The Burning of the World: A Memoir of 1914 (13 page)

Never mind. I was dog tired and I didn’t care about anything. We got into a cab for home. Rest! Rest!

H
OME
. The familiar walls, the familiar furniture, my room, my bed; everything had waited for me, unchanged, in frozen silence. And they would have come to terms with having waited in vain. Only I had changed here. My store of experience had been enriched by innumerable new impressions which were woven into my entire consciousness and would affect me—even if worn by the passage of time—for the rest of my life. The patterns on the familiar chaise longue’s plush upholstery were interwoven with the bare stumps of the trees in the Magierov forest, by glazed eyes staring into nothing.

Furtive eyes gazed out from behind curtains quietly pulled aside in the windows of the passageway flat in the courtyard. The Markbreiters. The hefty old cobbler with his green apron in the background, his hefty good-looking daughter in front and to one side, younger sister of the caricaturist Henrik Major
[1]
and future wife of the poet Zoltán Somlyó.
[2]
They stood motionless, giving no greeting.

My mother, too, received me in silence, only her lips trembling with emotion. It was only later that she could say something: “Thank God you’re here.” Her voice was hoarse and unfamiliar. I did my best to sound positive and convince them that I probably looked worse than I felt, and that I had got off relatively lightly, as things could have been more serious. Right now, all I wanted to do was to get myself clean, put on fresh clothes, get into bed, and sleep. And sleep.

“I’ve called Dr. Thomka,” my father said. “He’s on his way over now. He’d like to see you right away.”

“Can he wait until I’ve got rid of several weeks’ worth of Galician muck?”

“Never mind about that. It may be better if he sees you like this.”

My mother received Jóska without much enthusiasm; she seemed anxious. “Where shall we put him?”

“All he needs is a straw mattress at night, which can be put away somewhere during the day. He’s a good, decent lad, and I’ve got a lot to thank him for. Let him rest here for a week as well. Then he’ll go back to the regiment.”

The doctor arrived in a state of rapture. The wounded, in those days, still held some curiously fascinating glamour, although that would soon wither. At first, he didn’t recognize me for the former man-about-town.

He examined me from top to toe. He left the dirty, bloodstained dressing in place and advised me to go the garrison hospital in Hungária Street as soon as possible, where they would remove the dressing. He didn’t think the wound was dangerous and he could see no inflammation. The only thing was my nerves; I had probably suffered shock. I must be careful, when washing, not to get the dressing wet.

As long as he didn’t ask me to talk about the battle . . .

But I was in luck: I was not to talk much, but go to bed and sleep. He gave me a sedative.

For the time being, I sat in the corner of the chaise longue and leaned my head back. The little ornaments in the niches above my head rattled. My eyes closed.

I was startled awake by unfamiliar sounds. I jumped up. My father was sitting, petrified, in front of me; beside him, two men in civilian clothes shrank back in fright, their eyes staring.

“What are you doing out here?” I shouted. “There’s a battle going on! You’ll get shot!”

“Calm yourself, son! You’re at home. This gentleman is your friend Lajos Markó’s brother. They’re asking after you and their brother.”

Gently, he sat me back down and stroked my head. Little by little, I came to my senses, and tried to smile in my embarrassment, but the visitors withdrew, apologizing and keen to get away. There was a brief quiet exchange in the hall, then I heard the door click shut.

Well done. Now they’ll be telling tales of how crazy I am. Oh well.

They must let no one in!

My mother was standing in front of me. “Son . . . son . . .” she whispered. They were starting to behave as if I were an ill-tempered dog. “Your bath is ready.”

“Mother dear, please send Jóska in to help me undress and scrub my back. Better keep the fire going, so that I have clean water for a rinse after the main bath.”

Oh! A bath! A bath! My poor, filthy body; my gaping pores; the sand and dust of Galicia dissolved into the dried-on sweat. Floating weightlessly in the caress of warm water, wiggling my toes, turning slowly in the smooth-walled bathtub, being clean again. My poor, battered head, which, because of the dressing, I can’t sink below the water to scrub off the layer of sand stuck in the roots of my hair.

