_November 16th._
I am ill after my fall yesterday. An icy wind blows at my window. Loud
voices rise from the street.
Presently my mother looked out and said, “The saddlers and
leather-workers are assembling; they’ve got red tickets in their hats.”
Hours passed by. Suddenly I heard a loud buzzing overhead and an
aeroplane flew through the grey air over the streets. Parliament at
this moment is proclaiming the Republic—Károlyi’s National Council is
announcing that all Hungary shall be governed by the Republic of Pest.
Some handbills were brought up to me from the street.... “Victorious
Revolution.... Kingship is dead, long live the independent Hungarian
Republic!”
I buried my head in my pillow, unable to say a word. There seemed to be a
little mill in my chest and another in my head, and both went round and
round madly, grinding me to powder. Then I became aware that there was a
newspaper on my table—the smell of fresh bad printer’s ink betrayed its
presence. It contained an account of what had happened; everything passed
off in an orderly way and nobody had prevented it. Another opportunity
missed, another day of hope gone! The House of Commons, the Lords, met,
resigned themselves without protest, and the newspaper announces: “This
is a red-letter day in Hungary’s history....”
Those who had been present told me afterwards that early in the day
the trade unions proceeded from their meeting place to the House of
Parliament. They carried red flags, big placards, and a black coffin
marked “Kingship is dead.” The brass bands of the workmen and of the
postal workers blared, bands of gypsies and choral societies gave voice.
Red insignia everywhere. The nation’s colours had disappeared even from
the caps of the national guards and they too sported red labels with
“Long live the Hungarian Republic.” The only two Hungarian flags, and
small ones at that, were placed on the front of the House of Parliament.
Over the porch of the central entrance a huge red flag floated in the
breeze as if Internationalism from its newly conquered home were putting
its tongue out in derision at the crowd, which it had beguiled so far by
means of cockades of the national colours and with white chrysanthemums.
Opposite, on the buildings of the High Court and the Ministry of
Agriculture, red drapery was displayed all along the first storey. It
looked just as if a gaping wound, inflicted with a giant axe, had cut
them in twain.
The shops were closed. Trams were not running. Traffic had stopped like
a breath withheld, ready to cough itself again into the streets of the
town. A cordon of sailors lined up in front of the House: rather a
painful surprise for the government, this. Heltai had come back from
Pressburg with his men in a special train: surely the Republic was not
going to be proclaimed without him! So the defence of Upper Hungary is
now suspended for the time being while Heltai adorns himself with the
national colours: he entered Pressburg under the red flag. There are
rumours that his sailors are connected with certain robberies. In Pest it
is murmured that he knows something about Tisza’s murder.
Five aeroplanes circled over the square, the crowd kept increasing, and
then a giant advertisement on a long stretched canvas was brought out on
poles from a side street. The wind blew it up like a sail and made fun
of its inscription: “This morning in Parliament Square we shall proclaim
Count Michael Károlyi President of the Republic!”
It was ten o’clock. The Speaker’s bell rang. And the Hungarian House of
Commons, to its eternal disgrace, without a word of protest, dissolved
itself in impotence. In the other wing of the building the Lords had met
at the same time. Only thirty-two were present. They too had forgotten
the old classical cry: “_Moriamur pro rege nostro!_” Only Baron Julius
Wlassics, the president, spoke. He did not pronounce the dissolution of
the Lords. He said as little as possible, and ended his address with
the words: “Our constitution decrees that the dissolution of the House
of Commons as part of our two-chamber legislature will naturally render
the further constitutional functions of the House of Lords impossible,
consequently I hereby suspend the sitting of the House of Lords.”
This was the last act of an institution which was born over a thousand
years ago at Pusztaszer, had become the dignified Diet of Buda, the
heroic National Assembly of Pressburg, Francis Deák’s parliament. And
under the cupola rose the voice of that which was begotten by yesterday’s
treason, murder and destruction, and will undoubtedly engender anarchy.
