The Book of Fathers Read online

  Everything went dark within.

  He had no idea how much time had passed when he began to recover his senses. He was in the sleeping quarters of the turret, in the hastily knocked together contrivance he used as a bed. His head and all his limbs rested on wooden laths. He tried to lift an arm; the muscles did not obey. Ah… well… never mind. He sank back into the past, where he felt much more comfortable, where fate had not condemned him to immobility.

  In the few days that remained to him Bálint Sternovszky could not sit up, or move, or speak. Still, he was restless. He explored his family’s history, a tireless traveler of the mind, and tried without cease to think how he might pass on the substance of his visions. If only he could lift just one finger he might be able to do it, might be able to give a sign. He agonized in vain; there was no way.

  Borbála tended to him faithfully, asserting to the very end that she could converse with her husband and divine his desires from the fluttering of his eyelids. But Bálint Sternovszky did not recover precisely because he no longer desired anything.

  III

  NO END IN SIGHT TO THE TEEMING RAINS. THE PASTURES lie deep under water. On higher ground the mud is ankle-deep, in places knee-high. Just when all hope of summer seems gone, it bursts of a sudden upon the land, swelling the corn and nourishing the plants. As the sodden terrain dries out, the crusting mud crumbles to a yellowish dust that covers every surface, fills every crack. As if afraid to be left behind, the corn ripens fast to a rich golden hue. Natterjack toads and gorged grasshoppers inform their kind that they have had their fill. The sudden wave of heat cuts a swath through the stock; the bloated bodies of sheep and swine putresce in the acrid air.

  The windows of the county assembly stand wide open. Both within and without, the dog days of June have brought everything to a standstill. The languorous members were not even inclined to indulge in the amorous trifling that was a regular feature of life in this building at other times. The exchanges were fueled by little more than a general exasperation at having to rot here in the chamber. They were debating the proposals from the county administrator, alispán Sándor Vajda, regarding the repeal of legislation passed in the course of the reign of His Majesty Joseph II. The alispán blinked in disappointment at the complete absence of the noisy glee that might have been expected to welcome this topic. What a contrast with the clamorous reception accorded these laws when originally promulgated! It was the monarch himself who had now withdrawn them from his deathbed. A cause for celebration, one might think, for the repeal of the Habsburg legislation imposed upon us means we can return to our ancestral ways. The alispán’s proposals began with a preamble in convoluted language that urged us to take the action that all the other counties had taken already. He went on to list the decisions that had to be taken by means of a vote of the members of the assembly.

  To the high lords of the estates and others with privileged status the laws entitling them to the exercise of the power of life or death over evildoers under the terms of the ius gladii: be it known that this power is again restored to them, likewise the right to hold their manorial court, in accordance with the exercise of their rights and privileges of old.

  The numbers painted by order upon the walls of houses shall everywhere be removed, likewise there shall be dug up the signs that mark and note the number and name of every village, and the measuring sticks inserted in every field in the land.

  Furthermore, to ensure that those manipulators of the measurements of the land, meaning thereby those of foreign nationality and not of the nobility, shall no longer be able to enforce payment of taxes, nor in any other wise mislead the people, such manipulators of the land are hereby given notice to leave this noble county within the eight days next, whereafter if they should be found therein, those suitable for the purpose shall be obliged to enlist in the army, while those unsuitable shall be expelled forthwith from the territory of the noble county.

  In all the business of the noble county and in all correspondence the German language that has been imposed upon it shall cease to be in use but in its stead the Latin tongue, neglected of late years but formerly in traditional use, shall be reinstated.

  In the schools known as normal schools the syllabus lately instituted shall be abolished and the youth of the noble county shall be taught not in the German language, but in the former Hungarian tongue that was established of old.

