Miklós Vámos - The Book of Fathers

As his sister sped away in tears, the person who was once called Mendel Berda-Stern hanged himself on the window catch. He used the rope that served as the belt of his habit. The catch being a little low, he was successful only at the second attempt. In his death throes his last words cursed the stars.

BY DAWN THE BARE BRANCHES ARE WREATHED IN HOAR frost. The surface of the puddles thickens as the frost bites deep into the soil. Even the watchdogs would fain curl up with the cattle or the horses for the night, seeking the warmth of their larger bodies’ exudations. Breath steams from mouths like pipe smoke. The birds wintering here at home are already ashiver, as are the four-legged beasts sleeping through the freezing months. Out in the country, life almost comes to a halt. In town, too, there is less activity, people shut themselves in. The city sentries, known popularly as bakters , patrol the city’s better streets with urgent steps at night, their lanterns repeatedly extinguished by the beard-tousling wind.

Sándor Csillag awaited the end of the 1800s with excitement verging on hysteria. He had lived to see as many years as he had white teeth, and all of them were intact. Only from his mother could he have inherited such a magnificent array of ivory teeth, for his father had had many problems with his teeth, especially in his later years. Of such matters Sándor Csillag had no direct knowledge; only from Hami had he heard stories of his parents, who had both died relatively young. In his wakeful dreams he saw their faces and figures with as much clarity as if he were looking at lifelike paintings in oils. Why had Father not had any pictures painted of themselves?

Hami was of the view that the boy she had been left to bring up required the strictest possible education, for he exhibited from his earliest years a wild and untrammeled nature. He was still in nappies when he set fire to the kennel of the dog Berta, by means of a lantern he managed to carry there. The shed and the woodpile also went up in flames. The dog, chained up, was saved from being burned alive only thanks to the neighbors. Hami never worked out how little Sigmund had managed to climb from the chair onto the table, whence he could reach and unhook the lantern. Aged six, he could not be left alone with girls of his age, since their undergarments were of intense interest to him.

Lower school he completed in three years; that was because in Homonna and the districts surrounding it, that was the number of years of primary school available. And Hami did not have the heart to send such a little lad away to board. She planned to do that in later years. But Sigmund again put a spoke in Hami’s wheel. Before she could be told of his very poor third-year results, which barred progression to the upper school, he left home in his school uniform. His foster mother had no news of him for two weeks, during which her hair fell out in clumps.

A postcard covered in laboriously articulated letters arrived some weeks later, in a red envelope, from the city of Miskolc. Sent by one Tihamér Vastagh, tapster and coffee merchant, it respectfully informed Madame Hanna Berda-Stern that the young man Sándor Csillag had sought and entered his employ as an assistant in his trade. He had claimed that he was an orphan, who had been cared for hitherto by the addressee.

“Who is this Sándor Csillag?” asked Hami out loud, though she suspected the answer. She at once had herself conveyed to Miskolc by cart.

Tihamér Vastagh’s hostelry lay at the far end of town, in a street of dubious repute. Among the circle frequenting his premises there were just as many ladies of the night as poor and dissolute artisans or nobodies begging for credit. Hami had never set foot in such an establishment. Now she hardened her heart and lifted up with both hands her black lace skirt that swept the ground, so that not even its hem should touch the oily floor, and pushed her way towards the bar. “Good day, my good man. I am looking for Mr. Tihamér Vastagh.”

“That would be myself,” said the sharp fellow, whose Adam’s apple was the size of a medium-sized apricot.

“I have come about the boy.”

“Little Sanyi is asleep: he is on nights.”

“Little Sanyi? Hm! I want him at once.”

“I tell you, he is asleep.”

“And I tell you I don’t care!” She brought the metal-shod heel of her traveling knee-boots down on the wooden floor so hard that it retained the imprint. The boy who staggered out from the back half-asleep she brought round with two sharp slaps across the face. The boy slapped her back. Hami was speechless. The eyes of Sigmund/Sándor radiated the rawest hatred, like some wild animal. Hami was shaken to her bones.

Their conversation was bleak and to the point. The boy declared that under no circumstances would he return. Hami had never loved him and if that was how things stood, it would be best if their ways parted now. If his foster mother did not give her blessing to his life here, he would drown himself in the nearby River Bodva. “Don’t think for a moment that I am less determined than my father!”

Hami sighed. It was hopeless. She had never told the boy how Mendel Berda-Stern had ended his life by his own hand, but in this family the first-born sons did not have to rely on second-hand accounts. “But you have no need to rely on charity!”

“This is not charity! I do a decent job of work for my living!”

“But when you come of age you will inherit a great deal of money, you idiot! It is all yours by right, all that your poor father put away and which I have looked after for you!”

The boy shrugged: “I know. You can send it in due course.”

Hami wept openly, laying her head on the hostelry table. She thought this was the last time she would see her adopted son, the adored child of her brother. And so she would be left on her own in her old age. Since her father’s death, this boy was her only relative. Eventually she pulled out a handkerchief, blew her nose trumpet-like, and asked: “And how did you come to change Sigmund Berda-Stern to Sándor Csillag? Why have you thrown away your honest name?”

“Why did my ancestors throw away their ancient name?”

To this question Hami did not know the answer. The fire blazing in the boy’s eyes seared holes in her heart. She felt that the person she had sat down to talk to was a wayward relation, Sigmund Berda-Stern, while the person she left at the table, Sándor Csillag, was a stranger over whom she had no influence. She returned to Homonna without achieving her goal, or rather, having given up her goal.

In three years Sándor Csillag progressed down the country crescent-wise. From Miskolc he went to Büdszentmihály, from there to Nyíregyháza, and then on to Debrecen. He earned his living in a variety of hostelries. His feel for numbers and his hard-working nature and brains everywhere assured him of rapid advancement. Then he came to Nagyvárad, the town of his birth in Transylvania, where he worked as an assistant in a men’s outfitters. He thought he might spend the rest of his life in this attractive town, but the owner of the outfitters did not like the way he was drawn to his daughter, an attraction that she seemed to reciprocate. Sándor Csillag again had to pack his worldly goods, going to Arad via Gyula and from Arad to Makó, where he now found himself a job in women’s apparel. There followed Szeged, Baja, and Pécs. In every town the dashing young man who claimed that there were few more keenly aware of the latest fashions of the capital, the materials of choice, and the comme-il-faut was gladly offered employment. He did not admit that he had never been to Pest-Buda, that is, to Budapest, as it was now called.

In Pécs he found employment in the Straub shoe shop in Király Street, where leather and boot-making equipment was also sold wholesale to the shoe-and boot-makers of the town. He rented a monthly room in Apácza Street from an elderly couple, whither his sixth sense led him. In front of the window of that house blossomed delicate lilacs, visible from far away. Sándor Csillag was seized by the desire to wake up every morning in a room like this, with lilacs at the window, which as he rose and opened the window wide would fill with their deep scent. He had already shaken on it with the old folks when it dawned on him that the lilac dons its wonderful robes only for a few weeks every year and at other times it is but a sadly stunted dry bush. Still, he had no reason to regret his decision. It was delightful to stroll along Apácza Street, whither the crackling smell of the nearby coffee-roasters and cafés was invariably borne by the wind. Above him the sun traced a diagonal path, soaking in timeless filtered colors the walls painted a daisy yellow.