The Book of Fathers (23 page)

Otto Stern was counted among the regular visitors, Miksa Stern came less often, preferring to be the kibitzer, if they let him. Otto Stern played with clenched teeth and if he did not leave with his money trebled he would be most dissatisfied. Miksa Stern played for smaller stakes, which he nonetheless managed to lose in the end. He never asked for loans or credit; at such needful times he would rise from the card table, offended, and watch how the others battled on without him.

Otto Stern was having little luck that day. He was surrounded by four tobacco merchants at the table, people used to playing together and capable of understanding each other from the droop of an eyelid. When the amount that he
had allotted himself for gambling had migrated over to his partners, Otto Stern struggled to his feet, departing with a click of his heels and the accompanying of his spurs. Miksa Stern followed him like a puli dog. “Where now?” he asked when the iron gate had slammed behind them.

“What is that to do with you? Mind your own business.”

“Be not angry with me, I was on your side. I find it touching, your effort on the Society’s behalf.”

“Not the Society’s; my own. I keep my word.”

They walked on towards the center of town, where they had tethered their mounts. No one ever tied up a horse at the Tulip House, lest the act reveal that their owners were within. Otto Stern gave a round stone such a kick that it flew some two hundred ells, hitting a post with a sharp crack.

It was well past midnight when the two riders reached the first bend in the Hegyhát stream. The low-lying field was waterlogged, the water up to the tired horses’ knees, their hoofs slipping dangerously. Otto Stern turned back. His cousin thought he was looking for a ford, but Otto Stern had decided to head for the Nagyfalu hostelry. Climbing down from his horse, he gave the wooden door a resounding knock. No answer. He then battered on the door with both fists so hard that at every blow the wood visibly bent inwards. An old woman wearing a black kerchief looked out of the spyhole; she must have tumbled out of bed—a gray feather fluttered on her hair. “Stop that row!”

“Since when have they been locking the door?” asked Otto Stern.

“Holy Mother of God!” The old woman mellowed as the key rattled and turned in the lock. “A good while since Sir last honored us with his presence!” Wordless, Otto Stern aimed for the bar. Only two drunkards lay in a stupor across the tables, fallen together by the ears. The instruments of the Gypsy band were piled up in one corner, wrapped in
layers of rags. Otto Stern let out a bellow: “What on earth is this? A condemned cell?”

The two drunks started awake and blinked at him in confusion. By then Benedek Bordás had scuttled out, a gown hurriedly wrapped about his nightshirt. “Mr. Stern, sir, … at such a late hour?”

“Just so. A pint of your best red!” he glanced at Miksa Stern: “Same for him!”

“Thank you, but I would rather …” he began, but an angry flash from the eyes of Otto Stern made him swallow his words.

When the wine arrived, Otto Stern tossed his off in a single gulp and then pulled the landlord close by his leather apron: “Have you any girls?”

“I do.”

“What sort?”

“What sort does Sir wish?”

Otto Stern considered his reply. He had not touched a woman since time out of mind; desire rose afresh within him. “Full bosomed, tight-rumped, and one who washes often!”

Benedek Bordás ran to the serving girls’ quarters behind the hostelry. There were only two left now, the others having moved on. Borcsa, the fiery Gypsy, and Fatimeh, who had fetched up here from some distant shore. Benedek Bordás wondered which one to wake up, and chose Fatimeh, as her door was closer. Fatimeh, dressed in accordance with the customs of her village, looked as if she had wound a Turkish prayer-mat around herself. She asked tremulously from within: “Who is that?”

“Open the door. I have a job for you.”

Fatimeh’s dark iris was clouded still by the mist of sleep.

Benedek Bordás felt sorry for her. “It is no joy for me either, at a time like this …” and he yawned.

“Let us go!” said Fatimeh.

Otto Stern was waiting in the back room. He was staring out of the window, wondering if those really were the first faint rosy fingers of dawn outside, or if his eyes were simply deceiving him.

They knocked. Otto Stern let the girl in.

“At your service.”

“What’s your name?”

“Fatimeh.”

“I have no memory of you here before.”

