The Book of Fathers (15 page)

A suitable opportunity arose in the form of a warm invitation from Tadeus Weissberger, a merchant from Lemberg, for István Stern, together with his whole family, to visit him in his castle. “We are but a quarter of an hour from the town, by the shores of the lake, you can swim, sail, enjoy the sun!” he said in his broken German, their common language since István Stern was not able to speak Yiddish.

There were extensive preparations before cart and carriage were filled with the five members of the Stern family, two coachmen, three footmen, a chambermaid, nine travel trunks, six bundles of clothing, three hatboxes, and the small monkey. Éva sat with her two younger sons in the direction of travel on the carriage couch; facing her sat István, Richard, and his little Aszti. There was a footman by each of the coachmen up on the coach-box; the third had to squeeze onto the cart with the chambermaid, among the trunks that they had to constantly watch out for, in case they fell on top of them. The journey took four whole days, the nights spent at unmemorable lodgings.

Tadeus Weissberger received them in the garden of the T-shaped mansion, with a huge bouquet for Madame Éva. Agnieska Weissberger, the lady of the house, did her utmost to ensure that their guests from Hungary enjoyed themselves, her solicitousness going so far as to secure suitable aliment for little Aszti from the tsar’s zoological gardens. The Weissbergers’ six daughters—the youngest still in swaddling clouts, the oldest highly marriageable—attended to the
Stern boys with very similar broad smiles, which did not, however, make the boys feel entirely comfortable, since they were unable to understand their kind and generous hosts.

“At least now you will appreciate how useful it is to speak other languages!” their father pointed out, though in truth even he sometimes had to guess what his hosts had to say. He determined that on their return he and his sons would all take lessons from Rabbi Ben Loew. It was Éva who proved the best conversationalist, as she had a smattering of Yiddish from Elisa, her adored mother, who had perished at one of the stations of the highway of hardships. Her earthly remains were later finally laid to rest in the Jewish cemetery at Hegyhát, thanks to Aaron Stern.

Tadeus Weissberger arranged some kind of amusement for every night of their stay. Either musicians filled the salon with dance music, or a round of cards would be organized for István Stern. Up to this time he had known only the games that could be played with Hungarian cards; here he learned how to play the tarot, and proved exceptionally skillful at the game. After a substantial win Tadeus Weissberger would raise his glass and cry: “
Mazel!
”

His long-suppressed passion for playing cards came upon István Stern like a bucket of boiling water: he was on fire from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. He reveled in getting the better of the others by adopting a wooden, expressionless face. He was much less taken with the notion of winning money. Perhaps, if he had not been so carried away by the game, he might have attended to what the local men were whispering about between the deals, and if he had, he would almost certainly have understood. In the streets of Lemberg young hooligans were looting the shops and coffee houses, throwing all the goods of the Jews out into the street, daubing the walls with the vilest slogans. The cardplayers’ consensus was that it was not a good idea to make too much of these events. Such excesses by
hot-headed youngsters were likely to wane as suddenly as they had waxed.

Tadeus Weissberger was in the minority. He could not understand how the gentlemen could be so sure of themselves. Once emotions have burst to the surface, no one is really safe. But to the question of what was to be done, he no more had a sensible reply than anyone else. Be prepared, then you won’t be scared—that was his motto.

“Very well then, let us be scared,” said a voice. “How does that improve matters?”

István Stern meanwhile shuffled the pack and dealt everyone a hand.

“It would be better if we packed and went home!” whispered Éva in his ear at the breakfast table the following morning.

“What’s got into you? You were the one keen to travel!”

“I didn’t imagine we would end up just where the goyim want to kill us.”

“Kill us?” spluttered István Stern, as if surfacing from under water.

Éva told him what she had heard from Agnieska. István Stern could feel his heart beating faster. Have these people gone mad? They destroy the property of others simply because they are of a different faith?

He went running off to Tadeus Weissberger. His host was in the smaller greenhouse, watering his plants. “Why did you not tell me about this before, Weissberger?” he asked in his best German.

