Miklós Vámos - The Book of Fathers

“Holy Mother of God!” exclaimed the one called Zsiga, seeing what was left of the lad’s legs. The poor soul would not live to see the day out. “Let’s give him something to drink!” he said, squatting down beside him and, unscrewing his brown canvas-covered flask, placed it over Kornél’s mouth. The slightly sour, watered-down wine dribbled down the boy’s face.

“What’s your name?”

“Kornél Csillag.”

“Your parents?”

Kornél told them what he could. He asked if they had seen his mother or his grandfather. He described their appearance in great detail. The three men hemmed and hawed.

“They’ll… turn up,” Zsiga lied. “Don’t you worry any, we’ll look after you until they do. Now, would you be hungry at all?”

Kornél nodded. The most solidly built of the three, whom the others called Mikhál, took him carefully in his arms. Kornél gave a howl of pain. He realized only now that both legs were twisted the wrong way around and that the Turkish pants his mother had put on him back home had been cut to ribbons, which were now glued to his skin by his own congealed blood. Overcome by despair he began to sob, childlike, in spasms, repeatedly gulping for air. As the man carried him, he could see limbs dangling from under lumps of rock. The older of the peasants was lying at what had been the cavern entrance, his skull neatly bisected by a sharp splinter of rock, his brains spilled out.

Mikhál made a fire in the clearing, while the third fellow, Palkó, was plucking a gray bird the size of a small loaf, throwing its feathers into the fire; their burning smell irritated Kornél’s nose. He dared not ask any questions. His fingers began gingerly to explore his thighs. He detected some hard, sharp object lodged above his right knee. As he yanked it out, the pain made his heart skip a beat and he fainted again. It was evening by the time he came to.

Zsiga again made him drink a little and then fed him some meat, a mouthful at a time. “Pigeon stew. You’ll see, it’ll build you up!” though he scarcely believed his own words. Kornél put all of his little soul’s trust in this promise. When he had eaten himself full to bursting, he tried to get up, but Zsiga did not let him. “First we’ll have to bind up your wounds. Palkó is our medical orderly. He’ll sort you out.”

“And then we must talk about what we are going to do!” said Mikhál.

They had been cut off from their regiment for a day and a half since they had had their horses shot from under them. They ran for dear life from the battle, down into the valley. As night fell, they took shelter in an old winepress. That was where they acquired the stray dog that Palkó, thinking of their guard dog back home, had decided to call Málé. In the morning Zsiga set off to forage some food. He all but ran into Farkas Balassi’s irregulars. He scampered to the winepress the back way, through the yards. “Don’t know who this lot are, but if we’re sharp about it, we can get ourselves some horses!”

They crept out as far as the edge of the gully and could see how undisciplined this crew was. They waited until most of the band had gone past, hoping that there would be some stragglers bringing up the rear. Indeed, there were four such, whom they picked off one at a time, jumping on them from above and wrestling them off their saddles. They thus secured four horses, guns, clothing, and the contents of the saddlebags. The most valuable item was a sword forged in Toledo, which went to Palkó. Mikhál asked for the cordovan leather topboots of the first soldier, who must have been of the nobility, for his pockets also yielded the egg-shaped timepiece that Zsiga took for himself. He thought it was silver. He did not manage to get the winder to work, but when he-God willing-got back home to Somogy, his brother, a jack-of-all-trades, was bound to be able to mend it. The timepiece recorded the day and the month, as well as the year: it showed a quarter past twelve on the ninth day of the tenth month of the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and eighty-three.

In Palkó’s view it was best to stay in this deserted village until they had word of how the fighting was going; there was little sense in running into the arms of the Kurucz, who were said to take no prisoners and gave those they captured the shortest of shrifts. With the various bands of freebooters their chances were even less. Mikhál on the other hand voted for leaving at once and trying to reach their own troops as quickly as possible, trusting themselves to the mercy of God. The longer they took to catch up, the easier it would be to accuse them of desertion. Zsiga sucked on his empty pipe, throwing hunks of meat to Málé. He did not consider either approach entirely free of risk. “Let’s wait and see what the new day brings.”

“We must do something with this lad, though.”

“Goodness, is he still in the land of the living?”

Palkó had shorn the remains of his pants off Kornél and tore one of the shirts they had appropriated into strips to bandage up his shriveled legs. “I’d be very much surprised if he ever ran again on those.”

In his sleep, Kornél was pursued by shapes in billowing black capes, who in the end wedged him tightly in a well. Starting awake, he could feel both his legs stuck in that well. He touched them and as he felt the thick lawn wadding, it all came back to him. He tried flexing his muscles one by one, and for the first time it occurred to him that perhaps his legs would never be the same again. Of the three men, two were sleeping the sleep of the just by the embers of the fire, the third was stroking Málé the dog, murmuring to him as if he were a human being.

Kornél closed his eyes. “Grandpa, come back! Mother dear, you too! Come back to me! It is so hard without you!” he whimpered. His tears eased him into sleep once more, where again he was being pursued, this time even shot at.

Just before dawn broke, a Labancz patrol appeared in the clearing, cut off like the three men from the main body of their troops. They would have pitched camp had Zsiga and his fellows not started to fire at them at random. In the semi-darkness neither party knew who they were shooting at. As the newcomers were in the majority, they jumped on their horses and chased Zsiga’s little band down into the valley.

Kornél woke with the golden disk of the sun high in the sky. The three men were gone. They had taken the four horses but little else; even the dog had been left behind. For a while Kornél listened to the pounding of his own heart and then began to yell. If no one came, he was sure to starve. He felt desperately weak, life barely flickered in the darkness of his soul. Days passed like this, or was it only hours? At times, Málé’s rough tongue would lick him awake, into the land of the living.

On his second day alone, he managed to cling to the clumps of Málé’s fur coat and so straighten up, lying on his back like a tired rider. With the better of his legs he managed to touch the ground and was able to push himself gingerly along on top of the dog, and succeeded thus in covering much of the ground in the clearing. He undid the various bundles and bags left behind by the three men. He took a fancy to the egg-shaped timepiece and hung on to it. After a longish rest, he also raked over the floor of the former cavern. What he saw there he would never forget. The dead bodies had since been ravaged by wild animals. There was no escaping the stench of decomposing bodies, even if he held his nose. Grandpa Czuczor’s folio was nowhere to be found; perhaps it had ended up under a ton of rock.

The dog took him back to the clearing. On both sides of it the trees and bushes had donned their lushest and finest. Kornél was dizzy with hunger. One of the branches of an acacia reached almost to the ground and Kornél took its tip into his mouth. The tiny petals tickled a little but tasted amazingly sweet, and he chewed off as much as he could in the position in which he lay. Later he also found some myrtle berries, a little sour, but still edible.