Miklós Vámos - The Book of Fathers

“Yes. Yet that is how it is.”

“And your honor also learned the arias in the same…?”

Sternovszky nodded.

“Terrifying,” said the maestro.

“Were others able to avail themselves of this… technique, our craft would become quite pointless,” mused the dean.

Sternovszky’s face broke into a smile. He suddenly launched into a song. His voice was mellow and powerful, though able to reach a higher register than could most men. The words of the Italian lyrics seemed unclear in places and some he certainly elided, but neither the dean nor the maestro noticed, so powerfully did they fall under the music’s spell. As he came to the end they both burst into spontaneous applause.

“Whence comes this aria?” asked the maestro.

“Also from my grandfather Péter Csillag.”

“Yes, but who is the composer? Monteverdi?”

“I do not know. My dear grandfather was unsure.”

“Let us have a look at the music.”

“I have told you: there is no music.”

“But then where are the words from?”

“Have you not been listening? I just remember what my grandfather knew; that is how it is with me!” he said, impatiently slamming down the lid of the virginals.

The two musicians voiced no further doubts. The maestro asked if his honor would be willing to perform at the ball to be held in Count Forgách’s castle, and what he would like to perform to the accompaniment of the orchestra. Bálint Sternovszky accepted the invitation. Though showing no interest in the fee, he remarked that he had never in his life performed with an orchestra. The maestro deemed nonetheless that two days’ rehearsal would suffice.

They thought Sternovszky would try to prevail upon them to stay the night, but as he made no remark to this effect, they packed their things. As they were saying their farewells, the dean asked Sternovszky: “With such a voice you could have gone to the top of the profession. Why have you not tried?”

“I am not even sure that it is right for me to sing before an audience, especially for money… My kinsmen will curse me left, right, and center. My father, God rest his soul, might have disowned me.”

“Then it is fortunate indeed that he…” The maestro fortunately bit his tongue before reaching the end of his wayward train of thought.

“Our grateful thanks for your hospitality,” said the dean. “God bless you.”

As darkness fell Bálint Sternovszky watched through the window slits while the two men set off uncertainly along the forest track. They are afraid, he thought. Even in daylight this part of the world is none too friendly, never mind at night. Wolves howl by the reed beds; but as long as there is such a rich supply of pheasant, quail, and hare, they will not hunger for man flesh. Even the hen coops in the servants’ houses behind the turret were in no danger.

When Bálint Sternovszky had first come to these parts not every trace of the old village had been carried away by winds and thieves. The ruins of the houses had sometimes been covered by mounds of blackish dust. The area was largely in thrall to the young trees that had sprung up, forming a new forest. Where once the church had stood there were now reed beds, as if it were the shore of a lake. High above the rock face the peak loomed lonely, the color of rust, and rivulets of rainwater by the hundred bubbled down through the rocks, sweeping everything into the valley. The tiny traces of the life lived here by the people of old had crumbled away; there was, in any case, no one here to pick them up as souvenirs.

In the clearing alongside the rocky cliffs where he wanted to build his home, the brushwood and the undergrowth had first to be cleared away. Somewhere in the middle, mouth downwards, embedded in the soil, lay a copper mortar with a hole in it. Bálint Sternovszky had it cleaned and polished, and had treasured it ever since.

It took two years to build the turret, to his own design, in that clearing. “This is where it has to be!”

No one was clear why he wanted it built in just this spot or why he wanted this kind of structure as his home. The cost of the works regularly exceeded the budget. Bálint Sternovszky was unconcerned. “What has to be done, must be done.”

The family despaired when it learned that he had bought himself property many hours’ ride away from Felvincz, and that it consisted of two wholly ruined villages complete with the woods and meadows they shared. Nor could they find any explanation for where he had found the money for this purchase and for the building works. Income from the glassworks had declined steeply since Kornél Sternovszky had given back his soul to his Creator. His son Bálint was less successful as a businessman and devoted to it little of his time or energy. He was never very happy to be working; he preferred to sleep or to lie around dreaming of castles in Spain or Transylvania. However, he would have neglected the glassworks even if he had been of a more industrious nature. He hated the glassworks. In the absence of close supervision the master glassmakers who followed one another in rapid succession had little of his interest at heart and rather more of their own. The matriarch Janka summoned the family council with increasing frequency, but to no avail: neither carrot nor stick had any effect on Bálint Sternovszky.

His two younger brothers shrugged helplessly: they had no say in the running of the glassworks.

When the debts were such that they made the production and sale of the glass products no longer viable, Bálint Sternovszky received with equanimity the news that the glassworks would soon come under the hammer. “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away,” he said quietly.

Borbála was pregnant with their third son (whom the Lord would later be pleased to call to Him while he was still at the breast) and held her swollen stomach before him: “Do you not see that we shall be thrown out of our own house? Where will I go with my two infants? Where will I give birth to this third one? Have you not thought of this?”

“I have. Be of good cheer. I have done everything that I could.”

More than this he was not prepared to say. Only when they had loaded what remained of their belongings onto the oxcarts and everyone had clambered up on top of them, was he willing to vouchsafe the following: “Take the road in the direction of Kos.”

“ Kos? Where on earth is Kos?”

“Westwards. Keep going west until I say the word.”

The caravan set off. For several months Bálint Sternovszky and his family had fallen off the edge of the world as far as his relatives, friends, and creditors were concerned.

He was born so small that the midwife did not think he would live to see the dawn of day.

Bálint Sternovszky came into the world at about nine of the clock in the evening. He did not cry, only after hot and cold baths did he give a little squeal. His head had turned blue from the strain of the birth but it was already covered in unusually thick coils of hair. By the next evening his skin color had become more normal and his face had assumed the dreamy look that it was to bear all his life.

From a very early age his talent for music amazed his parents and teachers. He had only to hear a tune once-just once-and he was able to repeat it, immediately, note for note, even weeks later. Whenever his father sat him on his knee, he hummed Kurucz songs in his ear, despite his wife’s oft-repeated warning: “You’ll get us into trouble one of these days!”

“Janka, don’t go on! Surely one is allowed to sing!”

Allowed and aloud: certainly, Bálint did not stop all day. When he was not singing he would be humming a tune, and when he wasn’t humming a tune he would be whistling like a blackbird.

One day when he was eight he woke up hardly able to breathe. The little air that was getting through his throat was producing a dreadful, harsh wheeze. The doctor in Felvincz diagnosed diphtheria and with a resigned shake of the head by the skinny little lad’s bed said: “There is nothing more that I can do.”