by Miklós Vámos
This time the door was opened by a shy girl with curly hair. She was in talkative mood. Her name was Mária Porubszky, a relative from Beremend; she was baby-sitting. The Varghas had gone to fetch food from Sikonda.
Balázs Csillag was unsure how to present what he had to say. “Do you mind if I smoke?”
“Please don’t, it isn’t good for the little ones,” the girl said, showing him the Varghas’s two children, one about two years old sleeping in the cot, the other, just a few months, still in the cradle. “Aren’t they sweet when they’re asleep?”
Balázs Csillag just stood there, trying to bury his disfigured neck and hands in his shirt. He had forgotten, if ever he knew, how to address young women. Stork-like he shifted from one foot to the other. “This house was ours. And there are some things here, if they are still here, that is… not valuable things, valuable only to me… a sort of family album…” and he made for the stairs, under which his father had had built a slim cupboard of sorts. In the old days that was where he kept his music. Later this lockable store was given to Balázs Csillag. The new owners of the house had forced it open and used it to store firewood. At the very bottom they had stuffed newspapers, presumably as firelighters. Among these he found, more or less intact, the volumes of The Books of Fathers. He had himself begun the last volume, a thick, hardbound, lined book, but it was empty, except for these words on the first page: I hereby begin the latest volume of The Book of Fathers. Nothing else. A few days later he had received the call-up papers.
He clutched his family’s past to himself and wept, though the girl could not have seen any of this. His tear ducts, too, had been damaged and he frequently needed eyedrops.
Mária Porubszky’s index finger nudged his elbow. “But you will tell me your name, won’t you?”
He wanted to say: Does it matter? But then he said: “Balázs Csillag. And what is yours?”
“Hey, you’re not paying attention! I’ve introduced myself already: Mária Porubszky. But not for much longer.”
“What do you mean?”
“Because I’m going to be Mrs. Balázs Csillag.”
“You are what!?”
“You heard me.”
“Mrs. Balázs Csillag, my Mrs. Csillag?”
“Yours.”
“Have you gone mad?”
“No, I was born mad!” her laughter rang out.
Her prediction, which she later admitted was no more than a bit of harmless fun, came true within a year. The wedding feast was held in the house of her parents in Beremend. Old Mr. Porubszky was a carpenter, as all his ancestors had been.
Balázs Csillag went to the cathedral. He knew the priest, who had been a regular at Papa’s restaurant. “I want to sign up as a Catholic,” he declared.
“Why?”
“You are in the majority… aren’t you?”
The reverend father knew what had happened to the Csillag family. He asked no further questions but sent him to theological classes. With ten-year-olds he listened to the lectures on the commandments, the martyrs, and the books of the Bible.
Soon he was able to look up the office of the Jewish community. In the archway there was a rusting plaque: SERVICES TO THE LEFT-OFFICE TO THE RIGHT. He turned right. He waited his turn and handed over to the old woman behind the desk the certificate he had obtained in the cathedral. She managed to work out what it said. Her face was covered with amazement. “What is this?”
“I don’t want to be a Jew.”
“I see… and so what am I supposed to do about it?”
“Make a note in the register.”
The old woman shrugged her shoulders, opened up the relevant volume, and wrote a few lines in the column headed ADDITIONAL REMARKS.
“Do you want a receipt as well?”
“I do.”
He received a piece of paper with a stamp on it, which was proof that in the register of births maintained by the Jewish community the following amendment was made: UB 238/1945. The above-named, on the basis of document number 67/1945 from the First Pécs Parish Office, has this day, August 25, 1945, converted from the Israelite religion to the Roman Catholic faith.
Balázs Csillag slipped the piece of paper into his shirt pocket and went out into the street as if he had left something of himself behind. Since he had discovered what had happened to his loved ones he had done nothing but force himself not to think about how their lives had ended. But those images again and again came to the fore, together with the accompanying sounds and smells, and this was something that one could not bear and still remain of sound mind-he had to escape from them, at any price. If he was outdoors he would start to run and exert himself until he ran out of breath; if indoors, he went around and around taking tiny steps, like dogs chasing their own tails. He thought he would lose his mind if things carried on like this.
