Cécile Tormay

“ Now, perhaps Christopher understood all that she could not tell him. He lived for ever among men and men are ashamed of feeling. To hide it they whistle and look out of the window. She too had been brought up with these ideas. She was taught that feeling is deep and great only so long as it keeps mute and becomes at once petty and ridiculous when it raises its voice; so pitiably petty that it makes one blush and run out of the room. It must never be shown. Nor did the others in the house ever display it, nobody but Uncle Sebastian, long, long ago. ”

“ That is what we want: the proclamation of our confidence, our self-respect, to a world in which every nation boils with patriotism while we Hungarians, alone, proclaim internationalism, humility, and resignation—far beyond the necessities of our miserable condition.
It is true: our leaders don’t feel Hungary’s death—and, what is worse, our poets are silent as if they too were insensible to it. I cannot thank you enough that in this backboneless, collapsing, suicidal Hungarian world you have had courage enough to throw it in our teeth. ”

“ Christopher looked at her in amazement. He had never heard his sober, serious sister sing like that. All looked at Anne. Not one of them understood what had happened, yet they felt a strange warm light thrill through them.
“How beautiful she looks when she is singing!” thought Thomas Illey.
People do not see each other always, only now and then for a moment. Thomas Illey saw Anne in this moment. He turned a little pale and felt as if a hot caressing hand fanned the air near his face. He lost control over his eyes and passionately they took possession of the girl. ”

“ But we recognised his greatness, his strength, his endurance and his honour, and I am convinced that there is not a single Hungarian in Hungary who does not repudiate, desperately and indignantly, that which Károlyi has dared to do in our name to Mackensen.
It was torture to lie still in bed. Why is there nobody among us who will avenge this? Why is there nobody who will wipe off the dirt before it dries on us? Innumerable eyes glared at me through the dark from under German soldiers’ caps, and at last I could bear it no longer. ”

“ A few days later, Anne dreamed at night that there was a thunderstorm. Towards morning there was a sound in the room as if peas by the handful were being thrown against the window panes—many, many peas. Later, as if some invisible bodies were precipitated through the air, every window of the house was set a-rattling.
“Put up the wooden shutters!” shouted the builder from the porch.
Christopher came breathlessly up the stairs. “School is closed!” His pocket bulged with barley sugar and he was stuffing it into his mouth, two pieces at a time. ”

“ Christopher Ulwing forgot everything. His chest panted and inhaled the savour of the oak. The inherited ancestral instincts and movements revived; though displaced for a long time by strenuous intellectual work and rendered superfluous by long prosperity, the gigantic strength of his youth awoke again. There was nothing in the whole world but the timber of the oak and himself. For a moment the men got a glimpse of the great carpenter whose former strength was the subject of endless and ever increasing tales, told by the old masters of the craft to the younger generation. ”

“ Have even the songs of our fighting bards forsaken Hungary? Have the minstrels that remained at home all bled to death? The recital of our sorrows should be piercing the hearts of five continents; strength and faith should be sung to our sufferers at home, the bloodless nation should be stirred up with wild inspiring songs, so that it may not abandon hope. Poets are needed, poets whose voices can hold together the Hungarian soil, poets who will teach Hungarians to help each other. ”

“ It was a memorable event for the corridor to hear the sound of steps. The ticking of the marble clock resounded through all the rooms, no noise impeding its progress.
Thus did Anne find the house when she came back with her husband from the interrupted journey which was to remain in her memory like a broken dream.
Days without thoughts. Gentle words. Pure, girlish fears. Then she became accustomed to Thomas’s embraces. The news of her father’s death roused her and she could dream her dream no more. It was gone for ever. Another came.
Real life took its place and the first year passed away. ”

“ From the frontiers, narrowing round us every day, fugitive Hungarians are pouring in. On all the roads of the land despoiled and homeless people are in flight. Carts and coaches, pedestrians and herds of cattle mix on the highway, and the trains roll along, dragging cattle trucks filled with homeless humanity. Villages, whole towns in flight....
Maddened, with weeping eyes, half Hungary is escaping towards the capital which has betrayed it. And the heart-breaking wave of humanity is no longer an unknown crowd: familiar names are mentioned, and one perceives familiar faces. ”

