_November 2nd._
The house stood amid a sad, grey morning. Through the fog a continuous
drizzle was heard in the woods, and along the road a muddy stream gurgled
in the broken gutter. The people in the electric trams going townwards
were just like the morning itself: grey, wet and sad. They spoke of the
mutiny in the Russian camp.
“They have been disarmed”.... “Not at all, they have spread over the
country....” “They pillage in small bands, like the escaped convicts.
They too broke out on the news of the revolution. They captured a train
and came, all armed, towards Pest. On the way they fought a regular
battle, with many dead and wounded; the rest escaped.” ... “No, they did
not. They enlisted as sailors.”
There was panic and confusion in all this talk, and nobody seemed to know
anything for certain.
The tram turned round the foot of the hill. At the stopping place I
bought a newspaper. The papers were filthy, and the woman who sold them
did not take much heed of me; she was talking politics with a hawker who
sold boot-laces and moustache wax at that spot.
“Give me the _Budapesti Hirlap_.”—But the paper which for the last ten
years had fought, practically single-handed, against the machinations of
the destructive press was not to be had. The woman thrust another paper
into my hand. The tram went on and I began to read. As if announcing a
glorious victory the head-lines proclaimed in immense type: “ON THE WHOLE
FRONT WE HAVE LAID DOWN OUR ARMS! IN CASE OF OCCUPATION WE HAVE ASKED FOR
FRENCH OR BRITISH TROOPS.” Something stabbed and tore my heart: Gorlice,
Limanova, Lovchen, Doberdo....
The newspaper continued: “Six weeks are needed for the conclusion
of peace.... The King has relieved the new government from its
allegiance.... The government has decided in principle for a Republic
and has extended its programme by this condition.... The Government
has sworn allegiance to the National Council at the Town Hall ... the
touching scene, which buried a past of a thousand years, passed amidst
indescribable enthusiasm.”
Our arms laid down! Foreign occupation! The King has relieved the
perjurers! A republic in Hungary! And one of the most important papers
in Hungary writes of all this as if it were the accomplishment of long
cherished hopes, as if it rejoiced that “the past of a thousand years”
had been buried! Not a word of sympathy, of consolation.
Then something suddenly dawned on me: in this paper a victorious race
was exulting over the fall of a defeated nation! And the defeated, the
insulted nation was my own!... So they hated us as much as all that,
they, who lived among us as if they were part of us. Why? What have we
done to them? They were free, they were powerful, they fared better
with us than in any other country. And yet they rejoiced that we should
disappear in dishonour, in shame, in defeat.
I threw the newspaper away—It was an enemy.
We came to the Pest end of the bridge. The tram stopped, and I wanted to
change. “The trams are not running. You can walk,” growled the inspector.
The walls are covered with posters, orders, announcements, proclamations.
On a big coloured poster: “Lukasich has been appointed executioner.”
And under the announcement the execution of a soldier was depicted. As
I walked along my eyes gleaned a sentence from another poster: “People
of Hungary, soldiers, workers and citizens!” (The order of the words
was significant; but it did not appear to strike people’s imagination).
“Fellow-citizens! Glory, honour and homage to the victorious people of
Budapest. The people’s revolution has conquered” ... and the signature:
“The First Hungarian Popular Government.” Then another sentence: “The
military and civil power is in the hands of the head of the Hungarian
Popular Government, Michael Károlyi.” Many words, many black words. I
read the last words of the Popular Government’s Proclamation: “To assure
the transition from the present conditions to a quiet peaceful life, we
organise Soldiers’ Councils and a National Guard so that ETERNAL PEACE
may gain its healing sway over us all.”
Red and white blotches of paper and alternate signatures: Heltai,
Commander of the Garrison, Linder, Commander-in-Chief.
