The Burning of the World: A Memoir of 1914 (19 page)

“They’re saying that Italy’s getting ready to leave the Triple Alliance. Things could become very difficult for us here.”
[9]

I swallowed hard. I did my best to explain matters in a way that would calm their fears. I could see that they hung on my every word.

I’m a soldier, so I must know what I’m talking about.

I had seen Italian soldiers mobilizing at the time of the Italo-Turkish War.
[10]
Women threw themselves in front of troop trains to stop them leaving the station. Men wept and wailed; carabinieri ran about yelling. These people were not soldiers. Austria could deal with them with one arm behind its back.
[11]
Still, it gave one pause.

Had it all caught up with me even here?

We went on playing
schwarzer Peter
in silence, but no one was paying it any attention.

All of a sudden, some terrible animal fear burst upon me, and everything abound me span. The lid on the cast-iron stove clattered rhythmically, the pictures danced on the walls, and the lamp that hung from the ceiling swayed. From outside came a thundering sound as if some huge set of steel shutters had been yanked down. I felt as if the floor were sinking beneath my feet.

I sprang up. Frightened eyes stared glassily at me.

“
Erdbeben
,” announced Miri. “
Hoffentlich es ist schon vorbei.
”
[12]

My knees were trembling as I sat down. They made me drink some cognac and saw me up to my room. They did all they could to calm me down. This had happened before. Fortunately, it had caused no real damage, not so much as a cracked chimney so far.

Miri confessed that, until now, she had not believed that there was anything the matter with me, as I looked so well. But now she knew that I really was ill.

I was to ring the bell if I felt unwell in the night.

I felt dreadfully ashamed at having lost my self-control, and I tried to demonstrate that I was perfectly all right. But when they left me to myself, I spread wet towels over my heart and lay like that, fully dressed, on top of the bed. It took hours before I calmed down; but I didn’t undress, thinking that if it came again, I would run down to the shore.

Thus did I live through my first and, I hope, last earthquake. The sum of my feelings was, quite distinctly, one of utter doom.

How calmly I had observed the spectacle of Messina in ruins from the earthquake!
[13]
It’s one thing to see, or read, or hear about something. It’s another to live through it.

The next day, I received a telegram from Ervin Voit, informing me that he had managed to get some time off work—no easy matter, apparently—and that he would be coming down to Lovrana for a week at Easter. I was to see about a room for him.

I was genuinely delighted to hear this. So many shared joys, shared enthusiasms, and feelings bound us together in friendship. The remnants of yesterday’s drama were swept away, almost as if it had never happened.

He arrived tired out. His wan face looked almost waxy, his elegantly slim frame somewhat stooped; but with his fair curled beard and quiet voice, he nevertheless presented a distinguished and attractive gentlemanly figure. I could tell that this was the impression he made on the family when I introduced him. His decorative appearance did not go unnoticed—especially by the girls.

He was delighted with his room, next door to mine, and looking out over the sea.

“Here, at last, I can relax,” he declared, eyeing the broad divan. “I got practically no sleep on the train. There was a full moon, and the scenery was simply stunning.”

I told him that I ate with the family, and it would look anti-social if we altered that arrangement.

For a moment, he looked taken aback, as if anxious that the independence which he had so painfully lost by getting married, so yearned for, and had—if only briefly—now regained, was in danger.

“Of course—if that’s what they’d rather.”

“I’ll leave you to get some rest. You can have lunch when you wake up.”

The family were touched that Ervin also wished to eat with them, if we were happy with that arrangement. He promised to learn how to play cards—something he had never done in his life.

It was late afternoon by the time he reappeared, refreshed after sleep and unrumpled. He declined all offers of a full lunch, saying he just wanted a bite to eat. The quantities of chocolate, whipped cream, fresh butter, jam, honey, and various cheeses that this involved put a normal lunch to shame.

He was eager for a walk by the seashore before it started to get dark. We set off on the
lungomare
towards Abbazia, where I was familiar with every cliff, cavity, and inlet.

We sauntered along, stopping here and there to marvel at the sea, which he, too, loved. With his softly spoken, quiet nature, I didn’t wish to disturb his rapt state of contentment. Why speak at times like this?

