AN OUTLAW’S DIARY
[Illustration:
ADMIRAL NICHOLAS HORTHY.
]
AN OUTLAW’S DIARY:
THE COMMUNE
By
CECILE TORMAY
[Illustration: [Logo]]
LONDON:
PHILIP ALLAN & CO.
QUALITY COURT
_First published in 1923_
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
BY THE HEREFORD TIMES LTD., HEREFORD.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
ADMIRAL NICHOLAS HORTHY _frontispiece_
‘RED’ POSTERS _page_ 16
‘LENIN SPEAKING’ „ 22
GEORGE NYISTOR „ 30
THE JEWS CALL A MEETING „ 38
JULIUS HEVESI _alias_ HONIG „ 48
ALEXANDER CSIZMADIA „ 58
JUHASZ AND PECZKAI „ 66
COUNTRY FOLK GOING TO DRAW RATIONS „ 76
EUGENE HAMBURGER „ 82
ON THE BANKS OF THE IPOLY „ 88
TIBOR SZÁMUELLY „ 96
GEORGE LUKÁCS _alias_ LÖVINGER „ 106
THE RED MAY-DAY „ 110
BÉLA KÚN IN KASSA „ 116
EUGENE SZANTO _alias_ SCHREIBER „ 122
BÉLA KÚN AND SZÁMUELLY „ 130
TERRORISTS (I.) „ 140
‘SZÁMUELLY ... TOOK HOSTAGES’ „ 142
ALEXANDER SZABADOS _alias_ SINGER „ 146
THE EXECUTIONERS OF THE DEATH TRAIN „ 154
MAP OF HUNGARY „ 162
THE LIBRARY OF COUNT GEORGE SZÁPÁRY „ 164
ARPAD KEREKES _alias_ KOHN „ 174
JOSEPH CZERNY AND THE LENIN BOYS „ 186
A RECRUITING PLACARD „ 188
THE LENIN BOYS POSE WITH A VICTIM „ 192
TERRORISTS WITH A VICTIM „ 196
BÉLA VAGO _alias_ WEISS „ 202
RUMANIAN TROOPS OCCUPYING BUDAPEST „ 214
SZÁMUELLY ... BRINGS GREETINGS „ 220
TERRORISTS (II.) „ 224
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. 5
II. 21
III. 35
IV. 53
V. 68
VI. 84
VII. 99
VIII. 111
IX. 125
X. 137
XI. 148
XII. 162
XIII. 177
XIV. 189
XV. 201
APPENDIX 216
AN OUTLAW’S DIARY
CHAPTER I
_Night of March 21st, 1919._
There followed a moment’s silence, the awful silence of the
executioner’s sword suspended in the air. Humanity in bondage draws its
head between its shoulders, and, like the sweat of the agonising, cold
rain, pours down the walls of the houses. Now....
A bestial voice shrieks again in the street: “LONG LIVE THE DICTATORSHIP
OF THE PROLETARIAT!”
The neighbouring streets repeat the cry. A drawn shutter rattles
violently in the dark. Street doors bang as they are hurriedly closed.
Running steps clatter past the houses, accompanied by two sounds: “Long
live ... Death....” The latter is meant for us. Shots ring out at the
street corner.
“Death to the bourgeois!” A bullet strikes a lamp and there is a shower
of glass on the pavement. A carriage drives past furiously, then stops
suddenly amid shouts. A confused noise follows and the shooting dies
away in the distance. Other cars follow its track into the maddened,
lightless town. What is happening there, beyond it, everywhere, in the
barracks, in the boulevards? Sailors are looting the inner city: a
handful of Bolsheviks have taken possession of the town. There is no
escape!
One thought alone contains an element of relief: we have reached the
bottom of the abyss. It is disgraceful and humiliating, but it is better
than the constant sliding down and down. Now we can sink no lower.
Presently the streets regained their former quiet, and nothing but the
throbbing of our hearts pierced the silence.
There is no escape for us. The opened gutters have inundated us. St.
Stephen’s Hungary has fallen under the rule of Trotsky’s agent, Béla
Kun, the embezzler. And all round us events are taking place which we
have no longer the power to prevent.
