The String Diaries

by Stephen Lloyd Jones

  Lukács scowled.

  ‘You know no one called Balázs Jani. I’m not having my name associated with a cripple.’

  ‘He’s not a cripple, Jani.’ Izsák stepped into the toolshed. The boy only reached Jani’s chest in height; he kept a careful distance.

  ‘You shut up, ’Sák,’ Jani spat. He turned back to Lukács. ‘You don’t mention any brothers. You especially don’t talk to any girls from the Zsinka family. If you’re as deaf as you seem, you won’t have a problem acting mute, will you? Understand?’

  He shrugged.

  Jani snatched a handful of his hair and yanked his head back. ‘I said do you understand?’

  ‘Leave him alone!’ Izsák took another step towards them.

  Lukács refused to struggle in his brother’s grip. ‘Fine, Jani. No mention of brothers. And I won’t talk to any Zsinka whores, I promise.’

  He heard Izsák snigger. Before he even saw it coming, he felt Jani’s fist slam into his cheek. The blow knocked him sprawling. Pain bloomed in his face but he controlled it, pressing his lips together and raising his head, daring Jani to strike him again.

  ‘Remember what I said, runt.’ His brother cracked his knuckles and turned for the door. ‘I’m fetching Father.’

  Once Jani had gone, Izsák scampered over. ‘Does it hurt very much?’ he asked.

  Lukács laughed. The pain of his lacerated cheek was nothing compared to the sting of his older brother’s words. The truth of them drew blood from wounds that had festered in him as long as he could remember, a litany of individual scars: an older brother so ashamed of him that he would deny his existence; a father who cared only for the old traditions and who paid scarce attention to him now that their mother had gone; a younger brother too immature to understand the deeper currents that ran within their family, and whose scorn would arrive as surely as the next harvest the instant he was old enough to understand.

  ‘I’m fine, Izsák.’

  ‘He’s in love with the older Zsinka girl. But she’s not as keen. That’s why he’s so cross.’

  ‘She sounds like a wise girl.’

  Izsák sniggered. ‘I hear she’s a dirty kurvá.’

  ‘Hey! Where did you hear words like that?’

  ‘It’s what I heard father calling her. He says all the Zsinkas are sluts.’

  Lukács grinned at that, until a new silhouette appeared in the doorway. He flinched when he heard his father’s cough, deep and low.

  ‘Izsák, leave us. I want to talk to your brother.’

  ‘Yes, Papa.’ Flashing Lukács a sympathetic glance, the boy skipped outside.

  His father stood in the doorway for a time before he stepped over the threshold. Pulling a wooden stool from underneath a workbench, he dusted it down and sat his frame upon it. He smelled of old tobacco and mint oil.

  Riffling through the pocket of his leather waistcoat, Balázs József pulled out a clay pipe and pushed it into his mouth. The spark of a match illuminated an oiled mustache and thoughtful, heavyset eyes. ‘Dark in here.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is that why you like it?’

  ‘Don’t know. Maybe.’

  Velvet threads of smoke drifted across the shed, carrying scents of dried apple and scorched paper. ‘Heard what your brother said.’

  ‘It’s what you all think. At least he’s honest.’

  ‘He’ll get my belt later.’

  In between them, the mole rat hesitated in its explorations, its nose trembling as it tested the air, hunting for options.

  Lukács glanced up from the rodent and into his father’s face. József’s features had not lost any of their strength as he had aged. His face rarely betrayed emotion, yet now Lukács detected a softening. Was that pity? He wanted none of that. Certainly not from his father. It was partly his seed, after all, that was responsible for Lukács’s condition.

  József leaned forward. ‘Your cheek is cut. We cannot have that. You need to stop the bleeding.’

  ‘It hurts to make it stop.’

  ‘Do as I say. I will not have you looking like that tomorrow.’

  Reluctantly, Lukács focused on the throbbing in his face. As he had been instructed many times before, he tried to empty his mind of the distractions of his environment, tried to ignore the pressure of his father’s gaze. Instead, he concentrated on the sensation of the swelling, the bright lance of pain where Jani’s knuckles had split his skin. Gritting his teeth, he forced the muscles of his cheek to press together, bracing himself as the swelling dissipated through the right side of his face.

