_April 6th._
The woman for whom we were asked for wine yesterday was buried to-day.
The coffin was placed on the ground in the clean-swept little farmyard,
and her mother arranged the corpse as though she were putting it to bed.
Suddenly she knelt down beside the coffin and with her trembling, rugged
old hand stroked the rough boards and cried aloud: “Good God, why hast
thou taken her from me, why could not I die in her place?...”
Thus do mothers address grim death. What will they say when the attempt
is made to take their living children from them? Her lament became
louder and louder and dominated the ceremony. The Cantor said farewell
to the deceased in verses, singing them to an old-fashioned melody which
he repeated over and over again. This melody contained the memory of
ancient bards and the sorrows of wandering troubadours; the verses
mentioned by name all the mourning relations, each of whom, as his name
was pronounced, sobbed loudly, as though expressing his personal grief
in the general mourning. When the husband was named he pressed his face
into his doffed hat and his shoulders shook with sobs. The others had
their turn, but the old woman alone lamented from the beginning to the
end.
Everybody wept over his own sorrow, in the coffin alone there were no
tears. The tree in the yard stretched over it, and as the branches
swayed in the wind the dim sunlight threw their shadow over the coffin.
The shadow revealed that there were fresh buds on the branches, signs of
nature’s resurrection, and I realised that spring was coming.
“_In Paradisum_....” The priest blessed the coffin, blessed it as he
blesses an infant at a christening, the couples at a wedding, with the
same large movement which has served since the time of Christ for the
blessing on this earth of new life, of love and of death.
In Budapest the Red Power has decreed that from this day Christ’s
churches are to be closed and kinematographs established in them. The
Christian priesthood is threatened with the halter. The teaching orders
are expelled and the nuns driven from the bedside of the sick and the
cradles of the orphans. The dresses of their Orders are torn from them.
Their buildings become Communist meeting-places and the scenes of secret
orgies.
Theoretical Socialism has declared that religion is the private affair
of the individual. Now that it has got past the stage of theory and has
entered that of bloodthirsty reality religion has ceased to be a private
affair, for not even the soul must possess private property. Private
property has been abolished and common property has been substituted.
Religion is no longer a private affair, it is public business. And
public business in Hungary is now controlled in the name of the
Dictatorship of the Proletariat by twenty-six Jewish People’s
Commissaries, who this day crucify the Word with the same panting hatred
with which they crucified Him two thousand years ago. And the people
stand now as before, unimpressed, at the foot of the Cross, again not
understanding what is being crucified above its head with laughter,
contempt and hatred.
It is easier to drive cattle on than human beings; this the Communists
realise. By taking from the people its religion they take everything
from them but the couch, the platter and the cup; they deprive them at a
stroke of morals, philosophy and beauty.
The people knelt round the coffin and prayed, because someone was there
to tell them to pray; they turned to their inner selves, above the cup
and the platter, because there was someone who told them that there was
a God above.
Then the funeral procession wended its way out of the little farmyard.
Four men lifted the coffin, one of them the dead woman’s husband. His
head leant against the boards as though leaning on her shoulder. The
weeping crowd followed them up the hill-side. The bell tolled in the
steeple above the roofs. And the bell was still ringing for the dead
when, the funeral over, the mood of the people had changed. The girls,
gay in their finery, displayed their charms. Two farmers bargained over
the purchase of a cow. A young man pinched the arm of a grinning
maid....
* * * * *
_April 7th._
News reached us to-day. After driving the King from Schönbrunn, Vienna
has driven him from Eckartsau too. An escort of British officers
protected him and his family. Henceforth he is to live in Prangins. Thus
the little mountainous region whence long ago Rudolph, Count of
Habsburg, set out towards the Imperial Crown, bearing in his hand his
great destiny, has now, after eight hundred years, received his heir,
holding nothing in his hand but the past. But there is as much force in
an historical past as in an historical future.
The event provokes a few sardonic lines, set among the brief news items
of the Red papers. The French mob shouted insults at its King when he
was taken to the Temple. To-day the rabble shouts too. But the Hungarian
nation has nothing in common with the rabble. The same crowd which
knocked down one night the statue of Francis Joseph in Budapest and
smashed the effigies of kings on the millenary memorial, is now vomiting
insults shamelessly in the columns of its newspapers. But it is the
foreign hand, the foreign voice, that acts and speaks.