I have no idea how long this nightmare lasted. We were silent: everybody
was struggling with his own sufferings. The lamp burnt low, and again
the clock struck. I caught at its sound, and counted the strokes: nine.
Countess Chotek, who had been with us, was there no longer, nor did I
see my brother. Time went slowly on. My room appeared to me like the dim
background of a painting; figures sat in the picture rigidly,
disappeared, and then were there again. The door opened and closed. I
saw my journalist friend, Joseph Cavallier, in a chair which had been
empty a moment before. He spoke and pressed me to go—mad rumours were
circulating in the town, awful events were predicted for the night.
Lieut.-Col. Vyx and the other members of the Entente missions had been
arrested, and it was intended to disarm the British monitors on the
Danube. The Russian Red Army was advancing towards the Carpathians, the
Bolsheviks had declared for the integrity of our territory. Béla Kun’s
Directorate had declared war on the Entente. “You must escape to-night,”
said my friend; “they are going to arrest you. Come to us.”
My mother called me and I opened her door with apprehension. She was
sitting up in bed, propped high between the pillows: her face was livid
and appeared thinner than ever. She too had heard the cries in the
street, was aware of what had happened, and knew what was in store for
us. Her haggard, harassed look inspired me with strength to face our
fate.
“Why don’t you come here? Why can’t we talk things over in here?” She
did not mean to cause pain, but her words stabbed me. Poor dear mother!
When Joseph Cavallier told her of his proposal she shook her head:
“You live on the other side of the river, don’t you? Don’t let her go so
far.” Suddenly she recovered herself and turned to me: “It is raining
hard and I heard you coughing so badly all day.”
The others had followed us into her room, and all had something to say.
My sister-in-law mentioned her brother Zsigmondy who lived near by: he
had offered me shelter in his home. My mother alone was silent. Though
she could not say it, it was she who was most anxious for me to go. She
looked at me imploringly. That decided me.
“It can only be a question of a day or two,” I said. “Then, when they
have failed to find me here, I can come back.”
Did I believe what I said? Did I imagine that things would happen like
that? Or did I attempt to deceive myself so that I might bear it the
more easily? I noticed a deep shadow that stole suddenly, I knew not
whence, over my mother’s face. It appeared on the other faces too, as if
all of them had aged suddenly. And beyond them, around us, in the houses
opposite, all over the town, people aged suddenly in that ghastly hour.
They all went away and left me alone in my room. I knew I ought to
hurry, yet I stood idle in front of the open cupboard. How many, I
thought, are standing, hesitating like this to-night, how many are
hurrying and running aimlessly about, not knowing whither to turn? Will
it be the same here as in Russia? Quietly the door opened behind me: my
mother had risen and came to me so that we might be together as long as
possible.
“I will take just a few things, very few,” I kept repeating, as if I
wanted to force the hand of fate to make my trial short. “Perhaps I may
be able to come home to-morrow....”
My mother did not answer. She tied the parcels together for me.
“The housekeeper must not know till to-morrow morning that you have
gone....” She looked out into the ante-room to see that no one was
about, then opened the door herself and accompanied me down the
corridor. The house seemed asleep, the sky was black, and the courtyard
underneath was like a dark shaft in which rain-water had accumulated.
Leaning on my arm my mother walked along with me. In silence both of us
struggled to keep control over our emotions. At the front door we
stopped. Nothing was audible but the patter of the rain. My mother
raised her hand and passed it over my face, caressingly, as though she
would feel the outlines that she knew so well.
“Take every care of yourself, my dear, dear one!”
I was already running down the stairs. She was leaning over the
balustrade, and I heard her voice behind me, keeping me company as long
as possible, calling softly, “Good-night!”
“Good-night....” I called back, but my voice failed me in a pain such as
I had never felt before.
Beyond the street door there was a rattle of gunfire. I tried to keep
cheerful, and kept saying: “To-morrow I shall come back to her,
to-morrow.” I groped my way across the dark yard and knocked at the
concierge’s window. He came out, looking curiously at me in the glare of
his lantern: “There is a lot of shooting out there. It would be wiser to
stay at home.” But I shook my head and the key turned in the lock; the
door opened stealthily, and closed carefully behind me, as though
unwilling to betray me.