Linder? I never heard this name during the war. And yet it seemed
familiar to me. Then I remembered. I met him at a social gathering, and
once at an afternoon tea. On both occasions he seemed under the influence
of drink. That was the reason I noticed him, otherwise his insignificance
would have wiped him out of my memory. Now I seemed to see his face. He
gave me the impression of an elderly stage swashbuckler. His well-groomed
hair was grey, his shoulders high, his neck thick-set, his face
congested; his tiny grey eyes winked all the time, and when he laughed
they disappeared entirely. Linder.... Can this stage swashbuckler be the
new Minister of War?
I now noticed that more and more people hurried past me, and that all
were going towards the House of Parliament. A crowd was gathering in
the big, beflagged square. People dressed in black, officers in field
uniform, poured from the neighbouring streets. Some mounted police
arrived. Then came a military band. A military cordon was formed in the
centre.
“What is happening here?” I asked a woman who stood aimlessly among the
loafers on the kerb.
“I don’t know.” A young man, who might have been in her company, answered
for her: “The officers of the Garrison are swearing allegiance to the
National Council.”
“There are crowds of them,” said the woman, and moved her neck like a
duck in a pond. The young man laughed with contempt. “There may be four
hundred.” His accent seemed to proclaim him from Transylvania.
Motor cars rushed past me. Overhead, aeroplanes were circling and
strewing leaflets among the crowd: “The glorious revolution! The people
have conquered!” Leaflets on the ground, leaflets in the gutter, leaflets
everywhere.
The great grey mass of the House of Parliament hid the Danube from our
sight like a petrified lace curtain. On its walls the ancient coats of
arms of various counties, the monuments of past Kings, appeared and
disappeared in the mist like a dissolving view. At the sides of the
building the square extended to the river, and the ghostly outlines
of a bronze figure on horseback stood out against the background of
mist-covered Buda: the statue of Andrássy, the great Minister of Foreign
Affairs. In the haze it seemed that the rider moved, as though he wanted
to turn his steed and ride away to the sound of brazen horse-shoes,
back along the banks of the Danube, to see if the river had changed its
course—the river which had imposed upon the lands between the Black
Forest and the Black Sea the alliance which he had written on paper.
Had it left its bed, had it dried up, that great Danube, the ancient
zone across Europe’s body, that some man should be so bold as to tear up
the scrap of paper which confirmed the bond? Mist rose over the yellow
waves. The poisoned town threw its image across a veil into the river and
poisoned its waters. And the stream carried the poison, and perhaps by
to-morrow the lands it crosses may already writhe with internal pains.
To-morrow.... Everything is lost in a mist. Round the square the houses
showed their many-eyed faces through a haze. Below, the rain-covered
asphalt pavement shone, reflecting the people who stood upon it. In the
windows of the houses, on the stone steps of the House of Parliament,
between two stone lions, more people. I looked at my watch. It was eleven
o’clock. Another motor car dashed up, there was some cheering in the
centre of the square, and the figure of a man rose above the crowd. He
stood on the steps of the House of Parliament in a dark overcoat, a
bowler-hat on his head, a glaring red tie round his neck.
[Illustration: THE HOUSE OF PARLIAMENT.
_Photo. Erdelyi, Budapest._
(_To face p. 58._)]
The Minister of War. He began to wave his hat over his head as if
attempting to catch an elusive butterfly. I caught a few of his words.
He spoke with a lisp and stuttered slightly. “Soldiers, I expect
discipline.... We have faithfully done our duty on the field of
battle.... We suffered and we fought.... We imagined that the ideals we
fought for were worth while.... I, your responsible Minister of War,
declare that these ideals were false!”
I thought he would be knocked down for saying that. Four hundred
officers. Just enough....
“There is a new order of things,” ... shouted Linder. The short woman
next to me jerked her neck and complained: “I can’t hear anything.”
The slim young man, in his thin shabby overcoat, stretched his neck to
listen: “He says that we have not been beaten. We have won, the sovereign
people has won. We have conquered that false system....”
“I can’t understand,” said the woman excitedly.
We could hear Linder’s voice: “When we had beaten the Russians and there
was no more question of national defence, we had to go on fighting for
imperialistic, militaristic, egotistic ends....”