“But we talked of nothing else all evening!”

“Should we not start packing?”

“The vandals have never bothered us in this house … on the other hand, who knows what the morrow may bring?”

István Stern found himself on the horns of a dilemma. One part of him thought it ungallant to flee like a coward, another part of him felt a strong responsibility towards his
family, so … The longer he thought about it, the less he knew what to do. If only Grandfather Aaron were here, or Rabbi Ben Loew.

That afternoon, of the gentlemen invited to play cards only one, Samuel Bratkow, managed to reach the card table. His clothing was torn and, as he explained it, torches had been flung at the roof of his house and his family had fled to Tarnopol. He was heading after them and would be glad to take anyone who wished to go. Tadeus Weissberger hurriedly ordered his daughters, wife, and mother-in-law to take to the carriages. There were Weissbergers in Tarnopol who would look after them. He would follow as soon as he had taken care of the valuables. Alas, the carriage springs were dangerously overstretched and Samuel Bratkow begged their pardon for being unable to take all the ladies. Agnieska volunteered to lighten the load, as, with a little gentle prodding, did her mother. The carriage raced off, to the tearful cries of the Weissberger girls. István Stern at once offered his cart, which Tadeus Weissberger declined with the words: “We have our own carriage; in fact, we have two.”

Éva wanted to be off at once, but István Stern first had everything quickly packed up, so it was half an hour before they were embracing their hosts, commending one another to the care of the Almighty. By then the Weissbergers were also ready, and the horses harnessed to the carriages were fairly pawing the ground in their impatience. Let us go while we can, thought Éva. They climbed into the carriage. István Stern lowered the lids of his bloodshot eyes.

The pounding of hoofs, from somewhere in the distance.

Stern was sure it would be Samuel Bratkow, coming back for something he had forgotten. But it was more than two score horsemen, wearing only animal pelts and skins, reminding István Stern of the original Magyars who rode into the Carpathian basin. In the carriage little Aszti gave a
sharp little shriek and everyone realized that they were on the brink of catastrophe. The riders had reached them.

István Stern jumped down onto the carriage step and drew his sword, but in vain: he was the first to be speared through the neck by a lance and thrown under the carriage. The noise around him seemed to abate, the outlines of things became hazy. Before he finally lost consciousness he saw fire engulf the entrance of the house and there, falling from the first-floor windows, were the by now familiar white birds. Only later, on his sickbed, did he understand that for a fraction of a second he had witnessed the Weissberger family’s justly famous collection of books being consumed by the flames.

Thinking that he was dead, the attackers let him be. Night had already fallen when he came to. Some local peasants provided him with shelter and care. Richard also turned up, wandering among the pine trees of the park, as was little Aszti, whose crazed screeches drove István Stern out of his wits, so that several times he took aim at the creature. Richard always protected it.

In a foreign land, without acquaintances and helping hands, lacking the language and money, István Stern was unable to discover where his wife’s and two sons’ final resting places—if they indeed had such—might be found. Grandfather Aaron lambasted him with hate-filled letters, cursing him forever for not taking proper care of his daughter and two grandsons. Had Richard not been with him, István Stern would have thrust his dagger into his heart.

The Sterns never forgave him. Disowned first by one lot, then by the other.

In the end he took himself off with Richard and little Aszti and, abandoning his property at Hegyhát, asked permission to live in the five-pointed turret. The Sternovszkys tolerated their presence but never fully accepted them. No day passed but he toyed with the idea that he would end
his days of suffering in this world. So burdened was he by the weight of his conscience that he was virtually bent double. In the years that remained to him he gave few signs of being alive. He passed his time mainly playing cards. His right hand played his left; they fought battles of life and death. He was unwilling to play with anyone else.

When the Sternovszky family’s influence secured him a seat in the county assembly, he would sometimes attend the sessions, but he rarely made a speech. It was thus a surprise to all when he objected to the burning of the documents and papers relating to the abolition of the decrees of His Majesty Joseph II. It needed six people to hold him down, such was the passion this had ignited in him. He raved as he bellowed: “Papers and books must not be thrown into the fire!”