Next instant I stood alone in the rain. I shuddered: my retreat was cut
off. Home, everything that was good, everything that protected me, was
behind that door, beyond my reach.
Motor horns, human shouts, rang here and there in the distance, whilst
the rain poured in streams in the broken gutters. The road seemed
absolutely empty. Suddenly I heard steps on the other side of the
street. They had not approached from the distance but had started quite
near by; someone must therefore have stepped from out of the shadow of
the house opposite. Had he been waiting there spying on me? The steps
became hurried, passed me, crossed the street. A dark shape hugged the
wall under the recess of a door. No bell was rung. I stopped for an
instant: the incertitude of the past few weeks reappeared. The knowledge
of being watched, pursued, the torture of being deprived of my freedom,
made me catch my breath. The threat had followed me so long, appearing
and disappearing in turn, menacing me from under every porch, from every
dark corner. Should I fly from it? Should I turn down a by-street?
Suddenly I felt tired and ill: my pulses were leaden and my brain seemed
weighed down with heavy stones. For an instant I contemplated giving in.
I seemed to be of so little significance compared with the enormity of
universal misfortune. The crash of general collapse had drowned the
small moans of individual fates.
The shadow suddenly emerged from under the porch and barred my way. We
stared at each other. Then a well-known voice said, “Is it you?” It was
my brother Béla, who had been watching for me so that he might accompany
me.
Only a few lamps were alight on the boulevard, and our heels crushed the
fragments of glass from the broken ones. Empty cartridge cases shone in
the puddles.
Machine-guns stood in the middle of the street. Some men passed,
carrying a red flag; then a lorry, bristling with bayonets, rumbled
heavily by, full of armed sailors. One of these shouldered his rifle and
aimed at us. He did not shoot, and when for an instant he appeared in
the light of a lamp before the darkness swallowed him again, I could see
the bestial grin which contorted his face. The lorry disappeared, but we
could hear his voice shouting something in Russian. There are many of
these here to-day. “A bourgeois, to hell with him!” The cry of Moscow
fills Budapest.
Frightened forms ran across the openings of the streets on the other
side, and the air was filled with wild movements and lurching fear. At
last I rang the bell of the front door which was to shelter me, and my
brother wished me Godspeed and turned back. It was some moments before
the door opened, and a woman came along, dragging her feet. She looked
at me suspiciously and seemed frightened. Where was I going?
I murmured something, crammed some money into her hand, and brushed past
her. Here too the courtyard was absolutely dark. I hesitated in front of
the door of one of the flats: something urged me to go on, something
else drew me back. At last I knocked, and a friendly face appeared. The
table was still laid under the welcoming light of a swinging lamp: how
peaceful was the sight of that quiet little home after the howling,
dirty, soaking street! Michael Zsigmondy and his wife welcomed me, but
whether or not they had expected me I cannot say; at all events they
seemed to consider it quite a natural thing that I should have come.
“What is the time?”
“Past eleven.”
There was a knock at the door.... We looked at each other. A tall, dark
young man entered. “Count Francis Hunyadi,” announced Zsigmondy,
relieved. He did not mention my name, and they carefully avoided
addressing me. The newcomer spoke:
“Nobody knows what is happening. It is said that the Communists want to
hand the town over to the rabble to plunder.”
I thought of my mother, who was surely thinking of me too. Behind her I
saw more faintly other faces: brothers, sisters, friends, acquaintances.
I began to tremble for all those I loved.
Zsigmondy went to the telephone, but the exchange gave the invariable
answer: “Only official communications are permissible.” Then that
stopped too. The telephone exchanges have passed into the hands of the
Communists.
The rain stopped; the streets livened up, and now and then the howls of
the excited rabble came up to us: “Long live the Dictatorship of the
Proletariat!”
The children were taken into another room, and my bed was made up in the
night nursery. Bright pictures of fairy tales were on the walls, lead
soldiers and toy horses on the floor. However long I may live I shall
never again feel as old as I felt in that nursery.
