The Book of Fathers

XI

AN EXHAUSTED LANDSCAPE BIDS WELCOME AS THE morning sunlight’s shimmer tumbles down like corn into the dust from a ripped-open sack. The very slight rise in the temperature ruffles the shrunken torsos of the wayside acacias. The glass panes in the windows, left to their fate for months, reveal their need for a proper wash-down. Slushy humps of snow solidified on the pavement gradually begin to shrink. Ice weeps in the water butts, but the cold of the night brings frost to overeager plants. The vortices of February’s freezing air disperse the last traces of any mildness in the morning.

He was six when he had his tonsils removed. Until then Vilmos Csillag was so scrawny that the kindergarten nurse called him “Thinbilly.” When he put on some weight, he was mocked as “Tumbilly.” Only when he reached secondary school did he shoot up. He was slow to acknowledge the improvement in his looks.

He was in his first year at the secondary school when he heard two of the girls in his class talking in the ladies, which shared a ventilation shaft with the gents. Ági and Márti were smoking, despite a strict ban, as they discussed the boys in the class, where the girls were in the majority by twenty-eight to thirteen. Only one of the boys passed muster, the gangling French-born Belmondo (real name: Claude Préfaut), who was a recent arrival and loath to divulge the complicated international history of his family.

“And what about Vili Csillag?” asked Márti.

“He’s kind of…” Ági’s voice became uncertain. “A nice little boy.”

They giggled.

“Nice little boy, yes, you’re right. A nice little boy!” Márti repeated the phrase like some new slogan.

“It’s his eyes that are a knockout.”

“Right! You’ve noticed, like a kaleidoscope?”

“Yes. Sometimes gray, sometimes green.”

“Even light brown, sometimes.”

The bell rang. Vilmos Csillag did not stir. He would never have dreamed that he would get the silver medal in class. He examined himself in the mirror. Just then, his eyes were river-green.

Almost a year later they were revising French in the flat of Ági’s parents and exchanged a fleeting kiss over the kitchen table.

“You’re not doing it right!” Ági protested.

“But that’s how I usually do it,” Vilmos Csillag lied. In fact, it was his first time. The girl showed him how. Vilmos Csillag proved to be a quick learner. Of the girls in his class, Ági was fairly far down on the attractiveness scale as far as Vilmos Csillag was concerned, but she certainly rose a rung or two for finding him attractive. It was not the girl he wanted; it was the love.

Once it happened that only her older sister, Vera, was at home. She resembled her sister, but she was a fully grown woman, with substantial breasts, the mere sight of which made him break out in a sweat.

“Looking for Ági?”

“Isn’t she in?”

“You can wait for her if you like.”

Vera attended the same school and was just taking her final exams. She complained that she had no chance of getting through maths. “I just can’t remember all these stupid formulae!”

“Make yourself a crib sheet. And hide it in your…” He ground to a halt. He blinked unsteadily at the hem of the girl’s tight skirt, where the darker band of her black stockings could be seen.

“All right, Willie dear, I’ll make one,” she said, stroking his face; the red-painted nails traveled across the boy’s field of vision like five burning aircraft. “Listen… have you been with my sister?”

“You mean…”

“Yeah. Well?”

He blushed and made an uncertain gesture. “I can’t really… I don’t want to.”

“So you haven’t. I thought as much. She’s just blabbing.”

“Is that… what she said?”

“Yeah.”

Vilmos Csillag had no idea how to behave in such an awkward situation, to maintain the self-respect of the male. He began to chew the corner of his mouth relentlessly. Vera’s quick fingers hurried to the spot and separated mouth from teeth. “Don’t… Hey, your eyes have gone green.”

On another visit, he again found only Vera at home. They talked for a long time, about school, the summer vacation, teachers. Vera suddenly changed topic: “You should grow your hair, Willie. It would suit you better.” She brought a brush, ruffled up the boy’s somewhat curly hair and fashioned a Beatles cut for him. They took a look in the mirror in the hall. Vilmos Csillag knew that in the next few months he would not visit the barber’s even on the headmaster’s orders they were not allowed to wear the Beatles’ mushroom-mop.

As Ági grew increasingly unreliable, so Vera became more willing to be a companion. Vilmos Csillag would never dare think of this tight-skirted, slickly made-up woman as one of the “girls” at the school.

“What have you done to your hair, Willie?”

“I’ve combed it. And… I wet it!”

“You’re such a sweetie!” Vera ruffled his hair. “You arouse the animal in me!”

“What sort of animal?”

“A shark!” and she clacked her teeth as if to swallow him up.

Next time she came to the door she said: “No Ági again, sorry.”

“Where is she?”

“Dunno. School play, I guess.”

“Ah.”

“Oh, OK, I’ll tell you the truth. She’s hanging out with Mishi. You get me?”

“What do you mean hanging out?”

“Going out with.”

“Going out?”

“Yeah. With.”

“But… I thought she was going out with me!”

“Typical. Can’t spare the time to let you know that she isn’t any longer.”

“I see.” He had to sit down on the laundry basket in the hall. He tried to summon all his strength not to burst into tears, but one tear got away.

“Oh, my dear Willie…” Vera embraced him, her thumb wiping the tear from his eye. “Come on!” and led him into her room. There she whispered: “Party time!”

“Pardon?” The expression was new to him.

“My parents are away, in Parádsasvárad. Get it?”

When she began to take her clothes off, Vilmos Csillag was embarrassed and at first pretended not to see.

“You too!” Vera gave him a hand. Elsewhere, too.

Vilmos Csillag had imagined the scene a thousand, a million times, but always thought it would last a bit longer.

The girl gave a wry little smile as she rolled off and lay beside him. “More practice needed.” She examined the refractory member, now shrunken and sleeping the sleep of a two-year-old. “Hey, aren’t you…?”

Vilmos Csillag, after a long pause: “Aren’t I what?”

“Circumcised.”

“Why should I be?”

“Because that’s the custom with your lot.”

“What do you mean, our lot?”

“Well, with Jews, OK?”

“I’m not Jewish!”

“I thought you were.”

“Where did you get that from?”

“Ági said. And you look it.”

“Come, come…” and he bit his lip as his father’s turn of phrase slipped out.

Vera explained that on the basis of his looks, only someone who had never seen a Jew would not think him one. Soft lines, dark, wavy hair…

“My lines are soft?”

“Yeah.”

“Pity.”

“No worries, eh! We’re Jews as well, it’s no big deal!” She waited with a mischievous smile for the boy to laugh, but in vain.

“What makes Ági think I’m Jewish?”

“Oh come on, it’s not cool. Perhaps you aren’t after all… Those eyes, sea-green, they’re suspect.”

“You suspect that I am or that I’m not?”

“Yeah, that you’re not.”

Vilmos Csillag could hardly wait for his father to come home that evening. Papa just then was spending more time in the hospital than at home, as the heart trouble that had been bothering him since the war had taken a turn for the worse. He rarely spoke to members of his family, so Vilmos Csillag, too, had lost the habit of sharing his thoughts with him.

The moment his father came through the door he gave a grunt and flung himself on the couch. Vilmos Csillag sighed. “Could I have a word?”

His father was sweating profusely and kept wiping his brow. “Sit down. What’s up?”

“Just between the two of us.”

“It is just the two of us, son. Your mother is in the kitchen.”

“But she might come in any moment.”

“Come, come.” There appeared on his father’s face a look that was partly abstracted and partly blank: the look with which he shut out the outside world.

Vilmos Csillag knew he had only a small chance, but cut to the chase. “How come I know nothing of your past or how things were with your parents?”

“No. Not that.”

“Why?”

“It was a long time ago. It’s of no interest.”

“But it is of interest.”

“End of story.”

Vilmos Csillag flew into a rage. “And what about… is it true that you are Jewish?”

