They Were Divided by Miklós Bánffy Page A

doesn’t like to keep them up late. I’ll give you a candle to get back to your room.’ They turned and crossed the entrance hall, and as they did so they could see the lights on the floor above going out, one after the other, until finally one solitary glimmer could be seen moving slowly along until it too disappeared behind an arch and was seen no more.
    Soon the two young men were seated facing each other at the table in Balint’s circular ground-floor room in the castle’s north-west tower. A small reading lamp cast a glow between them, but the rest of the room was in darkness.
    Kadacsay hesitated for a moment before starting to speak. Looking now more than ever like a raven with his beak tilted slightly to one side, he seemed to be looking hard at the armrest ofhis chair as if he would get inspiration from it. Then, speaking slowly with long pauses between each phrase as if to underline that he was choosing his words with extra care, he said, ‘I have just made my will … Yes, my will. It seemed the r-r-right thing to do … now … and that is why I came to see you, to ask … to ask you to agr-r-ree to be my executor-r-r …’
    Balint found this sinister and upsetting. The fate of his own father flashed through his mind, for Count Tamas Abady had developed cancer when he was hardly older than Gazsi was today, and had died within a few months. Had this happened to his friend? Was this why he had seemed so sad and preoccupied? So, trying to hide his concern, he interrupted Gazsi, saying, ‘You’re not ill, Gazsi? If anything is worrying you I hope you’ve seen a doctor?’
    ‘No, no! I’m all r-r-right … as good as ever-r-r, I just thought it seemed sensible to … to be pr-r-repared, to be r-r-ready … just in case … in plenty of time …’
    Then he went on to tell Balint exactly how all his affairs stood and that he had settled everything with his sister when he had been over to see her a few days before. He explained all about what his property brought in, with detailed facts and figures, and told Balint that he had settled all those small debts he had incurred when still in the hussars so that all that now remained was the disposal of his family inheritance.
    ‘For Heaven’s sake, what makes you think of death when you’re still so young and healthy?’ broke in Balint again, now somewhat irritated by such gloomy thoughts when he himself felt so happy.
    ‘Does everything have to have a reason?’ asked the other, and smiled quizzically. ‘Perhaps one day my darling Honeydew will go a little cr-r-razy again, throw me and then r-r-roll all over me? Who knows, she killed a jockey like that once! R-r-rather a suitable durned up at Denestornya, the Coeath for me, don’t you think? After all, everyone knows I only know about horses. Anyhow, why be frightened of death? Didn’t Schopenhauer say something about it being only our will to live which makes us scared of death and that it was a purely animal reaction? Or perhaps I’ve got it wr-r-rong …?’ and he waved his hand in a gesture of mock dejection before laughing briefly. Then, far more seriously, he went on to tell Balint that he had decided to leave everything he could to his sister’s two sons on one condition . That was that each of them, before he came into his inheritance , must spend at least two years at some university abroad,in England or in France, and that it would be Balint’s responsibility to choose where. If they didn’t agree they were to get nothing. ‘I’m determined,’ he said, ‘that they shan’t turn out to be useless fools like me!’
    Touched by what he was hearing, Balint listened hard to everything that Gazsi had to say; and all the time he was thinking how tormented his old friend must have been, and how for years he must have lived with this inner turmoil and so now was doing the only thing he could to provide for his nephews what he had yearned for in vain for himself. Later he would remember one or two