Danubius Danubia I-III.: The Waters rise - The Waters seethe - The Source

By Thomas Kabdebo

Everything I have so far written, all my literary efforts both in Hungarian and English are no more than preliminary studies to this trilogy, said the author during an interview in 1990, when only the main outlines of the planned novels were fixed in his mind. Eight years later, the work is not only completed, but is also in the hands of those whom the author invites to view the Danube region and their historical identity afresh, and to think of themselves as members of a larger community, a community of the nations living along the river of many names: Donau, Dunaj, Duna, Dunav, Dunarea.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fapadoskonyv.hu Kiadó
• Release date: Jan 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9789633771006

Book preview

THOMAS KABDEBO

DANUBIUS DANUBIA

Fluvial trilogy

The Meeteing of the Waters –

The Waters Sheete –

The Source

Website: www.fapadoskonyv.hu

E-mail: [e-mail]

Translate: Bernard Adams

Cover: Rimanóczy Andrea

ISBN 978-963-377-100-6

© Thomas Kabdebo

© Bernard Adams

© Fapadoskonyv.hu Kft.

THE MEETINGS OF THE WATERS

To the memory of my father, Béla Kabdebó

CHAPTER ONE

THE WEDDING

The vacation had broken out, summer and festivities were becoming more strident, hope was blossoming, chewwies falling to earth beneath the beaks of thrushes. (That's how Granny pronounced it, chewwies.) It was the end of June and the University examinations had ended in Budapest. Dé shouldered his canoe and Gladness slung both their bags onto her splendid back together with her wide-brimmed straw hat.

Wait for me! she called after him as he trudged with long, heavy strides through the sand of the gently rising shore towards the dike as if the sixty kilos of the canvas canoe were the merest trifle. At such a time he was clumsy and irritable by turns, quiet of disposition, a sleeping powerhouse. Still waters run deep. We are all a mass of contradictions; so our mothers bore us and our fathers begat; our bodies are the product of the interaction of two conflicting elements. Our souls, however, are the ceaseless worship of the immortal particles in the temple of neutrinos devoted to the service of the one God.

But he stopped only at the top of the dike, where the sounds of the band could be made out.

It's nine o'clock, he called back to the girl, we're going to be late.

Gladness came up. A bit, she said, panting, and sat down on Isaac. That was what they called the rucksack, because it was tattered, had seen better days, many an expedition. This was no Pioneer trip. Dé had outgrown them, and had thereby qualified for the Democratic Youth Federation, which had superseded the more respectable Hungarian State Democratic Youth Federation and was as compulsory for a university student as his student card.

The girl opened her hold-all and took out from under the thermos a little hand-towel (she had brought one so as to keep the luggage down; she had washed it out twice in the course of the three-day canoe trip and dried it in the warm sun) and with it wiped the boy's forehead and her own shoulders and the brown skin under her armpits, where a few tiny beads of perspiration shone in the pale sunlight. She was small, hardly reaching 160 cm. Height is respected in a woman nowadays, by the shorter members of the fair sex, that is. Dé sat down beside her; he was taller by a head even so. He bowed his bull-like neck and spoke softly:

That's all right, five minutes won't matter one way or the other. He put an arm round the girl's shoulders.

A light breeze was blowing off the Island towards the Danube, bringing snatches of sound. The scraping of the violin, the boom of the cello, intermittent, wind-shredded, devoid of rhythm.

Behind their backs there was a rustle in a riverside willow-bed. Dé looked slowly round, aware from his hunting days that a sudden movement will frighten the game. A roe deer stood in the undergrowth, in the direction of where the shepherd's hut had stood undamaged until spring, until the May flood had swept it away. With his right hand he gently gripped the girl's shoulder-joint and with his left took Gladness's head and carefully turned it and her whole body to the side. The girl's turquoise-blue eyes opened wide, the round, shapely mouth formed an 'O', the finely chiselled snow-white teeth gleamed between the dark-red lips, and like a chaffinch from its hole the tip of Gladness's red tongue appeared from the slowly opening oval orifice.

Ssh, whispered the young man. The girl was trapped by wonder in his hands. She was a scion of the city, eldest child of a hard-working (now interned) Zipser{1} watchmaker, vegetarian, student of Esperanto, diving pupil and trainee office-worker all in one, who had previously only seen wild animals in the zoo, with the exception of the unalluring hedgehogs in the Buda hills and once, at night, an ailing fox.

The deer looked up, the wind bore the scent of man to it, and it took fright and bounded into the mud-bespattered willow-bed.

See the tide-mark high up on the tree-trunks? That's where the flood came to.

The surface of the water was still sparkling over towards the sandbank by the ferry; the red sun was sinking behind the hills of Bonyhád, from where it shot its last purple-red rays like a retreating Serb partisan who knows that next morning he will be back, appearing in the east, above the plain, on the barricades.

They stood up and strolled down from the dike. The canoe went into the watchman's shed, fastened up, and the boy took half of the luggage, and most of it--cooking-pot, stove, little tent, thermos--was likewise stored in the shed.

Is that the manor-house? asked Gladness, pointing at a big stone house standing on an artificial mound some distance away; from outside and behind it looked as grey and grim as a monastery, confining space four-square, and from that direction, the west, not even the recess of a doorway could be seen to soften the harshness of the big building to the eyes of anyone arriving from the Island.

The sounds of the Gipsy orchestra grew louder as singing rang out and rhythmic chanting{2} reverberated.

If from Danube blew the wind

Not an outlaw would you find.

Now the wind blows off the river…

"Blowing hither, blowing thither," hummed Dé, then took up the song, the tune, the village tune, which even the Dunjuska{3} had not been able to supplant; it had been no use friend Rákosi{4} shaking his handsome, ostrich-feathered head; he had once paid a visit to these parts, taken tea in the state-owned manor-house--the men from the Ministry of the Interior had turned out everything and everybody before he arrived and searched coach-house, cellar and loft, which at the time had belonged to the farmers' co-operative. Stalin's favourite Hungarian disciple had conferred his blessing on Annuska Csócsér, the Party Secretary's granddaughter, from whom he received a wet infantile kiss, then--because the roads were muddy--continued his journey on a Danube gunboat, as in his time had Hassan pasha, hideous plenipotentiary of the Sultan.