His father jumped up and hit him across the face with the back of his hand. Vilmos Csillag staggered to the bookshelf, for an instant unsure where he was. His lower lip started bleeding and the blood trailed onto his shirt collar. He heard the door squeak open and his mother scream: “Jesus!”

“Leave Jesus out of it,” said his father, offering him a handkerchief.

Csillag Vilmos had never been beaten by his father-not that he ever gave much cause. At school he always managed to get marks that, if not the highest, were always good enough to put him into the bracket of “good” students. But for his poor memory, he would be academically quite outstanding. Alas, often a day or two later he could not remember something he had learned word for word. On the rare occasions that his mother gave him household chores, he washed up obediently, dried the dishes, and went to the corner shop. He could recall only one big slap across the face and that had not been from his father. At the age of six he had got it into his head that he wanted a younger brother or sister and began to pester his parents about it relentlessly. His mother quickly disposed of him: “Ask your father.”

Father had said: “Don’t stick your nose into grown-ups’ business.”

But he was not to be shaken off like this and showered his parents with questions: why, when, how, and why not. On one occasion during a three-hander he got so worked up that his voice began to sound like a dog howling and he yelled: “And if you don’t make me a little brother or sister, may you rot in hell!”

“Fine,” said his father.

“Now Willie, dear, that’s going too far!” exclaimed his mother, and let rip with a stinging slap across the face.

On that occasion there was no blood; now it would not stop. Sniffing, his mother brought the first-aid box and took out a little pillow of gauze to place on the split lip-she had done a first-aid course at her workplace. She wanted to know what had happened between the two men, but neither seemed inclined to tell her.

Hours later his father drew him to one side: “Come out onto the balcony!”

Outside he lit a cigarette and offered his packet of Mátra cigarettes to his son: “Want one?”

“Papa, I don’t smoke, and anyway… you’ve forbidden me to!”

“Come, come… you really don’t smoke?”

“No.”

“Clever lad.” For a while he puffed away without saying anything. “My boy. Now listen carefully to what I’m going to say. This topic is taboo. Do you know what taboo means? Right. One hundred percent taboo. One thousand percent. There is no such thing as a Jew. There are only people. There are people who are shits, there are people who are good, there are people who are so-so. There are no Jews, no Gypsies, no nothing. Do you understand me?” and he grabbed his son by his shirt, so roughly that the top button popped out of its hole.

“Yes.” He was scared.

“So that’s that cleared up.”

“But you haven’t yet… you didn’t…”

His father butted in: “You are dismissed.”

For years Vilmos Csillag wondered why his father had used this military expression. He was constantly preparing to bring up the subject again. He was just waiting for a suitable opportunity. But his father communicated with him less and less, and with others, too.

Once he had the idea of writing him a letter. He spent weeks trying to find the best way of putting things, sketching his ideas in the big spiral-bound notebook. Here and there he decorated the draft. He planned to transfer, when he was ready, the text onto the magnolia-colored writing paper he had received for his fourteenth birthday, but had not used a single sheet of the hundred in the set of stationery.

Dear Papa

Pap

My Dear Father

Dear Father

Father,

I am writing to you addressing you my Father I am writing because I feel in conversation to have a conversation I cannot you do not want you cannot we cannot.

It would be so good I would so much like to talk, if we did not live like complete strangers two English gentlemen, with little in common or to say to one another. Why do you not want with me a normal ordinary proper relationship human connection? When I was small I seriously thought that every family behaved as we did, that is, everyone did his own thing and does not care about the others. I thought it was like this everywhere they behaved like this. I was open-mouthed when I saw at Gidus’s at János Buda’s they always have their evening meal together and tell each other in turn what sort of day they’ve had what their day was like, so they share the good and the bad, like in the fairy tales, do you understand?!

X Y X Y X Y X Y X Y X Y X Y X Y X Y X Y X

As long as

Since

Ever since I’ve been aware of things you have always been more or less ill, and our life consists of leaving you alone dangling in peace, because any excitement is bad for you. But why does it count as excitement if start talking we have a conversation? If a father and a son If a father thinks of his son as If there is mutual trust between father and son? If they make each other feel If they express If they indicate their love for one another?

Where did we go wrong, Father?

When did it go wrong

What made it

Why

I don’t understand why this is it has to be like this. I would like to ask something. Tell me, are you really totally not even a little interested in me? Never Nothing do you know about me and I know nothing about you. Perhaps you would not care you would not be worried if I just skipped school. Do you know how well I’m doing? What my favorite subjects are? (history, Hungarian literature). Do you even know what year I’m in?

And why do you not want to share with me what you know? Why do you not ask how I’m doing with the girls? It’s ridiculous but since I have been alive I can recall just one solely no more than one serious proper conversation, and that happened because I humiliated you in front of your friends; I think you remember that. I couldn’t have been six yet, when I heard some dirty words from some of the others and I asked right there in front of all the guests: Daddy, what does fuck mean. But you didn’t laugh even then, not like the others, you just told me off, to be ashamed of myself, and locked me out; I hadn’t the foggiest what was so awful about what I’d done. The next day you set about giving me the birds and the bees and mutual respect and love among human beings; I didn’t get a single word of the whole business, but I was afraid in case I brought your anger down on my head bring your wrath down on me and when you ran out of examples from the world of fauna and avia was exhausted, I nodded that I had understood. Then Pityu Farkas lifted the veil on the whole big secret, at first I couldn’t believe it, it sounded so revolting, I parroted back to him what you’d said about the birds and the bees and, among human beings, mutual love and respect, he laughed his head off so I kicked him in the groin; then he gave me a good hammering. You didn’t even teach me how to fight; all I got from you was “Don’t let them get away with it.” That’s easier said than done.

The more

The moral

The more I write, the less it contains what I want I would like it to the point.

By the time, however, that this letter was ready to send, Dr. Balázs Csillag was no longer in the land of the living. Vilmos Csillag did not stop writing. It might take months for him to add or delete a sentence. The point was not the text, but the thinking about it. The fragment of autobiography destined for a nonexistent addressee took long years to write.

You couldn’t have known Gabi Kulin; we were thirds when he transferred from the Apácza. Once, during form master’s class, we were discussing the oldest Hungarian families, those that can trace themselves back to the seventeenth century, and silly old Boney picked on Gabi Kulin. He was a tall, well-built chap, with girlish locks.

I wonder what you would have said if I’d behaved like him: in vain did Boney and the head constantly go on at him about his hair; he didn’t give a damn, until the head went ballistic and came in with a pair of hairclippers and cut a swath lengthwise through his hair, saying, “Now you will go and get a haircut!” Gabi Kulin did indeed go to the barbers’ and had another swath cut, crosswise! God, they almost threw him out.

But that’s not what I wanted to say this time; in that class he eventually stood up and declared: as Sir seems to be so interested, I can reveal that my ancestors go back to the twelfth century, because we are descended from the Bán of Kulin, that’s why my parents were sent into internal exile to Nagykáta. Boney was speechless and eventually said there must have been other reasons as well. Gabi Kulin snapped back: I am no liar, we had committed no crime and had only the patent of nobility, because the family fortune had been lost at the card tables. Boney ended the exchange saying: sit down, my boy, and don’t answer me back.

I became good friends with Gabi Kulin; they lived out in Hidegkút and he had to change four times to get to school. I often went to see them; his mother made the best jam butties. I used often to ask him about his family, and he often answered with wonderful stories. When he asked about mine, I felt ashamed, as I didn’t know anything about anyone.

When I ask Mama about her family, she gets everything mixed up. She confuses names and dates. She will not even tell me how the two of you met. I know from Uncle Marci that you were a secretary of Rajk’s, but how did that come about? He mentioned that you walked home from labor service, and that the Nazis killed all your relatives. But nothing more. That’s all I know about my history.

I feel I have come from nowhere and I suppose that someone who has come from nowhere is headed nowhere. Is that really and truly what you wanted?

Is that really how you wanted it?

Is it??

Father??