“Aha,” said the woman, and was bored.
The voice in the middle of the square continued to shout: “But perhaps we
ought not to grumble that this war has lasted so long. We had to demolish
the tyranny of a thousand years, the tradition of a thousand years, the
servitude of a thousand years.”
He, too, gloats over the destruction of a thousand years. What is the
matter with this town?
Some straggling cheers resounded and a few caps were raised. Then the
square became mute, for the hat of the Minister of War began to wave
again in the air. His face became purple with the effort, and his voice
sounded shrill. Words came, and he said:
“I never want to see a soldier again!”
For a moment these words passed above my comprehension. Then they came
back and drummed in my brain. I could not believe my ears. I must have
misunderstood him. It seemed impossible that a sane person should have
said such a thing. The Minister of War of the government which had
broken up the front under the pretence that Hungary was in need of
Hungarian troops for the defence of Hungarian frontiers! No, it was more
than ever impossible now when the Serbians were marching towards us and
Wilson’s message had delivered us up to the rapacity of Czech, Roumanian
and Yugoslav ambitions. Only the voice of dementia or sublime criminality
could speak such words. What made him say it? But he is drunk. Is it not
visible on his face? Do not people see how he sways and grins? His tongue
has slipped, he is going to withdraw his words. No harm has been done as
yet. The people have not grasped his horrible meaning, his venomous words
can be snatched back from the air.
Near Linder a long sallow face began to nod. Károlyi stood on the steps.
At his shoulder appeared a puffy, olive coloured face: Oscar Jászi,
Károlyi’s prompter. So there they are too, listening to all this, and
Károlyi nods and Jászi smiles, confirming, ratifying the awful words.
But the officers of the garrison are there! There may be about four
hundred, perhaps more, all soldiers, all armed, all men. They will not
stand it, they will rush at the Minister of War, catch hold of him by his
red tie and string him up to the nearest lamp post like a depraved beast.
My heart was hammering, and for a moment I had to turn away. It would not
be a pleasant sight, and after this who will keep the army in hand? Who
will take up the arms that are to be thrown away? He proclaims anarchy!
He does not want to see any soldiers.... And within the cordon cheers are
raised!
“Take the oath!” shouted Linder. Even then I had hope. Surely something
must happen. The men will suddenly regain consciousness. In 1848 the
Imperial High Commissioner Lambert was stabbed to death by the crowd on
the floating bridge, though what was that foreigner’s guilt compared with
the guilt of these Hungarians? Surely they cannot remain quiet like this?
They are going to tear him to pieces. A hundred naked fists—why perhaps a
single one could do it.... Oh for that ONE, gracious God!
[Illustration: “KÁROLYI STOOD ON THE STEPS.”
(_To face p. 60._)]
Within the military cordon the officers of the garrison stood in a row,
stood there and took the oath. The soldiers of the King swore obedience
to Michael Károlyi’s National Council.
A burning sense of shame rose within me. And then, suddenly, something
seemed to open my eyes, and I saw beyond men and events. Those officers
in the square could not be, all of them, deserters and hired traitors.
Surely there were some among them who had taken an honourable share in
the tragic Hungarian glory of the war, who had suffered just as I had.
They were soldiers, and as if it were a dishonour to be so, that fellow
dared to tell them to their face that he did not want to see soldiers any
more. And these words will run all over the town, and to-morrow they will
be racing across the country and will reach the frontiers where they will
lie in wait for the armed millions returning from the front.
Some vile spell, the dazzle of some occult charm, held the crowd
fascinated and cowed all into a lethargy of terror. What power could
it be? Whence did it come? What was its end? For neither Károlyi, nor
Linder, nor Oscar Jászi possessed that demoniacal influence which crushes
will power and opposition, makes cowards of brave souls and drags
honour in the dust. This force did not rise to-day or yesterday; it is
the result of thousands of years of savage hatred and bestial will for
power, a monster begotten in obscurity, which, safe from attack, has
spread across the globe, waiting its opportunity, setting its snares with
cunning, watching for the hour when it can strangle its victim as with a
rope.