The House of Culture was pulsating with sound. That big village hall owed its beauty, if not its actual existence, to that visit, preparations for which had taken six months, covering the walls with panelling, the stone floor with parquet, adorning with red roses the cloth that draped to ankle-height the table on the stage and the panelling with fine slogans in which Rákosi's name appeared six times, that of his great Soviet master seven times and that of Party Secretary András Csócsér, whose iron hand had dealt with the rich peasants of the island, once.

Dé knew all that, thought of it all and other things beside, and hummed the song. Gladness too took it up and sidled towards him on the dusty road. She's picked that up from the deer flashed through the young man's mind and heart, the latter swelling now with good humour. What did he care now about state ownership, poverty, tedious work: what did he care, young as he was and full of energy now dormant, now burgeoning… when he could now hear familiar voices, catch in his nostrils the pungent scent of paprika lamb, cooking in the courtyard of the House of Culture in huge pans. His cares were anaesthetised in his mind. Horace says somewhere that one rides with black care seated behind.

But Horace was never sixteen as Gladness was, or if he was he did not then write such youthful hexameters as have come down to us. The girl ran ten yards ahead, unselfconsciously, dancing, happy. Then out came a German shepherd dog, growled from the corner of the fence and barked at the girl, who looked back at it questioningly. Her short hair waved like a shining silk curtain, the dimples did not vanish from her face because she was not afraid, merely startled; its young owner whistled to the dog and it lowered its ears and slunk back.

The houses of the village stood in a double line, those that were standing, because their mud-brick walls had been washed away by the flood; here and there a roof had collapsed while farther on wooden scaffolding supported the more important barn, presumably a harvest-store. Then a garden gate burst open and three girls rushed out with three lads chasing them and ran towards the dike--they watched them as they fled frantically.

They're being chased, thought the girl.

They want to catch the last ferry, was Dé's opinion, and because his local knowledge was sound he was right; the ungainly, narrow, diesel-engined boat that shuttled back and forth as a ferry sounded its siren. At that distance the water in the cutting of the dike seemed now just a dark mass, the boat carving its submissive body as a lone aircraft did the even softer air of the sky.

Perhaps the Chronicler was sitting in that, looking down from above, seeing the landscape as a map and the Danube a whipcord on it but--like Radnóti{5}--imagining the clods too, so often soaked in blood. When he looked upwards from his seat into the vaulting sky he could see the clouds bedeck its mass, darkening, growing greyer as evening wore on. If the Secret Chronicler looked into himself he saw the Christ-face, the lord-peasant-face of his father, bathed in sweat, saw the horse before the plough, the bogged-down tractor, and because he knew every tiny least little thing, like the guardian angels entrusted with the defence of destiny, who have received their epoch-making knowledge from the Lord God, he could hear in that landscape, at that time, the groans of women in labour, the prayers of old men, and read like Morse the sharp slapping of the Danube on the sides of the ferry as it protested against the wind. The Chronicler's watchful eyes chirped in woodland cicadas in the branches of the mast-high birch-tree, croaked in tree-frogs at their tips, but the dragon-fly too was his emissary that quivered on the top of the ripe ear of corn.

When the village hall was built, out of respect the roadside cross had been preserved on which hung the body of Our Lord, beaten out of sheet-iron, and on the curving INRI of which a starling of religious propensity had built a nest.

Is there a God? asked Gladness, and the little Jesus's worn foot, pierced by the nail, brushed her head.

There is, replied Dé solemnly, then they went in through the gate.

Inside by that time chicken soup was steaming on plates, golden, peppery, full of green parsley, beetroot and strained through a muslin cloth, a soup driven into a frenzy with a pinch of marjoram and a touch of paprika, with gizzards in it, livers, wings, necks in huge quantities. Mounds of the vegetables from it gave off their scent from separate plates. The men were bent over their helpings, noisily guzzling the soaked pasta, while the women ate more nicely, the older ones with kerchiefs on their heads, a number of girls wearing a multitude of petticoats, others in pruszlik{6}, the bridesmaids bedecked with ribbons and headbands. Miska Pallér, the shot-putter, was in his track-suit. The soup-course was ending, conversation dying away, glasses steaming over.

His mother's, of course, when she looked up. Józsikám, she breathed hastily, half quietly, half loudly, half, perhaps, choking back a squeal of delight--half dying, half leaping.

Hi, Mother! Dé roared across, drowning the saxophonist, who was entertaining the diners with a solo after the soup.

In the hall there were long tables from one end to the other, and the same on the stage. His mother, Kató, was sitting in the far corner, enclosed by relations, screened by a line of neighbours with spoons, a passing group of stewards, little children that could not be kept still butting one another like he-goats and the line of the gipsy and costume-gipsy band, beneath the slogan on the panelled wall on which someone had daringly daubed LONG LIVE IMRE NAGY{7} over LONG LIVE RÁKOSI.

Moses had crossed the Red Sea quite easily, for it had opened for him. Kató stood up and beckoned, as one waves anxiously from the shore to a sailing-boat skimming in from the sea. His mother, forty though she was, looked wonderfully delicate and slender, the red silk party-dress hugging her figure, and her pale face too glowing, with the three freckles under her nose; there was a gleam of early grey in her shoulder-length hair; Dé had seen it all before, indeed, could feel in advance the caress of the toil-worn hand on his face, the contact with his clean-shaven manly chin of the hard skin that had formed on the once velvet palm, and seemed to feel the touch of one of the callouses on the first joint of his mother's middle finger as it reached his venturesome nose.

Kató had been waiting for her son, her only child, the hope of under-water swimming, the studious university student, the ambitious one, who would one day compile and write the ethnography of the Danube region; now she could see her son, the fruit of her passionate love for Berci, who was perhaps not as dashing as his father and had inherited not, alas, his father's black hair but her own chestnut-brown; who was now patiently rowing over the sea of wedding guests towards her, his white shirt taut over his barrel-like chest; he had put on trousers, indeed, as a mark of respect, and now he was striding across the floor, circumnavigating a table, and in a moment there he was.

