The Book of Fathers (25 page)

He must have made a startling sight as he stirred the autumn sky with his spindly arms, eyes closed, head to one side, raising one leg again and again, like a dove. Those in the building paid him no heed, while on the courtyard side he was shielded from view by the tall poplars. He firmly believed that there would come a day when, as a result of all his practice, he would be able to rise into the sky, circle the yard a few times, and then fly off, far away, to the distant village where Babka lived, near the sea, the place where he last remembered being happy. Since he had lived here, he was sure that even the number of stars in the heavens was fewer.

Even rain could not keep him away from the dovecote; he welcomed the little fat drops falling on his face. At such
times there pounded in him even more powerfully than usual the desire to fly south, on the trail of the migratory birds. He stood up on tiptoe.

“Get down at once!” his mother shouted at him, when she saw the boy, soaked to the skin, from the kitchen window.

The cry came as a shock to Szilárd and for a moment he lost his balance, the soles of his shoes seeking but failing to find purchase on the wet planks; he slid down to the edge, and although he reached out with his arm, it was in vain, and he plunged head-first into the air. As he fell his knee hooked itself around one of the dovecote’s supporting beams and for a fraction of a second it seemed to hold, only for the rotten wood to snap in two, and down came the bracket as well, right on the boy’s head as he landed on the ground, the doves spraying out as he flew.

The medical orderly who lived nearby came running over in his apron and slippers and promptly gave up on him. “Look, town clerk Berda, the skull has split wide open, the brain’s damaged, I will be bound; what could I do?”

His mother was hysterical and had to be dragged away from the blood-stained ottoman on which he had been laid. There was a gentle smile playing about Szilárd’s lips. Now, at last, he was able to do what he had so long been preparing for: to fly away.

He saw Kornél Csillag being teased and mocked for the German accent of his Hungarian speech.

He saw Bálint Sternovszky as a child and a young man, falling out of a window, twice.

He saw István Stern at the time of the Lemberg catastrophe.

He saw Richard Stern on the wide double bed, struggling in the presence of the congress—of this and of so much else, he understood little.

He saw Otto Stern with a wreath of tiny yellow flowers—buttercups? marigolds? euphorbia?—about his neck. He felt
peculiarly drawn to this huge-eyed man with the flowing hair.

He saw Matushka, her hair let down, scantily clad, giving her favors to total strangers. What is this? He felt a sharp, stabbing pain as he saw this and how the men touched his mother.

The living dioramas cascaded and swirled around him. Fragments of present time would surface, too: the honeyed light of the curtains glittering on the windows, his mother’s tear-soaked cheeks, a man with mutton-chop whiskers and hairy hands—the professor of medicine summoned from the hospital who in the end decided, against his professional judgment, to sew up the inches-long gash: “We can but hope.” Szilárd bore the intervention—which the doctor said was particularly painful—without a murmur, so captivated was he by his sojourn in the past. He found out about The Book of Fathers, and was able to observe even its whereabouts: the completed folio was in Richard Stern’s library, hidden in a gap between the floorboards; the one begun by Otto Stern lay in the offices of the Stern & Stern Wine Emporium, on the top shelf, buried under stacks of old bills.

Months passed without the boy regaining consciousness. One day there came through the town Dr. József Koch, who had been elevated to the post of court physician by the Emperor in person, and whose ancestors, going back seven generations, had all been distinguished medical practitioners; three of his brothers, too, had chosen the same career. He lodged in the Golden Lamb. Matushka begged him on bended knee to take a look at her little boy as he hovered between life and death. Town clerk Béla Berda hovered in the background with a servile smile, repeating: “Money no object.”

“But it would be, were I greedy for money,” remarked Dr. Koch. “However, one asks for only as much as is right.”

Dr. József Koch’s fee equaled one month’s emoluments for town clerk Béla Berda, but it was no use; not even he knew the remedy for Szilárd’s condition. “If ever he were to get on his feet again, which I do not think at all likely, he would certainly be feeble-minded.”