And now it will strangle us too! Our time has come!
I shuddered in my helpless solitude amidst the crowd that blackened the
square, where men suffered everything, cheered the negation of their
existence, and pledged themselves to their own destruction.
The sound of trumpets rose. The military band struck up a tune. What was
it?... My heart nearly stopped beating when I realised what it was. The
great revolutionary song of a strange people rose above the square, the
national anthem of a nation which had been our enemy during the war,
which led on the revengeful victors who were preparing to trample us
beneath their feet. A hymn of rebellion, which they play in the beflagged
towns on the banks of the Seine and the Marne to proclaim their victory,
a tune which means glory to them, humiliation to us. If the French nation
had succumbed to German arms, would they play this day _Deutschland,
Deutschland über alles_ on the Place de la Concorde?
To what depth have you sunk, Hungarian men? I set my teeth and pressed
my suffering down into my heart. And the grandiose strains of the
Marseillaise floated over my head. Their beauty I heard not. To me the
notes were but the guffaws of a scornful melody that roared derision over
the square. The clarions sounded brazen yells of contempt, the rolling of
the drums emphasised their mockery, and the cymbals applauded—applauded
our defeat.... And the crowd cheered Károlyi.
The soldiers went back to the City. The interrupted traffic thronged
over the shining asphalt. Carriages drove by. Small groups vanished in
the distant streets. Slowly the square became empty. A few constables
remained on duty in front of the House of Parliament; people waited at
the stopping place of the tram. The woman with the duck’s neck and the
Transylvanian youth were there too. We waited.
The House of Parliament relapsed into its grave silence. The bronze
figure of the horseman near the shore was invisible. Had it gone, was it
still there? I hesitated. There, on the other side, towards the bridge,
near the river, the embankment was bare. There never had been a statue
there. But the wraith of a giant whose blood was spilt on October 31st is
slowly groping his way towards it. His chest is pierced by a bullet, his
heart’s blood has flowed away. He goes slowly, but he will get there—when
the day comes.
The Transylvanian young man and the woman near me were both staring at
the shore. I had no intention of speaking aloud yet I said:
“That is where Stephen Tisza’s monument is going to stand.”
[Illustration: SOLDIERS TAKING THE OATH OF ALLEGIANCE TO KÁROLYI’S
NATIONAL COUNCIL.
(_To face p. 62._)]
The woman was horribly frightened. “Please, don’t say things like that.
The people hate him frightfully.”
“But why should they hate him so?”
“He was the cause of the war; the soldier who killed him said so.”
“His monument is going to stand there.”
“You will be knocked down if you say such things,” said the young
man. “This morning a gentleman just said to his wife: “Poor Tisza!”
Nevertheless the passengers became indignant, insulted him, stopped the
car and shouted till both got off. You must say nothing openly about him,
except that he was a scoundrel, that he wanted the war and was the cause
of all the bloodshed. One may not say anything of anybody but what the
National Council says. One must say nothing of Károlyi but that he is the
only person who can save Hungary. This is our liberty.”
Later in the day I had news of another misfortune which had befallen us
while the drunken Minister of War was proclaiming in front of the House
of Parliament that he never wanted to see a soldier again. Archduke
Joseph and his son Joseph Francis have sworn fidelity to the National
Council at the Town Hall. Somebody who had seen the Archdukes told me
that they had gone to the ceremony in field-uniform, with all their
orders on their chests. John Hock had the doors of the hall opened so
that the public might follow the ceremony and then received in the name
of the Council the oaths which bestowed a certain prestige and a doubtful
legal standing on the power they have built up on mud.
