_November 1st._
In the morning I heard that Tisza had been murdered.
The telephone rang in the corridor, sharply, aggressively, as if the town
was shouting out to us among the woods. It was with reluctance that I put
the receiver to my ear.
The ringing stopped and I heard only that meaningless buzzing at a
distance. It lasted for some time while I stared through the window at
the little ice-house in the garden. At last there was silence and I
recognised the voice of my brother Géza. He spoke from town, enquired
after mother, and asked how we had passed the night. In town they had
been shooting all night long, and armoured cars had rushed through the
streets. And then he said something I could not understand clearly.
I felt a strange reluctance to understand. I began to be afraid of what
was coming, of hearing something which, once known, could never be
altered again. The presentiment of catastrophe took possession of me.
“But what happened?”
“Poor Stephen Tisza....”
I still looked out into the garden at the reed-thatched roof of the
ice-house, staring at a reed which had become detached by some winter
storm. I stared at it till my eyes ached, as if I were clinging to it.
It was only a reed, but now everything to which one could cling was but
a reed. Suddenly the garden vanished. The window disappeared, and tears
fell from my eyes.
I heard the voice of my brother again. He concluded from my silence that
I had not understood what he said, so he repeated it: “He is the only
victim of the revolution. Soldiers killed him. They penetrated into his
house and ... in the presence of his wife and of Denise Almássy they shot
him dead.”
“The scoundrels!”
Communication was suddenly broken off.
Poor human creature! Forsaken, lonely, deserted man! Nobody protected
him. In his greatest hour, women alone stood by his side: it is always a
woman who is at the foot of the rood. My awful presentiment of Tisza’s
martyrdom came back to me in a shudder. How he must have suffered from
the thought that his usefulness had gone, how his brilliant brain must
have rebelled against annihilation, how his remaining vitality must
have revolted. Stephen Tisza was dead! What an awful void these words
created. Nobody was left to bear every burden in Hungary, to bear all
blame, all responsibility. The weight of the responsibility which he
alone bore falls to pieces with his death. Till now, one man bore them;
will the whole country be able to bear the burden? Even whilst I asked
this question I felt as if something which I had never felt before had
fallen upon my shoulders: my share of the terrible, invisible load. Small
legatees of a great testator ... I, others, every Hungarian.
Poor Tisza! In his good qualities and in his shortcomings he was typical
of his race. He was faithful and God-fearing, honest, credulous and
obstinate, proud, brave, calumnied and lonely, just like old Hungary. In
my mind his qualities were so tightly knitted together that I could not
separate them.
He was killed! Many will not understand the portent to Hungary of that
phrase. And yet Tisza’s corpse lies exposed in every Hungarian home, from
one end of the country to the other, in every house, every farm, every
cottage, even there where they do not know, where they laugh.
[Illustration: COUNT STEPHEN TISZA.
_Photo. Koller, Budapest._
(_To face p. 20._)]
The newsboy opened the door and threw the newspapers into the hall. The
papers flew in disorder over the floor. I said nothing about it, though
he seemed to expect some remark and looked back with an impudent grin to
see the effect his action had produced. Yesterday he would not have dared
to do such a thing. To-day the change has affected him too. How quickly
it spreads, faster than civilization! That would take years to cover the
road.
I picked the papers up. Not one had the customary black margin of
mourning. A significant omission on the part of newspapers of Tisza’s
old party; it showed the restraining influence of some unknown power.
His death was reported in neutral words, hidden in some obscure corner,
while one of the papers indulged in a riot of adulation for the National
Council and another shrieked victory over the success of the revolution
which it had prepared. It wrote cynically about Tisza and sneered at his
widow. It referred to the King as Charles Hapsburg and proclaimed in its
columns the republic for Hungary.
At last the Hungarian Liberal and Radical press has removed its mask and
displayed its countenance, which had never been Hungarian, in all its
nakedness. But to ponder these things was unbearable, and the reality
of our misfortune burdened my soul anew with anguish. How shall I tell
mother? I crossed the hall slowly, hesitatingly, and went to her room.
As soon as I opened the door she looked at me inquiringly, as though she
were expecting something.
“Well, what has happened?”