“ CHAPTER VI On Saturday a letter came from Baroness Geramb. There would be no more dancing classes.
All the light seemed to go from Christopher’s eyes.
“But why?” said he, and hung his head sadly.
“Dancing is unbecoming when there is a war on.”
“So it is true? The war has come,” thought Anne, but still it seemed to her unreal, distant. Just as if one had read about it in a book. A book whose one-page chapters were stuck up every morning on the walls of the houses.
It was after Christmas. The Danube was invisible. A dense, sticky fog moved on the window panes. ”

“ And the crowd increased. It was as though the city had for years devoured countless Galician immigrants and now vomited them forth in sickness. How sick it was! Syrian faces and bodies, red posters and red hammers whirled round in it. And freemasons, feminists, editorial offices, Galileans, night cafés came to the surface—and the ghetto sported cockades of national colours and chrysanthemums.
As though it were beneath some wicked enchantment, the invisible part of the town has now become visible. It has come forth from the darkness to take what it has long claimed as its own. ”

“ First she only saw the setting: the small clockmaker’s shop, her grandfather in front of a large, semi-circular window, the old hand of Uncle Sebastian, the violet-coloured tail coat, the buckled shoes. She heard his voice again. Broken, unconnected words came to her mind, reached her heart ... and then, suddenly, there was light.
“No, people don’t know what their neighbour’s real face is like.... Everybody wears a mask, nobody has the courage to take it off, nobody dares to be the first because he cannot know whether the others will follow his example, or stone him.” ”

“ Events come fast, crowding one on the other without rhyme or reason. Common sense is of no use, for our fate is woven by maniacs. We have occasional bright moments, little flickers which the storm extinguishes. If we see clearly for an instant, darkness falls before we can find our way, and in its gloom, fate deals us such blows that we become giddy and lose our bearings. Nothing helps. Everything is new and strange; in a present like this the past is no guide. One cannot acquire the habit of dying!—and Hungary is struggling in agony in the hands of her murderers. ”

“ A family survives only if it is rooted in the soil. It is hopeless for a tree to cast its seeds on the pavements of cities; lasting life is impossible there. The families of city folk are like their houses and last but three generations. Country people are like the earth. The earth outlives a house.... If only I could go home, everything would be different.”
Astonishment disappeared from Anne’s face and an indescribable terror appeared in its stead.
“And the house! We shall have to leave here!”
“Don’t be frightened,” said Thomas icily. ”

“ The testament of Peter the Great is the programme of Panslavism. The communist declaration of Karl Marx, the son of a rabbi, Mordechai by his real name, is the programme of Panjudaism. If it is realised, Hungary perishes, and human culture will follow it into its grave. We who fight on the soil of dismembered, trampled Hungary do not fight for ourselves alone, but for every Christian woman in the world. They know it not, and they stretch forth no hand to help us, but look on while the nations to which they belong ruin us. ”

“ That is not an explanatory imitation of nature, it is man’s only artistic achievement which lives in him, and comes out of his very own self.”
“I think so too,” said Anne gently. “Every art represents what exists, music alone creates what has never existed.”
“How they agree,” thought Thomas, vexed. Then, rather disdainfully:
“Do not the musicians learn from the reeds, the thunder, the wind, the birds?”
“Nature only knows harmony and discord,” answered Adam Walter, “melody has been created by man. Nature knows no melody.” ”

“ Fog, yellow, clinging fog, in which the town, with all its streets and houses, glides on mud towards a bottomless abyss.
Day by day more cockades of the national colours disappear from the soldiers’ caps, and as each one disappears it leaves a wound: a spot of blood ... red buttons take their place. In one of the main streets yesterday a red flag was displayed on a house. In the northern suburbs communists meet in shady little inns, and in the streets foreign-looking men harangue chance crowds from dust-bins or the tops of hand-carts. ”

“ Christopher Ulwing drew out his snuff box. It was his father’s work and his only inheritance. He tapped it lightly with two fingers. As it sank back into his pocket, he bent towards the window.
His house now became distinctly visible; the steep double roof, the compact storied front, the mullioned windows in the yellow wall, the door of solid oak with its semi-circular top like a pair of frowning eyebrows. Two urns stood above the ends of the cornice and two caryatid pillars flanked the door. Every recess, every protruding wall of the house appeared soft and white. ”

