Hungarian literature, one of the least known literatures in Europe, has produced works of international literary rank mainly in the realm of poetry. The traditions of Hungarian verse date back to the sixteenth century, to the first great Hungarian lyricist, Bálint Balassi. He voiced not only the exuberance of the Hungarian Renaissance, but his boisterousness and sentimentality, his choice of themes dealing with the warrior's life, with love and religious fervour, made him a model for subsequent generations of Hungarian poets. From the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present day, Hungarian literature has been a triumphal march of lyric poetry - each generation saw the emergence of great lyricists, who have, however, remained almost completely unknown to people abroad and to international literary opinion. The reason? Perhaps that the language of Hungarian poetry has always been refreshed from folklore and the archaic sources of Hungarian literature, so that the faithful reproduction of the hues of its idiom would have required extraordinary gifts and poetic power on the part of the translators. But the isolation, the unfamiliarity of Hungarian poetry and of Hungarian literature generally, may also be explained by the fact that in the last century, the chief concern of our authors was with the establishment of a national character. This concern overruled another - that of speaking to Europe, to mankind at large, and with it the requirement of contents that would transcend national limitations.

While Hungarian poetry was able, by the end of the eighteenth century, to boast of several great poets, narrative prose remained in its naive, archaic state. The novel, this most bourgeois product of European bourgeois development, was even as late as the first half of the nineteenth century only in an incipient stage in this country. Yet there had been quite a few spontaneous and characteristic manifestations of narrative art in earlier Hungarian prose. The parables of mediaeval codices, some of the dramatic passages in seventeenth-century memoirs, portions of the correspondence of Transylvanian princes and aristocrats, and, of course, the treasure trove of Hungarian folk tales - all these were important precursors of later Hungarian narrative writing.

In the first half of the nineteenth century it was the imitation of Eugène Sue and Walter Scott that set off the development of the Hungarian novel. The "mysteries" of the former were somewhat alien to the environment of the provincial Hungarian towns into which they were transplanted - the historical atmosphere of the latter was far better suited to the subjects and characters of Hungarian history. It was after such preliminaries that the Hungarian novel was born in the works of Mór (Maurus) Jókai, at the middle of the last century. Jókai established the national form of the Hungarian novel - in his picturesque and romantic manner he portrayed the personalities of the period preceding the revolution of 1848 - of the then recent past - the heroes of the Hungarian independence movements, the morals, customs and scenes of the vanishing feudal-patriarchal Hungary. The charm of Jókai's works is due to the nostalgic colouring of the recent past and his emotional, melancholic farewell to an old and familiar world. This nostalgia and emotion may also be felt in his short stories. The writers of the second half of the century - particularly Mikszáth, who in many respects followed Jókai and may, next to him, be regarded as the most significant author of the period - sang the swan song of the developing bourgeois Hungary to the old, intimate, patriarchal Hungary. In the short stories and novels of Jókai and Mikszáth the old world is clad in fairy hues; amid the conditions of capitalist Hungary, the epoch whose termination was marked, by 1848 suddenly came to seem humane and pleasant, heroic and interesting, though it had in fact been tainted by Hapsburg tyranny, feudal conditions and semi-colonial subservience to the Austrian empire. In this manner, Jókai and Mikszáth established a lyrical approach to the recent past. They saw heroes and eccentrics in the Hungary of yore, and both types equally require the descriptive art of romanticism and of realism to portray them. With Jókai and Mikszáth the Hungarian towns and country manors became populated with strange and unique characters and personalities. The art of these writers harbours a peculiar confession - that the second half of the century looked with emotion and pain upon the hopes and aims that had preceded 1848. The defeat of the revolution and of the struggle for freedom had thwarted the fulfilment of these aims and the hopes remained unrequited. Jókai and Mikszáth voiced the feelings of the ''better half" of the nation - capitalist Hungary looked back on the Hungary of the pre-1848 period, as upon its own better part. Or, as a mature and disillusioned man, upon the happy, magnanimous, youthful period of great expectations, bold ventures and selfless heroism.

It was Jókai and Mikszáth who gave birth to modern Hungarian short-story writing. These short stories were a development of the anecdote, itself the favoured literary form of the old, patriarchal Hungary. These full-flavoured anecdotal short stories, built up round a point, are in many ways different from Maupassant's type of short story. The characters of these short stories are heroes or eccentrics. The anecdote is suitable for the portrayal of both types. Its kindly, humorous savour deprives heroism of its poignancy, and eccentricity of the painful feeling of backwardness. The faithful heir, tender and cultivator of the anecdotal art of Jókai and Mikszáth was Károly Eötvös.

End-of-the-century Hungary awoke from its romanticism. In our country this romanticism had a longer after-life than anywhere else in the world. The cult of the recent past entertained by the period of capitalism, could only be maintained amid the forms of romanticism. But the young generation of writers at the end of the century had no reminiscences of this pre-1848 fairyland. Their experiences were simpler and more bitter. A truly urban Hungary had come into being, which saw even the village differently than the patriarchal mid-century generation. This period turned its attention to the unsolved, unsettled social problems of its day - and the breath of a new revolution may be felt in the passion with which the young generation drew attention to the destitution of the peasantry, the defencelessness of simple people and the depravity of the gentry. One of the leading figures of this new literature - a special kind of littérature engagée that was permeated with a sense of responsibility - was Sándor Bródy. And in his immediate vicinity, István Tömörkény provides an example of the philanthropic, sympathetic view of the people entertained by the urban intelligentsia. Tömörkény made a veritable discovery of the peasant world which the heirs of romanticism had so far only presented on the scenes of bucolic plays and sentimental short stories, in an idealized, syrupy setting. His short stories are sometimes rendered cumbersome by their ethnographic descriptions - inventories of customs, implements and the peculiarities of various trades. Zsigmond Móricz, with his rich knowledge of the peasantry, thought Tömörkény's short stories were "ethnographic museums." Yet there was need for this "inventory" to be made, because the world which Tömörkény described was as unknown to the educated classes as the life of an African tribe. More or less contemporaneously with the poor of the farmsteads on the pusztas, this period also discovered the urban poor, the proletarians. Ferenc Molnár was the first, before he undertook his more celebrated but also more superficial ventures in stagecraft, to take note of the urban poor and to discover the bitter-sweet poetry of their life.

The generation of short-story writers who emerged at the turn of the century, played only the overture to the great poetic revolution that developed in this country between 1905 and 1919. This was intrinsically a revolutionary period, throughout Europe. The unallayed, defeated Hungarian revolution of 1848-1849 came to life again in the bourgeois revolution of 1918 and the proletarian revolution of 1919, undertaking to complete the work that had been left unfinished in 1849. As in Petőfi's age, literature at the beginning of the century again became one of the sources of inspiration for this revolutionary fervour. In the lyrical field, the soaring poetry of Endre Ady was a portent of the great storm to come. Ady's companion in prose was Zsigmond Móricz. The revolutionary forces maturing in the peasantry were so strikingly voiced in the work of Móricz as though his were the words of a belated participant in the Hungarian peasant revolution of the sixteenth century. But Móricz was a belated author in other respects too. It was through his artistic portrayal of reality that Hungarian prose made up for the omissions of the long-lived post-romanticism of the nineteenth century. This post-romanticism had prevented Hungarian novels from presenting a picture of society that was of similar value, or a portrayal of the characteristic types of the period that was of similar richness to that achieved by European novels from Balzac to Tolstoy. Perhaps it was this belatedness that made the medium of Móricz' work so crowded and dense - perhaps it was this that lent his art so synthetic a character. For the synthesis of Móricz includes the concise and sombre tradition of the Hungarian folk ballads - the "Barbárok" (Barbarians) and "Hét krajcár" (Seven Pennies) themselves preserve something of this tradition - the linguistic splendour of the seventeenth-century memorials, and also the procedures of the modern, analytical character-study novel. Móricz's life work reflected the profound crisis of Hungarian society after the defeat of the 1919 revolution, as it did the ruin of the peasantry, the decay of country squiredom and the slow, threatening disintegration of the Hungarian bourgeoisie. For this very reason, Móricz established a grandiose, pan-national art of novel writing, and with him the Hungarian novel attained the heights which in poetry had already been achieved in the previous century.

The short stories of Móricz are alternately concerned with idyllic and tragic events. The idyll and tragedy are, of course, the two extreme characteristic forms of the feelings entertained in the period about 1919. By the time of the First World War, Hungarian literature - and naturally the short story too - were in a highly differentiated condition. The requirement for romanticism, for poesy, again surged to the fore and after the naturalism of the fin de siècle generation, by way of a reaction, the new art that used the tools of impressionism also appeared in Hungarian short-story writing. The requirement for idyllic writing became but deeper, under a firmament of social tragedies. The humour and charm of Jenő Heltai is as much a satisfaction of the requirement for the idyllic, as is the fairy world of Gyula Krúdy. The nostalgic feelings of Jókai and Mikszáth appear with renewed intensity, in highly decorative and stylized forms with Krúdy. It is with him that the poetry of the "recent past" gained complete fulfilment - the old Hungary whose figures he presents, is transformed into a fairyland of imagination and romanticism. It is obvious that Krúdy is a fugitive from his own period, and this escape into the land of dreams parallels to some extent all that world literature also attempted to do in the 1920's.

The national form of the Hungarian novel may be regarded as having been evolved by the first decades of the twentieth century. The novels of Móricz, Margit Kaffka and Mihály Babits mark the conclusion of this process. And nevertheless it seems as though the lyrical inclinations of Hungarian literature were manifested in the fact that the ideal of the perfect form was found in the genre of the short story, instead of large-scale compositions. The treasury of Hungarian short stories contains more masterpieces than that of the Hungarian novel. Margit Kaffka, who in her novel "Színek és évek" (Sights and Seasons) sang the swan song of the Hungarian country squires, in her short stories also depicts the crisis of the former leading class in Hungary. In the 1920's Hungarian literature became increasingly gloomy. The first signs of this gloom are apparent in the short stories of Andor Gábor. Under the firmament of the counter-revolutionary period, escape was offered either by dreams such as Krúdy's, or by a yearning for the purity and humaneness of the peasants' world, like that expressed by Ferenc Móra. Several of the latter's contemporaries, in fact, exaggerated the idealization of the archaic peasant life and created a peasant myth. Móra, however, remained immune to this kind of peasant romanticism and contrasted his own age, that of the inter-war years, the age of the new barbarism, with the pure humanism of the poor people's world, the memories of his own childhood.

The period around the First World War may also be regarded as a golden age of Hungarian short-story writing. Heltai, Krúdy, Kaffka and Móra were not alone in representing the generation of authors who replaced the anecdotal style of the previous century with a new art of short-story writing, one that seems both lyrical and philosophical. Short stories played a more important part in the lifework of Dezső Kosztolányi, Géza Csáth and Frigyes Karinthy than in that of any of their contemporaries. Among the writings of Karinthy, permeated with humour and wisdom, his short stories occupy a singular position - they are his means for expounding and illustrating one or other of his paradoxes. Karinthy's embittered playfulness conceals the moralist's lack of illusions - for the post-war generation, morals signified what illusion used to mean for their predecessors. In the first period of Kosztolányi, Csáth and Karinthy the paradox, improvisation and playfulness were dominant. Their strange stories are too speculative in character, the idea is too obvious in them. Kosztolányi was led to a recognition of the startling dramas of the human soul by Freudism, thus to achieve the newly defined morality which was manifested in an emotive, sympathetic love and compassion for erring man. Kosztolányi and his companions - including Géza Csáth - undertook to portray the tragedies of everyday life. The excentrics and heroes of the short stories of the last century, the barbaric peasants of Móricz' stories, were in the inter-war period replaced by nameless ordinary folk, the humble victims of modern civilization, the undistinguished pariahs of the cities. The majority of Kosztolányi's stories are about these moving and senseless lives.

Bewilderment at the tragedy and senselessness of life was an attitude characteristic of most short-story writers between the two wars. The most prominent representative of these wise and disillusioned authors was Sándor Hunyady. In an age that brought the disruption of forms into fashion he adhered to strict, classically simple form. Hunyady did not believe in ideals or devote himself to any particular faith. The way he stands outside, his impersonal observer's vigilance nevertheless express the same moral attitude as that of Kosztolányi or Karinthy. The Hungarian literature of the inter-war years may well be called a literature of diseased times. The moral approach of the period could be most faithfully expressed by the view that the writer's main task is to report to his fellow-men on his own forebodings of danger.

The works of the two most significant short-story writers of the period, Andor Endre Gelléri and Lajos Nagy, are in fact suffused with reports of similar purport. Both expressed the same disquiet, the same feeling of danger - yet how different their methods were. Gelléri recorded the realities of the first part of the thirties - the years of the great economic slump. In his short stories we may discover the specific conception of life entertained at the time - the bitter mixture of hopelessness and the urge to live, of pain and joy that then filled the hearts of decent men. Gelléri's short stories are poetic confessions about a remote age, and beyond the apparent playfulness of these confessions, lies the latent threat of tragedy.

The unrequited demands of Hungarian history emerged with renewed urgency. These unsolved problems had been left as a heritage to the 1930's by the defeated revolutions of 1848 and 1919. In the period preceding the Second World War, Hungarian short stories heralded the need for change through their terse and precise statement of the gravity of the existing situation, the diagnosis and declaration of the phenomena of desintegration and crisis. The great master of this diagnostic, terse and objective art was Lajos Nagy. His writings are very often gloomy and tenebrous, their satire is embittered and ruthless, their tone acrid and severe. His lifework showed almost the whole world as hopeless and devoid of prospects. Yet it is actually not misanthropy, but a heightened, humanistic sense of love that is expressed in his short stories, which by showing the untenable conditions are themselves an argument for something better and more humane.

The development and fruition of the Hungarian short story has been the work of about a century and a half. This literary form has acquired an importance similar to that of lyric poetry in Hungarian literature, because it has achieved a fortunate harmony of the inspirations derived from national and international sources. The anecdotal short stories of post-romanticism were superseded at the end of the century, under the influence of the short stories of Maupassant and Chekhov, by the modern type of short story, which had attained to a position of hegemony in world literature. Through Móricz the Hungarian short stories that had developed according to the Western form were enlivened by the influence of Hungarian folklore, and in the 1920's and 1930's a path similar to that of Western surrealism was adopted by Krúdy, while surrealism also exerted a direct influence on Gelléri.

The Hungarian short story thus itself underwent the process which was also the most important process of the whole of Hungarian literature - it succeeded in expressing its specifically Hungarian message in such forms and by such techniques that have rendered the unique, the national, the particularly Hungarian features comprehensible to a wider international reading public.

(1825-1904)

At one time called "Hungary's greatest story-teller," Jókai is still undoubtedly one of her most popular writers of fiction. Several of his novels were in his lifetime translated into German, French, English, Russian, Polish and Czech. His patriotic or adventure stories and novels or romances, whether excursions into Hungary's past history or laid in a contemporary setting, have been favourite reading among several generations.

The son of a lawyer, he was intended to join the profession. For some time before the 1848 War of Independence he had been one of the coterie which gathered around the poet Sándor (Alexander) Petőfi as its principal moving spirit, and, like his great friend, he too played a part - if a more cautious one - in those momentous events. Following the débacle, he was compelled to go into hiding, for a régime of ruthless oppression held the country in its sway. As soon as an easing of absolutist terror made this possible, he came out of hiding and returned to Pest. More historical novels followed. Jókai tried to keep alive his countrymen's spirit of defiance in the face of their present humiliation by reminding them of the grandeur of their national past. Before long, he became tremendously popular. An extremely prolific writer, Jókai published one novel (sometimes two novels) each year. His historical novels - Egy magyar nábob (A Hungarian Nabob), Kárpáthy Zoltán, Erdély aranykora (Midst the Wild Carpathians), Törökvilág Magyarországon (The Slaves of the Padishah), A kőszívű ember fiai (The Baron's Sons) - drew on Hungarian history and revived the traditions of national courage and independence struggles in the face of the invaders. Novels of manners - Az aranyember (Timár's Two Worlds), Fekete gyémántok (Black Diamonds), etc. - and the Utopian phantasy A jövő század regénye (A Novel of the Coming Century) enhanced his reputation and increased his popularity. Towards the end of the century, Jókai was the uncrowned prince of Hungarian letters; and, despite his faults, which drew the censure of critics (loosely-knit and rambling plots and romantically rough-sketched characters that are either of angelic goodness or unmitigated scoundrels) his books were eagerly read, and for a long time he was the most popular writer in Hungary.

The strong appeal of his writings springs no doubt from his excellence as a spinner of yarn. In his great talent for plot-hatching he is a close neighbour of the great French romanticists, above all Victor Hugo. His unmatched, poetic fancy conjured up images of distant worlds for the public of a backward Hungary. His intimate knowledge of detail, of the many little phenomena of life, gives authenticity to his novels and stories. Romanticism and realism, patriotism and the beauty of the tale are all blended in Jókai's lifework.

Between Felvinc and Nagyenyed, a small mountain brooklet, now spanned by a permanent stone bridge, crosses the road. On either side of the bridge, at the water's edge, stands an enormous willow: and there is a historical event connected with those two willows. Seven generations have seen them grow, and their story has been handed down from father to son and is remembered to this day as if it had happened in our lifetime.

It is now just a hundred and fifty years since the Kuruts-Labants war^[1] was à la mode, with the Kuruts forces setting the rules at Nagyenyed one day, and the Labants fighters taking over the next. As the former went out at one end of town, the latter came in at the other.

The citizens of Nagyenyed could not get it out of their heads that it would have been far, far better if these good people had gone to see one another instead of calling on them; but their visitors were worldly-wise gentlemen who had some notion of the strategic ruse according to which one way to beat an enemy is to strip the countryside of its victuals. It was this concept which they put into practice.

For while the regular armies of the Prince^[2] - the cream of the nobility, with their banners, stalwart hussars with wolves's skins slung over their backs, picked heyducks, and guardsmen, in their red-and-blue uniforms - were fighting pitched battles against the main body of the imperial forces, composed of shining cavalry, mail-clad and crested, of dragoons in embroidered buff-hides, and sharp-shooting musketeers, while all this was going on over there in Hungary^[3], idle soldiers of fortune roamed the countryside, so very much alike in their looks that it was impossible to tell the Kuruts from the Labants.

They were, for the most part, people who had themselves been ruined by the war and whom despair, destitution and a thirst for revenge had left no other choice than to take up their scythes or pickaxes and join either the Kuruts or the Labants camp, according to whose soldiers had made them destitute.

Bands of these vagrants went from town to town, extorting money and looting wherever they met with submissive inhabitants; indulging in arson, where their anger was roused, and taking to flight as soon as they were scared. They could hardly be called enthusiastic fighters; and the vanquished would as a rule go over to the side of the victors, so that, on Mihály Cserei's^[4] evidence, there were men who had been on and off the Kuruts side four or five times and as many times in and out of the Labants camp.

Such frequent alterations of quality must have been a serious obstacle in the quest for glory; for if you had made a good name for yourself, you could never be sure that, if your entire host happened to go over to the other side one day, the enemy might not see fit to spare them all and to hang you, as the most highly prized object of his revenge.

However, a way out of this predicament was found by assuming false names, by a practice mainly cultivated by the Labants fighters, who strove to find aliases for themselves over which those Kuruts nincompoops would twist their tongues - names which more often than not were corrupted German words that they themselves did not understand.

The Kuruts "pashas," on the other hand, sought to assume Wallachian names.

At that time, the most ominous menace that hung over Nagyenyed and the towns of the neighbourhood was represented, on the one hand, by the Kuruts leader Balika, who had taken up his abode in a cavern in Torda Gorge, still referred to as "Balika's Fort," and on the other, by the two Labants chiefs who had their quarters in the Mezőség^[5], and one of whom bore the queer name of "Traitzigfritzig," while the other was more romantically called "Borembukk."

Such were their assumed names, such, too, were those who bore them - fellows, now clumsy, now ruthless, half facetious, half sanguinary, of whom many amusing stories - and no fewer horrible ones - were bruited about, and whose names on the lips of nurses served as bugbears for frightening naughty children and in the mouths of roguish Nagyenyed students as epithets for jeering at each other.

Oh, those students! They were peculiar young fellows, those students of Nagyenyed!

As soon as a Calvinist lad had learned the art of making quill-pens out of goose-feathers, his mother would fill up a haversack with scones for him, and his father would buy him a pair of top-boots and take him to Nagyenyed, where, having put him down in the quadrangle of the college, having boxed his ears and given him his blessings, he would leave the boy to his own devices. Thereafter, it was up to the lad whether he would become a minister or a professor, King's Magistrate, Chief Warden, or councillor; and the father's worries about his son would be over. The lad grew up, acquired whiskers, became stout, crammed as he was with food and knowledge, was sealed off hermetically from all worldly temptation, had both body and soul taken care of, was educated in faith and good health, and made a clergyman, professor, King's Magistrate, Chief Warden, or councillor - in line with his mental faculties or his good luck, without causing the least concern to his father and mother. The College became his mother.

This respectable matron had some five or six hundred foster sons and an income of several hundred thousand forints to pay for their education; it possessed the most learned professors, products of foreign universities; a world-famous library and all kinds of endowments, which, while stimulating the youths to diligence, soon enough instilled in them the salutary consciousness of having learnt to earn their own livelihood, modest though it was, according to their deserts.

The Rector of Nagyenyed College was at that time the Right Honourable Master Gerson Szabó of Torda, a great scholar, an exceptionally peaceable gentleman and a tireless upholder of virtuous ways.

For, once he had established himself among his monstrous folios, he became so utterly absorbed in them that he would often ask his wife whether he had had his dinner, yet to his pupils he was an oracle. His inclinations drew him only towards such quiet and peaceful sciences as astronomy and mechanics, while he had a dislike for history as a science which - in his words - taught nothing but the names of men and women who excelled in slaying their fellow beings, praised the exploits of the sinful, the sanguinary and the ruthless and filled its boundless expanse with lies, instead of improving posterity through upholding the example of pious men, of benefactors of mankind, and of sages.

In his repugnance to particular historical personages, he even did not hesitate to falsify the past for the spiritual welfare of his students, enjoining the professor of history to depict Cleopatra, Semiramis and other such shameless hussies, as ugly, detestable monsters, the very thought of whom should be enough to fill one with loathing.

Never were the students allowed to cast their eyes upon a female shape; dancing, the sound of the fiddle and other vain diversions, were banished once and for all from their midst; even in church, to keep them from ogling the girls, a space behind the pews was partitioned off for the older students, who sat there on trimmed fir trunks, to keep their heads lower than the elbow-rests of the pews in front of them. For the right honourable rector professed the rockfast principle that a young man yet unable to marry, that is, while he was still prosecuting his studies and could not afford a well-feathered nest of his own, had no need to know a woman, and whatever happened in the meantime was vanity and would lead to nothing good.

It need hardly be said that this was the most unpopular view one could proclaim for the sake of the public weal, and that it found the fewest adherents among those most concerned - the students of Nagyenyed. After all, one could not help seeing a female figure once in a while, and any woman seems beautiful to a young man between fourteen and twenty years of age.

A particular difficulty in applying Master Gerson's educational maxim was the circumstance that he himself had a daughter, and she was so beautiful that you might go picking and choosing through the town for half a year and yet come back to her in the end.

All the students who happened to behold this girl invariably fell in love with her; but their love was wasted, because it would be easier for one of the damned to flee back across the Styx than for a student to come within twenty steps of Klárika - for that was the beautiful maiden's name.

Master Gerson had a one-storied house next to the college, with his own chambers on the ground floor, and his daughter's rooms occupying the first. A grill barred the passage to the stairs, so that it was out of the question for some young man, on his way to see the professor, to stray into Klárika's vicinity. And anyhow he would have done so in vain for the good girl had been brought up in such fear of both God and students she would surely have fled at the sight of the young man.

Nor did any simple mortal have free access to the learned professor's house; but for tried and tested personages his door was thrown open.

Two such tried and tested personages were the young students of the humanities, Joseph Zetelaky and Aaron Karassiay.

The former was a handsome youth of seventeen with the face of a virgin. He was a special favourite of Master Gerson's, who believed him to have confined his spirit among the books of science more securely than if he had put it behind bars or preserved it in alcohol. He always held first honours and wrote all manner of verse on any subject, making use with equal dexterity of hexameters, pentameters or alexandrines, or of Sapphic, Alcaic, or Anacreontic lines. It goes without saying that there were no love poems among these compositions, which sang of Winter, Spring, the Harvest, Lightning and similar lofty subjects. In addition, he spoke fluent Greek, Latin, Hebrew and French; knew every star in the sky and each flower in the fields; served as assistant to Mr. Gerson in the latter's chemical or physical experiments; and was, besides, a young man of such devout sentiments that, when called upon in class to recite the passage relating to a certain goddess who is wont to wear but scanty apparel, he would blush and cast down his eyes.

The other student, Karassiay, was a somewhat slow-witted fellow, taciturn and mild-tempered, a gownsman of six years' standing, who was high in Mr. Gerson's favour, because his name never figured in any spree or brawl; which, if it had, would have been disastrous since he was blessed by Nature with such arms and shoulders as, had he set them in motion to the misfortune of others, might have given them cause to recollect the occasion for a long time. Instead, he expended his stupendous strength only in the peaceful art of woodwork, fabricating all sorts of instruments for the professor. The capacity of his arms for other movement was evidenced only when, during the long vacation, the students would arrange mythological plays in the Big Hall - with a male cast, of course, and before a male audience - on which occasions Karassiay would play Hercules, and Zetelaky would play Dejaneira so naturally that no one would have taken Joseph for other than a girl, while it was sheer delight to watch Aaron, in his fight with the Centaurs, floor some thirty heathen demi-gods all by himself.

The General Examinations were drawing near, and the Honourable Master Gerson Szabó of Torda was making tremendous preparations for his scientific demonstrations, designed to show how water is turned into air, how a pair of hemispheres, converted into a vacuum, will cohere; how air can be ignited; and how paper mannikins can be made to dance under the electrifying machine; performances that passed for miracles in those days. For this reason he handed over the keys of the physics cabinet to his chosen ones, that they might busy themselves there with their usual diligence. And indeed, he noted that the two excellent young men entered the cabinet the first thing in the morning, and that only night would see them emerge. "What commendable diligence!" said Mr. Gerson haranguing his other students, "You should take them as an example, you wicked, vainglorious, good-for-nothing drunkards, that you may become as they are."

Let us see what our two youths were doing in the physics cabinet. This cabinet had a window which could be darkened for the purpose of optical experiments, a window that gave right onto the yard of the Honourable Master's house. Our two diligent young men were standing at that window, and, applying an immense wheeled telescope to its round opening, seemed to be examining something through it with absorbed attention. Was it the stars they were observing? Possibly yes. But then, why should they level the telescope downwards?

Just now it was Joseph's turn, and he was looking through the lens, enraptured. "My God, what a lovely sight!" he sighed, unable to restrain himself. Was it a star then? "Now she's picking a rose. How I wish I were that rose!" No, it could not be a star after all!

Our brave young men, under the pretext of observing the stars, occupied themselves all day long with admiring beautiful Klárika through the telescope.

While Mr. Gerson was deceiving himself in the belief that they were exerting their eyes upon the wonders of the firmament, the two young men entertained themselves by following the charming maiden with their telescope wherever she went into the garden, the rooms and the kitchen - feasting their eyes on her.

For our good Aaron this pastime was mere fun, but Joseph became so absorbed in it that he could not tear himself away from the telescope. When he lost sight of the girl for a while, he could neither eat nor sleep, took no interest in anything, and kept sighing and forgetting everything he had read; he even, to the utter consternation of Mr. Gerson, paid no attention in class, for then, too, his thoughts flew back to the little garden with the rose arbour and to the beautiful maiden gathering the petals of the full-blown roses with her tiny white hands and dropping them into her little apron.

Even during the experiments he would heap blunder upon blunder, breaking things, smashing everything he laid his hands on. In experimenting with phosphorus he used hydrogen instead of oxygen, nearly blasting the whole class out of the room.

Mr. Gerson was thoroughly perplexed. He had no idea what might be the matter with the boy. He searched and investigated and found nothing. By the time he had clip-clopped down the whole length of the long corridor, to the cabinet, everything there was always in its place again - telescopes turned skyward and alembics and airpumps operating normally.

Meantime, the sorrow in Joseph's heart grew day by day. Sometimes the deceptive telescope brought the adored maiden so close to him that he would stretch out his hands towards her in ecstasy, drawing them back with a start only as the windowpane hit his fingernails, which made Aaron nearly double up with laughter.

Amidst these torments, the evil spirit of temptation induced the pious young man to sit down at the desk one afternoon and - perish the thought - write a love-poem! The poem was in Sapphic stanzas and abounded in all the beauty under the sun. Aaron, on hearing him recite it, swore that he had never heard of a finer poem in his whole life.

One evening the two youths, leaning on their elbows at the window of the cabinet and gazing up at the moon, had a heart-to-heart talk.

"If only she could read that poem," Aaron said.

"Umph," Joseph answered. (Such a thing was not easily done in those days, when there were not yet seven magazines available, in which to get a poem printed.)

"If I were you, I would get it into her hand somehow."

"Yes, but how?"

"Well, I'd throw it into the garden."

"All right. But what if the wind should blow it away and drop it into the yard to be picked up by Mr. Gerson?"

Now it was Aaron's turn to say Umph.

"The thing to do," said Joseph, sighing, "is to fold the paper neatly and hide it among the budding roses, so that when she comes from the house early in the morning to gather rose petals, she will find it and read it."

"That's easy enough," Aaron said. "You can lower yourself by a rope from this window to the garden wall, and from there you can easily jump down into the soft earth where it has been dug up; then, to come back, you can hold on to the elder tree and use the rope again."

"What!" Joseph exclaimed, horrified. "Use a rope to lower myself from the college window? Climb over other people's fences at night? No indeed!"

Aaron himself was frightened at these words.

"Well," he said, "I didn't say you should do it. I only said it would be easy."

Joseph remained silent for some time, then suddenly said:

"Do you know where one could find a long piece of rope here?"

"Do I! Why, there's the old bell-rope up there in the loft."

"Go and fetch it down."

Aaron went to get the rope, tied a club to one end as a sort of saddle, made Joseph sit upon it and, winding the rope around the mullion of their window and holding it with his sinewy hands, lowered him down bit by bit to the stone wall. Not for a moment did Joseph seem to be worried that the rope might slip from his companion's hands, causing him to break his neck; if there was anything he feared, it was only that he might be seen.

But nobody saw him. He was able to climb over the wall, hide the poem among the roses, and again clamber back to the cabinet window by the rope in Aaron's hands, without suffering the least harm. And now they could only gape at each other, dumbfounded by the foolish thing they had done.

Next day they dared not look at each other, and even less into the telescope. Like two men guilty of some foul murder, they were afraid even to go near the spot of the crime, and it was with pounding hearts that they heard the tap-tap of Master Gerson's boots approaching along the corridor.

Master Gerson entered. Neither Joseph nor Aaron had the courage to look up at him, both of them convinced that the professor might read the story of the nocturnal escapade from their very nosetips.

"Please to step this way, humanissime!^[6] I want a word with you."

Zetelaky was more dead than alive. He would not for all the world look at the professor, who measured him in ruthless silence.

"What I wish to tell you, humanissime," he said at last in a dry voice, "is that next time you wish to deliver a poem, you will kindly enter by the door, and not by way of the fence, lest you trample my tulip-beds again. As for the poem you wrote, it is not bad, only your Adonic seems to me a little clumsy in one place."

With these words he thrust the poem in question into the student's hands. Joseph would not have objected if the earth had swallowed him up, college and all.

Klárika had found the poem in the place where he had hidden it, but, like the good girl she was, had thought it her paramount duty to tell her father and to complain about the spoiled tulip beds at the same time. The old gentleman had at once recognized the handwriting and seen through Joseph's wily scheme. Henceforth, experiments were no longer entrusted to that unhappy youth, nor was he ever again sent to work in the cabinet.

Meanwhile it happened now and then that matters other than what was printed in their books came to the knowledge of the student body, and news often seeped through of events that were taking place in the country. The students made no attempt to hide their sympathies or antipathies in the struggle going on between the Kuruts and the Labants. What is more, it might sometimes be judged from certain indications among the two or three hundred assembled in the hall before the lectures began that if it came to fighting, this elect body would not remain an idle spectator.

The desired opportunity soon presented itself. One day, Their Excellencies the noble lords Traitzigfritzig and Borembukk sent word to the town that they required the immediate despatch to their camp of a hundred head of beef cattle, fifty quintals of bacon, one thousand loaves of bread and twelve leather bags of curd - not forgetting wine, of which no more than 2,400 gallons were desired. The food supply of the good people of Nagyenyed had by that time run so low that they had to stint themselves to the utmost, in order to scrape together the quantities demanded; and when they were about to load the lot onto carts, Balika, having got wind of the whole business, sallied forth from his lair, swooped down on the transport and carried off the provisions into Torda Gorge.

"What was to be done now?" - the good people of Nagyenyed asked themselves. In vain did they tell Traitzigfritzig that Balika had carried off the victuals, and that he should go after him and take them away from him - the Labants leader flew into a rage, had his men assembled, and swore that he would have Nagyenyed burnt to ashes and drink up the blood of the entire population in lieu of the wine.

The unhappy citizens were seized with terror on account of these cruel threats; yet, anxious as they were to meet his demands it was utterly impossible to do so. Traitzigfritzig and his horde, however, had now reached Marosújvár, and from the manner in which they had treated the villages through which they passed, the inhabitants of Nagyenyed could well guess what was in store for them.

Such a state of distress was no novelty for Nagyenyed. On learning of the approach of the Labants band, the inhabitants at once left their homes, after having buried their valuables in their cellars or under cornstacks; the women, children and old people were sent up into the wooded hills, and the maidens were assembled and locked up in the Calvinist church. The able-bodied men took up their stations in the courtyard of the same church which was encircled - as it still is today - by a strong and high stone wall and fortified by several bastions, the towers of which had been built by the different local guilds: one by the Loyal Society of Bootmakers; another, by the Loyal Corporation of Weavers, yet another, by the Tailors' Guild; the fourth, jointly by the Tanners' and Shoemakers' Guilds; the fifth, by the Buttonmakers' and Goldsmiths'; and the sixth by the Blacksmiths' and Locksmiths' Guild. In these bastions were kept the chests of the guilds, and, at times of grave peril, it was to these strongholds that the guild-masters and their journeymen repaired to guard the Refuge of God.

Right opposite rose the compound of the college, a vast three-storied building with four wings, which lodged seven hundred students - a whole army if it came to the test.

As soon as the news that spread about town reached the college, youthful passion flared up in the students' hearts. "Stand fast! We'll defend our town!" they shouted enthusiastically; and, next morning, at the chemistry class, the Honourable Gerson Szabó was astounded to see his students filing into the lecture room armed with swords and pikes, and insisting that their professors lead them against the Labants army.

A singular notion indeed! The Honourable Gerson Szabó to lead people into battle, indeed!

"Have you gone out of your minds, dilectissimi?" said the good gentleman in consternation. "Go and take purgantes pectora succos!^[7] Do you think I am Ajax, or the rabid Achilles, that you want me to go to war? Or have I, perhaps, reared in you a generation of Myrmidons, that you should harbour such bloodthirsty schemes? You whose hands are accustomed to the leaves of books, are now to brandish spears? You who have been taught only to sing, should now contort your lips in yelping war cries? Have I imparted to you so much philosophy and science only to see you want only slain by a barbarous enemy, like any common, ignorant soldier who was born to be killed?"

In the course of this tirade Master Gerson became aware that even Zetelaky was concealing some sort of blade under his gown, and so gave the young man a fierce tongue-lashing.

"What!" he shouted. "Even thou bearest arms? Thou?" (When he began to say "thou," it meant that he was in a very bad temper.) "The righteous order of things has broken down! Why, have poets - the chosen ones of the Muses, dwellers of the sacred groves, friends of the Pierians - ever been known to brandish weapons? Speak up, young man! Thou art a great historian, and I challenge thee to name but one instance thou knowest of!"

The student, thus assailed, replied at last:

"There was indeed such an instance: when the disciples of Pan took up clubs, fell upon the Gauls that were ravaging Mount Helicon, and slew them."

Master Gerson jerked his head back at these words, for he had been given an unexpectedly smart answer, and that made him all the more furious.

"I forbid you, for my part, to take up arms at a time when the honourable Council of this town is making every effort to avert the menace through peaceful negotiations! And as for thee, humanissime Zetelaky, all I have to say is that one should not feel, called upon to answer every question. And now I bid every one of you to lay down all weapons this very instant. Whoever acts contrary to my order shall be expelled from this college and never again be re-admitted - Clarissimi domini iurati, go and have the cracked bell rung!"

It was customary to toll that cracked bell when a student was solemnly sent down from college.

Deep silence followed the rector's words, which was broken only by the rasping of the cracked bell. The students, who would have been capable of engaging an army six times their number, now, at their professor's command, tamely laid their arms down one by one. The cracked bell stopped clanging, the students went back to their seats and took out their books, and the honourable professor picked up his manual and proceeded to read his lecture as though nothing had happened, until the hour-bell was sounded; then he dismissed his pupils, and saw to it that the confiscated swords and spears were loaded upon carts and locked away in the vaults beneath the church, so as to make them inaccessible.

But at night, having recovered from the fear which the rector's words had put into them, the students again conspired, and, since their weapons had been taken from them, went out to the river Maros as soon as the gates were opened in the small hours of the morning. From the strong willow trees growing on its bank each student cut himself a good cudgel, which he smuggled into the college concealed under his gown, and hid in the timber-yard. Cudgels, they thought, were not the worst of weapons, provided they were wielded by good men.

That same day, at noon, Traitzigfritzig appeared in the outskirts of the town with a Labants force of about three thousand men; the venerable Town Council appointed the Mayor, and the college board the Honourable Rector, to go in deputation to meet him.

The deputation was received by Traitzigfritzig on horseback; the rest of his army consisted of foot soldiers, and there were three wooden cannons, drawn by buffaloes. It was, however, highly questionable whether the cannons could be fired without endangering the lives of those standing round it. There was even a fourth cannon - of brass, this one - which some party had once spiked and abandoned on the battlefield; they had removed the spike with a drill, so that, when they fired the cannon, the charge came shooting forth through the touch-hole, leaving the ball inside the bore.

The host itself presented a priceless sight - to say that it consisted of "picked troops" was a fitting epithet, for they had been "picked" from among all the nationalities of the country, Magyars, Wallachians, Germans, Serbians, Gipsies, with a sprinkling of professional marauders, all thrown together in it in one mass; some barefooted and helmeted, others with sabres tied over their sheepskin coats; some carrying big muskets without lock or wheel and each wearing trimmed mustachios, so that in a mêlée they could distinguish their own comrades from the Kuruts host, which was made up of much the same sort of people, but all of whom flaunted long hair and long, waxed mustaches that reached to their ears. The greater part had on rough sheepskin sandals, only the officers disporting shoes, for the most part supplied with spurs which, in the absence of horses, served no other purpose than to trip up their owners when they were on the run.

Such was the army of which Traitzigfritzig was the commander; but to suppose that he was like his ragged host, would be a grave mistake; his horse was a fine English stallion, he wore a shirt of mail, made of silver-starred rings, over a gold-laced cherry-red dolman, his brow was protected by a brass casque with a sterlet-shaped neck-piece, and his hands, sheathed in scale armour gauntlets, rested on the hilt of his long sword.

That he had come into possession of all this splendour neither by right of birth nor on his merits was written all over his broad, indolent face and ignoble features; and every item of his horse's harness and of his clothing had the initials of a different name embroidered on it, but this did not in the least prevent him from giving himself an air of sufficient dignity, when mounted, to speak disdainfully to those who walked on foot.

His lieutenant, Borembukk, was a hefty butcher's assistant with smooth-skinned, bony cheeks, who, unlike his superior, seemed to take special care to make his appearance as grimy as possible. His leather jerkin was caked with filth, and his countenance might well boast of never having come in contact with water other than showers from heaven.

His whole armament consisted of an enormous pole-axe, with which he was capable of striking down a bullock with one blow.

It was before these worthy men that the two-member deputation appeared with great reverence, hats in hand; and, in order to express their deep respect, Master Gerson addressed the two commanders with a well-contrived peroration in Latin.

Traitzigfritzig glanced at Borembukk, and the latter glanced back at him - and though neither of them knew a word of Latin, they yet pretended to have understood everything that was spoken.

"I have well understood what you have spoken," the leader said as he perceived that Master Gerson had come to an end, and condescendingly patted the latter's shoulder. "What is your name?"

"My name is Gerson Szabó of Torda, professor and rector of the venerable College; and this my companion is the Honourable János Tóth, Mayor of our noble Municipality."

"And where's the bootmakers' guild-master?"

"He did not find it expedient to join us, sir."

"Yet he ought to have come, because my army has need of three thousand pairs of boots, which must be delivered within three days, or, by the sword of my ancestors," (he had stolen it somewhere) "I will kill off every bootmaker in the world!"

A bolder pledge, I believe, has never been made.

Master Gerson bowed his head, and the Mayor now began to speak, in Hungarian.

"We shall not fail to convey Your Excellency's will to the honest guild-master, and he will do everything in his power. However, we beg you, on behalf of the entire community, graciously to keep your valorous army beyond the confines of the town, for, although we personally have the highest opinion of yourself, the foolish populace are nevertheless so mightily scared of men in arms that, on learning of your approach, they have all fled to the woods or shut themselves up in the churches; and so, even were you to enter the town, you would find nothing but abandoned houses, and you'd make it impossible for us to fulfil your demands, as there'd be nobody on whom to levy them."

Traitzigfritzig whispered something into Borembukk's ear, and, with an ill-concealed foxy smile, spoke as follows:

"O ye loyal subjects. Since, to wit, you being scared fools, and, to wit, we being desirous that your houses be not empty and nobody to be found in said; therefore, and whereas, returning to your town, tell ye to the people that, item, we clear out if they clear in; whereafter eminently, yet respectively and immediately, we pitch camp here, a thousand paces outside of town; and, item, ye have candles lit in every house, that we thereby may see ye be all inside; else, if thus and so, or, happen, this and that, you'll see what you will see."

Having with such eloquence delivered his ultimatum to the deputies, the commander dismissed them, and they returned to town, while he moved with his army some thousand paces from the city, to a field, where his soldiers built themselves tents from sheaves of corn.

And on their return the deputies told the inhabitants to go back to their homes and place candles in their windows at night, and to collect what little their poverty could still afford to satisfy the Labants gentlemen.

They did as they had been told: the guildsmen dispersed to their homes, the women and old people who had fled to the woods were called back, and, throughout the town, there was no end of cooking and baking till far into the night - all for the worthy Labants'.

But the lovely Klárika, in the name of the young maidens, who had been accommodated in the church, besought the favour of being allowed to remain for the night in the safe embrace of God's house, and, since this request was supported by all the other virgins, the Municipality and the professors consented at last.

A lovely, moonlit night descended upon the town, stillness reigned over the whole countryside, and the aldermen were quietly slumbering in their canopied beds, filled with a sense of the wisdom they had shown in averting a great menace from their town. In the church, three hundred and fifty virgins were reposing in God's holy shadow, when it seemed to Klárika in her dream as if a human form woke her, bidding her not to sleep but go up into the steeple.

Drowsily, she climbed the stairs to the belfry where the bell of the congregation, weighing eight hundred and twenty stones, was hanging, and as she looked out of the tall window of the tower into the moonlit night, she thought she saw a large, dark something, rolling slowly towards the town; it was not long before she made out a huge mass of people, above whose heads innumerable scythes and pikes gleamed metallically in the moonlight.

And suddenly, everything became clear to her: the Labants army had only been waiting for the inhabitants to return to their homes and go to bed, in order to make a treacherous raid on them.

Klárika, not wishing to lose a minute, did not go down into the church to wake up her companions, but seized with a sudden inspiration, grabbed the rope of the heavy bell, for the purpose of tolling it and alarming the whole town.

The girl's arms were weak, but peril gave her strength, and, her white hands clutching the thick rope, she swung the heavy bell, which two men together would ordinarily find it difficult to move. And ere the horde had reached the town, the alarm signal boomed forth, and in an instant all the people were up and, as though by previous agreement, the womenfolk and old people again fled to the woods, while the men hastened to the bastions of the church, so that when the Labants troops entered the town, they once more found empty houses.

Thus outwitted, Traitzigfritzig flew into a rage and gave orders for the town to be set on fire forthwith at twelve different points. But no sooner had his men set their hands to this evil task than there was a heavy downpour which put out every flame immediately, leaving the Labants chief cursing both God and the Devil for his bad luck.

Morning came, and the Rector and the Mayor once more appeared before him. The Labants chief did not give them time to speak a word, but denounced them and their fellow burghers for double-dealing, deceitful scoundrels who would cheat honest folk, and swore by all the gods that he would draw up his four cannons and make a shambles of the whole town, church, college and all, put the inhabitants to the sword, and deliver all the maidens to his soldiers, unless the one who had tolled the bell were surrendered to him.

"The one you refer to happens to be my daughter, Your Excellency," Master Gerson replied, woebegone. "But if I can ransom our town at the price of my daughter's life, I am prepared to deliver her up to you. I have only one favour to ask of you: that you should have my head struck off first, so my eyes may not behold her misfortune."

"That favour shall be granted you," Traitzigfritzig said consolingly, and having given this assurance, he at once issued orders for the troops to surge into the town from every side. Himself grandly seated in his saddle, he placed the halter in the Mayor's hands, commanded him to lead his horse, and in this manner made his entry into the town; while Borembukk sat upon the shoulders of the professor and, applying his spurs to that dignified, white-haired gentleman's sides, had himself thus carried all the way to the market place in ghastly buffoonery.

The students in the college had a first-hand view of the whole scene, for the procession happened to halt right in front of them; but they had been locked in, and the key of the gate had been pocketed by Master Gerson himself.

Later on, they had to look on as the half-dead maiden Klárika, the rector's daughter, was led out from the church-door and lifted by Traitzigfritzig into his saddle.

But that was more than a student's heart could bear.

"I'm going to kill everybody on earth!" Zetelaky shouted beside himself. "I'm going to slay them all myself!" and he bounded down the stairs four at a time, followed by Aaron and all the rest; in a trice the locked door was lifted out of its hinges, and a moment later, as from a disturbed beehive, out swarmed the students and fell upon the Labants marauders.

They wielded no more than willow cudgels, but whereas the Labants matchlocks had become useless through the downpour, the students' blazing wrath rendered the clubs heavy in their hands. Within one minute the Labants throng had been driven against the wall, and the bootmakers, who had grown bold at the first war cries, showered stones upon their heads.

