‘Here’s some water,’ cried Adrienne. ‘Put some on his forehead!’ but Maier merely said, ‘Not now. When we get the Master to his room!’
As they carried him out Uzdy’s arms and legs hung down like a broken puppet. Adrienne now saw that his temple was covered in blood.
‘What’s happened? For God’s sake tell me what’s happened?’ she cried, turning to her mother-in-law.
The old woman had remained motionless with closed eyes until Adrienne spoke. Then she slowly opened them, wider and wider as if she were seeing some terrible vision. Then she put back her shoulders and walked stiffly out of the room, closing the door behind her with determined quietness.
It was only later that Maier told her what had happened. He had been cleaning the silver when Count Uzdy came back into the house, on tiptoe, with that oak-log in his hand. Maier had immediately sensed trouble and had tried to intercept his master, but Uzdy had been too quick for him. Countess Clémence had been in the drawing-room waiting for the doctor to make his report to her and sitting at her usual place on the sofa. Her son had rushed at his mother, raising high the oak-log to strike her. Luckily the table had been between them and so Maier had been able to grab his master, catching his wrist in that vice-like grasp taught to male nurses, and tripped him so that he fell to the floor. Maier had learned the technique while working in the lunatic asylum at Graz where he had also been taught that it was almost impossible to subdue a violent patient in the grip of madness and that it was far better not to try to wrestle with them but rather to pin them down when dazed by a fall. All went as he had planned except that Uzdy had hit his head on the heavy wooden back of an armchair, split his temple open and passed out from the resulting concussion. Maier at once thought it best not to attempt to bring him round where he was but to get him quickly back to his own room. If he came to in different surroundings the memory of what had happened would probably fade all the more quickly. Now, as Maier told all this to Adrienne, her husband was lying quietly in his own bed with a cold compress on his temple. He was not likely to want to move for the time being; but later it would be different. Count Uzdy would have to be under constant surveillance.
That afternoon Absolon arrived at Almasko and Adrienne at once told him the whole story. Then they held a family council and agreed that someone must always be by the sick man’s bedside. Only four people could be relied upon to undertake this vigil, Adrienne, Absolon, Maier and the English nanny. His mother must be kept away from him, for when Maier had told him that Countess Clémence had been enquiring after her son, Uzdy had clenched his fists and such hatred glinted in his look that Maier had had quickly to change the subject. No doubt the sight of his mother would provoke another fit of rage.
Although Countess Clémence had sat with Adrienne and her brother while they discussed what course to take, the decisions were taken by them alone. The old lady sat there without even opening her mouth. Her face seemed as if turned to stone and they were not sure she even heard what they said. Then they decided to send for Dr Kisch and let him advise them what to do next.
Then followed three dreadful days.
Dr Kisch had arrived but he did not visit the sick man so as not to excite him. He said that he would see him soon enough when the time came to take him away; for, after hearing all the details, Kisch had realized that Uzdy would have to be closely confined. It had been immediately obvious to him that Uzdy was too far gone to be left alone in the freedom of his own home: it was too dangerous for him, and for everyone else.
On the fourth day Adrienne was on duty. It was the hour of dawn, but it was still dark. A small night-light flickered on the window sill and Uzdy, propped up on several pillows, was apparently asleep. His wife was sitting in a chair at the foot of the bed, and not a sound was to be heard, except for the ticking of the clock.
The hours crept slowly by, terribly slowly, because she was haunted by the thought that at eight o’clock that morning Dr Kisch would come to Uzdy’s room to take him away. The Red Cross ambulance wagon had been there since the previous day, hidden in the stable court. Two nurses had come with it, and they were going to take the patient to the clinic for nervous diseases in Kolozsvar — which was always referred to as ‘The House with the Green Roof’ — and there he would be kept in close confinement.
For Adrienne it was the end of everything for which she had yearned, waited, and struggled for so many years. It was the end of her dream of freedom, just when it had seemed so very close. It was the end of any chance of happiness, of anything which for her would make life worth living. It was the end of that dream for which Balint had given up his home and it tolled the death-knell of any chance of a free honest life, of having another child, and especially of that longed-for, oh, so-often-imagined boy who had never been born and who never now would be born! She felt as if, when in half an hour they would take her husband away as hopelessly mad, her love for Balint would die or at least be subtly transformed into unending frustrated pain. Now she would have to remain in that hateful house for ever, chained to an absent husband she had always loathed, living in hell with an estranged daughter and a half-crazed mother-in-law.
She had thought of nothing else during the past few days, but it had never assailed her with such force as it did that morning just as she was waiting for the final stroke of fate which would throw her life into havoc. Right up until this last minute she had felt that there might be some hope, that something, anything, would happen … some miracle that would cure him. She had been like a drowning man clutching at imaginary straws.
So she sat there, her head hanging low and her face covered by her hands. She could feel the pulse throbbing in her throat, and she looked back dismally at the seemingly endless sorrows of her life. She had been really happy only once, during those four short weeks she had spent with Balint in Venice; and even then, though dazed by the happiness of passing her nights in his arms, she had been menaced by the thought of that self-destruction she had thought to be a price worth paying for the fulfilment of their love. Now she thought she should have killed herself then. At least she would have been saved this present suffering.
Tears rose in her eyes and suddenly she was racked with sobs. No matter how hard she tried she could not control them. Leaning forward as if mourning the dead she cried … and cried … and cried … her tears falling through her fingers onto her blouse and into her lap.
Then a voice said, ‘Are you crying, Adrienne?’
Uzdy was looking up at her from his pillows. She had no idea how long he had been awake. Now he was staring at her with surprise in those strange slanting eyes. She looked back at him, unable to reply. His expression was amazingly peaceful. She had never seen him look like that before.
Uzdy did not move his head, and his long hair lay on the pillow like a dark wedge reaching up on each side of his face in strange peaks, his eyebrows and sharply pointed beard making him more than ever like everyone’s idea of Mephistopheles. Only now there was nothing satanic about him and on his lips was a slight, apologetic smile.
‘Why do you cry?’ he asked gently. ‘Surely not for me? Why should you cry for me?’ He spoke slowly as if he were really only talking to himself. ‘I know you were never happy with me,’ he went on, ‘so why should you cry for me now?’