The Tightening String by Ann Bridge

Author:Ann Bridge
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Chapter 9

This peculiar region lies to the east of the Tisza, the Danube’s big northern tributary – an immense, open, treeless plain, geometrically flat, unfenced and uncultivated; the saltpetre in the soil prevents the growth of any crop save grass, on which tens of thousands of horses, sheep, cattle and pigs grazed in huge flocks. There were no houses or villages save round the periphery; the whole vast area, some fifty miles long by thirty wide, was empty save for the livestock and the men who tended them, and criss-crossed in every direction by rough earthen tracks used by the animals. It was studded all over by shallow blue lakes to which, in autumn, ducks and geese came flighting in; but it was so featureless, land and water so mixed up, that those who came to shoot always had to take a guide to lead them to any given mere.

In the heart of this strange place stood the czarda, or inn, on which the shepherds, swineherds, cowherds and horse-masters, the Czikös, who lived too far from the outlying villages to ride to them, relied entirely for supplies; they both ate there, and bought their food and tobacco. This was the czarda’s raison d’être, but there were a few bedrooms for the odd sportsman who came after duck and geese. It was a long white one-storey building, in front of which, on that Friday evening, the Eynshams’ car drew up. There was no sign of Hugo and Endre, who were to have gone on ahead to arrange everything; but David had been coming there since boyhood, and was greeted warmly by the landlord, who showed them their clean simple rooms. Five minutes later the other two hurried in. ‘We had a deffetct!’ (This was the invariable Hungarian phrase for a puncture, or any sort of breakdown.) All agreed that it was too late to go out after duck that night; it wasn’t, but they were thinking of David Eynsham’s fatigue after the long drive from Budapest. However they strolled about in the low evening sunshine, admiring some splendid grey bulls with horns a yard across, penned in wooden enclosures – there was to be a sale next day. Rosina wandered off by herself to a small pond behind the inn, in which a purple heron was wading; in the half-bare willow-boughs which overhung it some extremely ugly birds, a sort of buff egret, were already going to roost; occasionally one plunged like a kingfisher into the water, and came up with a fish in its powerful beak.

When she returned to the czarda the others were already having drinks in the garden, where a few late flowers still bloomed under clipped trees; dung from the cattle-pens had made some degree of cultivation possible here. A she-ass and its colt were wandering between the tables, pushing their grey heads and soft moist muzzles over the shoulders of the guests, trying to reach the salted apricot-kernels which were served with the local vermouth. ‘What

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