* * * * *
_March 22nd._
The day was already breaking when weariness overcame me and lulled me
into something resembling sleep. It must have lasted a short time only,
then an almost physical pain about my heart woke me. I felt like a
person who has lost someone very dear to him and on awakening is
reminded of his bereavement not by memory but by grief. I shrunk from
complete awakening. Not yet, not for just one more minute! But it was in
vain I tried to hide from consciousness, swiftly I remembered
everything. Hungary was no longer. She had been betrayed, sold. _Finis
Hungariæ._
I found myself moaning inarticulately. My heart was wounded and
bleeding, and the blood that was flowing was the blood of all those who
were Hungarian. I pressed my clenched fists to my eyes, pressed them so
hard that my eyeballs hurt and red flashes passed before them. Then I
opened them quickly and the grey dawn stared at me with dimmed eyes.
Their day had come!
The street seemed dead, but it was only resting from the night’s revels.
It must have been an hour later when steps interrupted the silence—a
hunchbacked little monster was coming down the street with a sheaf of
posters over his arm and a bucket in his hand. Now and then he stopped,
smeared his paste over a wall, and when he went on red posters marked
each of his stopping places.
“Long live the Dictatorship of the Proletariat!”
The town must be given no chance to regain its breath, to recover
consciousness. When it wakes its whole body will be covered with the red
eruption. It will be everywhere. It will cover the barracks, the royal
palace, the very churches.
I turned away from the window: it was useless looking out: everywhere it
was the same thing. A morning paper was lying on the table. Yesterday’s
compositors’ strike was over. Socialist compositors had set the papers
of the Communists and the red was pervading the black print: “Unite,
Proletarians of the World!” This was followed by Károlyi’s proclamation:
“To the Hungarian people! The government has resigned. Those who till
now have governed by the will of the people and with the support of the
Proletarians have come to the conclusion that circumstances require a
new orientation. Orderly production can only be secured by handing over
the power to the Proletarians. Besides the danger of anarchy in the
productive activities of the country there is the danger of foreign
politics. The Peace Conference in Paris has secretly decided that nearly
the whole of Hungary is to be occupied by armed forces. The mission of
the Entente has declared that the lines of demarcation will be
considered in future as political frontiers. The obvious reason for a
further occupation of the country is that Hungary is to be made the
battle ground of the war against the Russian Soviet troops, now fighting
on the Roumanian frontier. The territories robbed from us are intended
as the reward of those Czech and Roumanian armies which are to be used
to defeat the forces of the Russian Soviet. I, the Provisional President
of the Hungarian Popular Republic, am obliged by this decision of the
Paris Conference to appeal to the proletariat of the world for justice
and help; consequently I resign and hand over the powers of government
to the Proletariat of Hungary.—Michael Károlyi.”
I was filled with disgust. He admits that it was he who has handed it
over! I felt with horror that this proclamation was nothing but the base
documentary evidence of the sale of a betrayed nation.
“I alone can save Hungary!” It was with these words that Michael Károlyi
started his lies on the 31st of October, 1918. “I hand the powers of
government to the Proletariat of Hungary,” he declares on the 21st of
March, 1919, when lies fail him. In the interval he has squandered and
sold Hungary. The mask has fallen, and behind it appears boldly the
rabble which he calls the Proletariat of Hungary. Practically all its
leaders appear in the list of the “Revolutionary Government Council.”
Just as in Károlyi’s Government it is headed by a deceptive Christian
clown; Alexander Garbai is the President. The others are all foreigners.
All the People’s Commissaries are Jews, there is now and then a
Christian among the assistant commissaries, then again Jews and still
more Jews. Jews are to administer the capital, Jews are at the head of
the police. A Jew is to be governor of the Austro-Hungarian Bank.
This list gives one furiously to think. The puppets of the October show
have been swept from the stage by the events of last night. The
demoniacal organisers, the raving wire-pullers and prompters have taken
their place, and for the first time in the long history of Hungary,
Hungarians are excluded from every inch of ground, whether in the hills
and the vales of the Carpathians, or on the boundless plains. The
country has been divided up among Czechs, Roumanians, Serbians and Jews.
