The Phoenix Land (39 page)

It took a long time to decide upon a name, a long time even to think of someone suitable. What was his name? I can no longer remember, but it does not matter. Considering the wretched part he played it is better it should not be remembered. He was a strutting military type, with tremendous moustaches and swelling chest, who stamped his feet and walked about with much sword clattering, as if he thought this necessary in a
soldier
. He agreed to everything, everything! Many times he swore eternal fidelity to Horthy, and then he left, stamping his feet as before. For continuity’s sake, I must mention here that he betrayed everyone. What happened to him on the other side I do not know, neither am I sure that he was not all the time secretly in touch with the royalist group.

All I know for certain is that he came back that afternoon to report that his mission had been a failure and that he was now a captive, a prisoner of war, and that he had been allowed to return on his word of honour merely give us King Karl’s message that anyone who took up arms against him would be executed. This message he delivered and then drove away, with the lie upon his lips that he was returning to captivity. However, not only was he not a prisoner but, as the highest ranking officer present, had been put in command of the rebellious troops, and it was he who ordered them to scale the heights of the Budaörs Hills where our defences had been posted.

We only learned about this man’s falsity sometime that evening, and the details on the following day. About noon I went over to the British Embassy in Tárnok utca. Loud cannon fire could be heard. Hohler received me in his bedroom, I do not now remember why: perhaps he had a cold. As a dressing gown, he
wore a long brown kimono he had brought from Japan. We sat in the corner near the window in two small armchairs, a coffee table between us. I told him all I knew about this deeply worrying
situation
, and how we had tried to bring about a ceasefire. Hohler offered the protection of England, and suggested I should move in with him, but of course I could not accept this as I had already had the same offer from Foucher. We talked for a long time about what promised to be a most dismal future.

Then a most strange thing happened. In the middle of the rather dark room I saw a grey cat. It looked at us. ‘Is that your cat?’ I asked Hohler. ‘I don’t have a cat. No one in this house has a cat. I can’t understand how it got here,’ he said; for he too had seen it when I had. We both got up. The cat had disappeared the moment we started talking about it. I had seen it dart under the bed, so we looked there for it. It was not there. Hohler, like many Englishmen, was superstitious and was determined that it should be found at once. I too became caught up in the
excitement
of the search. Passionately we looked everywhere, behind sofas and chests of drawers; we crouched down and even lay on the floor; we pulled the bed from the wall and soon the room was in chaos; but the cat was nowhere to be seen. The door had been closed, and so had the windows. It could not have left the room, and yet it was not there: just not there. We had to abandon the search.

If I had been superstitious I might have taken this for a fatal omen, coming just after I had just been threatened with hanging. As it was, although I did not believe in such things, all sorts of similar stories came to mind. It is true that in these cases the cats are usually black, as messengers of death should be, whereas ours had been grey. I could see that Hohler was thinking the same thing and was convinced it was for me. The shade of the ghostly cat hung over us, as we parted for, when Hohler pressed my hand with unusual vigour, it was as if he never again expected to see me alive.

Luckily, I was never harmed: then or later. If I had been the story of the cat would have been repeated everywhere, and a superstitious world would have discussed it for decades to come; all the more so as Hohler, as soon as I had left, called his staff
together and searched the whole place in vain. The grey cat was never seen again, just as it had never been seen before.

That afternoon there were renewed sounds of artillery fire – and then silence. At any moment we expected Lehár’s attacking troops to appear from somewhere by the Farkasrét
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or from under the Gellert Hill and – behind them, of course – King Karl, wreathed as always in smiles.

So, obviously, did others, as was proved by the presence along the Hunyadi János Road and at the corner of Disz Square of numerous small groups of giggling girls and swaggering young men, all dressed in their best. They were hoping to see King Karl’s victorious soldiers marching into the city, and they wanted to be the first to do so, as if to symbolize the cheering crowds to come. There were two or three more little groups at the turn in the road and higher up at the Lonyai Villa and at the beginning of Várszinház Street (named after the Palace Theatre). In fact, they were everywhere, which we took as a sign that everything would be settled quickly and not in our favour.

