The Burning of the World: A Memoir of 1914 (17 page)

“His Majesty wears one just like this. It’s what makes a man fit for court.” And now he was free to fiddle with this sacred piece of regalia.

Uncle Béla sat at the head of the table, the center of much noisy attention. Animated, lively voices called out this way and that, one on top of the other. Prominent among them was the rasp of the host’s stentorian oration in praise of the qualities of the defunct porker.

“She was a magnificent beast! Nine piglets she had in that litter. Slimmed down a bit after that, but she still made two hundred and fifty kilos. Her fatback’s as wide as my hand”—he spread his fingers to demonstrate—“with twenty kilos of it each side.”

Uncle Béla had numerous helpings of each dish. How could he manage it? A voice congested with cold began to drone from beside the bread oven. The womenfolk came round again, offering more. What should I do? I didn’t even like the food much, especially their sausages, which tasted of lemons. Shrieking with laughter, they loaded up my plate with fresh heaps and gay abandon. The stale air swam thickly with the smell of freshly fried cubes of pork fat, a huge dishful of which was now brought in. Lord help me! The brother-in-law hovered at my elbow—the sword had created a certain bond between us—and kept refilling my glass.

Dear Lord. If only I could feel hunger once more in this life! Every eye was upon me. A hero had to be able to stand his ground here as well. What kind of hero lets himself be beaten by a boiled sausage? A soldier must eat to get himself good and strong, so that he can give those weedy troublemakers a good drubbing.

I felt myself turning pale. I was unpleasantly hot. My heart raced, and the sweat broke out on my brow. I asked the brother-in-law to open a window.

The fresh air reached my legs first, then my chest. I breathed it in thirstily and felt better.

“What are you letting all the warm out for?” shrieked the woman with the cold from beside the bread oven. She must have been expressing the majority view, since about five people sprang up to shut the window. That was that.

Uncle Béla now hauled his entire bulk to his feet. He was a quite an imposing presence, in his canonical sash and his cassock with its row of red buttons, like wild strawberries. An attentive hush fell, and then he spoke. There was a somewhat ecclesiastical flavor to his speech; he saluted the host and his family in terms that were larded with references to the Bible and its stupendous feasts, and the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, thanks to which all could eat their fill. There was something about the family being upright, God-fearing folk, and about the divine benevolence that made it possible for all these decent people present here today to share in the bounty of His blessings (courtesy of the pig), and so on, and so forth.

The polished tones of his mighty organ rang out. A couple of old women dressed in black sat, like crows, hunched on the bench beside the bread oven. One or other of them even gave a little sniff.

When the speech was over, the suppressed high spirits broke out again with elemental force. Everyone spoke to everyone else, and everyone spoke about something different. In all the hubbub, I seized my chance to lean across to Uncle Béla.

“I think I’ve eaten too much. I don’t feel well. Can we go home now?”

He looked at me in surprise and wonderment.

“Let’s at least wait for the host’s reply. Why don’t you go outside for a little fresh air?”

How to go out without drawing attention to myself? If they noticed me, a whole band of them would attach itself to me purely out of courtesy. I couldn’t even relieve myself without being observed.

I didn’t care. I had to do something, or it would kill me. My stomach heaved threateningly. Any moment now, I would disgrace myself.

I managed to shake off my retinue. One of them shouted out after me: “Use the dung heap, that’s the closest.”

I followed the example of the Roman, though I lacked a peacock feather. O blessed relief!

Luckily, when I returned, the host was in full flow. Not wishing to be outdone by his lordship, his style tended towards the hyperbolic. He alluded rather deftly to Uncle Béla’s speech, and the blessings of the Almighty. Then he turned to an appreciation of the late pig. It was quite miraculous how its distinguishing qualities gradually expanded. At this rate, by breakfast time it would boast slabs of back-bacon half a meter long.

It was a fine eulogy. People have an inextinguishable impulse to say something complimentary about those who have been sacrificed for their benefit. How much more dignified, how much more worthy of respect is the behavior of the lion, calmly licking his chops, as if to say: lucky antelope. Now, instead of jumping about uselessly, his flesh and bones will turn into lion.

