The new inhabitants of the strange, small lodgings found everything
hostile and bleak in their new surroundings.
An open gas flame whistled in the narrow anteroom. The neglected doors
were shabby and the dark rooms only remembered people who had not cared
for them and were for ever moving on.
The first week passed by. Anne did not leave Thomas’s bedside and still
dreaded going to the window. All this time her soul lead a double life:
one for Thomas, one for the house.
After a sleepless night she could stand it no longer. She stole gently
to the window and bent hesitatingly, fearfully, forward.
She felt relieved. In the grey morning the old house still stood
intact.... She noticed for the first time that its yellow walls
stood further out than the other houses and that they obstructed the
road. She was shocked to realize how old and big it was. Its steep,
old-fashioned roof cast a deep shadow out of which the windows stared
at her with the pitiful gaze of the blind.
While she looked at them one by one, she never ceased listening to her
patient. Suddenly it seemed to her that Thomas’s breath had become
weaker. She glided back trembling. Henceforth this became Anne’s only
road. It was a short road but it embraced Anne’s whole life.
One morning a queer noise roused her from the sleep of exhaustion.
There was silence in the room, the noise came from the street. She rose
from the armchair in which she spent the nights and went on tiptoe to
the window.
Workmen stood in front of the old house. Some men rolled tarred poles
from a cart. The front door was open as if gaping for an awful shriek
of agony. A gap had formed between the tiles of the attics and men
walked upon the roof.
Anne covered her eyes. Had she to live through this? She could not run
away. She would have to see it all....
Thomas started up from a restless dream.
“What is it? What is happening?”
There was no word which could express what happened there, on the
other side of the street, or if there was one, Anne could not find it.
Without a word, she went back to the bed and drew her old sweet smile,
like a veil, over her face. She was overwrought, she drew the veil too
hard ... and it broke and covered her no more.
Thomas reached for her hand. In that instant he realised the immensity
of Anne’s sacrifice. Till now he had faith in himself and believed he
could attract his wife’s soul to what he loved. Illness had wrung this
hope from him and he felt ashamed, his pride suffered, that he should
have been the cause of Anne’s sudden sacrifice.
His dying eyes looked at her earnestly, with boundless love. Anne’s
back was turned to the light and while Thomas stroked her hand she
spoke of Ille. She planned....
Next day the post brought a little bag. It contained wheat ... golden
wheat from Ille. Thomas passed it slowly, pensively, between his
fingers and while the source of life flowed in poignant contrast
between his ghostly, lean hands, tears came to his eyes.
In these moments, in these days, under the cover of the worn torn smile
Anne’s face became old.
Out there, the roof of the old house was already gone and hemmed in
between scaffoldings; like a poor old prisoner, the yellow front was
waiting for its fate. To Anne’s imagining the house complained behind
its wooden cage and knew that it had been so surrounded only to be
killed.
The pickaxes set to work. The bricks slid shrieking down a slide
from the first floor. Labourers, Slovak girls, came and went on the
scaffolding and they too carried bricks on hods.
Every passing day saw the house grow smaller. The labourers tore holes
in the walls and left the rest to crumble down. That was the quickest
way.
The dull noise went to the marrow, and with every wall something fell
to pieces in Anne’s heart. It seemed to her that she became feebler
after every crash, that the efforts of generations collapsed in her
soul, great old efforts, with which the first Ulwings, the ancient
unknown ones, had all carried bricks for the builder--bricks for the
house.
She thought of her father. He kept the walls standing. And of
Christopher--he began to pull the building down. And now the end had
come.
The crevice grew alarmingly in the yellow wall. By and by the whole
front became one crevice. One could look into the rooms. From the
street people stared in and this affected Anne as if impertinent,
inquisitive strangers spied into the past of her private life.
Here and there the green wallpaper clung tenaciously to the ruins. A
round black hole glared in a corner from which the stove pipes had been
torn remorselessly: the tunnel of Christopher’s stove-fairies. In some
places the torn up floor boards hung in the air and the dark passages
of the demolished chimneys looked as if a sooty giant finger had been
drawn along the wall.
On the further side, the row of semi-circular windows in the corridor
became visible. The trees of the back garden stretched their heads and
looked out into the street. Then one day they stood there no longer.
When the heavy waggon drove jerkily with them through the gaping door,
Anne recognized each, one by one. On the top lay a crippled trunk and
the boards of the cracked, round seat spread from it in splinters.