One or two of his old acquaintances looked him up, and he would be invited out; but then here, too, the conversation would come around to those they had lost, and he would just take himself off without ado. Only in the company of Mária Porubszky did peace descend on him: she never forced the conversation yet chattered away enough for two; when they were together they were like two plants growing in the meadow. He found it difficult to come to terms with the idea of marriage, having many concerns: “Mária, if ever I dared undress, you will be horrified by the sight and will be revolted by me for a lifetime.”
“Well, now, dear Balázs, don’t you know there are more important things than the body?”
They continued to address each other formally after their wedding. For Balázs Csillag his wedding night was as distressing as for many of his ancestors, and indeed he recalled them in those moments, until Mária Porubszky took him by the hand. “Pay attention to me now, Balázs, and not to the past!”
This sentence proved to be a lifesaving balm. “I’m not going to attend to the past,” he repeated to himself in the voice of a naughty schoolboy. He closed his eyes and sighed deep sighs as his new bride gently traced with her fingers the wounded valleys of his body. He dissolved in the blindness of the love that Mária Porubszky, for reasons unknown to him, radiated in his direction.
The next morning, at dawn, in the kitchen garden at Beremend, he tore out from all the volumes of The Book of Fathers the somewhat musty pages, even the empty sheets in the volume that he had himself begun, and carefully burned the pile of rubbish. Then he did the same to the covers. The first volume was the most unwilling to catch fire, although it was falling apart, especially at the spine, but he was unrelenting. “I’m letting go of the past,” he muttered. “I’m letting the past go to hell. I’m letting the past go. It is not necessary to remember…” Even that “necessary” was inherited, and he corrected himself. “I don’t have to! I DON’T HAVE TO!” His voice rose to fever pitch.
The Porubszkys’ house was close to the Israelite cemetery of Beremend. The caretaker had had to get up early to dig two new graves, since his assistant had not shown up for some days. He had enough problems. “And you don’t have to shout!” he shouted.
Da Nobis Domine Pacem.
The pencil drawing was of the WC in the room, where the inhabitants of the ward could attend to the call of nature, or, rather, those who were able to walk. In the background could be seen a double window, the corner bed, with the patient’s case-sheet, and the bare leg of the patient lying there. Someone had just got up off the room WC-the person did not resemble any occupant in the drawing-and pointed with satisfied, rounded face at his steaming deposit.
That toilet had been made in the Thirties by the hospital carpenter, though the verb may be an exaggeration, since he had simply sawed a hole in the seat of a stool, into which the porcelain chamberpot had been inserted, to be changed in the Sixties for a container made of thick glass. The latter was somewhat loose in the hole and small accidents would result. By the time he drew this sketch on the back of a newsletter from the Lawyers’ Association, Dr. Balázs Csillag was no longer able to use the room WC; h
e even had difficulty clutching the bedpan. Under his masterpiece he had written the Latin prayer, but with the conviction that he had made a mistake in the grammar. Yet he was proud that for his whole life he well remembered what he had learned about Greek and Latin in secondary school. The expression resounded in his head in the smoke-soaked tones of Mr. Barlay. This knowledge was always available for drawing on in his head, he could whistle it up at any time, like a favorite watchdog. He spent many evenings with his favorite watchdog, reading the Anthology of Greek and Latin Poets, which he had had published by Athenaeum Press. His wife, Marchi, could never understand this: “How come he never gets bored with that same old book?”
“If you must choose between reading one volume a hundred times or a hundred volumes once, you will be better off with the former,” he said, quoting his teacher, Mr. Barlay. To Marchi this was an alien way of thinking: she wanted everything at once, and if it could not be at once, then she wanted it even sooner.
Da Nobis Domine Pacem. Is that right? Sounds odd.
