The Book of Fathers (39 page)

But I must now take up arms against a more serious threat. I dare not even write it down, so superstitious am I. May heaven grant me a sufficiency of strength and patience
.

Nándor Csillag kept stubbornly to his original intention. He found a house garlanded in ivy that now stood empty and forlorn. Constructed more than a century earlier by the town’s Fire Brigade Union, it had not been used since they built a new storage building in 1910. This was the building leased by Nándor Csillag. He gave his restaurant the sonorous name Restaurant à la Rossini, but this never really caught on and regulars would say, “Let’s go to Nándi Csillag’s!” Because at Nándi’s you could get French soups, Italian roasts, and Spanish desserts for the gentry like nowhere else. There were just seven tables, and the inhabitants of Pécs had, willy-nilly, to get used to the notion of booking tables, whether in person, by telephone, or foot-messenger. At Nándi’s Slovak waitresses served the specialties decked out in tiny candlelights and in the evenings the gramophone would play arias by Verdi, Rossini, and Puccini.

Nándor Csillag had a rose window cut in the tiny space that had been used by the duty officer of the fire brigade, and so could keep a constant eye on his guests and staff. If the diners were acquaintances—and virtually all the townsfolk counted as such—he made sure he greeted them in
person. He put on weight rapidly, which made his delicate frame appear rather humorous. Ilse pointed out that people might think they were both pregnant—she being now in her eighth month. Nándor Csillag had no regret about his corporation, and grew nineteenth-century mutton-chop whiskers to match. This hirsute growth turned white in the course of a week when the event foretold in The Book of Fathers in fact became reality.

Ilse’s behavior grew more and more strange. She gave birth to Tamás, but would not give him suck even once. Among ladies of standing it was accepted that this task was done in their stead by a wet nurse, but in the case of her first two sons, Ilse had insisted on breast-feeding them herself. She often voiced her conviction that the health of the infant was contingent on mother’s milk and urged her friends to follow her example.

Her knowledge of Hungarian seemed to deteriorate rapidly, with errors in her grammar and difficulty finding the right word. “Am I getting oldster?” she would ask, her face a map of fear. Her husband’s remonstrations failed to reassure her. Her chambermaid would often find she had locked herself in her room and showed no inclination to answer the door or even to reply to her repeated pleas. Once she spent a day and a half in her room without food or drink, totally indifferent to the calls of her husband and father-and mother-in-law. Nándor Csillag could not understand what had got into her, and Ilse never gave an explanation.

When one afternoon she set fire to the brocade curtains, the house all but burned to the ground. The staff, horrified, rang for the fire brigade. Once the flames had been extinguished the fireman in charge drew up an official report that gave rise to rumors about Ilse’s mental state that spread like the wildfire she had created. The family doctor kept reassuring Nándor Csillag that these things happen, that the
stresses and pains of giving birth often short-circuited the nervous system of the female body. “The ordinary folk say: the milk goes to the brain. It would be better if the good lady were again to give suck to the infant!”

Ilse listened to the doctor with an expressionless face. In vain did her husband prompt her, gently at first, then with increasing urgency, but she had nothing to say. Hardly had the doctor left the house when Ilse threw herself on the ground and began to pound the wooden floorboards with her head, as if it were her intention to crack open her skull. Not even with the help of the chambermaid could Nándor Csillag make her stop.

These fits of self-destruction soon assumed a chronic character. Tonchi was the only person who was able to still Ilse’s ravings, drawing her gently but firmly to her ample bosom. First the doctor, then other members of his family suggested that he should have his wife committed to an institution before she inflicted fatal damage on herself. This proposal would make him stamp his feet with rage: “That will be the day! I won’t have Ilse taken to the yellow house! Out of the question!”

But the situation deteriorated further. Soon even the safety of the children could no longer be guaranteed. Nándor Csillag took on two nuns trained in the treatment of such conditions, who tended Ilse day and night.

It is beyond imagining what sins we may have committed to deserve such punishment from fate. I had hoped to be able to live out my final days in peaceful isolation from the world, but an unending horror has blighted my everyday life: the illness that is taking her over is driving Ilse to commit appalling acts. I am pointed at wherever I go in town and my misfortune has become the gossip of the women of the town as well as of the men in the coffeehouses. Our tale is a tragedy worthy of an opera librettist. No greater calamity could befall us
.

He continued to hold this view even after the Hungarian parliament passed Law XV of 1938. A printed copy circulated in the
Nándi
and in the
Wild Man
.

Paragraph I.

In the interests of achieving a more effective balance in the life of society, the Hungarian Royal Ministry is hereby authorized to implement without further delay certain essential and important measures—including measures deemed necessary to eliminate unemployment among the intelligentsia—within three weeks of the promulgation of the present law, and in the spheres and according to principles delimited in the paragraphs below may implement such legal measures even if their implementation would otherwise require legislation.

Damned officialese!

The essence of the measures was explained to him by the lawyers among the regulars. Chambers would be established for lawyers, journalists, engineers, doctors, artists, and virtually all those in the professions, but the percentage of Jews in each such chamber would not be allowed to exceed 20 percent.

It soon became clear that he, Nándor Csillag, who in the recent past had performed in the leading opera houses of Europe, could not become a chamber member, because someone had decided he was to be counted as Jewish, since he had never formally converted to an “accepted and recognized” faith. Though this hurt, in practice it did not matter; he had long regarded his career as an artist as over.

He still persisted in maintaining that no greater blow was imaginable than Ilse’s illness even when Law IV of 1939 came into force, restricting the areas of public and economic life that could be occupied by Jews. A summary of its general principles—
Document No. 702 from the Lower House
—
appeared in the newspapers. This document was all too easy to understand.

