There was thick snow everywhere that year and it took nearly three hours for the heavy covered sleigh drawn by three horses to reach the village of Kozard. It was a good sleigh, for at that time there was no lack of excellent vehicles available for hire, and it drove merrily along with a happy jingle of silvery-toned bells. They arrived at midday and drove straight up to the little country house on its hilltop.
‘His Lordship is not at home,’ said Marton Balogh, Laszlo’s old manservant. ‘He went down to the village. Perhaps you might find him at the village store. I’m afraid I don’t really know.’
‘When do you expect his Lordship back?’ asked Balint, but the old man merely shrugged his shoulders, thinking that maybe his master had gone down for some country brandy and if that were so then his movements would be totally unpredictable.
Balint decided to walk down the hill and see for himself, and so he started off down the slippery snow-covered slope. Halfway down he met a young farmer, who was also the local civic deputy and who carried an official-looking paper in his hand. Balint asked him where he should find the village store and the young man pointed out the way.
Laszlo was indeed there.
He stood with his back to the shop door and on the other side of the counter was Bischitz, the owner of the shop, who was standing just in front of the glazed door which led to his private rooms behind the shop. All around them were the thousand different items which made up the stock of a village general shop — by the doors were bunches of harness and tack, scythes, hoes and spades tied together with twine; on the shelves were tobacco, vinegar, spices, sugar, rice, bottles of raw and refined alcohol, glasses, a pyramid of salt-blocks, a barrel of salted herrings and some stiff planks of dried cod leaning against it. From all this came a strong and rather disagreeable odour compounded principally of vinegar and tobacco with a strong dominant smell of the local aniseed-flavoured brandy.
When Balint opened the door of the shop a bell rang loudly above his head and Balint just had time to see the shopkeeper seize some bit of porcelain from Laszlo’s hands and whisk it out of sight. Only a bottle of plum brandy, and a single used glass, remained on the counter-top.
‘Well! And what brings you here?’ said Gyeroffy as soon as he saw who had come in. Balint could hear no sign of pleasure or welcome in his cousin’s voice, but rather a strong note of annoyance.
‘I came to see you. As you wouldn’t come to us it has to be a case of the mountain and Mohammed!’ Abady laughed good-humouredly. ‘So you see I’ve come to you.’
‘That old fool at the house could have come for me,’ growled Laszlo as he offered his cousin a glass of plum brandy. This Balint refused, with some impatience, saying, ‘If you’ve no further business here, we might as well leave, don’t you think?’
Gyeroffy looked hard at him.
‘No! I’ve nothing more to do here; and what there is can wait until this afternoon, can’t it, Bischitz? However I’ll have another dram even if you’re too grand to join me!’ and he swung himself round leaning on the counter in an obviously sulky temper. Bischitz refilled Laszlo’s glass, which the latter drained instantly before demanding another. When that too had been despatched the young man turned back and muttered, ‘Well, we can go now!’
Even so they did not leave at once for at this point the civic deputy came in. He too was looking for Count Gyeroffy.
‘This has come for you from the County Court,’ he said, handing Laszlo a sealed letter. Then he opened the book of receipts and said, ‘Sign here, please!’
‘Sign for me, Bischitz,’ said Laszlo, throwing down the official letter and refilling his glass. Abady glanced at the writing on the document which had fallen on the counter in front of him. He picked it up and looked inside. A man called E. Leo Kardos, resident of Budapest, had asked the court for a writ of seizure and the auction of Count Gyeroffy’s house and possessions.
‘But this is very serious!’ cried Balint. ‘Look! Everything goes to auction on April 15th!’
‘I’ve had lots of those,’ said Gyeroffy, before turning to the shopkeeper and saying, ‘Send it to Azbej, you know, like the others.’
Balint shook his head. He could hardly credit such fecklessness. ‘Perhaps it would be better if I took it to him?’ he suggested. ‘I’ll be seeing him tomorrow or the day after when I go to Denestornya.’
‘What for? You’ll send it, won’t you, Bischitz? It won’t be the first,’ said Laszlo in a mocking tone.
Now they really did start to go back to Laszlo’s house.
They did not say much to each other on the way. Balint was racking his brains as to how to get Laszlo out of all his trouble and how, too, to wean him from this solitary drinking. Only when they reached the house and had gone up to the former salon of the manor-house, which now served Laszlo as a bed-sitting-room, did he take out Countess Elise’s letter to her nephew. Before he handed it over he told Laszlo how lovingly they all thought about him at Jablanka, Aunt Elise, Magda, Pfaffulus, everybody … but he did not mention either Klara or Imre Warday.
A little stove had been installed in front of the French marble chimney-piece. A fire was burning in it and the smoke and fumes were led into the chimney by a rusty black metal tube. Laszlo stood beside the stove without saying a word, his eyes fixed upon the window and on the grey wintry sky beyond. He said nothing during Balint’s long story about his cousins, and he still said nothing when Balint came to the end of his tale and handed over the letter. For a moment he held the envelope in his hand, then he waved it twice in the air before his face before grabbing it with both hands and tearing it to pieces unopened. With his boots still covered with snow he kicked the bits of paper into the fireplace surround.
This was such a surprise that Abady jumped up in protest, only to find that Laszlo was quite calm, saying, ‘I’ve done with that world for ever, do you understand? I don’t want anything from it and I don’t want to hear anything from it. Nothing! Nothing at all! For me those people no longer exist. For all I can care they may be dead, or they may never have existed. Never! Never!’
‘Why do you reject everyone who loves you and wants to help you?’ asked Balint gently.
‘I don’t want anyone to help me! Why can’t you all leave me in peace? Especially all those, those … there in Hungary!’ Laszlo was shouting now, and getting increasingly agitated as he whirled about the dirty, untidy room where every piece of furniture was piled with filthy unwashed articles of clothing and the ragged sofa covered in old books and papers.
His cousin felt deeply sorry for him and so he moved across the room and joined him. ‘All right! All right! Nobody’s forcing you to anything,’ he said, and then, so as to give Laszlo time to simmer down, took him by the arm and started walking up and down the room, chatting trivially about a number of other subjects. As they did so they passed several times the corner of the room where there stood a delicate old glass-fronted vitrine. Its dusty velvet-covered shelves were now almost empty. In one corner there was an old chipped Meissen coffee-pot and beside it a matching sugar bowl with a long crack on one side, things no one would buy. In several places imprints on the velvet, less dusty than elsewhere, showed where other objects had once been placed. So this is where the governor’s cup came from! thought Balint, and realized why even today the shopkeeper had been in such a hurry to hide something. With his usual instinctive urge to help others Balint, without thinking, stepped over to the vitrine and said, ‘You’ve been selling the china, haven’t you?’