There was only one direction in which they could go. Only there, into the Abady lands at that ancient beech-tree surrounded by young shoots, to the same spot where she and Balint had renewed their love the year before, could she be sure of not being seen. For months before that, during their long separation, she had often come there alone, hoping subconsciously for that longed-for reunion, for that unplanned meeting which one day had become a reality. Why had she chosen that spot? Because it was there that she used to meet Balint at the very beginning of their love for each other, and because it was their own secret meeting-place.
Adrienne had come to look on the giant old tree as her friend and protector, for it had been the only witness of their mutual fulfilment and so to her was symbolic of their passion for each other.
Now, when Adrienne had led the doctor to this secret place, she leaned back against the great trunk. He stood before her and told her what she had to know.
He spoke carefully‚ choosing his words with his usual circumspection. He started by going over the known facts: Uzdy’s parents had both been mentally afflicted, the father clinically mad and Countess Clémence seemed to him to be far from normal. This in itself did not mean very much, for hardly anybody would be considered normal if all their oddnesses and quirks of behaviour were to be known.
Adrienne nodded her understanding but did not interrupt, only her large topaz-coloured eyes widened in anxious expectation.
The doctor went on, his soothing voice blunting the effect of the harsh facts he had to convey. His meaning, however, was utterly clear. He believed that Uzdy was at present in a state of high nervous tension. This might, indeed probably would, diminish in time, especially if he took regularly the calming medicine he had recommended.
‘I didn’t give him an official prescription as a doctor would,’ he said smiling. ‘He believes me to be some sort of amateur quack. I had to make it appear that way if he was going to take me seriously! He thinks it’s something to stimulate the brain for the unusual but interesting work on which he is engaged. Nothing else can be done for the present. We have got to wait until this degree of over-excitement had died down.’
Then he explained that people like her husband suffered alternating periods of excitement and unnatural calm, and that these periods could be longer or shorter and could even disappear altogether. There was always the possibility of cure. Now followed the doctor’s considered diagnosis for which Adrienne had been waiting with agony in her heart. Dr Kisch’s voice became lower as he pronounced the fatal words: ‘Bei dieser heute latenten Erregung könnte jedeseelischeErschütterungirgendeinerArteineheftigeKrisezum Ausbruchbringen,dienichtohneernsteFolgenbliebe — in this state of latent excitement any spiritual shock might bring on a crisis which could have dangerous secondary effects.’ This obviously meant her divorce, for that would be a severe ‘spiritual shock’ — it was, in fact, the exact opposite of everything that she had been hoping for these last long years.
When they finally said goodbye Dr Kisch added some phrases so as not to sound too discouraging, words that could be taken as hopeful but which, in the pain and disappointment of knowing that they still had to wait, Adrienne only remembered long afterwards.
For some time she remained there at the foot of the tree. She gazed ahead of her across the familiar clearing, in front of which she had so often paused before taking the path which led to the log-cabin that Balint had had built so that they should have a place to make love. It was here that a sudden wind had once torn down the young undergrowth, and now it seemed to the young woman standing there with such unnatural stillness that great swirls of mist were rising all around her and that the whole world grew darker and darker until she was alone in a sea of blackness. Then her knees buckled and she slid unconscious down the trunk of the great tree and lay in a faint between its entwining roots.
It was a long time before Adrienne came to, and by then the noonday sun was shining on her face. She had been lying on the same soft bed of moss on which she and Balint had fallen into each other’s arms that evening in May a year before.
Chapter Three
ADRIENNE’S FIRST LETTER FOUND Balint at Denestornya, the next at Budapest. In between he received a brief note which ‘Honey’ Andras Zutor, the forest guard, delivered to Abady at Banffy-Hunyad. All this said was:
We can’t see each other, not for a long time. I’ll write to Budapest.
Adrienne had had to send it there because Balint, when he had received her first breathless message at Denestornya, had at once written back that he would come to the cabin in the forest so that they could meet.
Though the fact that this new turn in events meant that the inevitable break with his mother was now delayed was some slight consolation, the despair he sensed from Adrienne’s brief letter was a deep source of worry. It was because of this that he had decided to go to the Kalotaszeg so that they would be able to talk matters out face to face. Life at home was becoming more and more intolerable as the relations between mother and son grew ever colder and more tense. Everything they said to each other had an artificial ring, so much so that they might have been two sleep-walkers speaking at each other. Mother and son would still have their meals together, walk down to see the horses, stroll in the park and round the gardens, but it was all a sham; to both of them everything they did was no more than a charade designed to fill in the ever-diminishing time they had together before the storm broke.
On the surface they both maintained the fiction that nothing had changed between them.
One day Balint read out to his mother a report that had been sent to him by their forest manager Winckler. It said that this summer red deer had appeared on the mountain, and that he supposed that they must have come from the Gyalu range or from Dobrin, the Andrassys’ place, where quite a number had been set free ten years before. Two groups of hinds had been sighted, with some youngish stags in attendance, and there were reports of great bulls with magnificent sets of antlers though it was not clear if they referred to one bull or to several different ones.
Balint showed the report to his mother, explaining as he did so how marvellous it would be if the red deer could be induced to stay. He thought he should go there at once and order larger feeding troughs and salt-licks to be provided to attract the deer in the coming winter. Roza Abady listened stony-faced; she didn’t believe a word of it. All she knew was that a letter had arrived from Almasko, and she was sure that her son had received a summons. Accordingly she hardly glanced at the papers her son passed over to her, but said icily, ‘Yes, of course. All right. Go if you must!’
Her protruding eyes might have been made of glass.
Balint only spent a few days on the mountain. He heard what the gornyiks, who had seen the deer, had to tell him about their tracks, and in turn had given his instructions about food troughs and the provision of rock-salt. And with the manager he discussed all those seemingly endless subjects that crop up in any substantial forestry holding; but his heart was not in it, for all he could think about was Adrienne’s divorce.
Everything he did, he did automatically, like a robot, and, most unusual for him, he did not even notice any of the beauties of nature. Indeed he could hardly wait to get away.
The letter he found waiting in Budapest was longer than the first, but still far from clear. Adrienne related what the doctor had said, but in hesitant, imprecise terms; and she also told him of those few more encouraging words he had said before they parted. There was something else which made Balint wonder where all this was leading to. When Adrienne wrote about how Dr Kisch had said that in Uzdy’s present state of mind any sudden shock might provoke a dangerous reaction, she had added two phrases about her daughter Clemmie: ‘We also have to consider her future. The child’s stability must be protected too!’