The newspaper continues to address “Everybody.” The Revolutionary
Council proclaims haughtily that it has taken over the government and
that it is going to build up its workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’
councils. Hungary becomes a Soviet Republic. The Revolutionary Council
will start without delay a series of fundamental changes. It decrees the
socialisation of big estates, wholesale businesses, banks and means of
communication. The land reform will not take the shape of dividing up
the land into small holdings but of organising it into socialistic
productive co-operative societies. The death penalty will be imposed on
the bandits of the Counter-revolution as well as on the brigands who
indulge in looting. It will organise a powerful proletarian army. It
declares its intellectual and sentimental community with Soviet Russia.
It offers an armed alliance to the Russian Proletariat. It sends
brotherly greetings to the working masses of England, France, Italy and
America, appealing to them not to tolerate any longer the looting
expeditions of their capitalistic Governments against the Soviet
Republic of Hungary. It offers an armed alliance to the workers and
peasants of Bohemia, Roumania, Serbia and Croatia. It appeals to German
Austria and Germany to ally themselves with Moscow.... Long live the
Dictatorship of the Proletariat! Long live the Hungarian Soviet
Republic!”
I thought of the stories related by returning prisoners of war, the
vague news of the Russian Revolution, the distant outlines of its
nefarious actors and its beginnings at Petrograd. Russia’s awful fate
filled me with anguish and apprehension.
This was the first ordinance of the Revolutionary Council:
“MARTIAL LAW.—Anybody resisting the orders of the Soviet Government or
inciting to rebellion against it will be executed. Revolutionary
tribunals will sit and try the criminals. Budapest, March 21st, 1919.”
I jumped up: I felt I should choke unless I did something.
“That soldier down there is still walking up and down,” said Mrs.
Zsigmondy quietly.
“It is lucky that the house has entrances on two streets. I shall go out
by the other.”
A sharp wind, cleared by rain, was blowing on the boulevard. The
carriages seemed to have disappeared, and only motor-cars were rushing
about, armed sailors standing on their steps and long-haired Jews,
smoking big cigars, sitting inside. The shops were closed, and red
posters flamed from their lowered shutters.
“Long live the Soviet Republic allied to Russia!”
The wind blew the torn down posters of the Károlyi Government over the
unswept pavements. Now and then hurrying pedestrians passed with bent
heads, their eyes expressing stunned bewilderment. They could not
understand what had happened.
A chemist’s shop was open: that was the only concession. My head was on
fire and my chest torn with coughing. I went in. Many people were
waiting for their prescriptions. Two people whispered to each other:
“The resignation of the Government was simply a sham to frighten the
Entente into re-establishing the old lines of demarcation.” “Goodness
no, my dear sir, there has been too much of Károlyi’s cowardly
pacificism. The Bolsheviks want to reconquer the whole of Hungary.” A
lean young man standing by began to gesticulate wildly: “If that is so,
every Hungarian ought to stand by them.” The other nodded: “We shall
soon go home to Pressburg....”
I was staggered. So they are still credulous, they still believe! I went
on sadly. When I reached the offices of the National Federation of
Hungarian Women I was taken aback. There was nobody waiting there, the
ante-room was empty.
What a great thing we had been attempting, we women! To stop a cart
running down a slope! We wanted to spread light and confidence and
strength into the homes and people of Hungary. Was it to be all in vain,
our sufferings, our labour?
As I opened the door into the inner office there was a sudden silence
within, and the secretary rose from his table. Familiar faces turned to
me, but they looked at me in silence, as if a question were on their
lips, as if they expected something.
Faithful, brave women! In this moment I felt that after all everything
was not lost. What we had sown could not be trampled down, the flames we
had lit could not be extinguished.
A young girl looked in and nodded. “Soldiers are gathering in front of
the house....”
We began to hurry. One gathered the list of names, another threw our
appeals into a basket: “There is a corner of my house where they won’t
look for them, I shall hide them there.” Another tied some documents
together: “My husband will hide them somewhere in the National Museum.”
“I will take these to a decorator who has hidden many other dangerous
documents,” said the secretary.
I wrote a farewell letter to my collaborators at the long table on which
I had done so much work. “We won’t dissolve and we won’t cease to exist.
Let everyone continue our work as best she can till we meet again. And
if there is any trouble and anyone is persecuted, say that I am the
cause of all.”
A girl leant against a cupboard and covered her eyes, while two others
dragged a heavy basket through the door: it contained our office outfit.