The double-headed eagle which swooped down on so many thrones of Europe,
has returned with broken wings to the mountains. Its shadow passed like
a cloud over the fields of lost battles.
A short notice is all that the foreigners’ press has to give to the King
of Hungary. Those who fawned before him in endless columns so long as
they could use him against the country, now have no more to give to him
when he in turn can give no longer. Cowardice knows no mean between
cringing and slinging mud. As for the Hungarians, whatever they may
think, in presence of the misfortune of a man and a King, they bow
respectfully and in silence.
King Charles IV. expiates not only his own mistakes, but those of his
predecessors for four centuries. The descendant pays with the loss of
his country, because the ancestors would never make Hungary their home.
The dynasty allowed its advisers systematically to weaken Hungary. And
this camarilla, to keep the people of the Great Plain in check, has let
loose upon it every possible nationality, ending with the immigrant
gabardined fathers of Béla Kun and Számuelly. But it was not alone upon
us, it was upon them too. The Habsburgs never understood that our
strength was their strength and our weakness their weakness. Their whole
country was made up of peoples which were attracted by their kindred
beyond the borders. The peoples of the Monarchy were all looking
outward. The petted Austrians looked towards Germany, the Poles towards
Warsaw, their favourites, the Czechs, towards the Slav giant, the
Roumanians towards young Roumania, the Southern Slavs towards Serbia,
the Italians towards Italy, the Jews towards the Jewish Internationale.
The Hungarians alone had no such kin. We did not look longingly
anywhere, nobody tempted us beyond the frontiers. And yet the rulers
preferred all the other peoples to us, and loaded them with goods,
treasures and power.
And now the peoples have gone, taking with them our land, our goods, our
treasures. This is the harvest of four hundred years policy of _divide
et impera_; the peoples are divided, but the Habsburgs rule no longer
over them. Between the torn pieces the crown has fallen to the ground.
* * * * *
_April 8th._
There were elections yesterday in what is left of Hungary. Now that
Socialism is in power it shows how it carries out the principles of
universal suffrage and secret ballot, which for decades were the
catch-words with which it endeavoured to seduce the electorate. The time
has come when no obstacle to Marxism exists, all ways and means are at
its disposal. In the village since early morning men and women have been
flocking to the communal hall. In the Soviet Republic, Proletarians
alone have a vote, but those who do not avail themselves of their right
are deprived of their food tickets and are liable to be summoned before
the Revolutionary Tribunal. Priests have no votes. Hungarian gentry
cultivating their own land have no votes, nor have crippled heroes nor
invalided officers. Lawyers are not Proletarians. But any Russian or
foreign Jew can vote if he is a Proletarian. And the Jews who, before
the social upheaval, claimed that they belonged to cultured classes,
have now turned Proletarians. Even the sons of bank directors. At the
town hall door stood a man who handed out the printed list of the
official candidates.
The voters looked at the list. One or two read it and swore.
“Let’s cross this one out and write our cousin’s name instead,” the
women advised. The returning officers shouted: “Let no one dare to cross
out the names of candidates or substitute others in their place!”
“Well, Mr. Comrade,” a labourer asked, “then what am I to do with this
bit of paper?”
“You just go and vote with it, comrade,” was the answer, and the ticket
was taken out of his hand.
“Devil take it!” exclaimed the men, passing lists over the table. And in
this spirit the proud and triumphant Proletariat elected its council.
In the neighbouring villages and even in Budapest it was done in the
same way. Comrade Landler’s emissaries had prepared the lists of
candidates in advance. Preliminary meetings and the assembling of crowds
were prohibited. Even the privileged class of Budapest working men only
saw the printed list of the candidates when the voters entered the
booth.