The servers cleared away the piles of chewed bones, the guests wiped clean the dishes with bread, the flowers were arranged in the vases and the wine-glasses filled with the fermented juice of the Homok grape.

The best man banged on the table and the hall grew quiet. The assistant best man moved towards the top table at the head of sixteen stewards, bowed and began to declaim:

PAPRIKA LAMB

Again I come, my lords, though lengthy my delay,

Yet not in vain my absence, I am bold to say,

For with me I have brought a dish, I do declare,

The first in rank, with which none other can compare.

And for this dish a stern test I have undergone,

Wrestling with a doughty ram full seven days long

Escaping with the skin of my teeth, for 'twas no game;

But all is well, for in the end I overcame.

In all the world there's no such food as this, I ween,

And water with this dish to drink were grievous sin.

This is the famous lamb in paprika, so eat--

Good appetite I wish you--till you be replete.

While, following the assistant best man's bow, the stewards set about the division of the paprikás in its red sauce to the fifty guests, quoth father-in-law to mother-in-law:

Now, is this the second sheep, d'you know?

How should I know? I've never been here before.

That's the point, see, that's the point. I meant to tell you, we had to slaughter another. There was a dead lamb in the first one's belly. Dead, unborn. Didn't half stink!

Enjoy your meal.

And you.

Bride and groom were sitting side by side--that was what they were called, although the two of them were by this time young husband and wife. He, above the table, was clutching his mate's little hand, while under the table he had hooked his half-booted leg round his bride's white-stockinged ankle, above the buckled patent-leather shoe and below the tulle wedding-dress, which she had had to raise in order to sit down.

Dé had now reached the end of his mother's table, pushing through the stewards with both hands. After him, like a dinghy tied to a big yacht but not visible from in front, came Gladness.

Dé gestured to the bridegroom, waving his hand from the wrist, and greeted the bride with a respectful bow. She did not so much as notice, as she was trying to free her ankle; he on the other hand shouted back Nice to see you, Jóska!

The greeting{8} struck an odd note in Gladness. Although in her family there were no strong feelings for or against religion, her father, Ernö Álmos, was something of an eccentric, and at school, in the Pioneers, in the sports club--in short, everywhere--they had been particular not to take the name of God in vain. In place of the confessional they had had self-criticism, in place of divine worship they had had to attend Free People's Half-hour, and adults had had to go to mass meetings, peace demonstrations and Party conferences as appropriate, and it had been advisable to lay aside crosses that dangled on neck-chains. In rural areas--as Gladness had quickly discovered--this had not been the case, and now, at the very end of June 1956, it definitely was not. People were beginning to talk again about the possibilities of de-collectivisation, the priest was venturing to teach religious knowledge privately in the sacristy of the dilapidated church and others attended the Litany apart from old women and the occasional widow. Gossip had it that Annuska Csócsér's grandmother had had her secretly baptised.

Finally, so as not to disturb the party while they were at their sacred task, the eating of paprika lamb, Dé and Gladness crawled under the table to the maternal corner.

An embrace, a caress, a kiss to right and left, a clean plate, piled high with lamb on the bone with delicious, spicy gravy, a little cabbage and a slice of bread to go with it, and a glass of red Kunbaja wine. Dé took it all and set it all before his girl-friend. There you are.

But wait a minute…, she said, I haven't even said hello. That is, I haven't been noticed, she added mentally. Kató understood. This is her… and without speaking she stretched out her hand across the bronzed paw of her son as he sat between them.

Gladness bent over it and kissed the elegant hand, disfigured with callouses.

The maternal hand flinched slightly, scarcely perceptibly, as if it were a captive lizard that wanted to race away but remained behind, relaxed for a moment, and now an alternating current of affection surged through it. That tiny cloud of nervousness had suddenly vanished from her heart, that nervousness which is so natural in widowed mothers with an only son. Gladness felt that she knew that youthful middle-aged woman, her son's mother, knew her from tales that Dé had told, from the photograph that he carried in his wallet, in the haven of the warm woollen sweater that she had knitted for her boy. She knew her, although she had only know Dé himself for a few months.

How many gateaux had been made? Members old and young of more than a hundred and fifty families had been invited to the wedding, planned for five hundred guests. The bride was a local girl from Szigethalom. The groom came from the neighbouring village of Kanda. The best man lived in Mohács, on the other side of the Danube, while the assistant best man was originally from the Island but now worked as an agronomist two villages away in Leánycsók. (No more beautiful village name is to be found{9}.) The priest had to be brought from Nagybaracska, as the parish priest of the Island had been removed while Rákosi was in the ascendant and had been unable to return under Imre Nagy's first Prime Ministership as in the meantime he had died in the hospital of a transit prison. The musicians came from Bátmonostor--the second village in the direction of Baja--a few people had come down from Budapest, and a related Catholic family had arrived from Szabadka, in Serbia. (That was quite something, a year after Tito's 'chained flirtation'.) They were sitting at the top table as rare guests from abroad, and the bridegroom's mother was now seeing her younger sister, who had been stranded abroad, for the first time since the war. We didn't emigrate, the country split between us, said the brother-in-law, drinking deeply of the red wine.

The custom was that in addition to the several dozen gateaux--rum, candy, hazelnut and dobostorta{10}--provided for the guests, each family brought its own home-baked pastry to be offered round at its table.

Kató had seized the opportunity and brought a fruit salad with creamed yoghurt, a recipe that she had learned from her relocated mother-in-law. The dinner-service of the Dunai Szendrö family that had come down to her husband had not been nationalised, so Kató had been able to keep the best pieces, which lay for protection wrapped in tissue-paper in the depths of the kitchen cupboard, so that for special occasions a few could be unpacked and recollected glories shine (some thought it was a question of former wealth) on the crested silver spoons and knives, the cut lead crystal plates and glasses and the heavily gilded porcelain cups. The relations ate the fruit salad with gusto and Gladness asked for the recipe for the home-made creamed yoghurt. (That was an instinctive female reaction and at the same time a charming compliment which took no account of the poverty that had fallen upon the family.)