“Honoured National Assembly....” John Hock, the notorious priest, the
President of the so-called National Assembly, raised his voice. Nobody
can tell for whom he spoke. National Assemblies are elected bodies, and
those who were there had been elected by nobody.
In the newspapers the speech was given in long columns of thick type.
My eyes passed over them, I saw only the speaker in his black cassock,
hiding behind the black columns, his diabolical face drawn between his
shoulders. A guilty priest, a guilty Hungarian, who has betrayed both
his God and his country. Once in his youth he was the adulated preacher
of the crowd. Then his downfall began. The gifted but morally weak man
with a corrupt soul got into debt and became the political tool of his
creditors.... That brought him into Károlyi’s camp.
His accomplices, who like to compare their little rebellion made in the
Hotel Astoria romantically to the great French Revolution, call Károlyi
their Mirabeau and have dubbed John Hock the Abbe Siéyès. Do they call
their ladies, Countess Károlyi, Baroness Hatvany, Mrs. Jászi, Laura
Polányi, Rosa Schwimmer, conforming to this precedent, _sansculottes_ and
_tricoteuses_?... There they are, all of them, in the big hall under the
cupola, pantingly enjoying the hour of their triumph. And John Hock goes
on with his speech. I see him before me, as I have seen him so often in
the street and occasionally in the little office of the manager of the
Urania scientific theatre, whither he took the manuscript of his play
_Christ_ and whither he went to talk politics, speaking in mysterious,
dark prophecies. His head always reminded me of the characteristic old
illustrations of Mephistopheles in _Faust_. The little black velvet cap
with the peacock’s feather would suit him to perfection. On his unkempt,
domed skull the hair is short and looks more like bristles than hair.
In his crafty, wicked eyes there is something of the look of those
animals that live underground. His ill-shaved face is blue and is always
unwashed. His cassock is covered from neck to foot with grease-spots; now
and then he fumbles with his indescribably dirty hands in the depths of
his pockets. He has to stoop down to reach their bottom. Then he produces
a dented snuff-box, and cocking his little finger with grotesque grace,
stretches his thumb and index finger into the box. His filthy fingers
lift the snuff to his nostrils, brown with continuous snuffing. Then he
leans his head back and shuts his eyes, in expectant ecstasy.
So he stood on the platform in the hall, filled with applause, after
having proclaimed the republic and having proposed that: “the holidays
of royal paraphernalia should be abolished and that the glorious days
of the revolution and the republic, the 31st of October and the 16th of
November, should for all times be declared National holidays.” Then he
read out a declaration, imposed on Károlyi by Jászi, Kúnfi, Kéri and
Landler, “in the name of the Hungarian nation and by the will of the
people ...” by which it was decided that Hungary was a Popular Republic,
independent and separate from any other country, the supreme power being
provisionally in the hands of the popular government, headed by Michael
Károlyi and supported by the National Council. It declared that the
popular government must urgently legislate and adopt general, secret,
equal, direct suffrage, including women in the electorate, for elections
for the National Assembly, Communal and Legal councils; decree the
freedom of the press, trial by jury, freedom of assembly, and take the
necessary steps for the agricultural population to obtain possession of
the land.
[Illustration: FATHER JOHN HOCK, PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL COUNCIL,
OPENING THE REVOLUTIONARY NATIONAL ASSEMBLY AFTER THE DISSOLUTION OF THE
HOUSE OF COMMONS AND THE LORDS.
(_To face p. 138._)]
The public in the hall shouted its unanimous assent after every point.