They locked him in an office in the assembly building. As soon as the key turned creakily in the lock, István Stern calmed down and his face once again wore the indifferent expression it generally had. The guards who looked in through the peephole reported this to the
alispán
, who ordered him to be set free.

István Stern walked home. That night he wrote in The Book of Fathers:
Audi, vide, tace, si vis vivere in pace
. He kept his word in the Book, and died quietly a year later. There was no surprise in the turret: they were used to the heads of families saying little or nothing as they took their leave of this world.

IV

EVEN ON NORTH-FACING CLIFFS HITHERTO BARE, SIGNS
of life, ruffs of green. The fruit-trees’ boughs sweep the ground, so swollen are they with their crop. Few whoops or cries from the fowl of the air; hens are busy brooding on the nest. Water lilies carpet the surface of the lakes. The tillers of the soil rejoice: there will be a rich harvest. Those short of food and drink are spurned less often now by those who are not. At times even in daylight an ever-waxing, ever more yellow moon rises in the sky.

They will have their work cut out to gather in this harvest, thought Richard Stern. He raised himself to the iron bars of the cell and let himself dangle as long as his strength allowed, in part by way of exercise, in part to see something of the world outside. Ever since being brought here from Spielberg he had prayed for a cell in the far corner of the tower, whence he might observe the slope that, his cartographic studies led him to deduce, would have a crescent shape.

Already, despite the distance, he was able to identify some of the local farmers and their lads. When all’s said and done, better a cell giving onto a hill in the fortress at Munkács, under the Carpathians, than any cell in that
Austrian eyrie, Kufstein; at least Munkács was in Hungary. The horrors they told of the hell of Kufstein! Inmates in irons day and night, no letters in or out, and up to six months without being allowed a turn in the yard. To cap it all, consumption was rife, scores took to the bare boards they had for beds, and the bodies were not released to the family but tossed into the moat in sacks with hardly a sprink ling of lime, let alone a decent spadeful of soil.

Richard Stern never expected a pardon; he thought he knew that the thread of his life, though it might be spun out for quite a long time, would finally be cut in the prison of the fortress of Munkács. So he could work only with what he had. Whenever his eyes could bear it, he spent his time writing; otherwise he hung from the window’s iron bars and feasted them, so that he might take not the bleak cell but the world outside, the summer cavalcade of nature, with him to the bourn whence no earthly traveler returns. He knew in his bones that the heavenly ones would never admit him. As a child he had been brought up in the faith of the Jews, but nowadays he would strain his memory in vain for their word for “devil” or “salvation.” Did the Jews have devils and angels at all? It hardly matters now … It makes not a bean’s worth of difference.

He let go of the iron bars and dropped down onto the rough-hewn stone floor; a twinge of pain shot through his kneecaps. The warmth of the month of July had brought little relief for his aching limbs. He could no longer bend his arms and legs without stabs of pain. It has not taken me long to wear them out, he thought. But that, too, hardly matters now; I expect them to perform little in the way of service to me. He sat down at the rough and splintery table that served two of the functions that mattered to him most: writing and eating. The third was met by the wooden bucket in the corner, whose ill-fitting lid ensured the constant companionship of noisome smells.

He opened The Book of Fathers, of which no more than thirteen folios remained blank. Richard Stern was an industrious diarist, filling more pages of the book by himself than all his ancestors combined. And this was despite his cells, especially the one in Spielberg, being severely deprived of light; sometimes he thought the goose-quill found its own way in the dark. He was given a single candle every other day and learned how to be sparing with it.

Earlier in his life it had not occurred to him that he might himself write in the pages of The Book of Fathers, even though in his younger days he had turned to it more often than even the Bible.

“This is another of the sins of the Sterns: that you don’t even go to the synagogue! Mark my words, the Creator will punish you for this!” came his grandmother’s refrain; she would have preferred him to revert to Sternovszky as his surname.