The Book of Fathers (29 page)

“The secret of the future,” he explained to his son-in-law, “is hidden in the difference between human and divine knowledge. This was already known in the ancient world. Have you heard of the Oracle of Delphi?”

“Yes,” replied Mendel Berda-Stern. “It lies in Apollo’s sacred grove, where Zeus killed the dragon. Yes. The problem is, often the prophecy is in vain, because its gist can only be understood retrospectively. Pythia, the priestess of Delphi, told Philip II, King of Macedon and father of Alexander the Great: ‘Beware of the chariot!’ When he was
stabbed to death, the sword of Pausanias bore an engraving of a chariot.”

“I see you are a man of great sophistication, Berda.”

“Mendel. Or Berda-Stern. But I am not in the least sophisticated. What I know, I know from my fathers.”

Leopold Pohl took this explanation as a form of modesty. He drank the pertu with his son-in-law, so that henceforth they were on a first-name basis.

“The only question is, is it right for man to crave divine knowledge?” asked Mendel Berda-Stern.

“If He did not wish it, He would surely not permit it.”

Mendel Berda-Stern told his father-in-law that whenever he heard of a clairvoyant, he would certainly visit her. He had had his fortune told from cards, from lead, coffee grounds, crystal balls, but of course most often from his palm. He also admitted that on his unexpected trips he was not trading in property—as he let it be known—but visiting secret citadels of gambling, which were the source of his regular income. His father had left him only debts, and the exiguous annuity provided by the Stern family allowed for only a modest existence.

“Everyone to his own, according to his gifts,” said Leopold Pohl. After a few glasses of vintage wine he solemnly brought out his most treasured possession,
Les Vrayes Centuries et Prophéties
, the prophecies of Maistre Nostradamus.

“King of the prophets,” said Mendel Berda-Stern in an awed whisper.

The volume was published in the city of Lyon. Leopold Pohl had had it bound in mauve leather in Homonna.

“Do you know French?” he asked.

“Yes. My great-grandfather Richard Stern was a professor of French. I inherited my French from him.” He took the opportunity to explain somewhat diffidently that his knowledge simply arose in him, through force of memory, without any kind of study.

Leopold Pohl was unsure whether to believe him or not. “Let us join forces in trying to interpret the quatrains and the presages.”

They spent many a quiet afternoon among the quatrains of Nostradamus, that is, Master Michel de Notredame, the majority of which Mendel Berda-Stern copied down himself. From one of these he suspected that Master Nostradamus was also of the view that he had received most of his knowledge from his forefathers. He lost his children and his first wife to the plague, on which he became an authority … a wretched and melancholy fate.

The famous Jewish doctor’s
Mischsprache
led to much scratching of heads. He used Italian, Greek, Latin, and even Provençal expressions and distorted words. With Provençal Mendel Berda-Stern was able to make some headway (his great-grandfather had studied this dialect), but in Greek he had to depend rather on Leopold Pohl. His imagination was much exercised by those of the prophecies of the king of prophets that had come true. For example, the foretelling of the death of Henri II, in a quatrain that Mendel Stern rendered thus:

A young lion comes to best the old,
A battle royal this pair will hold:
An eye is stabbed through a cage of gold,
Two wounds but one, a death foretold.

And this is exactly how it turned out: the king took part in a chivalric tournament in a golden helmet. He had overcome two of his opponents when the lance of the next, Count Montgomery, broke in two at the third assay, one end penetrating the golden visor to stab the king in the eye. The first wound was in the eye, the second in his brain.

Of the 1,200 quatrains, they found one that concerned Hungary. After heated exchanges they joined forces to
produce a faithful translation. They took it to refer to the years of the Hungarian War of Independence of 1848–49.

The Magyars’ life doth change to death,
Than slavery worse the new order’s breath.
Their city vast cries woe unto Heaven,
Twixt Castor and Pollux great battle doth beckon.

They debated whether it was Pest-Buda crying unto heaven or rather one of the major Transylvanian towns that had been captured. Perhaps Arad, where the thirteen Hungarian martyrs of the Revolution were hanged?