Then Károlyi rose to speak, to speak with that frightful voice which is
the natural consequence of his infirmity. He proclaimed the deposition
of the Hapsburgs, declaimed Wilson’s sacred principles, the League of
Nations, the right of peoples to decide their own fate, of eternal peace,
and wound up in a pathetic stutter: “only through sufferings, only
through the sea of blood caused by the war, could the peoples of Europe
and the people of Hungary understand that there was only one possible
policy: the policy of pacificism.... The policy of pacificism was no more
a restricted local policy, but the policy of the world.... The Hungarian
nation, the Hungarian state and the Hungarian race must cling to this
world-policy, because only such nations will prosper, only such nations
will progress, as can adapt themselves to, and adopt, the world-policy
which is expressed in the single word _Pacificism_.”
The hour was tragical and I had suffered much, but I could not help
laughing. Never did pitiable blabber say anything more stupid than
this, nor anything more wicked, for while he is proclaiming pacificism,
militarism armed to the teeth is invading Hungary from all sides. Is it
mere stupidity or the last service to a horrible treason? Whatever it be,
after this it is useless to analyse Károlyi’s mentality.
The Mirabeau of the Astoria was followed by the spokesman of the Social
Democratic Party: Sigmund Kunfi-Kunstätter, the Minister for Public
Welfare. He is said to be one of Lenin’s emissaries. His face is like
a vulture’s, his eyes are cunning and inquisitive. After John Hock’s
rhetoric and Károlyi’s disgraceful stutter, this cashiered Jewish
schoolmaster, who has changed his religion three times for mercenary
reasons but has remained faithful to his race, spoke with fiendish
ingenuity. He mixed truths with utopias, promised and threatened, and in
the certitude of his victory tore asunder the veil that hid the future.
“By proclaiming this day a free, popular republic,” said Kunfi, “we
have not only achieved great political progress, but we have started on
a road of which the past revolution and this day are not the end but
only important milestones.... Political freedom, the republic, the most
radical political democracy, all these are only means which shall enable
the great struggle, the fight between poverty and wealth, to start easier
and under better auspices....”
This is the battle cry of class-war, and till the war comes Kunfi offers
as a narcotic social reforms: the levelling of poverty and wealth, land
for the soldiers back from the front. And he promises that he will
force the entailed estates, big capital and great industry, to give up
everything that “justice” and the will of the people claim, and that in
such a way that it will not interfere with the continuity of economic
life.
This programme, which is not an end but only a landmark, expresses as yet
Kautsky’s ideas. But then, suddenly, it is no longer Kautsky; it is Lenin
and Liebknecht who speak through this representative of their creed.
“Political democracy is only a tool for us,” said Kunfi; “this political
freedom is valuable to us only because we believe and hope that by its
means we shall be able to carry through the great social transformation
just as bloodlessly, and with as few victims, as we have managed to
achieve the Hungarian Revolution.”
“Long live the social revolution,” shouted the gallery.
In his next words Kunfi answered the shout and in the exhilaration of
this triumph gave himself away:
“Our revolutionary work is not over yet! After reforming our institutions
we shall have to alter mankind!”
So he confessed that it was not the people who wanted his institutions,
but that his institutions wanted the people. And as he went on he
admitted that the men of the future were not to be Hungarians. “Every
place in this country must be filled by individuals who are inspired
by the spirit of the new revolution, of this new Hungary, of this new
world.” ... His words died away in a last sentence which, if it is
understood by the nation, ought to rouse it to desperate resistance,
for it is the proclamation of world-Bolshevism: “Every slave-nation
stands this day with reddening cheeks on the stage of the world, and one
after the other the peoples will rise with red flags and will sing in a
powerful symphony the hymn of the world’s freedom....”
[Illustration: SIGISMUND KUNFI _alias_ KUNSTÄTTER, LENIN’S EMISSARY.
PEOPLES COMMISSARY FOR EDUCATION.
