His slanting almond-shaped eyes glinted with private amusement he sat down at the table. ‘You don’t mind if I join you?’ he asked‚ the polite words barely masking the mockery of his tone. The serenaders were extremely put out, for they had chosen that evening only because they knew that Uzdy was away. Now he had turned up and spoilt everything.
‘So? A serenade? It is a serenade‚ is it not? For Adrienne‚ of course! Very good! Very good! You are quite right! I am most flattered that you should honour our house in this way. I am only sorry I disturbed you, but I must say in my defence that I knew nothing about it. You will forgive me, I’m sure,’ went on Uzdy without giving the others any chance to reply‚ ‘… but go on! Please go on‚ and, as long as you don’t object, I’ll just sit here and listen. It’s a great joy to me to hear such beautiful music. I never get the chance at home.’
This was more than Uncle Ambrus could bear. Angrily he burst out‚ ‘Only an idiot would serenade a lady when her husband’s at home! Perhaps you’d like us to come and play to you when …’ Ambrus broke off when he saw that Uzdy was looking at him with a strange gleam in his eyes.
‘When …?’ he enquired icily‚ raising his long neck from the fur collar.
‘Well … when you’re asleep‚ or, or… when …’ stammered Ambrus. ‘Anyhow‚ it isn’t the custom!’ Then, to bring the evening to an end as quickly as possible, he turned to the musicians and shouted, ‘Well, you dolts, get on with it! Play Master Alvinczy’s song, are you daft?’ Turning once more to Uzdy in explanation he said, ‘It’s Adam’s turn. That’s what the boys agreed.’
Again song followed song, but more swiftly now as if the gypsies wanted to get it all over with and run.
Though the music continued the festive mood round the table had been extinguished. While Adam Alvinczy stood near the band-leader‚ all the rest remained seated, Ambrus still nearest to the veranda, Uzdy at the upper end of the table, Kadacsay and Pityu on the courtyard side and, at the other end of the table, rather apart from the others near to the wooden gates at the end of Adrienne’s wing which led to the garden and the Szamos river that flowed beyond it, sat Laszlo Gyeroffy. While it was obvious that Uzdy’s arrival had spoilt the evening for the others, Laszlo seemed quite indifferent. He sat very straight, staring into the night, drinking tumbler after tumbler of champagne, laced with brandy. He sat so still he might have been a robot.
Alvinczy told the gypsies to play ‘A hundred candles …’
Up to this moment Uzdy too had sat quite motionless in his chair‚ his long narrow eyes fixed on the glimmer of light that showed from behind the shutters of Adrienne’s room. His lips were drawn back, showing his broad teeth as if he were about to bite. Now‚ however‚ he straightened himself up and his hand disappeared into the folds of his coat. When the band came to a climax with the words ‘a hundred pints of wine’, his arm suddenly shot forward and, at the fortissimo of ‘wi-i-ine’, fired his Browning directly at the gate-post leading to the Szamos, not twenty yards away.
It was lucky that the gypsies, intent on their playing, did not hear the noise of the shot; but all those seated round the table did, as well as the bullet’s impact on the gate-post. They all jumped in their seats, Ambrus belching out ‘God damn it!’ as he snatched his head sideways.
Uzdy burst out in a roar of laughter.
Only Gyeroffy remained unmoved‚ even though the bullet had whistled straight past his nose. Without appearing to notice what had happened, Laszlo continued to look dispassionately in front of him as he raised his glass once more to his lips.
This unexpected calm seemed to impress even Uzdy.
‘Your nerves are good,’ he called to Laszlo.
‘My nerves?’ said Laszlo, his voice seeming to come from a great distance. ‘Why?’
‘This is why!’ cried Uzdy, and fired two more shots in quick succession past Laszlo’s head, but the latter merely reached for his glass and drank down his wine as calmly as before.
This brought the serenade to an abrupt end. The gentlemen, all of them now in a chastened mood but delighted to get away‚ hurried back to town grumbling among themselves about what a strange, unpredictable fellow that Uzdy was. The only exception was Gyeroffy.
He walked now with a proud air, his previous diffidence completely gone, his head held high, his tall hat at the back of his head and, below those eyebrows that met so menacingly across his face, his aquiline nose was lifted in proud disdain. Laszlo’s lower lip stuck out, giving his whole face an air of arrogance. ‘Don’t stumble about like that,’ he said to Pityu Kendy when they were about fifty yards from the villa. ‘You’re in my way!’
The others whispered among themselves because they realized that he was extremely drunk.
And drunk he was, so drunk that he no longer remembered all the humiliations that he had suffered before returning to Transylvania the previous spring. Then, when he had been sober he had never been free of a nagging sense of self-accusation, never free from the knowledge that the cousin with whom he had been so in love, Klara Kollonich, had married someone else because he, Laszlo, had shown himself to be too weak of character to deserve her; never free either of the disgrace of being forced to resign from all his clubs in the capital because he could not pay his gambling debts. When sober he could never escape a nagging sense of being inferior to others. He had convinced himself that he was worthless and that he wore on his forehead a visible brand that advertised this worthlessness to everyone he met, even if they were kind to him and pretended not to see it. And if anyone showed signs of being friendly, he took it for pity.
At the moment when he had had such terrible losses at the gaming table, he would have been able to settle if he had not thought it more important to repay his mistress the money she had paid out for him on a similar occasion some months before. He had felt himself more dishonoured by being indebted to a woman, even though no one else knew of it, than by the public scandal which had put an end to his being accepted in the high society of the capital. And at the time he had felt that there was something noble and uplifting, cruel but at the same time triumphant, in choosing social death over private dishonour.
It was not long before the exaltation, the sense of the spiritual strength which had then given him such support, began to wither and die. Soon the recollection of his folly and weakness came back more and more strongly, to the point that he could only banish these gnawing regrets by getting drunk. And when he was drunk he went at once to the opposite extreme. Then he would become arrogant and scornful, letting everyone see that he thought himself infinitely superior to them. At these times he would believe himself to be a great artist, which indeed he could have been if he had not squandered his time and neglected his talent. But of this he never spoke. Even when drunk he would tell himself that they would never understand; and so confined his boasting to telling tales about his social success in grand society as if that were the only thing that would impress ‘those country bumpkins’.
His drinking companions noticed at once what was happening and so, as soon as Laszlo began to hold his head high and look haughtily down his nose at them, they would start quite consciously to tease him, which is, and always has been, the favourite pastime of the men of Transylvania.
Today‚ it was Baron Gazsi who went up to him and said, apparently quite seriously‚ ‘You did very well to tell off Pityu. He needs a lesson in good manners!’ And Pityu took him up by saying‚ ‘Indeed I’m most grateful for your telling me how to behave. You, who have always moved in the most exalted circles!’ Whereupon Adam Alvinczy said, extremely solemnly, ‘We should all follow your commands, naturally!’ and his brother Akos chimed his agreement.