Dé's aunt Maris bothered him. Fleshy, oozing good humour and perspiration, she was almost the physical antithesis of his mother. As a child he had not had a sweet tooth, and even pulled a face at the black delicacy known as 'boot-laces', although Maris used to bring him this popular confection from the shop of which, although it had been nationalised, she had contrived to remain manager by later joining the Party. Her husband, old Csokics, was now clinging with one hand to the flag-pole tied to the platform and with the other to a wine-bottle, while the band struck up, the saxophonist played a solo, the drummer rolled, the tables were quickly removed and the benches placed by the walls.

Sándor Csokics regained his self-possession, swallowed two cups of the coffee that was brought out, bowed to his sister-in-law and asked Kató to dance.

She looked at her son, and he at his aunt. Maris smiled: Never you fear, she said to Kató, Sanyi's still got an eye for the girls. Kató didn't want to be a spoilsport, the light music came to an end and the Gipsies struck up a csárdás:

I'm as drunk, my rose, as any lord,

Three days and three nights not slept at all,

Home I'd go but I can't find the way,

So until dawn comes with you I'll stay.{11}

Her brother-in-law's strong hand (he was a saddler by trade) was firmly set on Kató's hour-glass waist and she, placing her toil-worn hand on his shoulder, kept the swaying man upright. Berci never used to drink more than three glasses, thought Kató, not even at the golden wedding of his grandfather, old Dugonics, when the young men took the four grey horses out of the shafts and pulled the old couple to the village hall after the church blessing themselves.

At the far end of the hall Annuska Csócsér and the Pioneers began a conga, more and more joined in, and when the column of children reached the middle of the floor Kató, with a swift movement, included her brother-in-law and herself in the line, and so they congaed on, 'between hill and vale'{12}. Dé also got up and, with his aunt on his left and Gladness on his right, forced his way into the ring which grew and grew, the links of the chain expanding until it reached the walls.

Then the best man, a hefty, broad-shouldered, wide-faced young man with a somewhat pock-marked face banged again on the table and entered the lists himself. The music stopped, the conga-chain broke up into links, and he lit a candle and with it stepped up to the bride's father. "It's the kikérés{13}, whispered Dé to Gladness, and gave her hand a squeeze. Once…" the boy's sentence stopped at the first word, and between the index and middle fingers of the best man's right hand the burning candle flickered and sputtered. He went to the front of the stage and bowed, straightened his tie with his left hand, a mother cleared two gambolling children out of his way, and in ringing tones he began:

In today's Holy Gospel,

In the service of the Lord God,

In the consecrated church of the virgin Duke St Imre,

I caught a pair of little doves, which

I joined together with the chain of faith,

First to betrothal, then to joining of hands.

With the ending of this holy supper

Will you deliver them to the honourable best man or no?

We will not, said the bride's father gruffly.

Up to this point everything had gone in accordance with good form and order, for a single burning candle and one time of asking were not sufficient for the young couple's release. None the less the majority of the assembled guests exchanged glances full of significance. In the girl's father's gruffness there had been something menacing which brought back a memory. A year previously they had become engaged in this very place. The two families that were being united, some forty strong, had been seated at one immensely long table, and on that occasion too the kikérö had been today's best man. At the engagement the ritual of the kikérés had passed off without the candle and preceding priestly blessing, and the present response to the formula would have been very much the correct one. The groom--a smart lad--was a driver and mechanic in the farmers' co-operative and the blonde, sloe-eyed bride, Margit Kollár, was at the time an assistant manager at the distillery. (It's safer to put women in charge of such places, was the opinion of Veigel, the co-operative president.) She was a clever girl, good-looking and easy-going, and had worn her long blonde hair until now in a single plait--the end of it reached her ample buttocks--and afterwards coiled on top of her head. Her father, old Kollár, had been the local town crier, and now farmed his ten acres gloomily by himself and had transformed as much of it as possible into an intensive market garden. There he sat at his daughter's side, back straight, formal, his walrus moustache smartly trimmed. His wife sat by him, shrunken from hoeing and hand-planting, in her white old lady's kerchief and plurality of petticoats. Old Kollár had spent five years as a prisoner of war, and then, on his return in 1949, had made over half of his land to his son and daughter, because in Russia he had learnt that suspicion of being a wealthy peasant was to be avoided. He had spent a year in Siberia with a kulak who was serving fifteen years hard labour.

So back came the best man, this time with two candles held between the three middle fingers of his right hand. He inclined his head toward the young couple, bowed to the parents, and declaimed:

When Christ Our Lord

Had made the world from naught,

And our bridegroom too

Created from naught,

He asked the Holy God, the Creator,

That he too might choose one of the virgins.

With the ending of this holy supper

Will you deliver her to the honourable best man or no?

We will not, came the reply.

This is all traditional, said Dé to reassure Gladness who, not knowing the formulas, was watching with eyes wide and pulse racing.

Yes, this second refusal too was required by form, for one candle is not a candle and two candles are not enough candles. Perhaps the corsets were pinching which kept Margit's powerful body trim beneath the lace-trimmed ankle-length formal dress, perhaps the bra should have been loosened which held the ample, Rubensesque breasts too tightly in check, possibly the stern fatherly features should have been softened--that bitter slit that ran beneath the nose and which the moustache did not conceal--but old Kollár was not smiling. The ghost of that disastrous engagement dinner haunted him.

On that occasion, at the engagement, which had been a dress rehearsal for the wedding, old Kollár had met the best man's kikérés with a decisive 'No', whereas tradition demanded precisely the opposite. On that occasion the flaxen-haired bride-to-be had shouted out loud 'Yes, yes, yes!' and tears had glistened in her eyes. At this the shrunken Mrs Kollár too had joined in, wept and wailed as if there had been a death in the house, although she was only expressing regret at the refusal, and the Kollár and Igrity families had broken off negotiations.

And why?