Sometimes his mind simply would not serve. This caused him more suffering than any physical pain. At first he could hardly wait for the visits of Marchi and his son; now he was not sorry if they came less often-it made him feel bad if they saw him in such dreadful shape. He lay on his bed all day long, his eyes closed.
It was getting on for twenty years since he had sworn to cut the Gordian knot of memories to liberate himself from all that he was unable to deal with. Now, nonetheless, in his brain a spotlight was trained on the main paths and alleyways of his past, that is to say, of his life.
The cemetery at Beremend often came to mind; it lay heavy on his conscience. His first job after the war was in the transport department of Pécs Council, which was just being reorganized; he had been recommended by Imre Somogyi, the chief engineer on the railways. His father before him had held a similar post: Imre Somogyi senior had been a close friend of Nándor Csillag. He, too, had been taken. Everybody had been taken. Very few came back. During the reign of the Arrow Cross Imre Somogyi had gone into hiding in the Mecsek Hills, where his training as a scout had helped him survive. Pécs was liberated relatively rapidly, and there was still street-by-street fighting in Budapest when the cafés reopened here. In Pécs’s main hotel, the Nádor, the women’s orchestra had re-formed, with gaps in their line-up and patches on their costumes, but with enormous enthusiasm. That was where Balázs Csillag had bumped into Imre Somogyi. He was just pondering whether to move to Beremend, to get further away from Apácza and Nepomuk Streets and everything else that reeked of the war.
The head of the transport department made it possible for him-in fact, urged him-to enroll in the University of Pécs. “We shall have great need of qualified people!”
This was a pressing reason for staying in Pécs. They rented a room by the month, opposite the cathedral. In the morning he set off to earn his bread with egg-and-butter sandwiches in his pocket. Marchi made a little on the side with her lace embroidery. Balázs Csillag used to call her Marchilla or My Marchillag in those days, which they both found rather amusing.
At work Balázs Csillag came into contact with the transport section of the police. The police had just taken over the old militia barracks, where they could ride in through the back gate. The head of the section-another whose father had been one of the regulars in Nándor Csillag’s restaurant-treated him as an old friend, and soon offered him employment. “I have few men I can rely on, and even fewer whose heads are not cabbages. The old ones keep skipping off, afraid that they will be called to account.”
“Forgive me, but can you see me in uniform? Just look at me!”
“No one was born into a uniform. You’ll get used to it.”
Marchi leaped at the chance and devoted all her considerable charms to persuading her husband to accept the offer, the clinching argument being not just the salary increase of almost 50 percent (now in crisp forint notes, which had replaced the hyperinflated pengö), but the advantages of a service flat. How marvelous it must be to have a key to one’s own flat and to be able to shut the door on the noises and rows of other people! If you have your own kitchen, you can cook whenever you like and don’t have to worry about others raiding your larder. No hammering on one’s own bathroom door just as one’s soaking in the tub. This proved a particularly attractive argument for Balázs Csillag. As soon as they moved in, he got into the habit of reading the Anthology of Greek and Latin Poets while soaking in the bathtub.
He was given the rank of sub-lieutenant, and when a year later he was transferred to the administrative section as deputy head, he was promoted to first lieutenant, skipping one rank, which was rare. Initially he was involved with developing the general framework of the changeover to identity cards. He was at about this time prevailed upon to join the Party. After a six-month trial period, he received his little red booklet.
He was assigned tasks that required a great deal of circumspection: carrying out the nationalization of church schools, the monastic orders, and the brothels. The greatest difficulties were caused by the last: it was necessary to use force to remove the prostitutes from the four institutions comprising the town’s red-light district, and at two of them the policemen assigned to the task were pelted with rubbish, while at another site there were serious injuries.
If at all possible he gave the scenes of his childhood and adolescence a wide berth. He was not at all sorry that Apácza Street was renamed Eta Geisler Street. The house in Nepomuk Street was awaiting demolition, as the whole area was to be rebuilt with wider streets and roads.
