The Book of Fathers Read online

  He knew, too, that Great-Grandpa Czuczor had had to flee from Bavaria to Kos with his daughter and grandson, so it followed that this was how their house had looked. He feasted his eyes on the scenes as the lid lifted on the past.

  He saw his great-grandfather busy at the bottom of the garden, behind the rose bushes, assisted by a lad no bigger than he was now, though with hair of a startling color, as yellow as the yolk of an egg. They dug long and hard and eventually lowered into the hole a black iron casket, which they then proceeded to cover up carefully.

  “Wilhelm, du darfst das nie erzählen, verstehst du mich?” he warned, shaking his spade at the lad.

  “Jawohl!”

  The sad end of his grandfather, too, came to life before him, a story he knew well from his father. His broad-chested dapple-gray throws Péter Csillag while he is out hunting, and as he falls he smashes his head into a tree trunk, never to recover consciousness.

  “Are you unwell? Speak to me!” Kata was kneeling on the bed, the blanket drawn about her like a shawl.

  Bálint gave a heavy sigh and was about to launch into his carefully prepared speech, a paean of praise for the girl’s beauty that would have culminated in a formal request for her hand. But before he could say a word fists battered on the door.

  “Kata, open up! Open up at once, I say!” boomed the voice of Imre Farkas II.

  “If you hold your life dear, run for it!” shouted the girl, jumping out of bed and half-pushing, half-tugging the lad in the direction of the window. He seemed not unwilling to comply, but could not bear to take his eyes off Kata’s face and the snow-white skin of her arms and legs left uncovered by her night dress. This was no time to worry about modesty, it crossed Kata’s mind. “Coming, father dear!”

  By the time Bálint reached the ladder outside the window, the door had yielded to the shoulders of Imre Farkas, who was holding a three-pronged candlestick in one hand and a drawn sword in the other. He took everything in at once. He leapt to the window and in the light of the candles saw Bálint Sternovszky scuttling down the ladder. “Stop!” he cried, and when there was no response, he flung the heavy candlestick after him. As they fell the candles flew in three different directions and went out. Down below a shadow flew by, then came the sound of footfalls dying away.

  Imre Farkas wasted no time in questioning his daughter, but to little avail: whatever Kata said he would not believe. He even slapped her across the face, just to be on the safe side. “You will get a hundred times that if I ever see him hanging around you again!”

  Imre Farkas stormed round to his master’s first thing and demanded to be seen. Secretary Haller did not let him in. “Later, master glassmaker, he is just breaking his fast.”

  “So what?” said Imre Farkas, pushing the wizened old man aside and bursting in.

  Kornél Sternovszky was just stirring his tea, which he had reinforced with a tot of rum. “What is your business here?”

  Haller was hovering in the background: “I did say to him, master…”

  “I found your son Bálint in my daughter’s bedroom last night.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I demand an explanation.”

  “Haller, you may go.” Kornél Sternovszky placed the palms of both his hands on the table. He waited until the secretary had closed the door after him. “I find it hard to believe that my son would leave my house in the dead of night.”

  “Is your grace suggesting that I am a liar?”

  “That is not what I said. What I said was that my son Bálint is not in the habit of leaving my house without permission.”

  “Yet that is what he did. Ask him.”

  “I shall. Presently he is still abed, as indeed I believe he has been all night.”

  “I tell you: he has not!”

  “What is this tone that you take with me? Remember whom you are addressing!”

  “It were not easy to forget.”

  “And what is that supposed to mean?”

  “Suppose what you will, it does not change the facts. But I will not allow the smallest blot on my daughter’s reputation!”

  “How much longer do you expect me to tolerate your impertinence?”

  “Let us not stray from the topic. If ever again I see your son hanging around my daughter, I swear he will bring home his head on a plate!”

  “A threat? Are you threatening me? What an outrage!” Kornél Sternovszky rose from the breakfast table, knocking over as he did so a cup filled with tea, which rapidly soaked into the white damask tablecloth. “You are dismissed herewith! Leave at once!”