When the two hard-pressed Labants chiefs perceived that things were taking a serious turn and that their men were tottering under the blows which the students dealt them, they turned their backs on the battleground and made haste to clear out of town. Traitzigfritzig put one arm round the maiden that had been placed in the saddle in front of him and galloped away with her, devouring with his eyes the charms that were to become his prey. Borembukk had taken Master Gerson by the collar and dragged the worthy gentleman along with him as he sought safety with the aid of his long legs.

The Labants army was routed and scattered to the four points of the compass in less time than it would take to relate it.

The two commanders fled with a group of no more than thirty men in the direction of Felvinc, followed closely by swarms of students with their sleeves rolled up and hands gripping rough-hewn willow clubs. They had tucked their flowing black gowns in their belts and, supporting themselves on their cudgels, they took such tremendous leaps that they resembled English thoroughbreds.

The number of pursuers and pursued kept dwindling as pairs of fighters separated from their respective groups and remained behind locked in duel. Finally, but two pairs of antagonists were left - Traitzigfritzig and Borembukk ahead, and Joseph and Aaron, hot on their heels. Of the former, one was riding his horse, while the other trusted to his long legs; but the horse had become exhausted under the double burden, and, as they came to the aforementioned little brook, the two leaders saw that to cross it was impossible because the cloudburst had washed away the bridge and the water was overflowing the banks.

"Ha, Labants!" cried Aaron, overtaking one of them. "There's the end of the world for you."

Borembukk, seeing that there was no choice now but to make a stand, let go of Master Gerson's collar, and, grabbing his pole-axe, fetched such a blow at Aaron that, had he not jumped aside, it would have severed his body in two. But the student returned the blow with his cudgel and rapped the Labants' knuckles with such force that he dropped his pole-axe immediately. Thereupon the enraged Labants flung himself at the youth with his hands; and although the latter brought down his cudgel with a blow so mighty that it became bent and the Labants' head swelled up to the size of a loaf, Borembukk ignored the blow as if it were not he who had received it, and catching hold of the club sought to wring it from Aaron's hands. But Aaron held on for dear life with both hands, and so they kept up a tug-of-war for some time until both became exhausted and stood there panting and trying to outstare each other.

"Well, student," snarled the Labants, gnashing his teeth, "now you've met your master. Do you know who's trapped you? Bo-rem-bukk is his name!"

"But try to say mine!" Aaron retorted. "It's Ka-ras-si-ay!"

"Ka-ras-si-ay!" cried the Labants, horrified. "Why, then, we're both done for, you and me!" And with these words he tugged at his opponent, with all his might, and they both plunged from the high bank into the swollen brook. The water closed over their heads.

In the meantime Joseph, too, had caught up with Klárika's abductor; the rider, realizing that there was no escape, dismounted and, unsheathing his sword, turned to face Joseph, who was advancing in dumb fury.

"Go home to your mamma, you milksop!" he yelled out at the beardless youth. "Or I'll clip off your hands and feet!"

Zetelaky, without deigning to answer, spat in his hands and, grasping his club in the middle, stepped boldly up to the ironclad chief with the forbidding countenance.

"What the devil! Away with you!" the chief fulminated beside himself and lashed out fiercely with his sword. But Joseph gave a twist to his cudgel, one end of which swept the sword aside with a clang, while the other struck the helmet with a bang!

Traitzigfritzig, dazed by the blow, blinked vacantly as if trying to locate its source. He did not have to look far, for Joseph now grasped his cudgel with both hands and, swinging it at ids opponent's waist, laid him out full length. He dropped his sword and, his eyes goggling, tried to crawl towards his horse, whereupon Zetelaky, thinking his foe was out to kill his beloved one, who lay unconscious in the saddle, dashed over to the Labants chief and, trampling on his body, dealt him a final blow.

Not until now did he look around for his companions. They had all straggled behind; only the flap of a gown caught on a bush showed him that one of them must be there submerged in the brook. He rushed to the spot and pulled Karassiay out of the water by his gown. He and Borembukk were even then locked in relentless embrace, except that the student was still alive, and the Labants dead.

Then, with the assistance of Master Gerson, he sprinkled water upon Klárika and brought her round with sweet words; and at last the four of them went down upon their knees and thanked the Lord for their delivery.

The two willow cudgels, which had served to overcome their enemies, were planted in the bed of the brook to commemorate the event, and Master Gerson pronounced a blessing over the two weapons and over Joseph's love as well. And the young man no longer had to observe his Klárika through a telescope when he wished to see her.

It is now a hundred and fifty years since these events came to pass, and the two willow trees are yet thriving at the water's edge. Many years ago, the college had a house of repose built by those willow trees, and the students repairing there of a lovely summer day, would repeat the tale of the two willows and then sing, "God is our refuge and strength!"

1853

(1842-1916)

"Someone once called him a 'great commemorator,' as it was he who would bury people, deliver the funeral oration and write the obituary notice" - that was how Kálmán Mikszáth characterized Károly Eötvös. This 'great commemorator' of the second half of the nineteenth century was the chronicler of Hungary after the Compromise of 1867, recording as he did thousands of anecdotes and revealing stories. A lawyer and M. P., he spent his life at the House of Parliament, in coffee-houses, party clubs and court rooms. And all the while he talked and talked and collected his material - the most typical stories of the age. In moulding it into literature he altered but little of the facts of life. The best part of his work does not strictly comply with the set rules of any genre, most of his works being neither short stories, nor novels, but something of a cross between historical records and newspaper articles, coffee-house anecdotes and full-fledged belles lettres.

This lawyer so fond of his comfort hated to be disturbed by the noisy affairs of the outside world. But sometimes, when he discovered injustice, he would toll the bells. When at the end of the century, the antisemitic hue and cry of ritual murder was raised in the little village of Tiszaeszlár and reactionaries started a frame-up trial on the allegation that on Easter the Jews of the village had slain a Christian girl, Eötvös, throwing his full weight on the side of the persecuted, undertook their defence. He was the Zola of a Hungarian Dreyfus Trial, upholding the just cause of the downtrodden in the face of reactionary public opinion. His best piece of writing - A nagy per (The Great Trial) - is a record of his persevering and successful struggle.

In the Hermit's Cave at Tihany there once dwelled a man who praised the Lord, but did not by any means praise the landlord. And yet the landowner was hardly to blame for his fate.

His impish friends had called him the Double Evangelist, and there were those, too, who had adopted the term to taunt him with. Matthew was his family name and Mark was the name given him in holy baptism by the old minister at Kisszöllős. That is how he became Mark Matthew. He had as many names as the two evangelists together. So the imps and the taunters had not been entirely in the wrong in calling him the Double Evangelist. Still, what they had done was unseemly, for the name had eventually stuck to him, so that the young folks no longer knew his real name.

The Double Evangelist was born at Kisszöllős and was a Calvinist. How it came about, no one can tell, but a small cotter's holding fell vacant at Aszófő. It consisted of a cottage, a tiny garden and a small sloping vineyard, at the foot of which were a few plum trees surrounding a modest apiary consisting of five or six hives made of reeds.

The last cotter had left behind an orphan - a shock-headed, barefooted, sunburnt lass, whom the lonely Evangelist befriended.

Whether they were legally married or not, no one in the village knew for certain or cared. The two of them were a quiet, upright couple. They fulfilled their obligations towards the landowner, performed soccage service for the County without complaining, and kissed the hand of the parish priest, while the woman regularly went to confession and even attended the annual parish feast at Andocs. Thus did they live out their lives in peace. They lived to a ripe old age, until one day the wife passed away suddenly.

Barely had the Evangelist returned from the cemetery where his wife had been buried, when the town crier appeared and bade him come to the Village Hall.

There at the Village Hall was the bailiff from Tihany. He was a new bailiff and was inquiring into the affairs of the serfs and cotters around Aszófő, to see if he could discover any irregularities. In looking through the register, he had come across the Double Evangelist's holding. The register showed it to be still vacant. He had asked the magistrate why it was vacant. The magistrate had told him truthfully that it was not vacant for the Evangelist was living there. One question had led to the other, and in the end the magistrate had told the bailiff that he did not know when and how the Evangelist had come to occupy the cotter's holding, nor did he know what was his religion.

And so the Evangelist was ordered to appear at the Village Hall. He was an old man by this time and hardly strong enough to walk. His wife's death had crushed him still more. He did not so much walk as drag himself into the bailiff's presence.

"So you are the Evangelist?"

The bailiff was 25 years old and the aged cotter 75, yet the bailiff did not address him with the respect due to his advanced years. It was not the custom. The old cotter, holding his hat in his hand, leaned against the stove, otherwise perhaps his legs would not have supported him. He did not give any answer to that first question.

"How long have you been living in the cottage?''

"It must be some sixty years."

"How did you get there?"

"God gave it to me."

"That's of no consequence. Only the landowner can give it to you. What is your religion?"

"As long as I was able, I was a Calvinist. But now I am nothing, for I do not have the strength to walk to church at Szöllős or Füred."

Aszófő is a pure Catholic village. Meticulous care was taken to keep out strangers or infidel Protestants. Moreover, the bailiff was a new man and wanted to show the landowner that he regarded religion as something holy and that he intended to keep the village pure. The Double Evangelist could not in any case prove his right to settle on the cotter's holding sixty years ago. Obviously then, the law empowered the bailiff to dislodge the old cotter from the holding.

"Well, tomorrow you will leave the cottage, and stone-mason Birnbaum will move into it."

"And you, sir," he continued addressing the magistrate, "see to it that the old Evangelist takes nothing from the house or from the wine cellar in the vineyard, but leaves everything as it is."

And the notary forthwith wrote stone-mason Birnbaum's name beside the reference to the vacant cotter's holding in the register.

The farmer-magistrate was also a good Catholic of German stock, and so it was natural for him to prefer his own flock to the headstrong Hungarian Calvinists. But by that time he had become pretty much of a Hungarian. Moreover, he had known the Double Evangelist all his life, and the latter was already a grown man when he himself was still making mud pies.

Now he sat there on the bench and for a long time did not respond to the words of the bailiff, but kept looking down and drawing arabesques with the staff of his office in the dust on the floor. He wanted to think things out before speaking.

"Who will harvest the grapes this year, your honour?"

"What a question! Birnbaum, of course. Who else should do it?"

The magistrate still did not look up. He kept on drawing his arabesques in the dust, while he considered what he should say next.

"What if we left him in the house for a few more days, your honour? Perhaps something might happen to give his fate a new turn. Otherwise the Evangelist will become a burden on the village as a beggar."

The bailiff thought this over for a moment. Was it worthwhile to leave the aged cotter for a few more days in the house which had been his for sixty years and which he himself had built and maintained in good order? But before he had time to reply, the Evangelist spoke up.

"Have no fear, sir, I won't be a burden on the village, and I will leave the house, I cannot stay there anyway now that my wife has been taken to the cemetery. But I do thank you for your kindness and ask God's blessing upon you. If ever I did any wrong, I hope you will pardon me, Mr. Bailiff."

He hobbled up to the magistrate and shook hands with him, whereupon he did the same with the notary and the town crier. Then he left the room. In the street he put on his greasy, fifteen year-old hat and went home.

A great weight fell from the magistrate's heart. The bailiff did not give the matter another thought either, and turned to an examination of the other items on the list.

The Double Evangelist, for his part, seated himself on the porch as soon as he got home. The stump of a wild-pear tree served him for a stool. The walk had tired him, and it felt good to sit down. And, besides, he had to think about his lot, and an old man with lead in his limbs can think only in a sitting position. Every now and then tears trickled from his eyes. Why, oh why could not that poor wife of his have waited for him! How he had begged her not to hurry, had told her how good it would be if they could make that last journey together. And the old woman had listened to him for a while. Her eyes had looked and looked at him, the Evangelist, as in the days of their courtship. If only once more, just once more, she could open those eyes of hers.

The Double Evangelist wiped his face with the sleeves of his coarse dolman; he sat resting a while and then got up. He went into the house and looked about in the kitchen, room and pantry. There was a piglet he had been raising for Advent. He gave it food and drink and petted it. Just as his wife used to do. The dumb creature must not notice that the woman was already out in the cemetery. It must not cry after her.

Once more he went into the room. He slung his horsehair knapsack over his shoulder and stowed a few things in it. He put on his long felt coat and then went out, locking the kitchen door behind him and putting the key to the door into the knapsack.

He stepped into the yard. There was an old mulberry tree there. He had planted it forty years ago. Ah, he had then been a young man at the peak of his strength. He stopped by the mulberry tree and looked at the roof of the cottage. His hands had made that, too. It could stand a little repairing. The roof needed flanging and here and there a bit of patching with a few handfuls of reed. But then the house was no longer his. It no longer mattered in what shape the roof was. Let the new cotter, the stone-mason, worry over that.

But why was the house no longer his?

Since it was he that had lived in it for sixty years, he that had kept it in order and repaired it all this time, he that had inhabited it since his youth, why was he not allowed to die in it in peace? Why did they have to drive him from the house? After all, he was in nobody's debt.

The bailiff had ordered him to go. And when the bailiff commands, it is as if the landowner commanded. And the landlord was the abbot.

The abbot, Pál Horváth, was a decent, humane and pious old man. Or, maybe the County could do something for an old cotter.

Nonsense!

When had an aged cotter ever won a suit against the landlord, a Calvinist cotter against His Grace, the Abbot? And then - where did the County Counsellor live? How could he go there and present his case? When would the manorial court be in session? He would not live to see the outcome of his suit.

And even if he did live that long, even if he did win his suit, he would never again set foot in that house. His wife was no longer there. And without his wife he did not want the house, the vineyard or anything.

And life?

He did not want that either.

Next he went towards the wine cellar at the vineyard. He hobbled along slowly, and got there as the noonday bells were ringing.

He stopped at the foot of the vineyard. He looked at his plum trees. He had planted each one himself. But yellow moss covered them now. They too would not live much longer. The plums were turning ripe on the trees, but he did not touch a single fruit.

The vineyard consisted of two small plots. The grapes were turning yellow and red on the vines. Heaven was offering a good vintage. But not for him. God bless with it the stranger who would follow him! A grape doesn't amount to much, but not a single one did he pick from any of the vines. Yet he himself had planted them, had dressed and hoed them, and even this year his wife had tied them up, and trimmed them.

Poor woman, if she could only see the vineyard once more, just once more. But, alas, from the cemetery she could not come to see it.

He opened the door to the vault and looked about him there as well. Everything was in its place. He still had a small cask of his share of wine on tap. He filled a glass and gulped it down. But he did not refill the glass. Something seemed to have happened to that wine, it did not taste as it should. And yet it had neither clouded nor faded. A week ago it had tasted so good when he had been here with his wife. She too had drunk a glass and seemed to like it.

He turned to leave the vault and was about to shut the door when his eyes fell on his wife's reel on the beam of the press. And next to the reel lay an old blue headkerchief of hers.

He picked up the kerchief and looked at it for a long time. Once again tears filled his eyes and ran down his thin, wrinkled face. He couldn't help it - an old man is a weak man. He had to sit down for a while, for his legs would not support him when his heart was moved. Eventually he composed himself and put the kerchief in the knapsack.

He locked up the vault and took the key. Slowly he hobbled back past the cottage and went on to see the magistrate.

"Your honour, here is the key to my house and here is the key to the vault. I left everything in order. I gave food and drink to the pig and so it will manage till evening. And from now on you won't see me any more, I am moving. I am not of local stock, and I don't want to become a burden on the village. I thank you for all your goodness. If I have done anything wrong, please forgive me. I commend you to God."

The magistrate was having a glass or two with three companions. He offered a glass of wine to the Double Evangelist -and wished him Godspeed.

Henceforth the Evangelist was seen no more at Aszófő. Not a soul cared in the least. Nor did anyone see him at Balaton-Kisszöllős, where he was born. Indeed, he did not go there. It would have been useless to do so. He had left the village, as an orphan, sixty years ago. Who would have remembered him there? And he was not seen in the old church of the Calvinists at Balatonfüred. After all, there too they did not know him. Only the sexton would recall how now and then he had appeared at the service, sat down close to the door and dropped his penny into the collection plate.

But three or four days later he was found by young Ferkó Gelencsér.

Ferkó was pasturing his goats at the foot of the Old Castle in the vicinity of the Hermit's Cave. At that time the County still nobly permitted the serfs to keep goats. The goats were climbing the sheer cliffs along the shore to nibble at the thin twigs of the piperidge, spindle-tree, dogwood, maple and elder bushes; Ferkó was sunning himself by the waterside, and his dog was roaming about and sniffing at this and that.

All of a sudden the dog stopped in front of the Hermit's Cave and began to bark, his nose pointing towards the entrance. He barked and barked, and, while he was doing so, he time and again glanced back towards his little master.

Ferkó saw this, but paid no attention. He knew from the sound that the dog must have found something, but he thought there was a hedgehog in the cave and the dog was barking at that. And of course, he, Ferkó, would not climb up to the cave for a mere hedgehog.

Finally the dog realized that Ferkó would not understand him from so far away. So he climbed down from the cliffs, ran up to his little master and began to bark right beside him; and while he was barking, he pointed with his eyes, nose and ears toward the cave. Thus did he make his young master understand.

Ferkó walked up to the cave and found that an old man was lying in the entrance. He was covered with his long felt coat, his knapsack was under his head and his staff stood in a corner. His grey hair fluttered in the autumn breeze; he did not move, he did not speak, he only looked.

It was the Evangelist.

Ferkó raised his hat and greeted the old cotter.

"A good day to you, sir. What are you doing here?"

The Evangelist replied in a weak voice:

"I am resting, son."

"It will soon be midday, sir."

The Evangelist knew that very well, but he did not care. Evening would come, too.

"Give me a drink, son."

Ferkó went down to Lake Balaton, filled his gourd with water, and kneeling down, held it to the lips of the Evangelist. Perhaps the old man did drink a few drops, the rest ran down his beard.

"Take the knapsack from under my head, son, you will find bread and bacon in it. Have a bite and throw something to the dog, too."

"Thank you, sir, thank you very much, but we too have food with us."

He did not touch the knapsack. The Evangelist said nothing more, so the boy commended him to the grace of God, raised his hat again and went off to look after his goats.

The next day Ferkó Gelencsér again took his goats grazing at the same place, but by now he had put the cotter out of his mind. He supposed the old man must have had his sleep and rest, and have gone on. But the dog thought it proper to look up the old man, so he ambled up to the Hermit's Cave. And lo, the old man was still lying there. Ferkó must be told about this!

The Evangelist neither spoke nor moved, but lay there like yesterday. He was still looking, however.

Only now it occurred to Ferkó that perhaps something was wrong with the strange old man.

"Sir, shouldn't I speak to my master?"

The Evangelist answered in a mere whisper, as he no longer had the strength to speak.

"When I have had my rest, soon."

And that was that. Ferkó went his way, tending his goats, chasing after lizards, picking haws and looking for dogberries.

The Evangelist knew what he was doing. The cave also did not belong to him, but to the landlord. Everything was the landlord's. If they could drive him out of his house and vineyard, despite his having built it and planted it, why should they not drive him from the cave. The boy Ferkó would tell the farmer, the farmer the magistrate, the magistrate the bailiff, the bailiff the abbot. Suppose they would not leave him in peace even here?

And he wanted to rest, to rest for ever. He did not wish to be disturbed.

When a wild beast feels the end approaching, it digs itself into the earth, hides among the fallen leaves, retires into the depth of a cave or flees to the quiet darkness of a forest. It has no desire to be hurt by its enemies, to gladden those who envy it, or to be pitied by those of weak heart. And if wild animals may do this, might not an old cotter do likewise? When its death is near, even a cat will go up into the attic lest people see its agony. That was how the old Evangelist thought it all out in his own simple-minded way.

The next day Ferkó Gelencsér drove his goats to Pulpit Hill. He was nowhere near the Hermit's Cave.

But three or four days later he came back again to the vicinity of the cave. His dog once more visited the cave; however, when it stopped at the mouth, it no longer barked, but with its ears folded back and nose held high began to wail long and loud.

"The dog is upset about something."

Ferkó ambled up to the cave, and, lo, the old man was still lying there as he had been, covered with his long felt coat and the knapsack under his head, his staff in the corner. This time too he neither moved nor spoke, but now he was no longer even looking. Both his eyes were closed.

What if he is sleeping?

The boy was inexperienced. He did not know death from sleep.

But the dog knew.

The dog sniffed all over the old cotter, beginning at his boots and finishing at his head, and then at the knapsack under his head. And even the boy Ferkó knew that a dog does not sniff at the face of a live man. A live man might slap him for that.

Yes, the Evangelist was dead!

The leaves of the spindle-tree were still green at that season.

But its fruit had opened, its lovely, mitre-shaped, crimson and gold berries, lovely as the loveliest of flowers. The boy Ferkó broke off an armful, a whole lapful of spindle-tree branches and wreathed the peacefully resting body of the Evangelist with them.

At last the old man had found his eternal rest!

And were the landlord to come, were the bailiff to come, were they to give a peaceful cotter's holding to the Evangelist, - of what use would it be to him now. Let them show the fullness of their strength and their might, they who are not worth as much as the gold-and-crimson fruit of the spindle-tree. And even that - of what use is it to the old cotter?

The cave looks out upon Lake Balaton, into endless distance. An invisible mist weakens the rays of the autumn sun, and so the far off shore cannot be seen. But even so, the sunbeams peep now and again into the cave, caressing the lined face of the Evangelist. The autumn wind flits in, unseen, ruffling the spindle-tree branches, and the grey beard and grey locks of the old man. Well, old cotter, don't be hurt at having been deserted by your fellow men - the sun, the breeze and the flowers of autumn have come to greet you.

And not even man has deserted you. That boy Ferkó came to see you every day with his dog. And when the boy drove the goats in the evening and told the story to his master, the next day a magistrate was there with the town crier and with two navvies to dig a grave on the waterside and bury you there.

Yes, there they were.

They examined the old cotter. They took his knapsack from under his head. It was full of stale food. They took off his long felt coat. His clothing had to be taken home to the village poor. They unbuttoned even his dolman and waistcoat.

And when they reached his bare old body, they found, above his heart, the bonnet, thimble and blue headkerchief of the old woman who had been his companion.

Whom he had loved once and loved for ever. Whom he had followed to the churchyard a week ago and without whom he could not go on living. And whose every treasure he had heaped upon his heart so that as long as that heart was beating the old woman should know it was throbbing for her.

They buried him. They left the bonnet, the thimble and the kerchief over his heart. On his tomb they rolled three stones to mark the place where his head was resting. When as a child I was shown the tomb of the Double Evangelist, there was no trace of the burial-mound, but the three stones were still there together. The burial mound had been carried away by the winds.

Today who remembers the poor Evangelist? Yet, today, who remembers even the mighty king?

Down below, at the waterside, the miserable cotter is buried, above, where the shore rises to a peak - the mighty king is buried. Above the head of one they rolled three stones, on the tomb of the other they built a twin-spired church. The winds have carried away the burial-mound of the miserable cotter and time will soon wear down the church, too. The winds are already corroding the cliffs on whose top stands the church. The rocks are crumbling and falling to dust, rolling down into the abyss, and in fifty or a hundred years the eastern side of the church will collapse, too. Unless they support the whole hill with big ramparts.

But what difference does it make? - The mighty king has turned into dust and ashes just as has the poor cotter. When the king was buried, the nation put a gold crown set with gems on his head. Yet what became of that crown? It was stolen, cut into pieces and squandered - it does not exist any longer. But you, poor cotter, no one will steal or squander the thimble of your old wife. That is still there under the earth and above your heart. True, the forces of nature will consume the thimble, too, but if the thimble is to perish some day just like the crown, what will be the difference then between the king and the cotter?

I do not know.

And yet I do know.

No one broods over the memory of the cotter, but hundreds and thousands brood over the memory of the king.

1901

(1847-1910)

Born a year before of the outbreak of the Hungarian War of Independence against Austria, Kálmán Mikszáth lived at a period when not even the best minds of the nation saw a solution to Hungary's problems. It was the era of the "Compromise" (or reconciliation between Austria and Hungary, negotiated in 1867, by the Hapsburg dynasty and Hungary's ruling classes) when beneath the surface of apparent well-being and universal appeasement deep-set conflicts, social as well as individual, were at work. Mikszáth was a faithful chronicler of his era, even though he was pledged, partly by temperament, partly by political allegiance (he was a liberal politician and M. P.), to conserving the world in which he lived. His early stories, A jó palóczok (The Good People of Palócz), A tót atyafiak (Our Slovak Kinsmen), describe the life, the joys and sorrows, of poor village folk in a tone of gentle satire that now and then turns pleasantly sentimental. In his later writings he captured the grotesque features of a steadily decomposing feudal Hungary. His tone became increasingly harsh with satire, the idyllic sweetness of his earlier work was tinged with bitterness in a number of voluminous novels written towards the end of his life (Különös házasság, A Strange Marriage; A Noszty fiú esete Tóth Marival, The Affair of Young Noszty and Mary Tóth; A fekete város, The Black Town).

Mikszáth's prose is characterized by the informality of living speech, he consciously strove to enliven his writings through the use of popular idiom and the style of the amusing anecdote. This quality has earned for him the tag "the great talker." The nucleus around which he weaves his stories is supplied, for the most part (his lengthier works included), by some anecdote, a story from real life. Every now and then, the narrative is interrupted by fresh anecdotes from which new and equally amusing stories are developed, all of them enriching the main plot. His characters are excellently drawn, mostly with a strong flair for the comical or satirical, or with a touch of sentimentalism. For the most part, Mikszáth makes no comment - only seldom does he go to the length of flashing an indulgent smile and still more rarely does he give free rein to his passions. Yet the writer's presence is always felt - his work is shot through with the likeable attitude of a man well versed in the ways of the world but whose fresh and animated naiveté continually breaks through an assumed sophistication. This prevailing mood sets the tone for his style, in which turns of colloquial speech and poetic descriptions alternate with intentionally "unwieldy," circumstantial, involved periodic sentences that imitate the language of the anecdotist.

Mikszáth's impressive work is still favourite reading in Hungary and has won many readers in other countries. The most popular, besides the three big novels mentioned above, are a number of short masterpieces, such as Az Új Zrínyiász (The New Zrinyiad), Beszterce ostroma (The Siege of Beszterce), Két választás Magyarországon (Two Elections in Hungary), Szent Péter esernyője (St. Peter's Umbrella), and Akli Miklós. His chiselled, well-rounded short stories match his novels and prove that his forte was the narrative vein.

Chapter I
GIRLS, NEIGHBOURS AND THE LIEUTENANT

All the week my grandfather would smoke his pipe and curse, my mother would be cross with him because of the pipe - for she had a weak chest and the smoke irritated her throat - whereas grandmother, a god-fearing woman, would be annoyed and keep quarrelling with him on account of his blasphemy.

"Oh, András, András! Aren't you ashamed of yourself to abuse the Almighty, our Lord and Creator? It is dreadful to listen to you. Verily I say unto you, lightning will strike you one of these days, András."

"God has more brains than you and me... hang it!" burst out grandfather. "You just leave it to the two of us. I know, what I'm doing!"

And indeed, the old man got on very well with God. God liked him, blessed him with a fine, long old age and gilded it with much joy; grandfather, on his part, did his best too, and having roundly abused the Lord for six days, on the seventh day he would shave, put on his smartest Sunday clothes, climb into a britzka and, in good or bad weather alike, drive to church in Krizsnócz, the third village from ours (there was no Lutheran congregation nearer than that). All morning he would piously sing hymns in praise of God. The abuse he had heaped upon the Divine Majesty all week, he took back on Sunday, and that was the end of it. For God, after all, is good... and his goodness lies in the fact that one can wipe a thousand curses off one's blackboard with a single prayer.

As I grew a bit older he would take me with him to church, and I liked to go, at first, because he let me drive the horses on the straight road in the Uszánc Valley - and this was great fun indeed. It would have been even greater if he had not always snatched the whip from my hand, for he took great pains to spare the horses, and nothing in the world would have induced him to let them run at a trot; the driving thus actually consisted of merely holding the reins - but even that was better than nothing - and sometimes I succeeded in speeding up the horses by lifting and flapping the reins a little.

The old man cursed and scolded me on such occasions.

"Why such a hurry? So you want to win a race, eh? Can't you let the horses manage by themselves? Now listen, you good for-nothing little brat! Do you think I get a horse for mere chaff? Stop flapping those reins at once, I don't want to drive right out of this world!"

Later on, when I was in secondary school, I used to drive with the old man to Krizsnócz only during the holidays, but then I was already interested in the young ladies, who sat there on both sides of the altar in the polished family pews... the offspring of the neighbouring county squirelings: the Misses Krúdy, two flaxen-haired girls; Vilma Folkusházy, a small snub-nosed damsel; the four comely Vér sisters, like organ-pipes, their lustrous black hair put up in a crown. And the one I favoured most, a girl with large, dreamy blue eyes: Piroska Gáll, lithe and slender as a deer.

Why did I like her most? God knows. Some of the Vér sisters were more beautiful, more suited to me, yet I liked Piroska best all the same. Maybe because she was the tallest and strongest. She must have been about twenty-two years old. I stared and stared at her during the long, boring sermons and felt a peculiar thrill pass through my body; my eyes never left her, and I knew I would not have tired of looking at her for a hundred years. I came to the conclusion that if I should ever get married, this Piroska Gáll would be the wife for me, nobody else.

It is true, my grandmother (who was indeed very wise in matters of matrimony) had her own notions as to the best relative age. She said the bride ought to be half the age of the bridegroom and seven years in addition. Her manifold matchmaking experiences in the past had led her to this conclusion as to an invariable golden rule. According to this rule, the wife of a man of thirty ought to be twenty-two, the wife of a man of forty, twenty-seven, a man of fifty, however, ought to take a woman of thirty-two for a wife. She held this to be the moral foundation of a good marriage!

Now, I was only sixteen at the time, and according to grandmother's formula, I ought to have chosen a girl of fifteen. Who on earth wants a minx like that?

There was, then, a difference of seven years between us. But are seven years such an unbridgeable gap? After all, ten years, according to our history teacher, are but a minute in the infinity of time, and seven years are even less. Grandmother herself thought a happy marriage possible even with a difference of seven years, in exceptional cases.

In short, it would be quite all right, if Piroska Gáll would wait till I took my degree. Now, let's see, when would that be? Well, in about ten years' time. I shall be twenty-six by then, and Piroska thirty-two, while according to grandmother's rule, a man of twenty-six should take a wife of twenty; thus the difference will have grown to twelve years already, and that is more than a minute, even to our history teacher. Confound mathematics! This eternal disproportion will be the death of me...

But there was no way of overcoming it. Just the same, I still recall those Sundays with pleasure, and even today my heart beats a little faster when I think of the fair-browed village maidens, sitting there quietly, politely, their hats adorned with poppies, their simple cotton dresses so pretty and charming in my eyes...

*

By and by I got to know the chief characters of this churchgoing flock: fat Márton Csury, who, as a rule, fell asleep and snored mightily during the sermons; Mrs. Buzinkay, the beautiful widow, who was absorbed in praying zealously and whose prayer book, one could see as she turned its pages with moistened fingers, was full of pressed flowers and lavender leaves...

The prayer books of the young ladies were like this too... But as yet they had fewer pressed flowers in them. Oh, those dear little books with their metal clasps!

Even now, after so many years, living almost entirely amongst books, I suddenly get sick of them and am overcome with a wondrous longing for a book filled with dry lavender leaves - instead of big ideas and great observations.

Maybe it is not even the prayer book that I thirst for; it is the memory of the village, of the small church, that is still trembling in my heart... I can see all those personages once again. The thin, lanky Pál Krizsnóczy, the last offspring of the ancient village squires, sitting in his emblazoned special pew and ogling the village maidens, who stood around the left side of the altar, for only the married-woman's bonnet entitled the womenfolk to a seat. A posy of mignonette was pinned to their breast, there where the two wings of the big, flower-patterned silk-shawl crossed and coiled rearwards into a knot on the back. Their braids, ending in gaily coloured ribbons, hung down the back of the tightly pleated skirts, sometimes almost to the ankles. The young squire scrutinized the girls through his gleaming eye-glass, to determine whose father should be privileged to rent land for a half-share this year.

But best of all, I remember our own pew. My grandfather sat in front and sang with such zeal that perspiration dripped from his brow. I sat next to him, of course, keeping my eyes on the aforesaid Piroska Gáll; however, if she happened to turn her magnetic eyes towards us, I instantly cast mine down, although this happened quite often during a particular period... but more of this later on. Mr. József Pornya, bailiff of the farmstead of Rigy, sat on my left; he was there every Sunday in the summer and prayed for rain or for fair weather, according to the momentary needs of agriculture, and he dropped into the collection bag a big shiny coin or a small dull one, sometimes accompanying the latter with peevish grumbles: "Even that is too much this week!" Next in the row after the bailiff came Funtyik, the ninety-year-old miller, in his blue coat; once or twice during the service he had such fits of coughing that the vicar was obliged to stop his sermon till the old man's paroxysm ended... Prakovszky, the deaf blacksmith, sat close to the wall, singing the hymns with evident piety in a beautiful baritone; but since he could not hear the organ or the singing of the others, he was either ahead or behind, thus ruining the harmony and often drawing smiles from the entire congregation.

This greatly annoyed the churchwarden, who urged the vicar several times to forbid Prakovszky's singing altogether, but the vicar was not inclined to take such drastic action.

"God made Prakovszky deaf," he explained in his elaborate, clear manner, "but not mute. He might easily have turned him mute too. It would not have cost Him anything. But He did not do it, and that is why I am not going to do it either, for I am only His servant."

"Well, maybe He likes Prakovszky's voice," the churchwarden opined, "for he does have a splendid voice!"

"Quite possible, of course..."

The churchwarden thereafter changed his policy and succeeded at last in arranging that the cantor should adapt his organplaying to Prakovszky's singing.

All this would have left little trace in the history of the congregation, or, for that matter, in my own memory, had it not been for a certain extraordinary thing that happened to Prakovszky. I have since thought about it a hundred times without ever being able to find a satisfactory explanation. He was a small, puny man, with a large head and long hands, and he had the unbearable habit of sticking his oar in everywhere, which is why he was scoffingly called "know-it-all Prakovszky." The fact is, he was fond of reading, and knew something about everything, that something usually being wrong.

Somebody, for instance, would mention Miklós Zrínyi. Prakovszky then would break in:

"Too bad he was decapitated on St. George's Square."^[8]

Or let us suppose the conversation turned to Napoleon. Prakovszky would chime in with the remark:

"The one who married Saint Helena!"

But this did not lessen his prestige one whit, for in Krizsnócz this was considered knowledge just the same. If someone has a lot of wheat, be its quality never so poor, it is wheat still.

My grandfather liked Prakovszky; we used to stop at his place (he lived just opposite the church), and grandfather always asked him about the political situation, for a blacksmith's shop then served as a substitute for newspapers.

Travellers coming from afar used to stop at the blacksmith's to have their carriages repaired or horses shod, and all the news they had collected on the way was there exchanged for fresh news left by travellers coming from other parts of the country.

Prakovszky had the knack of figuring out from the various bits of information whether war or peace was to be expected. A traveller, for instance, would relate that the price of oats at his place was such and such. Egad, this meant war; otherwise the price would not be so high! Another traveller would tell him some other time that his son had been discharged from the army, because he happened to have an abscess on his leg. Prakovszky would sigh, for he also had a son in the army; but in the midst of his sighing, he would declare that peace was assured.

"Quo modo valemus, domine Prakovszky?" my grandfather used to ask.

" Valde bene, domine spectabilis."

Then followed the blacksmith's news items, usually received by grandfather with amazement and astonishment, as well as with curses, designed to entice the other to impart still more information.

"You have a demon in you, domine Prakovszky. What a clever man you are! How the deuce did you get hold of all this?"

Prakovszky would then shrug his thin shoulders, pulling his large head down between them, and answer in that peculiar, incomprehensible jargon, concocted from legal terminology:

"Well, the reversal of the intrinsic facts of a case can be understood only according to their intentions."

But all this happened much earlier, when he was not quite so deaf; the clang of the sledge hammer later ruined his eardrums to the point where it became unpleasant to talk with him; the only way of conversing with him now was to shout. Prakovszky's deafness also reduced his fame. He no longer could hear the stories of the travellers stopping to have their horses shod, and when he did hear them, he misunderstood them; and the local squirelings ceased to ask what was happening in the world, for if they had done so, he could not have told them anything of interest, despite his attempts to conceal his deafness. To him the voices of his fellow beings seemed to have grown weaker, as if the whole world were whispering, and there was no end to his lamentations:

"Such lungs! What miserable lungs people have these days!"

Sometimes he upbraided those who were talking to each other:

"Why are you keeping things from me? Speak louder!"

Prakovszky held stubbornly to his belief that he was just the same as before, a little hard of hearing. And this very belief made him ridiculous; his own ears being bad, he told the whole world: "Your lungs are weak!" He would not have been ludicrous, had he submitted to his fate. People forgive a weakness more easily if it is admitted by the person concerned - but if it comes to a dispute, the world will always win. For the world is the majority; and Prakovszky was the minority.

And what of that rascal, Bodri? The ungrateful cur, who was nearest to his heart after his son, joined the majority. For some time now he had stopped barking altogether, had become mute. The dog had noticed Prakovszky's deafness. And the heartless old philosopher argued thus: "Why should I bark, if my master does not hear me anyway? Am I to make a fool of myself by growling at a deaf man?" From that time on, Bodri, following his dog-sense, only tugged at Prakovszky's coat, whenever his nose told him there was some stranger around.

As a rule Prakovszky kicked Bodri for his pains: "Down, you villain!" He bore a grudge against the dog, and never again stroked its long, white hair, thus breaking off a friendship of twenty years' standing, because Bodri had noticed his master's deafness. Too much intelligence is harmful, even to a beast!

Prakovszky began to draw back from people as well. It started one Joseph's day at József Gáll's house, when the eloquent Kristóf Halóczy drank a toast to his health too, and said:

"There is another worthy Joseph in our midst, I refer to the Honourable József Prakovszky..."

At this Prakovszky began to wriggle in affected bashfulness. The sly Halóczy, however, only rendered the beginning of his toast in a stentorian tone, after which he dropped his voice and began to abuse Prakovszky without mercy, listing all his deficiencies and washing his dirty linen in public; but Prakovszky answered each sally with a smile, and when the speaker finished with the words: "You are a low-down creature, Prakovszky," and the glasses clinked, the blacksmith, deeply touched, yet maintaining his dignity, trotted up to Halóczy, and clasping both his hands, declared:

"What you said, was beautiful! Oh, how beautiful it was! I shall never forget your kindness!"

There was such a burst of uproarious laughter among the guests - beautiful Piroska too laughed for all she was worth - that even a fool could not mistake the import of that toast.

So Prakovszky, resentfully, turned away from his contemporaries, who were aware of his affliction and made fun of it, and henceforth showed up among them only of a Sunday, when he went to church to join in singing the hymns. He had not been a churchgoer before.

This provided another occasion for scoffing at Prakovszky:

"He turns to God; yet it was He that made him deaf!"

But maybe Prakovszky did not go to church on God's account. It was a rather peculiar flock that gathered there. If an unseen spirit should have thrown out of the congregation all those who went there on account of something else, who knows what the church would have looked like? Why, even the vicar would not have remained, for he went there only for the sake of the congregation.

The widowed Mrs. Buzinkay liked to display her pretty dresses. Piroska Gáll made a show of her alabaster teeth; that was why she sang all the time. Everybody was proud of something and liked to arouse envy in others. Such is life. And every one of them thought himself possessed of qualities which he considered admirable. People are like that. Take old Funtyik, the miller, who had no hair, no teeth and no silk petticoats either! Yes, but he had years! More of them than the others; so he was proud of his years - for he had to be proud of something while he was still alive. To be sure, one is not envious of years, but one does admire them. And that is something. Admiration was the salt of life to Funtyik. He pretended to be ninety-five years of age, although he was only ninety; for he thought to himself: "Let them admire me that much the more!"

And what about Prakovszky? Well, be liked to display his voice, to have his fine baritone admired, and that was why he always sat there by the wall, and why he sang, his heart full of pride over having such a voice. He believed it to be all the more beautiful, since he could not hear it himself. And what happiness for the others to be able to hear it! He thought he could read in their faces and on their lips, how they said to one another:

"This Prakovszky has a divine voice!"

"What a pity he is deaf, the poor man!" they added.

"It's no pity at all, he would only hear our voices and they are not worth much anyhow; it would be worse, if we should become deaf, because then we would not hear his singing!"

Of course, such dialogues only occurred in his imagination; but never mind, it gave him pleasure.

And that was nothing to what he felt whenever the hussar came home. It was worth observing Prakovszky on such occasions: his eyes sparkled, his bearing was proud, he even put a red carnation in his buttonhole; he walked the streets with his hat at a rakish angle, and his meerschaum pipe was stuck jauntily in his bootleg, if it was not between his teeth.

For Prakovszky was more proud of the hussar than of his own voice. The hussar was his only son, who, when not at home, was stationed in Milan, the city of a hundred towers, with his regiment, and without whom Prakovszky would have been quite alone in the world, quite alone indeed, because he had no other children; indeed, he could not have any more, because when this one had arrived, his life's companion had left: the noble Zsuzsánna Turtsányi had given birth to the hussar and then died.

But few mothers ever gave birth to a better son, for he was straight as a rod, handsome, and dashing, and how elegant he looked in that splendid, gold braided uniform! He had already risen to the rank of lieutenant, although he was not more than twenty-five; and he would surely be a colonel some day!

Lieutenant Sándor Prakovszky used to spend his holidays at home, in Krizsnócz, every second year. We met him many times. My grandfather kept remarking:

"What a fine son this good-for-nothing blacksmith has! The stork who brought him to that place must have been crazy! Such a handsome, clever, well-built fellow! I would give a little cough in no time if I were a woman." (In village love affairs an affected cough signifies longing, in flower language.) "And if I were you," he turned to me, "I would follow his example! A splendid fellow, this lieutenant!"

When Lieutenant Prakovszky was at home, Prakovszky senior throve; he was invited to name day and birthday celebrations, and even the killing of a goose served to justify an invitation. And when the two of them walked along the main street of Krizsnócz, every window on whose sill geraniums grew would open and it was as if smiling girls' heads were suddenly emerging out of the geranium blossoms... Sándor's sword would rattle, the windows would creak as they opened, and the old man's heart would beat so strongly that he himself could hear it!

On Sundays, the two of them could be seen strolling along to the house of God. The son went a little in front, while the old man lagged slightly behind, on purpose, so as to be able to see him, to delight in the sight of his son. The young gentlemen of the neighbourhood, who loitered about outside in the grass-grown churchyard and reviewed the blushing maidens passing in front of them, would all shake hands with the lieutenant.

"Welcome home, Sándor! How are you, Sándor?"

Soon after, they enter the church. All eyes are turned towards him, the women's singing dies on their lips, and even the older among them look round; a rustling arises on the side occupied by the women, as if all of them were turning to a new page in their hymn-book, and the news spreads all over the church:

"Young Prakovszky has arrived!"

Ah, young Prakovszky! What a dashing, what a splendid looking fellow! There's no denying it, hussars are the handsomest of all soldiers! A good thing the cantor does not stop playing the organ in his open-mouthed wonder.

And little old Prakovszky follows his son with short, mincing steps. Short, because he wants to stretch out this triumphant entry. His black, round eyes sweep penetratingly, haughtily over the congregation, as if to say: "Well, show me another boy like him! Although I am deaf, still I have a son like this."

Look how the old man's chest swells with pride! He walks with perfect ease now on the echoing stone floor; already he has joined in singing the hymn as his defective ears pick up the first note.

He takes his usual seat in our pew, he would not abandon it for all the world; there is no more room there for the lieutenant, who sits down in the next pew, right behind me...

I am telling this in such detail, because it turned out to be the cause of my great mistake. Piroska Gáll grew absent-minded all of a sudden, and stealthily made signs in my direction. My heart beat excitedly under the new velvet waistcoat I had received for Whitsun. I had believed from the start that this wonderful waistcoat (I attributed similar magic to all my garments) would prove irresistible to Piroska.

And now it had come true! At last, you are mine, my fairy princess, now I have caught you! Her eyes sparkled, and, as she flashed them at me during the sermon, my cheeks grew so hot that grandfather, looking at my flushed face, pressed his large hand to my forehead and inquired:

"You're running a temperature, my boy, aren't you?"

Chapter II
OXEN BEFORE CUPID'S CHARIOT

It was stronger than fever and sweeter than honey. All week long I remembered only her eyes, that bewitching look, the burning titillation of those two glowing orbs. I could not think of anything but her. Of course, for everything else in the world sank into nothingness...

A wondrous rustling filled the air. Mysterious voices drifted through the woods, as we drove home through the valley of Uszánc.

A different world seemed to have arisen from that of yesterday. Yesterday's world had slept, numbly, coldly, mutely, and now everything was in effervescent motion; the rye fields were playfully running along with the breeze, whilst the poppies smiled joyously amidst the rippling ears. The brook was babbling gaily. A hundred times had I gone this way already, without ever hearing its voice.

Ah, how long it seemed, that week... The following Sunday came all too slowly. Yet I expected so much from that Sunday, for I was harbouring the most reckless plans; why, I even thought of speaking to Piroska. I saw myself addressing her. "Yes, I shall do it. Come what may! I am not frightened, I'm no pussy-cat. But what am I going to say to her?"

Those were the days indeed! What a nimble fantasy I still possessed! I only had to beckon: Bring Piroska here! and there she stood. Exactly the same as she was in church, with all her movements, with her lips pursed demurely, her seraphic eyes raised towards heaven, her mouth opened in singing, while little lines and indentations appeared on her neck, from which a small golden heart was hanging on a black ribbon. I could see her cotton skirt with the blue dots and the three frills on the hem, under which the tips of her "Everlasting" shoes peeped forth. There was something singular and marvellous about all this. Other girls, too, wore skirts and shoes, but God knows why, it was not the same. Piroska had been dressed by the three graces themselves...

Suddenly I began to like being alone. Everybody was a burden to me. I withdrew into the apiary for hours on end and started to write my first poem. Oh, Lord, that first poem. Do you, reader, still have a warm spot in your heart that will enable you to understand what it means to write one's first poem?

It means the coming of love, the approach of the mightiest potentate in the world.

Love's arrival is not announced by heralds, as if he were a king; nor by a burst of rage, as if he were a seven-headed dragon, with his mace flung ahead of him... he comes quietly, almost stealthily, and the heart is seized with a sacred lunacy, it becomes an overflowing cauldron of boiling, bubbling feelings, and the soul exudes poetry, just as the forest soil after a downpour brings forth an abundance of mushrooms in token of its fertility.

