They had been married for nearly ten years and she had often thought of him as eccentric and cranky. To herself she used the word ‘crazy’ but not in this sense, not pathologically. She had never thought of him as incipiently clinically mad. The thought had never occurred to her. Now she had to face reality, to face the fact that he was menaced by that monster insanity, which could wreck her whole future — for if he really did go off his head she would never be able to divorce him, such was the law.
Adrienne was careful to keep this appalling thought to herself. She did not even mention it in her letters to Balint, telling herself that she did not want to worry him further. Subconsciously she was bowing to the superstition that if the thing was put into words then it would become so, as if the words themselves could conjure up the fact. She hardly even admitted it to herself, though now she watched anxiously every word and movement her husband made. Of course she had always watched him, but now it was different. In their first years of marriage she had had to be on the alert whenever they were together, but this was to protect herself from his violence and unpredictability; later, when she had learnt from Balint what love really was, she feared for her lover’s safety. Now her vigil was more clinical and she watched over Uzdy more as his nurse, dispassionately, without ill-feeling.
It was from this time that she found her hatred for him diminishing, for it was no longer her husband who was the enemy, but rather that dreaded sickness which if allowed to strike would utterly destroy everything she lived for. She found that she could even think of the onslaught of madness as something alien, some malignant superhuman force that came from God knows where.
Everything that Uzdy now said or did was for her merely a symptom to be studied, analysed and interpreted — but it was all so contradictory, so confusing, that the more she watched the more confused she became herself. One day she would be filled with hope, the next with despair.
On the surface nothing had changed. Uzdy lived as he always had and behaved as he always had, one day arrogant and ironic, another disdainfully polite; and yet there was always that latent ferocity lurking behind the 
of normality. He continued to work at those wondrous tables of figures that he believed would one day transform the world, indeed more devotedly than ever since Dr Kisch had praised his endeavours. He barely seemed to notice Adrienne’s presence and mercifully never came to her room at night, though this might have been due to exhaustion after long hours of work in his study or even to those soothing medicines the Saxon doctor had prescribed. Superficially everything was normal until something happened which seemed to disturb him. There should have been nothing in it, and its effect was only gradually noticeable.
It was after Countess Clémence came home from Meran that Adrienne began to notice that her husband seemed, though without any obvious reason, to be annoyed with his mother. He would pick on her, taking any occasion to reprimand her, sometimes with an insolent rudeness that had never before been the old lady’s lot. Adrienne did not remember his ever doing this before, though she admitted to herself that she might not have noticed in the summer and only did so now because she was watching him so carefully.
And, as soon as she did notice, she saw that the habit was growing. The first obvious clash came when the new young French governess arrived and Countess Clémence made her senior to the old English nanny. In those protocol-ridden days this was quite correct since the governess was an educated woman with an official diploma. Uzdy did not protest but lost no opportunity of humiliating the girl, all the while gazing maliciously at his mother. Then there was a host of unusual little incidents, all essentially trivial. Uzdy would suddenly start cross-questioning his mother as to why she had sent the carriage somewhere, or he would demand a detailed explanation for the replacement of one of the under-gardeners; he even expostulated with her for sending a basket of plums to the priest from Nagy-Almas who came each Sunday to say mass at Almasko. He, who had never bothered his head with anything to do with the daily running of the house, now took his mother up about all sorts of little everyday details of housekeeping. And when he did so one could tell from his tone of voice that, though he was making an effort to control himself, he now used with her that ironic insulting manner which would end in angry shouts when he lost control.
When this happened Adrienne felt herself go rigid with anxiety. What, she asked herself, could be the reason for this suddenly revealed resentment? What was the cause of this latent hostility which seemed as if he were demanding expiation for some secret offence? What could it be that had made Uzdy change so much towards his mother when for so many years he had always taken her part against her daughter-in-law? Why did he now turn against and ill-treat the one person he had always seemed to love and revere?
And why did the old lady take it all without a murmur?
Countess Clémence, faced with this inexplicable change in her son, would reply to him, giving the shortest possible answers in a calm but ice-cold manner. As always her expression showed no emotion and was as stiff as ever; her face might have been made of marble and her eyes of glass. She did not look at her son, but at something far, far away in space … or perhaps in time?
There was no regular pattern, no continuity. Sometimes ten days or a fortnight would pass without incident, and then suddenly a stormy scene would interrupt their calm. In the middle of October one such scene disturbed Adrienne greatly.
They were sitting in the big oval drawing-room after lunch. Adrienne was doing some needlework and her mother-in-law sat, as she always did, stiffly upright on the sofa with a table in front of her. Uzdy was pacing about the room from the stove to the windows and back again. It was the same as any other day and, like any other day, no one spoke. The habitual silence was broken only by the sound of his footsteps on the wooden floor.
Adrienne did not look up from her work but she was still able to see that every time her husband passed in front of them he darted a piercing look at his mother. This went on for a long, long time, until Adrienne became convinced that something strange and terrible was about to happen. It was as if the air under that high coved ceiling might suddenly transform itself into a menacing cloud above their heads. If the old lady felt it too she gave no sign. Her face was in shadow and her high-piled hair was edged with silver from the light behind her.
When Uzdy returned from what seemed like the hundredth time he had paced the room he stopped behind his wife’s chair, grasping it with both hands which Adrienne could sense were trembling uncontrollably.
‘I should like to ask,’ he said to his mother, ‘why you are spying
‘I have no idea what you mean!’ she replied.
Uzdy laughed, with menace in his voice. ‘You? You have no idea? All right, I’ll tell you! For some time now I have seen dark figures skulking under my windows. They march to and fro, stopping, spying and sneaking away. Then they come back again … What about that?’
‘It must be the night watchman,’ said Countess Clémence icily. ‘As far as I am aware, that is what he is supposed to do.’
‘So that’s it, is it? The night watchman? Well! Well! Well!’ Uzdy leant forwards so that his chest brushed against Adrienne’s hair. ‘The night watchman, eh?’ Then, suddenly, he shouted, ‘It’s a lie, a lie, a lie!’
Countess Clémence did not answer, but just shrugged her shoulders. Then her son spoke again and this time his tone was more controlled. ‘I went out myself last night, just to be sure. I walked round the garden, and I saw … do you hear me? I saw! All right, you’ll say “the night watchman” … They were everywhere. Lots of them. Behind every tree … everywhere, whispering together. Of course they were hiding, but I saw them and I know!’