“We had managed to reach that conclusion all by ourselves,” commented Béla Berda.

“Silence!” hissed Matushka, livid.

Béla Berda was quite certain his bankess had taken leave of her senses. She temporarily gave up her theatrical activities to devote all her time to her son. Where was that proud artress of old, who was not prepared to give up the stage even for his sake?

“I would leave any man for the stage, but there was never a man born that I would leave the stage for! That is not something you would ever understand … you … clerk of the town!”

It was through the theatrical company that they had met. A three-member delegation visited the county assembly to seek the support of the Noble County for their petition, which had been declaimed in ringing tones by the delegation’s female member. Béla Berda put his weight behind their proposals, though in fact he wished to put his weight only upon their spokeswoman. A committee was established for the purpose of considering what might be done in the town to promote theatrical activity in the Hungarian language, to raise its status, and to ensure that performances in the Golden Lamb enjoyed the support of a select public.

The lilac bushes were in bloom by the time Szilárd was able to sit up in bed, and it was the grape harvest by the time he was able to leave it. He could have fitted into his clothes twice over, and his mother had to tie his trousers with string at the waist. He was to remain anemic for the
rest of his life, even if he was fed to bursting with the richest foods. He went the rounds of physician after physician, being prescribed fortifying concoctions and the oils of saltwater fish, or urged to spend summers by the sea and in the mountains of the High Tatras; nothing was any use.

“This boy’s bones seem for some strange reason unable to retain flesh on them,” remarked the doctor in the mountain sanatorium.

Little though he may have borne in terms of flesh, he carried an enormous burden in his soul. What he had seen and almost touched at the opening of death’s door remained with him forever, and as he grew older he felt with increasing urgency the need to unravel their meaning. The first sign came as he was innocently rummaging around in his mother’s writing desk: he chanced upon a broken gold necklace from which was suspended a very small gold locket. Szilárd felt that compared with the other glittering items, this one radiated warmth, and he held it tight in his hand for several minutes. Whenever thereafter the opportunity presented itself he would head for his mother’s desk and at once seek out the locket and clutch it tight. The warmth that seemed to emanate from the locket he took as a message from days long past. He fingered and fondled it so much that suddenly the tiny lid sprang open. The image of a familiar face met his gaze.

The picture of Otto Stern had been made by a goldsmith in Debreczen. Yanna had ordered sketches of all her children, but only three were ever produced, as the goldsmith had lost his life in a robbery on his premises. Otto Stern had begged for the one of himself, thinking he would give it to Clara, but in the end he thought better of it.

Szilárd also turned up the egg-shaped timepiece; this came as no surprise, as he had seen it often enough in his visions. He longed to know more, but his mother was
implacable: “Leave off with all that ancient history; what little I knew I was only too glad to forget.”

“All right, but why will you not say who was my father? And my grandfather?”

“Your father now is town clerk Béla Berda and that is all there is to it. You unfortunate creature, rejoice and stop moping! Now that fortune is smiling upon us, why keep twisting that dagger in my heart?”

Szilárd sighed and left it at that. Once mother puts on one of her performances, truth flies out of the window. Only one sure source remained: the wellspring of the past. But how to launch again the kaleidoscope of images? He pondered this, night after night, sensing that thick blackness was the most likely part of the day for the longed-for wonder to occur. But for a long time he had nothing more to occupy his thoughts than the images he had been vouchsafed when he was so seriously ill with his head wound. He could feel still the little trough in his skull, the place of the imperfectly healed gap; his hair grew rather sparsely over it. His mother was ashamed of her son’s gash and was constantly trying to cover it with a cap or hat or by combing his locks over it. For Szilárd it was not a problem; it made him unique. His fingers often found their way to the indentation and delicately mapped every tiny landmark in minute detail. He found much pleasure in carefully scratching his little trough, and would play with it just as other boys of his age enjoyed their penises. And he was told off in much the same way when his mother caught him: “Stop fiddling with it!”