Suppressed sobs were audible near the wall underneath the high crucifix.
We shook hands, no one said a word, and they let me go alone. But when I
turned back from the door I saw they were all looking after me.
The guardians of the house were some quiet, gentle nuns. I knocked at
their door and the Mother Superior opened it as if she expected me.
“I thank you for your hospitality and pray your forgiveness if our
presence brings you misfortune.”
“Nothing happens but what God wills,” answered the nun, with a resigned
expression on her gentle face bordered with white veiling.
Meanwhile the soldiers had retired from the vicinity of the house, so I,
as usual, bent my way towards home. Only when I reached the beginning of
my street did I realize what I was doing. It was too late to turn back.
Something attracted me painfully, as though my heart were attached to an
invisible thread which was being drawn rapidly towards the further end
of the street. There it was that I used to turn in other times when I
felt weary. If only I could go there, just for the time necessary to
open the door, look in, and nod. And the thread pulled me harder and
harder, with ever increasing tension. I crossed the street. Just one
more step to be nearer. Just one more! As I leant forward I put my hand
to the wall of a strange house. For an instant I perceived our entrance
and saw the windows shining above. I looked at each of them separately.
The fifth was that of a room of many memorable evenings, my mother’s
window. I bowed to it, as if in greeting. Someone quite near to me bowed
at the same time. What was that? It was only my shadow that followed my
movements on the sunlit wall. Had anybody observed me? How ridiculous I
must have seemed! With hastened steps, very fast, I returned to those
who had given me shelter.
Hours followed which have escaped my memory. News from the impenetrable
tangle filtered through in the afternoon. The town has become more and
more strange and incomprehensible: it has put its neck into the halter
while talking of reconquering the country. Reliable news is now
obtainable of Károlyi’s resignation, and the proceedings of the
ministers’ Council have been divulged by journalists. Before the meeting
Károlyi had a long secret talk with Kunfi; thence Kunfi proceeded
directly to the prison, where he made formal compact with Béla Kun and
the Communists in the name of the Social Democratic Party. The agreement
was drawn up in writing. Meanwhile, in the old House of Parliament,
Pogány-Schwarz proclaimed the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. After
that everything went quickly: barracks, arsenals and munition depots had
already been given up to the Communists. Now the post office and the
telegraph have come into their power.
Kunfi obtained from Károlyi an order for the release of Béla Kun and his
fellow prisoners; he then drove to fetch them and they left their
prison, as Hungary’s all-powerful masters, to occupy the sleeping
capital.
Meanwhile Károlyi was sitting with his Countess and the former Prime
Minister Berinkey in a room of the Prime-Ministerial Palace. The town
was getting restless in the dark night. Wrapped in a blanket, Károlyi
shivered and asked what was happening out there. When he was told that
his proclamation had already been read in the Workers’ Council he asked
sleepily, “What proclamation?”
“Why, your resignation!”
“Impossible! I scarcely remember what it contained, I was so hurried to
sign it. Its publication must be prevented.”
An official told him that he was too late. “It is already being printed
by the papers and will appear in the morning.”
Károlyi stammered that he had no intention of withdrawing it, he only
wanted to alter some passages. But the Communists had taken good care
that by then it should have already been telephoned to Vienna. The wires
carried the news of Károlyi’s resignation and his disgrace, and the
document, as edited by Kéri-Krammer, is preserved for the edification of
a horrified posterity.
This is not a tale, not a figment of imagination devised to make
people’s flesh creep. In the night of the 21st of March Károlyi stood
with his narrow head bent to one side, his hollow chest heaving, in the
room formerly occupied by Stephen Tisza, and before the cock crowed
thrice....
This morning someone met Károlyi and his wife walking on the embankment
of the Danube. A big red carnation was glowing in his button-hole, and
his wife wore a bright-red hat in the shape of a Phrygian cap and a red
collar on her coat. Both looked happy and were laughing. “I am so
pleased,” Countess Károlyi said to a friend, “Hungary has never been so
happy as it is now.” At the Prime Minister’s house, when taking leave,
Károlyi expressed himself in the same sense.
