‘This does not concern Azbej! He has no authority in these matters!’ said Countess Roza stiffly. ‘Azbej does what I tell him to do and I will not have these poor people thrown out on the street for no reason. I have never done such things and I don’t intend to start now. When the property is yours you can do what you like! But while I’m alive we’ll have none of these new methods, if you please!’ And she glared at Balint crossly, her little eyes bulging with anger.
‘My dear Mama, I really didn’t think …’ started Balint, but he was not allowed to continue.
‘All right! But let it be clearly understood I don’t want to hear anything more about it. And, what’s more, you will please remember to speak to me before you raise such things with other people!’
This was the first time that Balint had had a collision with his mother since she had asked him to take more part in the running of their estates.
The experience taught him that he would have to proceed with great caution as it was obvious that his mother was by no means as prepared to relinquish the reins as she had previously suggested. About two weeks later, therefore, when Kalman Nyiresy, the forest supervisor, brought in the report for which Balint had asked, he went immediately to his mother taking with him the old plans of the forests which Nyiresy now admitted he had found among the archives. Countess Roza was delighted and gave Balint a free hand at once.
The weeks and months passed. Spring arrived, and whenever Balint found himself in Kolozsvar he would go, as dusk was falling, to visit Adrienne. He would usually go on foot and, as he walked down the Monostor road he would always ask himself the same questions: What did he want from Adrienne? What was the use of all this? Did he really want to start something that couldn’t be stopped and would tie him down, for he certainly did not want to lose his independence to any woman? Life should be lived without that sort of encumbrance. No commitments, that was always best. But if that is what he felt why was he pursuing Adrienne, when there were plenty of other women around with whom he could amuse himself without any problems? Each time he walked up the Monostor road he was assailed by the same confused thoughts and ideas.
Sometimes another voice spoke within him, a voice more cynical, more arrogant, a voice that laughed at his scruples and self-searching, and which accused him of behaving more like a timid schoolboy than a grown man of the world. This was the voice that said Balint was a fool, which scorned his moral reticence and laughed at his failure to end their little game of caresses by a serious and determined onslaught. ‘Take her, you timid little college boy!’, it said.
And one day, as they were lying close to each other on the cushions in front of the fire, it was to this second voice that Balint listened.
As so often they had been talking about love but, whereas in what Balint said there was always a hidden meaning, a purpose that he felt impelled to conceal from her, when Adrienne spoke her words were cool, impersonal, genuine reflections of what was in her mind. She talked of love as calmly and logically as she might of painting, sculpture or books, and her opinions were radical and modern. Marriage, said Adrienne, was an old-fashioned and meaningless institution. Nobody had the right to limit the freedom of another individual. All women as well as men should be free to act as they chose, as much with their bodies as with their thoughts. This was the only undisputed right that was accorded to mankind. Free will must be paramount. If you wanted to — and, shying away from the subject, she paused before going on to say that of course it was incomprehensible that anyone should want to ruin their lives just for that — then it should be their own affair and no one else’s. She herself would never judge anyone for going against the judgment of society. If that’s what they wanted, well, let them! It seemed to Balint as if her disappointment in her own marriage echoed through her words and encouraged him to hope that this was the moment for which he had been waiting, the moment when he should press for more. Gently murmuring words of agreement and encouragement, he started his attack by pressing his mouth into the back of her neck and gently covering with kisses that part where the almost invisible hairs are as soft and velvety as the skin of a peach. It was here too that her very individual woman’s scent seemed at its strongest.
Finally, when she paused for a moment he pressed her down violently, thrusting forward his shoulder to push her farther down among the cushions, his hands searching, searching, searching … For a brief moment Adrienne did not react; then, with the speed of a panther at bay, she jumped up and stood, back to one of the stone columns of the fireplace, tense, angry and defensive. She looked at Balint with hatred and amazement, outraged, unable to find words adequate to express her fury.
‘What? What?’ She was panting with emotion. ‘How dare you!’
Balint bowed his head humbly, without moving from where he sat at her feet. ‘Forgive me!’ he said. ‘Please forgive me!’ And he tried to cover up with a lie, saying that he had slipped, that it was an accident, that he hadn’t meant anything … really nothing at all!
Adrienne stood there without speaking, mutinous, looking at him with distrust, in her eyes the look of an animal that feels trapped and unsure of itself. After much pleading and more abject apologies from Balint she agreed once again to sit down beside him on the cushions, but apart, not close as before. This time she sat opposite him, her legs drawn up under her, defiant, coiled like a spring and ready to leap up and flee at his smallest move. Balint felt that she did not believe a word he said to her as she sat there, tense and strained, and so, after about half an hour of halting conversation on totally impersonal subjects, he got up to say goodbye. Adrienne gave him her hand but when he asked if he could call again on the following day, she said that she had some calls to make in the town and would not be at home.
‘Perhaps I could walk with you when you go calling? At least that way we could see each other,’ said Balint.
‘Very well. I suppose you could, though I don’t yet know who I’ll be visiting or when.’
And so they parted.
Balint was very angry. He blamed himself far more than he blamed Adrienne and even now he could not make up his mind exactly where the fault lay nor where he had gone wrong.
Once again two warring voices competed in his brain, the one despising him for being a coward and not following up his advantage by taking her regardless of any resistance. This voice told him that he would never achieve what he wanted by hesitating until the moment had passed, and that even if she had been angry at first all women calmed down as soon as it was over. And if she didn’t calm down? Well, then, what would it matter? At least he would have had her once! But the other voice was stronger and more convincing. This voice blamed him for even trying when he knew that she was not ready and did not want it. What an ugly and joyless coupling it would have been if he had succeeded, humiliating to both of them. Nothing would have been achieved, never again would he be able to pass those afternoons in her arms, those extraordinary, childish, unfulfilled hours when they lay innocently, their bodies entwined in a brotherly passionless intimacy, and when he was obliged to be content with the light caresses that were all that this woman, so strangely ignorant of what was meant by love, would allow him.
It was incredible that Adrienne could permit those endless fondling caresses, light wandering kisses, contact between their hands, legs and bodies, and still remain cool and unaroused while he was bursting with desire, as full of tension as a tightly drawn bow-string. Up until now this strange anomaly had charged him with power and pleasure until after he had left her as dusk fell, intoxicated but not disappointed, giddy with the effort to control himself, but happy too, always happy. But on this day he was sad and depressed. Something had spoilt the magic for him and he could think only of how he could regain that strange paradise where, unlike Eden, the fruit of knowledge was not to be plucked.