Somebody who had visited Budapest told us who were the candidates of the
People’s Commissaries. In one single constituency there were twenty-two
comrades whose name was Weiss—a typically Jewish name. Under the
supervision of Red soldiers everything went off smoothly. In one single
ward only was there any disturbance. There the terrorists had not dared
to forbid gatherings; consequently the electors put their heads
together, made up a list of their own, and defeated the official
candidates. This little incident was quickly settled by the Commissary
for the Interior: he simply annulled the election and the official list
was declared duly elected. Socialism has shown how it applies its own
principles when it achieves power. The advocates of the unrestricted
freedom of the press tolerate nothing but the official newspapers. The
champions of free assembly will not tolerate the gathering of a few
people in the street. Those who incessantly clamoured for a reduction of
working hours have introduced forced labour. The frenzied enemies of
militarism shout at their recruiting meetings: “Join the Red army!” The
foul-mouthed demagogues of secret universal suffrage impose on the
people their official candidates.
The foreign intruders have put the roof on the edifice of which
Hungarian labourers had been the masons and bricklayers. Does Hungarian
labour see at last for what ends its trade-unions have been used? Those
who attained power through the trade-unions are now attempting to
destroy them. By a single decree the Jewish tyrants of the Soviet
Republic have abolished the unions. The Commissaries of Hungary boldly
declare in their official newspaper, ‘The People’s Voice’:
“Part of their task has been achieved by the power displayed in the
great battle of class war.... They caused the upheaval of the
Proletarian Revolution. Class war is marching on victoriously and has
left trade-unionism behind it. It has become superfluous. The
humanitarian task of trade-union organisations must come under State
control.”
* * * * *
_April 9th._
Catastrophes get more and more frequent, evil spreads and takes root.
Early in the morning of the 7th a Soviet Republic was proclaimed in
Münich. Will Bolshevism stop there or will it involve unfortunate Red
Austria? If our premonitions are realised the horrible rule which
attempts the subjugation of the world will extend from the Eastern
border of Asia to the banks of the Rhine.
Bestial tyranny spreads like a deluge over the earth, and the bloodless
victims of the war are dragged helplessly into the vortex. It has
already swept away towns, countries, even continents in its uncurbed
stream. It has surged up from under the earth through the gratings of
gutters, through the doors of dark dwellings, down the marble staircases
of banks, over the columns of the newspapers. The groping, mystical
Slav, the high-spirited yet conservative Hungarian, the meditative
clumsy Teuton, what a contrast of races! Yet the realisation of the
Soviet system has been accompanied in every case by wonderfully similar
symptoms. The awful conception shows no trace whatever of the racial
characteristics of the three peoples, yet it has been carried through on
the same plan and by people of the same psychology in Moscow, Budapest
and Münich.
When Russia collapsed Kerensky was ready, and Trotsky’s spirit was
watching behind Lenin’s shadow. When Hungary was fainting and reeling
from loss of blood, there, behind Károlyi, were Kunfi, Jászi and Pogány
on the look-out, and they were followed by Béla Kun and his band. And
when Bavaria began to totter, Kurt Eisner was waiting to organise the
first act. As with us and with Russia, the second act followed and there
stood Max Levian (Lewy), the Moscow Jew, to proclaim the repetition of
the Proletarian Republic and the replica of Hungarian and Russian
Bolshevism.
While I was tracing the connection of the bloody events, my mind turned
to certain incidents of the past. Early spring was looking through my
window and gentle winds fanned my face. But I thought of a dense, sticky
fog. It was from the fog that a man’s howl rose: “Long live the
Revolution! To death with Tisza!” There it was again, howling from the
staircase of the House of Parliament: “Let us see no more soldiers!”
What demoniacal power, hidden by the fog, prompted these cries? What
power cast its spell to lure a haughty, brave nation into shame,
cowardice and perdition? Months have passed since I first asked this
question, and the obvious answer revolted my conscience, which required
time to be convinced. But Calvary has taught me the lesson. Now I seek
no longer, I know. It is not by accident that the scourge and the
executioner, the law and the law-giver, the judge and the sentence, of
the Turanian Hungarians, the Teutonic Bavarians and the Slav Russians
were one and the same. The racial differences of the three peoples are
too great to render that mysterious resemblance possible. It is clear
that it must originate from the soul of another people which lives among
them, but not with them, and has triumphed over all three. The demon of
the Revolution is not an individual, not a party, but a race among the
races.
[Illustration:
ALEXANDER CSIZMADIA.
LABOURER. ASSISTANT COMMISSARY FOR AGRICULTURE.