(_To face p. 140._)]
It is to our everlasting shame that no single Hungarian rose to choke
these words. In the Hall of Hungary’s parliament Lenin’s agent could
unfurl at his ease the flag of Bolshevism, could blow the clarion of
social revolution and announce the advent of a world-revolution, while
outside, in Parliament Square, Lovászy and Bokányi, accompanied by
Jászi, informed the people that the National Council had proclaimed the
republic. On the staircase, Michael Károlyi made another oration. Down
in the square, Landler, Welter, Preusz and other Jews glorified the
republic—there was not a single Hungarian among them. That was the secret
of the whole revolution. Above: the mask, Michael Károlyi; below: the
foreign race which has proclaimed its mastery.
And bands of Hungarian workmen and gypsies played the National Anthem and
the Marseillaise, and Gallileists sang the Internationale. Humiliated,
with bitter anger, I read in the newspapers of hundreds of thousands of
people, furious cheers, and the frenzied happiness of the multitude. Thus
is the news spread over the country, while those who were present say
that the people were shivering in the icy north wind that blew across the
square, that they took everything with indifference, and only cheered
when ordered to do so by their leaders.
Only when the National Anthem was played and a few Gallileists refused to
uncover did the crowd knock their hats off. That was all that was done
for the sake of Hungary’s honour. Nobody proclaimed Michael Károlyi the
president of the republic. The Socialists would not have it. Is he of no
more use? Do they not need him any more? As a compensation, Kunfi ordered
the National Guards to carry him shoulder high. So Károlyi was carried
between the ranks of the commandeered trade unions across the square.
The white canvasses with the inscription: “Let us proclaim Károlyi
President of the Republic,” were rolled up in silence.
The workmen went home and said among themselves that now everything would
be all right. There will be good times, and things will be cheap. The
rabble, however, blackguarded the king and cursed the “gentle-folk.”
At the head of one of their groups a shabby drunken woman walked with
unsteady steps. Shaking her unkempt head she put her arms round the
neck of a young fellow and dragged him along. After a time she let her
companion go, chose another, and hugged and dragged him along while she
danced some immodest steps.
Some peasant proprietors who had come there accidentally, walked in
silence towards the city, their stout boots striking the cobbles firmly.
In all this throng they alone represented the people of great Hungary.
A friend of mine followed them, to see what they would do. At last one
of them, an old peasant, who seemed to have thought it over, stopped and
turned to the others, measuring his words:
“This republic is a fine thing; but now I should like to know who is
going to be King?”
* * * * *
_November 17th._
How long and terrible the night can be! Clocks strike, one after the
other; one gently, another hesitatingly, and the fine old alabaster clock
is hoarse, and its chest rattles between every stroke. Down in the street
a carriage races past at a gallop, then a single shot rings out in the
silence. The shot must have been fired in the street behind our house....
Then everything relapses into silence for hours. The floor creaks, as if
somebody is walking barefooted towards my bed, though nothing moves. How
often did the clock strike? I waited impatiently for the sound, and yet
forgot to count the strokes. I lit the candle. Not even half the night is
over, and it has lasted such an age. Then that hopeless, helpless despair
came over me again. I don’t want to think. It does no good. Yet in spite
of myself something forces itself into my mind, leans over me, like a
ghost. It is _yesterday_. It comes stealthily over the threshold, towards
me. I shut my eyes in vain: I can see it though it is dark. I see the day
with all its shame and cowardice. I can see those who have wrought our
ruin triumph and applaud in the exhilaration of their success: “Long live
the Republic!” My sprained ankle smarts suddenly. The man who knocked me
off the tram is conjured up: his head sails towards me through the air,
as though borne by huge protruding ears. His nose projects enormously,
and his mouth opens wide and shouts “Long live the Republic!” The big
hall under the cupola of the House of Parliament was full of mouths like
this, with soft, flabby lips, and the curly thick lips of women. It was
these who proclaimed the republic for Hungary. And we submitted, suffered
it, and held our peace.
I try to calm myself, to restrain myself. The clocks strike again. Then
silence once more, spreading like a thread which a spider draws out.