“It must not be forgotten,” he declared, “that, though it may ruin a few
individuals and now and then inflict hardships on certain people, it has
to be borne in the interest of the community. Let us pour oil on the
wheels of the new Government and let us do all in our power to make it a
success, because that is the interest of the Hungarian people.”
They speak like that. Adorned ostentatiously with red flowers and a red
hat—wearing the hangman’s colours—these two human beings walk about
after having achieved their work. One of their confidants, a Communist
comrade, said of them: “Károlyi and his wife wanted a revolution that he
might become the President of the Republic. Now they want Bolshevism
that in the reaction which they hope will follow in its suit they may
rule as autocrats.” And the confidant grinned as he spoke. Is this the
solution of their enigma? I don’t know. Those who say so have stirred
the witches’ cauldron with them.
Suddenly I saw Béla Kun. I saw him as he had appeared to me on New
Year’s Eve at the barracks when he went to incite the soldiers. Károlyi
let him, Pogány helped him. Now they sit all together. And Számuelly is
with them, so are Kunfi, Landler and Böhm. They have not yet recovered
from the first shock: their good fortune has surpassed their wildest
expectations. Even in their dreams they had never hoped for so much.
[Illustration:
TWO “RED” POSTERS.
]
At Limanova and at Doberedo the Hungarians showed themselves obstinate
heroes; who would have thought that they would so easily bend their
heads under the yoke? The all-powerful Peoples’ Commissaries are already
moving. The people are crowding in front of the editorial offices of
‘The Red Newspaper,’ where Számuelly’s belongings are being packed on a
carriage. Béla Kun too is leaving the two rooms which he had hired with
Russian money under the name of Dr. Sebestyén. Whither are they going?
Into the royal castle? Into the Prime Minister’s palace, or elsewhere?
They have the widest possible choice: everything is theirs.
There was a knock at my door. One friend after another came in bringing
news. Béla Kun has sent Communist agitators all over the country. They
drive through the villages in motor-cars, beflagged in red, and shout:
“The Dictatorship of the Proletariat has been proclaimed! Kill the
gentlefolk!” A new order has been issued: it is forbidden to wear arms;
even revolvers have to be delivered to the authorities. Only the
‘reliable people,’ Red soldiers, factory guards and workmen’s levies,
are allowed weapons. The shops remain closed: their goods are declared
common property. The newspapers are to be communised or prohibited. The
buildings of the conservative _Budapesti Hirlap_ have been occupied by
the editorial staff of ‘The Red Newspaper.’ Armed men occupy the tables,
and on the front of the building the Red flag floats.
A message reached me from Elisabeth Kállay: she and her family have gone
into the country and she asked me to come to them. But I shook my head;
to-morrow I return to my mother.
Many have left town. Those who could went by train, others fled by
carriage, on foot, by whatever means they could manage. All traces of
them disappear—they simply exist no longer. One political party after
another pronounces its extinction. The general officers and high
officials have disappeared from the scene. Nobody attempts to raise a
dam against the deluge, though yesterday a sluice-gate might have
stopped it.
October 31st has returned like a haunting spectre and we live the evil
day again. Then the trap was baited with the device: ‘Independent
Hungary,’ now it is: ‘Territorial Integrity.’ The whole thing is like
the semi-conscious feeling during a nightmare that one has dreamt the
same horrors before.
Where are those who used to be always ready to give advice to the King
in Schönbrunn and the halls of the Vienna Burg? Why do they not advise
our unfortunate nation now? And where are now those who during the war
were ready to order thousands ‘over the top’ into the jaws of death
whenever a single trench was in danger? Where is my whole haughty race
which used to go so proudly, singing a merry tune, to face death on
foreign fields? Why does it stand now, with glaring eyes, inactive, on
our fields at home? Since Károlyi’s treason, four and a half months have
passed. And this new danger finds us again without a leader, without
organisation. Running shapes are in flight. Shadows are disappearing in
the distance, shadows which once were thought the great realities of
Hungary. And those who stay with us, in offices, in poor officers’
quarters, are but hungry, ragged, grey little shadows with bended heads.