Pista Igrity, known by all his friends as simply Igric, had lost at cards a whole month's wages at his son's stag party--because the real thing was still to come--and, what is more, his frilled shirt and dancing boots. He was the life and soul of the county folk-dance ensemble, the best dancer, the choreographer that blended local Hungarian dances with Serbian ones, a lively sort, witty in word and deed, amazingly frivolous and terribly venturesome. The girls adored him.

Well, he had not been as frivolous as his hare-brained grandfather Igrity, bosom friend of old Dugonics, who on New Year's Eve in 1943 had gambled away his entire property at Katymár. The winner, a sergeant-major of Engineers, at the time in charge of the maintenance of the Danube bridges at Földvár and Baja, was unable to enjoy the pleasant estate for long. From the autumn of '44 the partisans were in command of most of the southern Bácska{14}, which soon afterwards became Yugoslavia. There, you see, said old Igrity in March '45 to the sergeant-major as he sheltered in a barn on Retek puszta, you shouldn't have been so pleased on New Year's Eve.

The intervening Igrity, Pista's father, had been notary in the village until 1945 and then--after a few years in Budapest over which a veil was drawn--became chief book-keeper to the farmers' co-operative. He was a calm, quiet man, utterly reliable. András Csócsér, the Party Secretary, and Ignác Veigel, president of the co-operative, placed such reliance on him that in practice it was he, the éminence grise, the son of gentry, the former notary, that ran the co-operative. The relationship between the three of them was that up till 1948 the village mill was still in the hands of notary Igrity and Csócsér and Veigel were mill-hands. Notary Igrity contrived for Veigel to be pensioned off as disabled, having been kicked on the head by a horse. The local doctor issued a certificate to that effect. The fact was that Veigel was required for the SS. Then the war ended and Veigel stayed on at the mill. When Swabianisation was brought in he had not taken Hungarian nationality, and would have been forcibly repatriated with his wife and two children to their native Germany; but the notary said It is true that Veigel is a Swabian, but on the other hand his wife, M_rgitka Csócsér, is half Gipsy, and therefore their children are pure Hungarians.

The members of the commission saw the sense of this. Veigel stayed, joined the Party, and when the mill was nationalised became managing director. From that point on his career took him ever higher.

It was by no means to his disadvantage that in the meantime his brother-in-law András Csócsér had become Party Secretary. Csócsér belonged on his father's side to the minority that made mud-bricks--which since then has been known as the Brazilian production-line--but on his mother's side was related to the family that owned the long-established chemist's shop on the Island. His mother, their only daughter, fell in love with Kristóf Csócsér, András's musician father, who, as leader of a Gipsy orchestra, had the reputation of the fastest young man in the county and eloped with the rather plain chemist's daughter. They lived in Zombor and there it was that their son, young András, joined the partisans. The Germans were on the point of being driven out when young Csócsér had the idea of spending Christmas in Szigethalom, but he was captured by the Germans in the Igrity farmyard, in a potato clamp. They were going to shoot him, but old Igrity was still alive, as was the old sergeant-major of Engineers, and at the time the two of them were playing cards in the loft for whacks on the backside, as they had no money left. Old Igrity put on the sergeant-major's uniform and took out his riding crop and routed the ad hoc executioner that was escorting Csócsér. I didn't do that for your sake, you villain, said the old man to Csócsér, but for your father's, because I wasted half my young life with him. Jani Kőhegyi took Csócsér over to Szekcsö in the night, covered with straw in the bottom of the boat.

All that is by way of a digression, because the village was aware of the complex web of fortunes and events, and so the wedding guests old and young alike knew by oral tradition what they were observing.

I'm not giving my daughter away! old Kollár had raised his voice for the second time at the engagement dinner, and so the party broke up, all the youngsters climbing into a lorry and making for the Kispipa in Baja. The restaurant had previously been the Véndiófa, and some time later became the Aranyponty{15}; throughout these changes of name it was reflected in the mirror-smooth waters of the Sugovica. It was popular with the younger generation.

Since then a whole year had gone by, and the parents, or more precisely father Kollár, had cooled. Pista Igrity had behaved himself perfectly. He had driven the DKW, the company's large and small lorries, mended the tractor and the threshing machine, been a member of the Island dance team that had won the county folk-dancing competition and had not gambled. Nor had he accepted a dare, except on two occasions: at what seemed to be his final bachelor fling he had drunk a glass of beer with two flies in it for a hundred forints and towards dawn, wearing his father's dress suit, had walked along the parapet of the Ferenc canal bridge, which connected Nagybaracska and the Island. Had not a frog croaked underneath it, which a grass-snake was about to swallow, he would have won that bet too. The other youngsters, perched on the bridge, were sworn to secrecy concerning the circumstances of his immersion in the water; even Dé knew nothing about it, the snake never said a word and the bride did not guess. Notary, or rather, chief-book-keeper Igrity, however, discovered the truth because he had asked for his dress suit back and Pista had had to confess to Mrs Igrity what had happened, because she had dried and pressed the ceremonial 'tails'. The secret could not be kept from Iluska Igrity, Pista's younger sister, either, because she had heated the charcoal for the iron. Then Iluska had simply had to go and tell the solemn secret to her best friend…

The best man took up the third candle. The women lit it and placed it beside the other two, between the ring--and little fingers of his right hand. The three candle-flames flickered and flickered, and, at the focal point of the five hundred pairs of eyes fixed on them, seemed to shine more brightly than the strip-lighting on the ceiling. The best man stepped up to the top table, nodded, bowed, and spoke:

When Christ our Lord was keeping

His sheep in the Bakony{16},

He lost his hundredth lamb.

When He found it He bore it

Rejoicing to the flock.

I too would rejoice to bear

A couple of little doves

To nocturnal restlessness.

Honoured best men

(turning now to the assistant best men)

Do you deliver them, or no?

The assistant best men--there were three of them--exchanged looks and awaited the nod of the head from old Kollár. One could have heard a pin drop in the room or outside.

The girl's father gave an all but imperceptible nod, at which at last they said in unison We do. An involuntary sigh burst from all those breasts, two people stamped their feet in approval. Iluska Igrity said (quietly) Hurrah!

