Miklós Vámos - The Book of Fathers

Ilse fell pregnant for the third time; as she put it: “Proof of the pudding club that you are spending more time at home these days,” making her husband smile at her turn of phrase.

Nándor Csillag one morning surprised the household by entering the kitchen. The cook almost dropped her copper frying pan. “Sir desires something?” she asked nervously, thinking there must be something wrong: Nándor Csillag was generally asleep at this time.

“What’s for breakfast?”

This was even more surprising, as no one could recall the singer ever taking breakfast. Speechless, the cook pointed to the omelette and wafer-thin toast she was preparing for the lady of the house.

“Is this what my Ilse ordered?”

“No.”

“Well, how do you know that that’s what she would like?”

“Forgive me, sir… but my lady always has this for breakfast.”

“More’s the pity,” he said and crashed on into the dining-room, where a rotund Ilse was adjusting the curtains and staring out into the sunlight. Nándor Csillag rested his hands on her shoulders and, instead of a “Good morning,” said: “What to the heart is love, appetite is to the stomach.”

Ilse took a step back. “I beg your pardon?”

“The stomach is the conductor in command of the great orchestra of our passions.” After a pause, he added: “These are the words of maestro Rossini. You know, Barber of Seville, William Tell, and all that.”

“I am fully aware of the operas of Rossini. But what have they got to do with it?”

“Starting today, I am in charge of the daily menu.”

The diet of the Csillag household underwent a radical change. Specialties such as quail’s eggs, truffles, and snails surfaced on the menu. Nándor Csillag acquired a raft of Hungarian and foreign cookery books and wanted to bring their recipes to life. The cook was dispatched and her successors achieved a high turnover rate. Nándor Csillag was quite prepared to supervise the market shopping, to order the meat at the butcher’s and on occasion took in hand the direction of the kitchen itself. Whenever Ilse or some other relative took exception to this, he declared with an expression of hauteur: “If the Swan of Pesaro could do it, then so can I!”

Everybody knew that Gioacchino Antonio Rossini was the Swan of Pesaro.

“Nándor, Rossini was never your cup of tea. What is this with him now?” asked Ilse.

“Just because I did not sing him, I can still follow his philosophy, no?”

At the noontide of my life I sought my happiness – and no one was more surprised at this than myself – in Epicurean joys. In food, in drink, in reading, in the making of watercolors, in peaceful hours of meditation. I observed the sun setting on the Tettye, building a fire on the hillside, barbecuing food under the open sky, drinking fine red wines: thus did I at last find peace of mind. I awoke to the realization that there is no greater joy than when mind and body rest well replete.

I am toying with the idea that I should host a grand dinner for the gourmets and the gourmands of my town, using dishes from my own recipes in a restaurant for Feinschmecker. It will be a joy to revel in their joy. My plans are opposed as much by my father as by Ilse, perhaps by him more, since he is now at the stage where he opposes everything. But whom would I offend by spending my spare time supplying food of the finest quality for my guests? Why should this be more despised an occupation than ownership of the famous Csillag shoe shop? From the name of the firm, my father at the beginning of this year ousted that of old Straub, on the grounds that it sounds too Jewish. What a hypocritical notion! If Papa looks in the mirror he will see something that characterizes our origins more substantially than a name like Straub.

But I must now take up arms against a more serious threat. I dare not even write it down, so superstitious am I. May heaven grant me a sufficiency of strength and patience.

Nándor Csillag kept stubbornly to his original intention. He found a house garlanded in ivy that now stood empty and forlorn. Constructed more than a century earlier by the town’s Fire Brigade Union, it had not been used since they built a new storage building in 1910. This was the building leased by Nándor Csillag. He gave his restaurant the sonorous name Restaurant à la Rossini, but this never really caught on and regulars would say, “Let’s go to Nándi Csillag’s!” Because at Nándi’s you could get French soups, Italian roasts, and Spanish desserts for the gentry like nowhere else. There were just seven tables, and the inhabitants of Pécs had, willy-nilly, to get used to the notion of booking tables, whether in person, by telephone, or foot-messenger. At Nándi’s Slovak waitresses served the specialties decked out in tiny candlelights and in the evenings the gramophone would play arias by Verdi, Rossini, and Puccini.

Nándor Csillag had a rose window cut in the tiny space that had been used by the duty officer of the fire brigade, and so could keep a constant eye on his guests and staff. If the diners were acquaintances-and virtually all the townsfolk counted as such-he made sure he greeted them in person. He put on weight rapidly, which made his delicate frame appear rather humorous. Ilse pointed out that people might think they were both pregnant-she being now in her eighth month. Nándor Csillag had no regret about his corporation, and grew nineteenth-century mutton-chop whiskers to match. This hirsute growth turned white in the course of a week when the event foretold in The Book of Fathers in fact became reality.

Ilse’s behavior grew more and more strange. She gave birth to Tamás, but would not give him suck even once. Among ladies of standing it was accepted that this task was done in their stead by a wet nurse, but in the case of her first two sons, Ilse had insisted on breast-feeding them herself. She often voiced her conviction that the health of the infant was contingent on mother’s milk and urged her friends to follow her example.

Her knowledge of Hungarian seemed to deteriorate rapidly, with errors in her grammar and difficulty finding the right word. “Am I getting oldster?” she would ask, her face a map of fear. Her husband’s remonstrations failed to reassure her. Her chambermaid would often find she had locked herself in her room and showed no inclination to answer the door or even to reply to her repeated pleas. Once she spent a day and a half in her room without food or drink, totally indifferent to the calls of her husband and father-and mother-in-law. Nándor Csillag could not understand what had got into her, and Ilse never gave an explanation.

When one afternoon she set fire to the brocade curtains, the house all but burned to the ground. The staff, horrified, rang for the fire brigade. Once the flames had been extinguished the fireman in charge drew up an official report that gave rise to rumors about Ilse’s mental state that spread like the wildfire she had created. The family doctor kept reassuring Nándor Csillag that these things happen, that the stresses and pains of giving birth often short-circuited the nervous system of the female body. “The ordinary folk say: the milk goes to the brain. It would be better if the good lady were again to give suck to the infant!”

Ilse listened to the doctor with an expressionless face. In vain did her husband prompt her, gently at first, then with increasing urgency, but she had nothing to say. Hardly had the doctor left the house when Ilse threw herself on the ground and began to pound the wooden floorboards with her head, as if it were her intention to crack open her skull. Not even with the help of the chambermaid could Nándor Csillag make her stop.

These fits of self-destruction soon assumed a chronic character. Tonchi was the only person who was able to still Ilse’s ravings, drawing her gently but firmly to her ample bosom. First the doctor, then other members of his family suggested that he should have his wife committed to an institution before she inflicted fatal damage on herself. This proposal would make him stamp his feet with rage: “That will be the day! I won’t have Ilse taken to the yellow house! Out of the question!”