Balint did not know enough about this to discuss it in any detail so he decided to change the subject.
‘It’s my view,’ he said, ‘that we should try and find the means to draw closer together spiritually and economically. Here in Transylvania we are both at home. It is your country and it is my country. It is common ground to both of us. We could learn a great deal if we paid more attention to what really matters, and did not allow ourselves always to be sucked into the whirlpool of Budapest politics.’
Timisan listened attentively to everything that Abady said.
‘I’m most interested that a Hungarian aristocrat should have the perception to see these things. It is most unusual! But very little will be done for there are too many vested interests in Budapest, the bankers and big business will never allow it! Everything you say is true, but it’s a mirage all the same, just a, fata Morgana!’
Balint would have liked to go on with the discussion and talk to his new friend about his ideas for a co-operative. It would have been instructive, too, to hear what he had to say about the best ways of organizing credit, production and marketing, but the train started to slow down for its approach to Ludas and he was obliged to get up and take his leave.
‘I’m getting off here so I’ve no time to convince you,’ he said, smiling, ‘but, if you’re agreeable I’d very much like to see you again and talk some more about these matters. I believe you live in Kolozsvar. Perhaps I could come and see you?’
‘I should be delighted!’ replied the lawyer.
Abady spent two days at Lelbanya. As soon as he arrived he sent messages to the mayor, the notary and several other leading members of the community, the two parish priests, the doctor, the chemist, the mill-owner and a few others, asking them to meet him in the afternoon. The meeting seemed to Balint to go well for everyone listened to his proposals with rapt attention, nodded their agreement to everything he said, and finally made it clear that they were all lost in admiration for the wonderful plans that their representative had been so good as to work out for them. Later they all dined at the Grand Restaurant Csillag, or ‘Star’, which was the only restaurant in the town, on excellent paprika-chicken and fried dumplings. A lot of wine was drunk and speeches and toasts were made well into the night.
In the morning Balint found a large group of people waiting to see him. Everyone wanted something, a favour or privilege or concession. One desired a licence to sell alcohol, another tobacco, a third sought a place, and a grant, for his son at the college at Eged; others asked for work on the roads, in the burial ground at Vasarhely, promotion for a brother-in-law who worked on the railways, a word to the bailiff, exemption from military service, or advice on how to cure a sick cow. As might have been expected the majority either had some complaint of injustice or bad treatment that they had received from the judge, sheriff, schoolmaster — indeed from anyone who exercised any authority, while others merely wished for help in fighting the wickedness of their neighbours. They all seemed to think that Abady was all-powerful and they came to him with the same simple confidence that children say their prayers knowing that God is listening and all will be well. And everyone ended their requests with the words: ‘It only needs a word from your Lordship.’
Balint listened gravely and patiently took notes of every complaint or petition. He told them all that he would look into the matter but that he could not guarantee anything. Nobody believed this last phrase, for they were all convinced that if the count wished it then it would be done. They also believed that if it were not done then it was because the count had not wished it.
A public meeting had been arranged for ten o’clock in the two-storey house they called the Town Hall. Balint was shown into a large room on the first floor which had four windows overlooking the market-place. At one end a table had been placed. It was covered in oil-cloth and behind it, under a large print of the Emperor Franz-Josef, were three chairs. Balint was shown to the chair in the centre and on each side of him sat the mayor, who was also the chief magistrate, and the notary. Behind them, tacked to the wall beside the gilded frame of the Emperor’s portrait, was a large railway timetable. The chairs for the public were placed in rows facing the table.
The room was already full when Balint was shown to his place. Some of the younger of the leading citizens’ wives came, dressed in all their finery, and smiled at the young count perhaps hoping that he might find one of them to his liking. These all sat in the front row. Behind the ladies everyone placed themselves in strict order of precedence, the most important in the front rows, the insignificant farther back. At the rear the young men and youths milled about in an unruly throng.
The meeting started and Abady outlined his ideas for a local co-operative. He explained the advantages of everyone’s working together, how an organization that united them all could obtain better results and more profit for everyone than if they all worked independently and in competition with each other. He talked about the peasants in Saxony, where these ideas had long been accepted, gave statistics from other countries and tried hard to use simple phrases that everyone would understand. It was not long before he realized that few people understood what he was talking about, so he brought his discourse to an end with a few resounding clichés such as ‘God helps those who help themselves!’
There were a few cheers when he sat down — not very many, it is true, but just enough. The Hungarian priest now made a beautiful speech, whose relevance Balint did not entirely follow, and then, as it seemed that no one had anything further to say, the mayor rose and declared that the assembly welcomed the idea and that he was happy therefore to announce the formation of the Lelbanya Co-operative Society. He further announced that, once the co-operative had been organized, a marketing organization would be formed.
Balint now stood up again and made the offer of the use of the Abady house and property in the town as headquarters of the society, which would be swiftly expanded to include a farmers’ club, a free public library, and a model market-garden which would be to everybody’s advantage.
This announcement brought further applause, though it seemed to Balint to be somewhat less than before, and the mayor rose again and declared that the meeting had unanimously accepted all three suggestions put forward by Count Abady. He then read out the names of those appointed to the preparatory committee, warmly thanked the Member for Lelbanya for his efforts on behalf of the constituency, and declared the meeting at an end.
The whole discussion had lasted no more than an hour and a half, so Balint proposed that they should take a look at the property he had offered for the society’s use. Most of the leading citizens who had dined with him the night before, and a few of the younger farmers, agreed to this proposal, so they all left the Town Hall and walked along the rough road that led to the upper end of the town. There, on a small hillock shaped somewhat like a rock-cake, stood a sturdy-looking stone-built farmhouse surrounded by a shrubbery. The building had a two-tiered roof and a large veranda supported by two strong wooden pillars. Directly inside the main door was a long room which had once served as the family living and eating room and which was now the carpenter’s workshop. As the party entered they were greeted by the agreeable smell of fresh sawdust. Everywhere around were piles of newly cut laths and boards of pine wood, strewn in such apparent confusion that there was hardly space enough left to open the door properly.
There was only one occupant of the long room, a small boy, about three years old, who sat on the floor dressed in a ragged shirt and nothing else. He was eating an apple but, seeing all these dark-clad strangers, he threw it away and, after staring at them for a moment, got up and ran towards a door at the back of the room. When he was unable to open it he hung on to the door-handle and started to cry. The door opened and a woman in the last stages of pregnancy came in. The child buried its head in her skirts and stopped crying. As it did so the woman saw the strangers who crowded the doorway and, pressing the little boy’s head to her legs, she called back to the room from which she had just come: ‘Janos! Come here, there are some gentlemen to see you.’