  ‘Relax, boy. You’re too tense.’

  He realised he was holding his breath. Tears brimmed in his eyes as the line of the cut flared with white-hot heat and then, as with the swelling, began to subside.

  ‘Now wipe off the blood.’

  Lukács complied, looking at the smudge of crimson on the back of his hand.

  József inhaled smoke, sighed. ‘None of this comes naturally to you, does it?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘I swear, Lukács, if I knew how to help you in this . . .’ His father reached out a hand and tilted his son’s face up to meet his own. ‘Show me your eyes. Look into mine.’

  Unwillingly, Lukács obeyed. His father’s eyes seemed, at first, as they always did: a flat and unremarkable grey. But as he watched, Lukács began to notice changes. Striations of green appeared, flecks of indigo. The streaks of colour began to evolve and diversify, like diamonds rising and sinking in a twilight lake, a prismatic display of pigments that mesmerised Lukács with their range and beauty. Engulfed, he felt the confines of the shed fade as his father’s eyes became his universe. He swam in an effervescent sea glittering with pinpricks of turquoise and jade, copper and gold, on a rising wave where sequins and rubies and emeralds tumbled and danced in the surf.

  At the centre of all this, József’s pupils gaped like forsaken voids into which Lukács would flounder if he did not pull himself away: yawning maws, reaching for him with serrated grins the colour of charcoal. Beauty and horror; at first seductive and then threatening. Did he fear what lurked inside the darkness of his father’s eyes? Or did he fear the absence of what resided there?

  Lukács blinked, breaking the spell. He knew his own eyes were dull, lifeless – the colour of river mud in comparison. And for a fleeting moment he was glad.

  Suddenly he found his voice. ‘Maybe another year, maybe if we waited. We could go to the végzet next summer. Maybe I will have learned by then.’ He saw his father begin to shake his head, but he pressed on. ‘Or maybe we could just forget about the végzet altogether. I could stay here with you, helping you in the workshop. You know I’ve become more accurate with the instruments. I’ve done all the bevelling over the last month and—’

  ‘Enough, Lukács! I have heard enough! You will not disgrace me. Nor your mother’s memory.’ His father breathed deep, swallowed his anger. ‘You will go to the végzet. You will do your best. We will see what happens. There are qualities in you that any sensible girl should find attractive. I will not allow you – a Balázs – to carry the shame of a kirekesztett. Now, I want you inside the house within the hour. We have preparations to make. At noon tomorrow we leave.’

  Standing, his father exhaled a plume of pipe smoke. At the doorway, he paused. ‘You know, Lukács, your brother Jani might seem cruel, but we all have an interest in your success. Think on that. You may not believe it, but the life of a kirekesztett is a curse, one that would weigh on you many score years from now. Trust me, son; it is not a path you wish to walk.’

  With his father’s departure, the silence returned. Lukács watched the mole rat squirm and twist about in the dirt as it tried to manoeuvre its broken body.

  We all have an interest in your success.

  That was reall
y all they cared about. József professed a concern for his son’s life as an outsider, but it was empty sentiment. None of them cared a damn for his feelings – his fear, his absolute certainty – that tomorrow night would bring the first humiliations of many before the reality of that life presented itself anyway.

  He saw no reason why he could not stay here, living a simple life in his father’s mansion, learning the skills of a horologist and moving about in the world free of the social burdens imposed on the hosszú életek. His father’s pride alone condemned him to this path.

  Reaching for the mole rat, Lukács picked it up in his fist and studied it. The rodent struggled between his fingers, and he could feel its tiny bones moving under the thin grey fur of its coat. It was a repulsive creature, virtually blind from the skin that grew over its eyes to protect it as it burrowed through the earth. In many ways it reminded him of himself. He knew what it was like to have a sense partially formed.

