Abady’s eyes were still on her, demanding an answer.
Adrienne looked back at him, and then, very slowly, she sald: ‘I will try to go on living. Maybe I’ll succeed, even if we never see each other again …’
Now it was nearly daylight.
Adrienne sat on the side of the bed, still in her torn, thin nightdress. She did not move, but leant back on her elbows, her head thrown back and her eyes tightly closed.
Balint was already dressed. He was standing face to the wall. Then he turned back towards her and fell at her feet, burying his face in her lap and sobbing as if his heart would break. His whole body was so racked with sobs that his back heaved and shook as he pressed his face ever deeper into her lap, into the smooth curves of her half-naked thighs. Deep groans broke from him and he cried ever harder as if he would never stop. He was like a child in the grip of an unknown horror, a nightmare that could never be told in words, clinging to his mother’s knees and clasping her as strongly as if he would never let go. His hands clutched at her body, at her bare flesh, not in desire but as a drowning man clutches at anything that comes his way. Through these racking sobs which so tore his throat that she could hardly distinguish what he was trying to say, through the waves of pain that both were feeling, came only one word, repeated over and over again: ‘Addy … Addy … Addy …’
Adrienne gently stroked his head, not caring that her nightdress was torn, not noticing the ever-brightening light of the morning sun, regardless of her bare breasts, feeling no shame at the revelation of her torn and bruised and naked flesh. She felt nothing but sorrow, a dreadful, suffocating sorrow and pity.
Somehow she managed to find the strength to try and calm him, hushing him as one would a frightened child, vainly trying to lift his head, caressing his tousled hair as if he were her son, and all the while her hands, gentle and motherly, softly stroked his head as she tried to utter some words of comfort:
‘My darling … my own darling. You mustn’t … no, you mustn’t … My very own … my darling … no, you mustn’t …’
As Balint reeled out of Adrienne’s room the hotel was coming to life. He staggered out, not looking back, banging into the doorpost as he went, like a man mortally wounded and unconscious of his surroundings.
Adrienne rose from the bed and walked slowly to the window. From far, far away she thought she could hear music, but it sounded like a funeral march or the sad songs that accompany the dead to their last resting place. Perhaps it was only the echo of some distant siren. Her heart throbbed, beating unevenly as if it were about to stop for ever.
Adrienne just stood there by the window, looking fixedly into a distance that for her did not exist. She never touched the curtains but just stood there, alone, staring into nothing, her nightdress in shreds and in front, where Balint had buried his head, it clung to her thighs wet with his tears, and cold to the touch, for from outside the open window the early morning breeze had just begun.
The voluminous folds of the fine white netting floated around her, veiling her face, her dishevelled, unruly hair, her naked shoulders, until she was entirely covered.
She might have been wrapped in a shroud …
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Count Miklós Bánffy (1873–1950) was variously a diplomat, MP and foreign minister in 1921–22 when he signed the peace treaty with the United States and obtained Hungary’s admission to the League of Nations. He was responsible for organising the last Habsburg coronation, that of King Karl in 1916. His famous Transylvanian Trilogy, They Were Counted, They Were Found Wanting, They Were Divided was first published in Budapest in the 1930s.