_February 20th-22nd._
As one looks back on distant days they seem to melt into one like a row
of men moving away, and yet they passed singly and each had its own
individuality. Long ago the days smiled and were pleasant, now all that
is changed. One day stares at us, frigid, relentlessly, another turns
aside, and one feels there is mischief in its face; some of them look
back threateningly after they have passed by.
Such are the present ones. When they have passed they still look back
at us and mumble something that sounds like “there is worse to come.”
We refuse to believe it, our common-sense revolts against the prophecy,
because our common-sense has come to the end of its power of enduring
misfortune. Even jungles come to an end, and if they do not we tear a
path through the tangle of their thorns, tread them down, and, at the
price of whatever wounds and loss of blood, regain the open country.
The masses have lost their illusions concerning Károlyi’s republic, for
they are colder and hungrier than ever. History always reaches a turning
point when there is no more bread and misery becomes past endurance.
Logically there must be a change, and what change could there be but the
resurrection of the country? Hope, which has come to naught, must become
a reality in March.... At any rate we flatter ourselves with this belief,
so that we may find strength for life and work though the streets whisper
a different tale, nay, sometimes they shout it aloud, and last Thursday
they baptised it with blood to prove that they meant it.
Béla Kún’s staff has called the work-shirking rabble together. One day
they stir the people up against the landlords, next day they agitate
among the disbanded soldiers to induce them to raise impossible claims;
to-day it was the turn of the unemployed.
Potatoes are rotting in the ground and last year’s maize cannot be
gathered. There is nobody in the town to sweep the streets, to cart
the garbage, to carry a load. At the railway station starving officers
do porters’ work. The evicted officials of occupied territories hire
themselves out as labourers on farms. Meanwhile at their meetings the
Communists court the idle rabble: “You have lost your jobs in consequence
of the terrible bath of blood; the time has come to get your own back;
up, to arms!”
So the mob went to Visegrad Street, where Béla Kún and his friends
stirred it up still more and finally provided it with arms. With wild
screams the furious crowd thereupon poured out into the boulevard, armed
women, young ruffians with hand-grenades. “Long live Communism,” rose the
shout. Somebody exclaimed: “Let’s go to the ‘People’s Voice!’” And the
crowd, which had learned from the Socialists how to sack the editorial
offices of Christian and middle-class newspapers, went on to storm the
offices of the all-powerful organ of Social Democracy. The destructive
instinct knows no bounds. The alarmed secretariat of the Socialist party
appealed for help to the police and the armed forces, but before the
sailors and the people’s guard had reached the street its pavement was
covered with blood. Fifty constables awaited the crowd in a street; shots
fired by the mob were the signals for a mad fusillade; from windows and
attics machine-guns were trained on the unfortunate police and a shower
of hand-grenades fell on the building of the ‘People’s Voice.’ It was a
well prepared battle, the first real test of the Communists’ power.
It failed.... The Communist leaders remained in the background, and the
rabble, left to itself without guidance, abandoned the field with such
a bloody head that all desire for further fighting has gone out of it
for the present. It is said that the dead in this street battle numbered
eight, and that over a hundred injured had to be admitted to hospital.
It was late in the evening and we could still hear wild firing going on
in the direction of the fight. Even late at night occasional rifle shots
were heard. Then came the news in Friday’s papers that at day-break the
Communist leaders had been arrested. Szamuelly’s room was found empty;
on the table lay a piece of paper and on it was written: “Dear Father,
don’t look for me; there is trouble, I must fly.” Most of the others
were captured: Béla Kún was taken in his flat, and at the prison the
policemen, infuriated by the death of their comrades, beat him within
an inch of his life, indeed he only saved it by shamming death, and the
constables left him in his cell without finishing him off.