]
The Jews are the last people of the Ancient East who survived among the
newer peoples of shorter history. As the carriers of biblical tradition
they have been assured a certain tolerance and they look for the
accomplishment of certain ancient curses. Despised in some places, they
were feared in others, but everywhere they remained for ever foreigners.
The Jew comes uninvited and declines to go when dismissed. He spreads
and yet holds together. He penetrates the bodies of the nations. He
invisibly organises his own nation among alien peoples. He creates laws
beyond the law. He denies the conception of ‘patrie’ but has a ‘patrie’
of his own which wanders and settles with him. He scoffs at other
people’s conception of God and yet builds churches of his own
everywhere. He laments the fallen walls of Jerusalem and drags the ruins
invisibly with him. He complains of his isolation but builds secret ways
as arteries of the boundless city which has by now spread practically
throughout the world. His connections and communications reach
everywhere. Otherwise how can it be possible that his finances and his
press should, wherever they may be centred, strive for the same goal all
over the world? How is it that his racial interests are identical in a
Ruthenian village and in the heart of New York? He praises one
individual, and the praise rings over the globe. He condemns another,
and that man’s ruin begins wherever he be. Orders are given in
mysterious secrecy. What the Jew finds ridiculous in other people, he
keeps fanatically alive in himself. He teaches anarchy and rebellion
only to the gentiles, he himself obeys blindly the directions of his
invisible leaders.
Mirabeau was led towards the Revolution by Moses Mendelssohn and the
influence of beautiful Jewesses. They were there, in Paris, behind every
revolution, and they appear in history among the leading spirits of the
Commune of 1871. But they are only visible during the hours of
incitement and success; they are not to be found among the martyrs and
the sufferers. When the returning powers of order proceeded to take
revenge on the Commune, Marx and Leo Frankel had fled.
It was during the days of the Turkish Revolution that a Jew said proudly
to my father: “We made that: the Young Turks are Jews.” I remember at
the time of the Portuguese Revolution Marquis Vasconcellos, the
Portuguese Minister in Rome, telling me: “The Revolution of Lisbon is
instigated by Jews and Freemasons.” And to-day, when the greater half of
Europe is in the throes of revolution, the Jews lead everywhere in
accordance with their concerted plans. Plans like these cannot be
conceived in a few months or a few years. How, then, is it possible that
people have not noticed it? How could such a worldwide conspiracy be
concealed when so many people were involved? The easy-going and blind,
the bribed, wicked or stupid agents of the nation did not know what the
game was. The organisers in the background belonged to the only human
race which has survived antiquity and has remembered how to guard a
secret. That is the reason why not a single traitor was found among
them.
* * * * *
_April 10th._
Baron Jeszenszky paid us a visit.
“You would not recognise Budapest any longer. There are queues in front
of all the restaurants. Many people take up their seat on the kerb early
in the morning, so as to make sure of a dinner. They have to take
tickets beforehand if they want to get a meal, just as one used to book
one’s seat for the theatre. The meals too are like stage meals, for they
consist of tiny portions of bad food which have to be gulped down in a
hurry because the following number is waiting impatiently. A porridge of
millet, greens and stewed cabbage, that is the menu. That is the food
for which people wait for hours and pay exorbitant sums. They enter
hungry and leave hungry. They stagger, sick with hunger. Everybody is
emaciated.”
Only the new privileged classes, the families of People’s Commissaries,
the millionaires of the Revolution and the body-guard of the Cabinet,
the ‘Terror Boys,’ live well. I thought of the Batthyány palace. A band
of terrorists occupied it in the first days of the Commune, and they
have remained there ever since. The grand drawing-room, where I used to
see masses of azaleas between the magnificent old furniture, is theirs,
with everything that artistic and beauty-loving generations have
collected. I wonder who listens now to the ticking of the old clock
which once belonged to Michael Apafi, Prince of Transylvania? What hands
finger the ivory Christ of Countess Louis Batthyány? Dreadful tales are
told of the palace. It is said that those who are dragged there by the
terrorists are never seen again.
Baron Jeszenszky then spoke of other things.
“Palaces are treated worse than other places. The finer the mansion the
dirtier the people who are installed in it. Cooking ranges are put into
the drawing-rooms, their chimneys rest against the brocade-covered
walls. Libraries are transformed into sculleries.