Beauty. Peace. Happiness.

We walked as far as Ika. One side of the little cove was occupied by a trattoria, with little tables set out among the flowering oleander. We shared a half liter of
vino rosso
and gazed off into the distance lost in blue mist, where the glowing sky kissed the glittering water’s mirror.

“You’ve done some beautiful things since you’ve been here. That wave is especially good. It must have taken courage to resolve something like that, to that degree, using watercolor.”

I won’t deny that his recognition gratified me.

“I’m amazed that, after what you’ve been through, you can focus your will onto a subject that’s so difficult to observe. Nature remains the source of all beauty, the sole cure for whatever ails the body and the mind.”

“Look, I’ve been at the stage many times now where I felt that something in me had snapped, that I’d lost the connection with the old me, and like someone groping about in the dark, I couldn’t find the thread that would lead me out of a pitch-black mine. Now, for the first time, I’ve felt some sort of glimmering of light within me, the possibility of a way out, by turning to nature. But not in the way that I used to, in a generalizing sort of way, but rather with the kind of reverence with which Szinyei immersed himself in the beauty of a freshly ploughed patch of earth, the varying forms of its gleaming clods and its colors. I’ve escaped back into nature, and I feel I’ve made the right choice.

“I’ve wondered whether this unprecedented catastrophe that’s hit the world can make the human creative spirit more productive. Will it inspire some magnificent dramatic theme? After all, it produces tragedies by the minute, and heroic, or grandiose, events and incidents. More’s the pity. The official war artists have churned out every kind of allegorical celebration of heroism. There may be all sorts of reasons for this, but perhaps it’s not just the artists who are at fault. War itself has lost whatever glory it might once have had. It’s lice and guts-ache.”

“I follow you,” said Ervin. “I agree with all you say, and I’m glad to hear that you’ve found a way forward. Where I think you may go slightly wrong is to blame everything on the war. Artistic anarchy was already wreaking havoc before the war started. Remember the exhibition by ‘The Eight’? I don’t get that Béla, either.” Béla Bartók
[14]
was Ervin’s cousin. “Before coming here, I attended a little concert of his. You can imagine what I felt—me, whose ideal is Chopin. I thought I was going to tear myself apart in agitation. It would start in harmony, and I would begin to relax and give myself up to the music; and then suddenly one of the violins would slice into it with a dissonant squeal, like a sharp knife. Then, all of a sudden, they stopped. The end, but without an ending. At least I could stop holding my breath. The Jewish kids went wild. Most of the audience just stared at each other in bewilderment.”

He shook his head and took a gulp of
vino rosso
.

“Well, the twentieth century hasn’t made a terribly encouraging start.”

We sipped at the wine for a bit.

“You know,” I said, “if one frets about these things, one starts to feel as if one had got caught up in some great tangled ball of thread. The more one struggles with it, the worse the tangle, and there’s no unraveling it. Slogans chase each other round and round: ‘renewal,’ ‘youth forward,’ ‘new vision,’ ‘democracy,’ ‘impressionism,’ ‘naturalism’—a whirlwind of ‘isms,’ one succeeding the other, faster and faster. Each one serves only to heighten the confusion. Some revolutionary transformation may already be under way; or this may all just be straws in the wind.

“A year ago, at the school, a cheeky little Jewish girl stopped me and asked: ‘Sir, what do you think of Benczúr?’ I gave her a frosty look. ‘Why do you ask?’ ‘Because when we feel like a joke, someone says “Benczúr,” and then we all have a good laugh.’ I gave her a stony stare for her effrontery, then I waved her aside, as if to say ‘get lost.’ But you know, she may not have been entirely to blame. I think it’s this poisonous spirit that’s spreading far and wide, like a miasma of swamp gas.

“Who benefits from this wrecking? What’s the purpose of it? A lot of people associate it with the socialist revolution that’s smoldering away—look at how the left and its newspapers behaved in relation to the outcry over ‘The Eight.’

“I hate the wrecking and the destruction of things. Especially when I have nothing better to put in their place. That’s why I loathe war, and loathe destruction of any kind, even if it’s wrapped up as part of some well-intentioned revolution.