The silence becomes longer, longer.... I can stand it no more—if only
something would make a noise! I sit up, shivering, and strike the pillow
with my fist. That does not mend matters. A subdued moan resounds through
the room, a pitiable, miserable little sound which comes from my heart....
Do others suffer as much as I do? I have spoken to nobody, have seen
nobody. I don’t know what they think. I have no one with whom to share
my pain. Maybe that is the reason why it weighs so heavily upon me. I
try to console myself. Things cannot go on like this. Like everything
else it will pass. The revolution was made because the Jews were afraid
of pogroms by the returning soldiers. The republic was made because the
revolution was afraid of the counter-revolution. It is an accumulation
of narcotics. But no narcotic lasts for ever. The only question is, what
part of the victim is to be amputated while it lasts?
At last a square of light appeared at one side of the room. At first it
was gray, then it became blue, and finally it turned into daylight. So
there was a new day again; it has come with empty hands and who knows
what it will take with it?
In the afternoon Emma Ritoók opened my door. “What happened to you?” she
asked as she came to my bedside.
“A hero of the revolution knocked me off the tram.”
“How do you know that he was a hero of the revolution?”
“By his ears.... And then, he wore a brand-new uniform.”
My friend was infinitely sad this day. Since we had last met, her
credulous Hungarian nature had gone through an awful time. Despair and
rebellion sounded in all her words. Years ago, when she attended for a
term the lectures at Berlin University, she became acquainted with two
Jews from Hungary. They met in the philosophy class. They were friends
of her youth, and now these very people have made the rebellion of the
Astoria Hotel against her country. She complained:
“They said that we were even incapable of arranging that by ourselves,
that it needed Jews to obtain Hungary’s independence for the Hungarians.
I answered that we did not do it because it was unnecessary, that
history would have brought us independence of her own accord. But they
declared that humanity was sick and would not recover till a world
revolution eliminated from this globe the last machine, the last book,
the last sculpture, and the last violin too. This revolution must sweep
away everything, so that nothing remains but man and the soil, because
humanity is in need of a new soul, to begin everything from the very
beginning.”
“Tell them in my name that they are speaking for a race which has grown
old, which suffers from senile decay and would like to be re-born. We
are young, we have not yet exhausted our vitality, and innumerable
possibilities are in store for us. Only a degenerate race can seek
rejuvenation through destruction. Besides, if they want to re-create by
these means a world torn from its past, it will not be enough to destroy
the last book, the last statue and the last violin; they must destroy as
well the last man who remembers.”
“I shan’t be able to tell them,” she answered, “because I shan’t see them
again. Now it is not a question of philosophy, it is a question of my
country. And that parts us for ever.”
“Is that the reason why you sent me a message that you had a spiritual
need to meet me?”
“We must do something. The men do nothing. We ought to organise the
women. Unconsciously they are waiting for it. In the Club of Hungarian
Ladies there are many who are of our way of thinking.”
“There too?...”
The Club of Hungarian Ladies was founded a few years ago by a few
aristocratic ladies inspired by Countess Michael Károlyi. For that reason
I never joined it. Under the publicly proclaimed object of intellectual
intercourse I suspected the ultimate political purpose. I had been right.
In case of the admittance of women to the franchise, this club was
required to furnish Michael Károlyi with a ready camp among intellectual
women. The events of the last two weeks wrecked this plan, because the
truth about Károlyi has begun to leak out. At one of their meetings the
nationalist ladies, in opposition to the socialist, feminist and radical
Jewish adherents of Countess Károlyi, had declared by a great majority
for the territorial integrity of Hungary and had carried Emma Ritoók’s
resolution to address a protest to the women of the civilised world.