Many things he never ever wrote down. Most importantly the fact that, over time, he did not miss his father less; on the contrary, he felt his absence more. The wound had perhaps healed over, but beneath the scab the infection had become permanent. In the time that remained at secondary school, he brought the house down with his rendering of Attila József’s “With a pure heart” at the poetry recitals. It was enough for him to say the first line-I have no father, I have no mother-for genuine tears to course down his cheeks, which students and staff alike regarded as unsurpassable proof of the reciter’s skill.

As the years went by, his mother’s tongue loosened dangerously; in fact, she could not stop talking. She was now prepared to speak of her late husband, but the picture she painted had no resemblance to reality. Dr. Balász Csillag was apostrophized as a model husband with outstanding do-it-yourself skills, who was a leading figure of the antifascist movement during the War, who failed to receive his due only because his noble and sensitive character could not endure the compromises that necessarily had to be made in the course of a leader’s life. Vilmos Csillag’s modest interpolations (“Actually, it wasn’t quite like that…”) she rejected with a high hand and a loud voice: “Come now, my dear Willie, what do you know about it? You know nothing!”

In this one respect Mama was probably right. Although… there were also things that she didn’t know of. Vilmos Csillag well recalled his father’s last month at home, when his health was still tolerably good and before he was caught in the hospital treadmill. He behaved like a pensioner who had taken early retirement: he rose late, went to bed early, spent all day on the balcony wrapped in a blanket, the crossword in his lap, taking occasional glances at it, when he would quickly insert letters, barely looking. Vilmos Csillag often went out to the balcony and watched as the thinning hair at the top of his father’s head was pushed upright by the pillow behind his head. On one such occasion his father spoke. “My boy.”

He was so surprised it took him some seconds to respond: “Yes?”

“Tell me. What would you say if I were to move out?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Your mother and I no longer get on. Marital relations have long ceased. I am a burden to her. I could move in with a former colleague. Start a new life. What do you think?”

Vilmos Csillag was quite thrown by these six full-fledged sentences. He had already forgotten that his father was male and his mother female, if ever he had thought about it. He found it even more surprising that his father should start a new life when he was so close to… well, everyone knew what he was close to. Such a turn is completely absurd for… for such a short period. On the other hand, someone with only a few years (months? weeks? or who knows?) left is perhaps able to take more courageous decisions than lesser mortals.

His father was waiting for his answer, each deep furrow on his brow glistening with an amethyst-colored drop of sweat.

“But… why?” Vilmos Csillag asked.

“Long story.”

A dark shudder went through Vilmos Csillag as he suddenly imagined his father should no longer be there, an arm’s length away. “Have you told Mama?”

“I’ve mentioned it.”

“And?”

“She laughed her head off.”

“Huh?”

“She doesn’t think I’d dare.”

“Aha.”

“And you?”

“I think… you’d dare.”

“I asked for your opinion.”

“For that I’d need to know why-”

His father broke in: “I’ve told you: we no longer get on. What else do you need to know?”

“Well then… my opinion is… that it’s not worth it as long as you are ill. It’s better for you here at home, where you get first-class service from Mama, and I’m here too, if needed. When you’re well again, you will have time to ponder the problem.”

“When I’m well again,” his father repeated matter-of-factly.

At that moment they both knew that Dr. Balázs Csillag would never get well.

His father gave a sniff like a sniffer dog, then buried himself in the crossword on his lap. The conversation was over. Vilmos Csillag continued to watch for some time as Papa got into his stride and rapidly filled the grid: whenever he managed to tease out the meaning of a clue, the flicker of a smile played about his lips.

This proved to be the most enduring image. Five years after the death of his father, Vilmos Csillag could summon up his face only with effort, and ten years later, in the man preserved in the black-and-white snapshots, he found it difficult to recognize his father. If he dreamed of him, it was frequently the terrace scene, where he was wrapped in a blanket, his thin hair, pushed skyward by the pillow, tousled gently by the wind, and around his lips that little almost-smile.

His father died before Vilmos Csillag finished secondary school, before he took his final exams-A⁺, A⁺, A⁺, A (French), A (Maths)-before his unsuccessful entrance exams, three years in succession, for the arts faculty, for law, for stage school, and for the teaching diploma, by which time he was resigned to not going to college and had to manage without.

About these things

Of such matters

Of all these matters you were unable to could not know anything. Nor of my other lesser or greater achievements of mine in the university of hard knocks, in which you might have taken pride. Perhaps. With you it’s always difficult to know. When I won the poetry recital competition at secondary school, with “It’s not yet enough,” you said you were ashamed that I had recited such pseudo-patriotic poems. Was it my fault? It was a set text! Why did you never make the stress the effort to tell me that not all the poems in that are found in the textbooks are OK?

I got no guidance from you, nothing to help me think, no framework or

It’s difficult to…

You didn’t hand on even what…

You didn’t bring me up to know about life nor…

You did not spend time…

You did not care…

I did not count…

I am not reproaching you for anything, but what you don’t get in your childhood, you will always miss, and that’s not from me but from Jung. I guess you would never have imagined that I would read such books; as far as you knew I was a middling student in every respect. I wonder what you thought would become of me. Did you think about that at all?

I became a professional rock musician. I think that would surprise you, as in those days such a thing did not exist, there was only Studio 11, Mária Toldy, Kati Sárosi, and Marika Németh, who Mama said people loved soooo much, the way only Mama could say soooo much. Can you believe that four guys go on stage-three guitars and a drum, perhaps an electronic organ-and this band can make ten or a hundred times more noise than a symphony orchestra?

It’s a pity that you can’t now any longer by then

It would be so good to talk to you Papa.

FATHER

PAPA

FATHER DEAR

We should have talked.

It would have been good to have talked more.

Or ever

Never

Vilmos Csillag’s visits to the cemetery were rare. In his view his father was not to be found there: if he existed anywhere at all, then it was in his, Vilmos’s, memory, and it therefore followed that it made not a whit of difference whether he visited the area demarcated by others for mourning him. He argued this view defiantly to his circle of friends and generally won them over.

“My dear little Willie, even the lowest peasant visits his loved ones in the cemetery. You are the only person who comes out with this pretentious guff!”

“Get off my back, Mama.”

“Well, you might at least drive me there. You don’t have to come in, you can walk up and down outside. I need no more than ten minutes, or even less, five!”

This was the trap. You can’t turn down your mother’s desperate plea, but it would be absurd if, having reached the arched wrought-iron gates of the cemetery, he were to just hang around, obstinately clinging to his ideas, while Mama placed a bouquet in the little marble vase affixed to Papa’s small marble plaque. If I’m going there… I’ll go in with her and do the honors.

Since the visit to the cemetery was unavoidable, he kept putting it off, with the wiliest tricks. By the time they got around to it, it was again February, windy and bitterly cold. Vilmos Csillag grumbled: “We might as well wait for spring!”

His mother launched into a tirade: “Have you any idea how long I have been begging you to take me? If it’s too much of an effort for you, I’ll go by tram, like the other peasants!”

This was Mama’s trump card, the other peasants, down to whose level it is piteous yet sometimes inevitable to sink. Vilmos Csillag never understood where his mother got her invincible hauteur, which decreed that there are us, the cultured ones, all of us potential doctoral students of morality, manners, and superiority, and there are, by contrast, other peasants, who have been vouchsafed little or nothing of this. His mother’s father-and grandfather-were in all likelihood either unpretentious carpenters in the community of Beremend or perhaps tillers of the soil, in which light the “the other peasants” tag seemed even more ludicrous. There was not an aristocrat or even an intellectual in genealogical sight, who might have had some genuine grounds for differentiating themselves from the uncouth plebs and country bumpkins.