In consequence of the attack on the ‘People’s Voice’ the Social
Democratic party declared a general strike. All work was forbidden, the
traffic stopped in the capital’s main streets, the shop shutters put up,
and even the cafés and restaurants were closed. The town looked as if it
had gone blind; all along the streets closed grey lids covered its eyes
of glass. There was no traffic at all. All vehicles had disappeared, and
nothing but machine guns passed along the roads. At the various corners
of the boulevards soldiers lounged beside their piled rifles.
There were processions everywhere. I met one group, advancing under a red
flag and consisting of well over a thousand people, most of them wearing
white aprons smeared with patches of blood. They swung huge axes, knives,
and choppers over their heads, and all were covered with blood. They
looked as if they had murdered half the town, and wherever they went they
shrieked: “Long live the proletarian revolution!”
“Who are these kindly people?” I asked a hag with the face of a witch,
who was cheering them enthusiastically from the pavement.
“The butchers’ guild,” she said proudly; “Social Democrats, every one of
them....”
Nor were the Communists idle. Armed bands of them threatened the police
stations and prisons, supporting their demands with hand-grenades and
clamouring for the immediate release of their leaders and the delivery
into their hands of the constables who had beaten Béla Kún.
[Illustration: “THERE WERE PROCESSIONS EVERYWHERE.”
(_To face p. 258._)]
Meanwhile something was going on in the dark. The tone of the Social
Democratic press has changed suddenly and now the Government threatens
the counter-revolution with more vehemence than before, asserting
that the formation of a new party by Count Stephen Bethlen is a more
sinister crime than the murderous attempts of the Communists. With a
sharp change of attitude, ‘The People’s Voice’ asks for the punishment
of the constables who ill-treated Béla Kún, and writes threateningly of
Bethlen’s party and the National Association of Hungarian Women: “Through
the one of them the men, through the other the women raise their voices,
and because the revolution has not yet made use of the gallows, they give
as shameless and impudent an accent to their appeals as if the gallows
were absolutely excluded from among the weapons of defence the revolution
might use....”
And while the official paper of the Social Democrats writes like this,
the evening paper, _Az Est_, which for the last few months has boasted
of having been the principal agent in preparing and bringing about the
October revolution, now seeks to inspire the minds of its readers in
favour of another revolution by exciting sympathy and pity for Béla Kún.
Every day the attitude of the Government becomes less comprehensible.
It is openly said in town that Károlyi is in communication with the
Communists. He telephoned orders that the leaders should be well cared
for in prison, and then sent messages to them through his confidants,
Landler and Jeszenszky, and made his wife pay them a visit. Countess
Michael Károlyi, accompanied by Jeszenszky who is called Károlyi’s
aide-de-camp, went to see Béla Kún in the prison to which he had been
transferred. She actually took him flowers, and saw to it herself that
the arrested Communists were provided with spring mattresses, feather
beds, blankets, good food, and tobacco.
Károlyi, the guilty megalomaniac, becomes more and more of an enigma. He
wanted to rule; to attain power he had to ruin poor, befooled Hungary and
make an alliance with every enemy of the country. It was cruel logic,
disgraceful, but it was logic. But that he should now ally himself
with the enemies of his own power seems to indicate softening of the
brain. And this same feeble-mindedness manifests itself daily in all his
declarations and pronouncements in a more grotesque shape, in him as well
as in his wife. The stories about them become more and more extravagant.
The other day he had a kinematograph film taken of his projected entry
into the royal castle, yet dares not have it exhibited. He had a stage
erected, red carpets were laid, lacqueys in court livery stood in a row,
and he made his state entry with his wife, assisted by some actors.
Something went wrong with the film, so they started anew and played the
whole comedy over again.
Then there is the tale about Countess Károlyi’s attempt to play the
ministering angel. She had the royal table linen cut to pieces, and
the stiff, hard damask with the royal arms and crown on it was sent to
proletarian infants to be used as pilches!