Then the bride stepped onto the table and from there flew to the arms of the best man, waiting on the far side, and landed with his assistance. The groom vaulted the table--the leap would have done credit to Nureyev or Nizhinsky--and drummed on the floor with his booted feet. Hand in hand they ran off to change. There was no longer a veil on the bridal dress, as the bridesmaids had removed it after the marriage-vow. The church wedding had been a quiet affair; there was room for only half as many in the church as in the House of Culture, and shortly after the ceremony the priest had had to hurry off to the presbytery for oil to take to a death-bed. Is that a good sign? asked the old women in their fringed, crocheted kerchieves.

Grand of scale and joyous as the wedding had been, the road to it had been commensurately rough. It had been promised that the wedding-dress would be ready in the dressmaker's in Baja for midnight the previous night, but the bride's mother's emissaries had found the door locked. Panic erupted in the matronly hearts.

Nevertheless, things fell into place. Mrs Kollár telephoned Her Ladyship. Among themselves that was what they always called Mrs Mihály Szilas, née Róza Dugonics, who had been disowned by her father because she had married a penniless teacher of mathematics. At one time Mrs Kollár had worked as a milk-maid at the Manor House, where her mother was a maid, and had become the favourite of little Róza Dugonics. Ten years later--after Róza had married the Baja schoolmaster, who was said to be an undiscovered genius, and had bought with what she got for the jewellery inherited from her mother the house in the town, in which, more decades later, in our time, the dressmaker's was situated--the relationship between the one-time milk-maid and the former young lady had remained unchanged. The years had gone by, Róza's husband had died, her son had grown up, her grandchildren had been born and part of the house had been partitioned off; these were the premises of WEDDING LTD., dressmakers. The house was big, the salon small, the influence of Her Ladyship considerable, and the seamstress had the wedding-dress ready first thing next day.

That respectful osmosis of kindnesses that had permeated almost half a century, that refined inward obedience to rules, had bound souls together even in the stormiest of times and from time to time formed the basis of peace of mind in a society which had three times been stood on its head.

The bride arrived back dressed in pink, the groom in his shirt-sleeves, and those rolled up his two bronzed, muscular arms. Followed a few tangos, an English waltz, a jive, a semi-successful rock 'n roll and the Blue Danube waltz. Dé bowed to Gladness: May I, darling?

The girl dropped a playful curtsey: Yes, darling. Let's go outside, the two of them thought, and they waited for the end of the waltz and headed for the door.

It was cool in the yard, overhead the stars blazed. Dé looked up at the handle of the Plough, pressed his back against a big chestnut tree and hugged Gladness tightly to him with both arms. In the half-light the girl's eyes gleamed like pebbles in the water of a stream. My love, though you're not that physically yet, the boy began. The girl found a gap in his shirt and buried her face against his hairy chest.

Jóska! Where are you, my boy? came a shout from inside. The lovers gave a start. Jó-óska!, the brassy baritone did not subside, and what was more its owner filled the doorway with his stocky form.

It's my uncle, said Dé, without the irritation that might have been expected, while the girl, overwhelmed by what had gone before and the crushing horde of friends and relations, could not have wished the interrupter of the idyll far enough. My mother's brother, Dé added by way of explanation. They stepped out from the shadow of the tree into the beam of light from the door. János Kőhegyi flung wide his massive, powerful arms and hugged the two young people. His right arm simply went clean round the girl, who was small but broad-shouldered, but his left, on his nephew's back, reached only to his spine and there the gnarled, knobbly fingers gripped his shirt. János Kőhegyi was half a head shorter than his nephew, half a head taller than Gladness.

Just arrived, Uncle Jani? asked Dé.

Minute ago, replied János Kőhegyi. You know, the Mohács ferry still keeps the rowing-boat, for after the last crossing. That's still the regulation, because we start from that side in the morning. So I had to go down to Rákóczi Rd. to change, because I keep my suit at home in Mohács. Then I cycled to Szekcsö, because my motor-bike combination is in for service. I left the bike at the Teris' place, took a taxi to the ferry, got in the boat and the five of us rowed across.

We came by water as well, said Gladness. Canoed down from Pest.

I taught Jóska to row, János Kőhegyi nodded. "I had to teach him to row and swim when he was five, because he used to turn the launch adrift and one day we picked it up above Bezdán, dinghy and all. His mother was so ill that she couldn't stand. His father was just--or rather, as usual--in uniform giving orders round the southern counties. Know the saying? 'Szabadka, Zombor, Újvidék{17}, the army walks on flowers…' Well, he was walking on flowers when the Chetniks chucked a bomb in the flowers at us, and it went off near me and took my one eye out. With which János Kőhegyi, in spine-chilling fun, took out his left eye and put it in his hand. So, this Jóska here, your friend, set the dinghy adrift and it was washed miles downstream before the fishermen caught it. He had to be taught to row."

Inside the hall the candy-cake had been cut, sliced, made into portions. The band struck up a quick csárdás:

Let's snuff out the candle now, my dove,

It's not given us for nothing, now, my dove,

It's not given us for nothing…{18}

Because candles are expensive, why should it burn for nothing? The Gipsy's powerful tenor rose above the five-piece band and the words of the song penetrated the ear and gravitated to the loins.

So old Kollár consented, said Dé to his uncle. The stocky ferryman smiled broadly beneath his walrus moustache. "Because the Island Peril{19} caught up with Igric's fiancee, he said. What, her?" asked Dé, who had not spoken to his friend Igric for about six months.

János Kőhegyi nodded. Margitka's three or four months pregnant. That's why she's so tubby.

The public interrogation of the groom had begun.

The best man's assistants were putting a series of questions to him.

What's the first thing to rise on a wedding-night?

Where's the bride blackest?

How often can we smuggle the big doggie into the house?

Clever answers were greeted by the men with guffaws, by the women with ripples of laughter.

Under the table two little imps, Péter and Pál, tied Gladness's left leg to the table-leg. She pretended that she had not noticed, then tried to stand up; this, however, jogged the table and the glass of red wine that was on it, so that the red juice of the grape ran into her lap.