They ordered further books dealing with Nostradamus and the study of astrology. In respect of the latter, Mendel Berda-Stern also found relevant material in his father’s bequest. In the Lyceum of Eger, Szilárd Berda-Stern had read his way through Kepler’s three-volume
De Harmonice Mundi
, written in heavy Baroque Latin, which he found in the collections there. He noted how to cast a personal horoscope on the basis of computations based on the exact moment of birth.

Traveling in the city of Nice, Mendel Berda-Stern spared neither money nor effort in attempting to secure Jean-Baptiste Morin de Villefranche’s twenty-six-volume
Astrologia Gallica
. He managed to obtain only a French-language conspectus of the vast work. Four days and four nights he did not leave his room. He understood that the significance of the planets in the horoscope depends on which house they are lodged in. The calculations made about his own fate were in many respects modified by the arguments of Morin de Villefranche. He inserted what he read into the structure that he developed following Kepler. He experimented with complex calculations, to lift the veil covering the years, months, and days to come. He came to Nice to gamble, but on this occasion he did not darken the doors of the casino.

On the morning of the fifth day he hurried to the street of the goldsmiths and bought an expensive gold ring with a mounted sapphire, paid his hotel bill, and went home by the shortest possible route. He had a difficult journey: January was saying its farewells with hard frosts and storms of snow. It was around noon that he reached the apple trees of his Homonna garden and ran to the back wing of the house, where they had moved when they were first married. He pulled off his boots, fur hat, and coat, kissed Eleonora three times, and then said to her: “My dear, I am so happy! At the end of this year, on the fourteenth day of November, we shall have a son, to whom we shall give the name Sigmund, though he will prefer to be called Sándor.”

“Oh come now, Mendi my dear, where on earth did you get that from?” asked Eleonora, bridling.

“Not really earth. I worked it out. But for some reason the boy will be born in Nagyvárad in Transylvania.”

“Nagyvárad? But I have never been to Nagyvárad.”

“Nor have I.”

On his next trip he won 90,000 francs. All evening he stubbornly put his money, all smallish bets, on 7; he lost again and again, but he waited for his turn and on the seventy-seventh spin he put all his money on the number 7. As the ball popped about, it looked as though it would settle into the adjacent slot, but then after all, it decided to jump right into the 7. Mendel Berda-Stern was in a daze as the congratulations showered upon him. His winnings were carried in a wooden casket after him by his manservant. The next day he moved on, because his calculations suggested that he was about to enter an uncertain period when it was not worth taking risks.

After this adventure he also visited Marseille. In the market of the old port he visited all its three fortune-tellers in turn. From the last woman, who read his fortune from the tarot, he would hear: “You have already taken the path of
success. Advantageous journeys await, good plans are taking shape in your head.”

Mendel Berda-Stern nodded. After paying he asked: “How much for the cards?”

“Pardon?”

“I’d buy your cards. The whole pack.”

“What are you thinking of?”

“A hundred.”

“Monseigneur, they would not work for you anyway.”

“A hundred and fifty.”

“I tell you, no …”

“Two hundred.”

“Please!”

He paid three hundred for the much-worn pack. He had already learned how to put out a Celtic cross, but in the dark tents he had few opportunities to study properly the cards of the various colors. In the first alehouse on the way he ordered himself a jug of Champagne wine and studied the colored pictures of the tarot pack. It consisted of twenty-two cards, of which one was unnumbered: LE MAT—the Fool. Number XIII, on the other hand, bore no name; it showed a skeleton reaping heads, hands, feet in a field of blue flowers.

He studied the cards again and again. He paused at VII: LE CHARIOT. A crowned man with golden hair stands on a cart resembling a pulpit, drawn by two horses, one blue, the other red. On the chariot a coat-of-arms, bearing two letters: M.S. Mendel Stern? The Berda is missing.

Leopold Pohl enlightened him later that the M stood for Mercurius or Mercury, the S for Sulfur. These two elements are of utmost importance in alchemy. “If we ever try to make gold, we shall have need of them.”

Mendel Berda-Stern gave a little “Hmm.” He already had a way of making gold. Though he did not actually say so, in the features of the charioteering king of card VII he
detected himself, especially because of the wide, almond-shaped eyes and small but uneven lips. Not surprising if I win on number 7, then. The tarot and the computations of astrology confirm each other. He was troubled only a little: that the fortune-tellers generally regarded number 7 as the picture of the Reaper. (Of course, not in tarot and not Roman seven: VII.)

