As it happened, no one was watching him except Dodo, and she only wanted to hear about Gyeroffy. When Balint told her Laszlo was now organizer of the Carnival Balls in the capital, she sighed and said: ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Mama should take me to Budapest! Oh, how marvellous it must be!’
‘Don’t you believe it! Girls from Transylvania aren’t made very welcome there … or men either, for that matter! Besides you might fall in love with someone, and that would never do!’ Balint laughed in sympathetic mockery.
‘Yes, it could happen.’ Dodo said in a subdued voice.
‘Really? That Nitwit is good-looking enough. I could quite understand?’
‘Not him!’ interrupted Dodo. ‘Not at all! He isn’t after me anymore.’
‘Who, then? I thought
Dodo burst out laughing: ‘You men never notice anything! Why, Judith Miloth, of course!’
‘Not possible! I’ve never seen…
‘Look at them! Do I have to spell it out for you?’
Balint turned slowly so that he could watch Judith with Wickwitz. She was talking to him in a low voice, rather hesitantly it seemed, but Balint saw nothing out of the way in her manner, only that her expression was perhaps a little more serious than usual.
Lieutenant Baron Wickwitz had gone back to his regiment in November. He had paid off those dirty debts — in the army all debts to tradesmen were dirty as opposed to those incurred by gambling which were considered honourable — and so was back in uniform. He had gone to see his colonel and, with a wooden face, had told him that he was now free of ‘embarrassment’. The colonel, who knew well that Wickwitz had no means of his own, had wondered where the money had come from but was sufficiently relieved that he would no longer have to expel the young man from the regiment that he did not enquire further. All the same he wondered how he had managed to raise the ten or twelve thousand crowns that he had estimated Wickwitz had owed.
A month later Wickwitz had again asked to see his commanding officer, and once again he had asked for leave, this time for two or three months as he intended to get married and he would need this time to get everything organized.
‘Die kleine Gyalakuthy — the little Gyalakuthy girl?’ asked the colonel, who had heard something of Wickwitz’s activities in Transylvania. ‘Na, gratuliere — congratulations!’
Wickwitz did not undeceive him, though he knew that Dodo would not marry him, at least not now. It would take at least two years’ hard wooing on his part and it would always depend on whether someone else took her fancy. If no one else came along, then perhaps … but not now; and Wickwitz could not wait. He did not have enough time.
The reason he could not wait was that the money he had used to square his debts had been obtained from a dangerous and equivocal source. It was Dinora Abonyi’s money and if it were not repaid — and if the means he used to get it became known — then he could not avoid being cashiered. All this had happened at the end of the autumn just when his six months’ leave was expiring and when he had to go back to his regiment. He knew that if he returned to Brasso without money to pay his debts he would be forced to resign his commission. And then he’d be on the streets.
Wickwitz had turned to Dinora for help. It was not the first time. On several occasions during the summer and autumn he had touched her for a few hundred, later a few thousand crowns, for ‘petty expenses’, of course. And she had given them gladly. Now the fatal date for his return to duty approached and with no rich marriage to justify his absence and solve his problems, something drastic had to be done. Dinora was rich, good-hearted, extravagant … and she had no idea what words like a ‘bank draft’ implied. When Wickwitz told her that if she signed some bank drafts for him to cash he would be able to pay her back immediately what he had borrowed from her, she trustingly agreed. It all seemed so simple! You put your signature on a paper and your problems were solved. If Nitwit had asked for cash it would have been different, because Dinora was such an easy spender that she never seemed to have any ready money. And what was more this meant that as soon as Wickwitz had repaid what he had borrowed from her she would be able to settle that bill from the dressmaker who was becoming tiresomely insistent.
So Wickwitz had gone to Weissfeld’s bank in Maros-Vasarhely with three drafts for eight thousand crowns each.
Soma Weissfeld received him immediately. However, when he saw Countess Abonyi’s signature, he paused for a moment, removed his pince-nez, polished them meticulously and replaced them on his nose with fussy little delaying movements.
‘May I ask why … why have these drafts not been signed by Count Abonyi. It is usually he who signs and of course we know his signature well. Please understand, the Baron must excuse me, but this is rather awkward, rather delicate.’ He looked at Wickwitz with narrowed eyes while a somewhat suspicious smile pulled at the corners of his mouth.
Wickwitz managed not to lose his temper. He explained that the Countess did not want to involve her husband in this matter — she had run up a number of debts (this was true) and he might be angry with her. Of course she was a rich woman but she did not want to sell her crops immediately, he added with quick invention, but when she did she would see that the bank was repaid.
Weissfeld did not believe a word of it, but as he knew that Maros-Szilvas was Dinora’s own property inherited from her Malhuysen ancestors, and that it was extremely valuable, he decided that the matter was none of his affair. Accordingly he cashed the drafts, handing over to Wickwitz something over twenty-three thousand crowns. Egon returned to Maros-Szilvas with this sum, giving to Dinora four thousand, one hundred and sixty-two crowns and sixty cents. Dinora did not want to accept the two crowns and sixty cents but Wickwitz insisted, saying that it was a debt of honour and that he would consider himself disgraced if he owed a single cent to a lady. He told her that he had noted down exactly what he had borrowed so as to keep his accounts in order. As it happened this was true. He knew that his debts in Brasso amounted to exactly fifteen thousand, three hundred and seventy-seven crowns, and he would keep the difference as he would now have to find somebody who would pay back Dinora’s drafts and, until that person was found, he would need money to live. After all, he would never solve his problems if he didn’t go to balls and meet people — and no one could live without a cent in their pockets.
Dodo was given up at once: there was no time for a long-drawn-out pursuit. Only two possibilities remained. The first was Judith Miloth, and the other was a widow of over thirty whom he had met on a train. There had been an answering sparkle in Mme Bogdan Lazar’s eyes when he had first made her acquaintance by helping with her luggage, and he had soon learnt that she had a handsome property near Apahida. However it seemed that Judith would be the best bet so he would start with her. If that failed there would be plenty of time to go after the widow.