  The assembly was slow to stir, with only a few rumbles of “Vivat!” There were hardly any objections and voting took place in virtual silence. Only the abolition of the house numbers managed to raise some whoops of approval. István Stern added his voice to the chorus with a degree of reluctance, the words of his former father-in-law still ringing in his ears: “High time His Majesty Joseph II set about cleaning these Augean stables we call Hungary.” In any case, the turret had received the number “ 111,” which warmed István Stern’s heart. Thrice a first, and a palindrome to boot.

  The section decrying the manipulators was greeted with thunderous applause. Everyone hated the arrogant officials imported from outside by the powers that be and with little or no Hungarian, who hammered shoddy little stakes into the ground, resolving at a blow decades-old boundary disputes, and demarcated the boundaries of fields, meadows, and even the manors without so much as a by-your-leave. Even with these István Stern had no quarrel-the boundaries of his lands had already been marked off with stakes which, after mooting a few measurements here and there, the three assessors decided to confirm. The abandonment of the German tongue received an even greater ovation from the assembly. A number of the older nobles proceeded to make mock of the way German had come to dominate in every sphere, and one, Ádám Geleji Katona, even demonstrated how his guard dog now barked in German.

  Speaker Sándor Vajda had trouble keeping order in the boisterous assembly as he declared the proposals approved in toto. He ordered a break for luncheon, which provoked some booing, as the members had no intention of spending the afternoon in the house and every determination to dine on the more substantial fare awaiting them at home.

  “What work is there left to be done?” queried Ádám Geleji Katona.

  The alispán read out the agenda. Mihály Baróti, a teacher of Latin at the town school, petitions for relief from his taxes, as he is unable to survive on his salary. The chief constable’s report on the current state of the legal dispute between the lessee of the abbey and the county. Pál Hamburger’s petition, claiming that the Emperor in Vienna had personally allowed him to freely carry on the trade or calling of tapster. A review and possible adjustment of the tithe. A number of appeals from prisoners in the county jail. And so on and so forth.

  Amid mutterings the members reluctantly agreed to send word home that they should not be expected for lunch. In groups of various sizes they ambled over to the Fényes taprooms on the far side of the square. István Stern preferred to rest his bones on one of the blue benches in the courtyard of the council building. What weather! I’m melting, he thought, wiping his face, crab-red in the heat. In recent years he had found it harder to take his breath. He loosened his collar.

  One of the town attendants turned into the courtyard, carrying folded papers in a wooden basket, and dropped them on the ground.

  “What’s he up to?” wondered István Stern-he could see that these were official documents. By the time he realized what was happening, the man had put another pile on top of the first. He wondered whether to shout at him; by then the third batch had arrived. The attendant was bringing them from the archive. “I say!”

  “At your command, sir,” said the man.

  “What might be your business with those papers?”

  “They have to be burned.”

  “What?”

  “The alispán’s orders, sir.”

  “That cannot be true!”

  “It certainly is!” came the words of Sándor Vajda, leaning out of a window.

  “Why do they have to be burned?”

  “These are
the papers relating to the original orders of His Majesty Joseph II.”

  “Books and papers should never be thrown in the fire… you never know when they might be needed.”

  “Get along with you! Just carry on, János!” Sándor Vajda reassured the attendant, who had stopped in his tracks.

  “Don’t!” István Stern hurried over and prevented the man from emptying his basket again.

  “István, why poke your nose into this?”

  “Books and papers should never be thrown in the fire,” he repeated obdurately. To the man he commanded: “Pick them up!”

  The man was young but already balding, with an enormous Adam’s apple, which now slid down his neck and disappeared below the collar of his embroidered shirt. He looked at the alispán questioningly. Sándor Vajda came out into the courtyard, took the basket and emptied the documents, followed by the contents of his smoking pipe, straight onto the heap. The dry sheets immediately caught fire. Enraged, István Stern tried to stamp out the fire and kick the documents away. The alispán took him by the arm and dragged him off: “Come now, don’t make such a fool of yourself, Stern!”