The other day the military band was playing in St. George’s square. It
struck up the ‘Marseillaise.’ As if by magic, a window of the Prime
Minister’s residence opened, and Countess Károlyi leaned out and waved
her hand. Then the band began to play the Hungarian national anthem;
Countess Károlyi retired at once and shut her window in a hurry.
Receptions are organised up in the castle. Real Hungarian society,
which lives in retirement, practically in mourning, has severed all
contact with the Károlyi’s; but they have found a remedy for this. Their
receptions are reported in the newspapers, and among those mentioned as
being present are people who cut them in the street. The other day, to my
consternation, I found my own name in one of the lists, but when I tried
to protest through the press no newspaper would print my letter.
A few days ago Károlyi gave a state dinner in honour of two Italian
gentlemen, who, as simple private individuals, had come to visit some
relations here; it surpassed everything that bad taste had ever produced.
The country is in mourning, there is no coal, and in many houses people
lack even candles and oil; yet the castle was a blaze of light. The
ministers of the republic were present with their wives, and dinner
was served in the hall where the picture of the coronation of 1867
is hanging. The table was covered with linen bearing the monogram of
Francis Joseph, and the plates were marked with the royal crown. Thus,
in the royal castle, among the memories of kingship, on royal plate, the
so-called president of the republic entertained the astonished foreigners
who had expected to be the guests of a Hungarian nobleman and found
that they had fallen in with a ridiculous parvenu. They related their
adventures next day and carried the story back to their own country as a
huge joke.
[Illustration: THE ROYAL CASTLE, BUDA, WITH THE STATUE OF PRINCE EUGENE
OF SAVOY.
_Photo. Erdelyi, Budapest._
(_To face p. 260._)]
The Károlyi’s have parted with everything that could support them. It
is said of them that they gave asylum to Szamuelly, the murderer of
Hungarian officers, when he escaped the other day. Michael Károlyi
started his career with lies, continued it with dishonour, and now has
landed in the mire. If he is not stopped somehow it is likely that he
will drag the whole nation down with him.
* * * * *
_February 23rd._
Past midnight. I said good-night to my mother; the street is silent, and
my room is cold.
How often have I, at this table, imagined destinies that existed only in
the author’s mind, and while I wrote the story brought the children of
my fancy to very life! But now life is harder than the destinies which I
ever imagined, and more than once of late my real existence has seemed
to me like some fantastic tale, beheld from the outside, as though at a
distance....
This morning the newspapers have published a new law just passed by the
Government to oppose all attempts at a counter-revolution. It empowers
the Government to put ‘out of harm’s way’ any one who is, in their
opinion, dangerous to the achievements of the revolution or to the
popular republic. This means that anyone of us who is obnoxious in their
eyes can be arrested without any further preliminaries.
It was about midday when my telephone, which has been mute for a long
time, raised its voice. A cousin of mine was speaking, and her voice,
though she was obviously making efforts to appear calm, was excited.
“Knöpfler would like to speak to you. Important—Urgent.”
“Why doesn’t he come here, then?”
“He cannot come now. Mother-in-law keeps an eye on him. Come to us, we
will meet in the street.”
She put the receiver down. Among ourselves we always refer to the police
as ‘mother-in-law.’
I wonder what has happened. What has Gömbös, the leader of the Awakening
Hungarians, to tell me? (Knöpfler is his _nom de guerre_.) I saw in
the paper yesterday that on the proposal of the Minister of War the
Government had decided that his society should be dissolved.
I never leave home without saying good-bye to my mother. “Come home
early,” she said when I took leave. I was going to lunch with some
relations. My mother knew this, and yet she seemed anxious.
“I needn’t go if you don’t want me to. I can make some excuse.”
“No, you just go along,” she said, and her expression changed suddenly.
“You know, it does us old people good to be alone sometimes. Then we are
with our own contemporaries who are no more. You go along to your own
contemporaries who are still here.”