“ Are the Jews going to outlive us too, because they will not die for the land? All my national instincts rebelled. They shall not outlive us! Their time will come. They are only mortal, for they want a country—they want our country. The life of peoples is like the life of individuals. They have their childhood, their youth, their manhood and their old age. Humanity has deprived the Jewish people of the flowering time of youth and manhood. Their race has aged unsatisfied while it has buried its contemporaries—Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians. ”

“ Anne and Adam Warner looked at each other.
They felt an irresistible desire to laugh and in this sympathy they became friends over the heads of the crowd.
Sztaviarsky played his march at an ever-increasing speed. The crinolines began to whirl round. Wheels of airy, frilly tarlatan, pink, yellow, blue. Dancing had begun round the piano.
For a brief moment Sophie found herself pressed against the wall near John Hubert. She raised her big, soft eyes to his, as if to ask him a question. But she found something cold, final, in John Hubert’s looks. The girl turned away. Her eyes fell on Christopher. ”

“ When the lamp was lit others came in, shivering, and we all gathered round the fire like conspirators, for we all suffered the same pangs, we all wanted the same thing. We knew that the hour had come, that we had to call out the women from behind their locked doors. In the history of Hungary women have not often appeared. They have never had to fight for their rights, because there is no code in the world which protects the rights of woman so well as ours did—even in the darker centuries. ”

“ Adam Walter shook his head.
“I am afraid we don’t understand each other.”
“It seems impossible,” said Illey. “You are one of those who like the painted landscape more than the real, live country. I don’t want to smell the violet in the scent bottle, but at the edge of the woods.”
Walter looked suddenly at Anne and then, as if comparing her with Thomas.
“Mr. Illey, you seem to me like the music of the Tsigans.”
“Tsigan music,” repeated Anne thoughtfully, “and I, what am I?” ”

“ For Pressburg weeps above the Danube, the people of our northern counties have lost their homes, faithful Zips calls broken-hearted to the Great Plain. Kassa is ready to grasp Rákoczi’s sword. Transylvania shows her martyr’s wounds while the proud Székler shakes off his shackles and the ancient land that Hunyádi held is breaking its heart over the disgrace of Belgrade. Who can give us a word of comfort, who can strengthen us with faith in a better future, in this hour of our agony, if not the poets of the nation? ”

“ The bricks under the whitewash, the beams, the arches, all were creations of one single force and she felt herself one with them as if she had grown from between the walls, as if she were just a chip of them, a chip privileged to move and say aloud what they had to suffer in silence.
She thought of the finished lives, continued in her who had survived everybody. Mysterious memories of events she had never witnessed invaded her mind. Grafts from memories treasured up by the house of the Ulwings.
Since the clock had stopped, time ceased to exist for Anne. ”

“ In close formation, headed by its flags, the victorious German army enters Paris. Along its route the windows are closed, flags of mourning float from the houses, and the still-burning street-lamps are shrouded in crepe; the people, conscious of its dignity even in the moment of its humiliation, observes a gloomy silence in the streets. No order has been given, no instructions have been issued, yet, men, women and children, all turn their heads aside, and the eyes of the victors fail to meet the tear-dimmed eyes, burning with hate, of the vanquished.... ”

“ Oil lamps burnt in the streets at nightfall and the Ulwing house no longer stood alone on the shore. The value of the ground owned by the great carpenter had soared. Walls grew up from the sand. Streets started on the waste land, stopped, went on again. Work, life, houses, brick-built houses, everywhere.
Everything changed; only Ulwing the builder remained the same. His clever eyes remained sharp and clear. He walked erect on the scaffoldings, in the office, in the timber yard. He was a head taller than anybody else. They feared him at the Town Hall and the contractors hated him. ”

“ Those who speak and act in our name to-day are not Hungarians. This is a life and death struggle, a desperate fight between a people bled to death and a race that has been allowed to breed too freely—a new kind of war. A short time ago our defeat seemed certain: the Hungarian people made no resistance because its faith had been killed, but now the faith has revived. ”

“ A motionless figure stood at the street corner under a lamp peering into the windows of the passing carriages. Suddenly he looked no longer towards the carriages. His dark sad eyes rested on Anne. He held his hat low in his hand and snow fell on his thin face.
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They clasped each other’s hands and the peace of their mind was like the languid moment, still incredible, when a bodily pain has abruptly ceased to torture.
The sound of rolling carriages spread in all directions. Occasional laughter flared up among the human voices, dying away at a distance. ”