Free They Were Counted by Miklós Bánffy

Countess Ida chose this narrow boudoir to receive her guests because from there she could remain in close contact with the running of the house. Every so often the door beside her would be slightly opened and one of the maids or other servants would put their head in, whisper something in the countess’s ear and disappear discreetly as soon as they had received her equally discreet and softly-spoken order. The ladies’ conversation would then go on as if there had been no interruption.
    Countess Ida always received on her saint’s day and for her it was always the most difficult day in the entire year. Invited or not there were masses of callers in the afternoon, and in the evening there was always a large dinner followed by a dance. Rooms had to be chosen and prepared for the guests who stayed overnight , the great reception rooms prepared and polished, the reputation of the famous Siklod cooking had to be maintained and every detail, including the baking, needed her personal attention. Something always went wrong if she didn’t see to it herself. On her last saint’s day she had nearly died of shame when it was discovered that salt had found its way into the iced puddings; and the year before, at the very last moment, a most peculiar smell had been identified as coming from the potted veal tongues, and a carriage had had to be sent post-haste to Vasarhely to find some more, Alice Laczok, her sister-in-law who should have helped her, was so vague that she needed more supervision than the servants . In recent years her daughters had begun to be useful, running errands, checking the larder and the cold store, but today they had gone to those idiotic races, disappearing at midday and not returning until it was almost dark. They had left their mother to see to everything herself. And so she had, until the guests started arriving and she found herself nailed to the sofa and making polite conversation while her whole mind was on the thousand details of the preparations for the evening. She could hardly wait to get rid of all those who had dropped in, knowing that there was little time left before she would have to go and dress.
    Not that any of the ladies would have guessed that they did not have her full attention. With a sweet smile on her still beautiful if rather full face, she would turn from one to another with every sign of sympathetic interest, ‘Yes, indeed, my dear. How well you put it, I do agree!’ And all the while she was thinking: Did they put the champagne on ice? Have they let the cream curdle ? Did someone remember to shut up the ice pit? Was there enough beef for the guests’ coachmen’s dinner? Was Alice actually checking all these things or not? Despite the fact that her husband ’s sister was so unreliable she had been forced to entrust it all to her; and until the girls got back there was nothing else she could do. But though reconciled to the inevitable, she still worried.
    It was a mercy that Aunt Lizinka was there and that she never drew breath. In her high, piping, and surprisingly penetrating voice, she held all the country ladies spellbound with her version of the latest scandals. No one ever interrupted her: neither the mothers of marriageable daughters who feared her evil tongue and what she might say if she were offended, nor the country ladies who had come to pay their respects, for they knew that however frail and ancient she might seem she was still a power to be reckoned with in Maros-Torda. Only two years before she had used this power, to the whole province’s rage, to ensure the election to Parliament of its first peasant member, the demagogue Makkai, simply because she had been angered by the choice of a candidate she did not approve. People said that even Makkai’s election speeches had been dictated by Aunt Lizinka.
    Her latest tirade concerned her old enemy, Miklos Absolon, who, although he hardly ever left his estates in the northern part of the province, still wielded great