She said this so sweetly that it made me feel as if a solitary Sunday
dinner were a treat for her. She achieved her end, I went with a lighter
heart.
A cold wind blew down the street. My cousin and her husband came to meet
me, and a short distance behind them Gömbös followed. “We’ll go a few
steps with you,” they said, and Gömbös came to my side.
“The cabinet council decided yesterday,” he whispered, “to intern us.
Count Bethlen, Colonel Bartha, Bishop Count Mikes, Wekerle ... and you.”
Again I had that feeling that it did not concern me, and I listened
indifferently.
“Károlyi is at Debrö and the warrant lies on his table waiting for his
signature. Well, what do you think of it?”
“Nothing,” I answered, and was surprised to find how little it affected
me; “I am just thinking who will carry on in our place.”
They went with me for a short distance and then we parted. I walked
across the town, for I wanted to be alone and think: I had to make plans
and arrange my affairs for all eventualities. A thousand questions
crowded into my mind, and yet I found no time to take any decision,
because I was thinking all the while of my mother, and of her only.
When I told my hosts, over the coffee, the news I had just received,
their faces seemed to reflect the danger that stood behind me.
Evening was drawing in when I reached home. As I stepped into the
ante-room the telephone bell rang, and when I answered it a friend spoke
to me in the secretive way that has now become habitual.
“The dressmaker has come with the new fashion papers. She is going
straight to you, please don’t leave home until you have seen her.”
A few minutes later her husband arrived. He had heard it at his club....
“You will probably be arrested to-night. What are your plans? Your
friends, I understand, don’t want to escape.”
“I shall stay too,” I said, and thanked him for his kindness. Meanwhile,
my brother Géza had arrived, then a friend and his wife, and finally
Gömbös.
It was now nearly ten o’clock. My mother called me: supper had been
waiting on the table for a long while. The others had already supped,
so I left them and joined my mother. I ate rapidly, and she watched me
closely.
“What is going on here? Why have they come? Is anything wrong? Don’t hide
things from me.”
I tried to reassure her, though I saw clearly she did not believe me. She
sighed. “Well, go along to your friends, but don’t keep them too late.”
Soon they rose to go with the exception of Gömbös.
“It has been decided by the others,” he said, “that none of you will
flee. They only send me.... I shall help from abroad.”
We fixed up everything. Gömbös rose, took his society’s badge from his
button-hole: an oak wreath on white ground with ‘For the honour of our
country’ on it, and handed it to me. “Take this as a souvenir, nobody has
a better right to wear it than you.”
“God bless you; if we live I am sure we shall hear of you,” I said at the
door.
They left me and I heard the street door shut. I wondered whether anyone
was lying in wait for him, down there in the dark, and listened for a
time at the window, but the steps went undisturbed down the street.
I went to my mother. I don’t remember ever having seen her so excited.
“Now why don’t you tell me?” she cried. “I know that something has
happened.”
“Gömbös came to take leave; he is flying the country.”
I changed the subject as soon as possible. We chatted a long time and by
and by she calmed down. Or did she only pretend, for my sake? No, she
never showed anything but what she felt.
Slowly the clocks struck midnight. And here I am sitting at my
writing-table and, instead of imagining destinies, am occupied by my own.
Who knows whether I shall still be free to write to-morrow what I leave
unwritten to-day?
I packed the most necessary things into a small valise. Again the clocks
struck: they are knocking at the gate of the morrow.
* * * * *
_February 24th._
The news of the internments has spread all over the town. I was afraid
my mother might hear from someone else what was in store for me, so I
decided to tell her myself. She is not one of those whom one has to
prepare for bad news. When I told her, she went a little pale, and, for
a time, held her head up more rigidly than usual. But her self-control
never left her and she remained composed. She blamed nobody and did not
reproach me for causing her this sorrow.
“You did your duty, my dear; I never expected anything else from you.”
More approval than this she had rarely expressed.