Vilmos Csillag had no memory of his grandfather and only the very faintest of his grandmother, as if the negative of a photograph; by the time he was five they were both dead. Mama wanted to see their graves also. About the place of rest of the remaining relatives she told her son an unbelievable horror story. The village cemetery that had been the final resting place of the Porubszkys as far back as anyone could remember had been eliminated under socialism-“sir-shelism,” as she pronounced it-the gravestones that could be moved were transferred to Pécs, the bones remained in the ground, and some factory or power station had been built over the site. It sounded insane. Why would anybody want to build a factory right where there was a cemetery? Vilmos Csillag added this story to the catalogue of his mother’s mad tales. There were many of these, one more (or less) made little difference.

Sometimes his mother would come out with astonishing stories, and not always in connection with her late husband. The carpenter of Beremend rose to become the proprietor of a factory employing fifty, then a hundred, people. By the time Vilmos Csillag grew up, the family home at Beremend had expanded from three rooms to twenty-two. The sand buggy soon acquired an elder brother, a six-horse carriage, which resembled the garish phaeton in Vilmos Csillag’s favorite storybook, 77 Hungarian Folk Tales-though that had belonged to the King of Prussia, not the Porubszkys of Beremend. Their original two-hectare holding increased fivefold, to twenty Hungarian acres. Dashing hussars turned up, claiming to be related at the great-grandfather level or beyond. Vilmos Csillag had only his own, unreliable memory to draw on when he protested: “Mama, in the old days you never told me this!”

“Come, come, what do you know about it, my dear Willie? You don’t know anything, so it’s better if you keep as quiet…”

“… as shit in the grass!” he completed another of his mother’s favorite phrases.

“Exactly.”

Similar transformations were effected in Dr. Balázs Csillag’s career, in the level of affluence of his relatives in Pécs, and indeed in everything on which Mama gave little lectures. Her parents left Beremend for the capital in 1953, already burdened with serious illnesses. They died here so soon after their move, it seemed as if they had been destroyed by the sins of the metropolis. Vilmos Csillag occasionally felt the desire to find out something about the past, but if he asked his mother, he set off an inflation of the temps perdu, the exaggeration of the people who lived in the past, and he felt that he ended up knowing even less than before he put his questions. He could not understand what joy Mama could find in making such notorious over-statements-the most polite term that might be used for this activity.

The mustard-yellow Dacia came to a stop by the flower sellers’ stands and he immediately took charge: choosing the flowers, paying for them, and gripping his mother’s arm as if she were too frail to walk by herself.

The grave of the grandparents was covered by a modest slab itself covered in greenish lichen. Under it the text: DEUS MUNDUM GUVERNAT.

Once Vilmos Csillag asked: “But weren’t they Jewish?”

“Not very.”

“How can someone be not very Jewish?”

“You can if you don’t want to be. They became practicing Catholics after the war and paid regular visits to the Basilica. And I pay my tithe to the Church to this day.”

“Tithe? I had no idea there was such a thing.”

“There are many things of which you have no idea, my dear Willie.”

Vilmos Csillag had a sneaking suspicion that GUVER-NAT should really have been written GUBERNAT. He wasn’t sure. He never took Latin. He had studied Russian for eight years, but he did not consider himself competent to correct a Cyrillic notice. He had no talent for languages. What did he have a talent for? Good question.

In his own judgment he had not gone very far in life. In his mother’s judgment, he had got nowhere at all. The Sputniks, a band that spent the summers doing gigs around Lake Balaton and in winter performed at shows organized by the state-managed National Organizing Office (ORI), was difficult to take seriously, even though they had a single released on the state label Qualiton, and the radio had recorded four of their own compositions, three of which were approved for broadcasting. Of these numbers “The Pier at Szántód” reached the semifinals of the 1972 Pop Festival, which is to say that television viewers had the opportunity to see and hear the Sputniks on two occasions. This was his tally at the age of twenty-six. He had composed the music for “The Pier at Szántód.” The first line of the chorus-“What we lose on the swings, we get back on the roundabouts, yeh, yeh”-was, for a few months, on every teenager’s lips. Mama was rather proud of her little Willie at this time, laughing as she received the congratulations of her friends. But in private she was nonetheless advising her son: “Quit while you’re at the top… I’m sure now you’d get into university-apply!”

“For what?”

“Arts, law, economics, does it matter which? The important thing is that you have a degree.”

“Why? Have you got one?”

“Oh, my dear Willie… First of all, I’m a woman, and anyway we were at war when I might have gone to university, and then, on top of that, there were the restrictions, don’t you know?”

“You mean the Jewish laws?”

“Come, come, why do you have to put everything so stridently?”

“I’m not putting it stridently, the matter is already strident. Were you Jewish, or weren’t you?”

“You can’t really put it like that.”

“Yes or no?” Vilmos Csillag had lost his patience.

“Why are you yelling now? Is this what I deserve?” She was already in tears. The elaboration of the topic was again postponed. Vilmos Csillag didn’t force the issue. He would have got no nearer to the truth if he had found his mother in one of her loquacious moods. When the kosher butcher in Beremend happened to come up, he discovered that he was Mama’s first cousin and had an exceptional singing voice. If, however, Vilmos Csillag pressed her on whether he sang in the synagogue, he got only small change: “He sang wherever they let him.”

Once it turned out that, when things got very bad, Mama had taken shelter at her girlfriend Viki’s.

“You went into hiding?”

“Oh, my dear Willie, everyone was in hiding then! There were already air-raids!” and Mama would quote at length the radio announcer of the time and his announcements of the air-raids.

From the many tiny crumbs, Vilmos Csillag eventually pieced together that old Porubszky must have been Slav (Serbian?) or some kind of Mischung, but his wife was perhaps entirely Jewish; her maiden name, Helen Ganzer, is suspect but not 100 percent proof of Jewishness. How do we know she wasn’t one of the Swabian German minority in Hungary? Either way, we can surmise that under the terms of the Nuremberg Laws, Mama might just as well have been deported in the same way as the whole of Papa’s family. Including me, if… Of course, in real life there is no “if.”

His mother speeded up when she saw the gray blocks of columbarium. From the back of an old phone book, she read out his father’s numerical address. Vilmos Csillag remembered only that the vast number of identical faux-marble blocks formed a square and his father’s grave was somewhere in the top row.

And so it proved.

DR. BALÁZS CSILLAG

(1921-1966)

REQUIESCAT IN PACE

The two dates were obscured by the small vase, the size of a man’s fist, which Mama had paid for a year after the interment, though it took the unreliable monument mason three months to attach it to the stone. Mama had fumed continually: “Why in the name of the Virgin Mary does he keep promising if he’s not going to do it! Why in the name of the Virgin Mary does he take my money if he can’t manage to spit out when it will be ready? Does he think I can give him money in advance until doomsday? What does he think I am, the State Bank? What in the name of the Virgin Mary does he think he’s doing!”

“Mother, can we leave the poor Virgin Mary out of this!”

“You have no say in the matter!” His mother was in one of her aggressive moods.

At such times, Vilmos Csillag kept well clear of his mother, like a frightened dog of a bullying one. My mother is a dog that bites as well as barks, he thought. And how! When Mama was in a fighting mood, her mouth would not stop. Most often she spoke only to herself, but quite loud, her eyes half-closed and gesticulating wildly. “If you think you can get the better of me, you have another thing coming! You can’t get the better of me, everyone who knows me knows that, no? I couldn’t care less how long he has been manager in the Benczúr Street supermarket, I have been a customer there just as long, and that’s what really matters. Don’t you think?”

To those “don’t you think”s only those who did not know Mama would have the temerity to reply. The pause for breath was too brief for a response and the torrent of words would resume without flagging, with a “Do you think so?” inserted all too rarely. Vilmos Csillag, when a callow youth, was infuriated by these monologues of his mother’s. He asked her once: “Is this a conversation, or are you doing a solo?”

“I’ll give you what for, young man! As if I didn’t have enough problems, all I need is that my son should sharpen his tongue on me! What do you mean you’ve run out of milk? You should order as much as is needed! Milk and bread are basics that it is your duty to guarantee to every citizen! Don’t you think? Even if you’re left with some over, that curdles or rots! Of course I have put it in writing in the complaints book-you shan’t be sticking that in your shop window! I filled the page and more! It’s an outrage! The customer has rights! Don’t you think?”