The girl did not reply. She was twisting and tugging at the material of her dress, her eyes fixed on the ground. Otto Stern took her chin into his hand and studied her more closely. Then, quietly, he asked: “Are you a Jew?”

“Of course I am not a Jew!” Fatimeh’s indignation raised the pitch of her voice so high that it offended Otto Stern’s ears.

“Well then, where were you sprung from?”

“Isn’t that all the same to you?”

Otto Stern bawled her out: “Answer my question if I ask you, or I will …”

But before he had a chance to strike her, Fatimeh began to undress, and as her soft nakedness shone out, there was more light than when the double candlestick was burning on its own. Otto Stern threw himself upon the girl in the way he thought a man is supposed to find pleasure in a woman. Fatimeh took him by the arm: “No, good sir, not like that. Let me undress you properly. Lie down, close your eyes, and leave the rest to me.”

Otto Stern’s anger—if he is paying, no little whore should be telling him what to do—unexpectedly dissipated, and warm feelings of childhood spread within him and for a few moments he was a suckling babe in the arms of his mother, Yanna. And then he received from the girl something he had never before experienced. For him hitherto the securing of pleasures of the body was a struggle: the
more stormily he conquered the female of the species the more he felt himself the conqueror, and his pleasure came from this source too. Fatimeh tamed him, coaxed the feral beast within into a sweet household pet.

By the time he awoke in the morning the girl had gone. Otto Stern was staring at the ceiling, musing on the events of the night, when two bailiffs burst into the room and ordered him to the bar, and, since he resisted, they whistled for two more of their kind so that together they overcame him, tied him up, and led him through the corridor into the large room now bathed in sunlight. Already sitting there, every muscle of his body trembling and also with his hands tied behind his back, was Miksa Stern, face to face with Ádám Geleji Katona, Jr., and Graf Franz Neusiedler, member of the Governing Council. Who proceeded to wipe his moustachios—they had just been drinking wine—and began, in the official language of the empire: “Do you speak German?”

“Yes … as much as I have to,” replied Otto Stern.

“Quite a fellow! While I have people looking for you everywhere, you are hiding in the hostelry, a stone’s throw from my bed for the night.”

“I am at home in these parts.” He bellowed at Miksa Stern: “You will shake yourself to death if you don’t stop! They are not going to eat you!”

“Speak only when you are spoken to!” exclaimed Graf Franz Neusiedler.

Otto Stern threw him a murderous look. The royal commissioner, leafing through his papers to begin the interrogation, was untroubled by it.

What were the aims of this particular Society? Why was the primitive Hungarian language more important to them than use of German or Latin? Where does the Society store its uniforms and weapons? Denial is useless: the truth will out. And so on, relentlessly, for many hours. Otto Stern
sometimes lost his self-control and bawled or uttered threats, but the
alispán
always called him to order and because of the offense to a person of his rank he held out the prospect of monetary fines or imprisonment. Otto Stern felt worse and worse, sweat poured off his brow, but he could not wipe it away; the rope dug deep into his flesh; his spine had acquired a crick on the hard-backed chair; but most of all he was consumed by sheer fury: on what grounds were they interrogating him like a criminal? He was afraid that he would share the fate of his father, who in all innocence and in the prime of life was cast into the prison of the Austrian emperor and Hungarian king. Come to think of it, what right does he have to rule over us? Why is Austria not enough for him? And why don’t we have a Hungarian king of our own? One who speaks our language, knows our customs, has our interests at heart … When he reached this point it dawned on him that what they should have done is precisely what he was being unjustly accused of doing: donned uniforms, taken up arms, and gone to war against the tyranny that tells us what to do from far-off Vienna, with rough hands and the injudicious exercise of power. He felt a growing knot in his head and in his ribcage; he was wheezing like a blacksmith’s bellows.

“Are you unwell?” asked Ádám Geleji Katona, Jr., and motioned to one of the bailiffs to give the accused some water. Otto Stern would have reached for the cup but forgot that his hands were tied behind his back. He tripped forward on the chair and knocked his chin on the table with an almighty crack that made even the councillor shudder.

Miksa Stern gave a high-pitched shriek that sounded like a girl’s: “Otto!”