The bathroom had wonderful acoustics. I slapped the water: the sound rang metallically. Then the march from
Judas Maccabeus
came into my head, and I began singing the bass line, as I had done in the Lichtenberg choir, and the whole bathroom rang with it:

First, the choir of children; then the entire women’s choir took over; finally the mighty male choir. I remembered how the sublime beauty of that storm of sound reaching up to the heavens had suddenly made my throat tighten, and I had had to stop singing.

As now. Hearing the chorus, I suddenly remembered my fallen state. See the conquering hero . . .

Back to the here and now! I called out in a voice worthy of the chorus: “Jóska! Come in here! Rub my back with the soapy brush until it’s red, then ask for warm, dry towels.”

I don’t know how I got into bed. I only realized the next day that I had had no dinner.

My mother came into my room on tiptoe, smiling, holding out a bunch of red roses the size of a mill wheel.

“Thank God! It’s as if you’ve been renewed! Your father and I were so happy to hear you singing in the bathroom. Look what that poor girl has sent you! Why don’t you like her? She’d give her life for you.”

“Mother dear, please stop, or I won’t sing again.”

“But she’d make you such a good wife! Beauty soon fades, but a good heart lasts a lifetime. Sebők has sent a message, he wants to visit you this afternoon. You stay in bed, I’ll bring you your lunch. Sebők won’t mind you being in bed when he calls.”

Dear, soft-spoken Zsigmond Sebők. For the portrait I did of him, he had worn a sober morning coat which accentuated his slender elegance. He used to arrive for sittings punctual to the minute, and sought to serve the interests of art with his disciplined, almost frozen, poses.

Sure enough, he rang the doorbell at four in the afternoon. He approached the bed cautiously and his eyes searched my face. The touch of his warm, velvet-soft hand radiated friendship and love. He sat down beside me and we spoke for a long time about the events of the war, which then still had the thrill of novelty, the experience of battle, and the vicissitudes I had undergone. He made careful notes, then bade me a heartfelt goodbye. The next day a full-page article appeared in the
Budapesti Hírlap
about the heroic deeds of “a young friend and colleague”; and in that Sunday’s edition of
Jó Pajtás
a friendly piece, for the benefit of junior readers, about “the heroic Mr. Moldován.”

Dr. Thomka came again the next morning to examine me once more.

“You need to report to the garrison hospital tomorrow or, at the latest, the day after. I’m not going to touch the dressing. As far as I can tell, the wound’s all right, but your nerves aren’t what they should be. For now, take the tablets I’m going to prescribe.”

I attempted a joke. “Doctor, don’t make me too well, or they’ll take me away again.”

“Well, better to die healthy than live sick,” was his riposte.

After he had gone, I decided to shave to the extent that the bandages would allow. The razor tugged damnably on my beard, which was stiff from the dried blood in it. But at last I was able to wash at least part of my face clean. I felt reborn. Looking in the mirror, I was astonished to see a scattering of gray hairs at my temples. My first step towards old age at the age of twenty-nine.

Zoli turned up in the afternoon. He had traveled all the way from Beregszász on my account. He burst in with his arms spread wide and anxiety in his eyes.

“Look at you! You can’t trust a word they say. I came to see you on your deathbed, and instead I find a strapping figure of a man. I shall report back to Uncle Béla and family, who were just as worried as we were. We had an announcement about you printed in the
Beregi Hírlap
. I’m very concerned, though, to see you looking this well: they’ll have you back at the front in no time. You’d better stop eating so much.”

Then he told me that Vincze Vass was about to join the Bosnian regiment in Buda, and was dreadfully afraid. If he and his wife came to visit, I shouldn’t scare them. The family was otherwise well. Jolika’s husband hadn’t been called up yet. He himself, as county prosecutor, was still exempt.

It did me good to hear his voice and his witty, clever conversation, and to be reminded of the happy childhood we had spent together.

Next day, I decided not to delay any longer in reporting to the hospital. I called Jóska in and told him he’d have to rejoin the regiment in Veszprém. He should report to the command post at the railway station and they would send him on. I gave him a twenty-korona note, which was proper money, and said goodbye to the fine lad. I would never see him again.