Countess Károlyi, who was present, could not stand aside, so she promised
that the government would bear the expenses of printing it and would see
that the greatest possible publicity should be given to it abroad—on the
sole condition that her husband should be allowed to have cognisance of
the document. The members accepted the proposal, which seemed to forbode
no danger to the protest, as it was to fight for the nation’s right and
it would have been folly to imagine that the government was opposed to
that. They cheered Countess Károlyi and decided unanimously that although
I did not belong to the club I should be asked to write the preface to
the memorandum.
I accepted the commission. The interest of my country was at stake and I
would have accepted the invitation whatever the source whence it came.
Emma Ritoók brought the document back with her.... Károlyi had looked
through it and had struck out everything that might have been of any use
to our cause. So that was the reason for Countess Károlyi’s offer....
A sieve that shall stop even the smallest national movement. We are
cornered, and when we would cry for help the government puts its hand
over our mouths. Officialdom holds down our hands when we would help
ourselves.
“Put this carefully away,” I said to my friend, looking at the mangled
document. “One day this may be another proof of his treason.”
Various handwritings alternated on the margin, besides the considerable
cuts that had been made in the text.
“Jászi has read it, and Biró.... This is Károlyi’s handwriting; he even
signed his name to it.”
This was the first time I had seen his handwriting. Loosely formed
characters, words run together, others only half finished, the lines
slanting towards the corner of the page, capital letters in the middle
of sentences and innumerable mistakes in spelling. It looked just like
him....
“What shall we do now?” asked my friend. “We have worked in vain. The
government will publish none but the revised document and it will stop
any other from being sent abroad.”
“I shall find some way,” I answered; “but I will never permit my
patriotism to be censored by Michael Károlyi.”
“Refuse it,” said my mother; “it is better it should not appear at all
than appear in this form.”
In the evening I wrote a letter to Count Emil Dessewffy, to whom I had
mentioned the memorandum, asking him to use his social connections, or
the services of the ever-increasing Territorial Defence League, to get
it abroad in its original form. I wrote in pencil, at some length, and
poured all my bitterness into the letter. I criticised men and events
without mercy. I called Károlyi and his friends traitors and the leaders
of the Social Democrats the advance guard of Bolshevist world-rule.
I felt relieved when I had sent the letter. Then, I don’t know why, I
began to feel rather nervous about it. That letter might land me in
prison. Nonsense. How could it get into wrong hands?
* * * * *
_November 18th._
To-night the ground shook in this branded town. Mackensen’s motor
columns were passing through Budapest. They went, without stopping,
dark, thundering, betrayed, disappointed, out into the wintry night....
My sister-in-law told me she had seen them. Big waterproofs covered the
clattering motors and only their lamps betrayed that there was life in
them. Not a man was visible. Like the phantoms of war they came from
distant battle-fields.
They went on for hours and only once was their progress stopped. One
lorry pulled up for an instant, a man climbed out from under the
waterproof, took a little box, waved his hand, and disappeared in the
dark. He must have been a Hungarian soldier whom they had brought with
them, goodness only knows whence. And the waving of the solitary hand was
the only greeting and good-bye that our German comrades in arms received
from Hungary’s capital. The gray ghostly mass restarted and the others
followed....
We followed them in our minds, as the eyes of a shipwrecked crew on a
sinking raft follow the ship which disappears over the horizon without
bringing help.
It has happened ... they are gone, and in their track follow those whom
now nobody can stop.... And yet, the 1st Home-defence regiment has
arrived with its full equipment, and the regiments of Debreczen and
Pécs are coming too. Another has come from Albania and more come from
Ukraine, from France and from Italy. Through Innsbruck alone more than
half a million Hungarian troops have rushed homeward. They are disarmed,
disbanded—are no more. Meanwhile through the pass of Ojtoz a Roumanian
force consisting of sixteen frontier guards has invaded Hungarian
territory. They looked round, gave the sign, and were followed by a
battalion. They arm and enlist the Transylvanian Roumanians, and the land
is lost to us.
Last week a small detachment, a few Serbian troopers, rode into Mohács.
