. She thought about all the conventions that ruled her life at home and which, after the years of freedom in a foreign boarding-school, had seemed so unbearable, so humiliating. There had been the prohibition of any book, any play more serious than musical comedy, the impossibility of escaping alone, away from the ever-present chaperon; and never, ever, had she been able to escape from being watched. She, a grown girl, was still treated as a small child who needed constant supervision and control. She remembered one small incident that had weighed heavily with her when she was deciding to accept Pal Uzdy. Adrienne had been invited to tea with the Laczoks. After lunch Countess Miloth, who always took a siesta, fell asleep. The old governess, Mile Morin, had been ill and Adrienne, left on her own and not liking to disturb her mother, had climbed into the waiting family carriage and accompanied only by a footman had had herself driven to her aunt’s house. It had taken a bare five minutes.
The awful boldness of this adventure had unexpectedly serious results.
Her mother had accused her of all kinds of depravity, accusations that remained partly veiled only because in front of an unmarried daughter, she could not bring herself to say the word ‘whore’. Her father, too, had shouted at her, echoing her mother’s wild and hysterical accusations; not because he believed them, but because he loved to shout whenever he could. It was then that she had finally decided to marry Uzdy. She knew him to be a serious man who worked hard and who did not often come to town to carouse with the gypsies like the other young men. She had not been in love with him, but she had yearned to be free of the tyranny of her old-fashioned home, to be her own mistress, to carry some responsibility and to have duties of her own.
Recalling this, she said to Balint:
‘I know you never understood why I married Pali! Don’t deny it! I felt it whenever we met. But I couldn’t go on living at home, I couldn’t stand it. And I really did feel that I was needed, that I could help. I believed that I had found a vocation.’ She paused for a moment, and then spoke again. ‘I soon found that I was nobody there either, but at least I can read when I please, and I can go for walks alone in the woods! Do you know the country where we live, the woods beside the Almas? It’s beautiful there.’