  Imre Farkas II broke out in a cackling laugh of such vehemence that Kornél Sternovszky thought he had taken leave of his senses. He edged back, trying to reach the bell to summon his servant or Haller. Farkas was quicker off the mark and pushed the bell out of his reach as he bellowed: “You can’t get rid of me, I built the glassworks from the ground up, it will never function without me!”

  “It will function if I will it to! You are not the only master glassmaker in the world. You will be amazed, Farkas, how quickly your name will be forgotten! Get out of here!” And Kornél Sternovszky took a step towards him.

  The master glassmaker snorted like a wild boar: “Master thinks he can do with me what he will? Thinks his offspring can dishonor my daughter by way of amusement? That you can just throw me out, like some used washrag? That I will put up with anything and everything?”

  “I have nothing more to say! Out!”

  Kornél Sternovszky gave his master glassmaker a push in the chest. Imre Farkas II was in good shape and his chest barely registered the gesture. He began to shout out at the top of his voice unconnected words like “compensation,” “contract,” “complaint,” “courts,” and the like, until Kornél Sternovszky grabbed hold of the teapot and threw its hot contents in his face. For a fraction of a second the master glassmaker could not see. Then he drew his sword, as did Kornél Sternovszky his own, but the glassmaker was quicker on the draw and at the first clash of the blades wrenched Kornél Sternovszky’s weapon from his grip and with the same movement plunged his blade deep into his chest. For this Farkas was some months later duly hanged in the main square of Felvincz. By then Kornél Sternovszky lay in a copper-plated coffin six feet deep in the soil of his homeland. Kata’s mother came to take her away and Bálint never saw or heard from her again.

  Three years after his father’s funeral Bálint Sternovszky took over from his mother the running of the glassworks. He also inherited Kornél Sternovszky’s papers and folio. His brothers were jealous, coveting especially the glassworks, for which they would both have given their eyeteeth. Yet Kornél Sternovszky himself truly hated the glassworks, as well as all master glassmakers, every one of whom brought Kata to mind. He married as soon as he could. The daughter of the miller of Felvincz brought less in the way of a dowry than a gentleman of his station was entitled to expect, but when his mother raised this topic, Bálint silenced her with the words: “She will make a good wife. That is what matters.”

  The decline of the glassworks began as the young couple were enjoying their honeymoon. One night the drying kiln burned to the ground. Bálint dismissed the news with unconcern: “It could have been worse. At least we shan’t have to dry the glass for a while.”

  Haller, who had retained his post, clapped his hands to his head: “But sir, that’s impossible. It will crack!”

  “Less fussing, Haller! Some of the glass will, some won’t.”

  No one could understand how Bálint Sternovszky could remain so indifferent to the rapid decline of the glassworks. He would spend long mornings in the forests he had inherited alongside the glassworks. He told his wife he was looking for mushrooms.

  “How is it, husband mine, that you are always looking for mushrooms, yet never find any?”

  “Find them I certainly do! Only they are poisonous, like your good self.”

  In fact, mushrooming was not how he spent his days. The moment he found himself
in the thick of the forest, he would sit down and eat his rations. Then he would burst into song. He sang all day long, as the locals could testify. When he was in full flow he could be heard many miles away.

  Betimes he would wander so far that he would not return home for the night. He preferred to sleep under the open sky rather than seek the hospitality of others. He liked to lie in the dark on the grass or on the sand and examine the stars, as he ground his memories ever finer in the windmills of his mind. It was during such reveries that it dawned on him that he had to make the trip to Kos to find the house of Great-Grandpa Czuczor, or rather the garden with the rose bushes where he could dig for the iron casket and get hold of the treasure he had buried. He was certain there was a reason that God had blessed him with the rare gift of seeing into the past. It was compensation for all he had endured.

