Miklós Vámos - The Book of Fathers

The house on Nepomuk Street was inhabited by complete strangers who would not even let him in. This house had been assigned to them by the authorities. They had no knowledge of any Csillags. Balázs Csillag was not inclined to argue and sat out in Széchenyi Square. There he was spotted by an old schoolmate, who put him up for a few days. This brief period was more painful than the time in the labor service battalion, in prison, and the typhoid hospital all together: here he received the news. Of the entire family, he alone had returned. He had no parents, no brothers or sisters, no grandparents, no aunts or uncles or nieces. None of his childhood friends had survived. Not even the chatter box girl next door, Babushka, was there, with whom they were always playing Mummies and Daddies in the garden. Balázs Csillag had sworn that he would marry her. Looks like I shall remain unmarried, he thought.

Never mind marriage, it was hard enough to find reasons just to live. He moved into the hall of residence of the Calvinist secondary school, which had been converted into an emergency shelter. He lay on the bunk bed and stared at the ceiling. He was only two-thirds the weight he was before the war, but was quite unable to put any on. Of course, he had to eat more and better food. In the kitchen there was a hot meal once a day, but Balázs Csillag often did not even go down for that; kind folk would bring it up to him.

Then once again he took himself to the house in Nepomuk Street. On the firewall opposite he could still make out the remains of a poster from the Arrow Cross, the Hungarian Nazis, showing a triumphant Hungarian tank, with slogans above and below and a date. One heart-one will! Forward to victory! Balázs Csillag stared at it aghast. At the end of 1944 these wild animals were boasting of victory?

This time the door was opened by a shy girl with curly hair. She was in talkative mood. Her name was Mária Porubszky, a relative from Beremend; she was baby-sitting. The Varghas had gone to fetch food from Sikonda.

Balázs Csillag was unsure how to present what he had to say. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

“Please don’t, it isn’t good for the little ones,” the girl said, showing him the Varghas’s two children, one about two years old sleeping in the cot, the other, just a few months, still in the cradle. “Aren’t they sweet when they’re asleep?”

Balázs Csillag just stood there, trying to bury his disfigured neck and hands in his shirt. He had forgotten, if ever he knew, how to address young women. Stork-like he shifted from one foot to the other. “This house was ours. And there are some things here, if they are still here, that is… not valuable things, valuable only to me… a sort of family album…” and he made for the stairs, under which his father had had built a slim cupboard of sorts. In the old days that was where he kept his music. Later this lockable store was given to Balázs Csillag. The new owners of the house had forced it open and used it to store firewood. At the very bottom they had stuffed newspapers, presumably as firelighters. Among these he found, more or less intact, the volumes of The Books of Fathers. He had himself begun the last volume, a thick, hardbound, lined book, but it was empty, except for these words on the first page: I hereby begin the latest volume of The Book of Fathers. Nothing else. A few days later he had received the call-up papers.

He clutched his family’s past to himself and wept, though the girl could not have seen any of this. His tear ducts, too, had been damaged and he frequently needed eyedrops.

Mária Porubszky’s index finger nudged his elbow. “But you will tell me your name, won’t you?”

He wanted to say: Does it matter? But then he said: “Balázs Csillag. And what is yours?”

“Hey, you’re not paying attention! I’ve introduced myself already: Mária Porubszky. But not for much longer.”

“What do you mean?”

“Because I’m going to be Mrs. Balázs Csillag.”

“You are what!?”

“You heard me.”

“Mrs. Balázs Csillag, my Mrs. Csillag?”

“Yours.”

“Have you gone mad?”

“No, I was born mad!” her laughter rang out.

Her prediction, which she later admitted was no more than a bit of harmless fun, came true within a year. The wedding feast was held in the house of her parents in Beremend. Old Mr. Porubszky was a carpenter, as all his ancestors had been.

Balázs Csillag went to the cathedral. He knew the priest, who had been a regular at Papa’s restaurant. “I want to sign up as a Catholic,” he declared.

“Why?”

“You are in the majority… aren’t you?”

The reverend father knew what had happened to the Csillag family. He asked no further questions but sent him to theological classes. With ten-year-olds he listened to the lectures on the commandments, the martyrs, and the books of the Bible.

Soon he was able to look up the office of the Jewish community. In the archway there was a rusting plaque: SERVICES TO THE LEFT-OFFICE TO THE RIGHT. He turned right. He waited his turn and handed over to the old woman behind the desk the certificate he had obtained in the cathedral. She managed to work out what it said. Her face was covered with amazement. “What is this?”

“I don’t want to be a Jew.”

“I see… and so what am I supposed to do about it?”

“Make a note in the register.”

The old woman shrugged her shoulders, opened up the relevant volume, and wrote a few lines in the column headed ADDITIONAL REMARKS.

“Do you want a receipt as well?”

“I do.”

He received a piece of paper with a stamp on it, which was proof that in the register of births maintained by the Jewish community the following amendment was made: UB 238/1945. The above-named, on the basis of document number 67/1945 from the First Pécs Parish Office, has this day, August 25, 1945, converted from the Israelite religion to the Roman Catholic faith.

Balázs Csillag slipped the piece of paper into his shirt pocket and went out into the street as if he had left something of himself behind. Since he had discovered what had happened to his loved ones he had done nothing but force himself not to think about how their lives had ended. But those images again and again came to the fore, together with the accompanying sounds and smells, and this was something that one could not bear and still remain of sound mind-he had to escape from them, at any price. If he was outdoors he would start to run and exert himself until he ran out of breath; if indoors, he went around and around taking tiny steps, like dogs chasing their own tails. He thought he would lose his mind if things carried on like this.

One or two of his old acquaintances looked him up, and he would be invited out; but then here, too, the conversation would come around to those they had lost, and he would just take himself off without ado. Only in the company of Mária Porubszky did peace descend on him: she never forced the conversation yet chattered away enough for two; when they were together they were like two plants growing in the meadow. He found it difficult to come to terms with the idea of marriage, having many concerns: “Mária, if ever I dared undress, you will be horrified by the sight and will be revolted by me for a lifetime.”

“Well, now, dear Balázs, don’t you know there are more important things than the body?”

They continued to address each other formally after their wedding. For Balázs Csillag his wedding night was as distressing as for many of his ancestors, and indeed he recalled them in those moments, until Mária Porubszky took him by the hand. “Pay attention to me now, Balázs, and not to the past!”

This sentence proved to be a lifesaving balm. “I’m not going to attend to the past,” he repeated to himself in the voice of a naughty schoolboy. He closed his eyes and sighed deep sighs as his new bride gently traced with her fingers the wounded valleys of his body. He dissolved in the blindness of the love that Mária Porubszky, for reasons unknown to him, radiated in his direction.