Sunday was far away, however, and a catastrophe intervened. On Friday, my father drove out in the britzka to inspect the harvesters, and on the way in traversing a particularly bumpy spot along the road the carriage-shaft broke.

"Confound it," grandpa grumbled, "now we won't be able to drive to Krizsnócz on Sunday."

He said this as simply as if a mere plate had been broken. There was simply no heart in that grandfather of mine!

I was prostrate with grief. I cannot remember ever having experienced anything more tragic. The shaft was broken, so we could not drive to church!

I tried to persuade grandfather to have it mended at the blacksmith's the next day.

"Nonsense, he won't do it, the lazy dog, it will take him a week at least!"

"But after all, grandfather dear, you do have a reputation as a religious man. It would be a pity for you to miss church. Why could we not take a common cart, just like the peasants?"

"I am not the kind of fool that lets his bones be jolted about."

"At the worst it will give you a better appetite! And it will please God much more, if you suffer a little for his sake..."

The old man jumped up angrily:

"I am not crazy. If the Divine Ruler wants me to go to church, then let him not ruin my britzka. That's all I have to say."

So we seemed fated to stay at home the next Sunday, and I already had a new painful theme for a poem: "To a broken carriage-shaft."

But Providence is resourceful (that little brat Cupid seems to have no small influence with his more grown-up God-fellow). Towards midday on Saturday, the old farm-hand, Mihály Bozsicska, let our four oxen out into the clover-field.

We were just having lunch, when the peasants coming home from the fields related that our four oxen were heaved.

This caused immediate alarm, for heaving may have serious consequences. No one pays a dearer price for the pleasures of gastronomy than oxen, perhaps that is why they are called oxen. Human beings also have to pay the price, but only later on. For the pleasure man has today, he may suffer pain in the sacral region twenty years later, but the poor oxen have to pay right away.

We jumped up without delay and ran out towards the fields. Grandfather kept swearing like blazes, but moved along slowly, while father ran ahead with a jug of paraffin oil in his hands, and I came after him.

"Stick the dagger into them... the dagger alone will help," grandfather shouted. "This paraffin is a new-fangled thing, and all new-fangled things are worthless..."

But we had hardly reached Márton Pap's hay-field, when we saw Mihály Bozsicska coming sadly towards us, with bent head, driving a lone, brown ox, called Bimbó, before him. But what an awful sight poor Bimbó was! He was puffing and blowing like a grampus, his mouth was foaming, and his two flanks, although they had somewhat subsided, were still heaving like bellows in a smithy.

"What about the other three?" my father shouted anxiously, as we approached.

Bozsicska, unable to speak, only hung his arms, like the boughs of a weeping willow.

"Speak up, will you!" father snarled at him more angrily this time.

At that he began to weep, and the tears ran from his eyes and rolled down over his big moustache.

"The others have perished, master... Only two of us are left, Bimbó and I."

My poor father was much shaken, he scratched his head and heaped scorn on the deceased oxen.

"Confounded, greedy beasts, you! How dared you do such a thing to me! Just when I am short of money! What did you think I am? The owner of a banknote press?"

But being an optimist, he always looked for the silver lining in everything (and he who seeks will find).

"Well, there's Bimbó. Faithful Bimbó has escaped. Behaved like a man. What do you think, Bozsicska, will Bimbó pull through?"

Bozsicska cried like a child, he did not think anything, but kept on saying:

"Strike me dead, Sir, strike me dead!"

"I am not such an ass! Why should I get locked up because of you! What happened, has happened, nobody can undo it. But Bimbó will pull through, won't he, Bozsicska?"

Bozsicska cast a fleeting glance through his tears at Bimbó.

"Yes, Sir, Bimbó will pull through."

And my dear father was so pleased at these words that he started to pat and scratch Bombó's back and poured a little paraffin oil into his mouth. Then we continued our way to the fields to see the martyrs of appetite. A crowd had gathered there already, the labourers from the nearby fields had all come, and even Gipsy Babaj, the adobe maker, was prowling about with his small brats, rubbing his dirty hands, and continuously scolding his offspring in his funny gipsy dialect:

"Shtop shmirking, you shnot-nose. The gents will t'ink we ashked God to do it. And it ish four weeksh shinch I shaid my prayers!"

By now one could not see the slightest trace of sorrow on father's face, and he gave his orders with utter indifference: the hides to be taken to the shoemaker - there would be splendid boots made out of them; the better part of the meat to be retailed at half-price (let somebody call Patyinak, the butcher), and the rest to be given to Babaj. The little gipsies were dancing for joy, and this put father in even better spirits, so that, looking at the large, unbroken fallow land, he remarked, with some humour:

"They would have had to work a lot still!... They were lucky after all. It is better for them, from their own point of view."

And that was the last word, the funeral oration in memory of Villám, Virág and Rendes.

With that we turned homewards; and when my grandfather's short grey overcoat came in sight from behind the hill, called "The King's Hat" (the old man had toddled only as far as that), father shouted to him almost gaily:

"Bimbó has survived, dad..."

As if our family had no other ambition but that Bimbó should survive.

On the way home they discussed the question of money.

Oxen have to be bought in any case, whatever happens. Bimbó needs to have partners. Fine oxen must be bought to suit Bimbó. But how about money? Get it wherever we can find it. But where to find it?

"Why, József Gáll in Krizsnócz has plenty," grandfather declared.

"That's true, he has a lot. We ought to ask him for a loan, if he doesn't demand too much interest. Tomorrow is Sunday, you could run over to him, dad. We can borrow the small carriage from the vicar."

Grandfather nodded his approval, and my heart leaped with joy at the thought of seeing Piroska on the morrow.

Chapter III
THE WATER-MELONS OF THE VICAR'S WIFE

And that is how it happened. The next day, as every Sunday, we occupied our regular places in church. The organ pealed more beautifully than ever, the cantor put his whole soul into it, and Prakovszky's booming voice rose triumphantly towards the huge vault of the white ceiling on which a single eye was depicted. An eye, God himself. Human fantasy had searched everywhere on earth for a suitable conception of God and had been unable to compose out of rocks, clouds and flames the image of the Lord, the Invisible. So it had seized upon a part of man, the eye, and had said: "Such is God!"

An eye, all-seeing, all-hearing and all-knowing. An eye that smiled gently, reassuringly, when a good man looked at it, but fixed its stare sternly, threateningly on a bad man.

A titanic thought, born probably in a moment of great inspiration. God himself turned to man, and wanting to create a companion for man, he took out one of his ribs and fashioned from it a second human being. So man turned to the same source, took his own eye and created from it God's image...

But now, although grandfather would have taken me for a pagan if he had but known, other eyes held more interest for me: they were not painted on the ceiling, but sparkled under Piroska's beautiful white forehead; eyes that now looked dreamily, wearily, like the setting stars, now lively, exuberantly, like a blazing pastoral bonfire.

And, trembling in blissful joy, I felt her gaze feasting on me and penetrating into my very marrow.

My heart beat wildly, and I would have liked to accompany the words of the hymn: "A mighty fortress is our God!" with the cry:

"She loves, she loves me, sure as fate!"

My whole face turned crimson, I bent my head down, and for the life of me would not have dared to look her way, for I was sure our looks would meet, and God only knew what would have happened then. Maybe the church would have burst into flame! I raised my hymn-book before my eyes, like a nearsighted person, engrossed in singing, and furtively from under the book I looked at her cherry-blossom face, the charming transition from forehead to cheek, the wonderful chin that rounded off the whole, with a dimple in the middle, as if it were the deserted bed of a Lilliputian fairy brook. She did not seem to notice my being hidden behind that silly big hymn-book, but kept on smiling at me. The wily little imp! She knew, she appreciated, that the psalm-book was meant for tactics only, and that I could see all her movements in spite of it.

I was seized with a communicative urge; unhappy love is silent, reticent, but requited love wishes to burst forth, to boast. I could not bear silence any more than one can bear thirst; I had to talk about her at all costs.

"Grandfather, you know everybody here, don't you?"

"Everybody, my boy."

"That woman in the black silk-dress is Mrs. Gáll, isn't she?"

"No, that is Mrs. Krúdy. Mrs. Gáll is the other one, in the grey dress, in the other pew, with a braided bonnet on her head."

"And who is sitting beside her?" My voice was subdued, trembling, as if I were about to commit a crime.

"That is her daughter Piroska."

"A pretty girl," I said, with pretended indifference.

"She is a fine girl all right," replied the old man, "but her dowry is not too bad either."

"Are they rich?"

"Her father has squeezed plenty out of the peasants. He ought to have been hanged long ago. It would have saved me from going to him now, for one."

Oh, how awful that would be, I thought. In that case, Piroska would now be a hanged man's daughter!

"Are you going to see them, grandfather?" I queried timidly.

"Yes, but stop chattering so much."

"Will you take me with you?"

"If you want to come."

"I want to, grandfather."

"Oho, so that's it, you little scamp, you already have a crush on that girl."

I felt greatly pleased, I liked to be suspected at least of being interested in her. It made the whole thing look less mad, gave it an air of possibility.

"Why, no, grandfather," I stammered. "How can you even think such a thing?"

"There, there! All right, all right... Stay with Cornelius Nepos for the present, there is time enough yet for Ovidius Naso. It's true, I got my start during college already, but of course it's also true that..."

"What, grandfather?"

"That members of the fair sex used to be more beautiful in my time."

"You don't mean it, grandfather! More beautiful even than Piroska Gáll?"

"Now, you rascal, you have given yourself away! But the vicar is looking our way already - psst! Stop talking!"

The vicar was in the middle of his sermon, using that peculiar Slovak dialect that is the specialty of Lutheran ministers - a clumsy mixture of all the Slav languages, called "God's language" among churchmen. And this may well have been the case, because God probably understood it, while the Slovak congregation did not. I wouldn't be too sure that the clergymen themselves did.

I continued, of course, to look at Piroska, through my fingers, during the entire sermon; she seemed to be fingering her prayer-book absent-mindedly, suddenly taking out from between its pages a square white piece of paper (I could see from afar that there was something written on it). She perused it, and while she did so, her face turned sad just like that of a Madonna. She blew on the paper, as if she wanted to make it fly away, then rustled it between her fingers, and at last folded it as one folds a letter, cowering her head guiltily, like a repentant Magdalena; finally she put the note into her pocket.

When the sermon came to an end, and the organ was played again, the lovely, slender young ladies closed their prayer-books, put on their gloves, while their mothers smoothed their crumpled skirts, and then started towards the exit with a somewhat haughty, yet modest bearing, like so many does. The sweet pit-a-pat of their little shoes on the flag-stones accompanied the cantor's singing; for when the congregation was breaking up, only the cantor continued to strain his voice, along with a few weak-chested old women, who were anxious thus to expiate the sins of their youth.

Piroska also ambled along behind her mother, between the pews, and suddenly she turned her head towards me and a green flame seemed to flash from her glance, like a will-o'-the-wisp, beckoning to the wanderer: Follow me!

At this I went mad, and not waiting for grandfather to close his prayer-book, pocket his spectacles and take a pinch of snuff, and then to move out of the pew, after politely letting the others precede him, I flung myself across the pew and followed in Piroska's wake.

"Here, here! What are you up to now?" grandpa muttered after me. "The boy has gone crazy!"

But I took no heed. A secret feeling, an unaccountable instinct whispered to me that Piroska's last glance meant: "Follow me, young man, you are forever the chosen of my heart!" (After all, that's the way it is in novels!)

Thus I followed after her, as a blind fly follows the light, and I inhaled the scent spread by her hair. She only turned back once, but seemed to look further back, over my head: she did not even seem to notice me. How cunning, of her, how very cunning!

There was a rush and scramble as usual, everybody wanted to get out, so that there was something of an obstruction at the door. The peasants were vociferously discussing the sermon.

"I seem to have heard today's sermon before."

"Well, the vicar is too old to learn anything new!"

"But not old enough to forget the old things as well!"

The churchgoers had to stop once or twice because of the crush, so the rest caught up with them. The deaf Prakovszky kept pushing the peasants about angrily:

"Why the dickens don't you get going? Don't you have any manners? Can't you see, who is coming? An officer of the king's army! Make way, make way for my son, the lieutenant!"

And amid the scramble, the silver button of his snuff-coloured coat got caught in the fringe of a woman's shawl, but it was not the fringe that gave way, as he started to tug at it, but the button, which fell to the floor, ringing loudly on the flag-stones.

"Mr. Prakovszky, your button has come off," hooted József Pornya, the bailiff of Rigy, in his ears.

Never mind, nobody could stoop now to get it, so he only shouted, casually:

"Well, more was lost at the Orosháza smithy."

(What he really meant to say was: "On the battlefield of Mohács," the text of the popular song had gotten mixed up in his mind with this historical event.)

Outside the church, the people scattered in all four directions. The Gálls' attractive house with its ivy-covered verandah stood on the other side of the Neszte, the brook that cut Krizsnócz in half as the Danube separates Pest from Buda. The only plank, at the other end of the village, involved a long detour, and although the Neszte was small, the ladies could not cross it without getting their shoes muddy and without lifting up their skirts a wee bit at least; and inasmuch as the sight of ankles, prompting sinful thoughts, might have imperilled the souls of the wicked menfolk, who had just been purged of all earthly sins in the house of God, the noble families living on the other side of the Neszte were on Sundays permitted to pass directly through the vicar's garden, which, stretching as it did to the further side, had a handsomely painted little bridge across the brook.

Now too the noble families went this way, and the Gálls among them. I trailed everywhere after them, watching from afar the right moment to address my love-sick dove and to join her. For I was convinced she had some plan for me and that something was bound to happen. Perhaps her mother would go the other way, and being left alone, she would beckon to me. I also hoped that some veiled old woman, with emaciated face and long nose, would suddenly sidle up to me and whisper from behind her bony hand: "You are the luckiest creature on earth, sir, Donna Piroska sends word to you..." (What an idiot I am! This is not Sevilla, we live in Krizsnócz!)

The women were passing between the black-currant and gooseberry bushes, their tongues wagging boisterously. The general chatter was interrupted ever so often by peals of laughter (they were no doubt ridiculing someone) and their conversation converged into a great hubbub that sounded from afar like bedlam: "Red doublet, blue doublet, yellow doublet!" They stopped now and then beside a flower bed or fruit tree, for the vicar was a well-known pomologist and his pears were renowned far and wide. Some of the ladies tried to knock off one or two with their parasols. Woe, if the vicar had happened to see it, he would have made a bigger row over his pear than was made once in paradise over the apple.

At one point, they turned aside a little, to admire the melons of the vicar's wife - those exquisite musk melons! This inspection was essential, for the good lady would certainly ask anyone she met afterwards:

"My dear, did you see my melons? Haven't they developed splendidly? George is positively huge. But Júlia too will be delicious. And as for Marge! But to tell the truth, I think wrinkled Susan is the most promising of all; she is already turning yellow, and what an aroma she has!"

The vicar's wife was childless, and she had given her melons the names of children, pinning each name on the melon's back with a knitting needle: she knew every one of them; she took care and talked of them, as if they were her children - and just as Saturn had eaten his own offspring, she too would eat them in the end, smacking her lips and saying:

"Kate's flesh has a wonderful taste."

While the ladies were looking at the melons, Piroska wandered away from them to the other side of the melon bed, bending down, as if she wanted to examine a little flower more closely or to pick an insect from the golden bell of a melon blossom. Heavens! What a silly girl, a wasp may sting her! She bent down quite low and, with her back towards her mother and the ladies, very cautiously took out of her pocket the square little piece of white paper I had seen in the church and slipped it into the golden bell.

After casting a furtive look about her to make sure that nobody was watching, she quickly rose, and the beautiful arch of her back was again as straight and graceful as the stem of a lily.

I had seen everything, I knew everything. She had written a letter... she had written a letter...! So, I had guessed correctly! If only I don't go crazy with joy! I pressed my hand to my heart, so that the people following me should not hear its loud throbbing. Never before had the sun shone so brightly. It was as if it had melted altogether and the resulting fluid were dripping onto the trees and the grass. The clouds wandered gently, peacefully over the mountains, like enormous gossamer veils, and one's fantasy could imagine them enveloping exquisite feminine figures. The birds sang glorious songs on the vicar's trees; perhaps even the pears were singing. And the meshy golden bell of the melon flower was ringing, clanging, pealing with laughter, as if there were no brighter music in all nature.

But there was nothing unearthly about the bell, no fairy had cast a spell upon it, all it held was the letter.

I waited impatiently for the women to go away. Awful, how long they loitered! Had they nothing to do at home? At last they started back towards the middle path leading to the bridge.

Now I pounced upon my prey, and with a single leap I reached the melon flower.

Piroska looked back from the end of the garden and her beautiful face, flashing through the foliage, seemed to be terror-struck. But perhaps it was just my fancy.

Quickly I took the white paper out of the flower; the fine script was visible through it like spider's legs.

At last! I was about to open it, all a-tremble, when I felt a heavy hand on my neck. And at the same moment an imperious voice commanded:

"Give me that paper at once!"

As if overtaken by an avenging fate, I felt like collapsing and surrendering then and there. But instinctively, I turned round first, to see what that fate looked like.

Alas, it had taken on the guise of a lieutenant. Before me stood none other than Sándor Prakovszky.

"How dare you take something that was not meant for you?" lie snapped at me.

"What did you say?" I replied in confusion. "For whom was it meant then?"

The lieutenant burst out laughing and said in a contemptuous, nonchalant tone:

"Go to the devil and rob birds of their eggs and not people of their letters."

That made me really angry, I grew red as a boiled lobster.

"This is my letter."

"Will you give it to me at once?"

All this time he did not let go of my neck, but kept on tightening his grip.

"I won't give it," I fumed. "I would sooner die than give it up!"

"You won't, will you, you good-for-nothing brat!" the lieutenant hissed and, letting go of my neck, he tried to grab my right hand, in which I held the crumpled little note as firmly as I could, to keep him from getting it. With my left hand, I snatched my penknife out of my pocket and tried to open it with my teeth.

"I'll kill you, lieutenant!" I fumed.

He noticed the knife, wrenched it out of my hand and threw it into a bed of parsley. Never again was I to find that beautiful penknife with the horn handle.

Then he opened my right palm - he had a hand of iron. I kicked, scratched, bit, but all in vain, he grabbed the little note, tweaked my ears soundly (even now, in my old age, my blood boils, when I recall that scene), and then hit me in the back with such force that I rolled among the melons, like a ball.

Ah me, if the earth, if the bed of melons would but have opened up and swallowed me for good! What was I to do in the world after that? Nothing.

But what about vengeance? Yes, vengeance I could take! I felt new blood surging in my veins, and, jumping to my feet, like Miklós Toldi once upon a time, I tore up a pear tree by the roots - it was a seedling about three inches long - and ran after him, to strike him dead with it.

Like a madman, I raced back through the garden, towards the church, in the direction in which the lieutenant had gone with my letter. How awful, how dreadful! Surely it had never happened before that someone had been robbed of his letter like that. And how he had treated me! With what contempt, with what scorn, just as if I were a grammar-school boy. I gnashed my teeth, and dashed on and on.

I was in the act of tearing through the garden door, when I ran into my grandfather, and nearly knocked the poor old man over.

"Here, here! Where are you running, amice? What the devil has got into you? Have you gone crazy? Your clothes are all muddy. Where have you been wallowing, you little urchin?"

"I am not an urchin," I gasped, trembling with fury, "I won't let you use such words."

"What? You are not an urchin? You won't let me? Me?" He threw up his hands in astonishment. "Good God, the boy has really gone mad, and now he believes he is the deputy sheriff. Whom are you after, good sir?"

His ironical voice brought me to my senses; I began to understand how ridiculous I looked in grandfather's eyes.

"Nobody, grandfather."

I became terribly frightened even at the thought of somebody's finding out the story of the letter.

"You are as excited as if you had had a fight."

"I am rather hot."

"But that stick or seedling in your hand, what is it for?"

"This?" I stammered. "I was weeding in the vicar's garden."

"Is that so? Did you run away from church just to weed the vicar's garden?"

"It's a passion with me, grandfather."

"Well, I'm glad to know it; from now on you will weed the garden at home. But listen, son, this is neither a thistle, nor a thorn bush, but a useful seedling..."

"It did not fit into the group."

The old man shook his head:

"Well, well, this sense of the beautiful is most laudable, but you must not let the vicar see it, or there will be trouble. Throw it quietly over the fence, if you value your hide, and come along. We had better be gone as quickly as possible."

After all the excitement, a dull torpor pervaded me, I went along without a word, my head bent low, automatically following the old man, like an obedient dog. We passed over the small bridge, around which water lilies nestled. There was almost no water in the brook - just enough for the village swallows to drink and to use in building their nests. The birds of the Virgin Mary flitted like black arrows above the rivulet, twittering gaily.

The old gentleman tried to get the truth out of me on the way.

"Did somebody hurt you?"

"No."

"Are you worried by something?"

"No."

"Now, look here, my boy..." And his wrinkled fat face darkened and grew more and more anxious. "You have strayed onto some forbidden ground, for all I know. Something has happened to you, I am sure. You are not yourself. Come on now, tell me at once what happened. Quickly, one, two, three..."

"I have lost my penknife, grandfather."

My dear old grandfather smiled tenderly under his white moustache, he was glad to have found out what was the matter; it was as if a great load had been taken off his mind.

"Why, now," he said, quickening his pace, "soon you'll be telling me, amice, that you have lost your silly big head."

He turned round and tapped me playfully on the head, pretending to be angry, and knitted his brows.

"Devil take me if I ever buy you another penknife."

With that he quietly slipped his own pearly penknife, with the small saw and rasp and the three steel blades, into my pocket.

Chapter IV
GÁLL AND FAMILY

The Honourable József Gáll, Esq. was an old egoist, full of gall and malice, whose chief aim was to embitter the life of his family whenever possible. But those who did not belong to his family he strove very amiably to draw into his net so as to be able to fleece them afterwards. He was old already, about grandfather's age, and long ago they had made merry together during the carnival season at the famous balls in Pásztó. His health, however, was already the worse for wear - he had gout, his sight was poor, and he could go about only on crutches. Sometimes he lifted one of them to strike somebody he happened to be angry with.

He used to shuffle about his house all day long, and often all night too (for even sleep was denied him), wearing a green shade over his eyes, and his thoughts revolving about himself, eternally about himself.

His wife, still quite young compared with him, tried in vain to distract him.

"It is going to rain, Józsi dear," she would say.

He would not even look up, but replied rudely, in an infinitely bored voice:

"What do I care?"

A little later his wife would repeat:

"It is already raining, Józsi dear."

"I don't give a hoot."

Sometimes Piroska would nestle up to him - as is the wont of daughters - and pass her small soft hands over his bald head.

"There's no more hair for you to stroke!" he would snarl, shaking his fist threateningly towards heaven.

He did not condescend to honour his family with as much as a glance, but went about grumbling, fretting and fuming, a furious gleam in his eyes, beating the wall, the floor or the furniture or whatever happened to be in the way of his crutches, and croaking dolefully and reproachfully:

"Seventy, I am seventy already."

As if he were saying to his wife and daughter: "Why don't you take away the burden of my years, if you love me so much?"

From time to time, his haggard body was convulsed by fits of coughing which nearly choked him and caused his bony face to turn crimson, and the few white hairs on his chin to quiver dolorously.

"The hounds of death are barking," he would wheeze in the midst of a spasm.

If a guest at his table praised the food, the old man's fury knew no bounds.

"Me, I have no teeth left," he spat, throwing a fierce, envious glance at his wife and daughter, as if it was they who had deprived him of his teeth. Nothing under the sun gave him any pleasure. If the crop promised to be bad, there was no end to his lamentations: "We shall starve... We shall starve to death," he shrilled at his wife. And catching sight of her a few minutes later, he again shouted at her:

"We shall all die of hunger!"

Yet if his labourers reported rich crops, he lamented:

"What good will that do me? The others will have a fine harvest, too."

When we reached their home, Mrs. Gáll came towards us in the courtyard. She had already taken off her Sunday dress.

"Good day, good day. What are you doing in this out-of-the-way place?"

"I just came along. Is the 'lad' at home?"

Mrs. Gáll had probably not often heard anyone refer to her husband by that term. It sounded rather odd in her ears, but afterwards brought forth a smile.

"He is at home, please come in. Why, this is your grandson, isn't it? My, how he has grown! What's his name?"

"Ho, why don't you answer?" asked grandfather, turning to me.

"I'm called Pali."

"A fine name. Count Zichy's little son was christened Pali too, and so was the grandchild of the Lord Lieutenant; that's a good and clever choice, because Peter and Paul's day comes along in June, when there is plenty of everything, young squash and all manner of vegetables, fattened geese, ducks and piglets, and even the first corn on the cob, but God save you from Joseph's day, when there is still nothing to be had, nothing at all, just to think about it, my dears, almost drives me crazy."

Little by little Mrs. Gáll had adapted herself to her aged husband, and by now she judged even the Christian names according to her personal convenience.

"Is the 'lad' alone?"

"No, there is a young man here from Moravia, who is negotiating with him about the fields in Lucsivna. But, please, step in."

"About the fields in Lucsivna?" My grandfather was taken aback. "Why, is there anyone in the world fool enough to buy them?"

Mrs. Gáll meanwhile pulled aside the white sheet that was hanging like a curtain over the door, to stop the flies from getting into the room; then she opened the door and pushed us into the room.

There the 'lad,' his crutches deposited cross-wise in front of him, sat at the table on which he chalked lengthy calculations. A stranger with thin, fair hair and moustache, and dressed like a gentleman, was sitting opposite him; he was handsome, much too handsome indeed; mugs like his often appear on the pictures pasted on honeycake hearts.

"Hallo, Józsi!" grandad cried, and his voice seemed to fill the dreary room with gay sunshine. "You remember me, don't you, you old rascal?"

Old Gáll put the chalk down on the table and pushed the green shade further back on his forehead.

"I can't see a thing," he whined peevishly.

Of course, he had recognized my grandfather, and now he groaned, his lips trembling with fury:

"So you all are still alive, and even walking without a stick!"

"Well, we get along somehow, thank God!"

"What brings you here?" Gáll asked uneasily.

"I would like to talk to you about a smaller matter, if it does not inconvenience you."

"Everything inconveniences me," he replied categorically. "But it is all the same, you might as well kill me outright!"

"I would like to talk it over with you in private."

"That is not possible," he burst out angrily. "I am not such a fool as to let this Moravian out of my sight. If I leave him for a second, my enemies will persuade him not to buy my fields in Lucsivna. No, no, I won't leave this honest man from Moravia alone. He is mine. If you want to, you may talk in front of him, he doesn't understand a single word of Hungarian anyhow. Now, who is the kid?"

"My grandson."

"And I have none!" he cried, shaking his fists, and then picked up one of the crutches; poor Mrs. Gáll, fearing he would throw it at her, scampered out of the room.

But Gáll did not throw it at anybody, he just knocked on the table three times with it (a substitute for a bell in this house) and at the third tap the sound of the piano in the next room suddenly ceased, although the melody of "I'd like to go ploughing" was already beginning to unfold on the stubborn keys. But now it stopped and Piroska opened the door, thrusting in her pretty little head.

"What can I do for you, daddy?"

Oh, how sweet the ring, of her voice!

We all looked her way. The Moravian got up and bowed to the young lady.

"Mr. Gáll, will you please introduce me to your daughter?" he asked in German.

The old man threw a contemptuous glance at the buyer of the Lucsivna fields, who dared bother him with such an insignificant matter, and then mumbled reluctantly:

"Anton Dubek, an honest citizen of Brünn."

Piroska curtseyed gracefully - but on catching sight of me standing there near the sideboard, her oval face turned deathly pale.

"Take along the boy, Piroska, and show him through the garden."

I grew red in the face, my ears began to ring, and I thought I would not be able to move, but the girl stepped nearer and asked me quietly, without daring to look into my eyes:

"Haven't you ever been here before?"

"Never," I answered in a trembling voice.

"You want to see our garden?" she inquired with a superior, patronizing smile, such as ladies are accustomed to put on in dealing with young children.

I merely nodded. I was unable to utter a word, for it depressed me terribly that she should treat me as if I were a little boy.

"Come along," she said dreamily, quietly, casting her eyes down. "It is not a particularly beautiful garden, but there is a fine skittle-alley in it, and a fish-pond... oh, such a silly fishpond. You shall see."

I followed her. We went out through the porch, without a word, lost in thought. A strange shyness and bashfulness weighed us down. Piroska tried to appear natural and to hide her anxiety, but it seemed to me she stole excited glances at me whenever she could manage to do so.

"Do you like flowers?" she asked at last.

"No."

"Not yet?" she added.

It pained me so, this "not yet," it pained me as much as if she had said: "You are a child still."

Chapter V
EVE AND THE APPLE

On the meadow, next to the garden, the village children were playing "geese and wolf." The dialogue between the farmer's wife and her geese rang out in fresh young voices:

"Come home, my little geese!"

"We can't come!"

"Why not?"

"There's a wolf under the bridge!"

"What's he doing?"

"Washing himself."

"What does he dry himself with?"

"A golden towel."

The wolf - Folkusházys' seven-year-old Gyuszi - was standing between the farmer's wife and her geese, gnashing his teeth and ready to leap; the little geese trembled, huddled up together, and there was real fear on their tiny faces, stained red from eating strawberries; while the farmer's wife, little Zsófi Krúdy, a wee lady of eight, called and coaxed them to come home, waving her apron at them.

I don't know what Piroska was up to, maybe she wanted to escape from her confusion, she suddenly ran to Gyuszi the wolf, hugged him and encouraged the geese:

"I've caught the wolf, come quickly!"

"Let me go, Auntie Piroska, or I'll bite you," the wicked wolf threatened, but Piroska did not let go of him, until all the geese had fled over to their little mistress.

I just stared in astonishment. Well, who is a child now, I or she? And how well even this childishness suits her!

Then she returned to me and became serious again, opening the garden door, and walking despondently by my side as if she had a toothache. There was not much to be seen in this garden; it was like any garden of the village gentry. A well in the middle, a weeping willow beside the well, flowers in front of the apiary, mostly of the kind that was liked by the bees and also suited the members of the household: gilly-flowers and roses for the hair of the young ladies, pinks and rosemaries for the nosegays of the maids, dahlias for the hats of the shepherd and the coachman of a Sunday, in case they did not get a flower from their sweethearts. There was no end of flowers in all the colours of the rainbow; the bower was overgrown with ivy, there were border primroses for the cows, and Saint Paul's flower grew in a corner, serving as a substitute for tea among the noble folk of Krizsnócz. At another place, a barrel, with a capacity of about seventy gallons, was sunk into the ground; here fish were kept, and so it was called the fish-pond. Far off, at the end of the garden, there was a little patch, hidden amidst the maize and secretly called "Nicotiana" among the household; here Mr. Gáll grew his tobacco. In short, there was nothing remarkable to be seen in this garden, it would not have interested me one whit, even if it had been full of all the magic plants of this earth.

So we strolled along self-consciously in an embarrassed silence, until at last Piroska stopped near an apricot tree, on the top of which some apricots were beginning to redden. She stood on tip-toe, trying in vain to reach them.

And as if she were annoyed with me because of it, she said with some animosity:

"Why are you looking at me so strangely?"

"I?" I stammered, the blood rushing to my head. "No, I was not looking... I'm not in the habit of looking! Not at all!"

"He is not in the habit of looking," she burst out laughing, and, bending down, picked up a dry twig from the path and began twirling it about aimlessly.

Then she took a few hesitant steps forward, as though she were fighting with herself, whether to mention the painful subject that was apparently occupying and depressing her. My bashful behaviour seemed to encourage her, for she turned round with sudden decision and stepped quite close to me, so that I could almost feel her breath. She put her hands on my shoulders. My whole body was quivering with bliss, and it was as if I could feel the pulsing of the warm blood in her palms right through my coat, I closed my eyes, and I doubt whether I ever before or later experienced a moment so brimful with happiness.

"You look like a good boy," she said softly in a cajoling voice, "please, give it back to me!"

"Give back what?" I stammered with a shudder.

"My letter," she replied, "I saw you take it from the melon-flower in the pastor's garden. You will give it back to me, won't you?"

She smiled at me expectantly. I never saw such a smile before! It consisted of dew and sunshine, of query and command.

"Oh, Miss, a dreadful thing has happened... It was taken away from me."

"Taken away?" she cried in alarm, dropping the twig from her hand. Her lips were trembling, and her face grew white and lifeless. "Taken by whom?"

"By young Prakovszky, the lieutenant."

"The lieutenant?" she articulated in utter amazement, and the stunned surprise on her face made her look like a silly little girl in her teens. But the colour suddenly returned to her cheeks.

"And you let the lieutenant have it?"

"Yes, because he was stronger, he wrenched it out of my hands, saying it was meant for him."

Piroska knitted her brows and pursed her lips ironically.

"It was strange of the lieutenant to behave this way... it wasn't nice of him at all."

"Wasn't it meant for him?" I asked eagerly.

"Of course not," she answered indifferently. "How could you imagine that? Of all things..."

Her words filled me with the courage of a lion; and though I never would have believed myself capable of it, I boldly seized her hand.

"Say it, please, just one little word; oh, do tell me the truth," I stammered. "Was the letter meant for me?"

She did not reply, but she did not draw her hand back either, only turned her face away.

"You read it yourself, didn't you," she said warily, in a subdued voice, as if she wished to evade the question - or perhaps she wanted to sound me out.

"I had no time."

"You didn't? So the lieutenant took the letter from you at once? Well, aren't soldiers awful? But, of course, you didn't give it up easily, did you?"

"I struggled as long as I could."

"Good Heavens, it must have been quite a wrestle! Maybe others saw it too?"

"There was nobody in the garden at the time."

"But surely, you told your grandfather about it?" she asked uneasily.

"I told nobody."

"That was very decent of you. Please, forget the whole thing, if you really care for me."

And her eyes sparkled with bewitching coquetry.

"I care for you? Why, I write poems to you every day. Oh, Miss, you have given me back my life. I should have killed myself if the letter had been meant for the lieutenant, and not for me... Please, tell me, it was meant for me, wasn't it?"

I wanted to kneel down on the gravel path, but Piroska, noticing it, shook her finger at me.

"Don't be silly, or I'll be angry and run away. Somebody may look in over the fence and laugh at us."

"Well, was the letter meant for me?..."

"Why, of course, for whom else could it have been meant?"

"Then I shall go back and take it from the lieutenant, if it costs me my life."

"No, under no circumstances, that would cause a scandal. Let bygones be bygones; leave it at that. If you went there and made a row, the whole region would know about it soon, and what would become of me?"

I was intoxicated with looking at her exquisite beauty, my brain became dull, and I stammered mechanically:

"True, true. But I have to know what was in that letter."

"That I wanted to see you, and that you should somehow try to talk to me - that was all, and now it has already happened. Fate has been kind to us."

"But what next, what of the future?" I urged feverishly, impatiently.

"We must wait and see. Time is on our side. But you must be prudent and discreet, for if you mention a word about all this, about the letter, the lieutenant, our talk here, you will never see me again in this life..."

"Wild horses could not drag anything out of me... Never, never, Piroska."

Piroska again stretched her hands, gaily, towards the top of the apricot tree and, standing on tip-toe, managed to pluck an apricot from the highest branch... one single apricot...

"I got it. Here it is!"

Her body and soul had become as light as a butterfly.

She bit into the fruit with her little white teeth and pursed her lovely lips. Oh, how delicious!

Now she bit off one half and then gave me the other half with that oblivious, impish intimacy which will warm a man's body through and through.

"Here, this is for you, to keep you from crying."

The glass from which lovers drink in turns is full of significance, but an apricot means even more, when the girl one loves has eaten half of it and left traces of her teeth on the other half!

Eve must have offered the apple to Adam like this. But Eve did it so that Adam might know all, while Piroska did it so that I should know nothing. Paradise was lost both here and there, as soon as the fruit had been tasted.

But now it was not the archangel Gabriel who appeared with fiery sword, but a grimy little maid who bobbed up in front of us.

"Come in please, Miss."

I was crushed by this unexpected intrusion, but my heart's first idol declared gaily:

"We are coming, Panni. Have you laid the table yet?"

"Yes, Miss."

"And the Moravian gentleman is also lunching here?"

"Yes, Miss."

Good God! The first doubt was creeping into my heart. How lightly she took her being called away, her being parted from me. And she even had time to inquire about such a trifle as whether the Moravian would be lunching there. To hell with the Moravian, when such a disaster was befalling us!

I would have liked to reproach her for this, but I could not do so because of Panni, with whom she plunged into deep conversation. I never hated any human being as much as I hated this chattering Panni.

Because of her, we reached the room without being able to exchange a single intimate word. Grandfather, it seemed, had finished already and was only waiting for me, holding his hat and stick in his hand.

"Well," he said, "it is agreed then that I am to come by one of these days."

Gáll nodded and began rubbing his hands.

"So the poor little oxen were heaved... the poor little oxen."

A peculiar gaiety spread over his wicked, yellow face.

He was pleased over the misfortune of the oxen - as grandfather told me later on - for one thing, because it meant that another person had grown poorer, and at the same time, because every dead ox would raise the price of the live ones. And his oxen were alive!

He gave grandfather his dried-up, veiny hand in farewell:

"Now, that clover... the fresh clover... It must have had a delicious flavour. Confound it, they must have enjoyed it hugely... What do you think?... Clover melts in their mouths as do dumplings in ours, ha, ha, ha..."

He laughed aloud at his own stupid joke, but his dry, broken guffaw suddenly turned into a gasping, convulsive cough. "Here! Here!" shouted the Moravian gentleman, and ran to the sideboard for a glass of water. Gáll grabbed hold of the table with both his hands.

His head was shaking convulsively, his eyes bulged and became suffused with blood, the veins on his forehead had swollen until they were as thick as sausages, his neck and face first turned red as a brick and then dark violet. Meantime Mrs. Gáll rushed in from the kitchen and started to pat his back, so that little by little his coughing ceased and he was able to sputter, his eyes rolling grimly:

"I am going to die!"

"Fiddlesticks!" grandfather assured him. "But if you do die, I'll see to it that I am buried here in Krizsnócz, and then we'll both go to dances again, just like in Pásztó once upon a time."

A grin spread over Gáll's face as he, no doubt, recalled the sins of his youth. He was unbearable at all times, but he was even more disgusting when he grinned; his mouth opened almost to his ears, and one could see the gaps in his teeth, the black, broken stumps sticking here and there out of his gums.

"Stuff and nonsense!" Gáll lisped, hunching himself up like an owl; while a sort of sigh gurgled up from his chest. "The priests lie to us! You will see, János, there is nothing in the Beyond..."

But my good grandfather smiled mischievously, as was his wont when he was joking.

"I would not trust the priests either, Józsi, but the Czech musicians... By Jove, the Czech musicians did not lie!"

Mr. Gáll now struck the table with his palm. A flock of stupid flies, thinking the figures written with chalk were made of powdered sugar, had settled there for a nibble. So even these impudent little creatures have their disappointments? Instead of sweet delights, some of them met a tragic fate. Three or four of them died under Mr. Gáll's palm...

"Well, now," said the old man, turning to grandfather, with the dead remains of the flies smeared on his palm, "do you believe these will come to life and fly again?"

Looking, perhaps by way of association, at Mrs. Gáll's hands, he now discovered something awful. The woman's hands were greasy.

An awful perspective opened up before him.

"I am done for!" he shouted vehemently, and clutching one of the crutches, he jumped up and struck at his wife.

But Mrs. Gáll, being used to such things, was on the alert, and sprang nimbly and quickly aside, whereupon the angry old man lost his balance and fell to the floor.

"Oh, my coat!" he wailed as he got up... "The wasteful woman... Now, you shall perish, you extravagant, thoughtless woman. A curse on your hands! Oh, the best cloth of Gács! And to think that this woman should do such a thing! I am choking, huh, huh! She brought only four pillow-cases to this house and three sheets... that's all. She is ruining me, killing me... I'll die a beggar!"

We tried to flee from the room, in the wake of Mrs. Gáll, who had been subjected to such humiliation. She had been cutting bacon in the kitchen, and when the good soul had heard her husband's fit of coughing, she had run in, forgetting in her hurry that, if she patted the choking old man on the back as was her custom, the traces of her greasy hands would be left on his coat.

My grandfather was greatly embarrassed by the disgusting scene, and he tactfully tried to lessen its significance. In saying good-bye, outside on the porch, he remarked good-humouredly:

"The lad's a bit cantankerous, my dear."

Mrs. Gáll, it seemed, did not find anything unusual in her husband's behaviour, for she shrugged her shoulders indifferently, saying:

"One should not speak ill of the departed, my dear Sir, but believe me, it was his first wife that spoilt him. I have already improved his character considerably since then."

I wondered what Gáll would have been like if his character had not been improved - that is, I would have wondered, if Piroska had not been in my thoughts all the time. I was on the watch for a door to open. Surely she would appear from behind this one or that one. It was inconceivable that she would let me go without exchanging a sweet look at least. I wished grandfather would go on talking, start an anecdote... She was bound to come, she could not possibly fail me.

But she did not appear. The maid carried the soup through the porch into the dining-room. We had to get started, and still she did not come. How, in Heaven's name, could she restrain herself? It was incomprehensible! Perhaps she would watch me from one of the windows, and send her sighs after me...

As we went through the courtyard, each of my steps weighed as heavy as lead, and my glance wandered over all the windows: there was a fuchsia and a cactus in one of them, but her dear little head was nowhere to be seen. Where could she be, in which room? I would have given a kingdom for the power of Aladdin in the "Arabian Nights!" How imperiously I would have commanded the jinn: "Take down the house around her, first the roof, then the walls, so that I may see her once more..." For I had already forgotten what she looked like. I tried to recall her face, her hair, her eyes, but the picture became hopelessly blurred. (Oh, what an empty, good-for-nothing head I have on my shoulders!)

Lord, how sad, how cruel it was to leave like that, without having seen her once more! And when we passed the last picket of the Gálls' garden fence, I felt even sadder, now that the house too was out of sight. But what if she was still there, at the door or behind some tree in the garden, waving farewell with her white shawl? I turned back two or three times. Nothing. Nobody. Only the lowered green shutters stared back at me stupidly, emptily, like giant emerald eyes.

Grandfather snapped:

"What are you looking back for all the time?"

"I seemed to see clouds rising above the horizon behind the Gáll stable."

"Nonsense! There will be no rain this week. Didn't you see the bailiff of Rigy throw a silver coin into the collection bag?"

The sun was swimming in a blinding flood of light in the middle of the clear blue sky. By nightfall, the sun would have lapped up the last drop of water now winding its weary way through the bed of the Neszte, taking cover amid the clematis and bramble-runners, wetting the backs of the pebbles and trickling under the soles of the stones...

Our carriage was waiting for us at the church. By the time we arrived there - it took us a good quarter of an hour - grandfather had told me the result of his mission.

"The old scoundrel did not give any money, but promised to do so next Sunday, if he sold the Lucsivna fields by that time. So everything depends on the Moravian. The old sinner asked for twelve florins interest, may he choke by Sunday - I mean, let him choke, but only the week after. I must say, he is afraid of the other world! And there'll surely be a big bonfire under the cauldron in which he'll boil! What is more, he suspects it himself, I think, for he puts little stock in the Czech musicians!"

"Who are the Czech musicians, grandfather?"

"What? You have not heard the legend of the Czech musicians yet?"

"No."

"Well, it's a good story, especially for this gay village of Krizsnócz. I'll tell it to you as we go along."

We were just leaving behind the last houses of the village, Révész's sheep-fold and the barn-yards and approaching the cemetery. The old man got his meerschaum pipe out of his pocket, filled and lit it, and began the story of the Czech musicians.

Chapter VI
THE CZECHS' ADVENTURE IN KRIZSNÓCZ

Three Czech musicians were travelling across this county: stocky Zahrada, Safranyik with his goatee, and long-legged Zajcsek. They had a most unusual adventure. Zsigmond Kézdi Kovács, county counsellor, who was living in the house now occupied by the doctor's widow, questioned them after the incident and took down their statements. These records have been preserved to this day and may be read at the parish hall, where they are kept, like some great treasure, under triple lock.

The wandering musicians had come from the direction of Zólyom, on a peaceful summer evening, and having left the Lopata Woods behind them and descended into the valley, they found themselves enveloped by a thick fog; they said it became so dark, they could hardly recognize the road. They could not have been very far from Krizsnócz, maybe no more than a stone's throw, but they could not know this, for they saw no lit-up windows shining in the night; from this side, where we are driving now, the houses of Krizsnócz are concealed by trees, barns and sheep-folds, and none of the wanderers had ever before set foot in this district. So Zahrada, the oldest of them, said: "My friends, I am dog-tired, perhaps we will reach a village soon, but it is just as likely that we won't; so let us unharness our grey horses and lie down where we are."

Safranyik was of the same opinion:

"Let's do it. The farrier is not going to do any hammering today anyhow." (Safranyik, of course, meant the moon, where one can discern the figure of a hammering farrier.)

So without further ado, the poor devils (maybe just at the very spot we are now passing) jumped across the ditch and unharnessed their greys, that is pulled off their boots. All the boots seemed to be clamouring for food - they were agape with holes. The musicians put their bundles under their heads, laid their fiddles by their side, and stretched themselves out at full length. The meadow had just been mowed. No king ever slept in a more sweetly scented bedroom.

But hardly had they closed their eyes - perhaps they had not yet closed them at all, for how else could they have seen it - when a long row of brightly lit-up windows came into view a couple of hundred feet away.

Safranyik noticed it first:

"Up Zahrada, Zajcsek! Look, some castle or other is shining under our very noses. Come on, Zahrada, Zajcsek, maybe we can get something to eat and drink there."

They were all hungry (not to mention their thirst), so they jumped up straightway, took their fiddles and started off towards the castle.

And sure enough, there was a great castle, with a façade of thirteen illuminated windows shining brightly in the night. And inside, what a gay commotion! Ten or twenty cooks were bustling about in the kitchen. One of them was stirring the sauces, another stewing dumplings, a third peeling potatoes; this one was pounding poppy-seed, that one whipping cream; and the smell of all the fine courses nearly knocked our musicians off their feet - for, while the fresh scent of grass had been pleasant enough, it was not to be compared with these luscious odours.

And as for the chambers! At tables, loaded with drinks and roasts, sat a host of ladies and gentlemen, dressed in gala costumes. The glasses rang, and boisterous shouting and laughter filled the magnificent marble palace. Count Waldenstein's palace in the golden town of Prague could boast nothing better!

