Balint did not look at Adrienne as he spoke. His eyes seemed fixed on the far end of the room, but his words were spoken more softly and more slowly than before. He went on: ‘With the animals all is pure and natural. There is no foreign element, no theorizing, no prejudice, no complicated theory … and above all no speech to spoil everything. The animals all have their emotions, of course, but they’re lucky not to be cursed with ideals as well!’
‘Don’t you think it’s odd, you preaching about speech, AB? You, of all people! And what are you doing now? Don’t you call all this theorizing?’
‘Of course, but then I have to! I don’t have a great roar like a roebuck! But if I did,’ he said, laughing, ‘I assure you this hall would reverberate as from a blast from an organ!’
Adrienne drew back a little and straightened her back. She searched for words, obviously unconvinced even if she did not know how to refute what he said.
‘All right. Of course there’s some truth in what vou say. Put it like that if you must, but it’s not the whole truth. There’s a plan behind it. Oh, I know there’s beauty in birdsong and deer calls and mating instincts in the spring, but you forget something … or don’t choose to mention it. Behind all this natural beauty there’s no real free will; it’s all programming. I’ll tell you a story. We came to Kolozsvar this year by road. On the way we stopped at a village. It was market day and there was a booth in front of which stood a man beating a drum and calling out, “Come along! Come along! Come and see the Sea Lion, the terrible Lion of the ocean! Come along! Only ten copeks to see the terrible Sea Lion!” So we paid and went in, and what did we find? A lonely little seal!’ Adrienne laughed bitterly. ‘But we’d paid our ten kopecs, and no one would refund us that!’
‘I don’t see the connection.’
‘You don’t? It’s quite clear to me. Everything you said so eloquently, all your wonderful sonorous beautiful words, spoke of only one thing. You talk of the call of nature, the truth and purity of those unconscious programmes, their seductiveness undefiled by reason or thought or speech. But that’s no more than a beginning, a hint, a promise. Only later you can see it for what it really is … a baited trap, a swindle. That’s what nature consists of, just like the busker taking our ten kopecs with a false promise!’
Balint looked closely at her face, reminded by her words of their talk on the terrace at Var-Siklod and on the bench at her father’s house. He realized, suddenly, that he must feel his way carefully, that ‘baited trap’ was like a warning signal, and he had seen it before.
‘That really isn’t true, you know. Not at all. On the contrary the more you pay — and you must always pay — the more valuable the prize when you finally get it. Human beings are born to be disappointed. We complicate everything too much. We expect too much, cloak our feelings in too many words, hide behind conventions, pretend … always we pretend. Sometimes we know only too well what we are doing, but all too often we don’t, not really. We may think that we have noble reasons for our actions, we justify ourselves saying that it is for pity’s sake or for the ultimate good of others or some such cliché we’ve been brought up to believe; but it’s all nonsense, excuses or rules dreamed up by philosophers — or priests. This has nothing to do with nature. It’s all alien, imposed on ourselves by ourselves, human interference cooked up by old men sitting at desks. What you say is against all reason, it cannot be, it must not be. I was thinking about it up in the mountains.’
‘By the camp fire?’ asked Adrienne with an attempt at irony.
‘Not this time. Beside a waterfall. Think of a deep canyon, dark and narrow like a well. All around is snow and ice. Even the rocks seemed frozen. I looked up and …’
He stopped as Pal Uzdy came up to them. Though it was getting late, Uzdy was as immaculate as when he had just left his dressing-room, his collar impeccable, his face cool. Of course he did not dance, indeed he rarely even sat down but stood leaning against a doorpost if people were dancing or against the wall in the supper-room while others ate, always apart, a spectator. He was so tall that his cadaverous diabolic face could be seen over the heads of everyone else. Now he moved slowly and deliberately to where his wife was sitting with Balint. He spoke to Adrienne as if she were alone. Balint might not have existed for all the sign he gave of noticing his presence.
‘I’m going home.’
‘You are?’
‘What time would you like the carriage?’
‘I really don’t know. The ball will go on until morning. For the girls’ sake it’s hard to say …’ Adrienne faltered. For a moment she seemed frightened of something.
‘Naturally, of course!’ Uzdy appeard to agree.
‘I could ask the organizers …’ suggested Balint, feeling that he should say something.
‘There’s no call for that,’ said Uzdy without turning his head and still looking at his wife. ‘Stay as long as they want to, of course! … I’ll send the carriage at seven. The horses can wait until you’re ready to leave. Enjoy yourselves!’ Abruptly he bent his long body in a stiff jack-knife bow and brushed Adrienne’s hair with his lips. As he straightened up he glanced for the first time in Abady’s direction, and a faint ironic smile seemed to hover under the drooping moustaches. From his great height he waved a limp hand to Balint and repeating ‘Enjoy yourselves!’ he turned and walked away as slowly and deliberately as he had come.
For a moment neither of them spoke. Then Adrienne turned back to Balint with searching eyes and, gasping slightly like someone who is feeling faint and who needs water, said: ‘What were you saying? A waterfall? Go on, tell me! Go on! Go on! Quickly …’
‘I was standing beside the rocky pool at the base of the fall. It was very dark down there. Everything around me was covered in ice. Into this lifeless, petrified world there poured a great column of water seemingly from inside the earth, pushing its way through solid rock, breaking through the wall of granite. The water leapt out victorious, triumphant, unstoppable, liberated, unending, throwing out garlands of spray and vapour as it fell and then rushing on over the stones below me, following its fate, going wherever it had to go, wherever it was driven, down the mountain valleys, across the plains, going where nature led until it flowed into the vast waters of the ocean. Before my eyes was the triumph of life and motion over all obstacles … and I thought of you, just as I had by the fire. Of you, who are throbbing with … I’ve always felt it. On the terrace at Var-Siklod and when you were skating. Long ago, when you were still a girl in your mother’s drawing-room, it was already there, unformed, waiting. I could feel it, that powerful urge inside you …’
He was silent for a moment, then very faintly, in a whisper, he said very slowly: ‘I love you, Addy!’
Adrienne had been listening to him, leaning back in the armchair with her head propped up on one hand, her chin supported by her long supple fingers whose pressure made her lips seem even fuller than usual. Her eyes were half-closed like someone listening to a symphony, and when Balint reached out and touched her right hand which was resting lightly on the arm of her chair, threading his fingers between hers, she accepted the caress with no sign of the alarm she had shown the last time, at Mezo-Varjas.