Miklós Vámos: The Book of Fathers

He had an amazing eye for faces and detail, and he never needed a model: it was enough for him to set eyes on someone once to paint their portrait from memory. His wife, Katalin, was so beautiful that her fame spread to the neighboring lands, and though she frequently sat for her husband, she was no leading filly in the matrimonial fidelity stakes. Boldizsár once caught her in flagrante with an officer quartered in the town, but calmly closed the door on them with an unruffled “Do enjoy yourselves!” The couple were at a loss as to what to do, and when they had recovered somewhat, decided to do as they had been bidden. In the morning Boldizsár had a generous breakfast sent to their room and then invited the officer to the baths. There, he covered him, from top to toe, in green paint. News of this spread like wildfire. As the officer was quite unable to scrub off the layer of green, he lay low in his quarters as long as he could. In the end he had to send for Boldizsár and humbly ask him how to remove the paint, as he could hardly spend the rest of his life as a laughingstock. Boldizsár replied: “My dear sir, you have covered me in shame that can never be washed away; it is right that you should share my fate!”

“Last time he painted the woman as well!” said Kornél.

“Pardon?”

“Grandpa, you didn’t tell it like this last time… and the painter did not say they should enjoy themselves!”

“What did he say, then?”

“He said,” Kornél tried to lower his voice to a grandfatherly tone, “may you take pleasure in each other!”

Grandpa Czuczor scratched the back of his head. “Maybe I did, maybe I did…” This was not the first time his grandson had surprised him with the keenness of his mind. Only the other day the boy had been asking about numbers and remembered them up to a hundred on hearing them just the once, even drawing their shapes on the surface of his wax tablet. “You take after your great-great-grandfather!”

“Yes, like him I never forget something I’ve once seen.”

“Indeed?” Grandpa Czuczor covered the boy’s eyes with the palm of his left hand and asked him: “Then tell me what you saw today on my tabletop!”

Kornél began to list the items on the Regal, as his grandfather called the tabletop, clearly and faultlessly, as though ticking them off in his head, in a voice as clear as a bell: “Two composing sticks, four balls of twine, one Handdruck , one cutting machine, two paper planes, two awls, 30 meters of metal composing rule, two dozen spacers, three rack-cases for letters and spacing materials, seven books, hundreds of printed sheets, one pair of spectacles, two magnifying glasses, two round paper pill-boxes with your medicines in them, which you haven’t yet taken today, the canvas-covered folio by the inkstand, four quills… and one fly!” He fell silent.

“How come you know what a composing stick is, or a composing rule, or a Handdruck?”

“I’ve heard the words… and anyway you, dear Grandpa, have written them down in the folio!”

It took Grandpa Czuczor a moment or two to recall that he had indeed made a list of his printing equipment before packing up in Thüningen. “Does that mean… that you can read?”

“Indeed I can!” said Kornél and, picking up one of the printed sheets, he began slowly but surely to articulate the words, with complete accuracy. Grandpa Czuczor put on his spectacles and followed as Kornél read the rather special text:

BY HIS SERENE HIGHNESS PRINCE FERENC RAKOCZI OF FELSÖ-VADASZ: On the unimaginable sufferings of our Nation and beloved Homeland under the tyrannical rule of the German Nation, and on the unworthy pains endured by his serene person.

A PUBLIC MANIFESTO, to be placed before the entire Christian world, concerning the innocent nature of the arms acquired by the Hungarians to liberate themselves from the oppression of the House of Austria. First published in the Latin tongue and now again in the Magyar language.

Grandpa Czuczor had picked up a tattered copy of the Prince’s manifesto in a beerhall in Thüningen, from some visiting Hungarians. He meant to reprint it himself at some point.

Suddenly he shook his head. Lord Almighty, this little lad is not yet four years of age and can read fluently! “Was it one of your friends that taught you to read?”

“No.”

“Well, who then?”

“No one… I just worked it out for myself.”

“No fibbing!”

“I’m not fibbing… I just kept looking at the pages until I could make out the different letters. Why do they put an f sometimes where there should be an s?”

“Only when there’s an ess-zet ligature, for sz.”

“I see. But what about Auftria?”

“Well, that should also be with sz in Hungarian… they’ve left out the z…” Grandpa Czuczor was almost lost for words; he had read this Declaration many times yet had never noticed this misprint. Kornél could make an outstanding proofreader. He called out to his daughter: “Ho, come quickly Zsuzsánna, see what this little pipsqueak can do!”

Kornél started to read out the document again: “BY HIS SERENE HIGHNESS PRINCE FERENC RAKOCZI OF FELSÖ-VADASZ… Grandpa why is there no accent on the A and the O?”

“What accent?” asked Zsuzsánna, leaning closer.

“It’s not usual on a majuscule, perhaps on an A or an O ,” said Grandpa Czuczor.

“What does ‘major school’ mean?” asked Zsuzsánna.

“Capital letter,” said Grandpa Czuczor sternly. This much she might have been expected to pick up over all these years. Despite all her father’s efforts, Zsuzsánna had never learned to read or write. Fortunately, it was not Zsuzsánna’s brains that little Kornél had inherited.

My grandson Kornél read out what I have written here and I forbore to reprove him, so wonderful was it that he had learned to read. In general he is very skillful with words. Perhaps he may become a man of the cloth or a university professor? Were times not so hard I should gladly take him to the college at Enyed or Nagyszombat, to see what the professors there made of him. But it is dangerous even to leave the village, let alone travel any distance. They say that only a day’s walk away the Kurucz and the Labancz are preparing to do battle. Whichever takes flight will likely pass this way. And a defeated army knows no mercy.

It was suddenly light in the middle of the night. Grandpa Czuczor leaped out of bed and ran into the garden, looking round to see if the neighbors were also awake and, still half asleep, forgetting that the neighboring houses were deserted. Down in the valley there were fires, lighting up the land in red almost as far as Varasd.

Zsuzsánna also came running out, the little boy whimpering on her shoulder and a satchel on her arm, ready with food, a change of underclothing, candles, and other necessities she had fortunately packed some days before. “Come on, Father!” she shouted. Grandpa Czuczor dashed back into the house, pulled on his kneeboots, snatched up his cape and hat, swept up his own satchel and the folio, and took a long last look at the house and his precious possessions. Will I ever see them intact again? He ran out onto the road that wound its way up Black Mountain.

The villagers were all heading that way-in times of danger it was sensible to hide in the Old Cavern. This lay deep in the cliffs above Bull Meadow and its mouth could be blocked by a triangular boulder in such a way that no one who did not know his way around would ever guess what lay behind it. The Cavern, its floor the shape of a flattened pear, had been in use since prehistoric times. It was with this dark hollow that mothers in Kos would threaten their unruly children: “If you don’t behave, I’ll shut you up in the Old Cavern!”

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