Eleonora did in fact fall pregnant and her belly began to swell nicely; her husband considered the increase between his two trips to be spectacular. Above them hung the unspoken question: how do they get to Nagyvárad? Apart from his wife, Mendel Berda-Stern discussed the matter with two others. Leopold Pohl was of the opinion that the solution to this problem had to be left to fate; if it had been decided that the child would come into the world in Nagyvárad, then fate would see to it that his parents got there in time. His sister Hami persuaded him of the opposite: “What is the problem in traveling to Nagyvárad? Surely it cannot do any harm. While if you stayed at home and there was some complication … you would never forgive yourselves.”

They had a letter from the Sterns. Mendel Berda-Stern was nowadays even more reluctant to accept money and presents from them since they no longer actually needed it. But he knew if he refused, they would be mortally offended, and that was not a good thing either. He hardly knew the members of the large Stern clan; apart from a few courtesy visits he had almost no contact with them. The last time he visited them it was to introduce them to Eleonora.

They had moved from Hegyhát to Tokay. The Stern & Stern Wine Emporium, as well as the locally resident members of the family, had moved into Tokay after the serious conflagration of this year, 1866, as they had suffered severe damage to their houses and property. Hearing of this, Mendel Berda-Stern wrote them a concerned letter.

A sealed canvas satchel accompanied the reply, brought by a young farm laborer. The lengthy letter was written by Móricz Stern. From his adventures into the past Mendel Berda-Stern knew that Móricz was Rebecca’s eldest. Rebecca’s father, Benjamin, had died early from tuberculosis. His mother, Eszter, was the sister of Éva, the wife of István Stern. Mendel Berda-Stern had seen the Lemberg tragedy any number of times: death by the sword of five-year-old Robert and three-year-old Rudolf. He would gladly have been spared further viewings. But he to whom is given the gift of seeing into the past does not choose what he sees.

Our dear Mendel,

You would not believe how often you are in our thoughts, especially since we moved to Tokay. Many of our beloved things fell victim to the fire, above all in this list stand the copper mortar that melted into an unrecognizable ball, found by Bálint Sternovszky in the clearing where he built his turret—as you will know, since you are of our clan, the first-born son of your honorable father. Those whom He gave the gift of seeing into the past can feel if disaster threatens. It is certain that grave events are about to befall us. For this reason I am sending you, and ask you to look after and protect, a few family relics, above all and especially the first Book of Fathers. Its continuation you already have in your possession. It is possible that I shall be obliged to come forward with further requests in the near future, in the hope that your feelings towards us owe more to the strength of blood ties than to the debilitating power of distance.

The mere sight of the soiled cover of The Book of Fathers so upset Mendel Berda-Stern that he put off opening it until the next day, though he would gladly have rushed off with it to Leopold Pohl, so that the two of them might browse the
history of the Sterns, Sternovszkys, and Csillags. But all this is only his business. He spent many a long and lonely night turning the parchment pages. He wrote comments in the margins. He found it difficult to imagine that he could ever return the treasure entrusted to him for safekeeping. When he gave up reading and reverie at dawn, he would extinguish the sooty candle, and in the dazzling darkness he would embrace the thick volume as a mother does her baby.

Summer was over and the branches of the apple trees and quinces were bare in the wind when a messenger boy brought a message from Móricz Stern: “Mr. Stern asks you to come and see him without delay in Tokay. He awaits an answer.”

“I shall be there tomorrow sundown.”

Mendel Berda-Stern packed. Eleonora’s face clouded over when she saw him making preparations. “Mendi, where are you off to this time?”

“They want me in Tokay, urgently.”

“Could I not keep you company?”

“If your condition permits, why not?”

It was still a month and a half till the child was due. Mendel Berda-Stern persuaded Hami to join them. Not counting the coachman they set off in the bigger carriage with a manservant and a chamber maid. They took little in the way of luggage, the heaviest item being the wooden chest that they had piled high with gifts, so that they did not arrive empty-handed. It had in it two complete Kassa hams, three truckles of Homonna cheese the size of small millstones, several bottles of cider made according to a local recipe, and four heavy Pozsony homespuns, ideal for hanging on the wall or as bedspreads.