Mohács.... Once upon a time the Hungarian nation, with its king and its
bishops, bled to death there, resisting the terrific onslaught of the
Turks. The brook Csepel ran red with Hungarian blood, and the land was
covered with Hungarian dead as far as the eye could see. Now a handful
of Serbian cavalry ride over the mournful, grandiose graves and tread
the deathbed of the King. The field is peacefully green, the water is
clean, and there are no corpses on the grass. And yet, to-day Mohács is
a greater cemetery of Hungary than it was on the day of the great death,
for to-day there are none left ready to die for her.
What a nightmare it all is! Down there the commander of the Serbian
troops says: “I have been for seven years with my soldiers, and when we
marched through Serbia we passed before our own houses, and not a single
man entered his own home, but on they went, according to orders.... The
Serbian army has been at war since 1912, and yet it passed in front of
its home, its little fields, its women, its children, went on and never
stopped.” They come, they come for conquest, and our men do not defend
what is their own. How they must hate us, our land and our race which has
sunk so low! How we have been poisoned by those who ought to lead us!
With narcotic lies they have inoculated us and planted the plague in our
souls.
If only one could get away from these maddening thoughts, could tear them
out of one’s brain and get a moment’s rest. But it cannot be done. They
cling to us obstinately. These winter days in bed are terrible, and awful
are the long, sleepless nights. Sometimes I think that people don’t go
mad here because they are already all lunatics.
* * * * *
_November 19th._
Snow is falling. The roofs are white and shine against the background
of the gray sky. Scanty, economical fires burn in our grates: the
Serbians have occupied the coal-fields of Pécs, the Roumanians those of
Petrozsény, so Hungary has no longer any coal, and the Czechs stop the
supplies from Germany. In the gas-stove the flame is small and gives no
heat. The new order diminishes the supply of electricity, and the globes
have to be taken out of the chandelier. Only one is allowed in the room,
and it sends its light sideways into a corner. I hobbled over to my
mother. The partial light left dark recesses in the corners, and made the
place unhomely, sad.
The table in the dining-room seemed to have changed too. In the silver
vases there are still some evergreen twigs from our summer home, but
flowers there are no longer. Everything is getting so expensive. Our fare
diminishes every day too, but we pretend not to notice it. Every day sees
the disappearance of something we were accustomed to. Things we used
to take as granted have become luxuries. Already during the long years
of war things were not always what they seemed: coffee was not coffee,
nor were the tea, the sugar, or even the bread above suspicion. We got
accustomed to substitutes, but now even these have disappeared. In the
shops the shelves are empty, and the new stocks fail to appear. Those
who can, buy and hoard. Germany and Austria have stopped sending us the
products of their industries. We tighten our belts and get thinner and
poorer every day.
Across the street one window is still lit up, though it is getting late.
As I look up I can see a man making a selection of his clothes. He lifts
up a coat, holds it under the lamp, puts it aside, then takes it up
again; now he inspects a waist-coat, some linen. A woman comes in and
they talk for a few moments. Then they throw an overcoat on the table and
hide the rest in the bed, under the mattresses. They make a selection of
boots too. The woman puts one pair with the overcoat, and they hide the
others in the cupboard, behind some books.
Choosing and hiding of this kind goes on to-day in every house in the
country.
The popular Government has issued a decree, striving to satisfy the
demands of the disarmed troops by requisition. Its confidential agents
are to visit the people in their homes and requisition clothes, linen and
boots, without any compensation. Those who hide anything will have the
whole of their supply with the exception of a single suit, confiscated
and will be punished with a fine of 2,000 crowns or six months’
imprisonment.
This is a curious order, for it affects principally those who have
suffered most from the high prices of the war and the exactions of the
profiteers, namely the middle-classes, whose poor, shabby, outworn
clothes are the only remaining outward sign of their higher cultural
position, and whose only means of clothing their children consists in
utilizing every possible rag. Moreover there is a new element embodied in
this order, for by it the authorities have taken the first step towards
disposing of private property without due compensation. They lay claim to
search homes, and thus the thin end of the wedge has been driven into the
sacred rights of privacy and private property.