I remained at home the whole afternoon, sitting with my mother, and we
talked of times when things were so very different from what they are
now. If the bell rang, if the door opened or steps approached, I felt my
heart leap. In the afternoon a motor car stopped in front of the house.
For a time it throbbed under our window.... Had it come for me?
We have come to this, that in Hungary to-day those who dare to confess to
being Hungarians are tracked down like game. In the Highlands it is the
Czechs, in Transylvania the Roumanians, in the South the Serbians, and in
the territory that remains to us it is the Government who persecutes the
Hungarians.
The bell.... Nothing, only a letter. Those who have never tried it cannot
imagine what it feels like to have ceased to be master of one’s freedom
and to be waiting for strangers to carry one off to prison.
I spent the evening with my mother and, as of old, I followed her if
she went from one room to another: I did not budge from her side. After
supper I showed her a packet of letters which I wanted her to hide among
her own things, so that they might not be found if there was another
search. The letters had nothing to do with politics: they were old,
far-away letters which one never reads again yet does not like to burn,
because it is comforting to know that they still exist—dead letters of
past springs. I should have been horrified if rough strange hands had
touched them.
“Put them there,” my mother said and pointed to the glass case with the
green curtains. As I pushed the little packet in at the back of the
highest shelf I noticed a big box with a paper label on it. Written on it
in her clear handwriting was “Objects from the old china-cabinet.”
“May I have a look at these?” I said. She nodded.
It was as though I had received all the desires and forbidden toys of my
childhood; I pressed the box against me. Then we put our heads together
over the table, in the light of the shaded lamp.... Suddenly the high
white, folding doors of the old house where I had spent my childhood
opened quietly, mysteriously, one after the other, and as by sweet magic
I saw again the old room of long ago and the china cabinet near the
white fire-place, under the old picture in the gilt frame....
Slowly and carefully we unwrapped the little objects that had slept so
long in their tissue paper. My mother had packed them away when we had
come here and when there was no room in the smaller china cabinet of our
diminished dwelling. Since then I had never seen the treasures of my
childhood, and as the years went by they lay enshrined and undisturbed in
my memory.
The tiny Marquis de Saxe held up his white bewigged head; there was my
great-grandfather’s snuff box, which could play a tinkling little tune;
the Empire lamp in pseudo-Greek style, and a long-necked scent bottle,
which to this very day contained the ghost of a perfume of long ago.
There was the old Parisian card-case in the silky glory of the Second
Empire, the century-old miniature writing-table of mother-of-pearl and
the bucket of the same material with a tiny landscape painted on it. In
a separate paper were souvenirs of dinners at Francis Joseph’s court:
petrified sweets, with Queen Elizabeth and her fan stuck on them, the old
King when he was still young, Archduke Rudolph with Stephanie’s fair head
at his side. Among other things there was a little carriage, standing on
a silken cushion and containing golden flagons and bunches of grapes.
Next I found the gold filigree butterfly. Then there came a little
porcelain group of marvellous beauty: on a little toilet-table sat a tiny
monkey who was looking into the looking-glass; behind him stood a group
of laughing rococo ladies, and their whispering heads were reflected in
the mirror too.
Suddenly I instinctively put my hands behind my back.
“Do you remember, mother? We always had to put our hands behind our backs
when we looked at this.” We began to laugh, both of us, and at that
moment there was nothing else in this whole wide world that mattered.
And through the open white doors I saw myself, a mischievous fair child,
on tip-toe, looking up with religious awe, and I saw my beautiful young
mother, with the porcelain monkey-group in her hand.
“Do you remember?...” And memory kindly took us back to happy, quiet
times. My mother said: “I brought this from Paris in ’61, this was
given me by my mother, the pair of this one was bought by the Empress
Eugénie....” At the bottom of the box there was a little packet. And
there, at the very end I found again my forgotten love: a lady in a
yellow dress, my favourite bit of china. But I was disappointed with
it now. It had no mark and its origin was unknown. It was curious that
in childhood’s days she seemed to have been much more beautiful in her
yellow, china crinoline. She stood on the spread edges of her crinoline
and for that reason she had no need of feet. Her hair was brown and her
waist ridiculously slender.