But imagine the delight, the hullabaloo, when they caught sight of the musicians! A red-headed man with a pockmarked face, dressed in a dolman with silver buttons, and wearing spurs on his boots, rose to greet them with a haughty "Hallo lads, you come just in time. Out with your fiddles!"

They did not need to be told twice and began to draw from their strings all the Hungarian tunes they had learned on their way. Young and old jumped up from the tables, graceful brides and lily-like maidens, grey-bearded old men and mustacheless youngsters, and began to dance and to hop to beat the band. New boots stamped and creaked, silk petticoats twirled and rustled, the floor shuddered under the wild thumping of a hundred feet.

A ruddy-cheeked lady of about thirty with old-fashioned curls and wearing a sequin bonnet, trimmed with gold lace, and sky-blue skirt, stepped in front of Zahrada, and setting one arm akimbo and waving her lace handkerchief above her head with the other, danced a fiery csárdás, her hips swaying in passionate animation. At times she stamped her little feet on the ground, crying:

"Hey-ho, never say die!"

In her high spirits she once or twice dragged one of the men from the table, and it was a feast for the eyes to watch them whirling around. To Safranyik's great amazement she even got the fat, double-chinned vicar to leave his glass of wine.

"Come along, Reverend, your legs have rested long enough!"

And, believe it or not, the vicar sprang to his feet, declaring, however, that he only knew the "podzabucski," the famous Slovak dance. Now, Zajcsek was a past master in this dance, so the fiddles broke into song as if breathing the air of Slovakia, and the venerable gentleman was more and more carried away by the exuberant dance. The long, heavy gold chain around his neck clinked and rattled...

"What a game fellow the vicar is," people whispered. "One wouldn't have suspected down there that he had it in him."

At the sound of the music, the remaining dancers hastened in from the other rooms, and the crowd grew steadily bigger. Some were in light dolmans, others in fur coats (how they stood it in that heat, only the devil could tell), and even seventy-year-old couples were twirling around, with great whoops and bubbling with laughter...

A lovely girl (she was blonde, with a coronet on her head and large gold rings in her pale little ears) suddenly lost one of her heels.

"Who made those shoes?"

"Prakovszky."

"Where is he? Just wait, you bungler! Fetch Prakovszky, straight away! Let him fix it with paste!"

Ten or more of them ran for Prakovszky. They said he was playing cards with the Honourable Péter Krúdy and the notary, somewhere in the fourth room.

Meantime, the baking and cooking continued in the kitchen, and well-dressed roguish peasant girls, wearing red saffian boots and long shawls, fastened to their waist, were unceasingly carrying in food and drinks.

The diners flowed in an endless chain along the vast, long table, running the length of the chamber in which the Czech musicians were playing, and occasionally some inspired brain gave vent to a toast, of which only the stocky Zahrada, who had picked up a little Hungarian on the way here, managed to grasp a few words.

A thin young man, with a wart between his eyes, got up now, raised his glass to the noble and Right Honourable Márton Folkusházy, and praised all his offspring and their descendants. Zahrada said to himself:

"This fellow with the big wart must be an ass, for one should praise a person's ancestors - it is they who cast light on people in Hungary!"

But the young man went on to sing the praise of his great-grandchildren with brilliant epithets, ending with the words:

"And may God call them to Him as soon as possible!"

The gentleman thus honoured, sitting at the head of the table, nodded in deep emotion, and the whole company clinked glasses with him. At this he rose and, taking the arm of an old lady in a lilac dress and with powdered hair, trotted up to Safranyik in her company and whispered something in his ear. (Safranyik later said, they both smelled dreadfully of mould.)

Thereupon Safranyik motioned his two comrades to stop, and he alone played the bars of a minuet.

The two oldsters began daintily and gracefully to curtsey, scrape with their feet and preen themselves, gliding about slowly as in a dream. All this was both funny and stately at one and the same time. The ostrich plumes on the little old lady's headdress fluttered, while the thin old gentleman, his hat under his arm, strutted like a sparrow, ready to take flight. Once the old lady let her fan drop from her hand; Zahrada rushed over and picked it up, but the old lady merely smiled and, waving her hand, lisped with her toothless mouth:

"Hold it for a while, please."

After that, they flitted away, Heaven knows where. Zahrada held on to the fan, but nobody came for it. Now a fiery csárdás began. The lady with the sequin, gold-laced bonnet was in such high spirits that she whipped it off and stuck it on lanky Zajcsek's head, which was so small that the bonnet wobbled about in ludicrous fashion. At this the whole crowd burst out laughing, the revelling became ever noisier, and each tried to outdo the other with countless little pranks.

The dancing was interrupted for a minute, when a fat old gentleman, in a braided coat with cornelian button, declared:

"Here now, where have we left our manners? The musicians have had nothing to eat or to drink."

You should have seen the bustle which followed! The servant girls in red saffian boots brought in a small table and set what was left of the food on it - roast rabbit, sucking pig, pastry, goblets of fine Krizsnócz bacca d'oro and big bottles of Rigy plum brandy.

The musicians hung their violins on the coat-racks fastened to the wall, and then settled down to a hearty feast... How delicious everything tasted! If only the smell had not been so musty! It must have been quite late already, for the candles were almost burnt down, and the draught made them quiver in a ghastly way (there must have been a window open somewhere)... The noble assembly of ladies, damsels and gentlemen chattered and gossiped as they frisked and gamboled hither and thither. The younger ones played "How do you like it?" in one corner of the room, while in another group they threw a white lace kerchief from one to the other, shouting "I am angry with you"; if someone dropped the kerchief, he had to pay a forfeit, and such a big heap of gold rings and ear-clips was finally collected by the leader of the game, that a brisk, hunch-backed little man, who seemed to be some sort of bailiff, remarked wonderingly:

"Our descendants are stupid indeed. They dig gold nut of the earth at great cost, and afterwards, at great cost, they bury it again."

Another, clean-shaven, bespectacled little man, taking a pinch from his snuff-box every now and then and stuffing it in his nostrils, went from one to the other, shaking hands with everyone and inquiring in a pleasant voice:

"How do you feel here?"

"Very well, doctor. Splendidly, doctor."

The little man in spectacles rubbed his hands, saying:

"You have me to thank for it." And each time, he proudly thumped his hollow chest.

Everything was so beautiful, so gay... Zahrada could not take his eyes off the slender damsels, and once he poked Safranyik in the ribs, winking mischievously at the same time:

"Which one of these would you choose?"

Safranyik pointed to a roguishly smiling brunette, standing close to the mirror. The impish little lady noticed his hungry glance immediately (perhaps she had heard his words too), and winked back at him in such a way as to make him tremble in every limb, as if chilled to the marrow. Shy Zajcsek fared even more strangely: he tried to pinch the waist of a maid, but something pricked him, something like a sharp bone, causing him to draw in his breath vehemently, after which he behaved quietly, that is, devoted himself to drinking. Zahrada drank plenty too, but Safranyik, the fan of the old lady still in his hands, drank most of all... "Why the devil doesn't the old dame call for it?" The eyes of the musicians were already heavy with sleep... They hardly heard the buzzing and humming; at last everything grew quiet, silence descended and they sank into such a deep sleep that the whole world might have turned upside down for all they cared.

It was morning by the time they woke up, rubbing their eyes... The gold disk of the sun rose above the bald summit of Mount Málnád.

They looked around, to see where they were. And lo, they found themselves in the cemetery of Krizsnócz, their violins hanging on the crosses. A big human skull lay near Safranyik's head, as if it had just fallen off, in place of the gold and sequin bonnet the young woman had stuck on his head. And Zahrada was clutching a shoulder-blade in his fist.

Our three good companions jumped up horror-struck and ran into the village with chattering teeth. There they gave a detailed account of their adventure. In the revellers at the castle, the stunned villagers recognized their long-deceased forbearers. The very costumes were the ones they had been buried in.

All this was most strange and incredible, but the village folk believed it all the more readily, since three such honest men had witnessed it. The three Czechs were lavishly entertained and spent the whole winter in Krizsnócz, staying in turn with almost every family, and shortening the winter evenings by telling the sons and grandchildren about the revelry of their dead ancestors. The tale grew longer and longer. Once it was Zahrada, the next time Safranyik who remembered some new and piquant detail about the noble gentlemen and ladies from the Beyond. Of course, none of their noble descendants wanted to miss a single item; so again the musicians were invited to dinner and took part in a new round of festivities.

Until at last the Reverend Samuel Szirotka, the predecessor of our present vicar, lost his temper and took a hand in the proceeding. He sent for the Czechs, and duly reprimanded them in these words:

"Dearly beloved brethren in Our Lord Jesus Christ!"

"In this village, it is my calling to tell fibs about the Hereafter, and not yours, so mark my words: I advise you to take yourselves hence as fast as your legs will carry you; for if you don't you will regret it bitterly."

And at this the Czech musicians speedily made themselves scarce. But they left behind the famous legend; and ever since it has been growing bigger and better of its own accord.

Chapter VII
FIRST DISAPPOINTMENT

I heard the tale of the ball of the dead many times later on. Everybody in the neighbourhood knew the story and had something to say on some of the characters.

The fair young lady who had lost a heel was a Miss Melniky - her shoes had indeed been made by Prakovszky, grandfather of the present blacksmith; the young woman with the sequin bonnet was the wife of Barnabás Krizsnóczy, at the end of the last century (a very gay woman she was, God rest her soul); the old lady with the powdered hair - her maiden name was Baroness Karolina Szepessy - was the wife of a certain Captain Schremmer, Baroness Karolina, and had been lady-in-waiting at the court of Maria Theresa, but after her husband had been killed in the Seven Years' War, the old baroness had retired to her estate in Rigy and was later buried in the cemetery of Krizsnócz; the little man in spectacles was the district physician, Blatny, and had been just such a suave, prinking fellow in real life, and this was true of all the rest.

I would have liked to know something about Piroska's ancestors, so I asked from time to time whether any of the Gálls had been present at the ball.

"Who could have been there?" our old cook who was born in Krizsnócz retorted. "Old Gáll buried his father in the oldest and most ragged coat, and did not even allow his boots to be put on, saying there was no need for them anyway in the other world. So, of course, he could not go to the ball, the poor soul, amongst those decently dressed dead."

The fantastic story certainly made a deep impression on me, I remember it well to this day, although I am already over forty; for me it bathed the simple gentry of Krizsnócz, who had displayed such splendour after their death, in a wonderful, antique light.

All that week I dreamt about how I would rest one day in the cemetery of Krizsnócz, side by side, of course, with Piroska; our dust would mix, and we would see face to face those ladies and gentlemen for whom the Czech musicians had been playing.

But what would happen in the meantime? What about us? I had much to meditate on, recalling Piroska's behaviour in the garden, piecing together again all her words as one is wont to fit together the broken fragments of a pot... There I sat in the apiary of an afternoon, and just as the bees came and went with a soft humming, my hopes and doubts flew off and came back again. Lord, how happy these little bees must be, sipping honey, nothing but honey from the flowers.

I was so restless I could hardly wait for the following Sunday. And I knew I would await each Sunday just as impatiently, until I had made certain of her love. But when would that be, and where could I find certainty? At the altar? How far away that still was! Despair seized me, and I could have wept. Why had I not been born earlier? But at last I was calmed by the thought that she loved me after all. Why should I doubt it? I had not made love to her, I had not pestered her, she herself had begun it. But then I remembered the melon flower and the lieutenant, and again I boiled with rage.

During that week my parents often spoke of the Gálls. A few people from Krizsnócz dropped in to see us, on their way to the weekly market, and gossiped about one thing and another. They talked especially about the things my parents were interested in. I hung on every word that even faintly touched on the affairs of Krizsnócz... Ah, the thousands of insignificant remarks, meaning nothing to other people, these many-coloured, scattered pebbles - what wondrous pictures I could compose of them!

The visitors related that the Moravian had actually bought the fields in Lucsivna for five thousand florins; after he had signed the contract and counted out the money, the wicked Gáll had patted the Moravian's shoulder and said with a malicious smile:

"You are an honest man, Mr. Dubek, but you don't know much about money. You see, I would have sold you these fields in Lucsivna for as little as a thousand florins, because they are good for nothing but buckwheat."

At this the Moravian guffawed loudly and retorted:

"You are a clever man, Mr. Gáll, but you don't know the worth of your fields; you see, I myself would have given a hundred thousand for them, because there is hard coal underneath them, worth a fortune."

We heard more and more about that Dubek. That he would surely open a mine in Lucsivna; that he expected the engineers already next week; that he wanted to buy the splendid mansion of the last of the Krizsnóczys and settle down there... A whole string of sagas were told about old Gáll's fury, how he went raging around, tearing the remnants of his beard and cursing the villain from Brünn who had cheated him.

There were deep furrows on my father's face, when he heard this news. Though a great optimist, he was easily overwhelmed by worry.

"Maybe we won't get the money he promised, if he is so angry."

"Don't worry," grandfather consoled him. "That fellow would even lend out his wife at twelve per cent."

One evening, on entering the dining-room (it was Friday, I think), I heard grandmother telling my mother something about Lieutenant Prakovszky. Grandfather was smoking his pipe, sitting in his armchair, and he seemed to enjoy the stupefaction of the women. He must have brought back some news from town, where he had probably met acquaintances from Krizsnócz in the beerhall. For he used to go to the nearby town every week, whence he would bring mother a string of figs, a pair of crescents for grandmother, and a lot of tittle-tattle for both of them.

"Well, I declare!" my mother kept repeating, working her knitting needles swiftly. "So it's that young Lieutenant Prakovszky? Well, I never! But his taste is not bad at all!"

"The girl is pretty enough and a good match," argued grandmother, "and lieutenants, those wicked bastards, usually know on which side their bread is buttered."

"Fiddlesticks! They know nothing," grandfather cut her short. "If I were in his place, hang it, I wouldn't stay in Milan or in Krizsnócz either. I'd never have left Vienna, and I'd be spending my time unfastening the stays of princesses! I wouldn't even start with anything less, I wouldn't..."

Grandmother pushed her glasses onto her forehead and with a testy smile on her face - lovely and pure as winter sunshine - she lifted her fist threateningly at the old gentleman:

"You old rascal, you! Aren't you ashamed of yourself?"

Grandfather clucked his tongue, evidently to annoy grandmother, and then went out of the room, whistling a tune.

(As for me, I kept wondering to which among the different vocations that of unfastening the stays of princesses might belong? Perhaps to the dressmaking trade?)

"I am astonished at the girl, mamma," declared my mother now. "Would I ever have dared to do anything like that behind your back? Yet, how gentle, how innocent she looks..."

"That's the way it usually is, my dear. Even a white lily throws a black shadow."

"Whom are you speaking of, mother?" I asked in a subdued voice.

"Of course! That's just the thing for you, isn't it!" my grandmother fumed mockingly. "What else do you want? Wouldn't you like to mend these stockings, perhaps? Now, just look at the inquisitive brat! Out with you, at once, go to your grandfather in the barn!..."

I recalled this hazy and incomplete conversation several times before Sunday arrived, and I tried to complete it, to give it a favourable twist, but all the same I was left with an uncomfortable feeling of depression. I had grave misgivings on Sunday, as we drove to Krizsnócz with the promissory note already drawn up, and, having arrived at the church earlier than usual, grandfather said to the coachman:

"Don't stop here, Miska, but drive straight on to the Gálls!"

We had to make a detour because of the bridge. By the time we stopped in front of their house, Mrs. Gáll and Piroska were on their way to church. They were just passing Zehery's house under the chestnut trees, and from there they would cut across the meadow.

I recognized them at once, although this was not an easy task, the fashion being what it was. All women looked alike from behind. This was during the reign of the ugly crinoline! No matter, the men of that time loved the women of that time no less than the present-day men love the women of today in their enticingly tailored skirts!

Piroska, moreover, was wearing a new hat, which entirely hid her head and neck; a wide, white straw-hat, with a yellow ribbon trailing from the brim and covered with tiny rose-buds, just like the snail-shells covering the Slovak hats in Liptó. But I recognized her all the same. It could only be Piroska. Her walk, her bearing, all her movements breathed poetry; even the yellow ribbon flitted and danced around her waist in a characteristic rhythm.

"Well, I'll go in and settle the matter with the old man," said grandfather. "You may come in, if you wish; but if you don't, you can go back to church in the carriage, and I'll go on foot, it will be shorter through the vicar's garden."

"You had better go in by yourself, grandfather."

I let him go in, then I bid the coachman drive back to the church across the bridge, while I went on foot.

It would not have been difficult to catch up with the Gálls, but I did not want to; the mother was there, and I would not dare to join them; but Piroska, if she loved me as much as I loved her, was sure to feel it, that inexplicable, wonderful instinct would tell her that I was there, behind her back, following her like a shadow... and she would turn round, I would greet her, she would blush and... and... But isn't that enough?

So I followed in their wake; Piroska, however, did not turn back, she only stopped occasionally in the fields, bending down to pick something, a four-leaved clover, perhaps, or a wild flower, then she skipped along gaily like a lambkin, now and then using mazurka steps in her exuberance, until she had again caught up with her mother.

I devoured her with my eyes, especially when the dry twig of a red currant bush got caught on her dove-coloured skirt and the little lady began trailing it after her.

Now surely she would notice this and turn back. I gasped for breath. Something great could come of it! They couldn't help noticing the twig and stopping to remove it from the skirt, and while they struggled with that, I would reach them; for it would not do for me to stand still while they were thus occupied.

But was it proper, was it permissible for someone to arrive just as the attire of a pretty girl was being set to rights?

I pondered over this, until Piroska, actually discovering that she was dragging something along, gathered up her skirt with her left hand, without even looking back, and removed the mischievous twig. Ah me, how dazzlingly her tiny black boots and her shapely ankles flashed before my eyes...

After that they walked on peacefully along the narrow gravel path, quietly chatting; at the little walnut tree Piroska suddenly turned to the left, towards the vegetable beds. Her mother grumbled:

"Where are you going?"

"I am going to the melons, mamma, to see how much they have grown during the week."

"You'll have plenty of time on the way back."

But Piroska obstinately pushed her way through the clover and the small bushes to the melon bed.

"You are just like a colt," grumbled Mrs. Gáll. "You are always prancing about, and I don't even notice when you stay behind or run ahead. Next time, I'll hang a bell around your neck, so I can always hear where you are."

Piroska did not mind the nagging, she ran up to that certain melon flower, bent down and (I saw it so clearly, I could readily swear to it) took a folded letter which she slipped, through the opening of her bodice, into her bosom.

I still don't understand how it was I did not die on the spot. Man is a hardy creature, when all is said and done.

I saw all my hopes shattered. Is this how we stand? Well, well, young lady, so you have taken a letter out of the melon blossom? But Miss, I thought it was me you loved, you said so a week ago. Yet I did not write this letter. Somebody else wrote it, and you know it well, Miss, because you were looking for the letter. So you are in love with the lieutenant, are you? And me, you are ready to silence with a little deceit, telling me the letter was meant for me? There, the silly schoolboy will believe anything, let's make a fool of him; he needs a lock on his lips, well, let him have a rose-coloured one. Thank you, young lady, thank you very much. It's all right, everything is all right, I wouldn't have told anyhow, and even now I am not going to tell. What could I say indeed? Why, nothing happened; you did nothing after all, just broke my heart a little.

I looked after her with dimming eyes, as her figure disappeared through the garden gate behind that of her mother. I was seized with infinite bitterness. I lifted my fist, I did not know what for, maybe I wanted to threaten heaven or to strike blindly in the direction of Lieutenant Prakovszky's imaginary figure. I had no idea what I wanted, but I remember uttering indecently:

"Go, go, little harlot, and say your prayers!"

There was anger, envy, pain, resignation, wounded pride, contempt in this sentence. A strange mixture of feelings expressed in a single word. And then I stamped my foot on the grass. "I have buried you for ever."

Buried! If it were as easy to bury the memory of a girl, of one's first girl, as it is to inter a cold human body! This burial lasted longer, very, very much longer...

I stumbled involuntarily up to the notorious melon flower. There it was, laughing at me, swaying in the wind that now swept through the garden, making the tree branches rustle and quiver coldly.

So this was the lovers' letter-box. Two hornets in velvet dolmans were feasting in it. They had flown here in the meantime. Buzzing gaily and rolling about in the yellow pollen, they had no idea of the danger hanging over their inn.

My first thought was to stamp on it, to trample it with my boot heels, but then I thought of something else, and, tearing off a piece of white paper from a letter I had in my pocket, I pricked my finger with a thorn and wrote these words in blood: "Accursed be your love."

I carefully put the note into the bell of the melon blossom. For you are innocent, you small flower bell. I don't want to hurt you. But give them this my letter!

Just then my grandfather appeared, shouting from afar:

"So, here you are, my boy. You couldn't go in without me, could you? What, weeding the garden again, amice? Well, we are thoroughly late now! I believe the sermon is in full swing already! Never mind, at least I have settled our business."

"Did you get the money?"

"I did, but the 'lad' wanted to deduct the interest in advance, I all but came to blows with that devil!"

We hurried into the church; the organ was still playing, but we were too late for our seats; Dubek, the new owner of the Lucsivna fields, sat in mine, and there was no more room for anybody else.

So I went back among the peasants, where there was still an empty place, and I almost felt better there in my upset state. Although I decided not to look her way, not to take any notice of her, I saw my wicked fairy just the same.

She did not once look in my direction, she did not even remark that I was in the church at all, she only threw sly glances at the lieutenant... yes, at the lieutenant, who was sitting in his usual place, behind Dubek. Ah yes, of course, how stupid I had been! It was the lieutenant she was always looking at, him she was flirting with! And I had thought she meant me.

Now everything was clear. Mother's talk on Friday; the terror on Piroska's face, when she turned back last Sunday in the garden and saw me instead of the lieutenant taking out her letter; her embarrassment when she was showing me their garden (she was afraid, of course, that I would gossip about it or had done so already); and so, poor thing, she sooner let me believe she loved me... but how affected it all was, I should have noticed it at once. My grandfather must have been right, I was still nothing but a greenhorn.

Thus I alternately tried to justify the most unhappy creature in that church, and while the congregation's singing soared piously heavenwards, bitter reproaches kept bursting from my restless and sinful soul:

"Well, God, let me tell you here, in your own house, that you are not ruling as you should. Why did you strike me down so? Didn't I pass my examinations well? Am I not my parents' obedient son? And have I not always obeyed you too? And you see, you know how much I love her. Why, then, does she have to love someone else?"

Chapter VIII
SYLVAN IDYLL

Such, then, was the story of my first love: a drop of honey in a pail of wormwood, but oh, how sweet, how sweet that drop...

All of us have felt the gentle touch of spring. Others may have been luckier than I, for a thin ray of sunlight was all my share, whereas they, perhaps, enjoyed many a beam, whole sheaves of them... no matter, we prize the first vernal sunshine, because it is not reality as yet, but just a glimmer, a promise, a herald that brings the first good tidings, breathing life into frozen meadows, awakening frozen hearts, and then vanishing like a dream.

Why should we ask for an advance of scorching summer heat at the beginning of spring? Summer will jealously prevent us from returning to spring, but plunge us straight into autumn, and autumn will snarl at us: "Pay your debts!"

Perhaps it is just as well I did not get more - a mere twig poking through the fence around the garden of Eden, without fruit, without even a blossom... no more than a hint of what the trees inside there are like...

Yes, that was all... and my holidays were nearly over anyhow. I did not see the church of Krizsnócz again that year, save from the outside, when I passed it with my mother a few days later on my way back to school.

As we reached the fields of Uszánc, a hare crossed the road in front of our carriage. Mother gave a start and began quivering with fear.

"This is a bad omen, my dear, you will flunk this year."

"Like a flunkey, mamma?"

"Don't make fun of me. I talk the way my elders did. It's good enough for the short time I have left to live."

My mother knew how to make me cry with such remarks, and apparently she enjoyed doing it, for she could kiss away my tears afterwards.

Near the cemetery of Krizsnócz - where the Czechs once had such a good time - the wheeler's shoe came off.

"A good start alright!" cursed the coachman, jumping down to pick the horseshoe out of the dust.

Mother became even more frightened and began to wonder whether she should not return home with me. No, that would be no good either. Turning back was unlucky in itself, and fate could hardly be appeased in this manner. "And then, what would your poor father say? Let's go on and trust in God! The blacksmith in Krizsnócz will soon shoe the horse."

We found Prakovszky outside his smithy, surrounded by two broken-down carriages, a dismantled plough, a few new wheels and a grindstone, which was being turned by his apprentice. The old man was putting a red hot rim onto a wheel.

How amazingly transformed he was. We could hardly recognize the solemn Sunday singer in this hardy labourer; his face was covered with soot, and only the whites of his eyes shone wonderfully out of the blackness; the sleeves of his shirt were turned up, and his arms, too, were grimy from the sparks against which he protected his clothes by a leather apron covering him from neck to toe and from which the fringes of a tobacco pouch peaked out in the region of the chest.

As soon as he recognized my mother, who had stepped down from the carriage, Prakovszky smiled and respectfully threw his mushroomlike black hat on the ground.

"One of our horses has lost a shoe, Mr. Prakovszky."

"Thank you, quite well," replied the blacksmith politely.

"Will you please shoe the horse?"

"Ah me, she is dead, long since dead," he declared sadly, rubbing his hands. "God's will is law, after all, homines pisci, man cannot fight providence with a stick!"

Our coachman, Miska, noticed that the conversation had taken a wrong turn, and in order to cut it short, he thrust the horseshoe into Prakovszky's hand, shouting into his ear:

"Here, put this on, will you!"

The blacksmith set about it in hot haste. The horse was unharnessed and tied to the block; then Miska held up its front leg, while the shoeing was done; meanwhile Prakovszky rattled on:

"Yes, to be sure, I am all alone, like a hermit. There is the boy, of course, I am well pleased with him, I am proud of him, but he has become very much the gentleman. I was a fool to send him to school. What did I give him an education for? For the king. And did the king ever give me anything? Besides, he isn't even a king, but only an emperor... It was not worth while, my dear lady, believe me. One of these days they will make a general out of my boy, and then he will be ashamed of his father. Yet the blacksmith's trade isn't mere bootmaking. I have read in old chronicles that even the Russian czar, Paul the Little, didn't find it beneath his dignity to shoe horses in his spare time."

"Peter the Great, mamma."

"Hush, it's all the same."

"My boy is at home now, but I won't see him again for a long time afterwards. Maybe he won't even be able to come to my funeral. Though I have a feeling I won't last much longer. I am growing weak, losing my strength. I can hardly lift up the big hammer, and I cannot hear the small one. In short, what I need is a small hammer and big voices." He laughed cheerfully at this notion. "My heart grows heavy, when I remember that his time will soon be up and he will be going away once more. I have a premonition he will never see me again. I am tormented by nightmares."

Mother felt sorry for the old smith and shouted at him well-meaningly:

"Don't be afraid, Mr. Prakovszky, he will come back soon, you'll see. They say your son is already pretty well tied here."

The old man's eyes almost popped from their sockets, as if he could not believe what he had heard, and he repeated hesitatingly:

"Tied here?"

Mother put her hand to her mouth in order to make herself better heard:

"Tied to the apron strings of a beautiful girl!"

My blood rushed to my head; Good Heavens, she means her. Lord, help me to be strong, so I don't give myself away. Why on earth did that delicate subject have to come up?

The deaf blacksmith put down his hammer in utter amazement; having suddenly been flung out of the circle of his day-to-day thoughts, he began to talk in his ceremonious, stiff manner:

"And who, pray, might she be, that female, in her real being and fundamental essence?"

"Come on, drive the rest of the nails in, master," the coachman said, impatiently.

"Stop your cackling, stupid servant!" Prakovszky thundered at him. "A sharper nail has just been driven into the depths of my heart!"

Mother already regretted having pried into such a delicate matter, but she was bursting with curiosity, she was - God bless and forgive her - a woman.

"They say it is Miss Gáll," she shouted into his ear.

The smith laughed. He thought it a grand joke.

"Well, they hit the bull's eye alright! Why, the whole rumour isn't worth a poppyseed! My son has never even talked to this Miss Gáll. I haven't been on speaking terms with the Gálls now for more than ten years, ever since that scoundrel made a laughing stock of me on his name day. And as for the girl, she has a sinister expression in her eyes. I get the shivers, whenever she looks at me. I love my son, my dear lady, but so help me God, I would split his head in two, if he degraded the crowned starling of the Prakovszkys by marrying into such a coper's family."

(There was, indeed, a starling on the coat-of-arms of the noble Prakovszky family of Prakócz.)

He worked himself into such a rage that he shot darts from his eyes and ground his teeth. The horseshoe resounded from the force of his hammer blows.

"Well, that shoe will never come off. It will stay on even when there is nothing left of the horse but the bones."

Thereupon he resumed his abuse of Gáll:

"He is not a human being, I assure you, he is worse than a beast, he is more dreadful than that awful giraffe which digs up the graves. He is not just greedy, for if that were all, he would commit his evil deeds for profit: but no, he does them out of passion. He loves wickedness for wickedness' sake. Some time ago, when he was still healthy, he would stand in the Neszte of an evening. That is what our brook here is called. It is deep enough to hide a man. He would crouch or walk about unseen in the water, and when the herdsman drove the goats home, he would seize one of them as it crossed the brook and milk it into the water. For it did his soul good to think that some poor widow's children, who had nothing but goat's milk to live on would go hungry because of him... I can see it in your eyes, you don't believe me; you think Prakovszky's gall is boiling over! But may God be my witness, that's the sort of man he is. Nobody on earth loves him. Even his dog hates him. The dog once stole a ham bone from somebody's kitchen and carried it off, to eat it in some quiet spot; Gáll happened to see it, snatched the ham from the dog's mouth, washed it and ate it himself. The poor dog growls and barks at him ever since. What a scoundrel... There, ready."

In other words, the horse was shod. Mother was about to ask how much we owed him, but the blacksmith, on seeing her opening her mouth, ran into his workshop in confusion, and, to stop mother from following, started hammering away at a red-hot iron, till the sparks flew out through the door, as if a beehive had been set on fire.

"Don't come in, please, your dress will catch fire," he shouted.

So we started off without paying. Soon we had left Krizsnócz behind us and were feasting our eyes on the beautiful countryside, dipped in the melancholy light of autumn. In the meadows, the autumn crocus - last flower of the season - had already turned up for the burial of the others. The birch forest, here and there interspersed with beech and chestnut trees, had donned duller colours, and the drooping upper leaves of the ferns were beginning to wither. The grass was fading, the briars had dropped their blossoms, the juniper berries had turned black; all Nature seemed to be undressing before slipping into winter's white uniform.

After leaving the village, the Neszte here flows straight towards the wood, where it meanders along whimsically, sometimes running ahead, and then returning again, like a nimble little dog; at several places it cuts across the road, a wantonness that has cost the honourable county a tidy sum of money, since a number of bridges had to be thrown over it.

One of these bridges was in bad repair, and some of its boards appeared to have fallen out during the night, or perhaps a band of robbers - supposing such things still existed - had taken them to make a fire with. The notorious Jánosik is said to have dwelt here, the gallant robber of the Highland Slovaks, who stole the goods of the merchants and distributed the broadcloth amongst the poor itinerant scholars. He used an enormous yardstick, reaching from one beech tree to the next one. (Od buka, do buka.) And since beech trees are rather rare in the forest of Krizsnócz, the pint of Czinkota^[9] was no bigger a pint than his yard a yard.

But that is beside the point; the fact is, we could not drive across the bridge. Miska scratched his head and finally came to the conclusion that it would be best to drive straight through the forest to where the Neszte was shallowest and its banks not too steep, and there to cross it, while we, if we feared the dangerously bumpy woodland, could go ahead on foot along the forest path.

Mother was terribly afraid of overturning (I myself did not think it was much of a pleasure either), so we meekly set out to walk along the banks of the Neszte in search of a place where we could ford it with the least danger. If only we could have found some living soul to show us the way.

We had not yet gone a hundred steps among the bushes, when a voice rang out in the thicket:

"This way, this way, I am here, Sándor!"

We could clearly understand every word.

"Somebody is speaking," mother whispered in fright, because she could not imagine woods without robbers. "Let's go back to the carriage, son!"

"Oh come now, mother!"

It was a lovely voice, a voice so sweet, my heart felt as if it were floating in honey. Far from being afraid of it, I was irresistibly drawn towards it, I felt compelled to search for it.

I pushed through the briars and hazel bushes that filled the space between the great chestnut trees, and after a few steps I found myself at the edge of a clearing. I almost staggered backwards in amazement.

For, sitting in the grass, with a heap of wild flowers in her lap which she was tying into nosegays, was none other than Piroska Gáll. She gave a little scream and turned white as chalk.

"Why, Palika, it's you!" she said in a dull, sepulchral voice. "What are you doing here?"

I grasped the situation in a flash. Piroska was waiting for the lieutenant; here, in the forest, was their customary trysting place, and the correspondence by way of the melon flower served to fix the time and place of their rendezvous. I was seized by incomprehensible magnanimity. I don't understand how and why. Maybe, because my mother was nearby. For my heart was full of anger and hate towards the two of them.

"Hush! Not a word, Miss. My mother is here too. I know everything, but I shall not tell her, and it is important that she should not know, because she would spread it all... Farewell, Miss... I am coming, mamma! I am inquiring about the road."

Piroska looked at me in gratitude, almost moved to tears.

"You are a good boy," she whispered affectionately (perhaps her heart was not so hard after all), then she picked up a long-stemmed wild carnation from among her flowers, kissed it and held it out to me.

But by now I had the devil in me again.

"I don't want it," I said boorishly and left her.

Mother was waiting on the pathway. She asked with whom I had been talking, and said she had been loth to follow me (no wonder, mother was rather portly after all, and the underbrush was so dense, she could not have got through anyhow).

"She says we can cross the stream further on," I shouted to the coachman, who was advancing cautiously not far from the brook.

"Who was it?" mother repeated.

"A girl gathering mushrooms or flowers, something like that."

Mother broke into a smile.

"You talk as vaguely as if you had seen a wild beast and could not make out whether it was a giraffe or a hyena. You are worse even than old Prakovszky."

"I tell you, mother, it was a girl."

At that moment there was a rustling among the bushes. We looked up and saw the handsome Sándor Prakovszky step out of the wood, a gun on his shoulder and a bouquet of wild strawberries in his hand.

He was surprised to see us there, his attractive masculine face darkened, he seemed uncertain whether to continue towards us, but then greeted mother mutely, cast an ironical glance at me, and hastened at an angle towards the clearing, which the surrounding chestnut trees converted into a veritable chamber, invisible to all save the blue sky above. And the sky neither blabs nor wonders. But mother did wonder.

"A peculiar hunter that, gathering wild strawberries!"

"I never knew, mother, that one could still find strawberries at this time of the year."

"It is an industrious plant, and when the summer is long, it gets bored and brings forth fresh berries... But he is a splendid fellow, I must say." And she turned round to look after him.

"Listen," she added eagerly, poking me in the ribs, as if she had made a great discovery, "I bet the lieutenant is taking those wild strawberries to that 'something like that.'"

"No, no, mother, of course not."

I looked at her in alarm and confusion, thinking that perhaps she knew something. She peered at me, and as my face reddened under her scrutinizing, piercing look, she suddenly guessed everything, and cried in her warm, cooing voice:

"Oh, ho, so you are an accomplice! You better admit it was Piroska Gáll you saw there."

"On, please, no, don't believe such a thing."

But mother could read my face, like an open book.

"I'm not to believe it, you say? Well, now I know it for certain, and if you won't tell me, I shall go back to see for myself."

She turned round and wanted to go back at all costs.

"I shall die on the spot if I don't find out!" she declared.

My mother was a true woman and invariably fell sick when she could no get to the bottom of something. A mighty calamity befell the world when Eve ate of the apple and offered a bite to Adam, but just imagine what would have happened, if Adam had eaten the apple and not given any of it to Eve?

"Mamma, mamma, oh do come back, please... It would be awful. The lieutenant's capable of cutting your head off."

"So it's just as I told you, isn't it?"

"It is, it is, but don't say a word about it, I implore you."

At this she returned resolutely and in the best of spirits, for a little scandal (if it happened to other people) always gave her a thrill; she even looked beautiful on such occasions, and it gave her genuine pleasure to be able to reprove society and sigh over the wickedness of the world.

And that is just what she did all the way, especially when she had again settled down comfortably in the carriage, after it had crossed the Neszte and come out on the road once more.

"And now let people say there are no more robbers in the woods these days! Why, was Jánosik the only one? What if somebody robs a girl's honour? Robs the rose from her cheek, the bloom of her youth, its freshness and lustre..."

She went on fulminating and moralizing like this until the last birch tree of the beautiful Krizsnócz forest had been left behind.

I looked back once more, from the hills of Klatinicza, at the autumnal forest - there in the endless plain, it was no more than a patch, resembling a small brush.

"Oh, the forest, the forest!"

I heaved a deep sigh and thought of the many birds fluttering from branch to branch, the squirrels hopping about, the lizards creeping in the grass, and of Piroska chattering with the lieutenant under the tent of chestnut trees; and of all this nothing, nothing could be seen but that small brush.

How vast the world!

And in it how many beautiful girls besides Piroska!

Chapter IX
MANCZI

A year is a long time, and the student's year does not leap like a colt, but creeps like a snail. Nothing especially interesting is likely to happen even during such a long time. Unless, indeed, we find the transformation of a boy into a young man an event worth registering. When you were a boy, you carved your own name on the desk, but now your penknife gets accustomed to your sweetheart's initials. Last year it was your teacher who chose the subject of poetry for you, but now more inspiring subjects present themselves of their own accord, tripping along merrily on the sidewalks of the town, in pretty, pattering shoes and seductively swishing skirts.

Everything comes in its own due time. Just as the breath of spring dissolves the snow, brings the trees into bloom and fills the whole universe with a gentle murmur, an intoxicating fragrance... such is the awakening of slumbering forces and passions. There is almost no succession, but a continuous flow.

Your father tells you to take dancing lessons, your chums teach you to smoke: when you smoke, you think you are a man and you begin to mind the talk of men.

Then politics steals into your heart through some little gap and hides in a small corner.

You begin to have some sort of viewpoint, a green one mostly, but what of it?... There is plenty of time as yet to try the other colours.

Well, that year, my classmates and I too were not inactive. We announced that we were not going to study German. We joined forces, forty of us, and handed the professor of German our resolution:

The professors were horrified, held conferences, tried to persuade and overawe us, but to no avail, the classroom remained empty during the German lesson. At last they wrote to our parents.

Around Christmas I received a letter in my grandfather's round, elderly handwriting:

"My dear grandson, Pali!

"I hear you do not want to learn German. I fully agree with you. Your professor has complained to me, but let me tell you, my lad, you do well not to infect your brains with that language. I shall support you on one condition, namely, that by the end of July (at the time of the examinations) not a single German remains in this country. For once they have all left, we can easily do without the German language, but if, at the end of July, there should chance to be any German inside the country and in partibus, and you should nevertheless have avoided the German lessons, verily I say unto you, my pipe-stem will have the last word in this matter. Dixi.

"Your loving grandfather, János.

"P. S. I am sending you herewith two silver florins. Make good use of them. Send your old boots home, so we can have them toed."

The reader will appreciate that I was faced with a rather big task - but I have to admit that I was remiss in carrying it out, for though I stayed away from the German lessons, a number of Germans remained in the country, even after the July examinations, when I returned home again.

Of course the pipe-stem was no more than an empty phrase. I was not afraid of it any longer. Many a year had gone by since it could be used as a bogey! Now, far from frightening me, it hung in my mouth all day long.

Nor had any unusual events taken place at home during my absence. I got used to the changes in one or two days. For these two days were filled with inquiries concerning a thousand minor matters. Who has died since I left? Well, Mr. X and Mrs. Y. And the small spotted calf, has it grown a lot? Oh, yes, it is a heifer already. Is the Moravian still here? Indeed he is, he has started to work his coal-mines, and his business is flourishing; he will be a millionaire soon. And what about old Gáll, is he still alive? If he is, I can imagine how furious he must be. Of course, old Gáll is still alive. And since he did not have a stroke because of the fields in Lucsivna, he's bound to live for ever! Isn't his daughter married yet? (I was not afraid to ask now, and I did not even grow red in the face any more.) No, no, she is still a maiden, but there was a rumour lately that the Moravian gentleman has been courting her and that he has honourable intentions. Well, well! (My heart did not even give a start at this news. Where was my heart of yesterday?) But what does Lieutenant Prakovszky say to this? Nothing. What does the bee say, when a hornet flies to the flower it has left? Lieutenants do not complain, as a rule, they only take orders. The lieutenant left last autumn, and this year he did not come home for his holiday, punctum. A soldier is just a soldier, his "ménage" is furnished by the king in every town, his quarters by the quartermaster, but the girls he has to get himself. Young Prakovszky can take care of himself, for the Milanese girls are not blind!

In short, everything that had been cooking in the whole neighbourhood during the course of a year was now served up to me at once. But the details no longer affected me, I simply took cognizance of them. In addition, grandfather was ill with the gout, and he had stopped going to church, though he had not stopped his cursing. All through August, we did not go to Krizsnócz once. I was no longer interested in those simple, poorly dressed village girls, after having seen the town girls. Such things were below one's dignity. Innumerable disillusioning anecdotes were circulating about their naïveté. Ridiculous to talk to those little sillies! I preferred to go bowling on Sundays in the nearby Kata-baths. A more attractive entertainment, because it was new. True, the "girls" in this game are made out of wood, the ones on the right no less than the ones on the left, but perhaps it is just as well: you can knock them down, but they can't knock you down in return.

One day, however, my grandfather received a letter by post; after reading it, he burst forth with a string of curses more hair-raising than usual.

Nobody dared to ask him what was in the letter. At last, when he had calmed down, he said to me:

"We are going to Krizsnócz on Sunday, my lad."

At first, I thought he had repented of his horrible cursing and wanted to wash his soul clean with Sunday prayers, but little by little it developed that Mr. József Gáll had written the letter and was reclaiming the capital we had borrowed last year for the oxen.

Grandfather was one of those old-fashioned Hungarians who considered it a defamation of character to be asked to repay a loan (this is the most enduring feature of all the tribes that migrated into this country under Árpád!). And justly so, for undoubtedly it was an insult to disturb the pleasant day-dreaming of a man, quietly smoking his chibouk. It is an inherent right of man to fly into a rage on such an occasion.

Grandfather swore by all that was holy that he would rub the old scoundrel's face in the money as if it were dough.

Unfortunately, this threat was rather academic, for it was just the dough which was lacking.

So we began to consider where to get it.

Should we borrow money on next year's crop and from whom? Or sell something we could most easily do without? But what?

Luckily, grandfather had a famous setter, and even more luckily, there lived in the next village, in Rozmál, a Prussian baron by the name of Knopp, who had been wanting to buy this setter for a considerable sum. So grandfather wrote to him, and Baron Knopp called for the setter the next day. (Now grandfather might well congratulate me for not having driven the Germans out of the country altogether.)

The whole family wept, when Manczi, grandfather's hunting companion and the nanny of my little brothers and sisters, was taken away. For it was Manczi they loved to play with, Manczi who looked after them and amused them when they were bored, Manczi who pulled my brother's tiny cart and patiently allowed my little sister's bonnet to be put on her head. And whenever the children quarrelled amongst each other, Manczi flashed her teeth and snarled at them, causing the frightened warriors to come to terms immediately; in short Manczi, among other things, occupied the post of governess. And now she was leaving our house for good. The last glance she threw at her master was truly heartbreaking. May the Almighty punish that old Gáll!

The following Sunday we took the money along with us. It was a bright, fresh summer morning, after the previous day's rain, and Nature was arrayed in her full splendour, like a woman displaying all her finery. It was a year of plenty; everything, even the poppyseed, was growing, and the stunted trees by the roadside were overburdened with fruit, a boon to the wayside wanderers. The horses trotted gaily on the bumpy road, the coachman cracked his whip to his heart's content, and - hey presto! - we seemed hardly to have started, when we already found ourselves in Krizsnócz.

Everything in the village was clean and solemn, and a patch of road had been swept in front of every house. In some of the yards the older women were plaiting the girls' braids, and the men were smoking their short red clay pipes on the doorsteps. Here and there an old couple was sitting on the threshold; the husband, his head in the old woman's lap, dozed while she rumpled his hair. It was the usual picture and mood of a village Sunday: the fields deserted, as far as the eye could see, the village silent, no axe chopping, no swingle beating, no threshers thumping out their hollow tune, no mangle rattling; and even Prakovszky's hammer was resting.

Prakovszky himself, washed and combed with care, in his Sunday best, but bare-headed, came and went in his small fruit garden, waiting for the third peal of the bells, and passing the time by slaughtering a host of nefarious grubs; rumour had it that he used to drink a raw egg at this time, in order to improve his voice. Catching sight of us, he leant amicably over the fence, saying:

"Bonum mane precor, domine spectabilis. Whither are you headed?"

"To Gáll's. How are you, domine Prakovszky?" my grandfather bellowed from the carriage.

The old man smiled, then pointed sadly southward into the distance, in the direction of Italy.

"There he is, 'in the king's boot.'"

The rest was drowned in the noise of our carriage wheels, we only gathered that the old man thought grandfather had been inquiring after his son.

Chapter X
MR. DUBEK'S FORTUNE

We could already see the smoking chimney of the Gáll house from afar, and that alone already had the effect of a red rag on my grandfather, who grew more and more testy as he thought of his next task; he no longer returned the greetings at the farther side of the village, and by the time we arrived at Gáll's door, his neck had become livid and his nostrils had begun to quiver. He jumped off the carriage like a young man, for anger lent strength and vigour to his muscles and went along the porch with long strides like a captain of the cuirassiers, kicking a sheep-dog which happened to lie in his way, probably the one Gáll had once robbed of his bone. One of the windows giving onto the porch was open to let in the fresh air, and Gáll was dozing in the room by himself, sitting in the canvas armchair, while the flies freely walked on his wrinkled countenance. (Surely they could have found a better promenade for themselves!)

Grandfather's eagle eye lighted upon the dozing figure. His eyes were closed and his mouth wide open, and saliva was trickling over his chin. Grandfather leaned over the windowsill and shouted at him:

"Hey, Gáll! Wake up, old Gáll!"

The sleeper woke up with a start, and, seizing the crutches that were propped against his chair, rubbed his eyes:

"Who is it, what do you want?"

"It is I," grandfather shouted drily. "I have brought you your money, you old rogue! But first give me back the paper I signed!"

Gáll's face expressed utter amazement:

"What? Have you brought it already?" he mumbled ungraciously. He would have preferred to be entreated for a postponement. "Where did you get it?"

"Somewhere. None of your business. Give me the paper!"

"Come in and get it!"