Suddenly shots were fired somewhere near the hospital. On the other side
of the road, in the lighted room, the woman raised her head, and seeing
that she had forgotten to lower the blinds, she hastened to do so, in
order to hide the theft that she and her husband were committing in their
own home, for themselves, on their own poor little hoard of worn-out
clothes.
Even as I looked I was astonished at my own feelings. In my heart I
approved of those who tried to evade the order: and yet, my ideas of
honesty had not changed—it was the honesty of the law which had altered.
Only three weeks ago it protected us, now it is a means of attack, and
we, persecuted humanity, are only acting in our own defence when we
conspire for its defeat.
The sound of footsteps in the street roused me, for it is a rare thing
after the doors of the houses are shut. The footsteps went by rapidly,
as if in a flurry. I listened for a time, wondering whether some devilry
were afoot—but no, nowadays it is only those who walk slowly, steadily,
that mean mischief.
* * * * *
_November 20th._
Our road leads through a mist and nobody can see the end of it. Some
day, when we look back upon the past, many things may appear simple and
clear which now, while we are living through them, seem mysterious and
incomprehensible. Events come fast, crowding one on the other without
rhyme or reason. Common sense is of no use, for our fate is woven by
maniacs. We have occasional bright moments, little flickers which the
storm extinguishes. If we see clearly for an instant, darkness falls
before we can find our way, and in its gloom, fate deals us such blows
that we become giddy and lose our bearings. Nothing helps. Everything is
new and strange; in a present like this the past is no guide. One cannot
acquire the habit of dying!—and Hungary is struggling in agony in the
hands of her murderers.
To-day the lamp flared up in an unexpected way, for I heard news which
staggered me, stopped the beating of my heart and left me speechless.
I heard the familiar step of my brother Géza passing through the
drawing-room to my mother’s room, and rushed after him with a feverish
desire to hear and to know. Perhaps he might be the bearer of hopeful
news, as he used to be during the war; then, whenever he came to see
mother, there had been a bright spot in our gloom. But now he sat in a
state of collapse in the tall green armchair, and fury distorted his face.
“All these scoundrels are traitors. Lieut.-Colonel Julier has told me
how damnably they have betrayed the country. They are leading it to
destruction.” He banged the table with his clenched fist. “Do you know
that the armistice of Belgrade was superfluous? The Common High Command
had arranged with General Diaz, who was the delegate of the Allies,
for an armistice for us too as from the 4th of November, leaving the
frontiers of Hungary untouched and fixing the pre-war frontiers as the
line of demarcation. There was to be no enemy occupation. And on the 6th
of November Michael Károlyi, in Belgrade, opened the flood-gates on us.”
There was a weary silence in the room for a while. It was so terrible,
so monstrous, that, though my opinion of Károlyi and his gang was low
enough, I could scarcely believe it.
“Perhaps they—perhaps Károlyi didn’t know the conditions of Diaz’s
armistice?”
“They did; it was in Károlyi’s pocket before he went to Belgrade,” my
brother said. “They did it for the sake of power, for the doubtful
honour that the conclusion of peace should be in their names. Franchet
d’Espèray could not understand why they came. Then he gave them their
medicine: ‘If you want it, have it!’ says he.”
Everything seemed to be collapsing round us, even that which had till now
remained standing, and it was as though the weight of it fell on us and
buried us under its ruin. It seemed incomprehensible that the lamp still
stood there, where it had been before, and the chairs, the couch, the
cupboards.... Then I saw my mother’s hands as they clasped one another
spasmodically in her lap. I heard her voice, which sounded as if it came
struggling up among the ruins, with infinite pain:
“If the curse of an old woman carries any weight, I curse them!”