Kató witnessed this event and blushed to the roots of her grey-streaked hair, but only for a moment, then she grabbed the salt and sprinkled the red patch on the polka-dotted skirt with the grains. That might bring it out, she said.

Gladness was not at all bothered, went to her bag and put on her blue denim shorts, which immediately revealed her perfect legs to the top of her thighs. Sándor Csokics lifted his drunken head from the corner of the table and said Get that! His wife Maris slapped him on the back: Look at the old goat, he'd lick the salt off! Just go back to sleep, Sanyi my lad. Miska Pallér the shot-putter too stared at Gladness. He was by that time quite tiddly, but as he had mostly been drinking in the cellar his voice had not been heard before. Now he bellowed like a young bull: Hold me back or I'll be over there!

They held him back in fun. But not enough. Because Dé came up to the hefty shot-putter from behind, took hold of him by the collar and hauled him out into the yard. There, before the fresh air could sober him up, he struck the unruly man such a blow in the mouth with his right hand that blood spurted from his mouth and nose, and before the big lout could wipe it away and take up a defensive stance, he brought up such a left hook to the point of his jaw that he went down on one knee and all that remained was to push him right over. Dé, alias József Szendrö, did that, then returned to the hall, where by that time they were singing in chorus:

Bolts of canvas one, two, three,

When you're sad don't climb a tree.

Miska did and down he fell,

So we had to make him well.

On his bruised and battered face

Cold compresses, cold compresses had to place.

Gladness pushed her way through the crowd, beetroot red; fancy a simple change of clothes causing such a fuss?!… Back to her things! A pair of warm trousers over the shorts and back to the table. Her two hands found Dé's back, she put her arms round him from behind and her two firm breasts pressed against the muscles of his back.

In the middle of the hall three chairs were tied together and on them the young husband and newly-wedded bride had to dance; then a high, narrow table was brought: the young couple now danced on top of that. Thirteen turns and look out! the new husband jumped down and lifted his pregnant little woman to dance the csárdás on the floor in ever more Gipsy style:

'Let me not ask in vain,' sang the swarthy band leader, 'lift up your long skirt, let me creep into that snail'.

That was the chorus of the Romany song known as the Snail, to which could be danced tango, foxtrot or csárdás as one pleased according to how it was played. The more cheerful of the men sang along with the band leader, the Gipsy Jóska Usgyi, who intoned as he played the violin. (He was a cousin of András Csócsér, but only by an unofficial liaison.)

The violinist's attractive wife and lively young daughter were there too, whirling round together in the middle of the hall, and beside them a fifteen-year-old beauty dressed in Kalocsa costume; a twenty-year-old boy had brought her to the dance. His neighbour, they said. A big rough-haired dog got into the hall and was put out, a gnat whined at the door and was killed, one of the dancing couples bumped into the remaining corner table and a few full glasses were spilt, and above the now ripe language the Gipsy song was heard:

Dearer by far your cunt to me

Than the Great Plain of Hungary

Dé muttered something beneath his non-existent moustache and Gladness thought that she understood--her face turned from red to scarlet--although she did not understand when János Kőhegyi stopped the music with a terrific shout of Washing!

Forward stepped the bride--that is, the young married woman--with a bowl of water in her hand, and behind her the best man carrying a towel. The girl stopped in front of her dear father, kissed him on both cheeks and then with two fingers washed his cheeks right and left, while he pinned a hundred forints on the bosom of his daughter who was distributing kisses and washing them away. The best man was not idle and wiped old Kollár's wet face. A tear gleamed in Margitka Kollár's forget-me-not-blue eyes, but there was no time for sentiment because an uncle was stepping forward followed by an aunt, and they too had to be washed: one pinned on the payment, the other placed the note in the young woman's white apron.

They would have liked to be off now, but propriety demanded that they must await the kiss of the blonde, money-bedecked woman and the washing and each place ten forints in her apron, and that Gladness should run and say goodbye to Kató and Dé exchange a few words with his friend Igric. Midnight had long since chimed and the revelry would continue until dawn, when the wedding guests would escort the young couple to the bedroom. If they've got any strength left, they'll deserve it, János Kőhegyi's raucous laugh was heard.

Come on, my love, said Dé, putting his arm round Gladness, and they left the illuminated courtyard to stroll into the summer night, full of swirling moths, starlight and the scent of sweet-peas. Let's find the hut.

They did not really have to look for it, because there it was. For some twenty-two years it had stood on piles, as usual, among the tangle of grasses, aspens and dogwoods on the Danube bank, but its roof had fallen in and the wooden steps to the living quarters had been washed away in a flood.

Wait a moment; Dé swarmed up one of the supporting timbers, lay on his stomach, let down the end of his belt and with it pulled up Gladness as she clung to it. Someone must have plundered the old room long ago, before the flood. The only furniture remaining was a broken table and a rotten chair-leg; broken glass lay beneath the window, on one side of which the mosquito-net still hung. In the loft were two fishing rods, stripped of their fittings, the one of reed and the other of bamboo, and the torchlight lit up an unrecognisable heap: a mass of bits of mattress, torn blankets, muddy tea-towels.

You want to sleep here? asked Gladness in a rather shrill, uncertain tone. Yes. You just stay here and I'll get the things out.

Shouldn't we rather put the tent up, like before?

Look here! My father built this hut with his own two hands when he was an army officer, when my mother was expecting me. It became our fishing place. Dé's voice became unusually warm, excited. The girl's reluctance diminished somewhat. This is where I kept the very first lift-net that I made myself, in the loft. We used to hang my father's fish-baskets on the timbers underneath to dry. When the water was high we moored the dinghy here on a long rope. I caught my first bream at the end of it.

Gladness's attention was taken mainly by the tone of Dé's voice: seldom had so much poetry flowed from this dear, grown-up, twenty-two-year-old teenager, but she pondered what the difference might be--if any--between a bream and a chub, because never in her life had she seen fish fresh as often as cooked.

And so Dé jumped down and ran over for the things that had been left in the watchman's shed, out of which the tent served as bedding, the light travelling-rug as a coverlet and the top and bottom of a track-suit as pillows.