Wherever the red hand of Bolshevism has grasped the rod of power it has
always raised a spirit of resistance. The streets of Moscow, Petrograd,
Helsingfors, Berlin and Altona have run with the hot human blood of
revolt—Budapest alone has submitted in dizzy apathy. Is the hideous
enchantment more powerful here than elsewhere? Here, where in the time
of Károlyi’s revolution there were no more than two hundred and sixty
thousand organised workers and even yesterday no more than five thousand
Communists? What has happened? Austrian bugles have called on Hungarian
troops for too many charges during the war. Those who might have saved
us to-day are dead.
I felt a desperate longing for action: to do something even if one had
to die in the effort, to do something which would break the charm and
free the energies benumbed by its humiliating spell! I clenched my fists
and shook my head in frenzy; it cannot remain like this.
To-morrrow—to-morrow I shall go home. And wearily I shut my tired eyes.
The hours dragged on so slowly that they never seemed to come to an end.
Night was falling. The lamp was lit in the next room. The street door
was locked.... What was that? The slamming of it resounded as if a lid
had been banged violently on a giant box. And we are all sitting in the
box and waiting helplessly for our fate to be decided out there. As long
as the house doors were open the houses along the street seemed to hold
each other by the hand, and if one had got into trouble the slightest
movement would have been enough to warn the others. That is so no
longer. When the doors are shut the houses release each other’s hands
and each is left to itself with its own misfortune.
Out there in the dark threatening streets the stolen motors are racing
to and fro without a stop, carrying treacherous plans, hostile orders,
all over the town. And behind the doors no one is safe until these plans
and orders have decided his fate.
It was just before midnight when the bell rang in the ante-room. Its
sound choked the breath in our throats. Zsigmondy went out to open the
door. It was all right: only my brother Béla had sent me a message not
to go out to-morrow till he had spoken to me.
Then we retired for a restless sleep. A lamp was burning on the table of
the night nursery; my bed was made, but I sat for a long time on its
edge, waiting like a patient in the surgeon’s waiting room. There was a
smell of printer’s ink somewhere: if only one could read in these times,
I thought. There was a newspaper on the table. No, not that. I turned
from it in disgust. I wanted to escape the present.
How often have I found consolation in books during sad hours! But is
there a book that could lull the present sorrows to rest? I remembered
having read _Faust_ during a great storm at sea till the night had
passed, and during an evil night of the war my mother and I had read
_Toldi_ till the morning came. I wondered if to-day the armed knight
could carry me off with him as he rides to Buda to fight a last fight
for Hungary’s honour, to kiss faithfully great King Louis’s hand? I
shook my head. Was there nothing? _Hamlet_, with visionary raving eyes,
came and went, but did not arrest me. _Niels Lyne_ and _The Idiot_, and
rusty, armoured _Don Quixote_.
A patrol passed under the window. A soldier pulled his bayonet over a
corrugated shutter as if sharpening it for some future victim. The
others laughed, then they went on. Silence followed, the silence of a
huge wicked town that gapes.
How long will it last? Why can I not think of anything else? If I were
at home now I would count my books to pass the time. One, two, three....
I imagined myself taking an old volume from the shelf. Kant’s _Critique
of Pure Reason_. What good is that? At the other end of my bookcase
there is another book in a parchment binding as smooth and cool as
ivory: the Iliad. I thought of it—I had bought it in Siena, a long time
ago. Bright, great heroes, Homeric songs, would mean nothing to me now.
And Dante. No, I do not want him. His _Inferno_ knows nought of the
tortures we endure.
The horn of a solitary motor resounded through the night, and volleys
were fired in the direction of the barracks. Quietly, so as to make no
noise, I began to walk up and down in the nursery. There were books
lying about among the toys; picture-books, coloured animals, big, funny
alphabets. I looked at several; and thus a much used, shabby story book
came into my hand.
I sat back on the edge of the bed, the book open. It brought to me the
memory of holidays, old Sundays, mild childish illnesses.... Someone is
reassuring me, kisses me, hushes me and reads in a subdued voice at my
bedside, strokes the hair from my forehead.... The pages turn quickly.
And where neither Goethe nor Arany nor Dante nor Kant could succeed in
carrying away my thoughts this revolutionary night, the eternal
fairy-tale, that consoler of children, of sick and of suffering,
triumphed.