  So when one afternoon he came upon the forest that had grown over the old village, he recognized it at once. Ankle-deep in black dust, he knew that the rains and the snows had still not washed the soil clean of the black ash that was all that remained of the houses burned to the ground all those years ago. He looked first for traces of Great-Grandpa Czuczor’s house. In a landscape almost entirely reclaimed by nature he found it hard to make out the building that had so vividly appeared to him. The road up the mountain was overgrown with scrub; the only sure sign of the route was the jagged cliffs. Bálint Sternovszky was almost beside himself with excitement as he hacked his way through the prickly bushes and fought off the trailers twining round his legs, careless of the bloody scratches from the spines and spikes of the vegetation. He did not mind. He knew that no one can blunder into the past without paying the price.

  Another clue presented itself in the form of a fragment of wall no more than waist high, a remainder of the church. It had been overgrown by a bed of reeds that would have made the average visitor think that there was a lake or river behind it, but there was no trace of either. Bálint followed the twists and turns of a line where the vegetation was somewhat less lush, thinking that perhaps it might once have been the road. As he slowly reached the top of the mountain, night was falling and he sat down by a tree stump and cut himself some bread and salami from his shoulder bag. He fell asleep as he sat, and dreamed of his ancestors. Great-Grandpa Czuczor was throwing rocks into the stream, to dam the water in order to have a bath. He called out to Bálint, who was reluctant to join him, thinking the water too cold, but when he eventually did so, it turned out to be lukewarm and silky. Great-Grandpa Czuczor was stroking his brow, his wet fingers felt rough.

  He woke to find a dog licking his face.

  “Get out of here!” he said, chasing it away. The animal went a few steps, then stopped and turned back. In its eyes there burned a fire, a light of longing. He’s hungry, thought Bálint, and threw it a piece of salami. The dog gave a snort and wolfed it down greedily. Bálint threw it some more pieces and got to his feet. He was in a clearing covered with boulders and rocks and overgrown with scrub and trees that had grown up wild, some the height of a man. He heard years later that this clearing was called Bull Meadow. Long, long ago the bull belonging to Gáspár Dobruk, the local farrier, had got free and it was here that they caught up with the unruly creature, eventually.

  “Here,” said Bálint out loud. “Here and nowhere else!”

  He wondered if it would not be a good idea to seek out the scene of all the memories that had come to him in Kata’s room. But the only place with a name had been Kos. If He who had revealed to him all this wanted to direct him to another place, surely He would provide the means.

  That same afternoon he happened upon the outlines of his great-grandfather’s garden. The rose bushes had long been strangled by weeds. He hacked off a willow withy and marked out in the soil the area where he suspected the iron casket lay. Who was the trusty servant he could return with to dig up the treasure? Who could be warned-as did Great-Grandpa Czuczor-with the words:

  “Du darfst das nie erzählen, verstehst du mich?”

  “Jawohl!”

  There was no one. It was an act of criminal folly to let that boy into the secret. Were they to survive the catastrophe, the German lad would surely loot the treasure. You must never trust anyone but yourself.

  Thanks to Grandpa Czuczor’s valuables, he would never be short of money again. This was a secret he shared with no one, any more than he shared the buried treasure. At times he was troubled by his conscience. Perhaps his brothers should have had some of it. In his mind’s eye he often heaped up into three piles what he had found, or rather what was left of it. But he kept putting off the time he would reward his brothers.

  In any case, they would not believe where and how I had come by the money. They think little of me as it is. Let them think they have the better of me.

  On Saturday afternoon the wind picked up again and began to whip the ribbons on the maypole. The slim trunk of the tall maple began to sway perilously, sometimes seemingly at breaking point. The broad courtyard of the castle rapidly filled up with carts and sprung carriages, indifferent to the careful raking of the gardeners. The visitors alighted and paused when they saw the giddy swaying of the maypole, its colorful ribbons swishing sharply in the wind. Four of the ground staff also rode in, to keep order. Two posted themselves at the double oaken gates of the building, while two secured the entrance to the stairwell.

  Castle Forgách had been decorated in readiness for the ball. The famed avenue of walnut trees was hung with lanterns whose candles, to say nothing of the vast array of lights on the stone balustrades of the first-floor terrace, could hardly be lit if the wind did not abate; indeed, the lanterns themselves were in some danger. The ornately carved sides of the bridge across the artificial lake had been garlanded with flowers.