Even at Papa’s grave Mama began one of her rants when she noticed that someone-probably relatives of the man who rested below Papa-had stuck their three stems of roses onto our vase, the petals hung over Geyza Bányavári, born 1917, died 1966, mourned by his wife, son, daughter, and the others. This was fat in the fire for Mama, her eyes rotated in their sockets and with fingers splayed she stabbed the air: “And the others! Incredible! I’m surprised it doesn’t say Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all! But why don’t the others buy themselves a vase, or his daughter, or son, or his wife? Why do they have to violate ours? Don’t you think? What right have they? What grounds have they?” The wilting rose of Geyza Bányavári flew off, together with its wire clip, far away onto other slabs.

Vilmos Csillag was ashamed of himself for how little patience he had with his mother, and he promised himself countless times that he would hear her out patiently, lovingly even, because you can’t hope ever to educate your mother. But when that next time came, he could not swallow the lump of anger that formed in his throat after sixty seconds of his mother’s rant. They had monumental rows with Mama slamming the door and running off, even when they were in her flat. Shall I go after her? Shall I wait till she comes back? She’ll come back anyway… Won’t she? Don’t you think? He bit his lip. Come, come, not you as well.

He was twenty-two when he moved out to Zugló on the Pest outskirts, into a flat vacated by a musician friend, where the landlady was as deaf as a post, so that her restrictions-no women, no late nights, no ear-splitting yeah, yeah, yeahs-did not have to be taken seriously.

His mother took great offense when he announced the move, but tried to put a good face on the matter. “Why should I object? This is the way of the world: the children grow up, fly out of the nest, and build their own.”

Vilmos Csillag enjoyed thinking about how he would furnish his new residence, a room with its own front door and including a toilet, which he found unfurnished. He took it out on a long lease, as he saw no chance of ever buying a flat of his own. Perhaps when his mother… no… may God preserve her for many a year. He felt a pang of religion at such times, though this did not happen often. He was incapable of believing that there was someone in charge of his fate, or who even took a close interest in it. If he had had a guardian angel, she would doubtless have ensured that he did not end up as a crazy rock musician, in a risky, dead-end career.

Not for a long time had he been excited by anything as much as by the move. At first Mama was glad to help. But the cloven hoof soon showed through: not for a moment did she imagine that her son would take all his stuff and leave her alone in the seventy-six square meters that would all be hers. “In fact… it would be more sensible if I took your flat. I don’t need more space than that, then you could stay here… and sometimes you wouldn’t mind if I stayed in the maid’s room… don’t you think?”

“Aha! Right! I move out so that we can still live under the same roof?”

“Spare me your sarcasm, my dear Willie, pretend I didn’t say a word. Your will be done.”

Vilmos Csillag gave a roar of pain: “On earth as it is in heaven, don’t you think?”

His mother’s eyes were like glass marbles: “How come you know that, Willie dear?”

“Come, come… you made me go to RE in ’56… or have you forgotten?”

“Oh, that was so long ago, I thought you’d forgotten it all. I wanted to fulfill your dear grandmother’s wish, may she rest in peace.”

Again and again she offered reasons why it was unnecessary for her son to move out. We’ve got a flat, she would gladly let him have the two big rooms, the maid’s room off the kitchen was enough for her, she wouldn’t use the bathroom as there was a washbasin in the smaller loo. Vilmos Csillag then asked why she had said before that she had no objections to him moving out. His mother at once beat a retreat: “Fine, fine, let everything be as you wish, I shan’t interfere.”

Don’t you think?-added Vilmos Csillag to himself. Or do you think? When his bed, desk, and bookshelf were being loaded into the band’s minibus with the help of one of the roadies, she was dancing attendance around them, holding doors, suggesting how the furniture should be lined up, altogether as if the person moving was herself. But as soon as Vilmos Csillag took his seat by the roadie, she burst into tears and waved him off as if he were setting out for the Eastern Front. Vilmos Csillag felt awkward when he saw the passersby. But there was no need: who cares what complete strangers think?

Shortly after this a three-man outfit invited Vilmos Csillag to join them as their fourth for a six-month trip to Scandinavia. Stockholm, Oslo, Bergen, playing on cruise ships. He hung fire. “I… er… get seasick.”

“Seasick? You are brainsick, if you pass this up!” said the front man, who had worked out that they could each make enough for a second-hand car. “A two-year-old VW, no sweat.”

Father,

I’m going away now and I don’t know if I’ll come back.

I’ve written this for you to you during in the course of over the years.

If you get it, perhaps you will understand,

This will make it clear at least

That I think of you. More than you might imagine.

Ciao.

Ever,

Your son

Willie

Vilmos

He put the sheets into a thick envelope that he sealed. The day before his departure he took it out to the cemetery. He had to wait a while until there was no one around the block of columbariums. He put the letter on top.

He told his mother over the phone that he would not be coming back. She had difficulty catching his drift. “What do you mean, my dear Willie, that you’re staying out?”

“Oh mother… I’m sure you’re the only person on earth who needs a commentary.”

“All right, don’t shout, but what happens when your exit visa runs out?”

“Sod the bloody exit visa, I shall apply for asylum. I’ll get a Nansen pass.”

“Nan-sen?” She said it as though it were a swear word.

“That’s what they call it, don’t you think?”

“I see… but why won’t you just come back?”

“Because it’ll be better for me here. I’ll earn loads, I’ll send you money, I don’t know how you do it yet, but I’ll find out… Don’t worry, everything will be fine… I’ve more or less settled in here, I’ll soon have my own flat… half the band is staying, that’s to say me and another guy…”

“Oh, my God! What are you going to do there?”

“What we’ve been doing so far, playing music to drunken Norwegians.”

“But does that mean… I’m not going to see you again? Is that it?”

“Come, come. You’ll visit here first thing, I’ll organize everything.”

“Oh my dear Willie, how lucky your dear father is no longer alive! This would be his death!”

“Of course it wouldn’t, he would be delighted at his son’s good fortune, that he’s free and doing well… believe me, Mama, everything will be just fine!”

“So… you really… really aren’t coming back?”

They were both silent for a long time. At length the mother uttered the dark, sad sentence: “So I shan’t have a son… or a grandson…”

“Why shouldn’t you have a grandson?”

This languid interpolation went unheard by his mother: “You know you are the last of the Csillags?”

“All right, Mother! Don’t cry. We’ll speak again. Take care!”

When he put down the receiver, Vilmos Csillag felt that every part of his body was bathed in sweat. I have defected… there are no more Csillags on Hungary. This ungrammatical phrase signaled the beginning of the decline of his knowledge of his mother tongue.

Eight years were to pass before his application for a visa to return to Hungary was granted. While he was still in Europe it never crossed his mind to apply. Anyone who left the Hungarian People’s Republic was automatically treated as a traitor and villain.

Vilmos Csillag was unconcerned: for a long time he didn’t even want to hear the word Hungary, never mind return.

From Scandinavia he went to Paris, then over the seas. In America he could not find work as a musician, with a repertoire of Anglo-Saxon classics that no one was interested in hearing with his accent. He worked as a waiter, then found a job with UPS, driving the cream-brown vans, delivering everything from the Encyclopaedia Britannica to Mayflower dishwashers.

He met his wife on his flight to the New World. Shea was half American-Hungarian and half American-Indian, born in Delhi, where her father had just set up a taxi company. The firm foundered as rapidly as the marriage, and Shea was taken back to the States by her mother, to the poorer part of Brooklyn where the grandparents, who had emigrated in ’33, still lived. Shea was small, delicate, and loud, and what Vilmos Csillag most liked about her was that loud mouth of hers, as she picked her way with balletic ease through the five languages that she spoke fluently, or the sixth, seventh, or eighth, of which she knew only a few words. If they were in an Italian restaurant, she would converse with the waiter exchanging Verdi operas, in an inimitable Neapolitan accent. Even in the Chinese restaurant she could come out with a flawless sentence or two, bringing a happy grin to the face of the bowing staff. She could deploy a dozen words the way a resourceful housewife can in moments rustle up a tasty soup from leftovers in the larder when unexpected guests arrive.