While before the passage of this law only this country’s western neighbor, Germany, had taken resolute action to drive out the Jews, many other countries of Europe have since followed.

Mother of God, he thought, are we going to be driven out? He could not begin to imagine how this might be achieved.

It is being increasingly recognized that the Jews are a distinctive ethnic group, sharply differentiated from all other peoples.

Nándor Csillag had a fit. He bellowed and howled so much that it took five people to hold him down. In the town it was rumored that he had caught his wife’s illness. He would stop people in the street, begging them to read a crumpled copy of the newssheet with the preamble to the law, while repeating incredulously and obsessively: “Me, not a Hungarian! Me, whose Hungarian name brought glory to my homeland in the greatest opera houses of Europe? Who speaks Hungarian perfectly, and not a syllable of Hebrew? Who has ancestors who were executed in 1849 because they fought for Hungary’s freedom? Has everyone here gone completely mad??”

He would read out long extracts from the despicable text and in vain would people try to flee; they had to listen to it all, for he would hold them by the sleeve. At the most agonizing paragraphs, he would have to gasp for breath.

For a while he kept the document among the family papers. Later he stuck it into the cover of The Book of Fathers, which had split at the spine and acquired a crack.
His son Balázs threw it out when the volumes ended up with him.

Jews have taken part, and continue to take part, in a proportion that far exceeds their number, in the commission of crimes for selfish financial reasons, especially those that are liable to undermine the economic foundations of the country. Those who commit abuses of financial instruments involving the exchange rate are almost exclusively Jews, and the state authority must take wide-ranging measures to ensure permanently that abuses in this area do not harm the country’s economic prospects.

In terms of the law the words “Jew” and “Jewish” define the group in relation to which it desires to implement special regulations. By contrast, the term “Israelite” applies to the definition of the faith group. Those that the law subsumes under the term “Jew” are not necessarily to be identified with those belonging to the Israelite confession; the circle of Jews is a broader category.

The law restricts the role played by Jews in legislation, in bodies with legal authority and in local government and in the exercise of the ballot with reference to these:

participation in public office by Jews is in future entirely withdrawn;

the percentage of Jewish members in the chambers of law, engineering, medicine, journalism, theater, and film, is hereby limited to 6 percent;

positions involving the intellectual and artistic direction of the press, theater, and film companies are forbidden to Jews;

licenses held by permission of local authorities are no longer to be held by or issued to Jews;

in the sphere of public transportation and carriage the number of Jewish entrepreneurs will gradually be reduced to 6 percent;

certificates to practice trades and industries are generally forbidden to Jews until the number of such certificates and licenses falls below 6 percent of the total;

in trade and other fee-earning occupations, of those employed in white-collar work Jews shall generally not exceed 12 percent in number;

the ministry is hereby permitted to take steps to promote the emigration of Jews;

finally,

legal steps will be taken to ensure that any attempt to flout the law will be dealt with severely.

“Well, perhaps now is the time to emigrate,” Ilona said when the family met to put their heads together. “If it’s really going to be implemented.”

“But this is our land, too!” said Nándor Csillag. “Why don’t
they
emigrate!”

“Don’t shout, my dear, my head is throbbing. You are not on stage. We can hear you at normal pitch.”

Sándor Csillag traveled up to Budapest to try to secure the necessary documents. His old contacts had been severed, however, and doors closed on him one after the other.

In the daily
Magyarság
, venomous articles berated the Pécs authorities for their kid-glove treatment of the town’s Jews. Among the examples cited was Sándor Csillag, “the shoe-baron with the effrontery to charge sky-high prices for his shoes, who thoroughly and disgracefully fleeces the poor,” and his son “the illustrious representative of the Jewish fat-cat oligarchy, the owner of the
Nándi
, who always has room and food for his fellow Jews, who suck the blood of our patriots.” In both cases the name (Stern) was given in brackets.

Nándor Csillag bared his teeth, like a horse being shod. “What impertinence! I have documentation by the cartload that we are Csillags! And anyway, where did they dig that up?”

The family had difficulty persuading him not to sue the editors. It would just pour oil on the fire. The licenses to run the restaurant and the shoe shop were under threat of withdrawal shortly.

“What next?” asked father from son and son from father. It would have been logical to save the businesses by transferring their ownership to the incontrovertibly German Ilse, but unfortunately by this time and on her husband’s request, she had been declared incapable of managing her own affairs and no longer of sound mind.

“We need an
Aladár
!” said Sándor Csillag (Stern).

“An
Aladár
?” Nándor Csillag (Stern) was puzzled.

“Are you deaf?
Aladár
! A front man! Got it?”

Anti Kolozsvári became the family’s
Aladár
. Anti Kolozsvári was a well-known freeloader and sponger in the coffeehouses of Pécs. Nándor Csillag regularly supplied him with small sums, which in his notebook he put under the heading “Antimatter Tax.” Anti Kolozsvári had drunk himself out of a job in journalism and was not sober even as he officially and formally—for an increased fee—took over the ownership of the shoe shop and the restaurant. In the document that effected the transfer there were even two spelling mistakes in the signature of the beneficiary, but it bothered no one that in the document he recorded his name as Antall Kolosvári.

The Germans had overrun Poland when Nándor Csillag began to wonder whether what awaited them was in fact as serious as Ilse’s disturbed mind. The possibility of emigrating did crop up, but the family could not agree on a destination. Nándor Csillag voted for Switzerland, Tonchi for the United States, while Sándor Csillag chose Australia,
because of the kangaroos. Ilona and her parents preferred Canada, where two younger brothers of Manfred Goldbaum were already well established.