Miklós Vámos - The Book of Fathers

A young couple of the middle classes can settle quite comfortably in a three-room flat. One bedroom, one lounge, and one dining room will be adequate for the official, civil servant, or young tradesman of limited means. Today it is no longer sensible to rent a flat without a bathroom; to have one built is not the modern way. The old-fashioned faience room basins or lavoirs no longer meet modern standards of cleanliness.

A separate reception room, or as it is fashionable to call it nowadays in Hungarian, a salon, must be accounted a luxury, since it is always possible to furnish the living room so that it functions as a reception room.

A reception room among the middle classes plays a role of unusual importance. This is the centerpiece of the home, the pride of the lady of the house; here are the most expensive pieces of furniture and the most eye-catching decor. A crushed velvet or patterned silk couch in the center along the wall, with armchairs on either side and cushioned chairs in a semicircle. On the table a visiting-card holder and books in fine bindings. Richly pleated heavy curtains for the windows; on the walls and on the furniture, paintings and pictures of various sizes and ornamental plates, Makartstil bouquets, and porcelain figurines. This is where we can receive more distant relatives, acquaintances, and business contacts, and here the family’s celebrations can be held.

When he reached this point Balázs Csillag’s eyes filled with tears. He remembered his grandfather’s house in Apácza Street, then the one in Nepomuk Street, at Sunday lunch. When the grandfather clock struck twelve and Papa poured himself a thimbleful of bitters and tossed it down. The maid laid the big table. Half an hour later the cook sent the message, via her, that the family might take their places at the table. Papa insisted that they dress for the occasion and the three boys had in turn to go to Ilse, with her clockwork smile and drugged eyes, and give her hands a ritual kiss. He himself did so after them.

“ Dankschön! ” intoned Ilse four times, identically, like a recording.

In Lager 7149/2 time had ground almost to a standstill. From here he could no longer write home on the Russian and Hungarian form-postcards of the Red Cross, which were pre-printed SENDER PRISONER OF WAR. There was room for only a few lines on the card, but Balázs Csillag did not need even those. I am fine. How are you all? Write back soon! Answer he received none. He often tried to imagine what it would be like to see his loved ones and his home town again; sometimes he even dreamed of this. Usually he was a child walking through the vaulted gate of the house in Nepomuk Street; it would be late at night, his mother and father would be sitting by the fire (though only the house in Apácza Street had a fireplace), by the light of candles; they would acknowledge him as he entered and then his mother would say in her German-accented Hungarian: “Go up to bed, quickly!” and he obeyed.

He was the mainstay of Dr. Pista Kádas, who was inclined to depression. “You’ll see, we’ll get out of here and get home sooner than you might think!”

In the evenings he would make him tell stories. The stories of Dr. Pista Kádas always ended up with his years as a lawyer, and his manner of speech also veered towards that of the courtroom, with its circumlocutory turns of phrase, liberally seasoned with “well, now”s and “be it noted”s. He revealed to Balázs Csillag a world into which he sought admission in vain, though everyone in the family assumed he was destined for the Bar. He was still at primary school when he made speeches for both the prosecution and the defense at the dining table.

“Bravo, bravissimo, my dear counselor!” said his father.

At school Balázs Csillag’s most distinguished achievements were in Greek and Latin. He could recite poems by Homer, Virgil, and Ovid after just a few readings. Latin, too, seemed to be a milestone on the road to a legal career.

“I know I shall be a lawyer when I grow up!”

“How do you know?” asked Dr. Pista Kádas.

“In our family the first-born know a lot of things. I am not sure why this should be so.”

Dr. Pista Kádas continued to press the matter until willy-nilly he explained how these things were in the Csillag family. Dr. Pista Kádas heard the account with mounting disquiet. It was not the first time in the Lager that someone hitherto completely sane appeared to lose his mind overnight. He did not dare challenge the story; rather, he probed further, hoping that his friend would suddenly burst out laughing, like someone playing a joke. Balázs Csillag, however, stuck to his guns and insisted that for some mysterious reason he was able to see the past and the future.

“So you knew that we would end up here, too?”

“No, all I knew was that there was going to be trouble, big trouble. The way it happens is that the pictures, the images are often very fuzzy.”

“But then if your Papa also knew… what would happen, why did you not emigrate while you could?”

“That’s something that has been bothering me, too. Perhaps it’s one thing to see, and another to believe what you see.”

“Hm… You wouldn’t by any chance be able to see whether we will ever get out of here?”

“I told you: we are going home, sooner than you might think! And… our liberation is in some way connected with milk… Don’t look at me like that. Really, I am not mad!”

“Milk…” Dr. Pista Kádas gave a sigh. There was no more incongruous word that Balázs Csillag could have uttered. The prisoners of Lager 7149/2 never saw any milk; at most they might have caught sight of that sticky, white condensed stuff that made you nauseous even when stirred into ersatz coffee. It came in metal tins of the kind that the Csillag shoe shop sold as Csillag shoe polish.

In logging Balázs Csillag proved to have two left hands, but he was very good when it came to estimating the size of the tree trunks and calculating their volume, and the Russian guards soon made him responsible for producing the lists and the final figures on the dispatch notes. Balázs Csillag learned to speak Russian quite quickly and was therefore also used occasionally as an interpreter. He did all in his power to ensure that Dr. Pista Kádas was always by his side, but this did not always work out: the sickly, aquiline-nosed Kádas was for some reason found unsympathetic by the Russian soldiers. Balázs Csillag was certainly more like them physically, with his small, sharp gray eyes, quite long but somewhat bandy legs, and the black moustache that he grew in the Lager. This impression was reinforced when winter came around again and he wore the quilted jacket and ushanka that the Russian guards had cast off.

It was deemed a special favor if someone was ordered to take goods into town. They left the Lager riding on two double-wheeled trucks through the iron gates; this was the most spine-tingling moment, when you left the barbed wire behind. Each driver had a Russian soldier in the cab, while the prisoners stood in the back, shaken and tossed about. On the way back they could lie on the goods they brought, hanging on for dear life with their hands and feet. Sometimes one of them might fall out of the truck. The truck would then brake and reverse, two men carried out the order to throw the lifeless body back, and it would be held all the way to make sure it did not fall off again. Alive or dead, the Russians didn’t care, but a body was an item in the inventory and had to be accounted for.

Balázs Csillag was frequently chosen as transporter, Dr. Pista Kádas more rarely. There was one occasion when the trucks set off for the far end of town. They were rarely informed where they were headed; it was thought enough to tell the prisoners their duties when they got there. This time they drove into a yard, surrounded by a tarred wooden fence, where they saw a wooden structure resembling a barn. The prisoners jumped off and immediately lit up; the guards permitted this on arrival. One of them went into the office, the other joked with a fat woman who seemed to be the caretaker and was smoking a stubby cigar just like the soldier’s. His companion soon returned and motioned Balázs Csillag to come closer: “You go in, bring out the churns, up into the truck, one row stands, one lies on top of them, got that?”