While I was looking at her, steps resounded in the quiet street and
stopped in front of the house. Then the front door bell rang. That sound
dispersed all the magic that had surrounded us. The picture of childhood
fell in ruins and the folding doors of the old house shut one after the
other.
My mother’s hand remained on the table. She sat motionless in the green
armchair and turned her head back a little as if listening. We did not
speak a word, yet knew that we were thinking of the same thing. The
silence was so absolute that we could hear the steps of the concièrge
going towards the door. The key turned. There was talking down below. And
then we could hear the steps coming up the stairs. Would they stop at the
first floor for us, or would they go on? We held our breath to hear the
better.
The steps went on.
My mother’s rigid attitude relaxed, and she leant back in the arm-chair.
“What can the time be?” she said after a while. I was packing away the
treasures of the old china cabinet, one after the other. Should we ever
see them again? They might be smashed, they might be carried off. I took
leave of them, one by one. Nowadays one is for ever taking leave....
* * * * *
_February 25th._
What are they waiting for? The night has passed, so has the day, and I
am still free. Nobody has been arrested yet. Pogány insisted on the
arrests being made, and Böhm proposed them to the cabinet council, which
accepted the proposal unanimously. The fate of the arrested Communists
was settled unanimously too. They were to be detained only for the sake
of appearances, not to protect the town from them, but to protect them
from the vengeance of the police.
Since Baron Arco’s bullet laid low Kurt Eisner, the Jewish tyrant of
Bavaria, the Government has been getting more and more nervous. Since the
Soldiers’ and Workers’ Council in Munich decided for the Dictatorship
of the proletariat, the Communists party here is getting more audacious
every day. Red news comes from Berlin, from Saxony, and, like a distant
earthquake, it shakes our town.
Notwithstanding the request of the Entente, the date of the elections
for the National Assembly has again been postponed. Perhaps in March, or
in April.... If it’s delayed so far the fight will be hard. The party at
present in power is employing unheard-of stratagems. The achievements of
the revolution: freedom of the press, freedom of thought and of opinions,
freedom of association and meeting, all these exist only for them. Our
opinion has no longer a press. One newspaper dared to raise the question
of shirking work, and the gigantic amount paid out in unemployment doles;
the Communists demolished its offices. Then came the turn of another
which had attacked Hatvany’s book, the chronicle of their revolution.
Others followed, and the plant of their printers was wrecked too.
The same sinister spirit which directed destruction fell like a
strangling nightmare on the mind and brain of the press. Even
journalists, whose patriotic feelings were opposed to it, were forced
to join a Trade-Union. By means of the Trade-Union, three Jews became
the dictators of the written word. All the well-disposed papers and
printers were silenced, and the Hungarian spirit was banished from the
journalists’ club. When the Markgrave Pallavicini tried to make a breach
in the Communist and Social Democratic stronghold by purchasing an
existing paper, the terror had already reached such a pitch that Fényes
turned up with his armed sailors to prevent him from taking possession
of it. After this it was obvious that abolition of the freedom of the
press was being achieved with the aid of the same Government which had
crushed the freedom of assembly by means of Red soldiers, and the freedom
of opinions by the means of the ‘popular law’ of internments. We are not
even allowed to assemble: our meetings are broken up by the same Red
soldiers who demolish the editorial offices. And yet the Socialists dare
not appeal to the country, for who knows what answer it might give?