However, nothing happened until nightfall.

When I had finished my work at the Foreign Ministry I went home. I was just about to go to bed when, at eleven o’clock, the telephone rang and I was summoned to go immediately to see the Regent. I had already sent away my official car and so had to find a taxi, which took some time, before I could hurry away up to the Royal Palace.

Horthy and Bethlen were there, waiting for me. They quickly told me what had happened.

During the afternoon Lehár’s troops had started their attack. Ours, mostly newly recruited young university students, faced them boldly. Some were in uniform but the majority, poor
fellows
, were still in civilian clothes with tricolour armbands on their sleeves. Unfortunately eleven of them were killed. Then a most unexpected thing happened. From the armbands, and from what several of our boys had said, Lehár’s gendarmes discovered that they had been ordered to fight with a lie. Their superiors had told them that a Bolshevist revolution had broken out in Budapest, and that it was this they had to fight. When they learned from their prisoners that this was not true and that they
had been used without their knowledge to attack Horthy, they were dismayed, refused all further obedience to Lehár and melted away.

The result was that King Karl sent us a message saying that he was ready to surrender and asking that we should send envoys to him with our conditions and inform him what we would do to ensure his safety.

This was one of those extraordinary turnarounds, of which those stormy days were to prove so rich.

And here too, as so often in life, the drama had its comic moments.

At the palace we decided to send Kálmán Kánya as our
principal
envoy, accompanied, as we might well need a legal
specialist
, by Térfy
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who was not only our minister of food but also a most eminent jurist.

Khuen-Héderváry and I went to rouse Kánya from his bed. This was a not unamusing incident, although it went off smoothly enough. We took him up to the palace and went in search of Térfy. He lived in a little two-storey house in Kaszino Street between Uri Street and the Bastion. A small door leading to the courtyard was open, so without more ado we went in and up to the flat where Térfy lived. We rang the bell. After ringing several times, which did not surprise us, as by now it was after midnight and everybody was no doubt already asleep, a
maidservant
came to the door. Then she opened a barred window just a crack and asked what we wanted. We told her we were looking for her master, that we wanted him to come with us at once and that it was urgent. We also gave her our names, but by this time she had slammed the window shut and run away, leaving us outside in the dark.

In a few moments we could see through the bars of the window that a light had gone on inside. With faint rays of light streaming towards us through the keyhole and under the door we imagined it would not now be long before they let us in. But no! No one came, and we had to go on waiting. Inside there seemed to be much activity. Sometimes the wench would race across the room and then disappear through some internal door before again coming into view, carrying some sort of small trunk or
large parcel. She came and she went, and now there was more light – still not in the entrance hall but elsewhere in the
apartment
. We could see more activity through the open doors of adjoining rooms – but still no one came to the door even though we rang and rang with increasing energy.

Finally, after about twenty minutes’ wait the entrance hall light went on again and Térfy himself opened the door.

‘What?’ he cried out in astonishment, as we went in. ‘You? What a surprise! What a wonderful surprise!’ Then we learned why he had kept us waiting so long. He had been arrested twice before, once at the time of the Communists and then again by the Romanians in Debrecen. Both times it had been at night, and both times he had been caught unprepared and so could take nothing with him to the prison. He had then decided that from that time on he would never go without a bag containing a change of clothes, food and some books to read; also that before leaving he would have a wash and a shave. Accordingly, as it seemed all too probable that he would again be arrested, he had instructed the maid that she was not to open the door if someone came for him in the night. The girl had received a nasty fright when we appeared but had not heard our names as she had rushed off to her master crying: ‘They’re here! They’re here!’

We all laughed heartily at the misunderstanding. I have been mistaken for many things in my life – a poverty-stricken artist, a commercial traveller, the conductor on a ferryboat and a house painter – but never before a potential gaoler.