Intellectually, Vilmos Csillag felt like a dwarf by Shea’s side, unable to master even the English language sufficiently to prevent the appearance, upon his very first words, in the corner of the Americans’ mouths of that impersonal, tight smile they reserved for foreigners. Life with Shea was as frivolous as a stylish outing; it mattered little what the following day would bring. If ever they got hold of a bit of money, Shea at once found a way of spending it. She did not care for Vilmos Csillag’s anxieties: “We only live once. Don’t you think?”

The musicality of her voice was an erotic stimulant for Vilmos Csillag, so for a long time he failed to realize that the girl was mocking his English pronunciation.

Their son was born so soon that perhaps Shea had fallen pregnant on the first flight they shared. In fact, then it was only their fingertips that did any wandering, under the light fake fur blanket of Pan Am. Vilmos Csillag was in despair when she announced: “I’ve got news for you. You can jump a generation.”

The penny took some time to drop. “You mean… You’re…?”

“Oh yeah! Aren’t you glad?”

“Oh dear… I haven’t even got my green card quite sorted out.”

“Don’t you worry, I’ll see to it. I’ll see to everything. If I see to it, you’ll be happy?”

Shea did in fact manage to see to everything, the only thing she couldn’t see to was Vilmos Csillag himself. For him the United States remained enemy territory, where he dared move only with extreme care, lest he step on the little landmines of everyday life, such as any official document or printed matter, or telephone conversations with strangers. He never got as far as to listen without worry if someone turned to him unexpectedly in the street or a public place.

What was natural for Shea always remained burdensome for him. In vain did Shea urge him to pay always by credit card; he preferred cash, because every time he handed his credit card to the assistant, waiter, or checkout girl, his stomach would automatically contract, worried that perhaps they would take it and not bring it back.

They had endless discussions about the child’s name. Ultrasound revealed that it would be a boy, of average weight. Shea longed for some exotic name, in tribute to her Indian side, but Vilmos Csillag had trouble imagining a son who might be called Raj after the famous actor, or Rabindranath, after the famous poet, or Ravi, after the famous sitar-player.

“Every male name in the U.S. begins with Ra?” asked Vilmos Csillag.

“Don’t be so sarcasatic! In Hungarian there’s lots of e’s, so what?”

“Yes, but you have an American name.”

“Unfortunately. You should be proud of your origins.”

“And you don’t think Rabindranath Csillag sounds idiotic?”

“I do. Because of the Csillag part. You should adopt a more sensible name…” though as she saw his eyebrows rise, she corrected herself: “I mean, one that comes well, goes well here… Csillag is quite a tongue-twister for them, they say Chilleg or Kersilleg; do you want that? Why can’t you be Vilmosh Star! William Star! That’s fantastic, don’t you think?”

The “don’t you think” still reminded him of Mama, still whimpering in 4 Márvány Street. With the exhibition of photographs on the chest of drawers. The wedding photo. Papa in uniform. Vilmos Csillag in the regulation photo of the Hungarian Album of Baby Smiles, tummy down on an obscured table, legs swimming in the air. Then the graduation photo. The promotional shot, stamp-size, of the Sputniks cut out of the Radio and TV Times, with the caption: “Fresh talent in the semifinals!”

If there is fresh talent, then there must be stagnant, dried-out, and even rotted talent, he thought; that’s me now.

As for his son’s first name, he immediately rejected “Star” and, in line with his wife’s principle that you should be proud of your ancestry, he also rejected the Indian forenames, after the briefest of considerations. “And anyway, the child’s three-quarters Hungarian and only a quarter Indian.”

Shea admitted this. They agreed that out of practical considerations they would choose a name that existed both in English and in Hungarian and furthermore was not too much of a tongue-twister for an Indian. “What was your father called?” “Balázs Csillag.”

“That’s out, with that zh noise at the end. Grandfather?” “Well… one I don’t know, the other was I think… Mishka. Or Miksha!”

“You’re crazy. You don’t know the name of your grandfather?” “That’s the least of it. I know nothing about my clan.” The word sounded old-fashioned.

Shea laughed. “Your clan? You mean your ancestors!” “Nor them.”

“You’re crazy! You’re not even curious?” “I’m not crazy. But there’s no one to ask.” He began to explain that only his mother was alive, and it was difficult to talk about such things with her; she would generally change the subject, saying: “Come, come, my dear Willie, why rake over these ancient things!” “But then maybe there’s a skeleton in the cupboard!” “You’ve been watching too many cop shows on TV.” “How do you know? You may be war criminals!” “You’re crazy!” He quivered as he said: “Us being Jews.” “So?” Shea knew precious little of recent European history. Shea continued to bring up the topic from time to time. She simply could not believe that Vilmos Csillag knew so little of his past.

“If you’d known my father you’d understand.” Though even in adulthood he could not understand. How can you bring up a boy in such a cocoon of complete silence? “I know nothing at all. I tried to work things out from the odd remark here and there; the results are meager and confusing. I barely know the names of my father’s parents, let alone those of his parents’ parents. He never spoke of either. He was a broken man after labor service, I know, and then there was the Rajk show trial, and the chronic, ever-worsening heart condition: these are reasons, but no excuse. This is not something he should have neglected. Perhaps if he had not died so soon… I was still wet behind the ears, didn’t ask often enough, didn’t suspect there was so little time left. Or rather, I did suspect, yet this was never on the agenda. As for Mama, well, she is much too scatter-brained to be a credible source.”

The more he went on, the less he understood it himself.

Henry Csillag came into the world at the Flatbush Medical Center in Brooklyn. His life hung in the balance as the umbilical cord twisted around his neck and almost strangled him; his skin turned blue, panicking the medical team.

For a long time Shea would not let her husband near her, claiming that the gynecologist had said it would take time. In the end, she admitted she had lost her sexual desire for him. Vilmos Csillag was thunderstruck: “What do you mean you’ve lost it? Where has it gone?”

“If only I knew! Believe you me, I don’t understand it myself.”

“But then… what’s going to become of us?”

She did not reply. Vilmos Csillag recalled a line from the desperate housing ads in the Budapest papers: “Desperate: any and all solutions considered!”

But his wife did not read Budapest dailies. “What do you want to consider? I move out? You move out?”

Vilmos Csillag realized that things were serious. Shea had stopped caring for the child. From time to time she exhibited the classic symptoms of a heart attack: sudden sweats, her right arm went numb, for several moments she would lose consciousness. They went the rounds of the men in white coats, from gynecologist to psychiatrist: a lot of technical terms were tossed around, like vegetative neurosis, panic attacks, postnatal depression; she received any amount of medication and counseling; she was recommended sleeping cures, group therapy, and courses in yoga. All in vain. Henry-his father insisted on calling him Henrik, the Hungarian form, often adding “the Eighth”-was cared for by his father.

He was sacked from UPS for his notorious tardiness. About this time Shea landed in a New Hampshire sanatorium, only partly paid for by Social Security. Shea’s mother offered to let her son-in-law and grandson live with her, though she was herself on welfare. Her tiny home was near La Guardia Airport, on the Brooklyn-Queens expressway, and the windows rattled day and night as the traffic rumbled by on the eight-lane highway.

For a long time Vilmos Csillag looked for, but failed to find, any work. He ended up at the airport, though not at La Guardia but at Newark, which it took him two hours to reach. His job was to stuff luggage into the bellies of the airplanes and to remove luggage from them. This was a sphere of activity that seemed particularly to attract exiles from Eastern Europe: there were two Poles, a Bulgarian, three Romanians, five Russians, a couple from East Germany, and even an Albanian. No wonder I never learn English properly, thought Vilmos Csillag.

