The Phoenix Land

by Miklos Banffy

  ***

  I did not rely only on Oppenheimer in my efforts to find contacts in England. I had some other sources to tap as well. One of these led me to a man of somewhat dubious reputation but who was one of those interesting characters that come to the surface in wartime.

  He was a Mr Leipnik, of Hungarian descent but long resident in England. As far as I could gather he was regarded everywhere, at home as well as abroad, as a most suspicious character. The intelligence bureaux of the central powers believed him to be an Allied spy, while our embassy at The Hague only communicated with him indirectly because they thought that, even if he were not a spy for the Entente, he must at least be an agent for the British. I needed someone like that, as I had to employ any means possible to get to our former enemies. Accordingly, I went to see him. As far as I could make out he had worked in England as a journalist and had earned himself something of a reputation, writing principally on sociological matters. He had prophesied the downfall of the central powers in the newspapers of several neutral countries and had suggested that salvation would only be found in the some system of universal brotherhood, such as a League of Nations. It is possible that someone had paid him to take this line, but it is equally possible that he did so from personal conviction. What, however, is certain is that in him there was an even stronger streak of personal ambition. This became clearer to me as I got to know him better.

  Mr Leipnik lived at Scheveningen in one of those enormous fashionable hotels built along the seashore.

  When I went to see him there it was February, and the six-storey hotel, the last before one reached the northern dunes, had a forlorn air since most of the hundreds of windows were closed and the portico boarded up. Everything that during the high season in summer would be bright with flowers and colour and new paint, was shabby, grey and battered. Everywhere, including the garden, seemed abandoned and strewn with rubbish. To reach his tiny room on God knows which upper floor I had to climb up a service stair. There, at last, I found the excellent Mr Leipnik.

  He was a short man, thin and grey and wrinkled. His face was lined with deep furrows, and he was as yellow as a lemon. Also, alas, just as sour!

  After a few polite preliminaries, I went straight to the point. How could I get to England?

  ‘If I knew that I’d be there myself!’ was the answer.

  This was not a promising start, but as I persevered it soon became clear that my visit was for nothing.

  He abused the English passionately – and every other Entente nation as well – complaining bitterly that during the war ‘they’ had all been only too happy to make use of him but now, now ‘they’ didn’t care a hoot.

  After hearing this I might just as well have gone straight back to The Hague, but now he started to interest me as an example of human oddity, and so I stayed, smoking innumerable cigarettes, and from time to time throwing in a word or two to keep him talking. This he did, airing countless grievances. He went on for a long time, talking without cease even when it started to get dark, walking up and down in that little room which was barely four metres from the door to the window overlooking the sea.

  He abused everybody: he hated everybody. He declared that ‘they’ all owed everything to his noble ideas and generous spirit. Károlyi and Jászi had taken all their ideas from him but had no idea how to realize them – and not only that but they were stupid enough now not even to seek his advice.

  It was the same with Lloyd George and Clemenceau – and Salandra – and everyone else too. They had without exception battened on him and stolen his ideas and were now merrily living it up in luxurious Parisian palaces, eating and drinking and toasting each other while he, the great Leipnik, was totally excluded. Even though their success was due to his wonderful ideas, they would not give him any credit. Of course they were full of envy and without talent, and so they saw to it that he was not only squeezed out and kept away from their counsels but also condemned to live here, in the misery of this shabby cold room, staring at the bleak ocean from the unheated squalor of this dreadful hole! This was their gratitude. This, their thanks, and this was how he was treated!

  He went on for a long time, not exactly in these words, but endlessly repeating a theme that never changed.

  There was something essentially dramatic in the way that, as the room grew darker, his shape became silhouetted against the big bay window with its greenish shimmering background of an ocean here and there covered with grey fog – that ‘bitter sea’ of Homer – an infinity of angry waves, their crests forever revealing that eternal, useless, restless wrath as it hammered itself against the hotel’s sea walls with a rhythmic monotonous roar.

  Whenever I think about Leipnik, this is how I still see him, pacing up and down, up and down, endlessly repeating his litany of disillusion to the accompaniment of the ocean’s angry rhythm that seemed so symbolic of eternal hopelessness.

  It was certainly an interesting experience!

  ***

  There were other Hungarians at The Hague but none so tragic as Leipnik. For example there was Thyssen-Bornemissza and his wife. He had been one of the principal proprietors of factories in German heavy industry and during the war had already founded a firm in Rotterdam that had supplied the German war-machine from there. Also there was Miklós Vadász’s younger brother (the one who can be seen drinking champagne in the Törley posters). If I remember rightly, he had got there by way of Switzerland. This Vadász spent his time in inventing all sorts of useless devices and liked to explain them at length to anyone who would listen. Later on he was to make a lot of money with his ‘Mikiphone’.