"I won't. I don't ever want to be under your roof again. Hand it through the window, and I'll hand you the money in exchange."

"Stop acting like a child, János. Don't make such a fuss," Gáll pleaded, searching for the right words. "Don't make a scandal here. My servants are hanging around in the courtyard, they will see this scene and laugh at me, they'll spread the story. Gentlemen settle such things indoors. Do come in, please! I know you are angry with me, because I asked for the money; but I need it, on my honour, I need it. I am in great trouble... great trouble."

Now, grandfather was not at all averse to hearing about this great trouble. "What trouble?" he asked.

"My daughter is about to get married. It's enough to drive me crazy." His face began to twitch with rage. "What did God give us children for? To rob us of all we have. She says she wants to be happy. What do I get out of her happiness? Do I eat or sleep better if she is happy? Ridiculous! Let her be happy for all I care, but why should I have to buy three sets of furniture, a lot of silver spoons and all sorts of knick-knacks because of it? And I will never see any of it again! Everything I buy will belong to someone else. Whoever first thought up this nonsense must have been stark mad! And will she be happy? What is it to me? Will it help my old apple tree for its apples to be eaten by a stranger, whether he's a prince or a count, if it decays, withers and loses its leaves just the same."

Grandfather forgot his own resentment as he listened to this dreary, egotistical mind pouring forth all the filth that was in it. Shuddering involuntarily, he flung at Gáll:

"Why are you marrying her off, then?"

Gáll gasped, his mouth working like a fish on dry land.

"Why? Don't you know how that villainous Moravian has cheated me with the fields in Lucsivna?" He struck the table with his fist. "It's a mean trick on God's part too to hide the fuel from people in the depths of the earth. Awful, awful! I wanted to beat my head against the wall, but it would only have harmed the wall as well as my head. And the mines would still belong to the Moravian. I'd haul him into court, except that I'd lose the suit. So I've decided to do it through my daughter. That way I can at least keep hoping that some day I'll come back into my own."

"What do you mean?" asked grandfather, a vague expression of disgust spreading over his face.

"He will sign over half the mines to my daughter, and, if he should die first, the other half would be hers too, and then - well, who knows, what may happen yet."

Just like him to count even on his daughter's death; in which case he would inherit the coal-mines!

Grandfather wanted at all costs to collect the latest news for grandmother, and his anger momentarily gave way to curiosity.

"And is it all settled already?"

"The banns will be put up today for the first time, and we'll celebrate the wedding in three weeks. You see, I did not ask you for my small capital without good reason. But if you take it ill, why, hang it, I'll leave you the money and I'll sooner borrow some myself... Here, come on in and let's discuss it over a glass of plum brandy."

There was an unusual, nauseating affability in his voice, as if paprika had been scented with perfume. At such times Gáll was most dangerous; but grandfather walked into the trap. He gaily took hold of my coat collar saying:

"Well, let's go in to the lad."

So in we went. The 'lad' shook hands with grandfather in a friendly way, patted me on the back patronizingly, shuffled to the sideboard, poured some brandy into two tiny glasses, then looked alternately and hesitantly at the third glass and at me.

"Pali does not drink," grandfather hastened to remark.

"Well brought-up... very well brought-up," declared our host, putting the third glass away quickly.

Then he forced us to sit down, telling us not to rob him of his sleep.^[10] As if we wanted to rob him of anything, let alone his sleep!

His was a simple room, such as was usually to be seen in those times in the houses of the county gentry; there was a sideboard, a black leather divan, a low chest of drawers with brass rings, a bed with a scalloped white coverlet; there was a tobacco-cutter under the bed, and above, on the wall, the portrait of József Székács, the Lutheran bishop, faced, on the opposite wall, by the portrait of a warrior in helmet and yellow boots, his sword drawn, with the following caption: Insignis familiae Gál de Hilib; beside the bed, there stood an iron chest, constituting both treasury and archives, and decorated with gryphons, while on the top of the cupboard - where towns-people as a rule keep their knick-knacks - lay a sheep-branding iron bearing the intertwined letters G and J, a tin sausage-filler, a small sieve by way of tobacco container, a goose bone serving as weather almanac (for the backbone of a goose, killed on Martin's day, will, by becoming brighter or darker, indicate the weather better than any astronomer), a calabash, several hog bladders, tally sticks, and so forth.

"Hm, yes," grandfather began absent-mindedly, for his mind was already running on the various possibilities of recovering Manczi, if Gáll should leave the money with him after all, "girls do grow up in time, put on their marriage bonnet, move into another tent, and all that... There's no denying, your daughter is mighty pretty and she'd have deserved - I am going to say it frankly, since it is already on the tip of my tongue - a Hungarian husband."

"Nonsense, we all come from Adam."

"But is this Mr. Dubek at least of noble descent?"

"Why, of course, what do you suppose? He is a Dubek von Zöptau. He would be just as good a Hungarian as most of us, if he knew some Slovak."^[11]

"True enough; and if Piroska loves him, everything is all right."

"She'll learn to love him in time," said Gáll casually and dully, as if bored by this useless talk.

Grandfather became indignant at this reply.

"What? It's only later on that she'll love him? Oh, you hangman, you!"

"Now, now," Gáll laughed comfortably, as if he had decided not to take offence at anything today, but rather to be even more pleasant to us. He shouted through the door:

"Panni, come in."

Panni rushed into the room, holding a woman's shoe in her hand, which she was brushing with a hare's pad. It was a shapely little shoe, the well-worn shell of a beautiful, arched foot. None but Piroska could be its owner. It was such a sweet shoe, I would have loved to take it in my hand. The whole room was brightened by its presence among the other objects.

"What do you wish, Sir?"

"Bring us some buns. And hurry up, you lazy cow. You say, you don't want any? Of course, you do. What was I going to say? What were we talking about? Oh, yes, that she would love Dubek only later on... Certainly. One has to know what girls are like; especially when there is an officer involved... That gold-braided warrior-hero... And, of course, it's old Gáll who is expected to put up the bail. Yes, indeed!"

Gáll only had three stumps left in his mouth, one below and two above, but in his rage he gnashed them so skilfully that he really looked like a man-eating beast.

"Umph," grandfather interrupted him, "you mean Lieutenant Prakovszky?"

"Yes, and he had the check to propose, the good-for-nothing. A common blacksmith's brat to marry a Gáll-girl! What a world! What a century!"

"Yet if he loves her..."

"Impudence, I tell you. I sent an answer to his letter which I doubt he'll want to frame. He must have it by now... I mailed it four days ago. Believe me, that villain of a father of his must have persuaded him to set his cap at my daughter... he wanted to ruin me. I would give a lot, János, to have put this deaf bastard into oats at least once in my lifetime."

For old Gáll had been a sheriff before forty-eight and had lost his comfortable position because of his far-famed method of having the accused placed without clothes in a tub half full of wine, for which the accused had to pay of course, and having one or two butts of oats poured into the wine till it reached up to his neck; when the alcohol had heated the delinquent's blood and he began to fidget, he was pricked horribly all over by millions of oat grains - and so simply confessed to anything. Gáll - as may be seen - had a decided administrative talent!

"I see. Was it from Milan that the young man wrote?" asked grandfather, shaking his head.

"That's just what he did, the scamp!" answered Gáll with friendly familiarity. "And if it had been only that, but - between you and me - he wrote to the girl too and turned her head. She became quite unmanageable. You know, János, there is something devilish about the uniform of a lieutenant... Those gold braids... She all but refused to write him and tell him it was all off because she loved someone else."

"But she did write it?"

"Of course."

"You forced her to do it?"

"I and my only faithful servant, the one hanging on the nail by the door."

He guffawed derisively, as if he had cracked a good joke.

We both looked toward the door and hanging there saw a whip with a handle made from a chamois' leg. The blood rushed to my head at the thought that this cripple had beaten her lily-white body with that lash. I would have liked to spring at his throat and choke him then and there.

Grandfather rose automatically and took his wallet out of his side pocket to hand over the money; this was with him an infallible sign of deepest contempt.

Gáll protested for all he was worth:

"What? Don't you want to keep the money? Put your wallet back, János! Let nobody ever say that old Gáll does not appreciate friendship. He has a lot of whims, but he sticks to his friends... And he won't call in your capital, he'd sooner borrow himself..."

Grandfather's pride had been wounded by the recall (he was ashamed of people's talking about it in the neighbourhood), and he only waited for a single amiable word to put his wallet back again and fasten up the button.

"Well, thank you, lad," he said, putting his arm on Gáll's shoulder.

Gáll almost collapsed under the weight of the muscular arm, began to cough, and ejaculated his words as best he could, between fits of coughing.

"The difference-ence... however-ever... you... will pay the... difference-ence... of course... "

He repeated the syllables, because his wife was in the habit of patting him on the back when he coughed, so that the second half of the word would miss a beat. He had grown so used to this in the course of years of coughing that now he talked this way even when nobody was pummeling his back.

"What difference?" asked grandfather in astonishment.

"Why, the excess interest I shall have to pay the Jews. They won't give me money cheaply, not they. You can't imagine, János, how the Jews detest me!"

"I don't need much imagination for that," grandfather replied sarcastically.

Gáll ignored the biting remark.

"You will pay two per cent more, punctum."

I saw by the look on grandfather's face, in his eyes, that he was debating within himself whether or not to throw the money into Gáll's face. But soon he calmed down and confined himself to flinging this retort:

"All right, you old leech. Let's go, Pali!"

A few days later we learned that Gáll had done the same with all his debtors; he had recalled the capital on the excuse of his daughter's marriage, and then left the money with them after raising the interest.

Thus was Piroska's trousseau paid for out of the pockets of the poor debtors.

Chapter XI
THE SHOT

Re bene gesta we left for church, but not until grandfather had confirmed on his note of hand the two per cent increase in interest, "pro memoria and because we are mortals," as Gáll expressed himself, "for no matter how much we may trust each other, who can answer for our progeny?"

He sighed so deeply that the blacksmith's bellows could hardly have done better, his knees jerked convulsively and his body quaked all over.

"Death is ugly, János... so ugly. And the worst of it is that others go on living."

We were glad when we could at last leave his room which was poisoned by the breath of his mean soul. The air outside was clean, the sun was shining, and the sky blue, except in the south, where there were red streaks. This was supposed to mean rain - and perhaps it was true, because the swallows were flying low - and the pealing of the bell (it was the third summons) was reverberating solemnly through the valley. The morning was drawing to a close, but on the grass and the leaves drops of dew were still glistening, waiting for the sun to absorb them.

"I am going to drive over to Rozmál in the afternoon," grandfather said happily, "I shall try to get Manczi back. For I am lost without Manczi."

"Are we going to drop in to church, grandfather?"

"Of course. Considering we are here already." Then he added, as if wanting to excuse himself before God: "I mean, we'll do so anyway. Stop at the church, Miska, will you."

There were many carriages and britzkas around the church, even a few glass coaches. The good Lord seems to love the Lutherans, there are so many rich people among them! But what was in the wind today to bring out such a swarm of people? Had the news already spread that the marriage banns would be read today, and was that why such a crowd had come?

The church was indeed full to overflowing, although we were not the last to arrive: only the first hymn was being sung. They made room for grandfather in his usual pew and I sat down on the very edge of the next row. There was a dreadful crush, and even the passage between the pews was occupied by young peasant girls who had found no room in their old place beside the altar.

In spite of the great crowd, it was cool under the magnificent vaulted ceiling, as if the booming voice of the organ had absorbed all the oppressive odours and violet-hued vapours. Everything was so fresh and cool, nothing could be felt all round but the fine, penetrating fragrance of the bodies of those rosy, healthy girls...

The decorations on the altar too were unusual today, gaudy candles were burning in the candelabras, and the altar was entwined with tea-roses and violets. All round people were whispering that Dubek had sent them. This was quite contrary to custom in Krizsnócz: the Father and the Son could certainly dispense with it, and Mary was not courted here.

The many flowers were beautiful, none the less, especially the purple and faintly red violets. A bee, which had either been attracted through the broken window by the scent or brought in unawares in the cup of a rose, where it had been dozing in a drunken swoon, a silly little bee was buzzing around the altarpiece, occasionally darting up to the pulpit and then back again.

What if it should sting the vicar? What a rare spectacle that would be! Márton Szicsina, the sexton, kept an anxious eye on it.

Everybody we knew was there, all the lovely village maidens. The four Vér girls, too, one of them with an engagement ring on her finger. My, how the little imp was displaying it, to make the others envious! Vilma Folkusházy whispered something to Mária Krúdy, whereupon the latter reached up to her jet-black fringe of hair in alarm. Horrors, yes, a badly pinned-up braid was coming down... And the hairpin had dropped somewhere under the pews... The two pretty heads bent down to look for it, and for a moment only two round, white necks could be seen with their enchanting lines and charming dimples. Mária's neck was thin as a lizard's, and she had a black velvet ribbon around it which set off its whiteness all the more.

The Gálls were not yet there, but Mr. Dubek was sitting in my former place. His neighbour, however, was not Pornya, the bailiff, but old Funtyik, who was sleeping as usual on his spread-out arms. Funtyik's faded, once ash-grey coat had been turned and dyed dark blue. The saliva drooling from his sleeping mouth onto his coat sleeves mixed with the dye of the cloth, so that by the time he woke up, his white beard looked like a canary dipped in blueing.

Prakovszky too was there, his voice ringing out among the others, like a golden coin amidst dull pennies. He was evidently doing his very best and putting his whole soul into it, and the church rang with the boom. His exertion at times brought big drops of sweat to his forehead, and his Adam's apple jumped up and down in his throat, like a sley cap between the reeds of a loom.

Suddenly there was a commotion in the passage where the girls were standing, and a rustling like the murmur of the sea ran through the church. Beautiful Mrs. Buzinkay, on the other side, took her dainty white finger off the lines of the psalm - she always followed the text with her finger to avoid going astray - and put her lorgnette on her nose.

"The bride-to-be," everybody whispered.

It was as if a fresh breeze had sprung up, a hundred skirts swished, a hundred ribbons fluttered on the plaits, twice that number of cordovan boots creaked, as the girls made room, clustering together right and left, while their starched skirts, flapping against their legs, crackled deliciously and emitted a snake-like hissing.

Piroska had come with her mother. She it was before whom the crowd fell away on both sides, she who was stepping along between the line of village maidens, a white lily among mauve holly-hocks. The psalm, offered to the Lord, was just reaching the words: "Like the deer to cool brooks." Even the psalm seemed intended for her.

But now, oh, how pale, how sad my last year's love! How changed! As if her eyes had grown larger, yet it was only her face which had become thinner. A chill emanated from her. Even her mouth seemed thinner and had lost its colour. I would have liked so very much to believe that this had spoiled her beauty, and I tried hard to reason myself into such a conclusion. But I was merely trying to deceive myself, for well I saw that she was more beautiful than ever.

Everybody stared at her until she reached her place, and afterwards too, many glances rested on her; but she was not embarrassed, she merely raised her head the more haughtily, like a queen admired by the multitude.

Inquisitive eyes first took in everything about her clothes and her diamond pendant that might serve as food for talk at today's tea-parties (some countess, it was said, had left Gáll the bauble as a pledge). Attention, to the extent it was not yet exhausted, then turned upon Dubek, and only as much of it as remained after this was devoted to listening to the sermon.

The worthy vicar spoke at great length, and his sermon was as boring as it was long. But what it was about I could not say, if it cost me my neck. One thing is certain: everybody was impatient, the old women kept clearing their throats and giving little coughs, and the men alternately crossed one leg over the other with growing frequency. The whole Christian congregation sighed in relief when the vicar at last came to the prayer and, after saying "amen," closed his prayer-book, having first removed from it that certain slip of paper through which his scrawl was visible.

All the maidens looked up enviously at the piece of paper. It is the land of promise, that little white paper. The ultimate goal. St. Andrew with his dream, Lucia with her chair, both labour on behalf of this slip of paper.^[12]

Amidst breathless silence, the vicar, in a stentorian voice appropriate to the occasion, now read out that the Honourable Antal Dubek von Zöptau was taking for wife the Honourable Piroska Gáll de Hilib, etc.

At this everybody turned once more towards the bride, who no longer held her head so haughtily, but even reddened a little. This too came to an end, and again the church reverberated with organ piping and singing. The world returned to its old groove.

Deaf Prakovszky cleared his throat for the last hymn, and his booming voice stormed mightily out of his lungs, as if to split the ceiling and fight the very heavens; the singing of the others was as nothing compared with his, it was little more than the bleating of sheep beside the roaring wind - when all of a sudden Prakovszky gave a start and his voice collapsed.

It was so weird, it seemed as if the whole church had quaked and sunk to half its size. The cantor got confused in his organ playing. Everybody looked at Prakovszky, as at a clock that had stopped ticking. What could have happened to the old man?

Prakovszky turned round uneasily and asked Pál Szlaby, the butcher, sitting right at his back:

"What was that shot?"

"Shot?" Pál Szlaby repeated. "I don't know anything about, a shot. What kind of a shot are you talking about, friend?"

"I just heard a shot, this very instant."

"Well, I didn't hear any," said Pál Szlaby into his ear, smiling. "Surely, you are imagining things."

"No, of course I'm not! There was a shot just now. Fired from a rifle. You heard it, Uncle Funtyik, didn't you?"

But Uncle Funtyik shook his head in token that he had not heard a sound, although it must have been a cannon-shot at least, if Prakovszky heard it.

This only served to increase Prakovszky's agitation and, raising his voice a little, he asked the people sitting in front of him:

"Didn't you gentlemen hear a shot?"

They began to laugh. What a joke! Prakovszky has heard a shot and they haven't. Old Funtyik has been slumbering beside him, and Prakovszky must have been dreaming about a shot in Funtyik's stead.

They waved their hands to indicate that they knew nothing about a shot.

"I heard it clearly through," Prakovszky stammered in confusion, his eyes wide open, "I swear I did, I swear..."

Gáspár Folkusházy, engrossed in the hymn, grumbled in annoyance:

"The vain fool! Wants to make believe he can hear!"

The young furrier from Rozmál, however, turned back kindly, and cupping his hands in front of his mouth, assured him:

"It was just your fancy, godfather, there was no shot. Leave it to us, let us do the hearing, you just go on singing and keep quiet."

But the last thing Prakovszky could do was to keep quiet. His face expressed unusual perturbation; his hands were trembling; he tried to put the hymn-book into its box, but could not manage it, so he left it lying there and stood up in order to squeeze his way out of the pew; he accomplished this with some difficulty because of the fat gentlemen, and he even stepped on the corns of some of them; and as he fought his way out sideways, the silver button of his dolman got caught in Dubek von Zöptau's watch-chain, and he pulled both chain and watch out of the latter's pocket and dragged them along on his coat-button, till they dropped with a big clatter onto the stone floor of the church. Everybody looked in the direction of the noise. What was that? What has happened? What was that clatter? Why is Prakovszky leaving? A whisper arose which soon changed into laughter.

"The poor fellow has heard a shot."

It spread like wildfire. From one neighbour to the other. "Prakovszky has heard a shot." Well, isn't it funny? He is as deaf as a stick, and yet he heard a shot. Impossible not to laugh at that. As if a mischievous sprite had tickled the women and men alike, a broad grin spread over every face. Ha-ha-ha! Prakovszky has heard a shot. We did not bear a thing. All eyes were sparkling gleefully, each forehead grew smooth and bright with good humour.

The sun poured its rays into the church like a golden waterfall, yes, the sunshine itself was laughing, and even Abraham, offering up his son on the altar-piece, seemed unable to withhold a smile.

With dull eyes and wavering steps, Prakovszky himself was meantime vigorously pushing his way out through the bevy of maidens blocking his path in the passage. As he stumbled on, almost beside himself, his terror-struck eyes darting hither and thither, he dully, yet gently asked of acquaintances he passed:

"Didn't you hear the shot, dear girls?"

No, no. Nobody had heard it.

"Strange, strange..."

His face turned more and more yellow, like that of a dead man, like wax. It was indeed strange. For he could not have heard any shot, and even if he had, what of it? Why worry, if someone fires a shot outside? A mischievous boy may have fired a pistol, or a herdsman behind the gardens may have aimed at a flock of partridges whirring out of the grass. Why should anybody get so excited about it?

Prakovszky ran out of the church and inquired among the coachmen. Didn't they hear the shot? They too shook their heads and laughed among each other. No, Sir, there had not even been the cracking of a whip!

Then Prakovszky ran home, bare-headed; he had forgotten his hat in the pew. There in the kitchen he found his apprentice making love to the maid while she was cooking dinner. Prakovszky grabbed him by the collar and yelled at him:

"Who fired a shot just now?"

"I didn't," protested the lad with an innocent mien. "How could you think such a thing?"

Prakovszky let him go and ran out again, rousing the whole neighbourhood with his inquiries. By that time, the congregation had come out of the church, and the furrier of Rozmál, his godson, was bringing him his hat and prayer-book, shouting after him at the top of his voice:

"Godfather, hey, godfather!"

But the old man did not heed him, just kept on asking everybody whether they had not heard anything, and mumbling all the time, with heaving breast and bowed head:

"How peculiar, how strange..."

*

Even small things are big events in Krizsnócz. The whole village was enjoying the funny story of how Prakovszky had heard a shot.

Grandfather too told it at lunch, and everybody laughed over it.

But the laughter died away, suddenly, when four days later there was news from Milan that Sándor Prakovszky, lieutenant of the Imperial and Royal Hussars, had blown out his brains in the big barracks there on the previous Sunday around midday.

"Poor fellow!" grandfather remarked sadly. "Piroska's letter is to blame for this."

"Poor old Prakovszky," interposed my mother, and her tender, kind eyes filled with tears. "He did hear that shot!"

I too was shaken by the news, but mother's words astonished me no less.

"But that's impossible, mother darling... from such a distance! How can you imagine such a thing?"

Mother put her arms around me and stroked my head, gently, sadly.

"You don't know it yet. But one day you will learn that a parent's heart can see further than the eye and hear better than the ear. You don't know it yet... "

1904

(1863-1924)

Bródy made an early appearance in literature; without even completing his studies, he took employment with a firm of solicitors as articled clerk, in order to have more leisure, and wrote busily for newspapers - and for his desk. Before long, he secured for himself a place in journalism, and was just going on to 20 when he published his first book, with the symbolic title: Nyomor (Poverty).

Kálmán Mikszáth hailed him in these words, "Literary circles look upon him as a great talent." Bródy then began a feverish activity. He made himself the one-man staff of the magazine Fehér Könyv (The White Book), the most progressive periodical to be printed in the Hungary of the early twentieth century. He published several novels and strings of short stories each year, and his plays had successful runs. His principal novels - A nap lovagja (Knight of the Sun), Az ezüst kecske (The Silver Goat), Don Quichotte kisasszony (Miss Don Quixote), A villamos (The Tram), and Rembrandt - as well as his plays - A dada (The Nurse), A tanítónő (The Teacher), and Lyon Lea - made him very popular as an author and playwright. The writer's obligation to present the truth remained his artistic programme to his last day. In most of his writings his theme was lower-class morals and poverty, the kind of poverty which was introduced into world literature through Zola's work. Both his outlook and style were strongly influenced by a naturalism tinged with a certain amount of impressionistic humour.

His lifework remained incomplete and is not without flaws. He was not in want of talent - it was self-discipline, perseverance and a coherent philosophy that he lacked. Several of his novels, for instance, have a foozled ending, yet in each we find several chapters and scenes that are magnificent. On the other hand, masterpieces abound among his short stories in which he writes about the loves and poverty of the underdog or the purposeless existence of the man of wealth.

Bródy had an ill-regulated, hectic tempo of living. He was a celebrated playwright, one of the most widely read authors of his time; a handsome man who was idolized by women; an ace at cards; a militant politician and a columnist whose pen made strong men quail. Yet he never found peace of mind; success and appreciation failed to satisfy him. Several times he broke down, lost his zest for life, and again and again threw himself into the whirling of Budapest life. After the downfall of the Hungarian Republic of Councils of 1919, he went into exile but returned a few years later as though only waiting for death. In his last great work, Rembrandt, Bródy wrote of his disappointments.

On Wednesday, up there at the hilltop, at Fedémes village, a body of Polish lancers turned out in the small hours of the morning and rode forth, ammunition and all, to the training-ground. By the time the morning bell rang, the whole village was ablaze.

The lurid glare could be seen throughout the foothill district, as far as Szépasszonyfalva, or Fair Lady's Thorpe. There, the Matyó^[13] men kept crossing themselves tirelessly, while their womenfolk - although it was only mid-week - treated the soldiers to generous dishes of stuffed cabbage, anxious to keep them in the village. The village lads, however, their spirits sagging whenever the soldiers roistered at the inn, sneaked out and trudged home.

The villagers held that discretion was the better part of valour and that, rather than pay the price of insubordination, it was wiser to resign themselves to their fate. Besides, life had been like this ever since the 1870s, and they had grown accustomed to it. The same two companies of the same Hussar regiment had been stationed in their midst, all those long years.

The rank and file - mostly Ruthenians with only about one-fourth from the home country - were relieved by fresh levies every three years, but these changes had no effect on the lives of the villagers.

Throughout the valley the grass grew as fine as silk; yet the peasants' horses were hidebound, listless and bony, for the hussars took away the best, most fragrant hay and fed it to the cavalry horses before the very eyes of the inhabitants. They broke into the barns in broad daylight, and woe to any Matyó who dared protest. Young Kispatkóssy tried it once... On the wooden cross above his grave, there is a fine verse about his young life and grievous end. Perhaps it has worn off by now, but the village folk still remember it.

The pick of everything in cottage and stable was grabbed by those greedy locusts. Even the lads from the home country had quite fallen into their evil habits.

There was no remedy, no person to complain to. The young men in the village, scorned and humbled, went about chanting the most innocent of folk-tunes, as sadly as if it were a dirge:

The old women shed many a tear.

But the officers - none of them higher ranking than captain - had picked up a smattering of Hungarian; and their laughter was as unfeeling as the laments of the peasants were bitter.

And what else could one do in that place but laugh and weep?

What a foul hole, that village! The officers were bored to death, finding relief only in an occasional prank. At night, they would serenade all and sundry; the Jew Sam's wife, the Paklincs girls, any women that was handy. So far, they had spared only the doctor's wife, without having any particular reason for this omission.

That night the officers could get no sleep because of the autoda-fé at Fedémes. They did not disperse until shortly before dawn. Baron Brandel - the Lieutenant - would not budge without company, so he took the gipsy musicians and led them straight to the doctor's house.

The band struck up. The Baron sang the serenade to its accompaniment and raised his voice to a furious pitch when the doctor's head appeared in the window.

"Go away!" said the doctor curtly.

"Stay!" the Lieutenant commanded.

The shutters swung to, and a few minutes later the doctor stood facing the soldier.

"Herr Baron, may I have a word with you?"

The Lieutenant laughed and waved the gipsies away. Then he placed his hand upon the hilt of his sword and said: "At your service."

Not a soul was near them. It was pitch dark. The doctor spoke up: "Herr Baron, you are not acquainted with my family, I presume."

"No."

"To what, then, do we owe this unusual honour?"

"I do as I wish."

A resounding slap shattered the stillness. The officer clapped his hand to his sword. The doctor drew a revolver from his pocket.

"Step closer!"

Brandishing his sword and spitting invective, the officer made four passes at him.

But each time he approached his opponent and saw death staring at him out of the barrel of that small revolver, his arms and lips went dead. He tried to work himself into a frenzy, but without success; and his blood froze when his last charge brought a bullet whizzing past his neck, singeing his whiskers.

Cursing still, but trembling, he staggered to his billet.

He found his Hungarian batman lying as usual at his door. He kicked the man in the hip. Samu Kaál sprang to his feet.

"Sir!"

He was told to fetch wine from the cellar. He lit the lamp and placed the beverage on the table.

"Be off!" said the officer.

Samu Kaál started towards the door.

Moved by a sudden thought, the baron seized his batman's hand. "Stay here," he said gently. He stepped up to the table, poured wine into two glasses and gave one to the soldier. "Have a drink."

Samu Kaál's broad Matyó features now contracted with anxiety, now expanded in elation.

They drank...

At three o'clock in the morning the doctor got into his carriage, to visit his patients. The driver said: "Gee-up!"

Suddenly, behind him, his master tumbled out of the carriage.

A bullet, fired from a hussar carbine, had pierced his heart. Behind the carriage, a hussar was spotted behind some elder-bushes, by vegetable-women going early to market.

"Samu Kaál! What've you done?..." they shouted after the hussar, who had thrown away his weapon and was running towards the river bank.

Samu Kaál was taken to brigade headquarters at Miskolc. On the way there, he kept silent between his escorts and smiled to himself.

"The idiots," he thought, "they think they're taking me to my death."

He laughed when they tried to comfort him:

"Don't worry, Samu, you're not going to get bumped off for that."

"Why should I worry?" he answered.

The escorts, itching to know, went on asking: "Whatever made you do it, Samu Kaál?"

But he kept his thin lips tightly pressed, raised his sparse, yellow eyebrows, and said nothing.

Nor could they elicit a word from him in prison. The provost marshal and the examining magistrate - a Major - did their best to make him talk, but they were wasting their time: Samu Kaál maintained a facetious look and snickered slyly, at times even shooting a mischievous glance at the Major as if to say:

"Alright, alright, you and I know better."

Days and weeks went by. Szépasszonyfalva was not far away, and one day the Lieutenant entered Samu's cell.

What joy this visit brought him! He wiped his streaming rabbit's eyes with his fists, and even the old provost marshal was close to crying.

Ah, the Herr Offizier was a good soul, bless him!

The ward left officer and batman to themselves. Through the door he overheard the officer saying soothing words to the Matyó lad, and the latter supplicating his master:

"Oh, please, Sir, you won't let me down, Sir, will you?"

The day after, Samu Kaál declared that he wished to confess.

And he did confess.

"It was on Tuesday... I poked fun at his horse... He struck me with his whip... 'You'll die for this,' I swore..."

Upon this, the investigation was wound up. Sentence followed very soon.

The day before the judgement was pronounced Samu's mother brought her son clean linen and some food. She was admitted to his cell, so they might cry out their hearts together.

And the old woman's weeping expressed the grief of a whole village. Her son comforted her with speech so strange, one might think the poor lad was out of his mind.

"That bit o' land of Ferus Bándi's that lies next to ours, is it still to be had?" he asked his mother, slipping his hand into the pocket of his vest as if he meant to produce the sum.

He wanted to say a good deal more, and he did drop a few words about his master and that he, Samu, might be back home sooner than the others. Yet it was all so confused that his old mother sank deeper and deeper into despair, as she listened to him.

Samu Kaál was whistling a tune when they brought him before the court. His fresh clothes, clean linen and polished boots, matched his beaming countenance and big jug-ears; he was bright and shining like the cockade on his shako.

He sprang to attention in so soldierly a fashion that the presiding Colonel almost looked gratified.

"That's the spirit, my man!" the mute look of Samu's master seemed to say in encouragement. The Lieutenant was a member of the tribunal, his figure, smart as usual, but his cheeks pale as never before.

Samu Kaál was sentenced to death: for treacherously attacking and murdering a man, he was to be hanged by the neck...

Suddenly, the batman's tanned face became clouded, but it soon brightened again. He saluted smartly, and was led away.

In the army, retribution does not tarry long, nor was it allowed to do so at the brigade jail. Samu was divested of his uniform and his peasant garb returned to him. Oh, how happy he was to get them back! In one of the pockets of his short coat he found two rosemaries. Dry and withered though they had become, still, there they lay where he had stuck them two years ago.

Tears fell from his eyes at last. So he would go home, after all. It was true then, God bless his master!... He seized and fervently kissed the hand of the Lieutenant, who even now deigned to visit his batman.

"Be sensible, man! Keep your wits together and have no fear!" said the officer, and walked out of the condemned cell abandoning the prisoner to his solitude.

Samu Kaál repeated the words to his mother:

"Be sensible, mother! Keep your wits together and have no fear!"

The old woman was already beyond fear. She hardly knew where or who she was and whether to believe in God. Her entire body trembled.

Dawn came, a bright, snow-bound winter dawn. Through the window of his cell Samu Kaál could see the whole prison-yard: it was full of cord wood, only one slender beam by the wall stretched into the air. Some civilians were busily doing something with it.

Samu Kaál stared and stared. "What a devil of a show they're putting up," he thought. All the same, he felt a cold shiver running down his spine. He tried to reassure himself. Perhaps he was hungry? He took some food. Then he lit a cigar (his master had sent it in for him). He wasn't halfway through before they snatched it out of his mouth. More than half of it unsmoked! And how good it had tasted! He was sorry to have to stop smoking it, and placed it on the shelf.

He was told to say his prayers; then he was led out.

There in the yard his company stood arrayed in full uniform. He nodded in their direction and looked at them out of the corner of his eye. He wished he could have said something to hearten them:

"Have no fear, boys!"

He shuddered slightly, but wasn't afraid. Why should he be? Wasn't his master, that strapping man, that all-powerful officer, standing there, at the head of his company? Dressed in his gold fringed uniform and sporting a gleaming medal on his breast, he looked like a little god. Samu Kaál couldn't take his eyes off him.

He derived trust and courage and self-assurance from that sallow face and that twirled moustache.

With a proud bearing, almost haughtily, he marched towards the gallows.

He was turned about to face the company.

The Major who had headed the court martial now mumbled something, but Samu Kaál paid no heed to what he said. He was looking at his master. The Lieutenant - face waxy like a corpse's, but chest thrown out like a true hussar's - looked back at him.

"Be sensible... Have no fear!"

The hangman's assistants seized him. A yell burst from Samu Kaál:

"Herr Leutnant, stop them..." He could say no more.

It had been a mere jest, and it was over now. The officer gave the order for prayer.

1898

(1866-1917)

Hungarian literature can hardly boast a writer more Hungarian in his colours and atmosphere than István Tömörkény, who was of German descent. Son of a man named Steingassner, he took his Hungarian name from a little hamlet near Szeged, in southern Hungary. A chemist by profession, he published short stories and special articles in provincial newspapers. His service in the Austro-Hungarian army of occupation took him to Bosnia (now part of Yugoslavia), where he gained an intimate knowledge of the life of poor peasants whose way of life, desires, speech and everyday thoughts found their way into his writing. After his discharge from the army, Tömörkény settled down at Szeged and hardly ever left the vicinity. It was there he wrote his several hundred short stories and sketches. Like Móra, he was the director of the Szeged Museum until his death in 1917. One obituary notice said this about him: "We have scarcely had a greater loss in this war than the death of István Tömörkény."

Tömörkény conducted excavations in villages of the Szeged district - his collecting tours combined his archaeological, ethnographical and literary interests. In his works he portrayed the life and labour of peasants, navvies, farmhands and bargemen (the "water-folk"), going about it - as Zsigmond Móricz wrote of him - with the thoroughness of the scientist, the passion of the collector, the recreating genius of the artist and the humanitarianism of a righteous man. A thousand small details, shades of rustic speech and village folk's ways and views were given weight and shape and made unforgettably impressive in Tömörkény's masterly short stories. One of his writings found its way to Tolstoy, who wrote of it in his diary in terms of highest praise. Like so many contemporary literary critics, the great Russian novelist admired especially Tömörkény's humanism. For, in Tömörkény's writings, abject poverty and dreadful tragedies are always combined with a masterly portrayal of the integrity of poor people, of the strength of their humane feelings.

The extraordinary terseness of his short stories was the result of the need to conform to newspaper space available, but Tömörkény made the most of this compelling circumstance to improve his art, and his figures are as tight-lipped as are the Magyar peasants of the Plain. In his short stories, the plot advances towards the dénouement with certainty and but little encumbered with subsidiary episodes.

There had been signs of low spirits among the men on the dam all week. It does happen, after all, that people get out of bed on the wrong side and then everything rubs them the wrong way. There's hardly a man who doesn't have some grouch or other. Sometimes, if a navvy happens to be digging the earth at the bottom of the pit, he'll stop dead and just stare in front of him; then he'll throw his chest into the harness of his wheelbarrow and, mute and spiteful, trudge up the steep planks to the top of the high dam. His work's one of the hardest; and whoever hasn't grown up in it, can't do it. He may make a brave start on it all right, but it'll lick him for sure before he's halfway through. Navvies know that, and that knowledge gives them a self-respect heightened by the fact that they earn higher wages than other labourers. True, on this account they also swill more brandy than the rest; the job calls for it, they say, without it you'd be done for. They store their brandy in small jugs down in the pit to keep it cool. There's a straw in the jug, and they sip the liquid through it; and they have one common jug for all, or each man has his own. And no matter how often a man goes to take his sip, he will never get drunk, for, as the saying goes, "work takes the sting out of it." The labour of the navvies begins at daybreak, as soon as one can make out the planks on which they push up their wheelbarrows, and it ends at dusk when one can no longer discern them. Theirs is the sort of job that, within a month after going back to work, will wear away all the flesh they've put on during the winter. They are gaunt and lean, all of them, only their legs swell with bulging muscles.

They never work in winter, that is when, for the most part, they 'go socialist.' They do it only for fun, not on principle, for they are the aristocrats among 'labouring folk.' Labour, too, has a social hierarchy of its own. A docker will stay idle throughout the winter from the day the river freezes over and navigation is brought to a standstill; and he will never undertake any other job even though he be hard up, nor does he offer to do any digging in your garden when spring comes along. Not he, he's a docker and will carry loads - if there are any. And if there aren't - well, then it can't be helped, and he'll just have to wait, until something comes his way again. The same goes for the navvy. True, if it's something he can lug in his wheelbarrow, he may - or may not - go after it. But not a step for him without that wheelbarrow of his. Work for him can only mean shifting something from one place to another in his wheelbarrow, whether upwards or downwards. It may be earth to be wheeled up to the top of a high dam, or heavy stones to be wheeled down into a boat lying in shallow water on a hot summer day. Or it may be a fortress he's helping to build, or a railway, or a river dam; he doesn't care a pin. Why, people out on remote farms have even begun recently to hire navvies for setting up silos. In many places the green fodder is no longer put away in pits; it is stacked up in the open and then covered with a layer of earth, so as to allow it to mature.

Now, it'd be impossible to get the earth on top of the stacks if it were not for the navvies. Rural folk can't do the trick. So the navvy gives a hand. Their leader (pit-master, as they call him) sizes up the stack, does some quick calculating, hems and haws, makes his terms, and he and his buddies get down to work. A plank is leant against the stack, and by that footway, too steep for other mortals to mount even without a load, the navvies will sally up, pushing their wheelbarrows. By dusk the job is done, and the team-leader receives and distributes the wages: each of them gets such a tidy sum that many an educated gentleman would willingly accept it for a salary. Now every man packs up his trappings - leather bag, jug, matting, and sheepskin coat - in his wheelbarrow; the spade is stuck in at the side and the stew-pot hung over the board; and so they set out in single file like geese, in search of another job. They are thin little chaps, with short pipes between their teeth, and bocskors^[14] on their feet; they might be taken for Slovaks, although any Slovak attempting to do their work for one day would most probably die in the effort. They move along rapidly, for they never walk slowly behind their barrows. It looks as if the barrows were dragging the men along, instead of being pushed by them.

They aren't very talkative, these navvies, indeed. They're a rather silent bunch. If not provoked, they are likely to go on doing their work without so much as a word. Neither do they write any letters home, but send money for the wife by postal order - which is by far the best form of greeting. They stay away from home a long time, for months on end, it may be even from spring till autumn. They lodge under their rushmat awnings, using their sheepskin coats as upholstery, and live on bacon and bread. When they feel like a hot meal, the team cooks a stew in their common pot attached to the wooden tripod. For, like fishermen, they are divided into teams, each team headed by a 'pit-master' who negotiates the jobs and does the reckoning.

Well, as I said, the gang of dam labourers had shown signs of ill temper all week. At the end of the previous week, on Saturday, they had already had a tiff over the pay-off. The engineer had not measured the pits the way they would have it, and his calculations had shown a smaller amount of earth than had actually been excavated; he claimed they had cheated in some of the pits by increasing the height of the bubas. The buba is a round pillar of earth, a kind of tower, left in the middle of the pit that has been dug; and when the work is finished, the amount of earth that has been excavated is computed, in cubic meters, by the height of this pillar.

The engineer has his own way of computing whereas the 'pit-master' of the navvies merely uses a spadehandle; nevertheless, if there hasn't been any swindling in connection with the buba, the two calculations will tally as a rule.

However, navvies have a trick of increasing the height of the buba. When night comes, they cleverly sever the little tower of earth in the middle and, after adding about a span of earth, put the upper half back on the lengthened stump. The upper part remains covered with the green grass which was there before the pit had taken the place of the verdant meadow, and it has to stay there as a proof that there's been no monkey business in connection with the buba. That is why the earth is inserted in the middle of the pillar, and it is done so skilfully that no one who is not in the know will notice that the buba has been meddled with. This cunning trick is practised wherever possible; in fact, it's the general custom among navvies. When the Csángó^[15] people were resettled here, they were provided with excavation work, as a means of livelihood. In order to break them in, veteran navvies were appointed as their instructors, and the first thing they taught their kinsmen was how to raise the buba, and only after that did they proceed to impart to the newcomers the other knacks of their trade. Now, this can hardly be called laudable proceeding; but then they, in turn, are often the victims of a dirty deal. For instance, they are taken to distant parts of the country, where they have been promised good earth to work in. They have made their terms accordingly, and not until they got there do they discover that they've been cheated, for the earth is clayey or full of pebbles. But now it's too late, for how can they afford to turn about and come back all that long way? It's out of the question. So there's nothing for it but to start hacking away with their spades; and as they labour in silence, they keep turning over in their minds how much more satisfying it would be to drive the edge of their spades into something very different.

At such moments, one can sense an inchoate stirring among the men, and the pit-masters stick their heads together. Work, which usually proceeds with machine-like precision, begins to slow down. Faces turn glum. The men on one team are apt to pick a quarrel with those belonging to another. Their ill temper is easily discernible. It could be felt on this occasion, too, when they had not been taken to distant Galicia, or Rumania, or Bosnia to build railway-beds, but were at home on Hungarian soil, raising a dam to curb the waters of the Tisza. The high wide dams lining both banks of the river were the work of their hands.

Like two enormous lazy snakes, the dams might lie idly along the shores of the river for years and years, without seeming to serve any purpose. Immense heaps of props and brushwood and straw are stacked on their flanks and there are large sheds full of bags - with no hint of their possible utility. The water's edge, beyond the willow groves, is far removed from the foot of the dams; it lies so low in its bed that even the smokestack of a passing steamer can scarcely be seen through the branches of the trees. Like an ancient castle wall, the dam stands abandoned for years on end. Its counterpart across the river is hidden behind willows that fade into the grey horizon. At rare intervals, some carriage or clumsy ox-cart passes, and it seems to be moving along the tops of the trees. Roundabout, church spires pierce the distance, and, on the flat, hollow plain, very far off, the smoking chimneys of steam-mills can be seen. Nearer at hand, there are huge corn fields, a few brooklets with sluices, and reeds and rushes here and there - remnants from a world that has gone. Whatever life is astir here is to be found in those rushes, where the coots and ducks, the loons and grebes, make their nests.

And then, suddenly, the water is caught up in a playful mood, and its silent masses begin flowing down irresistibly. Where does all this abundance come from? Where, if it existed before, was it hiding all these years? The water, disdaining an answer, abandons its bed and goes to dwell among the willows. Then it reaches the foot of the dam and creeps up its wall. Gone is its stillness, it has become loquacious now: it rustles among the treetops. Swiftly and still more swiftly it flows and ever more water rushes in to take the place of that which has rolled by, and its natural blonde at times turns an angry brown. Now the space between the two dams becomes a broad canal raised above the level of the ground, and, down below, there is the land in bloom and the lonely farmsteads, and, in the distance, villages and towns.

Everything now depends on how well the dam is built. If it is not well built, the water will break through and the whole countryside will soon become one big cemetery. In town and village the drums begin to roll. The army and the police are set in motion and cart-loads of navvies are rushed to the spot. At the dam, a hard and urgent task awaits them. Props are driven into the ground, the dam is raised and reinforced. Already the water has climbed over two or three lines of props, it is carrying away the brushwood, and keeps eating into the dike. A fourth line of props is laid. From this spot, a week ago, you could admire a pretty acacia grove opposing its tender hues to the lush green of the crops. Now you look for it in vain, the spot where it stood is empty and bald, for the trees have been cut to serve as props. Most likely nobody even bothered to ask whom the grove belonged to.

There aren't any masters here. No one is master, save the navvy and the engineer. Troops there are, too: they have driven up labourers from far-off villages and farmsteads, but these are no good for anything except auxiliary work. Now the navvy rises in station; the craftsman emerges from among the mass of manual labour.

Nor is it by dint of muscular strength alone that he towers above the rest, but also by the force of his intellect. He is the first to spot a seepage, the first to recognize the looming menace of the huge hulking dam's sliding back a fathom or two from its site. He knows neither night nor day, defies mire and rain, gets drenched by the waves splashing over the dam, and lets his clothes dry on his body while he is waiting. No one could stand up to that kind of drudgery but he, who from springtime till autumn camps in the open, beneath the sky. Full of angry spite, he throws his body into the job; when addressed, he merely growls, his short pipe sticking out from between his teeth as if he meant to threaten the world with it. He lays down one tool only to pick up another. Yet what is this whole countryside to him? What its inhabitants, who are now standing by exhausted in dejected indifference?

Suddenly a muttering spread along the dam. The engineers suspected that something was brewing, but didn't yet know what it was. On the ridge of the dam one of the pit-masters gave a yell.

"Hoy!"

The men belonging to his gang stopped dead. Those who had been pushing their barrows up the planks left them there, right in the middle of the gangway. Spades were thrust into the ground. And hard and hoarse voices replied in succession like the crackling of an abortive volley, "Hoy!" "Hoy!"

An alarming calm succeeded the noise of work. The river - now swollen to a sea, so that the opposite bank had disappeared from sight - was whirling and tossing whole trees at the dam and hurling over it turbulent waves and the props they had pried loose. Its anger had grown into rage. The entire dam was covered with sodden mud, for the navvies had been carrying the earth up onto its back from behind, where water was already seeping through. And now a mud-splashed figure came hurrying along, in whose bedraggled appearance nobody could recognize the gentleman - for who would have find time to change his clothes?

"What's the matter?" he shouted from afar. "What's the idea?"

Nobody replied, only one of the pit-masters pointed a scornful finger at the yellow sea, and said: "Water."