  Stern pulled himself free and again tried to put the fire out, but most of the sheets were now well and truly ablaze, giving off acrid fumes.

  “Books and papers should never be thrown in the fire!” István Stern roared for a third time, kicking clear of the embers the few sheets that could still be saved.

  The Smorakh family had moved from Lemberg to Prague and then again to Vienna in the hope of improving their lot. They reached the imperial capital just as Queen Maria Theresa was giving expression to her convictions about their kind in a phrase that was to be widely repeated throughout her lands: “The Jews are worse than the bubonic plague.”

  Though she made this declaration in German, they understood it perfectly; there had always been at least three languages spoken in the family. The Queen’s was no empty phrase: with strictly enforced edicts she banned Jews from Vienna and Prague. The Smorakhs reached Posonium, the Queen’s Pressburg and the Hungarians’ Pozsony, on the back of a cart, in the hope of establishing themselves in the furniture business there, but they were not granted the necessary permit by the council. They loaded up again and went south, as Aaron Smorakh, the head of the family at the time, put it: “On the highway of hardships.” Their wanderings around the heart of Europe, punctuated by frequent stops, lasted some eight years. During these they suffered many hardships and disasters, of which the most painful was the death of Elisha, Aaron Smorakh’s wife, mourned by her husband, her mother, her three daughters Helga, Eszter, and Éva, and her two sons Jacob and Joseph. In these eight miserable years Aaron Smorakh tried desperately to keep the family together by making what he could by trading. Asked what was his occupation, he would say with a crestfallen smile: “I buy and I sell!”

  It was the autumn of their eighth year when they came to Hegyhát. The lord of the manor here in the Tokay region was looking for someone to take over his village general store, following the death of the previous leaseholder, Ármin Kertész, who had ingested poisonous toadstools. The contract was held by the Smorakh family in great respect and a gilt frame, which in the stone house they subsequently built for themselves had pride of place above the mantelpiece. Every member of the family knew its words by heart, like a poem.

  On the sixteenth day of January in the year of our Lord 1759 the general store of the lord of the manor in Hegyhát is hereby leased to the Jew Aaron Smorakh in accordance with the points of the contract agreed as stated hereunder.

  Firstly, the said Jew will stock in the general store all kinds of goods, iron and other necessities, to ensure that as and when the lord of the manor desires to purchase tools, equipment, or other goods for husbandry, they will not be wanting in the general store, and also so that the poor should not be obliged to walk long distances for every small thing.

  Secondly, it will be permitted to the said Jew to trade in and sell salt, tobacco, candles, pipes, and other such small necessities.

  Thirdly, if the lord of the manor himself or his officers or servants have need of some particular item and that item is wanting in his general store, the said Jew will be bound to obtain it and offer it for sale at a price that is meet. Fourthly, under the terms of this contract the Jew shall pay the sum of one hundred Rhenish florins by way of rent every year, and shall according to custom pay it in two parts, one part every six months. Fifthly, the said Jew shall be obliged to keep to the terms of this contract to the letter and if he should be disinclined so to do, it will be permitted to his lordship in person to take such steps concerning the general store as he deems necessary. Provided only that the terms of the contract are duly observed in peace, and that he behaves as behooves an honorable man, his lordship will provide him with due care and protection and will not permit any party to harass him unjustly. This contract will have force for a period of two years and if in the second year the Jew should be minded to extend it or surrender it to his lordship, he will be required to give three months’ notice thereof.

  Stamped and dated in the year of our Lord stated above, on the day of the month and in the place there stated.

  Bertalan T. Vámbéry

  Aaron Smorakh was thirty-two years of age when he signed this contract, his hair already white, his face furrowed and worn. He knew that for their rapid change of fortune his family owed particular thanks to two powerful men who wished them well, namely Bertalan T. Vámbéry and His Majesty King Joseph II, who only a year after his intolerant mother’s death ordered that the Jews were to have the status of a “tolerated minority,” as they were “in this wise more useful to the state.” Aaron Smorakh even adopted as his own the favorite saying of the only uncrowned king of Hungary: “Es geht, wenn man’s nimmt!” “It goes-if you take it.”