As we plodded homeward, Uncle Béla recounted the incidents of the evening, chief among them the menu, which surpassed any criticism. I was only half listening, as I inwardly acknowledged and paid my respects to those highly cultured Romans, thanks to whom I had escaped the day’s gastronomic adventure in one piece, and, with luck, would now pass an undisturbed night.

I woke the next day with a dull head, but the cool air streaming down from the green, wooded hills soon cleared out the cobwebs.

Otherwise, the days passed, one much like the other. A stroll round the yard and the gardens; making friends with the horses and cows; walks to Királd and in the woods. The dear woman’s reedy voice—“Béla, aren’t you hungry?”—as she hobbled about. Poor thing, she was always chasing around, to the extent that her frail body allowed, after the maids, who idled about aimlessly. There were six of them now, wasting time and stealing firewood and wheat.

“I had to hire another one, to lighten poor Anna’s load.”

As far as I could see, this just made the confusion worse, with each one trying to push the work onto the next, while Annuczi rose at five in the morning; she could still be heard at midnight, opening and shutting doors, going from room to room and looking into cupboards and under beds, or outside, searching for her favorite cat and calling its name.

“Fritzi, my darling! Fritzi, my darling!”

He was the nastiest and most amorous tomcat of the lot. He and his beloved yowled away at their love-tryst’s hymn with such abandon that, finally, a carter took his revenge by driving a pitchfork right thought him, puncturing him in three places. Annuczi nursed him for a week, to no avail; though he held out long enough for general peace to be restored.

In the evenings, by the warm, orange-ish light of the petroleum lamp, Uncle Béla and I would discuss world politics and how the war was going. Not much was changing, or looked likely to change. Everything seemed to have come to a standstill. It was “all quiet on the Western front.” This was even more horrible; everyone waited impatiently for something to break the deadlock.

The fighting that ensued involved no movement on either side. The armies were dug in within a few meters of each other. On occasion, troops fraternized with the enemy, especially on the eastern front, and opposing forces even made local truces. The commanders, naturally enough, took a dim view of this, as it undermined the fighting spirit. At any rate, apart from some skirmishing, the fronts had frozen, the lines had become ever more effectively fortified and impregnable, and nuisance fire was wasted into thin air. In general, the fronts had lost much of their initial horror.

True, the Entente’s announcements were not encouraging: “Time is on our side”; “The war will be won by the side that has the stronger nerves”; “The war has just begun.” The West has yet to mobilize fully. The airplane is the weapon of the future. A lot of reassuring pointers and slogans. The Germans, for their part, held out the prospect of chemical warfare. They had already created a gun that surpassed anything that had gone before: the “thirty-five.” Then the forty-two centimeter; whereupon the enemy moved into underground concrete bunkers.

A race had begun between offensive weapons and defenses. The powers had, for the time being, reached equilibrium. But the West’s resources, unlike ours, were inexhaustible.

As we debated these things, our positions became increasingly polarized between Uncle Béla’s optimism and my pessimism.

“I accept that my position is not based on personal experience. For that very reason, I maintain that I am able to judge the facts more objectively. For you, everything is overshadowed by the traumatic experience that almost ended your life. The deductions you draw can’t be objective.”

I shrugged my shoulders and held out my arms.

“All right, I can see how that could be argued. But, for the life of me, there’s nothing I can do about it; nor can the hundreds of thousands of men like me, who can’t escape from the influence of their subjective experience. Armies are made up of young men whose instinct for life makes them fight for survival; reasoning plays no part. Wars used to be decided by individual battles that lasted a day or two. The momentary fervor of youth, fanaticism, or enthusiasm could survive that long.

“I think the West have got it right when they count on nervous exhaustion. Their geographical situation, their wealth and their greater populations will enable them to hold out longer than we can. As I see it, if we haven’t won this war within a year, we’ve lost.

“I see the force in much of what people are saying. But don’t forget that, as well as material readiness, you need psychological readiness. I’m not sure that the latter isn’t the more important.”