I searched for words to minimise the shock, and then, I don’t know how,
I blurted out: “Tisza has been murdered!” The words sounded sharp and
metallic, like the stroke of an axe when it fells a living tree which in
its fall clears a gap in the forest.
I shall never forget the sudden, painful alteration in my mother’s
face. She, who always managed to look collected, lifted both hands to
her forehead. “What is to become of us?” she asked, in sobs rather than
words. I had never seen her in tears before, and the grief that swept
over me almost stopped my breath: I was so unprepared for her sorrow that
I could utter no word of consolation. Silently I kissed her hand. Then
for a long time we remained silent.
“How did it happen?” she asked at last, in a voice so weary that it was
as if she had travelled a great distance during our silence.
“Soldiers ...” and I handed the papers to her. I glanced at the page
of one of them: these lines met my eyes: “... Glorious Revolution. The
National Council has taken over the government of Hungary.... Naturally
the constitution is no longer what it was. The King has handed all
his powers to Károlyi, so that he may maintain order in the land.” I
turned the page. “One detachment of soldiers after the other declares
its adherence to the National Council. The communal authorities have
submitted to the National Council. So have the Exchange, the railwaymen,
the men of the electric trams.... Count Julius Andrássy, the last common
Minister for Foreign Affairs, has resigned!”
News followed news in a topsy-turvy way. Vienna—in Austria too the old
order has passed away. A Social Democrat called Renner has been made
Chancellor. The Social Democratic deputy, Victor Adler, has become
Foreign Secretary.
I read further, then my eyes were arrested by a proclamation of the
National Council: “Our beflowered and bloodless revolution will bind the
nation with eternal gratitude to the men who have worked disinterestedly
at its reconstruction.” I looked at the end of the paper: a notice in
small type caught my attention: “Report of the General Staff: As early
as the 29th of October the Higher Command had established communication
with the Italian Commander in Chief”.... “Trieste has been occupied by
an English fleet”.... “The King has ordered that the Fleet, the naval
institutions and all other things pertaining to the Navy, shall be
gradually handed over to the local Committees of Zágráb and of Pola....”
Every word of the papers strikes one in the face. Insult, shame and
degradation. And in face of this maddening conglomeration of defeats, of
this heartless report of Hungary’s collapse, there is Michael Károlyi’s
order: “The National Council orders that on the occasion of the people’s
victory, which has for ever abolished war, the whole of Budapest and all
provincial towns are to be beflagged.”
My mother has thrown her paper aside.
“Have you read the circular by which the National Council informs the
people of Hungary that Budapest has taken the power into its own hands
and that ‘not a single drop of Hungarian blood has been shed?’ Tisza’s
blood is not Hungarian blood in the eyes of Károlyi and his friends.”
Even as she spoke, on the last page of one of the papers I came across
the following:
“Count Stephen Tisza has been sacrificed to the cause of freedom...”
“They hid that so carefully that I could not find it,” said my mother.
I read aloud:
“At the villa at 35 Hermina Road an officer and a civilian appeared on
the morning of the murder. They demanded admittance. Tisza received them
in his study. ‘What do you want?’ he asked, and the civilian answered:
‘Are you hiding that swine of a Czech attorney who is upholding the
accusation against me?’ ‘I don’t hide anybody,’ replied Tisza.
“The strangers left hurriedly.... It is more than probable that they only
came to spy if Tisza was at home, because the rumour had spread in town
that he had left Pest!”
Then followed a remarkably short and cynical account of the details of
the murder, every word of which showed clearly that the writer of the
article wanted to avoid anything that might raise pity or sympathy in
favour of the victim. The report continued:
“During the day a thick crowd had gathered in the vicinity of the villa.
In the evening about a quarter past six eight infantrymen climbed over
the high railings of the garden and crept across the lawn to the house.
They entered by the back door. They quietly disarmed the police who were
in charge of Tisza’s safety, and penetrated into the hall. The footman
tried to stop them. Hearing the noise, Stephen Tisza, his wife, and his
niece, the Countess Denise Almássy, came out. Tisza held a revolver in
his hand.
“The soldiers began by reproaching him: ‘We have been fighting five
years because of you.... You are the cause of the destruction of our
country!... You were always a scoundrel.’ Then they shouted at him to
put his revolver down.