They promised to bring the country happiness. Hungary has never been
unhappier than now. Public opinion in the Provinces has lately turned
entirely against them. They had to do something, so they produced the
mirage of land distribution; and Károlyi, who had previously taken up
a mortgage of several millions on his property, went out with a noisy
following to his estate at Debrö and, before a kinematograph camera,
received the claims of tenants on the land which was laden with debts
and did not really belong to him any longer. An old peasant was elected
to present his claim first: an old servant of the Károlyi estate. In
a lofty speech Károlyi sang his own praise. The old peasant answered.
Unfortunately he was not allowed to say what he wanted to: he had been
carefully coached, but even so he made a slight slip in his address.
“I have served the Károlyi family to the third degeneration....” They
stopped him then. The Social Democrats sent their delegates to this
theatrical distribution of land. They feel that if they don’t succeed in
fooling the level-headed agricultural population of Hungary they will
lose the election. In many villages the Social Democratic agitators are
driven away with broken heads. It is the women who enrage the people
against them: “Blasphemers, _sans patrie_!”
But a thing like that does not embarrass the Social Democrats: they
adopt a disguised programme for the rural districts. Since one of the
leaders of the broken-up small-holders party, Stephen Szabó of Nagyatád,
has joined the Károlyi government in Budapest the Socialist propaganda
has appropriated the patriotic and religious mottoes of that party. The
Red Jewish agitators, before addressing the people, kneel down on the
platform, make the sign of the cross and pretend to say their prayers.
Then they start like this: “Praised be the Lord Jesus Christ, we too,
Social Democrats, believe in the all-powerful God....”
Notwithstanding the threats of the new ‘popular law’ the various
Protestant and Catholic women’s organisations bravely carry on their
work. The National Association had a meeting this morning. The whole
committee was present, not one was missing; it seemed like a deliberate
demonstration. These women can be great and noble. Is this to be our last
meeting?
“If anything happened,” I said, “and I were prevented from coming again,
I should ask Elizabeth Kállay to take my place. If her turn comes, and
she cannot be here any longer, let someone else take her place, and so
on. The links of the chain must not be broken.”
There was stern resolution in our dark, insignificant little office.
Countess Raphael Zichy looked at me while she addressed the others:
“There is one among us whom the Government wants to arrest. Let us decide
that if this should happen, we shall go, with a hundred thousand women,
up to the castle and claim to be arrested too, because we have all done
what she has done.”
She was not laughing now. And in all the weary journey of this wintry
world I have never been given anything more precious.
* * * * *
_February 26th._
Early this morning the door bell rang. Steps tramped about the ante-room.
A little later the little German maid came in.
“Two soldiers were looking for you, and asked if you were in town. They
had an urgent message. I told them you were in town but had gone out.”
As she spoke I knew that they had come to find out if I had escaped. It
is quite the custom nowadays; they ring, inquire, and go. They follow me
in the streets, and sometimes even walk behind me up the stairs.
[Illustration: COUNT KÁROLYI DISTRIBUTING HIS LANDS AT DEBRO.
(_To face p. 270._)]
It makes one feel like a cornered quarry. I’m beginning to wish that
something would happen. If it has to be, let them arrest me; but this
underhand spying gets on one’s nerves. It is reported in town that I have
already been arrested. The telephone bell is continually ringing—friends
inquiring if I am still at home.
Later Count Bethlen came to tell me that the internments had been
suspended after Szurmay, the former Minister of Defence, and Szterényi,
the former Minister of Commerce, had been arrested. They went for them
after midnight, arrested them and took them somewhere on the right bank
of the Danube.
In the evening my mother and I played Patience. It is about the only
old-time custom that is left to us now. To-morrow I shall have one more
day at home.... As for the day after—but in these times that is such a
distant date that one dares not think of it if one wants to live.
* * * * *
_February 27th._
Bishop Count Mikes has been arrested: his diocese waits for him in vain.
Once there was an Archbishop down there in Kalocsa for whom the faithful
in the Cathedral waited in vain too, when the time came for Mass. He had
girded on his sword, had gone to do battle for Hungary, and had perished
with his six bishops on the fields of Mohács. But his spirit is not dead.