Well, water there was, no doubt of it. Lots of it. You couldn't see a trace of the opposite bank. The trees of the flood area had all disappeared, and in the huge torrent here and there, a roof floats by, torn from some hut on the shore. The wind drove the waves over the drenched dam in sheets which from a distance looked like white sails fluttering. And it seemed - was it a mere illusion, or was it reality? - as if that long ridge of mud were swaying. There where the wind pitched into the water with particular vehemence, pressing it against the bank, the dam seemed about to give way, flapping like a reed-mat beaten by the wind.

"What's eating you people?" the engineer shouted. "Stopping your work like that? Can't you see that the dam's going to break if you quit?"

"Sure it is," the leader of the navvies agreed impassively.

The others kept silent, and the pit-master went on:

"If the water don't drop, that bloomin' dam's goin' to bust for sure. We're just wastin' our time here, heapin' up mud like that. Why, the water's gushin' out wherever you hit the ground with your spade. Look, mister, in this very spot where we're standin', the dam'll break before morning. Down there, the berm's split in three places."

"Then it's got to be plugged at once," the engineer shouted. "Get a move on, every one of you! There are enough bags and props. Now get back to work and be quick about it!"

"Not so fast!" said the pit-master. "You see, sir, we'll go on workin' all right till the old dam busts. We'll stick it out, an' no mistake. Though if the water don't drop tonight, the dam's going to crack up some place anyway. Why, it's already wobblin' like a snake a-gliding."

"What's your game, then?"

"What I mean is we ain't goin' to work on tick anymore. Look, sir," he explained, while the other men clustered round them, "I've fixed it up with my mates here that we're leavin' this place by Saturday. But we can't wait that long for our dough 'cause if the dam goes, everybody'll be runnin' for their lives, an' there'll be no one to pay us off."

"No fear of that," the engineer said.

"Well," the man went on calmly, "we had that happen to us before. That's why we want you to pay us for the job we done this week, an' pay us right away. An' from now on we get paid every man by the day, and not by the dirt we shovel."

There was bitterness in the engineer's voice as he replied:

"So you think I'm in a hole, do you? A fine time you picked to put on the squeeze!"

The pit-master, somewhat put out, began to excuse himself. "We're poor folks, sir," he stammered, "an' we had that happen to us before..."

Coming towards them on the dam there loomed a bespattered gentlemanly figure. He was an army officer, the one who was in charge of the unit dispatched to the scene of the threatened disaster; he was making his round among the sentries. A big, strapping, bluffly sincere man, he would have done better as an acrobat than in clambering about on this god-forsaken dam for eighty forints a month, and not even a chance to go to the barber once in three weeks. As far as his own safety was concerned he had thrown caution to the winds, went about without armed escort, and whenever the cart that was carrying the props got stuck in the mud, he lent a hand in lifting it out. He was liked by all the men working on the site; moreover, his enormous strength and powerful voice commanded respect.

"What's going on here?" he asked as he reached the spot.

The pit-master was about to tell him, when the engineer cut him short and related the men's grievance:

"Well, they're right on that," the first lieutenant commented. "Are you sure you couldn't pay them straight-away?"

"No, I couldn't."

"No money?" asked the other dejectedly.

"It's not that," the engineer retorted angrily. "I've got ten thousand forints, but those blockheads have sent all of it down in thousand-forint notes. And where could I get change in these parts?"

"How about the other sectors?"

"I don't know. If they have any small change there, they won't part with it anyway, as they need it themselves."

The mud-splashed men were becoming increasingly vociferous. "What's going on now? Will you or won't you pay?" The pit-master turned about and motioned them to keep quiet, but his words were hardly heeded anymore.

"Just slip me a thousand-forint note, will you," said the officer. "Nothing else will help now. My fifteen men are distributed over a two-mile stretch. Besides, it's no good using force here. Navvies can do more mischief than you would care for, if they have a mind to it."

And flourishing the thousand-forint banknote, the officer walked up to the navvies, who were standing there, idly holding their spades and pickaxes.

"You can't get your pay now," he said. "They've got no change. But the money's there. Here, see this thousand-forint note? And that's not the only one. As you can see, there's no tobacco shop around, where one could get it changed."

"That's true," said some voices from the crowd.

"Now there's your money, I've got it on me, the engineer has given it to me. Whatever happens to the dam, you'll get your pay from me. Well, do you trust me, fellows?"

"We do! Sure!" sounded on every hand. Only the pit-master objected.

"But..." he began.

"Well?"

"What if the dam busts, an' all our things get washed away? Will you pay for them too?"

The first lieutenant, pointing to the banknote, said:

"That's included."

"All right boys, at it again!" the pit-master said, waving at his men; and they all turned back to resume their work. Once more the heavy cudgels began banging away at the props, dripping wheelbarrows went creaking along, and men armed with spades were casting about for an inch of dry earth behind the dam. They checked the level of the water nearly every minute to see whether it was dropping. But it did not. It's not the weather that could do the trick now. The river would go down and that damn fast if there'd be a breach on the opposite bank! But you can bet your life the dam over there will hold while this one over here begins to look as if it had been built by children's hands for the fun of it.

The pit-master was scanning its winding contours with the air of a man who knows better.

"Look!" he cried suddenly.

A long way up the river, beyond the small poplar grove, the dam had given way, and a huge, yellow mass was pouring through the gap onto the green fields. It was the river! In the sudden silence that ensued, one could hear its roar as it tugged and clawed at the river bank. Now the game was up. The threat was no longer hanging over them, for the thing had happened and no power on earth could avert it. Only way back in the distance, where the ground began to rise a little, only there would it be possible for the local people - if they knew how - to run up some kind of provisional dyke. Hurriedly, the navvies gathered up their belongings and flinging everything into their wheelbarrows, set out along the dam in search of some place where they could descend. They made great haste; if the dam were to burst in front of them as well, they would be trapped. Down below, carriages were dashing across the fields with the engineers; mounted gendarmes were galloping towards the villages; from somewhere there came already the sound of a church bell tolling. The first lieutenant hastened to pick up his men along the dam. He overtook the navvies, for pushing a wheelbarrow makes heavy going in the mud; but they didn't mind his leaving them behind, because they were sure they'd find him and the money somewhere, if need be at his home.

"Well, you predicted all this," he said to the pit-master in passing.

The man answered imperturbably from behind his short pipestem, as he continued to push his wheelbarrow:

"Not the first time I've seen a thing like that happen, sir."

The water was spreading swiftly; you could see it gleaming among the tender crops, which, alas, had been sown in vain. Of course, one could not possibly know as yet how far it would spread, for once it had filled up the flats, its advance would be slowed down. It would then be 'grazing' as the saying goes, for its progress would be as leisurely as that of grazing cattle. But should it strike a brooklet or a ditch, it would quickly run way ahead in them and end by overflowing their banks.

The pit-master halted.

"We'd better go down into that village," he said to his mates.

They nodded their assent, and the wheelbarrows got under way again in single file. As they started down the slope, they saw that the water in the ditches had turned yellow, and that, on the lower side of the village, the people were astir in a desperate effort to throw up a dyke. The church bell was ringing. The pit-master put his whole weight into the harness of his wheelbarrow.

"Come on. Let's get a move on."

They made for the scene of action. Down there, things looked really bad, for if the people there did not succeed in enclosing that small stretch of land with a dyke, then the flood would run right into the middle of the village and at once wash the church away. They were working like mad shovelling the earth, lugging it in bread-baskets and manure barrows. The first lieutenant had arrived with his men. The soldiers had climbed up to the roofs of the huts and were throwing and carrying down the thatches. Their officer was pulling up a large section of fencing at one go and throwing it against the dyke to form a breastwork. But the water proved to be the stronger, for its pressure was growing steadily, and the centre of the loosely-constructed little dyke gave way. The flood came rushing through the gap. There were screams from the womenfolk, while the men stood sad and mute. The first lieutenant, seizing two soldiers with his powerful arms, jumped with them into the breach. At that moment the gang of navvies appeared and the pit-master let out a penetrating yell.

"At it, boys!"

Sheepskin coats and rush-mats flew from the wheelbarrows, and the rustic masters of the art of trapping water flung the might of their arms into the struggle. First they spread matting in front of the men standing in the water up to their hips, another group rushed up earth, while a third set, after wrenching the trellised gate off the church fence and covering it with matting, planted it upright in the ground and began to fill in earth behind it.

"That's that," the pit-master said proudly when they were done with the task and the breach had been filled.

They continued to help wherever this was necessary, and after that the pit-master turned towards the first lieutenant.

"What about that banknote, sir? I suppose it's melted away?"

"Not a bit!" replied the officer. "The water only reached up to my waist."

"Then you'd better pay us off, sir, and we'll beat it. There ain't much more we could do here anyway."

The men in sandals clustered round and made it plain that it was really high time for them to get their due.

"All right," the officer said and started out though he was dripping wet. "There must be somebody here that can give us change. Let's go to the parish hall. But as a matter of fact, I've no idea how much you are supposed to get!"

"Never mind. I know," the pit-master said. "As you couldn't figure it out by the amount of earth anyway, so we get day wages. Three whole days' wages for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and till nine o'clock this morning - another quarter day. That's what's due to each hand."

"And how about the job you've done here?"

The pit-master shook his head.

"That don't count," he said. "It wasn't for the gentry we did it."

The men nodded in token of their agreement.

1899

(1871-1957)

"The story of my life? It's a very ordinary and tedious affair, not worth the trouble to put it down on paper; still less to read it," Heltai wrote. "Like most people, I was born; then, at the age of twelve, made up my mind that I must become a poet and journalist." Even before leaving secondary school, he made good on this resolution by publishing some poems. He enrolled in the Faculty of Law, but soon gave up his studies to enter journalism. At first, he tried his hand at serious writing, but, in due time, turned a humorous writer. "Since then, I've been rowing away in the galley of Humour, a slave despairing of release," he wrote, half jokingly, half seriously in 1913, and added, "I wish to go on writing for a few more years, and then to choose a respectable profession."

In newspaper articles, comedies, novels, short stories and screen plays he captured many a feature of big-city life; like Andor Gábor, he began - as a disciple of the fashionable French moderns - by ridiculing the curiosities of the new-fledged big city in chansons, sketches and skits, but did so somewhat more sentimentally and mildly and more indulgently than his fellow-writer. After the failure of the two revolutions, he became more and more resigned and bitter; however, his writings dating from that period too are suffused with serenity, though of a now dimmer shade than his old optimism. The best of his plays - A néma levente (The Silent Knight), A kis kávéház (The Small Café), Az ezerkettedik éjszaka (The Thousand and Second Night), etc. - novels - Family Hotel, A 111-es (Room No.111), Az utolsó bohém (The Last Bohemian), Jaguár, etc. - and his several hundred short stories have been translated into many languages and he has supplied the stories for a number of films made in various countries.

A several-volume edition of his collected works - poems, novels, short stories, sketches, plays and fables - was published in recent years.

1

The Tündérlaki Sisters were three in number: two of them were respectable, the third was not. The two respectable girls were called Mariska and Jolán; the one who was not was Putyi.

Putyi was not even an actress - just a sort of show-girl. She led an immoral life, for she had a friend (just one, to be sure) who was very rich and kept her as his mistress. He had a large apartment furnished for her, showered her with money and jewelry, and provided lavishly for her clothing.

Mariska and Jolán lived with Putyi, who kept them supplied with dresses, hats, jewels and money. For Putyi was a good sister and had a very high esteem for their respectability. Mariska and Jolán also prided themselves on being respectable and having to give nothing in return for their lodging, their silk stockings, plumed hats and patent leather shoes.

Apart from that, Mariska had a special reason for carrying her head high. She wanted to become a teacher, indeed she already had her diploma and expected to receive an appointment any day. But it was slow in coming, in spite of the gracious intervention of the baron - Putyi's friend - who had gone to the length of seeing in person a few aldermen and councillors, even the Mayor himself.

By contrast, Jolán was a girl much given to day-dreaming. Her dreams were centred on marriage. Respectable, honest Matrimony, such as was the lot of every decent middle-class maiden. With a three-room flat, doing her own cooking and quarrelling with the maid.

Ah, ah, and again ah! The dream possessed her; it was the sole object of her existence. She lived in eager expectation of the day when the Man, the Husband, would come and redeem her.

Thus they waited, all three of them waited. Mariska for her Letter of Appointment; Jolán for her Husband; and Putyi for the dreams of her sisters to come true.

2

One day Mariska came home, beaming with joy.

"Oh, Putyi," she said, "this time it really looks as if I'll get that appointment after all. The gentleman on whom it depends has sent word for me to come and see him this afternoon."

"At last!" Putyi exclaimed.

"Well, I see your lucky star is rising," said Jolán. "But where's mine hiding so long?" she added, with a sigh.

At this they pondered a while.

"I think," Putyi said, "that I'll have to take a hand in this. You'll never find a husband by yourself. So I am going to find one for you."

"Oh, Putyi," Jolán said blissfully, "you can do anything once you've made up your mind."

Putyi looked at her, deeply touched.

"How stupid of us not to have thought of this before. A poor girl like you might just sit there waiting for her Prince Charming till Kingdom Come. Money rules the world, my dear, and suitors are giving you a wide berth, thinking you haven't got a penny. But they are very much mistaken, for I've decided this very moment to give you twenty thousand crowns for a dowry."

Jolán was struck dumb with happiness.

"Twenty thousand crowns!..." she whispered at last.

Mariska was deeply affected. "You're the best sister that ever lived," she said.

"Yes," said Putyi, equally moved. "Say what you will, I'm a good girl. These twenty thousand crowns are all I possess, but I'll give them to you."

3

Shortly before the show was due to start, Mariska came back from the gentleman who had the last word in the matter of her appointment. She was looking gloomy.

"Anything wrong?" Putyi asked sympathetically.

"Why, yes, more or less," Mariska said.

"What's up?"

"Oh, nothing much... You see, it's all settled now, and I could get my appointment right away, but the old chap's made it clear that he won't do it for nothing."

"So he wants money!"

"Oh no! It's... I seem to have made a hit with him and..."

"I see."

Putyi reflected. So did Jolán. Mariska kept silent. After a brief pause Putyi inquired:

"What did you tell him?"

"What could I?" Mariska flared up, offended. "Do you think I'd let a man like that come near me? Do you think I could ever do such a thing? You know my principles..."

Putyi got alarmed.

"Please, please, don't misunderstand me. I know you're a respectable girl... Still... But tell me, how did it all end?"

"I turned my back on him. Walked out of his office. I told him he might as well never appoint me, for I would die rather than do something shameful."

Jolán voiced her approval.

"You were quite right," she said.

"Absolutely," Putyi agreed. "And what about him? What did he say?"

"He said I was a foolish girl, I should think it over, after all, my future depended on it, and he wanted to be of help. He told me to come and see him again tomorrow, but I told him I would never show my face in his office again, and burst into tears. But, on the way home, I began to change my mind, I thought it would be such a pity for me to miss this wonderful opportunity... Don't you think so?"

"Why, of course," said Jolán.

"Absolutely," said Putyi.

"It occurred to me that there might be a way out..."

"What way?" asked Putyi.

"Well, I thought that someone ought to go and see that man and explain to him that I'm not the sort of girl who would do such a thing. If someone were to appeal to him that, for once, he should behave like a gentleman and not misuse his authority..."

"All right, but who is to go there?" asked Jolán.

"Maybe Putyi... She's got a name, a glib tongue and a way of impressing people, so..." Mariska said, with some hesitation.

Putyi turned pale.

"You think I should go?"

Mariska plucked up courage.

"Why not, Putyi? It isn't such a great sacrifice - why shouldn't you do it for your sister? I bet it won't cost you more than a word, and I'll have my appointment."

Putyi looked at Jolán, as though expecting her to protest. But Jolán said: "Ah, Putyi, you're such a good girl... You've provided for me, and you're bound to do something for poor Mariska as well."

"But... But what if that gentleman refuses to do it for me too... for nothing?" Putyi asked bitterly.

The two others smiled at each other and said in unison: "Come, come, Putyi."

4

Mariska's appointment was also the making of Jolán. One of Mariska's fellow-teachers began to frequent the Tündérlaki home. He fell in love with Jolán. She was not averse to the young man, whose infatuation grew rapidly when he learned that he was wooing twenty thousand crowns. Mariska added fuel to his fire.

"You had better ask Putyi for my sister's hand."

"I beg your pardon?... Why Miss Putyi?"

"Because she's the head of the family, you know. It's she that is giving the twenty thousand crowns."

The teacher turned a bit pale.

"Oh, I see."

"Yes. Any objection?"

"Well... er... it is a bit awkward. You mustn't misunderstand me, Miss Mariska. I have a very high opinion of Miss Putyi, your sister. But... you see... er... I'm a man of peculiarly delicate feelings..."

Mariska gave him an icy look.

"Nonsense! Jolán is a fine girl and you're a fine man: you'll make a happy couple. Nothing else counts. You're wasting precious moments through your shilly-shallying."

The teacher stammered something. But afterwards he considered that common sense is the key to success, so he donned his frock-coat, called on Putyi, and asked Jolán's hand in marriage.

Putyi was practically in tears with joy; in an access of maternal affection she gave the two her blessing.

Jolán and her fiancé were a picture of bliss. Day after day the teacher turned up at the home of his betrothed, where he partook of a substantial meal and helped himself to the baron's cigars and cigarettes. Yet, as he had pointed out himself, he was a man of peculiarly delicate feelings.

"I don't like this sort of thing," he would remark to Jolán, almost every time they met. "If I could help it, I would rather decline your dowry."

Jolán was indignant.

"What a crazy idea! To throw away so much money!"

"No, but after all... Your sister's a wonderful girl, I admit. But honour does come first, don't you think?"

"No doubt," Jolán agreed with firm conviction.

"And once we are husband and wife..."

"What then?"

"I hope you won't take it amiss, darling, but I would rather we didn't cultivate her..."

"Just as you wish, dearest," Jolán said obediently. She looked up at her fiancé with a beaming face.

5

The Tündérlaki Sisters, as I have said, were three in number: two of them were respectable, the third was not.

1911

(1878-1933)

"I ran away from the paternal home to become a journalist, became infatuated with a provincial actress, felt happy, was an artist, plied the bottle, had my fling, made love - I don't know what came over me," Gyula Krúdy writes in his autobiography. Such, indeed, was his life. Born into a family of the provincial gentry, he lived in Budapest for the best part of his life, and in his writings we find the poesy of his native Nyírség district, of the Hungarian countryside, as well as the whirligig of urban life, of young petticoat-chasers and flirtatious women, literary cafés, Turkish baths, horse-races, big battles fought at the card-table, and trysting-places. He put himself into many fictitious figures - now he was Sindbad the mariner, now Kázmér Rezeda, the impecunious and enamoured poet, a man always full of yearnings, always on the move, always after women and food, and professing the vanity of life. His impressionistic sketches, the numerous little episodes he knew and told about the Hungary of his time constitute a lasting lifework - the picture of a world and an attitude.

Krúdy has been called "the Hungarian Proust," perhaps because there hovers about his figures that kind of poesy, that approach blending past and future, which is so characteristic of the great French writer; and because Krúdy's life and art also embody a constant search of uncapturably fleeting Time, in remembrance of things past.

He is one of the most poetical of Hungarian writers of fiction. The atmosphere of his writings, the heroes - "hazy knights," as he called them - of his short stories and novels, added new colours to the spectrum of Hungarian letters. This was linked with the deep, vibrant tone of his prose, which found so many imitators after his death, and with his attitude as a man and writer, to which his works owed their magic and popularity - a spleen that is specifically Magyar, a sense of the joys and inexplicable sorrows of life.

He was a prolific writer. Whenever he had lost money at cards or on the turf, he would sit down in a café and write away in his pearly hand, immortalizing the adventures of jockeys and ladies of easy virtue and journalists who fought duels with army officers. There are Krúdy fans who claim to own a hundred and twenty or thirty books written by him. An enumeration of the most important of his novels can be but a haphazard one: A vörös postakocsi (The Scarlet Mail-coach), Hét bagoly (Seven Owls), Boldogult úrfikoromban (The Young Gentleman that I Once Was), Asszonyságok díja (The Wages of Good Women), Reseda Kázmér szép élete (The Good Life of Kázmér Rezeda), Az útitárs (The Fellow Traveller). His principal volumes of short stories are: Szindbád, Tótágas (The Head-Stand), Az élet álom (Life's a Dream), and Egy pohár borovicska (One Glass of Gin).

Titus Finehouse,^[16] the journalist, had been sentenced to death by the directors of the Club, in the room, where the members usually held their conferences and courts of honour, and set down the rules for forthcoming duels.

The room had served this purpose ever since it had been the site of a ball in honour of Albert, Prince of Wales, at the end of which the participating gentlemen had fought one another with champagne bottles and had snatched the violins and flutes out of the musicians' hands to beat each other up with. After that memorable occasion, no further rioting had taken place in this room of dark memories; it had, on the contrary, been used only for honourable purposes. The lives of rooms may thus change, no less than those of the people who live in them. Rooms know no shame; only women can be as shameless as rooms.

Titus had written an insulting article about the Club: it was for this that he had to die. P. E. G., retired colonel of the Hussars and member of the Club, who was known as the best marksman in Hungary, had been detailed to execute the verdict. The journalist's fate was thus sealed. He could now, while still among the living, give away without the slightest compunction all his worldly goods, to the extent he ever possessed any; no doubt, he would not need them any more.

Following the time-honoured practice on the occasion of trumped-up family misfortunes, Finehouse's first thought was to ask his editor for an advance. An advance will reconcile a journalist with death no less than with life.

Having received his advance, he nonchalantly left Elderberry Street, where for many years he had struggled, at a hostile writing desk, with poor pens, watery inks and, even worse, with the complexities of syntax, cropping up always when he intended to write his most brilliant articles. With the advance in his pocket, Finehouse made up his mind to die like a gentleman. Let us observe how our hero, in anticipation of his own demise, accomplished this feat.

To begin with, the journalist had to get hold of a suitable hat, for his own, as a result of his nocturnal mode of life (when nobody could see it anyway), already resembled the headgear occasionally left behind in cafés in lieu of payment. The customer takes to his heels, and the hat waits in vain to be called for. It rarely occurs that a customer, after having departed on the pretence of "just going across the street," ever returns for his hat. Finehouse, as a rule, came by his hats, umbrellas and canes in cafés - not through fraud, God forbid - but simply through the grace of Olga, the cashier of the café where he usually hung out every night. However, we must not have any misgivings regarding Olga's and Finehouse's friendship. The journalist would simply stand about at the cashier's desk - just like other night-birds, who spend their lives in cafés - and tell Olga all sorts of things he had heard in the editorial office. From these talks Olga could have become acquainted with the world of politics and literature. Yet she never showed the least interest in any of the people Finehouse kept telling her about in his dull stories. Nor was she surprised when unavoidable circumstances obliged her to stand surety with the side-whiskered waiter on behalf of some of the journalists (and, of course, of Finehouse too) in connection with scrambled eggs, ham-sandwiches, pickled sausages, sardines, wienerwursts served with horse-radish, slices of salami, bread and butter, pickled herrings, lean slices of bacon, smoked sausages, or whatever else a penniless journalist usually subsisted on.

And Olga was not surprised even when Finehouse, lanky and pale, holding his hat under his arm, informed her with a martyr's solemnity that his ill fate could not be averted, that he had to die young, in the very middle of a promising career and without having finished the great work, which he, as an old-fashioned journalist, constantly dreamed about in times of need, and from which he always hoped a change for the better. This great work, it is true, he had never even begun although he had told everybody that he was always working at it in the small hours of the morning. And now there he stood, before Olga's throne, unshaven, blue-lipped and blear-eyed. He expected some sort of a miracle from her, like a drowning man, who catches at a straw. Olga, however, maintained her placid indifference, sustained by her shawl, hat and coat, hanging within hand's reach in case she had to flee from some drunken customer. In matters, such as the supplying of cigarettes or of a tip for the janitor to open the house-door after midnight, this woman would at times show incomparable kindness! But now, as she considered T. F.'s situation, she could not hide a smile, which served to pass a bitter judgement on her own fate too:

"One must die somehow or other," she said.

"But surely not in such a shabby old hat!" the condemned man burst out indignantly.

Olga came from southern Hungary, her moods changed quickly, and looking at Finehouse's hat, her natural kindness gained the upper hand again.

"It is really worn-out! Not even worth pressing!" she remarked, examining the hat with womanly care. Then she left her throne, and went into a small closet, in which various objects left by their owners were stowed away by the employees of the café.

"It was left behind by a customer who swore he was about to drown himself in the Danube. Try it on, Titus."

Finehouse put the hat on his head and surveyed himself in the mirror from all sides. He liked the hat, but he did not want Olga to know it. So he said:

"Isn't it strange that this hat should all of a sudden remind me of the small provincial town where I spent part of my childhood? Such hats used to be worn by men in green breeches who came there in pairs, with all sorts of wires and knives hanging from their belts - men at whose sight the dogs began to bark madly, smelling animal blood on them."

"Sowgelders!" exclaimed Olga, and now she also looked at the hat in amusement for, coming from the country herself, she knew those wandering youths, whose profession it was to rob animals of their sex. "Let me tell you, Titus, that none of your colleagues ever had such a hat! They will turn green with envy, when you appear in it! The editor of the Concord has been asking for it, but I did not give it him. I wanted to reward some gifted young poet with it, but there are no gifted poets nowadays."

Finehouse did not take off the Tyrolese hat, for he thought it made him look like one of the squirearchy. He stood there, his spirits rising, as if suddenly his chest had been relieved of the weight that had been compressing it for hours almost to the point of choking him.

Olga now handed him the umbrella-cane.

"Well, Titus, tell me honestly, did any newspaper scribbler here in Budapest ever have an umbrella that was a cane at the same time?"

Finehouse was indeed amazed at this peculiar cane, out of which, in the event of rain, one could pull an umbrella. He tried out the trick right away and held the opened umbrella over his hat:

"Such presents are given to old economists to commemorate their twenty-fifth jubilee..."

"You're telling me!" Olga replied.

"Or to a middle-class husband, who, in the course of a long married life, has already received from his wife such a variety of little presents for name-days, birthdays, jubilees, that he possesses everything from ties to smoker's sets. While my waistcoat pocket is, of course, full of tobacco."

In speaking as he did, Titus was not free from hidden excitement, as he turned the odd treasure around in his hand. Although his brow was clouded, there was a sparkle of hope in his eyes, because the possibility occurred to him that he might survive the duel by some stroke of good luck and that, being in possession of the green hat and the umbrella-cane, he might rise in the world.

*

"What a splendid woman, that Olga!" Titus kept saying to himself on leaving the Franciscan Café. Never once did he think of going to the editorial office; although he might have caused a sensation there with his new outfit, he would risk being caught by the bilious editor and being entrusted, on the eve of his death, with writing up the evening news. He would rather die than sec the news-bulletin now! He would sooner lose his job than work like a slave tonight of all nights, he, the proud owner of a new hat and umbrella-cane! He would degrade himself if - at a time like this - he were to hang around that smelly office, acting the busybody and begging for work, for anything to prove himself useful at all costs! Simpletons of journalism might do this, men who never had had any experience in life - not to speak of a duel with pistols. Not even here, on the Danube embankment, where the bullet was sure to miss one and splash into the river, even if the pistols were loaded - as experienced seconds were in the habit of saying.

The clock on Franciscan Square was striking ten, when Finehouse, driven by an inner compulsion, directed his steps towards the National Club, where the court of honour had passed the death sentence on him.

At first, it was only from the opposite side of Hatvani Street that he dared to scrutinize the castle-like one-storied building, through the open doorway of which the coaches were driving, their wheels rattling to a stop, directly in front of a flight of stairs covered with a red-velvet carpet. After they had deposited the guests, the porter in cherry-red livery slammed the coach door, causing the big lamp hanging in the archway to quiver. The coaches then drove into the inner court, turned around the fountain and left through the other gateway, passing into Szép Street. The dimly lit Club windows were closed tight, as if none of those behind them ever needed fresh air - though it was a mild night in early autumn, when the sky is full of stardust.

Our hero, lurking in a doorway, gazed rapturously at this grim building, where life and death were unimportant, as if the gentlemen who visited that exclusive house, had other ways of living and of dying than did common mortals! What would happen, for instance, if Titus were now to step across the street and ask a coachman in cherry-red livery after P. E. G., retired colonel of the Hussars, so that he might at least have a word with the gentleman who was going to kill him the next day? Most likely, the coachman would disdain to have anything to do with him; maybe he would even bawl him out if he recognized him, for these old Club employees, of course, knew the rules of duelling. The opponents were not supposed to meet before the duel, and so Finehouse would only expose himself to horrible humiliation. With his old hat on, he might have done it, but now the "sowgelder's hat," as he called it to himself, gave him a certain self-assurance. He left his hiding place and made a detour through Kerepesi Street, coming back on the other side of Hatvani Street, the side on which the Club stood. He sauntered along like an indifferent stroller, without looking at that feudal castle as he passed its open portal, his umbrella-cane swinging on his arm, for it had a conveniently crooked handle, which one could put over one's wrist. It swung to and fro, now and again tapping against his knees, as if to reassure him. Indeed, in possession of such an umbrella-cane, nobody could possibly debase himself to such an extent as to crave pettily for mercy. And Titus, with a purposeful air, turned into elegant Szép Street, in order to save his face before the cherry-red club porter, who, it appeared to him, was looking at him with irony and contempt, as if this impudent servant had guessed why the journalist was strolling in the vicinity of the Club... And, having entered Szép Street, Titus passed along the curtained windows, behind which the gentlemen were no doubt eating their supper and gazing admiringly at the colonel - like at a rare kind of lobster.

*

In the course of his walk through the narrow dark streets of the inner city, Finehouse once more found himself in Franciscan Square; for the habit of many years kept on bringing him back to this same place. He called himself a stupid ass for not going to some distinguished restaurant, since the "whole town" must know about his fatal duel by now, and be could well show himself to the world, for all and sundry would be talking about his affair in any case. He could demonstrate his fearlessness, his determination, his courage all the more easily now that he had a suitable hat and an umbrella-cane to cut a handsome figure with. Why shouldn't he, for once, enjoy being the centre of attention, considering that so many people regarded this as the acme of pleasure. When would T. F., the insignificant journalist, ever again be in a position to have people point at him saying: "There goes the journalist who had the courage to challenge death in the execution of his professional duty..." When would he again be noticed in those circles where duels inspired respect? When would those ironical, contemptuous, sneering, mean eyes of his fellow-beings turn respectful, if not tonight of all nights, the last night of his life, which, with the advance money in his pocket, he could spend in carefree merriment?

Finehouse fancied himself in the middle of a distinguished restaurant, where the gipsies were playing for him alone, and the women, dressed for the theatre, kept turning their heads towards him, their hearts a-flutter, for he was far and away the most interesting man in town at present, ready, for the sake of honour, to encounter a roaring lion and face certain death.

"You could really afford a better supper today," the Tyrolese hat advised him recklessly. "A beefsteak for instance in some swanky restaurant, where they not only know how to spell beefsteak correctly, but also how to prepare it properly."

"With a fried egg," the umbrella-cane added, tapping against his side.

"You have money, yet you have no idea how to be a gentleman," the hat reproached him while he continued his way towards the small pub in the Athenaeum building. "You will never be a gentleman if you miss such an opportunity. You should go to the Grand Hotel Hungaria or the Hotel Bristol, to let everyone there see that you, too, exist in this world and that you intend to die on the field of honour. If you don't like beefsteaks, why, find something else on the menu which the kowtowing waiter will hand you. Fowl perhaps... or maybe young hare - it is in season again since the middle of August. With bay leaves swimming in the sauce around its saddle. And they say one has luck in a duel, if one finds shot in the meat. Don't order crab, the market is swamped with it at this time of the year. You would not manage it anyhow, for it takes skill to eat crab in a mannerly fashion. Order something from the grill, instead, and the waiter will honour you with humble, apologetic looks, while you wait impatiently for the meat to appear. Just think, what your editor would do if he could have a duel played up in the newspapers for days! He would get all he could out of the occasion, he would! But you are too stupid even to make the acquaintance of some nosy society Lady."

Finehouse nearly gave way to the obstinate urging that resounded in the tapping of his umbrella-cane and in the rustling of the tuft of chamois hair at the back of his hat: "Be a social lion, if only for a day, before you have to die!"

It was then that he passed a street vendor, who sold all sorts of fruit from a small cart by the light of a lamp. Grapes and nuts were an expensive luxury at the moment, being out of season, and found few day-time buyers; but the reckless fly-by-nights took to them with delight. In order to celebrate this unique day by an extravagance, Finehouse bought a paper bag full of grapes and nuts and paid for them without even bargaining.

*

"I was not born to be a gentleman, although I shall have to die tomorrow just as if I were one!" said Finehouse to himself unhappily, as, with the paper bag tucked under his arm, he entered the small night-pub which kept open only for the sake of type-setters and similar nocturnal workers whose soberness could be taken for granted, and who were more likely to come here for food than for amusement. The publican's name was Kersantz, and journalists, accustomed as they were to coffee-house life, could frequent his place only on rare occasions, as it cost them more than to sit in a coffee-house, where they could limit themselves to sipping their coffee, plain or with milk, while everybody who wished to make a night of it at Kersantz's place was obliged both to eat and to drink. One had to spend money here, and printers alone would be granted credit, for they would pay up regularly every Saturday. Even an editor-in-chief would not get anything without paying cash; and that is why Finehouse was by no means completely dissatisfied with his choice, when he decided to spend the last night of his life in this respectable night-pub.

He took a seat at a comfortable corner-table, like someone who is thoroughly sure of himself.

It did not escape his attention that Kersantz, the silent redbearded Swabian who was carefully measuring his wine at the counter, like a chemist weighs out his powders, that this mute Kersantz favoured Finehouse's new hat and umbrella-cane with an appreciative look. Was he, perhaps, saying to himself that this umbrella would some day come into his possession anyhow? But who could fathom the thoughts of an innkeeper? Only moneyless people suspect the innkeeper of watching them steadily to keep them from running away without paying.

Finehouse asked for the bill of fare from the undersized waiter whose attention had been drawn to the new guest by a low voiced "Over there, John" from the innkeeper. It was the first time in his life that such a distinction was conferred upon Titus Finehouse. There is no denying it, publicans can see into their customers' pockets.

John crossed himself, catching sight of Mr. Finehouse at the corner-table. He approached hesitatingly as if he saw a ghost.

"I was told, sir, that you had been shot in a duel."

"Dreams of the future!" replied Titus with a laugh, and continued in the particular jargon which journalists reserve for waiters, "Yes indeed, John, dreams of the future. You should be more attentive, I mean, open your ears better when you are eavesdropping at Marich's table."

John's face, incapable of hiding his feelings, now revealed even greater amazement.

"Sure enough, it was at Marich's table tonight that the printers said your life, sir, was not worth a brass farthing. And that you were already dead..."

In the inner room of the vaulted public house, there was a long table upon which the printers had put a sign in beautiful big letters, reading: "Marich's table." Mr. Marich was at that time the most renowned type-setter, who could boast of having set Francis Deák's famous Easter article.^[17] And this Mr. Marich, a very respectable, tall and dignified gentleman, as a rule, made his appearance after midnight, when he would assume the presidency at the table.

Titus was flattered at being the subject of discussion even at Marich's table, for it was a table frequented by the most respected printers; but he pretended not to be interested in the excitement of the waiter, who stood there slapping his knees with his napkin, as if trying to wake himself from his dreams.

"Would you care for lights with pickles?" he said at last, remembering dimly that Titus, whenever he ate here, would order this cheap, unappetizing dish. Titus always asked for half a lemon with this course and praised the cook for taking the trouble to cut the lights into small square pieces so that they would not be underdone.

Titus did not heed John's offer and merely murmured, under his breath, something to the effect that this little fellow wanted "to pickle him," as if his whole body, and life, and profession, and his mood as well were not already pickled sufficiently!

"I want a broiled cock!" Titus snapped, noticing that this was the most expensive course on the modest bill of fare.

"Fricassee of chicken, very good, sir!"

"I said, cock! One that was not caponized in youth, like some editors of no talent! One that lived to be a cock, and ran after young servant-girls and took a peck at the nurses, too!"

Who knows how long our hero would have gone on praising the merits of the cock he meant to devour tonight, calling after the departing waiter to serve up the cock's spurs, not to mention its liver and gizzard, when he was cut short by the sudden appearance of a fiery red moustache on the threshold of the pub.

There are all sorts of red moustaches. Most of them are venomous, malignant, neglected emblems of the male, unworthy of cultivation, if only because of their colour. This particular red moustache, however, was the one exception in a hundred, representing good humour, sprightliness, satisfaction and joie de vivre, as if the corners of the mouth under the moustache were fixed in a permanent smile. This red moustache deserved to be cultivated and well treated, and to be patted frequently, like a faithful dog. There were round spectacles above the red moustache, one of those funny horn-rim spectacles eternally wobbling on the bridge of the nose, with a ribbon hanging over the ears and lenses behind which the eyes seem to radiate perpetual kindness.

But it was the tie under this moustache that riveted one's attention. A lavallière, with white and blue dots, it nevertheless boasted a pin, shaped as a boar's head with ruby eyes.

And, indeed, it was the pin of a game-dealer, called Andrew Aurous. This name was a heritage from the days when he had worked as a journalist, before switching to the career of game dealer.

"I'm glad to find you here, Titus," began the ex-journalist, who used to come quite often to this pub, from his nearby house, to inhale the smell of the press, as he put it. Because, even as a game-dealer, he could not forget that peculiar smell. "I read in the paper that you have established certain connections with the squirearchy, with the National Club, with the counts. I want to recommend my old Drawing-room Calendar to you, the one I compiled when I was trying to bring together Hungary's men of literature and the aristocracy. A count, followed by an author - a countess, by a woman writer... That's how my calendar was compiled, interspersed with narratives, verses and portraits."

"Not a bad idea," the journalist replied. "But, for the time being, I am a man condemned to death."

Andrew Aurous, however, was not the man to give up, at the first hurdle, a plan for the sake of which he had left his house in Bástya Street at such a late hour.

"Literature has taken a turn for the worse. Lewis Chatty is now always writing about railway workers, ever since he created the character of Adam Churly in his comic paper. The idea of writing about conductors and watchmen! One should write about counts and countesses, anything else is of no account. There will never be a genuine Hungarian literature, until writers and magnates are on a par."

"On a par, right you are," Finehouse replied. "But, I am, as I mentioned before, condemned to death, until further notice and now I shall drink a 'Chatty.'"

"That's just the trouble," exclaimed Andrew Aurous, the compiler of the one-time Drawing-room Calendar, fingering his watch-chain, which sported a boar's tusk, set in silver of course. "Wine and soda is named by the innkeepers after Chatty, instead of being named after Count Andrássy or Prince Festetich. That's why you modern Hungarian writers never get anywhere! Now we of the older generation might have directed literature into proper channels. But you took the pen out of our hands, and here you are now, against the Club and against the whole aristocratic world!"

Our hero answered cynically:

"A 'Chatty' is a grand concoction: one part wine, one part mineral water and one part soda."

The 'literary' game-dealer could only shake his head over so much pigheadedness.

"I have preserved my connections with the aristocracy, and I must say, I never had cause to regret it. I still get pheasants from Count Berchtold's woods."

"I never touch pheasant," Finehouse interrupted in a mood bordering on anarchism.

"All the rabbits shot on Count Degenfeld's estate are delivered to me, for I have a contract with those people."

"I can easily do without roast rabbit."

At that moment the game-dealer caught sight of the Tyrolese hat, with the tuft of chamois-hair, hanging on the peg, and could not refrain from remarking:

"Well, brother, to judge by your hat, one might almost think you too belonged to the gentry."

"I don't want to belong anywhere!" replied Titus, throwing a contemptuous look at the tell-tale hat and at the game-dealer as well.

All of a sudden, without warning, the fiery red moustache appeared in its true light and revealed that sly venom, concealed under every red moustache.

"In that case, consider my visit as nonexistent, though I did come here entirely for your sake!"

And with this the game-dealer departed, conscious of his importance, authority and wealth, shaking his head, convinced that his intervention aimed at reconciling Hungary's literary circles with the aristocratic world had been in vain. At home, he no doubt complained to his wife about the ingratitude of Hungarian writers towards would-be benefactors.

Finehouse, too, felt some misgivings at being abandoned at the corner-table in the company of John and a chicken fricassee. Perhaps he was missing his last opportunity of making peace with his opponent... Who knows the ways of Providence? Might it not be better to be the editor of that Drawing-room Calendar and to outlive the coming day?

"I thought I told you I wanted cock," Finehouse grumbled at the solicitous waiter, who, in the absence of other guests, was standing at the journalist's table, and looked on in apparent amazement as bite after bite of the chicken leg disappeared in the mouth of the dead man, until only the bone remained.

Since John, not knowing what to say, made no reply, Finehouse continued impatiently:

"There is no real service nowadays, not even at Kersantz's! Under the circumstances, there's no choice but to avoid this establishment in future. Thank God, I shall have a very good reason for staying away. Bang!" he shouted, pointing a salt crescent at his forehead.

"Bang!" repeated the little waiter, and slipped away unobtrusively, as if he found it decidedly unpleasant to be near a corpse.

Left to himself and having nobody to chat with, Finehouse returned to his lugubrious thoughts. We shall not attempt to describe all his animadversions; there was, however, an ever-recurring picture of a red horse ridden by a man in checkered trousers and top hat, and carrying the caption: "Time flies." Would it not be better for him - Finehouse - to fly too, instead of senselessly facing the fatal pistol? He had kneaded a tidy little heap of pellets from the breadcrumbs, when the door once more opened - again in Finehouse's honour.

"I seem to make business thrive here," said Finehouse to himself, recognizing in the newcomers his seconds. They did not belong to the literary profession, but were so-called gentlemen of leisure. On catching sight of them, Finehouse felt a convulsion in the region of his diaphragm and could barely keep down the chicken he had just devoured. Every nerve tingled painfully intolerably; he was seized by ghastly shivering, and his face froze at the sight of the two gentlemen, who greeted him jovially, recounting that they had been looking for him "all over town," until at last somebody had told them in the editorial office that if they did not find the journalist in this pub, then Finehouse had probably taken to his heels and left the town for good.

"Who said that?" asked Titus absent-mindedly, as if he had already got used to the idea of running away.

"Algernon S. said so," one of the seconds replied.

The Algernon S. referred to had always been Finehouse's enemy at the newspaper, forever complaining that Finehouse's name had appeared in print more often than his own.

"Algernon is a liar as per usual," exclaimed the journalist, with a beneficent burst of anger, which helped him to regain his strength of mind for the time being.

"Others have voiced the same opinion," his other second noted. "They said that Titus Finehouse would not wait for the duel, but run away from town post-haste. Unfortunately, they said, it would be in vain, because the colonel's friends, the other officers, would find him wherever he was, and cut him to pieces, as was their bounden duty."

The second who spoke thus, was a tall gentleman with a pockmarked face, a big nose and a Slovak accent. In civil life, he was a painter, but his name had figured more often in connection with duels than on pictures. Most of his time was spent in restaurants where he entertained his table companions with gruesome tales of duelling, for in one way or another he had been connected in the last twenty years with each and every duel, at least with those fought in Hungary.

The other second was a dangerous little hunchback, whose pale face and straggling black beard, eternal morning coat and tall stovepipe hat, double-barrelled pistols (two of which he constantly kept in his pocket), sword-cane, and hunting knife stuck in his waistcoat pocket, were known - as was his provocative behaviour - everywhere in town where affairs of honour were at issue.

The hunchback was a romantic figure, and, having immediately noticed Finehouse's umbrella-cane in the corner, remarked contemptuously, as befitted his character:

"With a single whack of my stick I could break this pastoral crook in two. The thing is only suitable for weak clergymen," he added, and deposited his own rattling steel-cane at a tidy distance from Finehouse's title to fame.

A shorthand teacher by profession, he had almost no time for exercizing it, because his friends insisted on overwhelming him with their affairs of honour. His name was Towerpommel, and he boasted that this not at all commonplace name had been bestowed on his family by Maria Theresa herself.

Towerpommel sat himself down with his back to the wall, after casting a glance in every direction, as if desiring to establish from which side to anticipate a treacherous attack: be it the murderous assault of a drunkard, the approach of a rowdy, an unexpected insult, or a slap in the face; for this addict of the gentle art of duelling was always expecting to be beaten up somewhere or somehow. Having seated himself, he pulled out of his pocket first one and then the other of his pistols, and made sure that they were properly loaded.

"We are up against the Club now, and its long arm reaches into every corner," said the little man softly, and his eyes, the eyes of a consumptive, blazed enigmatically. "I don't presume any lack of chivalry on the part of the gentlemen themselves, but what if one of the servants, footmen, waiters, butlers or coachmen should decide all of a sudden to take vengeance for their masters' sake?... Am I not right, Benchy? Just the other day the fat editor, who had written something unsavoury about the mistress of a count, was beaten up by commissionaires near the Club."

The gentleman with the pockmarked face, called Benchy, merely nodded his assent, as he did not care to argue about bagatelles. He chose to talk of duels rather than of coachmen's brawls. And Benchy, speaking with his Slovak accent, continued the story he had begun on the way to the pub and had, no doubt, already related to Towerpommel on many previous occasions (for they were given to spending day and night together in various taverns):

"I tell you, Steve, the wound seemed to be a fatal one, and I would not have given a brass farthing for Count Mamby's life after Count Bimby's bullet had gone through his liver. The liver of that loose-liver... And all the time the flies kept on biting me devilishly for there was a stable near the site of the duel... We had to look for a priest, to give Count Mamby a chance at least to die a good Catholic... Because, you know, I have always attached much importance to religion, my uncle being the dean of Rose Hill... On my word of honour, the flies kept on following me like devils..."

"Devilish flies!" said Towerpommel in acknowledgement of the fly episode which now made its first appearance in the oft-repeated tale. Never before had Mr. Benchy mentioned these flies that bit duellists and seconds alike.

*

Soon afterwards the two gentlemen got ready to leave the pub, as if they had only wanted to make certain that Finehouse had not decamped. They did not belong to that fraternity of topers who are capable of sitting around in public houses for hours on end, silently drinking and lost in reverie. They frequented pubs only as convenient places in which to carry on their daily confabs, paying no attention to what they ate or drank, because they were much too busy talking. They would, however, sit in the pub any length of time for the sake of telling adventurous stories, especially if they could somehow involve their own person in these tales.

Our gloomy journalist did not impress them as a suitable listener; he was almost rudely inattentive while Benchy was telling his story, and the little shorthand teacher, nervously twitching his bushy brows, tried in vain to arouse his interest. Titus remained absent-minded even when Benchy came to the conclusion that Count Mamby's happy recovery was really due to his uncle, the dean of Rose Hill, of whom it was said in the Uplands that nobody ever died who had received the extreme unction from his hands.