“I hate injustice and the hurting of defenseless creatures. I’m not a weakling—you felt my muscles in Novi—and I’m not a coward. Remember when I gave that cabman in Rottenbiller Street a beating that night? He was thrashing that horse, tortured half to death, with the whip handle. On its head, its nose, its eyes. I told him to stop hurting the poor exhausted creature. He came at me with the whip. I left him lying on the ground.”

Ervin felt my arm. “Yes. You’re pretty much back in shape, and you’re combative enough. You were born for the front.”

I waved him aside and went on.

“On my way home, I rather regretted losing my temper, mainly because I realized that he’d only take it out on the wretched horse. But that poor defenseless victim meant more to me than its beast of an owner.”

Dusk was falling. The pink glow spreading up into the sky from the west played on one side of the waves, green shadows on the other.

“I enjoy listening to you. I agree with you one hundred percent, though I suspect that may be partly the
vino rosso
.”

Slowly, we got up and started back towards Lovrana.

I broke the silence. “Listen, I feel like I did after taking confession, back in the days when I was a devout little boy. I have that same feeling of inner peace. Though I must admit it’s stirred things up inside me as well.

“I don’t suppose that you’ve come here to wrestle with the world’s problems, any more than I have. We’re both here to devote ourselves, with no distractions, to whatever peaceful joys and beauties this earthly paradise can offer. Let’s talk about those, or not, but let’s not speak any more about war, and the things that go with it. Let’s go straight up to Castua tomorrow.”

The weather had favored us with a glorious day. Ervin reported that, back home, people were still squishing about through slush. Here, spring was unfolding in all its splendor.

From Abbazia, we made our rattling, swaying way on a tram, accompanied by squealing and grinding noises, to the oil refinery.
[15]
This was beautiful too; here, even this had its charm.

Finding one’s bearings from the shore was simple. The mountains rose before us, dotted with smaller or larger settlements—a sort of bird’s-eye view in reverse. Veprinac on its hilltop, like something in a fairy tale. To the east of it, Castua. From afar, it looked like a mediaeval fortified settlement. We had a two-hundred-meter hill to climb. It was bare, with the shriveled remains of fig trees here and there, and farmhouses overgrown with vines that had never been pruned. Kitchen gardens, no bigger than a room, surrounded by stone walls; the soil in them gathered together by the basket load from deserted houses, rotten tree stumps, and gullies. Tiny fields of wheat on a little plateau. Stunted rye and oats, which they harvest with sickles and tie into wreaths, like flowers.

A Hungarian peasant would sit and weep.

And yet, these were big-boned, heavy, sinewy people, with a somehow lordly presence and urbane manners. But from what? The Mausers believed that it was the sea. They were sailors, fishermen, and sometimes workmen.

Cheerfully, we plodded upwards. We crossed the railway line from Fiume. The blessed sun was almost scorching. We were climbing in our shirtsleeves. Beside the railways tracks, a railwayman, assisted by a mechanic, was spreading pitch onto his cape, spread out on the ground, to render it waterproof. It did not bear thinking about that he might actually wear it—hopefully, once it had dried, although this was uncertain.

Passing the ruins of former buildings, we were greeted by a chorus of croaks, crunks, and crepitations. We reached an abandoned open cistern. This was the source of the concert: innumerable toads the size of side plates gamboled about here, full of the heady joys of spring. Yellowish (
terra di Siena
), with yellow-green markings, they splashed about among the floating weeds in the muddy green stagnant water. The larger males squatted on the backs of the females, one human-looking foreleg embracing the female’s neck, croaking love’s sweet song. The weeds were woven through and through with strings of tiny balls the size of peppercorns.

We continued on upwards. When we started to flag, we would sit on a limestone rock, its surface weathered to a rasp, and gaze out over the magnificent panorama. We could not get our fill of its beauty. Then we would press on for another stretch.

“It’s beautiful all right, but imagine having to do this perhaps several times a day!”

We approached Castua. A little mediaeval Italian town with its piazza and its
duomo
. The place had evidently seen better days. The pieces of meat hanging in the smelly little
macelleria
were black with flies, legions of them greenly glinting. We searched for a trattoria, and found one. But neither of us liked the look of it. I had my suspicions about the
frutta di mare
and suchlike.