Somebody mentioned the National Club.
“The whole place is unspeakably filthy,” Jeszenszky said. “The silver,
the whole equipment, the library, have all been confiscated. The office
which disposes of the property of the Church has been established there.
An unfrocked priest of the Piarist Order sits there organising the
despoiling of the Church and the confiscation of the property of the
various creeds. The provincial Soviets receive their orders to attack
convents and the palaces of bishops from this place.”
Evening was darkening the windows. The clock struck. For a while we
stayed with Jeszenszky, then we walked towards the village.
“Let us look at that house which is for sale,” said Elisabeth Kállay, as
we turned off the main road.
We crossed a small farmyard. The house was surrounded by mud, and it
took some time before the good wife could be found. She asked us to wait
as the master was out, and brought us chairs. A young man strolled out
from the stable, doffed his hat, and sat down on the stairs. Now and
then he looked stealthily at us, then went on smoking his pipe in
silence.
Lenke Kállay spoke to him.
“One knows little that is good and little that is bad about this new
order,” he said cautiously. “There are some who like it and some who
don’t. It may be true that the Government intends to give every farmer
three hundred acres and make them free of taxes.” Then he cast his eyes
down and began to stir the mud with the point of his boot. “You see,
they will confiscate nothing but big fortunes, and that for justice’s
sake.”
The sound of a cart was heard approaching from the main road. Elisabeth
Kállay turned in that direction.
“I have heard that carts and horses are being requisitioned for the Red
army.”
The attitude of the man changed suddenly. He raised his head
threateningly and his voice was full of rage: “Just let them try. I will
knock down the first who touches mine!”
* * * * *
_April 11th–13th._
Palm Sunday. Spring has come. Easter is approaching through awakening
nature, and yet this Palm Sunday is very different from all those I can
remember. The days of persecution, forgotten for thousands of years, are
rising from their grave and haunting us. Life is like the ravings of a
fever-stricken brain; the Christian faith is persecuted in Hungary
to-day. Our churches are in danger. Kunfi, the People’s Commissary for
Education, the Jew who has so often changed his religion, has decreed
that the priests must read from the pulpit every Sunday for three weeks
only that which they are directed to read.
The apathetic village has cast off its apathy: as if rising in defence
of its property it becomes demonstrative. In the be-ribboned costumes of
the country, girls in white shirts, with long waists and short skirts,
women in shawls, are going up the hill-side. Behind them comes the
throng of men. The procession has a determined obstinate look about it.
Besides its faith, beyond its prayers, there is in the soul of this
people the old Hungarian spirit of rebellion. There are many of them;
the whole village, even the invalids, have turned up. The banners of the
church are swaying slowly, higher and higher up the hill. A cross,
carried aloft, shows against the sky. The little sun-kissed square in
front of the church swarms with men in black and women in all colours of
the rainbow. Bells ring and the smell of incense pervades the cold air
of the church. Palm leaves are consecrated by the priest at the altar.
I hid behind the Kállays in the dim light of the oratory. The crowd
surged at the end of the aisle, furrowed faces, seamed with toil. In
front of them little girls, starched little figures rendered
artificially ugly, their tightly-plaited hair standing up on the sides
of their heads, like little horns ornamented with ribbons. The boys
stood on the other side. Those who stood bare-footed on the cold flags
raised their feet alternately to warm them against their legs. A tall
boy nudged his small brother. The little one looked back, but prayed on
without laughing. Even the children seemed more serious than usual. I
have never seen a more serious crowd.
The poor village organ struggled pantingly with the Gregorian chants.
Under the motionless church banners the human voices rose, some high,
some low, a little out of tune and clumsy. Yet the ancient liturgical
song, the thousand-year-old mournful song of Palm Sunday was very
touching.
“... And they betrayed the Son of Man to be crucified....”
These words, so often heard, fell like blows on my heart, and had now a
new meaning for me. I felt that this Palm Sunday was not a commemoration
of the past, but a statement of the dark happenings of the present.
Christ was undergoing a fresh Passion on this earth. The ancient
plaintive tune of the Passion continued in the church.