Károlyi’s press shrieked with joy. The mid-day papers published the
report and obsequiously fawned on the Archdukes. Cunningly they called
this brave, clean soldier the new Philippe Egalité, comparing him to the
Orléans Prince who had denied his origin and pronounced death on his
king.... I was dumfounded. Those who had any strength of character would
feel now that they had been abandoned, while the weak would have nothing
to cling to and would inevitably drift toward the National Council. What
was at the bottom of it all? How did it happen that Archduke Joseph, the
general idolized by the nation, the bearer of the great traditions of
the great Palatines, how did he come to the disgraceful table where a
disreputable priest collected oaths for the National Council? What has
forced the Archduke to join the enemies of his country and his dynasty?
Among the many dark scenes of this grim tragedy this one alone has come
to light; it cannot yet be understood, and the time has not yet come to
pass judgment upon it. That the Archduke went there with a stricken soul,
against his innate convictions, those who know him cannot doubt.
Ever since his childhood, ever since he started life under the old trees
of Alcsuth, he had always trod the paths of the nation’s honour. During
the war he was a father to the Hungarian soldiers. Of the many stories
told about him I will repeat only one which I had from my brother. At the
Italian front a wounded Hungarian soldier was asked on his deathbed if
he had any wish. “I should like to see Archduke Joseph once more.” That
was all he said and the Archduke came and held his hand while he died.
One who was loved like that was not carried by fear or bribe to the Town
Hall. It was not for his own sake but in the misconceived interest of his
country that he made the sacrifice, aggrandised by its background, his
family’s transcendent history of a thousand years.
In front of him in a dirty office: Michael Károlyi, John Hock, Kunfi,
Jászi. Behind him, on a road lost in the centuries, in silver armour
with vizor raised: the haughty face of the Emperor Rudolph, Count of
Hapsburg, whose cup-bearer was a Hohenzollern. And again, his handsome
silver locks covered with a black velvet biretta, the chain of the Golden
Fleece about his neck: Maximilian, the friend of poets, the hero of
Theuerdank, the last of the knights. In a heavily embroidered bodice,
the sparkling Marguerite of Austria, ruling Duchess of the Netherlands.
Philippe le Bel, and the amorous Joan. In grave splendour, Charles V.,
on whose kingdom the sun never set, and the victor of Lepanto’s gory
waters, the young Don Juan of Austria. The gloomy cortège of the Spanish
Philips and Carlos. The full-wigged Ferdinand and Leopold under the holy
crown, and Maria Thérèse’s powdered little head bowed in the grandiose
tumult of Hungarian fidelity, among drawn swords and hands uplifted for
the vow: “_Vitam et sanguinem pro rege nostro_....” Joseph, the king in
a hat,[3] a narrow, meditative face at the window of the Vienna Burg,
while behind him Mozart’s spinet sounds delicately sweetly from the gilt
white room. A touching face: Marie Antoinette, more royal on the scaffold
than on the throne. Leopold of Toscana, the friend of the Hungarians.
In a simple white frock-coat: the Duke of Reichstadt. In the robes of
the Order of St. Stephen: the great Palatines. And at the end of the
row the constitutional old King, the last grand seigneur of Europe, and
Elizabeth, the wandering queen, who never was at home but when she was in
Hungary.
This history of the Hapsburgs is the history of Europe itself. It is a
history of imperial diadems and royal crowns, of empires, kingdoms and
countries, of centuries and generations. And so to drag the Archduke
Joseph into the mire was precisely what Károlyi and his accomplices
desired. Let the downfall be complete, so that there shall be nothing
to look back on, so that the abased nation shall not be able to expect
anything from anybody. The political leader of the nation has been killed
in the person of Stephen Tisza; its military leader has now been enticed
into the gutter and has been covered with mud so that those who look out
for a chief round whom to rally may not discern his real character. The
bonds have been severed, and in the silence of our amazement we are all
become solitary and forlorn.
What is left to us? The funeral of Stephen Tisza! The dead leader will
once more gather his followers together. And then our bitterness shall
find voice and strength.
* * * * *
It was in the afternoon that I heard that the funeral which we had wanted
to attend had already taken place quietly, in other words secretly. Only
a new act of Károlyi’s impudence made some noise. He had sent a wreath
labelled: “A human atonement to my greatest political adversary. Michael
Károlyi.” The mourning family, however, had the wreath thrown on the
garbage heap. Quietly, with secrecy, Tisza’s coffin was taken from the
house of the bloody deed to the railway station. Few of his friends were
present, but the two women who had been faithful to the last were there.