It has appeared now and then in the history of Hungary, and to-day it is
here again. Its name to-day is John Mikes.
Some of us who went to the Association this morning spoke of him.
Suddenly the news came that Communist soldiers had run amok in the
neighbouring street and were coming to break up the women’s meeting.
“Let’s go,” somebody suggested.
“I stay!” And three others stayed with me to see it through. To save our
rings and watches we handed them to one of those who left. There were
shouts in the street. People were running about in the house. Then the
noise subsided and the visit of the Reds did not come off.
In the afternoon I went to see the daughter of General Türr, the
Hungarian who had been Garibaldi’s right-hand man and one of the heroes
of Italy’s fight for freedom. It was rather a shock to see an Italian
officer there, his chest covered with decorations. Where had he got them?
I thought of the Hungarian dead at Doberdo and San Michele. And I also
remembered that the Czechs were at present using Italian rifles to beat
out the brains of Hungarian peasants in Upper Hungary.
When the commander of the American troops landed in France he shouted:
“_Nous voilá, Lafayette!_”... When the Italian general who is leading
the Czechs over the defenceless Carpathians stepped on Hungarian soil I
wonder if he said, “_Nous voilá, Tüköry ... nous voilá, Türr!..._”
My hand twitched when I gave it to Italy’s soldier. And yet this stranger
seemed a sympathetic, well-intentioned man. And Italy once was my second
home, dear good friends of my youth live there and the fate of our two
peoples has often taken a common road. We must forget, but it is still
very hard.
We tried to inform Signora Türr of the situation, but Károlyi’s ministers
had preceded us. They had betrayed themselves. Signora Türr spoke of
them with the greatest contempt and promised to inform her government
of the country’s desperate plight. “Why, what you have got here amounts
practically to Bolshevism....” Practically!
* * * * *
_February 28th._
It seemed quite unusual to have been in society again, without any
serious cause or purpose, for nothing special, just as we used to in old
times. Countess Mikes gave a tea party in honour of Stephanie Türr.
Loafing soldiers on the look-out gathered round the entrance when we
arrived. Where are the old times? Where are the homes that knew no care?
Electric lights dimmed in silken shades, the dainty lines of beautiful
dresses, Paris scents, the smoke of Egyptian cigarettes; flowers, a
shower of flowers——.
Now there are last Spring’s dresses, dim light, scanty heating,
cigarettes of a coarse tobacco. Scents exist no more, and in a
wide-necked vase three miserable, sad flowers. Hungarian society no
longer has a social life. Those who can amuse themselves in these times
are not Hungarians. Salons are dead, they have become the meeting-place
of embittered conspirators where people talk to each other and then look
anxiously behind them. Practically every Hungarian house is spied upon by
its own servants. We know it but cannot remedy it.
Everything has changed, even conversation. In former times it turned
on human interests, music, theatres, books, distant towns, foreign
countries, acquaintances. Now we ask each other “What was it like
in jail? Have they searched your house yet? I thought you had been
arrested.” And if somebody says “I’m glad to see you” it has a different
meaning from what it used to have. Count Albert Apponyi passed smiling
and came up and shook my hands warmly. “So you are still free!...”
I met Stephanie Türr once more before she left, and talked to her in the
hall of the Hotel Bristol. She gave me a solemn promise; she will try to
help us when she gets home. The Italian officer who had been given her as
an escort for her personal safety, said nervously:
“Signora, you are watched. There are detectives here.” Then he spoke
so low that I could hardly hear him. “_E pericoloso_,” and he winked
and nodded to me. “Be careful, we can leave, but those unfortunates who
remain here are playing with their lives.”
I felt as if there were only two kinds of humanity in the world: those
who are happy and those who are unfortunate. And these foreigners look
upon us as if they were looking, half in pity, half in curiosity, through
the grating of a mortuary.