“... Then did they spit in His face, and buffeted Him; and others smote
Him with the palms of their hands, saying Prophesy unto us, thou Christ,
who is he that smote Thee?”
As if all the church were thinking the same, a shudder went through the
crowd: _the same people had smitten Him two thousand years ago_.
“... And when He was accused, He answered nothing....”
It seemed an awful duty to repeat the cry of the Jews from the Gospels:
“Let Him be crucified!” And the words followed by which the people of
Jerusalem accepted the responsibility for the sentence:
“His blood be on us and on our children!”
There was a moment’s silence, as if the people were following the burden
carried by their voices. And then, as from afar, the song resumed:
“... And led him away to crucify Him....”
The organ, like a decrepit old shepherd, gathered the flock together.
The voices rose in unison and clamoured in such despair as has probably
never been heard in this our land:
“... My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”
The people chanted it with pale faces, with broken hearts, and in that
moment every one of them was Christ and Christ’s words were their own.
The sounds had died away, and yet a feeling as of a wound remained. The
church door opened and through the doorway the bright sunshine floated
in. And the centuries-old hymn of Hungarian Catholicism rang out in a
last appeal. It spread, rose, and mingled with spring, and its eastern
rhythm and western faith clamoured to the endless blue sky.
* * * * *
_April 14th._
Nowadays I often feel like one who has lost his way in an unknown
country on a dark night. He dares not move: he stands in the dark and
waits for the sun to rise. But sunrise never seems to come, his terror
becomes insufferable, and his mind becomes unhinged.
The whole of Hungary is in darkness to-day. Those who were once together
are separated. Each isolated district bears its tribulation in solitude.
What is happening in Transylvania, in Upper Hungary, down in the South,
beyond the Danube, or in Budapest itself? In the dark one hears nothing
but the awful crash of collapse, one is ignorant what has fallen down
and where the cataclysm happened. Then all of a sudden news comes in
secret whispers. The whole country is falling. In Transylvania and in
the South the Roumanians and Serbians rule with the scourge in their
hands. In Upper Hungary the Czechs labour to fill the prisons. They
persecute and punish everything Hungarian. But for that, life must be
more tolerable there than in the Red area, because there people have the
hope of resurrection. The events here, if they are to continue, can only
end in death. In Budapest and in all that remains of Hungary the
miscreants are erecting gallows. At first they promised integrity,
bread, peace and freedom. Now they are sneering at our territorial
integrity. They give us starvation instead of bread, a Red army instead
of peace. Here and there the disillusioned, betrayed victims raise their
voices. Deception, as a means of government, can never be anything but
transitory, and can only be followed by the honest truth or by
terrorism. What will become of us? How often have we asked that
question?
I gazed out upon Nature’s calendar. When I left home it was still
winter; it snowed now and then and the bare branches showed up black
against the bleak sky. Then one day the sickle of the moon appeared,
like the windblown flame of a torch, above the hillock, and green clouds
covered the bushes. The green clouds have turned into young leaves and
beyond the hillock above the steeple night raises a round red disk in
the sky. Many days have passed. Enough days for the moon to grow to its
full size.
* * * * *
_The Night of April 14th–15th._
The embers have died in the stove. I watched them for a long time: now
they are collapsing, and it is cold. There has never been a cold like
this, yet I sit here and write, though there is no reason for it. But
after all, I do not write for others, I do not write to keep a record of
my thoughts, I write only to relieve my feelings.
Charles Kiss came this evening, running the gauntlet of the police in
order to bring me news.
It may be an afterthought, but it seems to me that I knew he was coming.
I believe I felt something impending, something I had feared for days,
something unavoidable. In the evening the others had discussed the
coming Easter festivities. I did not join in the conversation; I kept
out of it whenever I could, and perhaps it was this that gave me a
lonely feeling. There is such a thing as presentiment.
I am not allowed to stay here.
To-day everybody who is Hungarian is outlawed and homeless on every inch
of Hungarian soil. To their bloodhounds our ‘rulers’ throw the lives of
those who dare to fight against them. I have fought against them and my
life has been proscribed.