“‘I will not,’ said Tisza, ‘you are armed too.’
“‘Put it down,’ a tall, fair young man aged about thirty shouted.
“‘I won’t.’
“‘Then let the women stand aside.’
“‘We will not,’ said they.
“Tisza retired a few steps and put the revolver down.
“‘Now what do you want?’ said he.
“‘You are the cause of the war.’
“‘I know what the war has done to us, and I know how much blood has
flowed; but I am not the cause of it.’
“‘I have been a soldier for four years. Innumerable families have
perished because of your wickedness. Now you must pay for it.’
“‘I am not the cause of it.’
“‘Let the women stand aside!’ No answer. ‘It is you who have brought this
awful catastrophe about, and now the day of reckoning has come.’
“Three shots were fired. Tisza fell forward on the carpet. He was hit by
two bullets: one in the shoulder, the other in the abdomen. The third
grazed the cheek of Denise Almássy.
“‘They have killed me,’ said Tisza; ‘God’s will be done.’
“While the victim was writhing in agony the soldiers hurried away. It is
not known to what regiment they belonged.”
Thus far the reporter’s account. My mother looked at me interrogatively
for an instant and then shook her head sadly.
“Something has been omitted from that account. It all sounds very
improbable. Hungarian soldiers don’t kill in the presence of women.”
“It is a psychological impossibility,” I said; “such an account can have
sprung only from the imagination of a Budapest reporter. Soldiers from
the front would not talk politics if they wanted to kill. They might
have rushed in and stabbed Tisza, but such a cold-blooded, cowardly,
premeditated murder is not in the nature of Hungarians. It must have been
very different.”
“However it was,” my mother sighed, “it is terrible to think that it
could happen. Poor Countess Tisza!”
A short notice at the foot of the paper said something about her—Count
Michael Károlyi had sent her the following telegram: “It is my human
duty to express my deep sympathy over the tragical death of my greatest
political opponent.”
My mother was horrified at this.
“How could he be so shameless as to intrude like that!”
Indeed, this impudence sounded like a sneer at Tisza’s memory, and in any
case it was wanton cruelty to the faithful, heroic woman who knew full
well that for many years Károlyi had with cruel hatred incited the masses
against her husband.
The origin of this hatred was deep and irreparable, for it sprang
not from a divergence of ideas but from the physical disparities
which resulted from Károlyi’s infirmities. Michael Károlyi, a stunted
degenerate afflicted with a cleft palate, a haughty, hopelessly
conceited, spoilt and unintelligent child of fortune, could never forgive
the simple nobleman Tisza that he was gifted, strong, clean and healthy,
every inch a man, powerful, and in power. It was the hatred of envious
deformity for strength, health and success. Those about him, for ends
of their own, made capital out of this. Some of his satellites reported
several of his utterances on this subject. In fact Károlyi made no secret
of his hatred for Tisza.
Many times he was heard to assert that he would not rest till he had
ruined him. Could he have done so, he would have sent his telegram of
condolence to the widow of his “greatest political opponent” at an
earlier date, namely when the discussion of the new standing order of the
Hungarian parliament took place. On that occasion he challenged the half
blind Tisza, who was about to undergo an operation, to a duel in the same
week when he, Tisza, had already fought two others, one against Count
Aladár Széchényi, the other against the Markgrave Pallavicini. On this
occasion Károlyi’s hatred was fanned to a white heat, for Tisza, a master
of fence, assessed his adversary no more seriously on the duelling ground
than in politics: he played for a little with him and finally thrashed
him with the flat of his sword till he collapsed.
Idly I turned the paper. Another notice attracted my attention: “In the
name of the National Council Count Michael Károlyi, Dr. Joseph Pogány and
Louis Magyar order that on the first of November all theatres of Budapest
shall give gala performances.”
Gala performances! Budapest and all Hungarian towns to be beflagged! And
Hungary struggling in agony and Stephen Tisza on the catafalque!... A
wave of indescribable bitterness swept over me. Oh! that I could escape
from it all and leave it far behind me!