  His Majesty Joseph II had ten years earlier, while still co-ruler with Maria Theresa, determined that the Jews choose “proper” surnames. To this end they were to appear in the offices established with the aim of noting down the date of birth or death of every single subject of the Empire. Since the official language was German, it was expected that the Jews would choose German names. As a dutiful citizen, Aaron Smorakh duly rode into the town of Eger to find a new name for his family. His first act was to place two jeroboams across the ink-spattered desk (the family had by then obtained permission to cultivate a vineyard on a share-cropping basis), and then he asked the bespectacled official: “Wie heissen Sie, Herr…?”

  “Wilhelm Stern,” came the reply from the surprised official.

  Aaron Smorakh drew himself up to his full height and announced solemnly: “Dann wird Stern unser Name sein.”

  “ Sind Sie sicher?”

  “Ja, ja.”

  “Also, Stern?”

  “Gut.”

  Aaron Stern jiggled and jolted his way home to Hegyhát, with the deed poll in his saddlebag. Up went the new shop sign without any more ado: Stern and Son. Jacob, his firstborn, was already his right hand in the store.

  Éva, now of marriageable age, these days often busied herself with her trousseau, assisted by two servant girls. Aaron Stern had laid by a crate of special, sparkling wine from the region of Champagne for the wedding feast. She had a dozen or more suitors vying for her hand in the next few years, but found none to her liking. By her age her older sisters had long tied the knot. Aaron Stern was more and more concerned: “You are certain? Not this one either?”

  Éva would give a nod. She trusted that her father would have as much patience as she to wait for The One.

  She met István Sternovszky in the burgh of Debreczen, whither she had gone with her father to buy supplies. A harvest ball was being held in the grand hall of the hotel. Aaron Stern was so pleased with the advantageous terms on which he had secured his purchases that he surprised his daughter with an evening gown decorated around the neck with the most delicate Brussels lace. The event was patronized chiefly by the nobility of the area, the only outsiders apart fro
m the Sterns being the debonair Sternovszky boys, magnets for the fan-shielded eyes of every girl’s mother. István and János stood a head taller than the mass. Their glances kept returning to Éva, whose coal-black curls bounced and fluttered like dark little birds around her ivory shoulders. They both put themselves down on Éva’s dance card. Though they spent the same amount of time in the girl’s company, it was clear from the outset that István’s intentions were of the utmost seriousness. The Sternovszky boys were on a two-month tour of the kingdom, thanks to their uncle’s generosity. A few days later István abandoned the tour to ride to Hegyhát to see Éva again, leaving his younger brother in the hostel at Csaroda. Unable to see her, amid the utmost secrecy he sent her three brief letters. He received but one reply: “The road to me leads through my father.” The higher the wall, the harder it is to conquer, thought István Sternovszky, his ardor only further inflamed by the delicate pearly script of her dear hand.

  Éva forbore to inform him that she had told her father: István Sternovszky is the one. Aaron Stern flew into a rage, his white hair billowing as he stormed: “Have you taken leave of your senses? The Sternovszkys of all people… Does that man have any idea who we are?”

  “He does, rest assured, father dear.”

  “Do you think his family will let him take a Jewish girl to the altar? How on earth could anyone imagine that?”

  “Let that be his business.”

  For more than a week István Sternovszky delayed making the announcement. His mother had a weak heart; he knew that if he now said his piece, it might be the end of her. Borbála no longer resembled the girl she had once been: in recent years she had put on a great deal of weight, so much so that she was now out of breath after taking just a few steps, wheezing as if she had run halfway round the town. The doctor had put her on a strict diet that she only pretended to keep. Sometimes she would even slip out in the dead of night to feast on something from the larder.