  His frustration blistered into anger. He tightened his grip around the animal. The mole rat thrashed, mewling a thin sound of distress. Lukács increased the pressure, watching it intently until a glutinous scarlet thread spurted from its mouth on to his fingers. Disgusted, furious, he squeezed harder, feeling the rodent’s bones cracking and collapsing under his hand. He flung its body across the shed where it hit the wooden boards with a wet slap.

  Wiping his fingers clean of the mole rat’s fluids, Lukács realised just how long he had been sitting here. The sun had crept across the sky and now a single beam of light shone through the gap in the doorway. He held up his hand and looked at the shadow his fingers cast on the wall.

  He rearranged them and the shadow became a mole rat, one twitching knuckle a perfect reproduction of the creature’s nose. Lukács made the shadow rat cavort and play for a moment, before he switched the arrangement of his fingers and the shadow rat morphed into the profile of a wolf. The wolf yawned and dissolved into a horse that bucked its head twice, and transformed into the silhouette of an eagle. The bird moved its head from side to side.

  Lukács watched the eagle for a while, then shook out his fingers and made a deer, the top of its head smooth and antler-free. Taking a breath, he braced himself for the pain he knew would follow, and focused on the shadow animal. The deer twitched. Gradually, twin bumps appeared on its head. Lukács felt his teeth grind together as he concentrated. The knuckles of his hand felt like they were trapped in a vice. With an effort that made him cry out, the bumps on the deer’s head suddenly elongated and branched. Before his eyes, antlers grew up and out, developing individual tines. The pain was now unbearable, glass daggers slicing him from the tips of his fingers to his elbow.

  On the wall, as if checking for potential predators, the deer raised its head and looked from left to right. Lukács gasped with exhaustion and the animal’s image collapsed. As he regained his breath, he contemplated the silhouette of his limp fingers, fingers that burned now as if touched by fire.

  Tears streaked his face. He wiped them away with his free hand and studied the one that pained him. Blood welled from under the nails of each finger and dripped onto the toolshed floor, where it mingled with that of the mole rat in the dust.

  They left for Budapest at noon the next day. Lukács climbed on to the cart next to his father as the two horses flicked out their manes, impatient to be on the move.

  His brothers had gathered in the courtyard to watch them leave for the city. Jani’s face betrayed his scorn, but he raised an arm and waved Lukács off, as if sensing his father’s displeasure and calculating the cost of defiance too high. Little Izsák, his face filled with excitement at the prospect of a night alone, skipped and bobbed on the gravel. József whistled to the horses. The cart lurched forwards and Lukács felt his stomach lurch in tandem as they drove out through the gates.

  The horses led them through the town and soon they were passing the white walls and red tile roof of the huge Gödöllö palace. The building’s magnificence captivated Lukács every time he saw it. The knowledge that the Royal Palace in Budapest dwarfed it both awed and perturbed him.

  ‘Will I see Franz Joseph at the palace?’ he asked, after they had been riding for an hour. Once they had left the outskirts of Gödöllö the road had narrowed, and they journeyed now past fields and forest.

  ‘There’s no chance of that,’ his father replied. ‘For a start, the king is in Austria. That’s the only reason we’ve been granted permission to hold the végzet at the palace this year.’

  ‘He doesn’t know what goes on in his own palace?’

  ‘Of course he does. But there are appearances to maintain. The Crown doesn’t officially recognise us as subjects.’

  They ate lunch on the road: cured sausage spiced with paprika, a hard cheese and hunks of bread. His father washed it down with mouthfuls of red Villány wine, then handed the bottle to his son. It was the first time Lukács had tasted wine. He enjoyed the feeling of warmth that spread through his belly.

  ‘Will all the great families be arriving at the palace on a horse and cart?’

  ‘Don’t be insolent, boy. You won’t be arriving on this. I’ve hired a carriage for tonight. It meets us at Szilárd’s house. The manner of your arrival is the least of our worries.’

  They reached the Pest district by late afternoon. The city was hot and dusty, and the sounds of the crowded streets filled Lukács’s ears. When they finally arrived at the waterfront, he gazed out at the vast expanse of the Danube for the first time in his life. Jani had told him to expect a sight, but this was the largest body of water he had ever seen. Its sheer size confused him at first, and he found it difficult to believe what his eyes were showing him. How could such a wonder of nature exist?