It was strange that at such a moment I could hear the hissing of the damp
wood in the fireplace and could see that Alback’s little old portrait was
hanging crooked on the wall. I got up and put it straight. Out of doors
the mist was drifting. Drops condensed on the window and trickled slowly
down. The mist was noiselessly shedding tears over miles and miles.
When I left my mother’s room I met my brother Béla in the hall. He stood
with his back to me, staring fixedly out into the mist. His sword with
the belt twisted round it and his officer’s cap lay on the table. The
cockade of the cap was still in its place.
I looked at him silently for some moments, and a deep pity filled me. He
too was one of the hundreds of thousands. For him it was even worse than
for us.... As a lieutenant of reserve he joined his regiment of lancers
on the first of August, 1914. Since then he had served with many branches
of the service, often in the infantry, till at last, after long years of
war, he was invalided home gravely ill from under Jamiano. On the banks
of the Drava, in Przemysl, the battle of Lemberg, the wintry Carpathians,
Besarabia, and that hell of rocks the Carso—the road of many Hungarian
deaths, of much Hungarian honour. He had traversed it from end to end.
And now he stood here, like an old man, looking into the fog, with his
sword lying idle.
Only when I called him by name did he notice that I was in the room, and
as he turned I noticed that his coat dangled as if it were hanging on a
skeleton.
[Illustration: COUNT MICHAEL KÁROLYI.
(_To face p. 26._)]
On his drawn face deep lines extended to the corners of his mouth. He
seemed highly strung and started to say one thing, then stopped and said
something else. “I started for town but could not stand the walk so I
came back.” While he spoke I felt that he was thinking of something else
all the time. Suddenly he collapsed into a chair, his elbows on the
table. “There, in Pest, deserters and demagogues. They have suspended
me, and shirking defeatists are the leaders and laugh at us. The new
government glorifies cowardice and dishonour. We have come to this. Why,
then, what was the good of it all?” Through his voice spoke the voice
of four years’ suffering, and a tear trickled down his pallid cheeks.
Suddenly he stretched out his thin hand for his cap, and looked eagerly
with bent head at the cockade on it. “They won’t tear mine off.” He
stopped abruptly and looked up to me: “You have heard what happened
yesterday in Hermina road?”
“I know.”
He got up and returned to the garden door, and motionless stared out into
the fog.
In the evening a neighbouring farmer came over. He was a faithful old
friend of ours, and now, in his own simple way, he tried to give proof of
his devotion, as if to offer reparation for the wrongs we had suffered.
He asked us if we wanted any vegetables. “Just say the word, there are
a few left in our garden.” And his thoughtful kindness impressed me
more with the change that had taken place in our social order than any
annoying brutality of the street could have done.
Then we talked of other things. He spoke of Tisza and told us with many
lamentations that they were still shooting in town, and that soldiers
terrorised the people from big motor lorries. One railway station had
been pillaged. Another was on fire, so a man told him who had just been
there. The military stores had been stormed by the mob. Barrels of petrol
were rolled into the street, smashed, and the petrol set on fire as it
poured out.
Soon after the farmer left us, the door bell rang, and my brothers and
sisters came, one after the other, up the garden path. Whenever the door
was opened the mist floated in from the darkness like smoke, and the new
arrivals stamped on the mat for a moment or two to rid themselves of the
mud. Slowly we gathered round our mother like birds in a storm.
A fire was burning in the hall, its light playing over the beamed roof,
glinting here and there from the oak staircase which rose high against
the wall. It came and went, flared up a little, flickered, and then died
down.
When daylight had disappeared from the mullioned panes of the window the
shaded lamp was lit on the round table. My mother prepared tea, just as
if things were as they used to be, when we came home chilled. Then she
sat down in her usual place, in the corner of the green velvet couch.
Above her, on the wall, was a fine old etching. It was an old friend of
my childhood, full of stories—_Le garde de chasse_. How I loved to look
at it on Sunday afternoons when it hung in my grandmother’s room! Since
then its old mistress had gone, so had her room—indeed the very house had
been demolished. The picture alone remained. In the foreground on the
edge of a wood, with raised fists and a huge gun on his shoulder, stands
the aged keeper, in an old fashioned beaver and high shirt collar. Cowed
and cringing are two little children, who have been caught in the act of
stealing firewood. And now while the voices of my brothers were humming
in my ears I was struck by something I had never noticed before. How this
picture had gone out of date! Justice has altered. Nowadays the law of
“mine, thine, his” is proclaimed in a new shape.