I
REPORTED
to the garrison hospital wearing the cape blackened with dried bloodstains. This was for the sake of my parents, who naively thought it would stir some impulse of pity towards me.

A stocky, elderly, benevolent staff doctor peeled away the dressing which had dried onto the wound and examined me.

“We need to be careful, there’s some discharge . . .” He tested my reflexes and gave a little wiggle of his head.

“Surgery first of all, then to neurology,” he told the orderly.

I got through surgery smoothly enough. The X-ray showed no serious deformation of the skull. They swabbed and dressed the wound, which felt good.

In the neurology department I was taken to a crowded ward, the beds crammed so close together that there was scarcely room to move between them. I was shown to a bed with a bulging straw mattress, a straw-filled bolster, and a blanket. I was to lie down and wait for the doctor’s rounds.

The patients in there consisted mostly of nervous “crazies,” made both apprehensive and good-natured by their illness. I soon made friends with an extremely timid young cadet suffering from shell-shock. As I was making up the bed, I managed straightaway to knock the board from the end of the bed to the floor—whereupon, in his fright, the poor fellow flailed his arms about wildly, crying out inarticulately. Compared with him, I must have had nerves of steel, as the incident left me unaffected. A good sign, I thought.

Afterwards, we chatted. He dreamed of a little house on Virányos Street, a tender wife at his side, in quiet and in peace. To this day, I don’t know whether things turned out that way.

There was a young trainee doctor, and an even younger Polish-Jewish pharmacist. The latter made the most noise. He went on and on about women and his various escapades with them. At other times, he would bellow out, at the top of his voice, a garbled scrap of song that he had picked up God knows where:

The young trainee was earnest and officious, but he was a good lad and, when the need arose, he would hand out sedatives, bromide, phenobarbital, and the like.

The most serious case was the Polish legionary. A section of cranium the size of a five-korona coin was missing from the back of his head, and his brain was exposed. He lay there like a block of wood, helpless, and now and then he made a kind of wordless sobbing noise.

A young cadet had taken a bullet through the shoulder. It must have smashed some nerve, because he had no feeling on the left side of his body, which he sort of dragged around with him.

A shot had severed an artery in another man’s leg; it seemed that he also had hemophilia, because it wouldn’t stop bleeding. He was white as a sheet, but in good spirits.

A third man had been shot through the face. His jaw was wired up, and he could only open his mouth to a narrow slot, into which he shoved his food.

Doctors’ rounds took place during the morning. The assistant to Frey, the consultant, turned out—to my surprise—to be Elek Falus.
[2]
He had been called up as a private but seemed to have found a good billet. It was certainly a stroke of luck for me. I saw him discreetly drawing Frey’s attention to me.

“Are you the chap who, according to the X-ray, has nothing in his head? There does seem to be something left in there, though, despite the X-ray.”

I would have liked to reply, but in my humbled state, the most I could do was to acknowledge the joke with a modest, appreciative smile.

“Heightened reflex; traumatic neurosis,”
[3]
he said, adding a few Latin terms. Falus wrote it all down dutifully.

After that, the days passed slowly. A new patient came in, accompanied by his family: a well-built, good-looking young ensign, an engineer by profession. His very pretty younger sister had also come along, much to the delight of the “crazies.” He and I later became good friends. We would go out at dusk to stroll around the building under the bare trees. Leaning on a stick, he shuffled along slowly and cautiously. At first I thought he had something wrong with his legs. But he held out his wrist and I could feel, to my amazement, that his pulse skipped every fifth or sixth beat. This was why he took such care over every movement.

Later, the trainee doctor waved it away. “That’s nothing! He can live with it. His heart can still be all right.”

One evening, during our walk, the bells in the city began to ring. You could even hear the old bell in the Basilica. A festive clamor spread out like a wave over Budapest. As we later learned, the Germans had won a great victory over the Russians at the Masurian (or, as the squaddies say, “Ramasurian”) Lakes,
[4]
and Kaiser Wilhelm had, apparently, announced to his troops: “By the time the autumn leaves have fallen, you will all be home.”