Balint caught his breath, so taken by surprise was he that it should be the coarse-spoken, rough-mannered, hard-eyed old roué who was playing Chopin with such delicacy. Balint felt that he had been vouchsafed a glimpse of some forbidden secret, for he was sure that no one else could know that the much-feared old man would pass his evenings in playing sentimental ballades and nocturnes.
And yet there he was, his powerful torso motionless, his bald head a faint gleam in the semi-darkness, his hooked eagle’s nose barely visible. He was looking straight ahead, into nothingness, the notes singing under the light touch of his fingers, and it was as if he himself were a thousand miles away. He must have played these melancholy tunes a hundred times; and he played only for himself, for his wife was stone-deaf and could hear nothing. Just for himself; this sweet old-fashioned music, the music of his youth, played by memory at the dark end of a vast but sparsely-furnished room.
Balint touched the footman’s arm. ‘We’ll wait until Count Sandor finishes,’ he murmured.
When Crookface had played a couple of preludes he got up and walked with a heavy tread towards where his wife was sitting.
Balint and the footman now came in as if they had just arrived. Kendy turned towards them in welcome.
‘Where the Devil have you sprung from at this time of night?’ he cried, and gave a big good-humoured laugh with his lop-sided mouth. Then he turned to his wife, smoothed his moustaches upwards, and, making no sound but merely mouthing the words, said, ‘This is my cousin, Balint Abady!’
Countess Kendy rose dutifully and shook hands with the visitor. There was something essentially humble in her manner. It was as if she were not in her own house, indeed as if she were not even the wife of the noble Count Kendy but was still no more than a little typist. Very softly, in the hardly perceptible whisper of the deaf who have no means of judging how loudly they speak, she murmured, ‘Welcome, I’m sure. So pleased!’ Her face was lit by a serene smile.
It was a beautiful face, interesting and pale-complexioned, with full red lips and grey eyes that were fringed with thick dark lashes. Her black eyebrows nearly met over the bridge of her nose and this gave her glance an unusual and mysterious look, as if she were peering at one from a great distance. Her hair was light-brown in colour, wavy and very thick, with two great tresses wreathing her head in the same manner as one saw in portraits of the beautiful Queen-Empress Elisabeth.
She looked at her husband with the unspoken question as to whether she was doing right and then, with a slow, solemn, almost lazy movement, gestured Balint towards an armchair beside her.
He sat down. He told how it was that he came to be there, how he had been making for Segesvar so as to catch the express train home and how the carriage-horse had fallen lame just as they reached the outskirts of the village. Crookface interrupted him once or twice with brief questions: Where was the carriage now? Was the horse being cared for? Had Balint dined on the road? Then he rang for the footman and gave orders for Balint’s coachman and his horses to be properly looked after. When this was done he turned once more towards his wife, again brushed back his moustaches and mouthed something silently to her. Immediately she rose and started to leave the room. Balint involuntarily watched her as she went. She had a beautiful walk, like that of oriental dancers, whose hips and shoulders swayed to an individual rhythm, a rhythm that ought to be accompanied by slow syncopated music. Like a mirage she disappeared silently through the doorway.
She did not return, but in a few moments servants brought in two more lamps, a small table and a cold supper. Balint ate ravenously, for his dinner at Udvarhely seemed a long time ago.
Crookface asked about the meeting at Homorod and Balint told him what he could, but the conversation dragged as the host was a silent man by nature who normally only let drop the occasional four-letter obscenity from the corner of his mouth and the rest of the time merely sat puffing at his cigar.
As he was eating Abady looked up at the large picture on the wall in front of him. Only now did he begin to notice it and realize that it must be a portrait of his host’s young wife. It had the same figure, not tall but well-proportioned, and the same face. There were the mysterious grey eyes in their frame of black lashes, the same eyebrows, the same lustrous hair wound round the head in the double crown made famous by the wayward Empress. Only one thing was different, startlingly different. The dress in which she had been depicted was nothing like that of today, or even of the recent past, but was in the style of the seventies, with long narrow sleeves, plunging décolleté and a bell-shaped skirt decorated all over with different coloured little ruffles and bunches of artificial flowers in the rich confusion of the fashion of those days. It was beautiful and harmonious, but strange.
‘What a wonderful portrait!’ cried Balint enthusiastically. ‘And what a superb likeness!’
Crookface did not answer, but merely puffed more smoke from his cigar.
‘Who is it by? I never saw such exquisite work,’ he went on, looking at his host.
‘Oh, some Frenchman or other,’ he murmured.
‘But what an interesting dress! I suppose the Countess had it for some costume ball?’
The old man sat back, but he said nothing. Balint got up to look at the picture more closely. Standing slightly to one side he noticed that the lamplight revealed a long scar across the picture all the way from the right shoulder down to the left hip where the carefully concealed blemish was hidden in a cluster of little painted nosegays. There had obviously been a most skilful repair, probably from behind the canvas, but the long rip was still just visible. Balint was about to ask his host about this, but something held him back. He knew that Crookface would not take kindly to cross-questioning — indeed no one ever dared ask him anything — and so he held his tongue, sat down again and just went on staring at the picture.
There was something else mysterious about that painted face, Balint thought, noticing now what a sensuous mouth the lady had, something he had not really remarked when she had been in the room.
For some time neither of them spoke: both were looking at the picture on the wall in front of them. Then suddenly old Crookface said, ‘How is Laszlo Gyeroffy?’
Abady was amazed. Whatever could be the connection, he wondered? Why, out of the blue, should the old man suddenly mention Laszlo?
Of course there was a connection, and a most intimate one, though Balint could hardly be expected to know what it was. The portrait was not of Crookface’s wife, but of Julie Ladossa, Laszlo’s mother. Her portrait had been painted in Paris by the celebrated Cabanel, then the most fashionable of contemporary portraitists. For barely a year it had hung in the hastily arranged temporary drawing-room, upstairs at Szamos-Kozard, where cobwebs and a rusty nail still showed where it had been placed. It was the picture at which Laszlo’s father had struck and then thrown away in his rage and grief at his wife’s desertion … and that was why it had that terrible tear from shoulder to hip.
How it had found its way to Sandor Kendy’s was never revealed. It was a mystery to which nobody but he knew the answer. Was it mere chance, or was there a history of secret searches and even more secret deals? Was the torn masterpiece rescued by the local store-owner, only to be sold, discreetly, later? No one knew.
There were many other secrets tied to this picture too; old passions, yearning desires, misunderstandings, the conflicts of pride and disappointment, and, above all, the gnawing regret for what ought to have been but never was.
Many years after the scandal of Countess Gyeroffy’s flight and her husband’s death in the woods Sandor Kendy had had some business with a lawyer at Haromszek. There he met the lawyer’s niece, Alice Folbert, who was the living double of Julie Ladossa. When Crookface saw the young Alice it was as if he met again the woman he had loved twenty years before. He did not mind that the girl was already extremely deaf and was likely to become even more so; indeed, it was rather an encouragement for him, for it made the girl seem all the more impersonal. She did not need, or want, to be spoken to. Indeed it was neither necessary or possible. All he had to do was to watch her, to gaze and wonder, and observe how she held herself, how she walked, how she moved her shoulders, how she bent over her needlework, how she looked and how she smiled, always without a word. She was there, and yet she wasn’t. She was a symbol, a dream, a ghost; and yet she was flesh and blood and real and he could play for her the old tunes which he never could for the other one and never, never, could she destroy the illusion by some unfortunate remark which would shatter the spell.