Thine—is mine, his—is ours! This is the teaching of the new leaders of
the people and the foundation of their power. For many thousands of years
the crowd has learned nothing with such ease, and nothing has ever made
it the slaves of its masters with greater speed.
Involuntarily I glanced at the opposite wall. Another picture was over
the other couch: a cheap, coloured engraving of Ofen-Pest, the ancient
little town. People still passed across the Danube by the floating
bridge; in its narrow little streets real red, white, and green flags
were floating, and in their shadow Louis Kossuth and Alexander Petöfi
made a real war for freedom. How all this has changed!
The kettle was singing, and from the fireplace a pleasant warmth, scented
with the smell of pine-wood, penetrated the room. The silver and the cut
glass shone on the white tablecloth. I sat snugly in the armchair. Here
things were still as of old, and I felt a glow of gratitude towards the
home which now was no more taken for granted but appeared as an island
amid the flood.
Did the others feel this too? I looked round. All were unusually silent.
Now and then someone said a word which fell like a pebble in a silent
pond. Worry was written on all faces. During the long war, among the many
terrible misfortunes, I had never noticed despair in my family. We never
gave up hope. Our faith that Hungary would survive whatever happened had
never altered.
“She has been betrayed!” And we returned to the fate of Tisza. We decided
between us that we would all go to his funeral. But when will it be?
Nobody knew. My mother had been sitting for a long time silently in her
corner when she said in a low voice, as if speaking to herself:
“They killed him ... killed him. They knew what they did. They have
bereft the nation of its head.”
We looked at each other.
“And the guilty have escaped without leaving a trace.... At any rate,
they would not have been hurt—the triumphing revolution will provide
for all eventualities by a general amnesty.” My brother took up the
newspaper. “Have you read this? By request of the National Council
the Ministry of Justice has ordered by telegram that all those who
are arrested or imprisoned for high treason, lèse majesté, rebellion,
violence against the authorities or against private individuals, or
incitement to violence, should be released at once!”
The new government could not have pronounced a graver indictment of
itself. This amnesty was a free confession of its ends, its means and its
guilt. From this moment Michael Károlyi and his National Council appeared
to us in the rôle of the accused at the bar of judgment.
“Criminals,” said my brother-in-law. “Here in Pest they have anticipated
the ordinance. Two days ago they set free the Galileists accused of high
treason.”
“It is said that Countess Károlyi herself went to fetch them.”
“Yesterday they liberated in triumph all the deserters.... Only a few
hours before the assassination of Stephen Tisza a commission came
with the written order of the National Council to the jail to free
all political prisoners, and as the order put it, “all deserving
prisoners.” The first to rush out of the prison was Lékai-Leitner, the
man who recently made an attempt on Tisza’s life. He addressed a speech
to the assembled mob and explained without being interfered with why
the principal contriver of the war, Tisza, should be killed. “Let him
perish!” he shouted, and the mob cheered while he, protected by the
police, incited his comrades in the street to murder.”
“Károlyi’s National Council must have known of that. Yet they did nothing
to protect Tisza. A few hours later his assassins could destroy him
without fear of interruption.”
I thought of Marat’s saying to Barbaroux: “Give me four hundred assassins
and I will make the revolution.” ... Into the hands of what a crowd
have fallen the fates both of our country and ourselves! High treason
and rebellion are no longer crimes, violence is lawful, incitement to
it permissible. Assassins can exercise their trade without punishment,
and there is no place where one can claim justice. I staggered under
the confusing thoughts. I seemed to have lived through something like
this once before. Many years ago, on a hot, close summer night, I was
awakened by a violent shock. The room swayed, the house tilted backwards
and forwards, everything tottered, cracked, collapsed. An earthquake!
And when I wanted to grasp something it gave way, moved from its place;
nothing seemed firm.... “Let us fly!” ... A mad voice shouted it through
the night.... Fly? On such occasions there is no place whither flight is
possible; for miles and miles the earth quakes.
Presently, in order to encourage my mother, I said aloud:
“Everything is not lost yet. The troops will come back from the front.