"What is your religion, by the way?" Towerpommel had asked Titus abruptly, but not without a purpose.

"I am a Roman Catholic," the journalist replied indifferently.

"You could have told me that earlier," his second returned mysteriously.

Yet now that the gentlemen began to make serious preparations for leaving their absent-minded listener, the journalist exclaimed:

"Take me with you, wherever you go!"

He put his green Tyrolese hat on his head and reached for his umbrella-cane, as if trying to prove that his external appearance would be an asset in high society.

The hat and the umbrella-cane did make an impression on the seconds; they looked at each other thoughtfully, and at last Towerpommel declared:

"Well, friend, I don't mind, you can come along. We have a date in the Orpheum Café^[18] with some gentlemen from the country, who wish to have our advice in a certain Transdanubian affair of honour. So you will have to excuse us if we leave you alone there for a while."

The best cab of the capital was waiting for the seconds, because seconds were wont to ride in two-horse cabs in those days, whenever they had something to settle in town. The ordinary man in the street would cross himself every time he saw this splendid cab, with the two grim gentlemen inside, flitting through the streets of the city. Meantime, the better-informed would try to guess, then and there, on what affair of honour Manuel, the cabman, was urging his horses through Váci and Crown Prince Streets, while the pockmarked painter would greet the people on one side of the street, and Towerpommel would again and again ceremoniously take off his top hat at the other window of the cab. Even when they could espy no familiar faces, they would salute just the same, for a gentleman riding in a cab must always be the first to greet.

But it was dark now and the seconds were little concerned when the humble journalist climbed briskly up onto the box and seated himself beside the cabman, so as not to inconvenience the gentlemen inside. An imperceptible tug at the reins brought the steeds to a stop, directly in front of the mysteriously illuminated night-café, while the corpulent porter, garbed like a Hussar, hurried towards them as if to greet long-expected visitors.

The air was clean and pleasantly warm, already in the lounge, and there was almost no trace of the unpleasant smell associated with inferior music-halls. Indeed, the scent of an illusive perfume hung in the air, as if a fashionable diva from the operetta had just crossed the lounge, condescendingly letting her swan's-down cloak glide from her shoulder for the edification of the minions. Beyond, the grey-bearded bandleader was playing soft, lilting melodies in the French manner, and his big beard was draped over his violin, as if the bow were drawing the tune from the beard.

A long time ago, when still a budding journalist, Finehouse had often come to this place as part of his education in the "school of life"; but ever since the Franciscan Café, with its free and easy ways, and its lack of emphasis on elegance, had opened, Finehouse had avoided the more swanky place. After all, who would want to dress day after day in a tail-coat in order to tell tall tales about all the parties he had gone to during the course of the evening? This might suit a greenhorn, but not an old hand like himself, who, moreover, would soon have to face death.

For this very reason Finehouse did not go into the main hall but sat down in the outer room, where he intended to pass the time in the company of a bottle of beer, while his friends settled their affairs inside. Out here, the music-hall actors were playing billiards, while a number of others, their hats on their heads, were seated at marble tables, as if there was more liberty here than in the world of plush and velvet, where the band was playing.

"Well, there is no denying it, I was not born a gentleman, and yet I must die like one," said Finehouse to himself, already for the second time that night, as he sat at the corner-table and thoughtfully watched the billiard game of Baumann and Gyárfás, the music-hall comedians. He could not keep out the thought that these actors would continue their jolly game even after his burial, a bullet in his heart or in his head - whichever part of his body the colonel might prefer as a target.

Soon, however, his thoughts were forced into unexpected channels, as he was greeted, in quick succession, by the following individuals:

First, a tall horse-dealer, who looked like a haughty fellow with his twirled moustache, but was cozily passing the monotonous hours of the night in jotting down the strokes of the billiard-playing comedians. Then the tall waiter, with dyed moustache, who came out of the inner fairyland for the sole purpose of greeting Finehouse, of whose impending tragedy he had read in the newspapers.

Next in time was Caroline Turf, the flower-woman, who in days long past had been the mistress of sundry counts, but who now, with old age approaching, told the journalist: "Here's a flower for you, but I won't take any money for it!" Then came the manager of the music-hall, who looked like a lieutenant dressed up in civilian clothes, and who made a deeper bow to the journalist than he would have vouchsafed even to a millionaire. He was followed by the cloak-room attendant, who stepped forward insinuatingly, a pin between his lips and a garderobe number in his hand, ready to take Titus' outfit into the cloak-room, and yet not quite daring to touch the umbrella-cane...

Finehouse realized, while returning all these greetings, that he was sitting there with his hat on, that sowgelder's hat which thus far had never failed to make an impression wherever he showed up in it. In the huge gilt-framed mirrors he could now see the hat, with the chamois-hair at the back spread out like a fan, reflected from all sides and in countless repetitions.

"Maybe I shall yet make a hit in life," Finehouse mused, "though, come to think of it, I shall not be of this world in another twenty-four hours."

But now that Finehouse was again on the brink of despondency, fortune came to help forget his sorrow for a while. And this is how it happened: In the doorway that divided the distinguished from the common world, there appeared the powdered face of a blonde lady, and that face smiled at Finehouse as if it were set up behind the display window of a hairdresser's and flirting with the gloomy journalist through the pane. On any other occasion, Titus' face would perhaps have turned appropriately serious at the sight of this painted, expressionless doll's face, but now, on this night of nights, he raised his hand to his hat and saluted like an officer. At this the lady stepped forth in all her splendour. Now she looked like a model from the shop-window of a city tailor, on which the shop attendant had pinned a label reading "Latest Paris Fashion." She was a stupid, wicked female, whom the journalist had known in the days when the fly-by-night world had employed her as a scullery maid. She had since become the mistress of a rich cabinetmaker, and, in her new role as a lady of fashion, she took a lively interest in the journalist who was to have a duel the next day with the best shot of the National Club. It was probably the tall, well-informed waiter who had told Eliza Magnate - for such was her name - the thrilling news that the death-bound journalist had installed himself in the outer room of the café, whereupon this lady of fashion had thought it worth her while to interrupt her self-display.

The lady first examined Titus' hat and umbrella from a distance before deciding to approach the journalist's table. But Finehouse, who was nothing if not noble, hastened to assist the Angel of the Orpheum in her role; he got up from his table, politely raised his green hat, and, carefully directing his steps as if he was still a pupil at that small-town dancing school of yore, he tiptoed daintily, yet not without due manliness, towards Eliza Magnate...

"May I have the pleasure of conducting you to my table? I would be delighted if you would grant me the honour," said the journalist, and it seemed to him as if somebody else were speaking in his stead, someone of whom he had no knowledge so far, who had been secretly concealed inside of him. Cornelius, for instance, the romantic poet, who had been the journalist's ideal in his youth. Or Julius, the gallant newspaperman, who - he just remembered - was nicknamed "Flippant" in journalist circles, and had been famous for his gallantry towards the ladies, although he had kept his silver exclusively in his upper waistcoat pocket, for the manifest purpose of preventing its being pilfered from his corpulent self.

"How about a glass of bubbly, mademoiselle?" asked Titus, when, taking the beauty idol by the arm, he had led her to his table, and swept the cigarette ash off the marble with his hat.

And soon - in the words of the old tavern song - the sparkling liquid flowed, while the lady looked on with a waxen smile, for treats like that were her nightly fare. Finehouse, however, declaimed with a swagger:

"Now, do tell me, dear Eliza Magnate, what I can do to put you into a cheerful spirit just once in your life and to make you give me a kiss?"

"First of all, Sir, will you please put your hat on, or you will catch cold," came the clumsy reply of this supernaturally stupid Angel of the Orpheum, wrapped in swan's-down, silver and silk, and she helped the journalist to put his hat on his head at a gay and jaunty angle. And with her languid hands, which idleness had made as white as the inside of a walnut, she turned down the rim in harmony with the fashion of those days.

By the time Mr. Towerpommel and his partner came back from the inner sanctuary of the café, the star of the Orpheum Café and the journalist seemed to have become the greatest of friends. Encouraged by Finehouse, Eliza had already smashed a flimsy champagne glass, filled to the brim, so that the charwoman had to come and clean up the mess on the floor. The genteel quality of their principal's entertainment tremendously impressed the seconds. As Eliza Magnate's close table companion, the journalist could be no second-rate fellow after all. It dawned on the two men that their principal must really be somebody.

"Have you settled your business?" asked Titus importantly. "I hope you are again involved in a fatal case!"

The beauty queen smiled appreciatively at the gentlemen, as if she had long ago known them for their indomitable courage and heroic demeanour.

The pockmarked painter wanted to tell one of his gallant stories, as was his custom after a few glasses of wine, but Towerpommel, the dwarf, did not give him the opportunity to speak.

"It would be more opportune to instruct our friend Finehouse on how to behave at the duel tomorrow! If only to keep him from putting us to shame!"

The outer premises had become virtually deserted in these small hours. Actors, horse-dealers, lucky-bagmen had already drifted away, having lost all hope of adventure; only Uncle Blau, the old speculator, remained sitting in the corner, waiting for some rich customer to turn up to whom he might impart his secret on stock-exchange gambling in the good old days. Patti, the card-trickster, who was said to number a hundred years, had also left, together with his wig and his pack of cards. So the agitated shorthand teacher could freely measure off the thirty steps, counting aloud as he did so, and leaning on his sword-cane:

"One, two... thirteen... twenty-three... thirty; and five steps avance. Now, Benchy, you give the order to fire, please," shouted the hunchback from the other end of the room.

The pockmarked man rose from behind the wine glasses and took Finehouse by the shoulder.

"Come along, I'll show you your place," he announced, making Titus stand on a square of the café parquet. "Here you stay put and wait for the commands! First: 'Attention!' Second: 'Ready!' Then I count ten, and while I count you must fire your pistol, standing sideways to your opponent, so as to give him as narrow a target as possible. There now! Attention! Ready! One, two, three..."

At this moment, the crack of a pistol sundered the quiet harmony of the distant music. The shorthand teacher, standing at the other end of the café, had actually pulled the trigger. A lamp rattled to its death.

"We want to make this young fellow get used to the report of a gun!" remarked Towerpommel, on recovering his wits, for he had turned pale at the sound of the shot. But little harm had been done, after all. As the journalist returned to his place, Eliza Magnate stroked his hand. But when the head waiter, at last, arrived with the bill on a silver tray, the cunning expression of a highwayman on his face, our hero suddenly realized that he would be left, after paying the bill, with barely enough money to pay the janitor for opening the house door, and even that only if he could, somehow, manage to cheat the waiter out of part of his tip. Eliza drifted away towards the washroom. The two seconds got into their cab and shouted to the journalist through the window:

"See you at half past four tomorrow afternoon, Francis Joseph barracks!"

Cheered up as he was by the champagne, Finehouse still could not realize the dreadful situation he had got himself into. Walking slowly along Andrássy Street, he was hopefully searching his pockets for some hidden coins which he was in the habit of concealing even from himself. He was sure that he would come across the five-crown piece which he must have put there out of his advance. This habit had developed from the circumstance that sometimes in the office the hilarious journalists would tackle one of their company in order to hunt through his pockets... "Such is Bohemian life!" they would declare at times as they stripped Titus to the skin. Now, however, his search proved to be in vain, and even if Titus had any money left in some secret spot, he must have hidden it from himself so well that it would be found only after his death by whoever would sell his trousers; while this unknown someone was bargaining with the old-clothes-man, the silver crown would come rolling out of some pocket. So he turned his steps hastily towards the Franciscan Café, where he still hoped to find a big company, discussing his life and death at the sacrifice of a night's repose.

To his great surprise, however, the Franciscan Café was empty, and there were no journalists even at the round table by the cash-desk, where they usually sat arrogantly in the consciousness of their own importance or humbly in the shade of their penury. Only Olga was there in her place, weary, melancholy, hopeless, as always at the break of dawn, after another night devoid of events worth mentioning. Thoroughly sober now, the journalist went up to the cashier's throne and addressed her thus:

"Olga, my darling, the last day has come, the last on which you can still decide whether you want to marry me."

Olga, no doubt, had already heard this from Finehouse on numerous occasions, because she did not betray the least surprise on hearing the journalist's words. Only her eyes turned more melancholy, and the needle-work trembled a little in her hands.

"Olga, dearest," continued Titus with a burst of enthusiasm, as if this flowery speech from which he himself seemed to derive amusement, would help him to forget both the money he had squandered during the night and his penniless present. "Olga, my sweet, I would die with a peaceful mind, if I knew my name would survive me, even though it merely belonged to a widow. Mrs. Titus Finehouse, widow of Titus Finehouse! Doesn't sound at all bad, does it, Olga?"

"Widow of Titus Finehouse," said Olga, and, taking a pencil, she wrote on the margin of the cash-sheet: "Mrs. Titus Finehouse, widow," and drew a circle around the name, as if she wanted to inscribe it in her memory for ever. Like all men who rarely have an opportunity to talk about themselves, Titus enthusiastically declaimed:

"There won't be as much as a cat left behind me... My name will be mentioned for one or two days in the newspapers, but after that nobody will ever utter it again in this country. Not even by accident. But if I left a widow, the widow of Titus Finehouse in this world, who would maybe sometimes even visit my grave, I would rest much more easily down there in my coffin. And people would say, well, this Finehouse was not such a bad fellow, after all, seeing that before dying he honourably carried out his obligation to keep the promise he so frequently made to the cashier of the Franciscan Café. My name would be surrounded by a nimbus of sorts, and people would know that I did not live light-mindedly, from one moment to the other, but had a purpose in life which I fulfilled."

These sentimental words had their effect, for Olga now reached with one hand for the brandy bottle, while with the other she let a small glass sparkle against the light to convince herself that it was clean.

"This, I believe, is the Easter brandy drunk by pious Jews. The boss never drinks any other."

Finehouse gulped the brandy down with a tired, leave-taking smile. The brandy livened him up, and he would have liked to talk some more. But Olga put on a solemn face and sent him home, before he could be carried away by a new fit of sentimentality:

"We'll talk about it tomorrow," she said.

"Do you think so?" Titus asked in a voice hoarse from the brandy.

"I have a feeling we shall," replied Olga. And she gave Finehouse her hand.

*

Were the green Tyrolese hat and the umbrella-cane surprised at the sight of Titus' lodgings, when they arrived there after a lengthy walk?

Finehouse would usually throw himself on his bed, as if he had returned from the other world at daybreak, to become a small child again, lying, doubled up like an embryo, under the black-bordered obituary above the sleeper's head. This obituary - or funeral notice as it was called in those days - contained the information that Mrs. Robert Finehouse had died at the age of thirty-two, after a prolonged and painful illness. Mrs. Robert Finehouse was Titus' mother, and the obituary was his only possession. Not much of a fortune, but quite enough for such a sentimental fellow.

Shall we describe Finehouse's room? It was about as big as a hazelnut, with a little hole in it, but the keyhole through which one could peep in, was always stopped up with a rag. And outside there was a notice, which constantly flapped in the draught passing through the corridor of this ancient downtown house. "Coming in a minute!" the notice read, but the lodger never did come.

Now too, the drowsing journalist was visited by many people in succession. There was first the little cobbler's boy, with a tiny note in his hand that looked as dirty as if the boy had come into the world with it. He stood before the door in amazement, as though seeing it with its odd notice for the first time; then he gazed vacantly at the courtyard and finally left to join the procession which was following a blind singer from house to house. The journalist knew the steps of the tailor, who, for years, was wont to visit him like a lovelorn admirer and, if he managed to slip in through the door, would always begin the conversation by assuring the journalist that he only happened to be there accidentally, because he really did not want to disturb Mr. Finehouse for such a trifle. Now Titus could distinctly hear him sigh as he crouched by the keyhole and whispered endearingly:

"I only wanted to see you for a moment, my dear sir. To wish you luck, that's all. Just to set my mind at rest and convince myself that sooner or later you would pay what you owe me. Please, let me in, sir, I swear I did not even bring a bill with me."

But Titus only hid himself deeper under the counterpane, and even the slyest words could not move him. After all, he had put a notice on his door saying that he would be coming in a minute; well, let the tailor wait if he felt like it. The tailor started to leave, then turned back all of a sudden, and indignantly shouted through the keyhole:

"By God, I'll prosecute you, if you don't let me in straight away."

The tailor waited, but Finehouse did not budge, although he already regretted having put that fatal notice on his door.

And Finehouse, who was a good fellow at heart, listened remorsefully to the tailor's despondent steps moving away from his door. He did not want to hurt the good man's feelings, but he could make no exceptions for anyone.

Soon thunderous steps were approaching up the spiral staircase that in old downtown houses connected the ground floor with the first. At the sight of this staircase, Titus had often wondered how people could carry coffins down it. And now these ill-boding, excited, aggressive steps were approaching Titus' door, as if announcing the bearer of an official summons. They were cruel, wild steps, like the steps of the headsman approaching his victim.

The journalist knew the owner of these steps: it was Mr. Munk, the instalment agent, a veritable curmudgeon with his customers. Mr. Munk was a thick-set, square-built, red-headed fellow, whose aim in life had been to force all the inhabitants of the capital to pay him instalments. Mr. Munk laughed ironically at the notice on the door:

"Very well, Mr. Editor," he said, "very well!"

And he could be heard gnashing his teeth, while he wiped the sweat off his forehead with a big, white linen handkerchief.

"Scandalous!" he kept repeating. Getting hold of a chair from somewhere, he settled down comfortably in front of the door.

The journalist tried to guess which of his enemies could have given a chair to Mr. Munk. The porter perhaps... or was it the midwife, living in the neighbourhood, who could not hope to get anything out of Titus? "People are wicked and malicious," Titus told himself, lying there dejectedly under the obituary, as if it was his own funeral notice. He was not up to having a fight with Mr. Munk; he felt helpless and this sensation was almost pleasant, because he did not have to make a single move, just like a dangerously ill patient, who had already resigned himself to his fate and at best hoped for a miracle. But even miracles would not help against Mr. Munk. He had settled down in front of the door, and Titus could hear him wheezing, hawking and belching as if, while waiting, he were practising how to be more loathsome. There was the rustling of a newspaper in Mr. Munk's hands, the swish of pages being turned over in a notebook, the grating of a pencil, as he rounded off his notes. Life has a way of facing one with such ghastly minutes, in which one cannot get rid of some oppressive burden that has rolled on one's heart. Mr. Munk was a very great burden.

The journalist lay in his bed almost tortured to death; he dared not budge, for thus he could still hope that Mr. Munk would at best believe him asleep and not begin to speak in that horrible, aggressive, unbearable voice he used to dun his debtors to the other world.

At this moment our hero would rather have faced the colonel's pistols than to be under Mr. Munk's guard. Pistols were fired in a second's time (hadn't he heard it himself the night before, in the café?), but Mr. Munk might sit before his door for hours. And he wasn't bored at all, as one might have thought. He began to cough. First, like a man from town, quietly and discretely; then like a man from the country, who sought pleasure even in coughing. Then he scratched himself. He scratched his palms, he scratched his head; he dug around in his ears with a match, gurgling blissfully during the operation; he rubbed his legs against each other. There are people who are never bored, because they always find something to occupy their bodies. And so Mr. Munk, when he could think of nothing better to amuse himself with, kicked his shoes off his feet and sat about in his stockings.

Fortunately, there are events that shake even the most vigilant watchman. The sounding of the bell in a nearby church was just such an event. The midday bell, which awakes special thoughts in every mortal, even if that mortal is called Munk. At first, Mr. Munk started to curse quietly, then he swore ever louder, beating the door first with his fists, then with his feet, without let-up, as if determined at all costs to make a scandal on the journalist's "last day." But Finehouse was already breathing more lightly, for he could now calculate how long Mr. Munk would be able to carry on the siege. True, Mr. Munk was a good hand at banging, having had considerable practice in this field. On the other hand, Titus too had, during his long hours of suffering, inured himself to the final assault, and it would have been foolish to surrender now, when the end of the battle was already in sight. By the time Mr. Munk, outside, had reached the state of bellowing his curses, Finehouse, inside, was already sitting on the edge of his bed, knowing full well that Mr. Munk would become deaf from his own swearing and finally desist.

*

Having lost the battle, Mr. Munk departed, stopping again and again on the staircase, as if still up to some mischief, but at last the sound of his steps died away, like a memory that becomes pleasurable after the event. Having got rid of Mr. Munk, Finehouse now looked at his hat and umbrella-cane by daylight. They were imposing even in the daytime, although they had looked more impressive at night. Now one could see some wear and tear on them, for they had been lying about in the cloakroom of the café for a long time. The journalist found comfort in the thought that brand-new things never had as much value as used ones: lords and nobles always had their new shoes broken in by their valets. He was still lost in admiring his acquisitions, when he unexpectedly felt a pressure around his heart and almost fell back on the bed. All of a sudden, he remembered the duel in the afternoon, the duel he had not had the time to think of because of his visitors. In the face of other troubles, we sometimes forget even death.

"It would be much better if I could only cry," Finehouse muttered, sitting down on a chair whenever he felt the saving tears approaching. But they did not want to come. Only women are lucky enough to be able to cry whenever they want to. No, Finehouse's tears would not trickle from his eyes, however much he waited for them. He had to dress from top to toe, and he had to go out into the wide world, without the relief offered by weeping.

Still, he was lucky, because on entering the newspaper office he found the editor-in-chief there, who was known for his inability to refuse any request; it was as if his vanity or some caprice made him want to prove again and again that he did not give a fig for money, although the lawyers were issuing warrants for the seizure of his furniture almost every week. Finehouse had a stroke of genius and candidly confessed to his chief that he had spent the advance received on the previous day to the last farthing and did not even have enough money to pay for his lunch. His manoeuvre came off - or did the hat and the umbrella-cane also have a share in its success? The editor-in-chief liked his correspondents to hold their own also on the "field of honour," so he handed Finehouse ten crowns, and the journalist could now look forward to the events of the afternoon in much higher spirits. He visited three taverns in succession, until he found one where he was served boiled beef, his favourite dish. Fortune seemed to be favouring him, because the meat was of a kind to arouse the envy of his neighbours. This, by the way, is a dish that is noticed even by the most indifferent people when the waiter passes their table with it. They scrutinize it, estimate its value and envy the guest for whom it is destined; they all but taste it. The journalist's portion was large. It had originally been put aside for the proprietor's lunch, but he renounced it for the sake of the unknown customer with the Tyrolese hat and umbrella-cane. And Titus ordered two helpings of the sauce, out of gratitude. Horseradish sauce, at that.

*

It was after he had eaten the lucky boiled beef that Finehouse's fate changed to such a degree that he is probably still living somewhere or other, if he has not died in the meantime. The colonel's bullet missed him. On the other hand, Finehouse's bullet hit the colonel, very much so, and the colonel died in consequence of his wounds, as befits a brave soldier. The cab in which Titus returned from the site of the duel, was paid for by the office attendant of the newspaper. Nor did Titus make a fuss about it.

1930

(1878-1955)

"I was born on January 12, 1878, in Budapest," Ferenc Molnár writes in his autobiography. "There followed an intermission of five years, after which I spent sixteen years going to various schools in quick succession. The better part of the time - eight years - was spent in the Calvinist secondary school, and the lesser in Budapest University, whence I was crowded out and forced to repair to the Café Central to pursue my law studies."

Like so many other Hungarian authors and poets, Molnár began his career as a journalist. He was still a young man when his first short stories and novels appeared. His themes were Budapest capitalism and the clashing emotions of the poor and the newly rich. His short story Széntolvajok (Coal Thieves) is a fascinating sketch of the cause of poor people driven by poverty to thieving.

Already prior to the First World War, he scored great successes with his witty plays, in which he utilizes all the 'tricks' of the stage and combines them with high literary workmanship and poesy. Liliom, A testőr (The Guardsman), and his other plays - Olympia, Harmónia (Harmony), Csoda a hegyek között (Miracle in the Mountains), Az ördög (The Devil), etc. - established him as a celebrated playwright. His name soon became well known the world over - his comedies, which are built up with ingenuity and the experience of an old hand in the world of the theatre, were acclaimed in Paris, Vienna and New York, and his films were highly appreciated in all of Europe and America. His novel A go zoszlop (Column of Steam) as well as several other creations forming a part of his vast lifework, are important assets of Hungarian prose-writing.

His fiction is less known than his plays; the only exception perhaps being A Pál utcai fiúk (The Pál Street Boys), a book for young people, a fine, emotionally-coloured story of Budapest boys, which has been a world success. Yet his early short stories and novels include works of significance: their realism, pithiness and the excellent sense of form apparent in them still stimulate the readers' interest.

A golden morning-mist lay over the Danube. Below, near the water's surface, its colour seemed of a dense and milky hue. Higher up, above the Tower of Buda, the sunbeams seemed to have melted into the fog.

It was a golden haze, a cold, rare golden vapour, such as drunken alchemists must at one time have dreamed of. On the banks, the trees stretched up into the mist, clambering into its golden vapour and bathing their few remaining russet leaves - tatters of their former foliage - in it.

Everything appeared to melt into this autumnal haze: it was like some old and blurred pastel landscape. A large smudge was advancing, slowly, dreamily along the embankment. Suddenly, there was a cry, but the sound was cozy and muffled, as though uttered in a room. The large smudge fought its way through the fog, and, after much exertion, emerged from it. It now turned out to be a cart laden with coal. Three merry lads were sitting on the driver's seat - imitation-miners, sooty-faced city coal-heavers. They presented a comical sight, against the background of that huge mass of coal. How far removed they were from the choke-damp, the black sweat, the white horror of the shafts and pits. Their coal was a tamed, lifeless mineral, a black mass that threatened nobody.

Two old, decrepit horses were harnessed to the cart: their ancestors had once galloped and trampled freely through the wilds and here they were tugging a coal cart. Like them, the coal also appeared to be harnessed to this cart: a poor old, crumbling mineral, fit only to be flung about and split and to be exploited as an inorganic domestic animal.

And the three merry imitation-miners were masters of both beast and coal. They were a funny sight, resembling colliers no more than a butcher's boy resembles a cowherd, who at least tends the cattle in a live state rather than in the form of meat.

"Hurrah! Off we go!" one of them shouted.

"Whoa!" the other cried lustily, climbing onto the top of the coal-heap.

"Chuck it down there," said the third.

"Where the bush is."

The one who had spoken first, expectorated and prudently said:

"Only into the bush."

There was a thud. The man standing a-top the coal-heap had thrown a big lump from the cart. The black stone rolled over the rusty grass towards the bush, slid beneath it, and stopped.

"Come on! Let's go!" the other urged.

"There's a bush over here too."

The driver nodded his head:

"Chuck it there, only there," he said, and another lump of coal was flung into the fog. Upon striking the ground, it broke in two and set the bush rustling as it disappeared under it.

The two old horses resumed their heavy plodding, never feeling that their task was growing lighter as the load decreased. Physics is a compilation of very cold, highly immoral and even unjust theses. I well know this, otherwise I might say that the weight of the cart did not really grow lighter, for its load had decreased through immoral means.

It is a pity that we did not live a thousand years ago. For at that time nine out of every ten people would have believed that if you pinched two pounds out of a hundred, there would still be a hundred pounds left. Nowadays only one among ten will believe such a thing, namely, the coal-merchant.

So pinch they did, these fellows, and had a good laugh over it. Stealing must be great fun, a very amusing occupation, indeed! Perhaps it is just as cheering, amusing and exalting as its reverse - honest work - is dull, cheerless and bitter. After all, who indulges more lightly in pilfering than those eternal seekers after pleasure and amusement - women and children? We men know nothing about it. My great-grandchild's grandchild will be able to tell of the exultation which will follow the release of all souls from the great burden, which sacred Property now imposes upon our lives.

"Come on, let's go," the coal-thieves' merry marching song sounded from the driver's seat.

"Hoop-la!" they cried, as Mr. Kleinberger's coal flew from the cart. One after the other, the largest and bulkiest pieces sailed through the air, each of them big enough to fill half a stove.

"Come on, let's go," the thieves' march went on. "Throw it in the bush."

"Only in the bush," the deep bass chimed in. They were enjoying themselves, hugely. It must have caused them an exquisite thrill, more delightful than a game of cards, more pleasurable than drinking.

The method, by the way, was as ancient as coal itself. Throw a lot of coal out of the cart on your way there, and pick it up, piece by piece, on your way back. The coal itself would have been amused, if it were possessed of a sense of humour. Man has not changed! It took thousands of years for brown lignite to develop into bluish-black anthracite. But already at its brown stage of adolescence it was stolen, by the lake-dwellers, and it will still be stolen by generations of aviators, after it has crumbled into grey dross.

The last fat lump was flung down near the landing-stage on the river; for there the bushes came to an end. Tucsik, perched on top of the coal-heap, was almost broken-hearted to think that they could steal no more. He rather regretted that he had been so slow in throwing.

"I should have dropped one or two more," he mused, remembering two thick bushes which he had failed to pay his compliments to. Thus does a dying man look back upon his life. There are always bushes which we have passed by unheeded, and each brief quarter of an hour represents a whole lifetime, filled with omissions. Sixty years, or a quarter of an hour, - it's almost all the same; and it is also irrelevant whether one failed to steal or to give.

The porter was already waiting for them at the hotel door.

"What d'you mean by coming at this time of the day?"

"When did you think we'd come?"

"Why, early in the morning."

The cart stopped.

"Swing to the left and then round to the back," the porter shouted imperiously. "The basement window's open." Then, noticing how slow they were, he barked.

"Come on! Let's go!"

This was no longer the enthusiastic "let's go" of the thieves' march. This was the authoritative tone of duty. And it had the sombre, bleak and pressing ring of duty itself. It was not the thieves who spoke it, but the respectable porter - and he would never steal coal, not on his life! He stole shirts, he stole towels. He had climbed a rung higher up the social ladder, so he had nothing but contempt for mere raw materials. He was a cultured thief; industrial products were what he required.

The cart was driven round to the back of the four-story building, whence there soon came the rumbling, thundering noise of coal being dumped into the cellar. It clattered down the wooden plank, one little clap of thunder following the other.

"They're bringing coal," a few late guests remarked. "Autumn has come."

The din and roar of the avalanche of coal could still be heard from the cellar.

"Winter will soon be here," said a stout old chambermaid, the sort one always has to ring for twice.

She looked out of the garret-window. The fog was lifting. Absorbing the sun's golden warmth, it began to vanish, and a glorious warm yellow light now enveloped the scene. The Danube resembled liquid opal. Peasant girls, employed as gardeners, were sweeping up the fallen leaves, with slow rocking movements. It was a beautiful calm autumn morning.

From the garret-window, the stout chambermaid caught sight of a commissionaire.

"He's coming," she said.

Descending to the first floor, she knocked on the door of Number Twenty. "Please, Ma'am, the luggage carrier's already coming with his cart."

The widow Sikoró was sitting on the sofa, surrounded by trunks and baskets.

"It's time he came, too," she said. "Do you hear that noise?"

They listened. The coal continued to roll and to crash into the cellar.

"Winter has come!"

There was a knock at the door, and a small Jewish commissionaire entered.

"Good morning, Ma'am."

Mrs. Sikoró slowly rose from the sofa. She was a very old and very sick woman. She heaved a deep sigh and said:

"Well, let's go then."

This had an even more serious ring than the porter's "let's go." This was the real thing. 'Let's go!' Let's go and die, let's go to the peaceful churchyard and join the other old ladies there. Mrs. Sikoró no longer stole anything. Perhaps that was why she felt so sad. Nobody and nothing was willing to be stolen by her.

The commissionaire was a small ruddy-cheeked man, A golden watch-chain dangled from his waistcoat. It was easy to see that he was a man of some consequence. He was indeed about to give up his present trade for a small-scale forwarding business. These small hauls with his pushcart were, so to say, the closing strains of his career as a commissionaire. He would now become the owner of a forwarding firm, advancing from the status of wealthiest commissionaire to that of shabbiest forwarding agent.

Within ten minutes, he had placed all Mrs. Sikoró's belongings on the cart, neatly fastening them with string. All the while he conversed in a medley of German and Hungarian, his voice sounding as if he were choking. Then he pushed his red cap back from his forehead and shouted:

"Joseph!"

At this, a man turned up from behind the building. He served as the commissionaire's draught-animal. His face was dull and of a mouldy colour - the small, pallid caricature of a soulless animal - with an irregular growth of hair above his upper lip. The poor man looked as if he weren't really as ugly and mouldy as all that but had merely gazed at himself in a cheap, blistered mirror, and had henceforth continued to wear the countenance he had seen reflected in it.

Baggy trousers hung loosely about his legs, while the sleeves of his coat reached right down to his finger-tips. Some stout gentleman must have performed the most repulsive of all charitable acts by presenting him with his cast-off clothing. This thin green-faced Joseph now harnessed himself to the small cart and set to work.

Slowly and painfully he hauled the laden cart; while the little red-faced commissionaire took hold of Mrs. Sikoró's wheel chair and briskly propelled his light burden in Joseph's wake. He soon overtook the latter and slackened his speed. Slowly the rare procession advanced; the wheel chair at the head, then the commissionaire, followed by Joseph, with the overloaded cart bringing up the rear.

When they reached the road, where the coal cart had passed a short while before, the commissionaire greeted the policeman standing there. A commissionaire always greets a policeman. A commissionaire greets everybody, for in his line of business it is vitally important to maintain a wide circle of acquaintances, which cannot be done without attending their parties or bowing to them frequently - to the point of annoyance. Mr. Eislitzer chose the latter expedient.

As they jogged along with the creaking little cart, the mouldy-faced little man suddenly stood still. He threw up his head, and stood there like a pointing dog.

"Mr. Eislitzer," he said softly.

The commissionaire stopped too, and the whole procession came to a halt. Have you ever watched a man carrying a load? As he staggers along, his breast fills with hatred towards his work. But on and on he carries his load. When at last his hatred has accumulated to the bursting point, then let there but be some sound, some strange gesture, anything to startle him, and he will stop dead. Fatigue and disgust are not sufficient to halt him. There has to be a sudden burst, like an electric spark.

They started muttering in subdued voices.

"Mr. Eislitzer," repeated he of the mouldy face.

"What is it?"

"There's coal here."

"What d'you mean, 'coal?'"

"Fine coal, I tell you. Saw it as we were coming along here. Thought at first it was just by accident. But then there was another lump further on, and then another and another. Pinching the coal, that's what they're doing, the coal gang. See?"

"I see," said Mr. Eislitzer.

And a moment later, they had left everything, wheel chair and all, standing in the middle of the white road. The cart, with its shaft turned to one side, towards the embankment, appeared to be watching them. The two men, meanwhile, had scrambled down the slope and were rummaging about among the weeds, in the bushes, and at the water's edge.

They were conversing in a mysterious manner.

"Hallo," said the human beast of burden, "look at that wopper!"

"But this is theft all right," said Mr. Eislitzer.

Stooping unceasingly, the two men picked up the lumps of coal, hiding them under their arms.

A curious pair of animals they were, two stunted urban creatures grazing coal.

Mr. Eislitzer was holding a fine, large, shiny piece of coal in his hand. He looked at it lovingly, and tried to guess its weight.

"This one alone weighs at least ten pounds."

"Here's some more," the other whispered greedily. "I'll pick that up too."

Mr. Eislitzer surveyed the scene.

"Incredible," he said and added: "There's some more."

When they had picked up as much as they could carry, the beast of burden turned towards Mr. Eislitzer, and said with a grin:

"They hid it here, and now we're taking it away."

"Taking it away!" exclaimed the commissionaire. "Why should we? What makes you think we're going to take it away? Whom d'you suppose we are? Maybe, you think we're going to take it, but why should we?"

"Sure enough," said the other.

For a while, they stared at each other in consternation, as they both had their hands filled with lumps of coal. At last, Mr. Eislitzer recovered his speech.

"Let's load it onto the cart."

They loaded the cart, whereupon the procession resumed its march. From afar, where the hotel was, came the mysterious rumbling noise of the coal as it rolled into the cellar.

"Won't they be surprised though, when they come back, and start searching and find it's all gone," said Joseph happily almost bending double as he dragged the cart along.

A little farther down they stopped again. From under a bush there stared at them such an immense lump that the commissionaire's heart missed a beat.

"Did you ever," he exclaimed. "Stealing lumps as big as that!" He ran down to fetch it, and brought it up, panting. It glistened in the sunshine. A fine specimen it was, beyond doubt, a solid lump of dark lustre striped here and there with yellow streaks of ore. The commissionaire added it to the rest. He shot a glance at Joseph, who was wiping his nose, with a cunning expression on his face. He was smiling beneath the sparse growth of hair that was his moustache. At this Mr. Eislitzer's face suddenly became serious.

"I shall report this to the police," declared Mr. Eislitzer, as he ran down to pick up yet another piece. From below, he shouted:

"Pick up all you can find. We're going to report this, and the stuff'll be restored to its rightful owner."

Until now, he had not been particularly serious about all this reporting and restoring business. But hitherto he had lacked the moral basis for picking up the already half-stolen coal. His pronouncement had provided him both with the moral basis and the right to pick up those lumps. Get'em loaded on the cart first, among the trunks and baskets, he thought. Once they are safely there, we'll consider the next step.

So they went on and on, occasionally stopping on the road, under the half-bare trees. The little cart was now black with coal. They tied the wheel chair to the truck, and now Mr. Eislitzer too harnessed himself to the shaft. So now the two of them were lugging the cart. They trudged mutely side by side. Joseph was wondering what would happen with the coal. The weather had turned cold. Winter was around the corner. In his mind's eye he saw a small, spindle-legged iron stove, well stoked, giving out a fine, scorching heat. 'How pleasant that would be,' he thought.

Mr. Eislitzer's thoughts were different. 'I could sell the coal,' he thought. 'My household needs every penny I can get. This is clear profit. The finest coal that's to be had.'

Suddenly a policeman showed up, coming towards them.

"Ahem," said Mr. Eislitzer, turning red in the face, to match the colour of his cap.

He swallowed a lump in his throat. The policeman was a handsome fellow, with energetic features. Severity and superiority were written on his face.

"Yes, yes," said Mr. Eislitzer, to no purpose, "yes, yes."

He swallowed again.

"What time is it?" he asked the little man, all the while watching the policeman out of the corner of his eye.

The policeman came nearer and nearer. The commissionaire stopped, disentangled from the harness and reverently raised his cap to the policeman.

"I'll give'em what for, those swine," he whispered to Joseph and ran up to the policeman.

"Could you please tell me where I can find the nearest police station?" he said. "I wish to report a theft." The policeman was carrying his lunch wrapped up in a scarlet bundle.

"What do you want?" he asked angrily.

Mr. Eislitzer pointed towards the coal.

"What d'you say to that? Look, there, under the bushes. Do you see?"

And he related the case. The policeman placed his bundle on the ground. Then he took a look at the coal. Another policeman was now approaching from the other end of the road. It was the one whom the commissionaire had previously greeted.

"Yes," said the second policeman, "the guard down at the landing-stage has already told me about it. He had already collected a lot when I passed by."

"Oh, he did, did he?" thought Mr. Eislitzer.

"There's enough fuel here for a week," said one of the policemen.

The other one replied:

"You should have seen the quantity that's further down the road! There's enough coal there to go on with for a fortnight. I walked all along the embankment and saw some under every bush."

The landing-stage guard turned up. He wore a coat with brass buttons.

"They also threw some into the water, officer," he said panting. "Not right into it, just close to the edge, so it won't be washed away."

He stared at the coal on the cart, and smiled. He, too, was fond of coal.

"Bless me!" he ejaculated. "So you've picked it up already!"

"Pardon me," protested Mr. Eislitzer, "we've just informed this officer here."

Now they all stood there in a group: the first policeman with the red bundle; a poverty-stricken janitor, and father of six children, at a rough guess; the second policeman, with a look on his face that spoke of wanting to turn in and sleep for forty-eight hours at a stretch; then there was Mr. Eislitzer; his assistant, the poor human beast, who lived upon dry bread steeped in thin coffee and on flour mixed with warm water; the landing-stage guard, who lived on a pontoon, in a small shack with one porthole, which he heated in winter with small pieces of driftwood, fished out of the river during the summer. They stood there, a group of penniless, miserable creatures, sick from poor housing and terrible, griping penury that drives a man to his grave. They were all of them down-at-the-heels, pale-faced peasants, except for Mr. Eislitzer, who was rich, because he ate meat once every day.

"You should nab them, when they return," said the guard. "I've just come from the hotel, they'd already finished unloading the coal. They must be here any moment."

The draught-man smiled. He was glad the rascals would be arrested, but was sorry to lose that fine coal. The guard picked up a lump. "I could do with that," he remarked with an artificial, strained laugh lest they take his words seriously; but he eyed the coal so wistfully, that Mr. Eislitzer snatched it from his hand.

"You put that back."

"Fuel," said the draught-man. "Good fuel. Would heat the room well, when it's freezing outside."

He scratched his head. He was afraid of the frost, for he knew it only too well. He was a specialist in that line, the devil take it.

The two policemen said nothing. They had acquired great practice in not coveting lost property. They had already experienced the feeling the first time a gentleman in a silk-hat had pressed into their hand a lost purse, or when they had collected the few coins from the pockets of the first dead man they had seen run over; or when they had caught their first ragged pickpocket, and removed from his clutched fist the golden watch he had just stolen. This practice, this training they had had in honesty lent their faces a sort of seriousness, which gave the impression of genuine moral dignity. That too is a skill, just like any other craft, which can be mastered. A policeman is trained to be honest, as a carpenter is trained to work with his plane. That is his job. And when he has been honest for twelve hours in succession, he grows tired, and lies down to sleep.

The draught-man was an honest fellow, for he melted into Mr. Eislitzer's strong character.

Had Mr. Eislitzer escaped by some side-alley with the coal stolen from the thieves, he would have followed him, and would have been just as happy to get away with the theft as he was now that they had so nicely managed to report it.

Mr. Eislitzer had not stolen the coal, because he was hesitant, and he who hesitates becomes a moral being. What is hesitation? An artificial pause, which serves to leave the decision to some external event. A thief who hesitates is like a stammering liar. The latter speaks a few words to every one, in order to gain time and let something happen which would make it unnecessary for him to finish his lie. Such stammering, such hesitation represents the struggle of the body, of matter, against the principles which in general govern its actions.

Finally, the landing-stage guard's reason for not stealing the coal was simply that none of the others had stolen it, and, having been caught up in the drift of events, he now found himself one of this honest and law-abiding company.

Suddenly, the draught-man gave out an exultant yell, pointing towards something in the distance:

"There they come!"

And, indeed, the coal-store miners were approaching. The horses now jogged along at a brisk trot. Only the driver was now sitting in front; the other two coal-heavers were standing up in the cart, looking mighty grim. They had already sensed that trouble lay ahead. Somebody had picked up the coal, and now they had but the one desire, to flee.

On seeing the group, the driver pulled the reins, and the cart slowed down to a walking pace. Nothing could have better expressed the mess in which the once so merry black-faced fellows found themselves. The group moved to the middle of the road.

"Hey," shouted Mr. Eislitzer, who headed the party. "Would you mind stopping for a moment."

The guard advanced and caught the reins of one of the horses close to the animal's mouth.

"What d'you want?" the driver asked suspiciously.

He knew only too well, poor chap, what they wanted.

The policemen pushed Mr. Eislitzer aside; the coalmen dismounted from the cart. Official proceedings followed; the names and addresses of the witnesses were taken. Then the empty coal-cart left the group and was driven away by a downhearted driver.

He had a licence, so they could get him again the next day. The two merry fellows remained in the policemen's charge.

Then the procession got under way again. The policemen in front, two wretched, hungry, sleepy policemen, with the two grimy men, who shared a tattered mat for their daily three hours of sleep. There followed Mr. Eislitzer, with the bath chair; next to him came the landing-stage guard, who still cast loving glances at the coal. All these were the witnesses. They too were going to the police-station. They would teach these rascals a lesson! Lastly there came Mouldy-Face with Mrs. Sikoró's belongings: he was smiling with a "serves them right" expression all over his face, but with a touch of pride added, since he was one of the witnesses. He, too, was going to teach them.

Walking in the sunshine of that lovely warm October day, these poor, downtrodden people, were taking one another to prison, on account of a few lumps of coal from the stores of Kleinberger and Co. They might have been thieves, each of them, and yet they were honest; each could have been accused or accuser, witness, denunciator, or thief of thieves; none of them was in the right, yet each had right on his side. There was no difference between them, save that one had a face the colour of mould while the other's face was smeared with coal-dust; that one was wearing a round shako with a white pompon on it and had been trained to honesty, another wore a gold braided sailor's cap and had too much self-control, while a third had a red cap and a weak will. Yet they were taking one another to the police-station, for the simple reason that they were all in a group, because they were held together by all the dastardly lies which for thousands of years had been drummed into their heads by the rich. So they went on their way, following one another, because the rich had set them against one another, these poor, miserable, hungry, sleepy, shivering, sick people. They went, because some had had a sword hung on their sides, and another a red cap thrust on his head, by the well-to-do: and they had been taught to keep an eye on each other, these poor, ragged, liveried masqueraders. They went along, solemnly, earnestly: the world never saw a sight more pitiful, more sickening, more revolting and more heart-rending than this procession.

But nobody saw them, except the widow Sikoró, who rode alongside them in a wheel chair. But Mrs. Sikoró did not have an inkling of what was going on, for all the time she was absorbed in thoughts of death, of the beautiful cemetery where the other tired old ladies had already been laid to rest.

1918

(1879-1934)

Son of an impecunious village fur-mender and of a woman baker, Ferenc Móra owed his university education to a fortunate accident combined with a keen desire to study. He became a schoolmaster, then a journalist; in 1904, he joined the staff of the Szeged Municipal Library and, like István Tömörkény, was eventually appointed director of the local Museum. He conducted excavations and became deeply interested in archaeological studies. He lived a rather monotonous life in Szeged, contributing short stories and other features to various newspapers in Budapest and the provinces. Several of his novels met with extraordinary success. Aranykoporsó (The Golden Coffin) draws a vivid image of the conflict-torn Roman Empire in the period of decline, as seen in the mirror of an idyllic love-story; Ének a búzamezőkről (Song of the Wheatfields) is a hymn to the beauty of rustic labour; Négy apának egy leánya (Daughter of Four Fathers) is a thrilling novel of manners. His novels for children - Dióbél királyfi (Prince Walnut-meat), A kincskereső kisködmön (Treasure-hunting Little Smock-frock), and Csalavári Csalavér - are masterpieces of charming humour and human kindness and are still counted among the most popular books ever written for young Hungarians.