Graf Franz Neusiedler slipped out from behind the table. “We shall have a pause. Bring him round as quickly as you can.” Grasping the wine bottle and his cup he went out into the hostelry garden. In summer it was possible to dine out
of doors, at X-legged tables painted green. He sat down on a bench at one of these.

Benedek Bordás hurried out to wipe down the wooden table as the Graf sat down, and instantly conjured up a blue-and-white tablecloth. “Nice day we are having!” he said to the Graf, in Hungarian.

Graf Franz Neusiedler looked straight through him. Thanks to his mother, Annamária Lórántffy, he was fluent in the language but considered that when representing the Austrian emperor he could not stray from the official language.

It proved quite impossible to obey his command and beat some life into Otto Stern, though they even tried to do so literally. In the end they had to seek new orders from the Graf, who had both suspects taken to the prison cell of the county assembly, where they were manacled hand and foot and chained to the walls. Otto Stern was in a sitting position on the cold stone. Miksa Stern’s chains were close enough to Otto Stern’s to allow him to reach his head with the palm of his hand. He kept putting his fingers in his mouth and with the moisture thus gained he would stroke Otto Stern’s face, though the latter continued to show no sign of life. Miksa Stern sobbed and wondered what his elderly parents would say if they knew.

Golden honey from the comb rolled softly on some flat surface, the bees buzzed soothingly above him. Otto Stern, in swaddling clouts, watched as Nanna Eszter spread the honey with practiced movements. Now Otto Stern could see that the pale surface was the rolled-out pastry of the strudel and covered the entire table, like a tablecloth. After the honey there came the sprinkling of poppyseed, sultanas, and chopped walnuts, and finally a dusting of fine white sugar—this was the Sterns’ recipe for strudel.

Otto Stern was clear, however, that he was merely remembering this. In the background the stone flags of the
prison cellar, black with damp, confirmed that this was the dream, not the other. The images of the past were followed by a token vouchsafing of the future: he could see how there was a flood, then a conflagration, and the foaming of much blood: difficult years lay ahead of us. He could see the birth of his son Szilárd. He could see in the light of many candles on a glittering wooden podium wildly gesticulating men saying their piece as the now-adult Szilárd quietly whispered the odd word to them …

His pain increased and again he fell into the well of the unconscious.

When he next came to himself, night had fallen, and he was very cold. Someone nearby was snoring with something more like a croak (on the basis of his family history, his guess was that it was a dog). He could feel that the timepiece was missing from his pocket, the egg-shaped watch, his most treasured possession! He tried to reach for his pocket insofar as the irons permitted and could feel that the chain, too, was gone—someone had torn it off. The henchmen? Or that girl? What was her name? Fatimeh …

This loss pained him more than all the physical suffering. His teeth were chattering. Had he not been able to look ahead, he would have been quite unable to quell his baleful foreboding that this was undoubtedly the end. But he knew he would have a son, and that was possible only if he survived this filthy prison, this filthy business, this filthy time.

Graf Franz Neusiedler was still at the breakfast table when news was brought to him that one of the suspects had expired during the night.

“Pity. That means he will not be able to undergo interrogation.”

Some hours later he discovered from the sealed package brought to him by mounted courier that he had traveled so far from Vienna in vain. The Hegyhát where Nándor Wimpassinger (not Wimpassing) and Miska (not Miksa)
Stern had secretly founded a citizen’s militia was another Hegyhát, at the far end of the country and no more than a day’s ride from the imperial capital. The councillor immediately issued instructions to Vienna to have the copyist who had committed the error dismissed from his post.

“What shall we do with Miksa Stern?” asked Ádám Geleji Katona, Jr.

“Is he a noble?”

“No. He is part of the local vintner fraternity.”

“The lash.”

“How many?”

“Five and twenty.”

“In public?”

“Please yourself.”

Graf Franz Neusiedler was the last person to leave the lower part of the village on four wheels, raising his feet onto the seat opposite, as the water in the carriage rose knee-high. There were no other outsiders there. A third of the houses, chiefly along the low-lying banks of the stream, were in danger of collapse. The cellars had turned into baths, the walls were wet through and on the point of disintegrating. The following day the waters rose again, drowned some domestic fowl, and all manner of objects were swept away by the swirling stream.