But in vain. In the caverns of the night when he was on his own and he could insert all five fingers in the uneven gash, his thoughts became more focused, as if his nails scratched the surface of the brain, waking whatever slept within. At such times he came closest to achieving the unfolding of everything that he longed so passionately to discover.

Meanwhile his mother paid him little attention—bigger things were brewing. The town was in turmoil. The Hungarian nobles were less and less inclined to comply with the Emperor’s wishes, finding his orders increasingly outrageous. There was a notable scandal when the Emperor’s personal envoy was welcomed in the main square with a speech in Hungarian, the translation of which was not forthcoming. In a matter of minutes this crystallized into a slogan, which was soon on everyone’s lips, indeed became the headline of the local newspaper: “He who does not know our language cannot truly understand us!;” the crowds began to cheer and clap. The Emperor’s envoy, a paunchy, goatee-bearded little fellow, misunderstood the situation, rose and began to bow low in all directions. He was met by booing and cries of “Off, off!”

That evening in the Golden Lamb the local playwright Gáspár Szerdahelyi’s tragedy
The Unhappy Hungarians
was being performed by the company. The action was set in the period of the Tartar invasions in the thirteenth century, yet the evil Tartars wore Austrian army uniforms, and their lines were peppered with words of German. The play was such a success that it held the audience in the Golden Lamb until well past midnight, and the company had to encore the fifth act. Szilárd’s mother played a heroic sutler wench to universal acclaim, with her hair billowing and in a skirt so short that not only her ankle but sometimes also her shins flashed into view. Szilárd, who had been forbidden by Béla Berda to view the tragedy, partly because of the lateness of the hour and partly because he had not covered himself with glory at school, watched from behind the back row in the company of the other children. Here it struck him for the first time how beautiful his mother was and how much she was admired by the menfolk. It was an odd, tingling sensation, which kept him awake for nights on end.

The following day the Noble County unanimously voted for the resolution. Béla Berda took a copy home with him and proudly read it out at the dinner table. Szilárd’s mother learned it by heart. She often recited it, even if there was no obvious reason or audience, and even while doing the housework. It stuck in Szilárd’s memory, too, he heard it so many times.

Under the chairmanship of Royal Councillor his Honor Endre Jagasics of Bátormezö, Judges of the County Court Messrs. József Morocza and Ferenc Dániel, Chief Constable Antal Varasdy, and Town Clerk Béla Berda, as members delegated by the Noble County to establish in its bosom the National Theater Company, having met in the matter of the advancement of Theater in the Hungarian language, humbly and respectfully beg to bring the following further proposals to the attention of the Estates of the Realm.

The aid that the Company shall need, over and above its other income, to consist partly of capital moneys raised, partly obtained by subscription from the Noble County, is hereby guaranteed. It is, however, deemed necessary to engage in discussions jointly with neighboring Counties concerning the need to support the Theater Company performing in the Hungarian language irrespective of the Noble County in which it is performing, since the Company can serve as a barrier and dam against the Germanization that is flooding us from the direction of Austria and Styria.

Further aid may consist in harnessing the support of a subscribing audience for twenty-one performances of the Hungarian Theater Company over a period of five years. In addition, there should be established a Fund, of which the standing capital would assist the Company’s goals and endeavors. Finally, in every district of the land all chief and deputy constables are to call upon all owners of land, men of the cloth, and nobles of quality and quantity, to contribute to the advancement of the National Theater Company.

One night Szilárd had the sudden and absurd notion that if he were to climb up into the dovecote again, he would be able to imbibe some of the opium of the worlds long past. He pulled a gown over his nightshirt and stole out into the yard. Streaks boding ill lined the sky, veiling the full moon. From somewhere the desperate barking of a dog unable to sleep could be heard. Szilárd was shivering, the cool of the evening grass made his bare feet tingle. The dovecotes loomed huge in the dark, seeming much bigger than in the light of day. With considerable difficulty, he managed to shin up. He had grown recently and was heavier than in those days; the pole bowed under his weight. A few birds startled awake, cooing in righteous indignation.