  The river, his father explained, originated in the Black Forest of Germany, winding its way through Europe for nearly two thousand miles before emptying into the Black Sea. The afternoon sun, low in the sky, winked on its brown waters.

  József halted the cart outside a three-storey townhouse with tall leaded windows. A boy came out to lead away their cart and horses while another servant conveyed them inside. After brief introductions with Szilárd, Lukács was shepherded into a dressing room where clothing had been laid out for him.

  The polished shoes he recognised; the rest of the outfit he had never seen before. While it resembled the formal evening wear worn by the nobility in and around Gödöllö, the cloth and the tailoring before him was of an even finer standard.

  Wearily, he peeled off his travel clothes. He washed himself using water from a jug a servant had left him, then pulled on dark trousers and a stiff white shirt. The winged tips scratched at his neck. He tied a white silk bow tie at his throat, shrugged into the waistcoat and finally the wide-lapelled frock coat. Its fabric was heavy, smooth, luxurious.

  On a separate side table, the last item waiting for him was a polished pewter mask. He picked it up and turned it over in his hands. The artistry was stunning. He remembered the lengthy sitting he had endured six months earlier; the pewter face bore an unsettling resemblance to his own, although the artist had clearly used licence in its construction. The mask’s expression conveyed strength, confidence, compassion – qualities he suspected his father had requested, rather than anything the visiting journeyman had witnessed for himself.

  At nine o’clock that evening, obediently following József, Lukács climbed into an enclosed black carriage. The sun was setting as their driver turned on to the Széchenyi chain bridge that linked Pest in the east to Buda on the west bank. The bridge sat upon two enormous stone river piers, the roadbed suspended by chains of iron, each link several yards long. It was the only bridge in Hungary to have mastered the Danube.

  ‘See the stone lions?’ his father asked, pointing at the guardians on each abutment. ‘I knew the sculptor, Marschalkó. A fine man. They say the famous bronze lions of Trafalgar Square are based on them. Such ma
stery.’

  As they crossed the bridge, Lukács studied the vast edifice of Buda Palace on the opposite bank. The building overwhelmed the hill on which it stood, its tall walls of stone, washed golden in the setting sun, rising up proud of the surrounding trees. Verdigris roofs, turrets and domes blazed with colour.

  ‘The finest building in Europe,’ József told him. ‘Graced tonight with the finest of its residents. You’re privileged indeed, my son. I’ve never visited the ballroom. They say its opulence is not to be matched.’

  Their carriage clattered up the hill, rolling to a stop in front of the palace entrance. József laid a hand on Lukács’s shoulder and reached into a pocket. ‘Before you go,’ he said, ‘I have something for you. Tonight you become a man. It’s fitting that as my son, you wear my finest work.’ From his pocket he withdrew a gold watch on a heavy chain. ‘This is yours. I’ve kept it from you until tonight. I’ve been working on it this last year. You won’t find a more accurate, finely balanced piece, even if I say so myself. Here, take it.’

  Stunned, Lukács took the watch from his father, immediately feeling its weight. He opened the hunter case and gazed at its face, marvelling at the craftsmanship, and the work that must have gone into it. Turning it over, he saw an inscription on the back plate.

  Balázs Lukács

  Végzet 1873

  ‘I don’t know what to say, Father.’

  ‘Then say nothing. Go. Don’t lose it. Put on your mask before you open the carriage door. And take this purse. You shan’t need it but you should have money. Make me proud, son. I wish you well. Whatever happens tonight . . .’ His father paused. Then he nodded towards the door. ‘Go on. It’s time.’

  Lukács followed two footmen through the palace grounds as the sun dipped below the hill. Candlelight shone out of a plethora of palace windows. Once through the grand entrance, he ascended wide stairs and followed an endless corridor hung with life-sized paintings of Hungarian royalty. The identities of most of the monarchs were lost on him, but he noted several images of Franz Joseph.