  However, I will end my brief list of exiles, not with him but with a young man from Budapest who called himself ‘Monsieur de Solmont’.

  He was what one would call a ‘pretty boy’, with wavy brown hair, smooth rosy face, and not tall but well-proportioned body. He was always elegantly dressed, with a flower in his buttonhole and a scented pocket-handkerchief in his breast pocket, the tip of which hung out like a dog’s tongue in summer. He would appear in a different suit every day – in most colours of the rainbow – and either beige or two-toned shoes. He trod so lightly, his shoes might have been fitted with springs.

  The Andorjáns had known him in Paris, and so he was often with us.

  I must say I envied him; not for his beautiful shoes, nor for his well-rounded muscles, but rather because he always seemed so satisfied with his lot. For instance, his real name was Sonnenberg, and he was the son of respectable shopkeepers who lived somewhere in the Erzsébet district of Budapest. At some point he had changed his name to ‘de Solmont’ (‘Sonne’ becoming ‘Sol’ – ‘Berg’ becoming ‘Mont’). This sounded well and vaguely aristocratic, and he was very pleased with it. Some French people – whose name really was de Solmont – did not like it at all and denounced him as an impostor. He himself related all this to me, most indignantly as if it were most unreasonable of them. They should have been pleased instead of objecting, he said, and that with his looks, clever manner and ready wit, and as a newspaperman, he added lustre to their name! It was monstrous that they were so ungrateful!

  He seemed to have enough money – or least credit – because he had hardly arrived in The Hague before he had already rented a fine flat in the centre of town which was furnished with large sofas and Persian carpets, and soon invited me, with the Andorjáns and one or two other ladies, to tea.

  Everything he offered us was expensive and good: caviar and sardines as well as oranges and pineapples. Even more expensive-looking was the host himself, who wore a multicoloured silk dressing gown and who did his best to charm us with gracious gesture after gracious gesture. So as best to show off all nature’s advantages to the ladies he tried to organize a boxing match for their delectation. He explained that he was a marvellous boxer and that they really must witness his prowess at this most virile and elegant of sports, whose movements were so beautiful they really must watch it. We all agreed. Very well! Show us, then! Let
us see! Then a slight difficulty arose as there were only two other men in the room, Andorján and myself, and neither of us was willing to take part in an exhibition of that sort. ‘No matter!’ we said. ‘Show us alone!’ … and he did!

  He took off his silk brocade coat and started to box in his pink tights. He did it very well, tiptoeing about with graceful steps that owed much to the dance. He turned this way and that, sometimes stealing forward with a cunning little feint, or jumped lightly sideways, or was suddenly brought up, jolted by the awesome blows of an invisible opponent then, with lightning speed, bringing down the non-existent enemy with such a fierce blow to the chin, nose or solar plexus that he was knocked out with devastating skill. With all this effort he became quite heated, as with teeth clenched, he pranced about the room wearing a triumphant smile and now and then shouting out some technical term so as to impress his spectators. Finally he got so short of breath – no wonder after such a fight – that he sank down on a sofa amongst all the ladies and demanded that they feel his biceps. See how strong they are! How hard! It was clear that anyone struck by him would swiftly be finished off, dead or maimed for life! Oh yes, he was that sort of man!

  A truly wonderful fellow, that little de Solmont!

  Later, and most unexpectedly, the perpetrator of this extraordinary performance was to get his comeuppance. Although at that time I did not know it, and was never to learn the reason, he had an enemy at The Hague who, anxious to teach him a lesson, who had been looking for him for some days. One evening on returning to the Hotel Oude Doelen I was told by the hall porter that there had been a fight in the entrance hall that afternoon. Well, I thought, so little de Solmont has had a chance to deal with his enemy!

  Later that evening Andorján told me what had actually happened.

  The enemy was having tea in the hall with some ladies when de Solmont came up to him and said a few words. No one knew what was said. All that was certain was that the newcomer got up and dealt the great boxer two ordinary little slaps on the face which made de Solmont fall to the ground, breaking three chairs and some Delft vases in the process. This is all I know. We never discovered if de Solmont had been hurt by some piece of broken pottery, or whether he had fainted. All that was certain was that the poor fellow had to be dragged out by the waiters, while his enemy just returned to where he had been sitting. The affair had no other important consequences that I knew of except that our young friend was thenceforth forbidden to enter the Oule Doelen, and so I did not see him again. I was sorry because he might have taught me to box, which can be a wonderful thing, as this story shows.

  ***

  At that time I only made the acquaintance of two Dutch politicians. One was Treub, of whom I have already written; the other was Jongheer van Karnebeek.

  I met both through the good offices of Elek Nagy.

  I do not have much to recount of Treub, who was most amiable when I gave him my memorandum and who seemed to appreciate the implications of the growing Bolshevik threat in Hungary and who had promised to get it laid before the Grand Cinq in Paris. However, a few days later the ‘Republic of the People’41 took power in Budapest, so it was evidently too late for my memorandum to be of any use in Paris.