"I Believe in Man" is the title of one of his short stories, and it about sums up his literary programme - a sturdy, optimistic faith in mankind. He has mostly written of down-and-out men and women, amidst whose daily cares and unceasing hardships the triple flower of Charity, Solidarity and creative Labour blossoms. He shows much sympathy and understanding for the world of children and either tells experiences of his own childhood, shaping them with artistic talent, or relates touching stories of peasant lads from the Szeged district. His main asset is a profound humour - he smiles at human frailty, so as to force back his tears. Móra stands at the crossroads between conventional and modern art, his harmonious outlook and optimism link him with conservative Hungarian fiction, but the rebellious kernel of his themes already reflects the modern world.

This outlook pervades his short story Szeptemberi emlék (A September Reminiscence), in which he treats a childhood grief with so much warmth of heart and intimacy of feeling that the memory of that distant past becomes beautiful, its bitterness mellowed.

That summer was just like this one, the wheat abounding in ears, the grapes thick with clusters. You could not have put more apples on the trees nor more grapes on the vine-stocks.

"Now, my son, there'll be new books, and a new suit at vintage-time," said my father, patting me on the back. "There will be indeed. Even a vest with golden buttons, plated with silver and gilded with gold."

A sense of shame, which had been haunting me for a year, now brought a flush to my cheeks. As a first-year grammar school boy, I had had the ardent wish to dress as finely for Whitsun as the children of the Strosses, our neighbours. It was easy for them, of course, for their father owned a clothes shop and they could dress like any prince they fancied. (Yellow trousers, red waistcoat and green hat with feather-grass.) But I had to look after my finery myself. Luckily I had not to search far. Seven houses away, on the other side of the street, lived Mr. Raven, the coffin-maker, who used to dry the newly painted coffins in the courtyard. I stole the gilded paper-letters from the coffins and sewed them left and right on the front of my jacket. It was very beautiful indeed, and God had certainly more pleasure in me than in any emperor whose chest is a whole Milky Way of orders. But grown-up people seldom have the same taste for beauty as children. My mother made me take off the orders and shook her head apprehensively.

"What will become of you, my son, if you still do such things in your first year of grammar-school? Will you never come to your senses?"

Well, in the second class I did come to my senses. I read through the entire Holy Bible, the Old and New Testaments, the Song of Songs, the Apocalypse, and those many Jewish kings had an extraordinarily sobering effect on me. Whenever I had a quarrel with Olga Stross on account of some cheese tart, I would call her Jezabel and tell her if I were to marry her, I would have the hounds lap up her blood. (I had seen this scene on a beautiful woodcut in the Bible.) In Crane Street, I was considered a sage and my merits were acknowledged even officially. At the distribution of the terminal reports I got a purse of twenty florins, the highest in the school, and I was just counting them on the table when my father good-humouredly recalled that sinister spot in my past, the coffin-affair.

"Don't listen to him, son," my mother said, looking in from the kitchen. "Your father is only making fun. I'll tell you something else. Out of this little sum of yours we shall give ten florins to your father, so he can pay last year's taxes. The other ten you will lend me, and we shall have a walnut cross made for the grave of your grandparents, and we'll buy two piglets besides. In the summer you'll graze them in the vineyard, by vintage-time they'll have grown up, and one of them we'll sell at the autumn fair and buy your third-term books with the money. Will that do?"

Of course it would do! My father knew as little about money as myself, and so my mother had charge of the financial empire. This was the first and last well-founded budget in my whole life. We couldn't be blamed if it didn't get the approval of the Heavenly Authorities.

On the afternoon of St. Stephen's Day^[19] a hail-storm struck down the grapes, worse yet, it split the very vine-stocks. Next morning one could still gather hailstones by the handful on the flat places where the water had swept them together. This St. Stephen's Day became a historical date in our family ever since. It is our ab urbe condita, and we count everything from then.

The sling-stones from Heaven did for the two piglets too. Had my father been some Roman Emperor, the astrologers would surely have assigned them a place to graze somewhere near the polar star, where the other stellar animals are to be found. But as it was, we only buried them at the foot of the lilac shrub. I too assisted and was most astonished to see my father raise the back of his hand to his eyes. I had never before seen a grown-up cry. Especially not in our family. The tears of our kind usually flow inwards as I have since learned.

Only now did I guess that there must be some great misfortune. But not until the 1st of September, "the day of the white hands," did I learn what it was.

My mother took me to school for registration. Mothers become lionesses when their child is clutching at their skirts. They have no fear even of the high and mighty.

Mr. Zólyomi, the teacher on duty, was by no means a man to be afraid of. He was a gentle soul, as sweet as honey-cake, and as far as I know, still remained so, at the sunset of his life. He even offered my mother a seat when he saw that my second-form school-reports contained nothing but "very good" marks.

"Well, mother, you must find great pleasure in this little bag of tricks," the teacher said, patting my fear-blanched face with the ruler.

To judge by her age, my mother might have been the teacher's daughter. But gossamer-threads spun by the spiders of care had already got caught in her hair when she was but twenty-five. Our kind never took it amiss if somebody thought us older than we were. Pride and not wounded vanity made my mother's ever sorrowful face turn the colour of peach blossoms. She looked at me with sudden emotion, but instantly pulled herself together. From her bosom she drew her coloured kerchief.

"Please, what do I owe, Mr. Teacher?" and she undid a corner of the kerchief.

"Six florins and fifty-three farthings, my dear."

The peach blossom faded to cherry blossom.

"We have but one florin, Your Honour. The gipsy-woman didn't give me more for my silk kerchief. My husband told me that a poor child has to pay no more than one florin."

"All right, my dear, but in that case you must bring me a Certificate of Poverty," and Mr. Zólyomi, turning grave, looked at the sheet filled with columns. Should he scratch out what he had entered? Oh, how much trouble these stupid women made!

My mother clasped her veined, bark-like hands.

"Your Honour, we are poor even without a Certificate, please, believe us."

Mr. Zólyomi suddenly averted his eyes and lowered his head.

"I see that, my good woman, and I believe it, but then I can't disregard the law either, you'll have to bring a document from the town hall."

The town hall was but a stone's throw from the school, yet very, very far. How should a bare-footed, or, at best, slippered woman find her way in there? True, she knows Dobos, the night watchman, who used to deliver the tax due-bills, but he is deaf; and Mr. Csajka, the bailiff, but he again is rude.

Well, the bells were ringing noon, when, at last, we were shoved onto the scene of action. Only by that time we found the door closed. The clerk had gone over to the Crown for some beer.

Now, what should we do? Never in her life had my mother been in a pub, nor did she know the clerk. So we sat down on the doorstep and demurely awaited him. The horse-relayer asked us what we were about and then told us that the clerk was lame and that we should address ourselves to him. In the morning he was lame on one leg only, but after beer-drinking he was lame on both, so we should easily recognize him.

We did indeed recognize him. It was at about two o'clock. First he was in a very good humour. He insisted on giving my mother a kiss, but when he staggered against the curb-stone, he at once became angry.

"What the deuce do you want here, at this hour of the day? And anyway, as far as I know, you've got a vineyard, too."

"We have, two strips of land. One strip is entirely bare."

Now the limping man was already roaring:

"Well, that's the limit! So they want a Certificate of Poverty! The scoundrels! The swindlers!"

He was already stumbling along at the other side of the market place, but we still could hear his swearing. The town hall guard saluted him stiffly, then bored his eyes into us.

"Move on, move on, woman, while the going's good!"

We got a little scared, but at the corner of the town hall we recovered our wits. My mother was a woman with a strong will.

"I won't leave it at this, my darling. Let's go to Bajáki, the teacher's, he has always been good to us."

Mr. Bajáki had taught me the alphabet, and he used to visit me at vintage-time to see how much I had grown. He was a very kind-hearted man, but now even he couldn't help us.

"My dear, whoever owns landed property, has no right to a Certificate of Poverty." I had not realized, till then, that we were landed proprietors.

Our property, by the way, could be covered by ten somersaults, while the tenth would land us on the neighbour's ground. Luckily, it was sheer bottomless sand. Had it been of loamy soil, capable of becoming mud, we should have long since carried away the whole "property" on our feet.

The teacher advised us that the best thing would be for my father to try to speak with those gentlemen of the magistracy to whose homes my grandfather long ago had had free entrance. For my grandfather was once the finest tobacco-cutter in town and so a rather famous man in his time. (I record this fact for the benefit of my future biographers. They should know that celebrity in our family did not begin with me.) Every local official had his tobacco cut by my grandfather, knowing that not a pipeful of it would stick to the hands of the old shepherd.

No doubt, the Cumanian^[20] gentlemen at the town hall recalled my grandfather with kind feelings when next day my father shamefacedly slunk in. But only the town clerk deigned to speak to him, and all he would say was:

"You see, Martin, you should have given fewer cheers for Lajos Kossuth. Then you would not be such a marked man now."

The councillor of the tax department, himself a partisan of the spirit of 1848^[21], at least gave this advice: "Look here! This very month a commission will visit the vineyards to estimate the damage by the hail. Maybe they'll give you something in writing about the how's and why's. You'll have to submit this paper to the council, together with a petition. After all, exemption from school fees can be granted, it only needs a bit of goodwill. But don't for all the world tell anybody that this was my advice, for as it is, I am always being accused of stirring up the people."

My father did not take me with him into the town hall, but left me at the gate. I amused myself reading the announcements posted on it. A price of a hundred florins was set on the head of some highwayman. The head of that outlaw was worth a hundred florins to my native country. But my untarnished little life was not even worth six florins and fifty-three farthings to anybody. This I learned when my father came down and without a word took my hand. He did not speak till we reached the bootmaker's stall on the market place. Softly and gently he asked me:

"Do you see, how fine those fine boots are?"

"I do," and my heart gave a big throb. For I already knew what the next question would be.

"What would you say if I were to bind you as an apprentice to a bootmaker?"

I could not say a word. I only shook my head. How could I then have understood the way of the world? How could I have foreseen all the careers that would be open to bootmakers by the time I was grown up? I only knew that bootmaker's apprentices were dirty, that they worked with pitch and that when I met them, they would push me into the ditch. Had I but grasped then that the world belongs to those who can keep on pushing!

Afterwards a great council was held at home. We took stock of the settee, the looking-glass, the coverlet, every object of luxury which could be converted into money, so that one florin might become six and a half. We considered even the cradle of my two-year-old sister; she was already a big girl and we might as well make her bed in the nook. But all that was too little. Even if it covered the school fee, what would be left for the books? We also went through the list of our sundry relations, but they, too, were all ruined by the hail - how could the blind help the sightless?

That night I had a very bad dream. I got stuck in a pitch cauldron, the bootmaker's apprentices tied my toes with pitched thread and dragged me through the street to the market place. When I awoke, my eyes were swollen with the tears I had shed in my dreams.

By that time my father had already moved out to the vineyard. Whenever he had troubles which he could neither laugh nor curse away, he always hid himself there. (Ah! If only as much had been left to me of that "landed property" as a dog-hole, how often would I have hidden there myself.) My mother took me in her arms, although we were bashful people and, normally had no time for such upper-class ways. She even tried, with a large comb to give a semblance of order to my dishevelled hair.

"Don't worry, my darling, you're not an apprentice yet. Last night I remembered the Right Reverend Ágocs. He is kind to the poor. But, be sure to kiss his hand nicely."

The Right Reverend Ágocs was a very good man, indeed. He was always walking around the church like a mighty, beautiful idol come to life, and he never let a woman or a child pass without extending his hand to be kissed. He knew the whole town by name, and he immediately called my mother by name, when she shoved his fat, beringed hand towards us.

"God bless you, my good woman, God bless you, dear Mrs. Móra! Well, how do you do, how are things down in Crane Street? Is there to be a baptism, or has someone died?"

His big sunflower-face smiled, but the smile faded when my mother finished her jeremiad about our troubles. The honest man froze into a stone idol.

"Why all the fuss? What are you wailing for? Where is it written that everybody must make a gentleman of his child? You could bind your boy as an apprentice, couldn't you? Now, God be with you!"

But a good man cannot quite deny himself. Even though we had made him angry, he again, on parting, let us kiss his well scented hand.

Now it was all up with me, indeed. Even my mother asked what kind of apprentice I wanted to be? My God, what else could I have said but: bookseller. I could say it with a fairly easy heart and upon that my mother brightened up a bit too. Perhaps she was thinking of the books full of beautiful tales I should be able to read to her, seated beside the ditch of a Sunday afternoon.

At that time Mr. Ranezay was the only bookseller in our town. In his shop window there just happened to be a notice saying that he wanted to employ an apprentice "of a good house."^[22] Of this I was a little afraid, for our house was rather wobbly and the tiles were inclined to slip from the roof here and there. But there seemed to be no difficulty about this. Mr. Ranezay examined me first with his bare eyes and then with his eyeglasses, and after that he declared that he would make a bookseller of me and ask no more for it than three florins a month.

Never shall I forget the afternoon that followed. It was unseasonably warm that autumn, though the swallows were already departing. My mother did the washing at the well and I was sitting at her feet under the wash-tub. Neither of us spoke a word, we merely wept softly. Her tears were falling into the tub and mine onto her feet.

But my real torture came only next morning. As my schoolmates were going to the Veni Sancte,^[23] they knocked on our shutters, door, and fence, and shouted through the chinks in the gate:

"Francis, Francis!"

This Dante forgot to include in his Inferno!

I hid in shed, pigsty, garret, but all in vain: the buzzing of the happy children reached me everywhere. I couldn't stand it longer than a week. When my pals passed our house, I waited till they were round the corner and then I dashed off after them. In the market place I hung around among the squatting market-women till I heard the school-bell ring eight o'clock, at which both teachers and children quickened their steps. Then I would circle round the school, first only from afar, then in an ever smaller circle. Maybe this is what Adam did when the door of Paradise closed behind him. If there's one man in the world who had a taste of what he went through, I am that man!

Adam, however, was driven only from Paradise and not from school, and he was debarred only from the covered table, not from books; this could be endured, this one could get used to. Already on the fourth day I was inside the fence. On all fours I stole past the head-master's door and right through the long, whitewashed corridor, till I came to the open door of the third class. There I heard everything; the teacher's explanations, the answers of the boys, the old school-attendant shuffling towards the bell; when I heard that shuffling, I scurried out of school and into the street as fast as one can run on all fours.

Till the middle of September there was no trouble whatever. Even by stealth one can drink gustily out of the well of science, from which I, poor, untidy youngster, was shut off by barbed wire. But then it so happened that the teacher, Mr. Eyszrich, was praising the beauties of the Latin tongue to the third class. How sonorous, how powerful, how concise that language was and how no other language could be compared to it.

"The Latin says: Unus es Deus. Which of you knows how to say that in Hungarian?"

Deep silence.

"Well, now, won't anyone dare to try? Matthew Nagy?"

Matthew Nagy was an eminent pupil, son of an estate steward, my rival in the second class. At this challenge he spoke up:

"One you are, God."

"No, that's not quite right! What sort of word order is that?"

Matthew Nagy caught himself up:

"I mean One God you are..."

Again I heard the teacher's voice:

"No, no! Don't you feel that there is something more in the Latin?"

My heart throbbed terror-stricken, but I could not help it, I simply had to shout:

"You alone are God..."

In the same instant my forehead struck against the tiles, for I had become faint with the excitement. Oh, what had I done, what would happen now?

What did happen was that the Latin teacher carried me in his arms into the class, and after that no school fee was ever asked from "landowner" Martin Móra. Unus es Deus. You alone are God. Even if you are a little far off, even if you have not much time to look down on Earth...

But, all the same, to me September remains the most sorrowful month of my whole life. Even though I belong to those who cry inwards, tears do come into my eyes whenever in the month of September I see a little boy with his head bowed...

1927

(1879-1942)

When Zsigmond Móricz's highly successful short story Hét krajcár (Seven Pennies) appeared in 1907, Endre Ady, the leading Hungarian poet of the period, acclaimed it in these words: "This short story is worth as much as a force of revolutionary irregulars." Móricz's activity, his vast work, brought about a revolution in Hungary's literature and in the general approach to things and people in this country.

Like Balzac, Móricz can be said to have created a world in his work - a counterpart of the real world. His novels and short stories abound in a richness of human emotions, whirling passions, violent clashes and extraordinary loves such as one cannot find, perhaps, in any other Hungarian prose-writer. Strongly conscious of the social injustice of his times, he was a man with a realistic turn of mind, a diligent observer and artistic reshaper of the facts of the real world. Though his concern was essentially with facts, he regarded sentiments and emotions as part of the facts of life. He was a literary cartographer of the Hungarian social scene, writing about peasants (Sárarany, Pure Gold; A boldog ember, The Happy Man; Pillangó, Butterfly; etc.), country gentlemen (Úri muri, Gentlemen on the Spree; Kivilágos kivirradtig, Till the Crack of Dawn; Rokonok, The Relatives), aristocrats and rebellious peasants (Betyár, The Outlaw), the urban middle-class (Rab oroszlán, Captive Lion; Az asszony beleszól, She Sticks Her Oar in; Jobb, mint otthon, Better than Home; etc.), and of the illusions of youth (Légy jó mindhalálig, Be Good Unto Death; Forr a bor, Fermenting Wine). He has given a comprehensive picture of the world in which he lived and against which he rebelled. He explored the course - and sought to establish the justness - of Hungarian history in his vast trilogy Erdély (Transylvania) and in Rózsa Sándor which turns around an episode of the War of Independence of 1848.

His historic novels were addressed to his own time, asserting the possibility of constructive national efforts and an honest political administration, and advocating responsibility towards the people. One can here point but to a few aspects of his lifework - his vast encyclopaedic knowledge and a broad range and depth of vision characterize Móricz's great oeuvre.

His short stories, the best of which describe episodes typical of the age with unparalleled dramatic power, were published in seven volumes after his death. Their effect upon both writers and readers has been immense - the young generation of writers has been brought up on Móricz, and many look upon him as their Master. Knowledge of life, dramatic power and irrepressible emotions - these are the things they can learn from him. Móricz's life spanned a crucial period in Hungarian history, one which was fraught with two world wars and full of bitter experience.

The gods in their wisdom have granted the benefit of laughter also to the poor.

The tenants of huts do not wail all the time, often enough a hearty laughter comes ringing from their dwellings. I might even go to the length of saying that the poor often laugh when they have every reason to cry.

I happen to be thoroughly familiar with that kind of world. The generation of the Soós tribe that had brought forth my father went through the direst stages of destitution. At that time, my father worked as a day-labourer in a machine shop. There was nothing for him, nor for anyone else, to brag about in those days. (Yet brag they did.)

And it is a fact that never in my life was I to laugh as much as in those very years of my childhood.

How, indeed, should I ever again have laughed so heartily after I had lost my merry, red-cheeked mother, who used to laugh so sweetly that, in the end, tears came trickling down her cheeks and her laughter ended in a fit of coughing that almost choked her...

But she never laughed as merrily as on the afternoon which we spent searching for seven pennies. We searched, and we found them, too. Three were in the drawer of the sewing machine one in the cupboard... the rest were more difficult to find.

My mother found the first three pennies all by herself. She thought there ought to be more coins in the drawer, for she used to turn a penny by sewing and kept whatever she earned in that drawer. To me, the drawer of the sewing machine seemed an inexhaustible gold mine, and whenever you delved into it, all your wishes came true.

Thus I was flabbergasted to see my mother digging into a mess of needles, thimbles, scissors, bits of ribbon, braid and buttons, and, after she had poked around in them a while, to hear her say in astonishment:

"They have gone into hiding."

"Who?"

"The coins," she said with a laugh.

She pulled out the drawer.

"Come on, sonny, let us find the wicked things. Naughty, naughty coins."

She squatted on the floor and put down the drawer so cautiously, she seemed to fear its contents might fly away; then she daintily turned it upside down, as though she were catching butterflies under a hat.

You couldn't help laughing over the way she acted.

"Here they are, in here," she giggled, and was in no hurry to lift up the drawer. "If there's but a single one, it must be in here."

I squatted on my heels and watched closely for a shiny coin to creep forth somewhere. Nothing stirred.

To be quite frank, neither of us really believed that there were any inside.

We glanced at each other, laughing over the childish joke.

I touched the drawer as it lay there upside down.

"Ssht!" my mother shushed me. "Keep still, child, or they'll run away. You have no idea how nimble pennies can be. They run so fast, they simply roll away. My, how they roll..."

We rocked with laughter. We had seen often enough, how easily the pennies could roll away.

When we got over our fit of laughter, I stretched out my hand once more to lift the drawer.

"Don't!" mother cried out, and I snatched back my finger as if I had scorched it on a stove.

"Easy, you spendthrift. Why be in such a hurry to send them off? They belong to us only while they are safe here, under the hood. Let them remain there for a little while yet. For, you see, I have to do some washing and for that I need some soap, and for the soap I must have at least seven pennies, they won't give me any for less. I've got three already, I need four more, they must be in this little house. They live here, but they hate to be disturbed, and if they grow angry, they'll vanish and we shan't ever get hold of them again. Easy, then, for money is a delicate thing and must be handled gently. It wants to be respected. It takes offence quickly, like a sensitive lady... Don't you know a verse that would lure it from its house?"

Oh, how we laughed while she babbled along! My incantation was odd indeed. It went like this:

At this I turned the drawer right side up again.

There was every kind of rubbish below it, but coins... there were none.

My mother kept rummaging in the heap, making a sour face, but that didn't help.

"What a pity," she said, "that we have no table. It would have been more respectful to turn it over on a table, and then the coins would have stayed put."

I swept up the things and put them back into the drawer. Mother was doing some hard thinking the while. She racked her brains to remember whether she had some time or other put any money elsewhere, but she couldn't recall it.

Of a sudden, I had an idea.

"Mother, I know a place where there is a coin."

"Where is it, sonny? Let us catch it before it melts like snow."

"There used to be one in the drawer of the glass cupboard."

"Oh, my lamb, I'm glad you didn't tell me before, it would surely no longer be there."

We stood up and went to the cupboard that had lost its glass pane ever so long ago; the penny was actually in the drawer I had suspected it to be in. I had been tempted to filch it for the past three days, but I never mustered enough courage to do so. Had I dared, I would have spent it on candy.

"Now we have got four pennies. Don't worry, sonny, that's already the bigger half. All we need is three more. And if it has taken us an hour to find four, we shall find the rest before We have a snack. That will leave me plenty of time to do a batch of washing by nightfall. Come on, let us see, perhaps there are some more in the other drawers."

All would have been well, had each drawer contained one coin. That would have been more than we needed. For, in the prime of its life, the old cupboard had done service in a prosperous dwelling, where it had harboured many treasures. In our home, however, the poor thing contained little enough - weak-chested, worm-eaten, gap-toothed as it was.

Mother chided each drawer as she pulled it open.

"This one used to be rich - once upon a time. This one never had a thing. This one here always lived on tick. As for you, you miserable beggar, you haven't a farthing to your name. This one won't ever have any, we keep our poverty in it. And you there, may you never have a single one: I ask you for a penny just this once, and even so you begrudge it me. This one is sure to be the richest, look!" she burst out laughing, as she jerked open the lowest drawer, which had not a splinter to its bottom.

She hung it around my neck, and we both laughed so hard, we had to sit down on the floor.

"Wait a minute," she started, "I'll get some money in a jiffy. There must be some in your father's suit."

There were some nails in the wall upon which our clothes were hung. My mother delved into the topmost pocket of my father's jacket, and, marvel of marvels, her fingers pulled out a penny.

She could hardly believe her eyes.

"Bless me," she shouted, "here it is. How much does that make? Why, we can hardly manage to count them all up. One - two - three - four - five... Five! All we need is two more. Two pennies, that is nothing. Where there are five, there are bound to be two more."

She went about feverishly searching all my father's pockets, but alas, to no avail. She couldn't find another. Even the merriest jokes failed to lure forth two more pennies.

My mother's cheeks burned like two red roses with excitement and exertion. She was not supposed to work, for, whenever she did, she was taken ill. This was, of course, a special kind of work, and you can't forbid people to look for money.

Snack-time came and went. Soon it would be getting dark. My father needed a clean shirt for the morning, and no washing could be done. Well-water alone was not enough to remove the greasy dirt.

Suddenly, mother tapped her forehead:

"How silly of me. I never thought of searching my own pocket! Now that I think of it, I shall have a look."

She did, and sure enough, there was a penny in it. The sixth one.

A veritable fever took hold of us. Just one more penny was lacking.

"Let me see your pockets, perhaps there is one in them."

Dear me, it was no good showing them. They were empty.

It was turning dark, and there we were with our six pennies, we might as well have had none for all the use they were. The Jewish grocer granted no credit, and the neighbours were just as penniless as we. Besides, you just couldn't go and ask for one penny!

The best we could do was to have a good laugh over our own misery.

We were in the very throes of it, when a beggar came by, wailing his sing-song prayer for alms.

Mother almost swooned with laughter.

"Stop it, my good man," she said, "I have been idle all afternoon, for I am short of one penny to buy half a pound soap with."

The beggar, a kindly old man, stared at her.

"You are short of one penny, you say?"

"One penny, yes."

"I'll give it you."

"A nice thing to take alms from a beggar!"

"Never mind, my child, I can do without it. All I need is a hole in the ground and a shovelful of earth. That will make everything well for me."

He put the penny into my hand and shuffled along amidst our blessings.

"Thank goodness," my mother said. "Now run along..."

She stopped short, then burst into ringing laughter.

"I can't wash today in any case, but, just the same, it's none too soon that we scraped together the money: it is getting dark, and I have no kerosene for the lamp."

She laughed so hard, it took her breath away. A fierce murderous fit of coughing shook her body. She swayed on her feet and buried her face in her palms and, as I drew close to support her, I felt something warm trickling down on my hands.

It was blood, her precious, hallowed blood. That of my mother, who could laugh so heartily as few people can, even among the poor.

1908

BARBARIANS

1

The little dog, the poodle, cocked his ears, sniffed the air, and in the next minute began to bark viciously.

"What's the matter?" the shepherd asked. But the poodle barked all the more.

"Townsfolk?" the shepherd asked.

The dog stopped barking for a few moments.

"Plainsmen?"

The dog began to bark again.

"Well, then, what's troubling you?"

The shepherd stretched out full length on his sheepskin cloak in the shadow cast by his ass, and did not pay any more attention to the whole matter.

After a while the two sheep-dogs also noticed the approach of the strangers and began to bark in a deep booming voice. They made such an abominable racket one would think they were being skinned.

But the shepherd already knew that fellow herdsmen were approaching, the poodle had already told him that quite plainly.

It was quite some time before the two shepherds astride their asses could be made out, riding across the parched plain. They came along slowly on their donkeys, their two dogs running round about the donkeys' legs.

The poodle stood by his master's feet and did not leave off his fierce barking even for a moment.

The big sheep-dogs gradually quieted down, after recognizing the strangers as shepherds. Perhaps they recognized the dogs too.

They were quiet for a minute or two, then they barked one verse or two, but their heart was not really in it.

Only the poodle did not give up, he continued to yelp as if somebody was mincing him with a knife.

When the two strangers reached the flock, the sheep-dogs picked a fight with the new dogs and all that could be seen was a flurry of snapping jaws and dust and fur. One of the shepherds roared at them from the back of his ass, he even raised his staff and threatened to strike them dead, but he let them be and jogged on towards the sheepskin cloak.

"Hallo."

"Hallo yourself."

The shepherd propped himself up on his elbow and took a look at the newcomers.

Then he shouted to the dogs:

"Get away from there!"

At this the dogs snarled at each other in a somewhat friendlier way.

One of the guests dismounted and approached with long waddling steps.

"Good day to you."

"Same to you."

He stood up to pay his respects, although the visitor did not deserve the honour because he was his ill-wisher. Our shepherd had heard at the tavern not long ago that the other had said his sheep were the scamps of the plain. Why did he say this about him who had the right to graze his flock wherever his engagement allowed him?

But then one did not immediately show one's feelings and thoughts. He shook hands with them and said:

"You get down too."

Then the other shepherd dismounted and they unharnessed the two donkeys. But the donkeys remained standing where they had stopped and did not budge, only their skin quivered under the sting of the gad-flies. At best they wiggled their ears.

The two shepherds took their sheepskin cloaks off their donkeys, spread them out on the parched earth, and lay down. They lay this way facing each other, just starting in front of them. They did not speak.

They were sheep herders all three of them, shepherds who were out with their flock all year and never saw the village, unless it was to attend a wedding feast or a country fair now and then. They were rugged plainsmen. Around them was the endless sky, that was all, for while an occasional cloud sailed across the sky, on the ground there was nothing but the chirping crickets. And not too far away a bent wild pear-tree grieved.

The big flock was far off, the boy was with it. The shepherd's little son, a twelve-year-old stripling; all there was of him was a big hat, a small sheepskin cloak, and a bit of curiosity. So he began to drive the flock back and around dusk he already came up to his father.

The men remained silent even then. A shepherd can spend entire days in silence. When they are together, they are silent together. And even when they go on a visit like this, they are no more talkative.

"And what about the woman?" one of the strange shepherds asked.

He was a big burly man, a freckle-faced tough man with blue eyes and a red moustache. As to the colour of his hair, one couldn't tell for his hat was pulled down almost to his eyebrows.

The other guest also grunted something. He was a smaller man with a stubby nose and ferrety eyes. He puffed on his pipe, and looked up, but did not say a word.

"She's been here."

"When?"

"Oh 'bout a week ago."

"When's she coming again?"

"She'll come all right."

"Do you have food?"

"I have some."

"Enough for two weeks?"

"For ten days."

"Ten days."

They remained silent again.

Now the boy was standing there too. He just stood and leaned on his crooked staff, silently watching the guests. He would have liked to find out what they wanted, why they had come, but he did not dare to speak. He did not even want to. If they didn't, neither did he. It wasn't urgent.

The sun was setting slowly. It too looked at the three men curiously, it did not know who they were and what they wanted. The sun was sorry that it would have to leave for the fold with its own flock. Would the secret come out by then?

Well, it didn't come out, for the three men just sprawled and smoked, sitting there with crossed legs.

The host only glanced around once, and even then he pretended to look for his flock, but actually he was looking to see whether his staff was within reach.

When the sun went down, life began to stir on the plain. Birds flew overhead, small birds in large swarms. Clouds of gnats rose from the grass or somewhere. The birds were preying on them.

"Listen."

"What do you want?"

"Do you have a belt?"

"Yes."

"I saw it last year at the fair; it's ornamented with brass."

"Yes, it is."

"You ought to sell it."

"Sell it?"

"Yes."

"It's not for sale."

"No?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Well, it just isn't. I made it for myself."

"For yourself?"

"For myself. And my son."

"And for your son?"

"For him."

"For the two of you?"

"Of course."

With that they sat a while longer.

And then it grew quite dark. It grew dark as suddenly as if somebody had blown out a candle.

"And don't you want to sell it?"

"I said I didn't."

At this the burly shepherd seized his staff and quietly drew it closer to him, as though he wanted to get up. The host did not move, he just watched like a sheep-dog, but he was alert.

"That's your last word?"

But by this time the host was springing to his feet. The two others jumped upon him.

Once, twice, the staffs clashed. First the two staffs struck the single staff, and then one staff struck the host's head.

He staggered.

"So that's why you've come?"

But he could not say any more, the two savages went at him and beat him to death in a moment. He was lying lifeless on the ground, yet they struck him once or twice more.

The little boy just stood there beside them and stared. It all happened so abruptly he could not even budge.

"Take off your father's belt," the red-faced man said to him.

The boy just stood there.

"Take it off!"

The boy turned deathly pale, and keeping his eyes on the men he went over to his father and removed the belt from his waist.

"Give it to me."

The boy lifted the belt and looked to see which one he should give it to. He just looked and did not notice that one of the staffs was being raised to strike him. It was such a blow on the head that he gave up his soul instantly.

The four dogs, as if they had not understood what was happening, suddenly came to life. The two strange sheep-dogs attacked the other two, seizing each other by the throat. The four bleeding dogs thrashed the ground, whining and yelping.

The little poodle hurled himself at the red-faced shepherd and bit his leg. The shepherd flailed him with his staff and kicked him until he was lifeless.

The four sheep-dogs were not even visible in the dark. They mauled each other for all they were worth.

The two men remained standing, leaning on their staffs, waiting for the dogs to finish. When they came back bleeding and licking their wounds, the red-faced shepherd said:

"Start scratching."

And the two sheep-dogs started to scratch. They scratched a hole in the earth. But it went too slowly.

The men took short-handled spades from the packs on their asses and helped them.

Once the ditch was dug, the smaller shepherd dragged the body of the boy into it. The man's body, however, was too heavy.

"There's the belt."

He tied the belt around the dead man's neck and dragged him into the ditch.

By the time the moon rose, the dead shepherd and his son, with their three dogs, were into red. The two men built a fire from manure on the grave and fried their bacon. They ate their meal with relish.

"Well, that's that," said the red-faced shepherd. "Let's move on."

They began to drive the flock, and the three hundred sheep began to move across the plain, but it was a slow job, because the animals wanted to lie down and rest. They could not understand why they had to keep on wandering on an empty stomach. But since they had no choice, they went on and on. The four asses ambled after them, and the two wounded sheep-dogs followed limping.

The two shepherds walked calmly after them.

2

Ten days later a tall, dark woman could be seen walking across the vast plain.

She was dressed in white linen, on her feet were loose shoes, firmly fastened with twine, and she wore a linen kerchief on her head.

She was carrying a pack on her back and striding swiftly, although she had been walking already for three days. Her village was far away, because her husband, since he was grazing his own flock, did not easily obtain the use of a pasture.

Her heartbeat quickened when she saw the bent wild pear-tree from far away; that was where her husband used to graze his flock.

But this time she could not see her man anywhere.

There was no farmstead or village hereabouts for at least a day's walk. Not a soul anywhere, only the endless plain. If somebody was not in his place, no one could find him. She found the old fireplace and she sat for a while by it.

She wandered all day about the pastures she recalled. But she could not even find a trace of the flock, no fresh trail, no shining little sheep droppings. The dried-up traces were several weeks old. And there had been rain, a storm too, which had washed away the traces long ago.

She slept under the great and fearful sky and could not understand where her man could be. After a short slumber she was on her way eastward to find other shepherds who might know something about him.

She reached a pasture where she saw smoke; it was a merry smoke.

That wouldn't be her man, she could see already from the fire. Her man, poor soul, did not even have the desire to make a fire, if he did not need to. He liked everything dry and his food cold. He never made a fire in the morning, he ate his bread, bacon, and onions just as they were. He made a fire only around noontime or at night, to cook some noodles or a clear soup, and that only for the sake of the boy.

Huge furious dogs attacked her savagely, but she did not fear them because she knew their language; she had been a shepherd's daughter and was also a shepherd's wife. The dogs barked at her but did not harm her.

"Good day, good people," she said when she reached the fire.

A huge red-faced shepherd and three young herdsmen were standing about.

"Has no one seen my husband with his flock? My man is the one who always goes towards the sunset."

"With three hundred sheep?"

"Yes, with three hundred. That's him. Curly the Shepherd, he was called."

"Well, sit down, my good woman."

The woman remained standing for a while, but since no one was inclined to speak she just squatted down with the pack on her back, crouching on her heels and resting in shepherd fashion.

"Well, I don't know where your husband went. He headed towards the sunset."

"I wonder where he could have gone."

"He didn't say where he was going, but he went towards Transdanubia."

"Transdanubia?"

"Twelve or thirteen days ago he came by here. Said he had to be away for a while, because he was in trouble with the pandours."

"Him?"

"Yes, him."

"With the pandours?"

"With the law."

"He never mentioned it. Just two weeks ago today I was out here to see him. He said nothing about it."

"He was a reticent man."

"Reticent, but he would have mentioned that."

The red-faced shepherd offered her the fork with which he had been stirring the kettle of stew.

"Do have some."

"I've eaten."

"Have some, just the same as if you were eating your own. I don't begrudge it."

But the woman only shook her head. She did not reach for the fork, she did not dip into the kettle, although the meat looked good, and there was mush. These men were faring well, so early in the morning.

She looked at the flock. There was a mixture of sheep and ewes of Hungarian breed. She just stared and stared, as if she were looking at her own. If her husband went away, she would have no more sheep, nor ewes.

"I even recall," said the red-faced shepherd, "when he passed here he was wearing a belt. It was ornamented with brass."

"That was him," the woman said, "he liked that belt, he always wore it around his waist."

"I asked him for it, but he wouldn't give it to me."

"No, he wouldn't have given that to anybody in the world."

"I offered him whatever he might ask for it, but he wouldn't hear of it."

"Oh, my poor, dear husband," the woman exclaimed, and she clasped her hands.

"Then he said he had to go away."

"Did he mention me?"

"No, I asked after you, but he didn't reply."

"Not even a word?"

"He only said you had been here. I asked him when, and he said about a week ago. That's what he said."

"About a week ago? Is that what he said?"

"Yes."

"But then it's only been a week since he went by here."

"Could it have been only a week?"

The woman looked over the young herdsmen, but they knew nothing about him.

"They didn't see him, because they weren't here yet."

"Where were they?"

"Oh, here and there."

"Are they new?"

"New or not new, they weren't with me."

"But still why did he come then?"

"He just came. He just came by here with his flock, he was a bit languid. There must have been something wrong, because he was very quiet."

"That was him."

She stared in front of her with dry eyes, but her heart felt more and more restless.

"Didn't he leave any sign?"

"Sign? What for?"

"Well, then..."

She stood up.

"Wasn't the boy with him?"

"Boy? I saw a lad with him, they were together with the flock."

"Yes?"

"He had two sheep-dogs, and a poodle."

"That's right."

"Well, why don't you wait for him? Maybe he'll be back by autumn."

"I'll go after him."

"Well, suit yourself. You're welcome to stay here. We wouldn't be put out. You could stay here for a day."

"To Transdanubia, he said?"

"To Transdanubia."

"Then I'm going after him to Transdanubia."

"Always towards the setting sun."

"I'll ask somebody."

With that the woman stood up again, shook the pack on her back, nodded her head, and went on her way.

The shepherds looked after her a long time. They ate and drank. Wine from a wooden flask. Then they got up and tended their flock.

And the woman went and went until she disappeared. She was swallowed up by the vast plain. The sun rose higher and higher in the sky and watched the dark woman dressed in white linen walking on and on across the plain. And she just went and went. She did not even look towards her home. She just went and went on the endless plain until she was lost in the distance. She walked until she reached the Danube. She crossed the river, having found a boatman who took her across. And on she went.

She went wherever she heard of shepherds grazing their flock.

She went all summer, went until the first snow fell. She wandered over every pasture, visited every flock and sat down to talk to every shepherd and ask whether he had not heard of a straight little reticent man with three hundred sheep.

For the winter she went home to her village. She opened the house with the key which she had concealed under the eaves and passed the winter at home. By that time her pig had grown, her hens and chickens multiplied, because the neighbours had watched over them while she had been away.

With the coming of spring she could not bear to stay at home any longer. The poodle had a puppy; he too was a smart little black dog, and she said to him:

"Come, little poodle, let's go find your master."

She went out into the plain again. She carried what she could on her back and walked forth to the place where she had left the shepherd.

She found the great pear-tree again. She settled down as if she wanted to spend the summer there.

And she stayed there for two weeks, or three, she did not count the days. She watched the dog. When she ran out of food, she went home again, packed up once more and returned. Out to the great plain where some other shepherd was already grazing his flock.

The hot days and the rainy ones came and went. But she could not tear herself away from the place, she just wandered around in the vastness.

Then one day the poodle found something. He brought a hat.

"My husband's," she said, "where did you find it, poodle?"

The dog led her to the place.

The poodle scratched in a bit of smooth sand. He scratched furiously, barking and whining and snarling. He scratched and scratched.

Then he uncovered a hand.

The woman fell to scratching with her ten fingers in the sand, and soon the body of her husband was before her, the flesh rotting away. Around his neck was the brass-ornamented belt.

She found her son too. The child lay face down and his big hat was on his head. As she lifted the hat she saw the big wound on his little head. The mother stared at it with dry eyes. Just one blow with a stick and that was the end. He had not suffered long.

She sat by the grave all day long. At night she scratched the sand back. She made a little mound over the grave and stuck two stakes in it in the form of a cross. Then she walked eastward.

By morning she found the flock.

"Where is that red-faced shepherd," she asked, "who grazed his flock in these parts last year?"

"In Szeged," said the strange shepherds.

"So I thought."

"The pandours heard about his tricks and took him away for questioning."

The woman did not rest, she started for Szeged.

She arrived on the third day. She went to the chief of the pandours and related everything.

The pandours went out and took her along with a horse and wagon.

They dug up the grave, wrote down what they saw. They removed the belt from the body of the dead shepherd and went back to Szeged.

3

The examining judge conducted an inquiry.

He questioned one prisoner after another. Facts began to accumulate and it was clear that the red-faced shepherd had been responsible for a whole series of thefts and murders. There was already enough to send him to the gallows when the examining judge asked him:

"And what about Curly the Shepherd?"

The shepherd did not bat an eyelash.

"Curly the Shepherd?"

"That's what he was called, when he was still alive."

"When he was still alive?"

"While he lived he was called Curly the Shepherd. And what happened to him?"

"I don't know him Sir."

"He grazed his flock beside you, on the puszta of Csobor. Together with his little boy."

"That's possible."

"Do you know him now?"

"If he's the one who went over to Transdanubia."

"It would be good to know where he went. To Transdanubia, or elsewhere?"

"Well, he visited me on his way there, that's true. He was in some kind of trouble with the law, and he was going towards the setting sun for a while."

"The setting sun or a resting place?"

"A resting place, I think."

"That's what I think too. And you helped him to get there."

"I, Sir?"

"Him and his son."

"Never, Sir."

"See here, justice has caught up with you finally. You only have to own up to this last one. What had Curly the Shepherd done to you?"

"Nothing, Sir."

"Done nothing to you?"

"I had absolutely no difference with him."

"Then why did you say in the tavern of Csűr that he was grazing his flock where he shouldn't?"

The red-faced shepherd's eyebrows quivered.

"I didn't say that."

"Others heard it."

"Nobody could have heard it."

"They heard it, and you know that very well. To whom did you say it?"

"If I said it, that wasn't why."

"Then why?"

"I didn't say it because of that. A shepherd is allowed to graze wherever his engagement says he may."

"He had three hundred sheep. Where did he disappear with them? He couldn't have disappeared from the face of the earth. Right?"

"Right."

"But if he's disappeared, then his sheep should be around. Were they rams or ewes?"

"Mostly rams, if there were any."

"Of course there were. Did they belong to him or to the landlord?"

"He'd be able to tell you."

"What did he tell you?"

"I never spoke with him."

"Then how did you know?"

"Others told me. I saw them. He grazed his flock beside mine. He wasn't very talkative. He was a reticent man."

"Was he reticent?"

"Yes... he was."

"Then too?"

"When?"

"When you clubbed him to death with your staffs. Both him and his son."

"Did he have a son?"

"He had a son. You struck him just one blow on the head and he was finished."

"Don't say such things to me, please. I never spoke with him, neither him nor his son."

"If you didn't speak, then he could not have spoken. He was a reticent man."

"What does Your Honour want of me?"

"I want you to unburden your soul. One more or less."

"I can't own up to what doesn't concern me."

"Think about it."

"I've nothing to think about."

"Did you take spades with you?"

"Spades?"

"On your asses."

"Asses?"

"Because it was a clean job."

"I had nothing to do with it, Sir."

"Did you drive off the sheep?"

"I had sheep of my own, Your Honour, I wasn't curious 'bout anybody else's."

"But they were fine sheep. Three hundred. He was a good man, Curly the Shepherd. He acquired them by himself, he saved his earnings."

"Maybe. But I know nothing about it."

"Are the sheep still with your flock, or have you sold them?"

"Don't say such things to me, I beg you."

"Now listen to me, you're no child! Anybody who has admitted all his crimes ought not haggle over three hundred sheep. What is that to you? Now when you can go before God with a cleansed soul do you want Curly the Shepherd to tarnish it?"

"Can't help it."

"I could spit in your face, like some snivelling brat's. You went there after sunset, struck them on the head, killed their dogs and buried them in the sand."

The red-faced shepherd grew more stubborn. His eyes burning, he glared at the examining judge.

"It was none of my doing, Your Honour."

"Get out of here, you insolent... I don't want to see you anymore."

The shepherd staggered.

"Get out of my sight. You're no shepherd, you're a filching scoundrel! Rest assured that you will not have peace on the gallows either."

"What was none of my doing, I can't admit."

"Get out!"

The shepherd turned around and started for the door with big heavy steps. When he reached the door and wanted to put his hand on the doorknob, he reeled backward.

He could not touch the doorknob. He could not move, he just stared and stared and his mouth began to froth.

There, hanging on the doorknob was the brass-ornamented leather belt.

The shepherd slowly touched his head, then he turned around.

"Your Honour... I confess..."

The examining judge did not say a word, he only looked at the man with eyes like glowing embers.

"We killed Curly the Shepherd for his three hundred sheep and two asses."

With that he bowed his head.

The examining judge looked at him for a long time, then he rang the bell.

Two pandours entered.

"Take him away. Give him twenty-five strokes with a cane."

The shepherd bowed his head and went out through the door, a broken man.

"Thank you very much."

The judge looked after him and reflected:

"Barbarians."

1932

(1880-1918)

Margit Kaffka, Hungary's greatest woman writer, came of a family of impoverished nobles, who had clung desperately to the forms of their old way of life and, though sunk in debts and ground down by poverty, refused to work and live according to the new times. Kaffka broke through the prison bars of this milieu - after several wretched years in a nunnery, years that provided her with enough experience to last a lifetime, she became at first a primary-school and subsequently a secondary-school teacher.

She was twenty when she first sent in her poems to Budapest newspapers. Soon afterwards she published her first volume. She became a contributor to Nyugat (West), the most progressive Hungarian periodical of the time. She began to pour forth a vast number of poems, short stories and novels. Hangyaboly (The Ant-hill) treats the soul-cramping educational methods used in the convent school; Színek és évek (Sights and Seasons) - her most important novel - tells of the battle waged by the emerging new type of woman against the decaying world of the old ruling class; Állomások (Stages) is a roman de clef, the romantic story of Kaffka's literary battles and private life.

She died young, of influenza, within a few days of her little son's death from the same insidious epidemic.

"Better for us to fight and live militantly than to shed tears and keep waiting, give birth and live in fear. Remember, ye men, that, like yours, women's blood is no dearer in battle than in love's embrace," she wrote in one of her poems. She took an absorbing interest in the modern problems of woman's emancipation, of her new opportunities and tasks. And as the surging feminity of her message burst the banks of conventional lyric poetry, Kaffka became one of the chief cultivators in Hungarian poetry of the vers libre. On account of their bold message and exquisite, womanly, evocative lyricism, her novels and short stories are still effective today.

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