Everything went quickly now; even the two pillar-men lay on their backs
on the pavement of the street. When evening came and the labourers had
gone, Anne snatched a shawl and ran down the stairs. She wanted to take
leave of the pillar-men. She bent down and looked into their faces. The
light of the street lamp which used to shine into the green room, lit
up the two stone figures. They looked as if they had died.
Steps approached from the street corner. Anne withdrew into the former
entrance. Two men came down the street. The elder stopped; his voice
sounded clear:
“Once this was the house of Ulwing the builder.”
The younger, indifferent, stepped over the head of one of the stone
figures.
“Ulwing the builder?” Suddenly he looked interestedly at the mutilated
walls.
“Ulwing? ... any relation of the clockmaker of Buda?”
“His brother.”
“I never heard that he had any family,” murmured the younger,
continuing his way, “Sebastian Ulwing did great things for our country.”
Anne looked after them. Was this all that remained of the Ulwing name?
Was the memory of his work already gone? The heroic death of Uncle
Sebastian, a doubtful legend, was that all that was remembered?
Men came again. Carriages, life, the noise of the town.
Anne went back, across the road, towards the strange house.
That night Thomas became very restless. He tossed from one side to the
other and asked several times if Anne was there. He did not see her,
though she sat at the side of the bed and held his hand in hers. She
held her head quite bravely, there was not a tear in her eyes. She did
not want Thomas to read his death sentence from her face.
In the morning Anne felt her hand tenderly pressed.
“Are you here?” asked the pallid, dying man. “All the time I was
waiting for you to be here.”
In a few moments Thomas’s features altered amazingly. A shadow fell
over them and Anne looked round vainly to find out whence it came. Yet
it was there and became darker and darker in the hollow of his eyes,
round his mouth.
“I am going now,” said Thomas, “don’t shake your head. I know....”
She could not answer nor could she restrain her tears any longer.
“Weep, Anne, it will do you good and forgive me if you can. I did not
understand you, that is what made your life so heavy at my side.” He
shut his eyes and remained a long time without moving; only his face
was now and again convulsed as if something sobbed within him. Then he
drew Anne’s head to his heart.
“Here ... close, quite close.... This was yours, yours alone....
Anne.... Anne....” repeated his voice further and further away,
“Anne....”
That was the last word, as if of all the words of life it were the only
one he wanted to take with him on the long, lone road.
Before night came Thomas Illey was no more.
That night Anne kept vigil between two dead. Her husband ... and the
old house.
When day broke somebody came into the room and flung his arms around
her. Her son. Thomas’s son.
Leaning on his arm Anne left the strange house behind Thomas’s coffin.
And the younger boy, fair and blue-eyed held her hand close and clung
to her.
Thomas was borne away. It was his wish to be buried in Ille. Anne and
the two boys went in a carriage through the town to the station.
It was a warm summer night. The gas lamps were already alight. Here
and there electric globes hung like glowing silver-blue drops from
their wires. Illuminated shops, show windows, large coffee houses with
glaring windows. Servites’ Place, Grenadier’s Street ... and on what
had once been the Grassalkovich corner an electric clock marked the
time.
The carriage turned a corner, the pavements on both sides swarmed with
pushing crowds. ’Buses, carriages, the hum of voices, glaring posters,
people. Many people, everywhere.
Further on there was a block in the traffic. The scaffoldings of
new-built houses encroached on the pavement. Damp smell of lime mixed
with the summer’s dust. Under the scaffoldings hurrying figures with
drawn-up shoulders. Sudden shouts. A jet of water sprayed the hot
pavement in a broad sheaf.
A mounted policeman lifted his white-gloved hand. For an instant
everything stopped, then the crowd became untangled and rolled on like
a stream.
Anne’s eyes passed vaguely over the signs of the shops. She found no
familiar name. The Jörgs, Münster, Walter, were nowhere. Other names,
other people. And the Ulwings?
A forgotten corner lamp, an old tree surviving in the row of young
trees bordering the streets, a condemned, quaint old house, uncouthly
timid among the powerful new buildings ... these might possibly know
something of Ulwing the builder but men knew him no more.
The carriage reached its destination. It stopped at the railway station.
In the smoky hall Florian and Mamsell Tini sat on the luggage.
Somewhere a bell was rung and a voice proclaimed the names of unknown
places that people went to ... lived in.
Anne, standing on the platform, saw a dark van coupled to the train.
They had to wait a long time ... the train started late. People came
hurrying. Only he who travelled in the black van to Ille was in no
hurry.
The furious bell sounded again.
Anne leaned out of her carriage door though she wanted to see no more;
all was over for her and far, far away. Her tired aimless look was
suddenly arrested.