They will restore order. Those who have fought there will not tolerate
the rule of deserters and shirkers at home.”
“Unfortunately Károlyi’s agents have gone to meet them at the front,”
said my brother-in-law. “And they have taken with them an ample supply of
the government’s newspapers.”
Meanwhile out of doors the fog became as dense as if a morass had swollen
up in the valleys. It clung about the windows and coated the panes. My
brothers and sisters prepared to go. When we took leave we agreed that as
we could hope at any rate for a little more safety in town than here, we
would move in as soon as we could procure the necessary vans. The villa
stood in a lonely spot among abandoned houses; only my sister Mary, and,
on the other side of the ravine, the farmer, lived on the hill besides
ourselves. And the woods were full of vagabonds.
“It will be safer....”
“It will be equally unsafe everywhere in Hungary,” I said while I put my
coat on to accompany them a short distance.
When we reached the bottom of the hill shots broke the silence. Rifles
answered them, and their echo rolled on between the hills. A white dog,
frightened to death, rushed past me like an arrow, his tail between his
legs, and his ears pressed tightly back. The caretaker of one of the
empty villas, an old Swabian gardener, stood in the gate, smoking his
pipe and watching the road.
“Himmelsakrament!... The Russians have escaped from the prisoners’ camp,
that’s what people say in the shop. Goodness knows what is going to
happen to us....”
“False alarms,” I said as I passed.
The firing increased every moment.
“Mother will fret,” said my sister Mary. We took leave of the others and
turned back.
Beyond the Devil’s Ditch, where the road starts up the hill, two bullets
whistled over our heads. They must have come from the bushes near by, for
we could smell the powder. In front of us a human form emerged from the
fog. “That one went too low,” he muttered. “God guarded me so that it
missed me.” The stranger had a big collar and wore a soldier’s cap. He
might have been a non-commissioned officer. “Can one get newspapers down
there by the electric tram?” he asked, touching his cap.
“No, they don’t sell papers to-day.”
The man turned back, and, leaning heavily on his stick climbed the hill
slowly behind us. He never spoke, but sighed now and then, and one of his
boots tapped curiously on the pavement. Through my thoughts I had heard
the tapping for some time before I realized that the poor fellow had an
artificial leg.
“It was all in vain,” he exclaimed unexpectedly, and his voice sounded
even duller than before. I could not see his face, but somehow I felt
that this man with a wooden leg was weeping in the dark. That made me
think of my brother, and of the others, the cripples, the blind, the
sick, the maimed, who all say to-day with a lump in their throat: “it was
in vain....”
When I reached our garden another shot passed over my head. I pressed
myself against the trunk of a tree and waited a little. I seemed to hear
my heart beating in the tree. The danger passed by and I went on. The
lighted windows of the house shone gently upon the path and beckoned to
me, just as they had done the day before, just as they had done on any
day when my steps took me home.
When I entered the house I found boxes and trunks in the hall, and my
mother was packing. She was putting boxes tied with lilac ribbon into the
trunks, her own dear old belongings which she had treasured with so much
love throughout a long life. Indefatigable, she went to and fro. She bent
down, brought another object, never complaining and astonishingly calm.
Meanwhile the fire on the hearth went out, and the sticky air of the
night penetrated through the shutters. The dining-room had become very
cold too. We did not dare to make fires: our wood in the cellar was
running short and should we fail in our attempt to hire a van, who knew
how long we might have to stay here?
Later on I went up into my room and collected my papers. All the time
I could hear my mother’s steps down below: it was a step that I could
recognise among a thousand others. It always sounds as though she drags
one of her feet slightly, but she does not do so really, it only sounds
like it, and it gives her gait a kind of swaying rhythm. I love to hear
it, for it always reminds me of my childhood. Whenever I dreamed anything
frightful in my little truckle bed that step would come slowly across
the room, and even before it reached me all that was terrifying had
disappeared.
On the ground floor a cupboard was opened: the noise sounded like a sigh;
then drawers were gliding in and out. Beyond the garden the dogs barked.
Now and then violent outbursts of firing rent the hills. But even then my
mother’s steps never stopped. I could hear them passing quietly backwards
and forwards between the trunks in the hall and her room.