Next came the news that the royal couple, together with their entourage and Ostenburg’s little troop of armed men, had left for Tata and were to stay in the Esterházy palace there
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. They took Siménfalvy with them as a prisoner.

Here follows what he himself told of this experience.

He had been captured by Lehár’s men between Györ and Komárom and locked in a cattle-wagon connected to the rear of the king’s train. They warned him not to look out, or he would be shot. Nevertheless, whenever the train stopped, he did look out, either peeping through a slit in the door or the corner of a window. At nearly every halt, were it a station or signal box, he would see a well-dressed young man who boarded the royal train.
Then they had stopped for a long time at Biatorbágy, where there had been an open-air mass, an inspection of a guard of honour who had presented arms, and had gone through other court
ceremonies
. Later he had heard distant cannon fire. Sometimes he had caught a glimpse either of the king or Queen Zita taking a walk or chatting with the officers. Of course, he had not been able to hear any news and knew nothing of what was happening.

Towards evening he felt the train start again, this time moving backwards. It moved along in the same sluggish way as before, and again there were frequent stops, where the same young man he had seen jumping onto the train would jump off again and disappear.

It was already dark when they arrived at Tata. Suddenly the wagon door was wrenched open, and the same men who had imprisoned him now told him to take command of the guard and be responsible for the safety of the royal couple.

He looked after everything. Outside the king’s rooms he placed armed guards chosen from among the officers who had remained faithful to the king and, when everything had been arranged to his satisfaction, he too went to his bed. He was aroused at about two in the morning. What had happened was that one of the partisan leaders, Rákosi by name, had decided to march to Budapest to offer his services to Horthy. On the way he arrived at Tata and there he found all the loyal guard asleep not only at the castle gate but also outside the king’s door. Even Ostenburg was down in the basement with some woman. So he disarmed them all and placed his own guards in their place. General havoc everywhere! The partisan guards were filthy dirty from sleeping in the fields and dusty after their long march. Their clothes, civilian not uniform, were in tatters, and it was hardly surprising that everyone in the house imagined they had been attacked by bandits. It took some time for Siménfalvy to restore order and send Rákosi on his way. Finally silence again reigned in the castle at Tata
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.

So ended the first phase of King Karl’s attempt to overthrow the government.

There can be no doubt that if Karl and Zita had not allowed themselves to be wined and dined in Sopron, had not wasted
time attending military parades,
Te Deums
, open-air masses and formal reception of envoys and had had no more than two trains hitched together as one, then they could have reached Budapest either Friday evening or early Saturday morning, when they would have met almost no resistance. We had no resources, and we would have either been chased out or arrested. Then they would have been able to play monarchs for a few days at least. But for their awkwardness, and the childish conceit that allowed them to waste time on trivialities, that vital day and a half would not have been lost.

There can also be no doubt that their glory would have been brief. The Czech army had been mobilized and was being rushed to our border; while the Serbs had despatched yet another
battalion
to Bácksa to reinforce their forces already in Baranya. If a Habsburg king had seized power in Budapest, then there would have been an immediate Serb attack followed by a Czech
invasion
. The country would have been overrun. The resolute
resistance
of the Hungarian government averted this danger, at least for the time being.

Later the Legitimists were to say that had Karl been accepted by us, the Czechoslovak army would never have marched into Hungary because all those Slovaks still loyal to the king would have changed sides. There is no need for me to deny that, for it has been authoritatively refuted by one of the most reliable of King Karl’s supporters, Tamás Erdödy, who had been a
childhood
playmate of the king’s and perhaps his only true friend. Erdödy tells in his memoirs how the unhappy royal couple had been led astray and repeatedly fed with encouraging but false information by a group of desperate political exiles whose only hopes lay in the restoration of the monarchy. And it was these people who played up to the poor king, a man weak in every respect, who was not fitted to rule and who could not even have managed a medium-sized farm.