“ Hungary!” the word popped into his head once after a particularly tough shift. Even Hungary has to be better than this.

He called the Embassy, only to be told that he had to apply in person. But Washington, D.C., is a four-hour trip from Brooklyn by car, though not in his twelve-year-old Impala, which two-thirds of the way there began to sound as if armed terrorists were firing from the radiator, and then gave up the ghost. The yellow AAA truck soon rolled up behind him, but after one look under the hood, the AAA man slammed it down again. “You can kiss this rust bucket goodbye.”

After several hours of trying to thumb a lift, he was picked up by a truck carrying horses, but it took him no further than Delaware; here he exercised his arm in vain, until night fell. He walked on to the nearest rest area and spent the night on a bench. The next day he managed to reach the Hungarian Embassy, in a state that did little to inspire confidence. But that was not the only reason they treated him like a leper. The face of the lady clerk reminded him of burned toast. A sourcunt, he decided, the long-dormant word bouncing around his head with a pleasant little buzz.

It turned out that his situation was not hopeless, because after his illegal departure from the Hungarian People’s Republic the criminal proceedings normally pursued in such cases had not been issued and so-as the woman in the blue suit put it-he had “no judgment” on his record. Even if there were, it would be theirs, not mine, he thought.

“But don’t imagine, Comr… Mr. Csillag, that you will be met by vestal virgins garlanded with flowers!” she said. “And don’t forget to obtain an American passport for Henry Csillag from the U.S. authorities, as he is a U.S. citizen.”

He was informed that the application for the child’s passport had to be accompanied by the written consent of the mother, since Henry was a minor. Vilmos Csillag did not imagine this would be a problem, but Shea was adamant: “You are not taking my child anywhere! You get me? I’d be insane to entrust him to a halfwit like you!”

“Insane pots and kettles!” he burst out, regretting it immediately. Shea began to rant and rave and, like the genuinely insane, her mouth filled with yellow froth, and brought two nurses running and a white-coat who held her down while she was given an injection in the arm. Shea changed to English and began to prattle at such a speed that Vilmos Csillag could not make out a word. She always does this when she wants to get the better of me.

Every attempt to bring up this subject with his wife resulted in the same fit of rage. He had no choice but to admit defeat: U.S. citizen Henry Csillag-who by then had learned the capital letters not just of English, but also of Hungarian-could not be taken with him to the old country. This made him feel insecure and uncertain again. Will they ever let me back into the U.S.? If not, will I ever see my son again?

To these questions the answers of the lady clerk with the burned-toast face were reassuring. “Why shouldn’t we let you go back to him? You’re hardly a national treasure.”

Vilmos Csillag agreed.

“And anyway, those days are gone. The Hungarian People’s Republic is no prison but quite a decent little socialist state, with human rights and everything!”

What might that “and everything” be? Vilmos Csillag asked himself when, after a change of planes at Zurich, the Swissair flight landed at Budapest-Ferihegy. The captain thanked the passengers in both French and Hungarian for having chosen to fly Swissair and expressed his hope that they would soon be seeing them again on one of their flights. Amen to that, thought Vilmos Csillag.

Following this, they were not allowed off the plane for another forty-five minutes. Outside the sun rose ever higher, the temperature inside the plane rose even more rapidly, and sweat glands were in overdrive. It was May 1982, yet Budapest was receiving him with something like a summer heat wave. His passport was subjected to thorough scrutiny by a border guard in a khaki jacket, then slipped into the latter’s breast pocket, the flap buttoned. The guard stood up: “Kindly follow me!”

He escorted him to a narrow room, where he was interrogated in considerable detail about the manner of his leaving the country; based on his answers, the interrogator dictated the official record of the conversation to a typist who was fighting a constant battle to stay awake in the heat. All this took hours. Vilmos Csillag asked if he could have a word with his mother, who was sure to be waiting outside, but permission was refused. His passport was not returned; the official said this was likely to be a short-term retention, until his case was closed, and he would be given an official receipt.

He was allowed to go. He tottered out of the building, which compared with the airports in America seemed like a doll’s house and was by now deserted-the arrival time of the next flight was not yet up on the arrivals board. His mother was not there. Not a taxi in sight. He sat down on his suitcase. He had a vague notion that there was a bus service to the MALÉV Hungarian Airlines office in Vörösmarty Square in the center of town, but he had no idea how to find it. At length a distinctly private-looking Skoda rolled up, and the driver offered to take him into town for a thousand forints.

As he climbed out of the car, he saw an old woman in the doorway of his block, who was shouting something and heading for the Skoda. It took him some time to register that it was his mother running towards him. They embraced and his mother covered him in sopping kisses and was already chattering away, saying how overjoyed she was and what a delicious meal she had cooked for her dear Willie. Her s’s, sh’s and ch’s sounded odd. Goodness… Mama has false teeth.

In the evening at the dinner table, when Mama’s dried fruit turned up on his plate-it had always been Mother’s proud specialty-he began to feel that he had come home. His mother was convinced that pears or plums that had been expertly dried never spoil; in fact, this is precisely what arctic explorers, mountain climbers, and astronauts should take with them. “And if there is a little white bloom here and there, that doesn’t matter. It’s not mold, just a little um… salt.”

The salt of life, thought Vilmos Csillag, popping a fruit in his mouth. But it isn’t salty, it’s sweet, crumbly, a bit tough. You have to keep trying to swallow if you want to get it down.

Next day they took the tram to the cemetery, this time at Vilmos Csillag’s request. He would have ordered a taxi, but his mother said no: “Oh, my dear Willie, you’re not going to waste your money on those thieves, they are out of their mind, they demand such a huge tip, and public transport here is fantastic, I know where we have to change trams, I’ve even bought you a ticket!” And Mama’s will was done: they trundled along on the trams, riding into the gentle wind.

By the time they got off the last carriage, the sun had taken shelter behind the gray cotton-wool clouds. There was much lively buzzing of insects around the flower sellers. Vilmos Csillag immediately felt at home and took the initiative as in the good old days, selecting a mini-bouquet for Mama’s parents and short-stemmed roses (so that they would fit the little vase) for his father.

They had difficulty locating the Porubszkys’ grave, it was so overgrown by moss. The gravestone itself had turned black and only someone who knew where to look would have been able to read the words DEUS MUNDUM GUVERNAT. His mother tore at the stems of the wild plants, panting, and regretting that she had not brought with her a little spade or even shears.

“Do you have a spade at home?” asked Vilmos Csillag.

“No, but I could borrow one.”

“Who from?”

His mother stared at him, her eyes clouding over. “Just give me a hand, will you!”

They spent a long and awkward time there, with little result. In the end his mother gave up: we’ll have to come again, properly armed. She placed the mini-bouquet in the middle, lit two candles, and began to pray. Vilmos Csillag could read her lips. Hail Mary. Our Father. Perhaps I should pray too, he thought, but it felt a little foolish to imitate his mother.

The site of his father’s grave they missed entirely. Mama rocked her head to and fro helplessly: “I don’t understand it, it must be here, I swear!”

Vilmos Csillag’s stomach was on the verge of exploding when he spotted the grave of Geyza Bányavári, born 1917, died 1966, mourned by his wife, son, daughter, and the rest. Above-where he remembered his father being buried-now lay Dr. Sombor Máva, 1955-1980. He had twenty-five years, Vilmos Csillag calculated, but only in order to delay the other, ghastly thought. Mama too had discovered Geyza Bányavári and began to hyperventilate: “What is this? What’s happened? How… What on earth…??” Her breathing became irregular, and she crumpled by the columbarium, barely able to breathe, as her face turned the color of blood.