  Manager Bodó was regulating the arrival of the carriages, having planned well in advance how they might all fit into the courtyard without ruining the lawns or the flowerbeds. In his agitation he was crunching away furiously at the walnuts he had stuffed in his waistcoat pocket. He needed this ball as an oxcart needs a ditch.

  The maestro had had the first-floor terrace in mind for the evening concert, but had to report to the Count that in such a wind neither musicians nor audience would feel comfortable; so they moved to the grand hall of the castle-the Count called it the sala grande-in plenty of time. The servants were already offering drinks in the foyer.

  Bálint Sternovszky had been quartered in the end room on the second floor of the U-shaped building, from the window of which he was able to follow with interest the folk streaming in. He had brought his binoculars with him. These, too, he had found in his great-grandfather’s iron casket, and although he had never shown them abroad, he was of the opinion that they were made of gold. He could see his wife and two sons alighting from a black carriage. Little János was pushing his way forward as he clung to his mother’s frilly skirts. István, his firstborn, strode along with all the soldierly pride of a four-year-old, his miniature mantle ornate with frogging, his right hand resting on a tiny sword.

  So they’ve come after all, Bálint thought. Borbála was not in the least inclined to be present when her husband sang. “Must you again make a fool of yourself?”

  “What do you know about it?”

  He imagined the feeling of seeing his sons in the audience. He did not know whether they had inherited even a little of what he had had as a gift. István was not prepared to sing even simple songs all the way through, though he never stopped talking: a chatterbox if ever there was one. Little János, on the other hand, would not say a word, and they were regularly having anxious exchanges with the doctor. Though it is no use being impatient; everything in its time.

  Wheels creaked down below as the guests streamed onto the terrace and the foyer. Count Forgács had not yet appeared and manager Bodó welcomed the guests. The Count’s four children-all of them girls-were larking about on the lawn in their finest. Bálint Sternovszky knew that his family would not be lodged with him and was th
ankful; this was not a time he wanted them around. Again he went through in his head the pieces he had several times rehearsed with the maestro, first with the latter at the virginal, then with the castle orchestra. The maestro nodded approval, judging both the melody and the measure to be just right, querying only the Latin text here and there. “That’s not exactly how it is written.”

  “That’s the way I know it.”

  “But if you look on the sheet you will see the text…”

  Sternovszky broke in: “There’s no time now for learning something new. Let it be as I picked it up.”

  The maestro yielded with a nod. Had he insisted, Bálint Sternovszky would have had to declare that he had no choice. Which the maestro could in no way have understood. Not if it is beyond even me, he thought.

  Outside the wind had whipped up the dust into whirling cornet shapes and the panes of the wide windows rattled in their frames. Sternovszky registered in passing that they could not have come from his former glassworks, as they never produced glass of such thickness.

  There was a knock on his door. A liveried servant bowed: “Your excellency is awaited for dinner.”

  The round and oblong tables were set up in three rooms that opened into one another. The gilded candlesticks radiated a bright glow even though it was still light outside. The noise of wind could be heard within. Bálint Sternovszky greeted Borbála and the children kissed his hand. They did not speak through the five-course meal of cold pigeon pâté, lamb broth, grilled sturgeon in gray liquor, beef ragout with dill, and walnut roll.

  As they took their places in the sala grande, the musicians, sitting in two rows facing one another, were already tuning up, as the maestro looked through his sheet music by the pianoforte. The boys’ choir was lined up against the wall, in three rows.

  Pál Forgách was in the front row, discoursing with his most distinguished guest, Count Limburg. Quite suddenly he nodded in the maestro’s direction without turning to face him. The maestro, in turn, gave the signal to the orchestra, and the concert had begun. The two counts nodded in time to the rhythm, but without once interrupting their conversation. Until the madrigals of the choir drowned their words, their discussion was audible to all: the leader of the Felsölendva threshers had lodged an official complaint with the county council, alleging that Count Forgách had unjustly and contrary to the terms of their contract withheld from them a payment of eighty florins.