Miklós Vámos - The Book of Fathers

Graf Franz Neusiedler looked straight through him. Thanks to his mother, Annamária Lórántffy, he was fluent in the language but considered that when representing the Austrian emperor he could not stray from the official language.

It proved quite impossible to obey his command and beat some life into Otto Stern, though they even tried to do so literally. In the end they had to seek new orders from the Graf, who had both suspects taken to the prison cell of the county assembly, where they were manacled hand and foot and chained to the walls. Otto Stern was in a sitting position on the cold stone. Miksa Stern’s chains were close enough to Otto Stern’s to allow him to reach his head with the palm of his hand. He kept putting his fingers in his mouth and with the moisture thus gained he would stroke Otto Stern’s face, though the latter continued to show no sign of life. Miksa Stern sobbed and wondered what his elderly parents would say if they knew.

Golden honey from the comb rolled softly on some flat surface, the bees buzzed soothingly above him. Otto Stern, in swaddling clouts, watched as Nanna Eszter spread the honey with practiced movements. Now Otto Stern could see that the pale surface was the rolled-out pastry of the strudel and covered the entire table, like a tablecloth. After the honey there came the sprinkling of poppyseed, sultanas, and chopped walnuts, and finally a dusting of fine white sugar-this was the Sterns’ recipe for strudel.

Otto Stern was clear, however, that he was merely remembering this. In the background the stone flags of the prison cellar, black with damp, confirmed that this was the dream, not the other. The images of the past were followed by a token vouchsafing of the future: he could see how there was a flood, then a conflagration, and the foaming of much blood: difficult years lay ahead of us. He could see the birth of his son Szilárd. He could see in the light of many candles on a glittering wooden podium wildly gesticulating men saying their piece as the now-adult Szilárd quietly whispered the odd word to them…

His pain increased and again he fell into the well of the unconscious.

When he next came to himself, night had fallen, and he was very cold. Someone nearby was snoring with something more like a croak (on the basis of his family history, his guess was that it was a dog). He could feel that the timepiece was missing from his pocket, the egg-shaped watch, his most treasured possession! He tried to reach for his pocket insofar as the irons permitted and could feel that the chain, too, was gone-someone had torn it off. The henchmen? Or that girl? What was her name? Fatimeh…

This loss pained him more than all the physical suffering. His teeth were chattering. Had he not been able to look ahead, he would have been quite unable to quell his baleful foreboding that this was undoubtedly the end. But he knew he would have a son, and that was possible only if he survived this filthy prison, this filthy business, this filthy time.

Graf Franz Neusiedler was still at the breakfast table when news was brought to him that one of the suspects had expired during the night.

“Pity. That means he will not be able to undergo interrogation.”

Some hours later he discovered from the sealed package brought to him by mounted courier that he had traveled so far from Vienna in vain. The Hegyhát where Nándor Wimpassinger (not Wimpassing) and Miska (not Miksa) Stern had secretly founded a citizen’s militia was another Hegyhát, at the far end of the country and no more than a day’s ride from the imperial capital. The councillor immediately issued instructions to Vienna to have the copyist who had committed the error dismissed from his post.

“What shall we do with Miksa Stern?” asked Ádám Geleji Katona, Jr.

“Is he a noble?”

“No. He is part of the local vintner fraternity.”

“The lash.”

“How many?”

“Five and twenty.”

“In public?”

“Please yourself.”

Graf Franz Neusiedler was the last person to leave the lower part of the village on four wheels, raising his feet onto the seat opposite, as the water in the carriage rose knee-high. There were no other outsiders there. A third of the houses, chiefly along the low-lying banks of the stream, were in danger of collapse. The cellars had turned into baths, the walls were wet through and on the point of disintegrating. The following day the waters rose again, drowned some domestic fowl, and all manner of objects were swept away by the swirling stream.

Along the stream it was possible to do little more than move what could be moved to higher ground. All the boats, rafts and other useful equipment that could be found or made proved inadequate. Those who lived higher up also thought it best to carry away their goods piecemeal; those who had carts of some sort used them; those who did not pushed or dragged trolley-like contraptions.

The flood had damaged twenty-three houses, of which fourteen collapsed. The embankment was breached. The water did not start to subside for another week. Those who had lost a great deal included the Sterns; though their homes fortunately did not fall, most of their goods were gone. In the confusion and chaos the death of Otto Stern passed with little notice; even his burial they did not get around to until a month later, and even then it did not go at all smoothly. His body had by then swollen considerably and a much larger than usual coffin had to be made.

The water table in the cemetery had risen so high that it was not possible to dig a grave; even a moderately deep burial pit immediately turned into a duck pond. The earthly remains of Otto Stern were laid to rest only by lining the sides of his burial chamber closely with rocks and using buckets, for hours before the burial, to empty it of the thin sludge that steadily seeped into it. When the gravediggers threw the earth on the coffin, the mourners feared that the clods of earth would float off at once, before their very eyes, as the water welled up again.

“We have done what we could,” mumbled Nanna Eszter, as she placed her own pebble on the mound. She kept thinking how this dear boy loved to swim. Her eyes burned, without tears, as she recalled how the six Vandals would swim across the Tisza, each urging the others on, like a pack of dogs let off the leash, with Otto Stern at their head, his muscular arms splashing and swirling in the river, his red hair blazing like the biblical burning bush.

THE FIRST BREATH OF DECAY BRUSHES THE FACE OF the land: autumn is here. Colors, fragrances, delectable tastes there remain aplenty, but the grain is now piled high in the barns, and the barrels are brimming with must. The bushes and trees sigh as they are relieved of their burdens. As soon as her treasures have been harvested, Mother Earth can afford to attend less to her outward appearance. The greens are mollified by yellows that pave the way for the russet browns to come. The dogs are now less tolerant of the feline cabals than hitherto. The latter flee from before them with hissing squeals and caterwaulings to the far end of the yard, the top of the fence, into the lofts or up chimney stacks.

“The good Lord surely did not make you with childbearing in mind, my dear,” said the midwife, perspiring profusely, to the delicately built young woman, when at last the throes of labor came to an end and the baby’s rather swollen and unusually bloody little body emerged.

“Safe and sound,” said the midwife.

The baby gave a little cry. Sparrow cheeps, thought the exhausted mother, barely able to keep her eyes open.

The child was christened Szulard. In the part of the country whence her mother hailed this was a favorite name for puppy dogs. With his bright eyes, a permanently furrowed, receding brow, and fragile-looking limbs, Szulard indeed resembled a retriever puppy in many ways. Even in adulthood his face recalled the muzzle of a well-fed dog. And for this reason he was rarely taken seriously. As he grew up there were few children more obedient and gentle than he; perhaps the only respect in which he stood out from his companions was that he never stopped talking. He spent his childhood in a village by the sea in the care of his grandmother.