They took him to Geszt. Once more he was to cross the great plain he
loved so much, to take his rest in the soil of the land that had allowed
him no rest while he lived.
Evening came. A cart rolled through the silence of our rural retreat and
stopped in front of our garden. We had been waiting for weeks for the
long paid-for firewood, and at last it had come. The Swabian driver who
had brought it stood lazily on top of the pile and threw one log after
the other indifferently into the road. I asked him if he would mind
bringing the wood into the courtyard. If it remained out there every
piece of it would be stolen before the morrow.
“Certainly not; you ought to be jolly glad that I brought it at all,”
he answered. He squeezed the money for cartage into the pocket of his
breeches, whipped up his horses, and the cart rolled downward on the
mountain road. I did not know what to do. I went to the farm, then
enquired at the nearest houses, when I noticed two men coming up the
road. They had red ribbons in their buttonholes, and rifles over their
shoulders. I stopped them and asked them if they would carry the wood
in for me: I would pay for it with pleasure. They looked at each other,
whispered, and at last one said, as if bestowing a favour on me:
“We might, but it will be sixty crowns for the cubic yard.”
“Have you taken leave of your senses? You know it won’t take you an hour
to carry the whole lot in.”
“Well, if it doesn’t suit you, carry it yourself,” and they laughed
sardonically. “You’ll have to come to us in the end,” one of them added.
Then they sat down on the edge of the ditch opposite the gate, lit their
pipes and looked on maliciously to see what I would do next. I turned
my back on them, picked up a log and dragged it into the yard. The men
sat and looked on. I had to go in and out a good many times, and was
soon panting with the unusual exertion; my hands got wet and sore with
the damp wood. Then suddenly my sister’s children appeared. They got two
poles and we carried the logs in on the improvised stretcher. On the
road two little boys and a girl came strolling towards the farm. They
stopped, looked on for a while, and then they too joined us. Now the work
proceeded fast, and within an hour the wood was all stacked in the yard.
While we worked the two men sat on the edge of the ditch opposite,
smoked, spat, and addressed provoking remarks at us. When I closed the
gate I could not resist shouting across to them: “Good of you to have
stayed here. At least you saw of what mettle we are made. We managed your
job although you couldn’t manage ours.”
The log-pulling tired me out—and that did me good. For fatigue softened
my troubles, and when I went to bed I fell asleep at once. But I must
have slept only a short time, for suddenly I dreamt that somebody was
standing in front of my window and knocking. In the semi-consciousness
of awakening I listened. My room was on the first floor. I jumped up.
Violent shooting was going on near the house and the windows rattled in
their frames. Then a long appalling howl rent the night, steps ran down
the hillside, and everything lapsed into silence.
I lay awake for a long time. A curious light came through the latticework
of my blinds which overlooked a piece of waste ground. I listened. There
were steps in the neighbourhood. Something was happening out there.
Should I go and see?... I hesitated for some time. My limbs were heavy
with fatigue. Then at last I went stealthily to the window. Soldiers were
standing in front of the empty villa which stood next to ours and were
supporting a hatless man who seemed to be wounded or insensible. A small
shrivelled form held an electric torch in its hand and fumbled with the
lock of the door. The shadow which he cast on the white wall was like
that of a hunch-backed cat. The door opened and they all went in.
My first thought was “I must telephone to the police!” Then I realized
that even that impulse belonged to the past. What good would it be? There
is nobody who can maintain order. I thought of the fugitives in our
woods. The country was swarming with deserters, released convicts, small
bands of burglars. We shall have to get used to it—we shall have to get
used to many things.
And again there was firing down in the valley. Although the danger of
remaining longer in this deserted neighbourhood still worried me, I was
too tired to absorb fresh troubles, and went to sleep.