They have selected for the deed a certain Mikulics, a one-eyed
terrorist, nicknamed ‘the Cyclops’ by the others. I never heard of him
before, but it appears that he is the plenipotentiary chief of the Air
Service. Számuelly said of him that he was so cruel that even he could
not stand up against him. This man has been commissioned to settle with
me. He himself said: “I must do away with her.” And henceforth my life
will depend upon my ability to avoid him. There is another one also who
is after me, and he too is quite unknown to me. He is the head of the
newly-established Secret Service, and is a bosom friend of Számuelly. He
is called Otto Korvin, though his real name is Klein. He is a
hunchbacked little Jew who used to be a bank clerk.
The idea of it fills me with terror. A hand seems to be feeling for me,
slowly, steadily, trying to grasp me. I have had that feeling ever since
Charles Kiss told me about it. Faithful friend! How concerned he was,
and how pale he looked; he could only talk in whispers. When his
carriage stopped under the porch, Lenke Kállay shouted to him:
“Do you bring good news?”
“I’ll tell you when we are alone.” And when no one else was within
earshot he told us the news he brought. I remember clearly that I nodded
and wondered at the same time why I did so. My mother has been
examined.... Eight armed soldiers surrounded our cottage. Meanwhile
detectives examined everybody in the house separately. It lasted two
hours. They were threatening and declared that it was useless to try to
deceive them, they were on my track and knew full well where I was.
My mother showed the letter I had written to her and declared it had
reached her from the other side of the Danube. That was all she knew
about me. She seemed cool and composed all the time and she looked so
haughtily at them that suddenly they ceased calling her comrade. They
even took their hats off and talked to her bareheaded. After they had
left, my sister Mary found my mother in her room lying on the sofa. She
was in a state of collapse and cried bitterly. On her table lay the
warrant for my arrest.
“I cannot bear the sight of it,” she said. “Put it somewhere where I
cannot see it.”
No tears came to my eyes, and yet I was sobbing inwardly and unseen. I
saw by their faces that they thought I was quite collected.
My brothers and sisters were questioned too, principally Vera, who had
worked so much with me in the interests of the Counter-revolution, and
Géza. They were called to the police station. Charles Kiss also was
arrested. He came before a Jewish monster called Juhász, the head of the
investigation department of the political police. The other officials
were just like him. The office was all dirt, confusion and Jews.
“They filled me with disgust and when I found myself unguarded I
escaped.” He laughed like a naughty boy who had played a prank. And I
laughed too, though my heart was breaking. Then suddenly I thought, what
if they were to arrest my mother in my place? Or take some other
hostage?... The room reeled round me at the thought.
“I must go home and give myself up,” I stammered.
All of them began to argue at this. It would be sheer madness, they
said; nobody would suffer for me.
“I shall bring disaster on this house too....” I tried to find words to
express my regret. Meanwhile the others were planning my escape. I only
realised this when T heard that my family wanted me to fly the country.
[Illustration:
BÉLA JUHASZ _alias_ GOLDSTEIN.
A CHIEF OF THE SECRET POLICE.
]
[Illustration:
JOSEPH PECZKAI.
ONE OF SZÁMUELLY’S “DEATH TRAIN” COMPANY.
]
“Through Balassagyarmat....” I heard Elisabeth approve the plan. Aladár
Huszár was sure to help me across the river Ipoly.
It was Lenke Kállay who pointed out that it was essential that the
servants should not know whither I went. I was to travel to Aszód as if
I were going to Budapest, turn back there and go to Balassagyarmat. I
shuddered with disgust: the station of Aszód with its red flags, the fat
political delegate, the fiddler, the Internationale, came to my mind. I
remembered a seat on the platform and reflected that I should have to
sit there from seven in the morning till five in the afternoon. The
people would be able to look at me without my being able to hide my
face.
As soon as I was alone these details assailed me with redoubled force. I
leant my forehead against the windowpane, which felt smooth and cold,
and soothed me as a cool hand might have done. I looked at my watch. It
had stopped: I had forgotten to wind it up. A carriage rattled by under
the window; it was taking Charles Kiss to the station. To-morrow at the
same time it would carry me, and I shall be alone. I had refused to go
with him, my fate must not be shared by others: anyone arrested in my
company would be dragged down with me to the same disaster. Let him go,
if possible, in peace; let him make his escape, my gratitude will go
with him. No one has ever shown me greater kindness than he.