Miklós Vámos - The Book of Fathers

“In Pécel?”

“Or have you moved on?”

Henryk found it more and more difficult to own up. But he was spared this, as the woman unexpectedly gave a shriek:

“Oh no, what am I saying? You’re not Jóska Bíró at all, you’re the other one, his friend, who stayed just for the summer,… little Vilmos… Vilmos Csillag! What brings you to these parts?”

“You knew my dad? Vilmos Csillag was my dad…”

“Heaven preserve us!” The woman clapped her hand to her face, which bore many signs of having worked in the fields. “Of course… How could I have… it’s been so long! But it feels like it was yesterday.”

Art is rarely able to surpass life. It was sheer chance that I lay down on a grave in Somogyvár Cemetery that turned out to be the final resting place of Mihály Bíró. Who would believe that just then there appears old Mrs. Palóznaki, maiden name Ági Mandell, who was a childhood friend of Mihály Bíró’s son. It was with these Bírós that Papa stayed in the Fifties, because they offered country holidays to city children for payment, taking in as many as three or four at a time. Ági Mandell said Papa was the only one to come back year after year.

Absolutely incredible!

I asked her to describe what sort of a child Papa was. She said delicate. He was reclusive, not as loud-mouthed as the village kids. She also recalls that the color of his eyes changed all the time, depending on his mood: sometimes it was gray, at others green, or even light brown. I thought I could detect that Ági Mandell had a soft spot for Papa, but she denied it-she had fallen for Jóska Bíró (“head over heels,” as she put it).

I discovered that the Arrow Cross had taken Mihály Bíró because he was Jewish; he returned from one of the German Lagers and became a corn exchanger. Since their village did not have a mill of its own, the peasants would take the corn to Mihály Bíró, who would exchange it for flour using a complicated formula that factored in weight and quality; he would then take the corn to the nearest mill himself. That was how he made his living. Until serious illness (cancer) forced him to give up. After his death the children sold his house, which became the agricultural cooperative’s nursery. Now it stands empty. Jóska Bíró became a stonemason and to the best of Ági Mandell’s knowledge he moved to Pécel.

My grandfather was supposedly in the Ministry of the Interior as a “backroom boy” (Ági Mandell’s phrase). The minister was László Rajk, who was hanged. What happened to my grandfather she does not know. I wrote down her address and the phone number of the bakery where she works in the office, and I gave her my details too.

Henryk spent several weeks in the village, during which Ági Mandell invited him over for dinner more than once. Her roast pork was so succulent that Henryk had thirds, not just seconds. He was under the weather for days afterwards, but still considered that he had never in his life eaten anything so delicious.

The Somogyvámos estate had been sold to a distant kinsman of the Windisches, a Viennese business lady called Frau Rosa Windisch. She was approaching forty, but the turkey-like wattle under her chin made her seem much older. This not especially attractive part of her body she assiduously tried to conceal with chains of silver and gold and rows of pearls, which therefore constantly drew attention to it. Frau Rose Windisch spoke English with a dog-like bark and was never happy with anything. She strode up and down the half-ready building with eyebrows arched and head continually shaking: “I can’t believe this!” Her intonation was a tribute to the meticulousness of the Berlitz method.

“What is it now that she can’t believe?” Jeff asked Henryk, quietly.

“She’ll let you know, don’t worry.”

Frau Rosa Windisch wanted to establish a stud-farm here, with a Gasthof for Austrian and German visitors, the main attraction to be daily horse-riding. She thought that the quality represented by the HEJED Co. did not come up to Western standards. But it soon turned out that hers did not either: her taste was that of the petty bourgeois Austrian, and she would have much preferred brand-new garden gnomes to the nineteenth-century reliefs that Jeff and his team were restoring with such care.

The three of them could hardly wait to be rid of the testy lady, and could not be bothered to take her on for retaining 10 percent of the contractually agreed price on the grounds of alleged shortcomings in quality.

“Good riddance!” said Jeff.

They left the estate in Henryk’s Jeep. Stopping at the sign that marked the end of the village, they took great satisfaction jointly and severally in urinating on it.

Jeff and Doug took two weeks off and went on vacation to Malta. Henryk went into the office quite often-it now consisted of three interconnected rooms on the Bem Quay, by the Danube -and chatted with the office girls and the bookkeeper. Having no work, he realized how lonely he was. He tinkered with the “Papa et cetera” file. He gathered what information he had into a family tree on the computer, printed it out on the all-in-one used for photocopying the blueprints of the HEJED Co., and pinned it up on the wall of his flat.

I’ll add to it, as and when I have something to add, he thought.

He often thought of Ann and even more often of Bond, James Bond. These were two rare examples of names that he remembered even in his dreams, perhaps because they often featured in them. He had to remind himself how lukewarm his feelings for Ann had become by the end. But Bond, James Bond, he loved unreservedly (the last person he embraced with the keenness he felt for this sheep-sized dog had been his mother). Bond, James Bond, generously tolerated this and would sometimes lick Henryk’s face, his tongue rough, warm, and wet.

Maybe I should get myself a dog… a big one.

In the absence of his two friends, however, he decided that what he needed was a two-legged friend. Though he was quite certain he was not interested in men, in his heart of hearts he was not quite so certain that he was interested in women. However intimate he came to be with Ann, they had never come close to that melting into one another he had read about in novels. He hadn’t ever, so far, felt anything like that. Which was to say that he had never been in love. That, or the novelists were pulling a fast one.

His evenings would generally begin in restaurants and end in nightclubs, mostly in the ZanziBar, frequented by a lot of English-speakers, chiefly Brits, on account of the wide selection of beers on offer. Henryk never got drunk, but a couple of pints of Guinness loosened his limbs sufficiently for the stroll to his house, which was nearby. Dog-walkers often walked past, and Henryk would eye up the dogs no less than the women. The dogs would generally amble over to him, pressing and sniffing, their tails windscreen-wiping furiously, while he was always happy to hunker down and stroke their backs. He would inquire after the dog’s name, age, breed, if the owner or walker was not in a hurry. His sieve-like memory instantly lost this information, so he would put the same questions to the same owner the next time they met. The bigger the dog, the more Henryk liked it. Not far away there lived a Great Dane that always made him melt inside. And he greeted the four black Labradors with the same joy every time; he already knew they were mother and three pups, the latter seven-month-old males who had already caught up with their mother in size.

“What are they called?”

“They’re still called Milady, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis,” said the brunette holding the four leads not in her hand but wound around her neck.