Someone came to her, came to her out of the past ... from far away.
Adam Walter stopped in front of her carriage and, without a word,
uncovered himself. He stood still there near the line when the train
had gone. He looked long, long after the trail of smoke.
The long dark night dissolved into dawn and fields and trees....
Now and then little sentry huts appeared as if something white had been
flashed beside the rushing windows of the train. The barriers at the
crossings were like outstretched arms. Racing telegraph poles, signal
wires shining like silver. The shrubs rocked in the wind caused by
the train and the shadow of the smoke floated broad over the sunlit
cornfields.
Then all was reversed. The train stopped.
People had been waiting for a long time at the small station of Ille.
Blue spots, bright peasants’ petticoats, shining white chemisettes. All
the round holiday hats were doffed simultaneously like a flock of black
birds.
Bareheaded, dumb, the people of Ille stood before the wife of Thomas
Illey. Hard brown hands offered themselves and the tearful eyes looked
at her as if they had always known her.
“God brought you back home to us.” The deeply furrowed face of an old
peasant bent over her hand.
Those behind gathered round the boys. One peasant woman stroked George
Illey’s arm.
“Oh my sweet soul, you are just like your father.”
Anne looked round bewildered. She felt some strange new emotion. The
ground she stood on was the ground of Ille, the trees had grown from
it, the people too, everything was part of it, her sons, Thomas’s
memory....
A deep rustic voice said:
“Our master has come home.”
The crowd opened a way for the metal coffin, carried by four stalwart
youths to a cart. They placed it on a pile of oak boughs, then all
started behind it. At the cross roads the cart turned towards the
chapel. The carriage took the road through the row of poplars.
Anne’s eyes followed the cart. The wheels were invisible under the
branches hanging down from it. Rich green life carried death. The crown
of the oak carried Thomas Illey towards the cemetery.
The bell of the chapel called gently to heaven. The churches of the
villages responded in the distance. One told the other all over the
country, that the master of Ille had come home.
Along both sides of the road the poplars stood erect like a guard of
honour, full of old traditions. The carriage turned another corner and
pebbles flew up under the wheels. There, surrounded by oaks, stood
the old manor house of Ille, and in the cool white-washed hall steps
resounded under the portraits of ancient lords of Ille.
Anne started wearily, then suddenly stopped, deeply shocked. As though
the house had been prepared for a gay festival ... it was all decked
with flowers. Her eyes were hurt by the glare of the bright colours
and her pent-up sorrow moaned within her. She pressed her hands to her
bosom ... the flowers pained her.
“Why did you do it? Why? Just now?”
The old housekeeper left the row of women servants.
“It was the order of our good master. It was his will that every flower
should be picked when our mistress came home.”
In Anne’s pale, transparent face the corners of her eyes and lips rose
in silent pain. It was as though she gazed into a mysterious abyss of
which she had known nothing till this day. Now she saw Thomas’s soul,
now that he had given her every flower that had not grown on someone
else’s land. He was dead when he gave, but he gave....
If only one could answer those who are gone; if only one could speak
when speech is no more possible....
Anne remained alone in a small vaulted room. Above the couch of many
flowers hung the portrait of Mrs. Christina. The piano, the small
work-table were there too, and everything was in the same position as
it had been in the sunshine room.
She leaned her brow against the window railing and from among her old
household gods looked out into the new world. A verdant breath of the
large garden fanned her face. The trees whispered strange things to
each other.
Anne thought of the swing-tree and her gaze wandered over the garden
as if in search of it. Then she heard something call to her. It became
clearer and clearer. Beyond the trees, there spoke with quiet distant
murmur, a faithful old voice: the Danube ... the fate of the Ulwings.
The past spoke. This was all that was left to her; nothing more....
In that instant the tramp of strong young steps recalled her from the
past. Through the glaring summer sunlight her two sons came down the
gravelled path.
She looked at them and her head rose.
THE END
FOOTNOTES:
[A] Canzelei = office (German).
[B] Iroda = office (in Magyar).
Transcriber's Note:
Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as
possible, including inconsistent hyphenation.
Italic text has been marked with _underscores_.
The following is a list of changes made to the original. The first
line is the original line, the second the corrected one.
Page 8
driving him into bankruptcy”
driving him into bankruptcy.”
Page 67
a wire inside to curl it up on his back.”
a wire inside to curl it up on his back.
Page 84
In the shadow of Tarnok Street he saw light
In the shadow of Tárnok Street he saw light
Page 189
lamp in front of the Ulwing’s house.
lamp in front of the Ulwings’ house.