We both fell silent. Uncle Béla fiddled with a pellet of bread and gazed off into nothing. I would be sorry to upset him. Oh well. The argument would continue tomorrow, though for my own part I was finding it pointless, and was bored by it.

“Well, I’ll say goodnight, Uncle. It’s time I went to bed.”

“’Night, Bélus. Sleep well.”

Sweet dreams.

A door separated his room from mine—an old-fashioned low door with a brass handle and, in the center, a little disc-shaped polished brass knob. I used to hear him still moving about late into the night, or reading by candlelight. The candle often burned out, as he would fall asleep.

Tomorrow would be the first of March. I had to report at the end of the month for a medical examination. Now, as I attempted to weigh up the results of my time here, I concluded that I had imagined it differently. I had thought that I might be able to create some kind of extraterritorial existence for myself, where I could reconnect with my past life, take up the works I had begun but left unfinished, assess the compositions so far just sketched out with a few strokes, shut my eyes and stop my ears.

It was impossible. All that I had thought, imagined, or conceived felt alien, incapable of development. Alien. No longer relevant. Something had been broken inside me; or perhaps in the whole order of the world. Or in everything. For now, there was no way out. Perhaps I should let the past tear itself free from me, and allow myself to be carried by the tumultuous flood tide of the times.

I imagined my father’s voice. “Son, you must stop this brooding.” I say nothing and look at him. How can I make him understand?

“You’re always so pensive. There are deep lines on your forehead that weren’t there before.”

“There’s a lot that wasn’t there before. And there’s a lot on its way that we know nothing about.”

Oh well. Let’s get some sleep.

I woke early—although there is no such thing as “early” in the country, and there was already movement in the street outside.

The wooden shutters did not close perfectly, and the shaft of light that forced its way though the chink projected an image of the passers-by and carts outside onto the far wall of the room—but in reverse. The fundamental principle of sight and photography. I watched with childlike delight. The sun was up and shining; it was early spring; I had another month of life; and suddenly one word transfixed me: the sea! Maybe for the last time. Maybe there, in Lovrana,
[2]
where I had been in love. A veritable avalanche of joy hit me. I whistled as I shaved.

Annuczi was there at breakfast.

“Annuczi, my dearest. I’ve been so happy here, and I want to thank you for everything.” However, etcetera. “I’d like to go home tomorrow. They’ll be pleased to see how much weight I’ve put on.”

She looked serious.

“We’ve been so happy to have you here. You know how much Béla loves you, and who knows when we shall see you again?”

Oh, please let us have no goodbyes!

I left Királd railway station at dawn the next day for Eger.
[3]
Szilvásvárad, Bélapátfalva, Mónosbél . . . places that held happy, sacred memories for me.

Eger, where I had painted the great church at sunset to commemorate the ordination of Uncle Béla’s class of candidates for the priesthood. That had been ten years ago, when I still believed in the sanctity of art.

Another world.

M
Y UNEXPECTED
arrival at home was cause for delight. My father was at the office, but mother could not get her fill of me.

“You’ve become a new man in these three weeks.”

“More’s the pity! They’ll send me off again.”

I tried to be lighthearted. I quickly outlined my plans: if possible, I would be leaving for Lovrana tomorrow. My mother pressed her hands together.

“Still so restless, son! Wouldn’t it be good to rest here at home? There’s your expensive studio standing idle. Instead of devoting yourself and your time to calm work, you flit about.”

I sat hunched despondently in the corner of the divan—my usual place—and racked my brains: How to put into words the rupture that had taken place within me? I knew that, until I found the point at which I could reconnect, I would have no peace.

She stood in front of me.

“You mustn’t think that I want to hold you back if you feel that travel will bring you relief. It’s just that I feel sorry for you, son. You’re in the prime of your life, and you’ve gone quite gray at the sides. It so saddens your poor father, too.” Her voice wavered and became thin.

An hour later, when she came back from the kitchen, I could see that she had taken a firm grip on herself. She smiled and held out a bundle of letters.