As the wolves howled the old man sat erect on the front bench, his back straight and his great chest puffed out proudly like a mighty bear surrounded by snapping hounds. His chin stuck out. He sat motionless before the storm, but his eyes searched the room for the first man to insult him personally so that he could challenge him to a duel.
His opportunity came when new young member shouted: ‘King’s lackey! Hireling swine!’ No sooner had the words been uttered than Keglevich had leapt to his feet and challenged the man. Gravely and in measured terms he demanded satisfaction for the insult, which could only be assured by a fight with the weapons of his own choice.
Speaking with cold authority he issued his orders. The duel would be fought with his own swords, old-fashioned weapons with broad rigid blades honed to a knife-edge. No bandages would be permitted; thrusts would be allowed — and this despite the fact that he was a swordsman of the old Hungarian school which used only cutting strokes while his opponent was of the Italian style — the punto d’arresto in which the master stroke was a killing thrust. The next day Keglevich was carried out dead from the gymnasium where the encounter had been arranged. At the first ‘On guard!’ the old man attacked with all the vigour of youth. His opponent backed away and then suddenly countered with a thrust of such force that the old man was run through, the sword point coming out through his back. So a man of no importance took the life of a statesman old enough to be his father.
As soon as the House had been adjourned Balint, after only ten days in Budapest, returned home to Kolozsvar as he had promised his mother to do. He arrived on Shrove Tuesday in time for the Mardi Gras Ball, and though he was not all that keen to attend he realized that as everyone knew he had returned he had no excuse not to go. He decided to put in an appearance but to leave early. After all he had no reason to stay until dawn. After dinner he told his mother he must go and dress.
‘Come and see me when you’re ready,’ said Countess Roza. ‘I haven’t seen you in tails for such a long time and I like you in your finery. Come and be admired! We don’t go to bed early.’
‘No, indeed!’ said Mrs Tothy.
‘We’ll be waiting for you!’ said Mrs Baczo.
Balint promised to return and went to his room. Laid out on the bed was the tail suit with the stiff white shirt and collar neatly placed between the coat and white waistcoat. The sight of these formal clothes brought back memories of Budapest and especially of his cousin Laszlo. Balint stripped and started to shave before the washstand on which a jug of hot water stood waiting with a towel laid over it. As he did so he remembered how he had only seen Laszlo once or twice, always at the Casino and always dressed in evening clothes. They had only exchanged a few words because there had been dancing every evening in the great ballroom on the ground floor and Laszlo, now the official organizer, had to be present all the time. He had wanted Balint to join him, but Balint had refused as it would mean returning to his hotel to change. Laszlo had not insisted.
Now, lathering his chin, he recalled how Laszlo’s manner had somehow seemed subtly different, more assured and distinguished. He had carried his head higher than when they had last met at Simonvasar.
As Balint dipped his razor into the hot water — for if he didn’t shave in the evening he would be covered in bristles before morning — he remembered how an English friend had once told him that no gentleman should ever wash without a razor!
A little later, now in trousers and stiff white shirt, Balint returned to the mirror to put on his tie, an operation he did not relish as unless it was perfectly achieved in one single movement the starched white piqué cotton became wrinkled and the whole thing had to be done again. Balint’s first effort went wrong and, as he started to thread a second tie through the loop at the back of his collar it came to his mind that Adrienne was sure to be there. He imagined her in the dark green dress she had worn at Var-Siklod — though as no doubt she possessed many dresses there was no reason to think it would be the same one. Still, he could see her in green, her dark hair fluttering as she moved, dancing with one of the young Alvinczys or Pityu Kendy. Let her dance the whole night if she wished! He at any rate would not be there to see because he would only go for a few moments, just long enough to show his face so that no one could say he’d stayed away out of pride.
The second white tie was a success. After glancing approvingly at himself in the looking glass above the dressing table, Balint stepped back to the bed, put on his white waistcoat, checked the pearl buttons, put on his tail coat and was ready to leave. Suddenly he thought of a little cocotte he had met in Budapest. She, he decided, would be better for him. It would not cost him much and would be far better than getting entangled with a married woman. Of course it had been different when he had been abroad en poste. Everyone knew that diplomats would move on, that they were not their own masters and that any affair must naturally come to an end. He had had several liaisons with married women who, as the phrase went, ‘accorded him their favours’, cried a little when the parting came, gave him a last night of passionate lovemaking (‘to remember me by!’) and then maybe wrote a letter or two or a postcard before the inevitable silence. These affairs, transient though both parties had known they must be, had had their compensations. The first moves were as exhilarating as the beginning of a deer stalk — with the difference that though the prey might have to be pursued for two or three weeks, both knew that the doe wanted, eventually, to be caught.
Now almost ready, Balint started to collect all those small objects without which no gentleman felt properly dressed: a slim gold watch on a chain, keys, cigarette case and lighter, wallet and some small change. Then he selected four fine linen handkerchiefs and sprinkled them with eau-de-cologne as he had been taught by an elegant and accomplished Swedish lady during his stay in Stockholm. It was she who had told him that men should never use scent, which was either vulgar or effeminate: cologne alone was socially acceptable. And she had taught him many other things besides, the fine points of making love, the etiquette of a lady’s bedchamber, the details of dressing and undressing. What a charmer she had been and how intelligent! He wondered what she was doing now … and he tried hard to remember her name.
Checking that he had forgotten nothing, he went down to see his mother.
Chapter Five
THE MARDI GRAS BALL at Kolozsvar was the most important social event of the whole Carnival season. It was held in the Assembly Rooms of the Casino and so strong were the ancient traditions that some men still wore, for this occasion, the mulberry-coloured tailcoats and grey trousers that had been the fashion in the 1830s. The ball, which naturally began on the evening of Shrove Tuesday, went on well into the morning of Ash Wednesday.
It was also the tradition that even the oldest ladies turned out for Mardi Gras, dressed as if for an imperial reception, and wearing all the family jewels they could find a place for. Even those who had kept away from all the other dances turned up on this special night and it was only young girls who did not wear imposing tiaras.
By ten o’clock the rooms were already filling up, carriage after carriage drawing up at the Casino portico to discharge their cargoes of soberly-dressed men and sumptuously-dressed women and girls. Adrienne arrived with her husband and her two sisters and the three women moved slowly up the steps holding their long skirts with one hand and clutching their furs to them with the other.