  At much the same time I had for the same reasons visited Karnebeek on a couple of occasions, as I had hoped that perhaps he would be able to persuade Count Loudon, then Dutch ambassador in Paris, to raise the subject there. At our first meeting the minister had seemed disposed to do so, but soon this willingness disappeared, as it seemed that he was beset with many worries that required all his attention and all his energy. He told me what now follows, and I relate it here because I found it so interesting. The Belgians, as a fine return for Holland having accepted, fed and housed many thousands of Belgian refugees during the war, now charged the Dutch with having let the invading German army pass through the province of Limburg and demanded compensation for this in the form of handing over the province of Zeeland (Flanders) and the mouth of the Scheldt. In vain did the Dutch government argue that the Germans, if refused passage through that narrow strip of Dutch territory – which was only a few kilometres wide and impossible to defend – would have broken through by force, and that Queen Wilhelmina’s government had given way only to save her peace-loving subjects from the devastation which resistance would inevitably have brought with it, and also that it had had no strategic effect since their army opposing the Germans had already been over-whelmed, the Belgians would not relent and so presented the government of Holland with a most awkward and perilous predicament. The dykes forming the banks of the Scheldt were higher than all the neighbouring towns and villages whose survival depended on their careful maintenance. This applied to the whole territory almost as far as The Hague. Karnebeek described it well when he asked: ‘Do you know what this country is? It is very little land surrounded by a great deal of water!’

  This was not generally known at the time.

  The question of Zeeland became public knowledge a few days later.

  I am glad that I happened to be there just at that moment and happy that I was privileged to see for myself the quiet, courageous, unified and dedicated patriotism with which this tough hard people faced a threat of force.

  Everyone had their post and stood at it. Everybody did their duty naturally from their queen, who never ceased to go from house to house in the villages of Zeeland, to the dockworkers and organized socialists. Everywhere was one single cry: ‘Resist!’ Resist until the end, resist even the Great Powers, the millions of France’s great army, the powerful fleet of England, always resist, never give in: it was better to die. It was the noble spirit of freedom inherited from their brave ancestors that had always preserved the Dutch people despite their paucity of numbers.

  Holland did not have to mobilize; she chose another way. Anyone who volunteered was issued with a rifle and a beret; and almost everybody did volunteer, from boys who were hardly out of their teens to old men with grey hair. Everybody: men of all kinds and all professions.

  I saw many such civilian volunteers – berets on heads and rifles on shoulders – as they bicycled by, every afternoon, on their way to some meadow where they drilled. In a few days, out of nothing, was created a huge army on wheels – two of each, as everyone in Holland owns a bicycle and all the roads are bordered by special tracks for them. And all this was done without advertising, speeches or posters, quietly and simply with all the calm of inner strength.

  At that time I also saw an interesting march through the city centre of the Dutch capital.

  It seems that a few days before I arrived in The Hague there had been some sort of attempted revolution. The would-be insurgents occupied the state library, which is situated between two streets near the royal palace. There the Dutch citizens cut them off, attacked the building and, not being like the milksops of other countries, fired steadily at it until the grey stone sculptured façade was dotted with bullet holes like a white shrub in full flower and soon forced the insurgents to surrender. The lion’s share of this restoration of order had, in fact, fallen to the Catholic bodies who, since their co-religionists were in the minority, had all come together under one command. In this hour of need they marched out, led by the Abbé Nolens.

  To prove their solidarity when it came to a threat to the whole nation, such as the Zeeland affair, and also to show publicly the part they had played at the time of the recent attempt at revolution, the Catholic organizations arranged this demonstration march through the streets of The Hague. Perhaps too, they thought it a good moment to show their strength.

  This demonstration march was joined by many, many thousands of people. In front of each group was carried a placard bearing the name of the town, village or association which it represented, and at the head of the procession, as well as between the marchers, was carried the gold and silver Papal banner.

  It was fascinating to see both the calm and the interest that was accorded to this massive demonstration, but it was even more fascina
ting to see, in the multitudes that thronged the sidewalks, a crowd largely made up of the Protestant majority, who watched the marchers with such patience and real sympathy and did not appear to mind that it was the papal yellow and white and not the Vierkleur – the blue, white, red and orange of the national flag – that was carried before them. It was particularly interesting that this should be so here, in Holland: that country which had once led the world, and fought so many terrible battles, in the Protestant struggle against Catholic oppression. Interesting too to note how the Dutch people still today will never fail to refer proudly to all the suffering they had had to endure in defending their Protestant faith at the siege of Haarlem and at the time of the Duke of Alba’s cruel persecutions and the countless sacrifice of Protestant martyrs during that war.

  These were indeed men of high quality.