The Minister of the Interior paid a surprise visit to the Pécs Police HQ. Balázs Csillag had the honor of being introduced: “He will soon have his doctorate!”
The minister asked a few questions and inquired after his family circumstances. Balázs Csillag stood at (what his superiors considered not stiff enough) attention. “Married, no children as yet.”
“Parents?”
“None.”
“Hm?”
“I have no wish to speak about this. May I be excused?” and he left without waiting for the answer.
Subsequently he heard that the minister had continued to express interest in him, believing he was concealing an Arrow Cross or a Horthyite father. A few weeks later he was summoned to Budapest to work at the Ministry. “What happens if I refuse?” he asked his immediate superior.
“What happens is that that doesn’t happen.”
He thought Marchilla would be devastated, but he was wrong. The woman clapped with joy. “That’s fantastic, Balázs dear, and you’ll take me to the theater? And to the movies? And to the opera?”
His final task in Pécs was to relocate the cemetery at Beremend. When the chief constable gave him the instructions, he thought he had not heard right. “Relocate? A cemetery? What in God’s name for?”
“Because it is to become the site of a power station. Industrialization is more important than the dead, that must be obvious.”
“And why does this require the use of police staff?”
“Because the cemetery is a Jewish one, Comrade Csillag. You get my meaning?” and the chief constable winked knowingly.
He’s sending me because… someone’s branded me a Jew, thought Balázs Csillag. He read the relevant file. The wrangling had been going on for a while. The Jewish community of Beremend and the Chief Rabbi of Pécs had launched an offensive, in their protests the mildest expression used being “defiling the dead.” The Chief Rabbi had managed to secure the council’s permission to transfer all the gravestones that remained intact to the Jewish Cemetery of Pécs. But as soon as two laborers arrived on the spot, half a dozen Jews from Beremend chased them off. According to the books, the police station at Beremend had a complement of four, but in the event only two men were available and they had requested reinforcements.
Balázs Csillag ordered the mounted police to Beremend, and this time he led them personally. By the time they reached the village, the gendarme sad
dle that he had polished to a shine had worn the trousers and the skin on his rear to shreds. The gates to the cemetery still gave shelter to a few unpeaceful descendants of those at peace within it. An old woman in a black headscarf, who somewhat resembled Ilse, shook her fist in front of Balázs Csillag’s nose, whereupon he dismounted with great difficulty. “What do you think you lot are doing, eh? Haven’t you hounded us enough? No respect even for the dead, eh?”
The situation was complicated by the fact that Marchi’s father and mother were both calling out the names of all the dead of the family who lay here. “What sort of eternal rest is this?” Then they suddenly noticed their son-in-law. They hesitated for a second, then decided to ignore him.
“So even they…” thought Balázs Csillag. I should have known. He tried to raise his hand to indicate he wanted to say something. It took a long time for them to calm down. Then he said: “People, listen. Orders are orders. With your help, we can save every gravestone. Without it, we can save only as many as we can shift by the end of the day. The tractors are due tomorrow.”
“Of course,” shrieked the old crone reminiscent of Ilse, “the stones yes, the dead bodies no?”
“Look, my good woman, what are we to do with the bodies? It’s better for them where they are,” replied Balázs Csillag, quietly but firmly. He had witnessed enough scenes like this at the Front; he knew these people would give in.
“You’re not a Jew, right? No idea what one is, eh?” the crone shrieked, stabbing the air with her gnarled fingers.
As the slabs left the ground one by one, each felt like a dull thud on his heart. He told himself off: it’s all the same. Your loved ones don’t even have a grave! He sauntered out of the cemetery, feeling that a cigarette would help him relax.
I shouldn’t have smoked so much, he thought now, in his hospital bed. How many people had warned him, and how often! He had just waved them aside: “You have to die of something sometime anyway.”
“True, my dear,” said Marchi, “but it is not all the same when.”