Meanwhile, by the light of the torch hung from a nail, Gladness was tidying up with a brush extemporised from a willow-branch. It was the nesting instinct. The sand-martin builds its nest in a burrow in a high, wall-like mass of clay, the thrush in the topmost triple triangle presented by the three-pronged fork of an elder-bush, the wild duck among the reeds, the raven on the bare branches at the top of an ash-tree. This improvised nest, however, resembled most of all that of the wild dove, whom the magpie could not teach to build a nest because all the time she cooed: [tudom]. What's happening here now, thought the girl, is partly irresponsible, partly inevitable. Since Easter love had been smouldering in both of them, the sparks of the first encounter had caught the tinder of their souls, and in the course of three months their whole being had slowly and surely come to red heat. Let it burst into flame, thought the girl.

So far, Dé began as he undressed, then faltered, because he had taken off everything and was only in his swimming shorts, stretched to bursting point. So far… The night was kind to them, sending a gentle breeze, clearing the air of the mosquitos which had in any case become so much less common at flood-time.

I know, said the girl. So far I've made excuses. She was wearing a light bodice and pink briefs, as she had every night they had spent together in the tent, kissing and arguing. Mrs Álmos, Lujza Mlinarik, had brought up her children strictly, and if her husband Ernö had not been taken away by the Secret Police six months previously it would have been inconceivable for their eldest daughter Erzsi to go on a canoe trip down the Danube alone with a boy. But when the support is taken from a woman she collapses like a tomato-plant that has lost its stake and devotes all her strength to remaining alive. Their domestic organisation had become so much clutching at straws, and any of them would have turned in any direction for moral or material assistance. Gladness's Uncle Antal had been the man on whom they could most rely. The girl, who had previously been in school, had to look for a job the moment she was sixteen. Although everything about her was in turmoil she kept her head: her outstanding temperament ('magic', Dé called it), her optimism, her cleverness and wonderful looks assured her many, if superficial, friends. Anyone with a natural smile always on her face that can so clearly cheer up others finds it easier to come to terms with her own difficulties.

Easier, but not easy. Chastity, after all, is a threshold which divides virginity from intrusive male love like a veil: it conceals the woman's warm inner world from that which would harshly intrude upon it.

They kissed and kissed until the liquid that bathed both their tongues tasted of toffee, and the boy's burning body warmed the girl's through and through. From that they became aroused, blazed with passion, burned with its flame. Gladness was a diver, had the body of a gymnast with shapely, taut, perfectly rounded breasts. In the starlight the brown nipples on her two breasts seemed black, and she saw as black the boy's familiar thick chest-hair. She clung tightly to this fur, and no longer offered opposition, only quivered gently, scarcely perceptibly.

They threw off their last clothing.

It might hurt a bit first time, said Dé, and caressed Gladness from head to foot with his broad palms and slender fingers. Although nature had endowed them both with plentiful fluids, and although the boy already had a certain experience, indeed both of them soon craved union, even so things did not go smoothly.

The girl's lack of experience counteracted the submissiveness of the hymen, rendered flexible by gymnastics, and while the boy was feverishly seeking the warmest place in her body the first arrow burst from his overtensed bow.

Ten minutes later the bow was drawn again.

Joey, whispered Gladness quietly.

That was the name that Gladness had chosen for Dé, who, after all, had been christened József, just as he called her Gladness, avoiding the name of Erzsi.

Yes? Dé whispered back.

I'd like you to stroke me there with your fur.

Obediently, like a creative artist, the boy moved his hairy body over the girl's pubic hair, and so the genie of love succeeded in gaining access to the innermost room through the untrodden entrance of the widely spread thighs.

Oh! squealed Gladness and with both hands clutched the slender male buttocks as she had clutched the float in her first swimming lesson.

They rested. The black mass of the night parted and the flickering gleam of the morning star awoke the sleeping light of dawn.

A few red pearls on the nap of the narrow white towel.

Gladness's eyes were closed, but two white, salty teardrops trickled from between the long lashes. Dé dried her body, bathed in the dew of love-making and now breathing evenly, lay down beside her and watched her slowly fall asleep. How long went by? Ten minutes? An hour?

He felt, rather than knew, that time did not exist, and that what did not exist could not stand still. Yes, external and internal rhythms break existence into sections. And human life is a cycle of such sections. He heard and listened to the sound of the willows on the shore and realised that the rhythm of the murmur was a amplified version of his own slow, strong pulse. He listened to the soft hiss of the waves in the recesses of the river-bank--the eternal, timeless Danube splashing now in girlish fashion--and to the calm breathing of the girl made woman on the improvised bed.

That time does not exist is as much an illusion as the idea that it does. The growing light woke Gladness. She smiled, like a little bird in a nest quickly built in the tumble-down shed, its beak brimming with happiness. And, very soon, something rare--though not altogether unheard of--took place. They became aroused again at one another's closeness, and the boy, extraordinarily careful and gentle, intent on sharing the pleasure that awaited, suddenly brought the excited girl to ecstasy. The unexpected physical and spiritual wonder surprised Gladness like a whirlwind whipping up the waves.

Then all was quiet again, or was that a sound that they heard? The dawn ferry was getting ready, motor barking, siren wailing.

Joey, to Dé again, sounding more like 'jaw', with something of a northern twang, reminiscent of her mother's disguised accent. He was miles away and did not hear.

His mind was following a chain of associations evoked by the ship's siren. He was thinking of the Dugonicses, who used to own all the Danube crossings that they could, from Földvár to Mohács, at one time right the way to Bezdán. Self-satisfied, proud robber-knights they were… armed with their long-established nobility they plun…

Joey, someone was clinging to the hairs on his chest, a cooing turtle-dove? A small but strong, well-built female. His mate.

CHAPTER TWO (A)

REVOLUTION

WHO SOWS THE WIND…

There ought to be a door, because people can see in, said Gladness. There used to be one, replied Dé.

The boy jumped down and disappeared. Half an hour later he was back with boards, nails and a hammer and put