One of the cemetery gardeners took them back to the main entrance on his little truck and offered to call an ambulance from the office, but Mama wanted to do something quite different in the office, and Vilmos Csillag had some difficulty preventing her from smashing the sheet of glass that separated the desks from Reception. She gave vent to a variety of inarticulate noises, and the girl in the sailor’s blouse, who represented the state funeral company, attempted like a keen student to work out from the fragments she uttered what in fact Mama’s problem was. Then she turned the pages in thick, black folders until she got to the bottom of the matter: “Dr. Balázs Csillag’s urn contract expired on January 2, 1976, my good lady, because that was when the ten years expired.”

“But why wasn’t I informed?”

“Do you have any idea how many cases like this we have to deal with? It is quite impossible to notify everyone by post, but we always put up a poster showing which individual graves or urns have expired. Even then there is a period of grace that may extend for between twelve and eighteen months. If during that period the relatives of the deceased fail to appear to sort the matter out and arrange an extension, the company can do little but vacate the unlawfully occupied places.”

“Expired! Vacate! Outrageous!” His mother shrugged off Vilmos Csillag’s calming hand like a dog just out of water. “Now they don’t even leave the dead in peace! Some ‘eternal rest’!”

“I’m truly sorry, madam, there is nothing else I can say. I would imagine that someone who does not visit their dead for so long can be presumed, as far as the company is concerned, not to consider them important.”

“Why should it not be important? Just because recently I’ve been rather busy and have come more rarely, it…”

The girl in the sailor blouse lost her temper: “Madam, your deceased was removed five and a half years after the expiry of the period of grace! And only now has it occurred to you to visit?”

“Five and a half years? Quite impossible!”

The girl felt she had the upper hand, and shrugged her shoulders: “Minimum.”

“All right, all right. How much will it be to restore him to his place?” Mama pulled out her worn folder that she used as wallet and license holder.

“Unfortunately, it is not in our power to do so.” The girl’s lips stiffened into thin, parallel lines.

“And if I may be permitted to ask, why is it not in your power to do so?” A measured reply always whipped Mama to greater fury.

“Because the ashes from expired urns are placed in a common grave, which is then thoroughly disinfected and covered with earth.”

Mama had to have the words repeated to her three times before she could take in their import. She was incapable of dropping the matter and screamed and yelled as she demanded to speak with the superior of the girl in the sailor blouse and then-having got nowhere with the stubby little fellow-the manager of the cemetery. Her wish could not have been granted, even if they had made an exception to the rule in her case, because the several hundred metal boxes taken from the urns and thrown into a common grave bore no markings of any kind, so no one could ever identify the remains of Dr. Balázs Csillag. Mama’s sobbing and the stabbing pains in her heart, and the holding up of all the staff at the cemetery, was all in vain: she had to come to terms with the fact that her late husband’s ashes had ended up under the sandy grass of a plot in a place whose location could be given only approximately. She sat until closing time at the edge of the plot, on a broken-backed bench, continuously sniffling and blowing her nose.

Vilmos Csillag knew that she was inconsolable. He just stood behind her, his hands resting on her shoulders.

They were strap-hanging in the tram when he finally gathered the strength to ask her: “Mama, how come you did not visit Papa for so many years?”

His mother’s eyes were veiled in tears. “It was constantly on my mind, I always meant to, and then something would always come up.” She was crying again. “What a lazy, miserable wretch I am… Yet it is not right that he survived the War, the POW camp, the Rajk trial, only to end up in an unmarked grave like some criminal. This is not what this good man deserved of me, after so many happy, cloudless years together… ours was a model marriage, I tell you, model, everyone admired it.”

It was hard to let this pass. “Come, come, Mother, you’re not serious!”

“Why not, my dear Willie? A lot of bad things can be said of your dear father, but he was all his life a model husband and father.”

“Really? You think that a model father is one who practically never speaks to his son?”

“Yes, well, perhaps he was a bit taciturn, that’s true.”

Vilmos Csillag’s dander was up. “Model husband, eh? Who when he was seriously ill was thinking that he would move out?”

His mother was thunderstruck: “Where did you get that from?”

“From him! That’s what he said!”

“You’ve made that up. To annoy me.”

He knew that for the rest of his life he would regret it but he had no mercy on his mother. He told her the whole story, sparing no detail.

His mother just listened, hooting frequently into her handkerchief. Vilmos Csillag’s aggressive mood evaporated. Well now, what good did that do? he asked himself.

His mother said to him the following evening: “You’re angry with me for… losing Papa like this?”

He shook his head. We’ve lost everything else already anyway, he thought.

He felt he could not just sit at home all day and began to look for temporary work. He found some in the big covered market, where a schoolmate had a business dealing in live fish. Vilmos Csillag used a net to lift carp, catfish, and zander from the glass aquaria; for a tip he would clean them and slice them up. He was constantly planning his return to the U.S., and constantly postponing his departure. At first he exchanged letters weekly with Shea and his mother-in-law in Brooklyn; then the exchanges grew less frequent. His son in the photographs grew by leaps and bounds. He had begun to write a few childish lines himself. The forms of address and the closing formula would be in beginner’s Magyar, the rest of the letter in English. He signed himself HENRYK.

Mischung, thought Vilmos Csillag.

The months went by. He longed to see his son again, though perhaps not strongly enough to take the necessary steps to do so. The illness that struck his mother out of the blue again wiped out the possibility of making the trip in the short term.

In the period of almost a year that it took for his mother to make the journey from the Kékgolyó Street clinic to the cemetery, Vilmos Csillag’s hair had begun to turn gray. He hoped Henryk would turn up for the burial, but he sent only a telegram of sympathy, in which there was only one word of Hungarian, the family name of Vilmos Csillag. Shea and her mother are no doubt bringing the kid up to hate me.

Now he found it truly difficult to say why he was in Hungary. He sold the flat in Márvány Street and deposited the money in the Trade Bank, in an account from which, according to the current regulations, he could withdraw it in stipulated amounts when traveling abroad. No problem. I’ll fetch Henryk and we’ll have a holiday by the Balaton.

His plane landed at Kennedy Airport. He was not met, which did not surprise him. He was reluctant to spend money on a taxi and took the inter-airport shuttle bus. While he worked in Newark, the drivers had been prepared to stop for him on the corner of Northern Boulevard, only fifteen minutes’ walk from Shea’s mother. This time, however, the Sikh-turbaned driver would not make this illegal stop, so he had a walk of at least half an hour ahead of him when he dropped his two suitcases on the traffic island.

He remembered the area and knew that if he could get over Grand Central Parkway, he could make his walk much shorter. But the multilane expressway teemed and roared with vehicles, searing into his brain with the howl of wounded wild animals. Without bags maybe he could have zigzagged across, but with two suitcases he had no chance. So it had to be the long way.

He walked along the ramp that led to the pedestrian bridge along an auto scrapyard. It was lighting-up time, at least in theory, but in this part of the world it was the exception to find a working bulb in the streetlights-the street kids liked knocking them out with catapults.

Beyond the scrapyard, the road, made of imperfect concrete blocks, turned down towards an oily garage entrance. In the building, half sunk into the ground, there were windows like those of the workshops in Vilmos Csillag’s secondary school. In two places the broken panes had been replaced by ones that did not fit. This plot must have long ago gone bankrupt: the doors hung open and the name of the firm, KLINE & FOX, THE WIZARDS OF FORD, had broken off at one end and hung down in the wind, making a slight creaking noise. It was witty. He was pleased he understood the word play on The Wizard of Oz. Abracadabra, just watch my hands, one, two, a Ford for you, air-conditioning, leather seats, power steering… He knew how to say “power steering” only in Hungarian; it never needs to be said in English, because every car has it.

KLINE & FOX

He tried to get closer to the English pronunciation. Kline must have been Klein, the Fox perhaps Fuchs and then… more Jews… oh yeah. He imagined them. Béla Klein, no, Albert Klein, no, better: Miklós Klein, piano maker. They fled here during the Great War from Kispest. Miklós Klein, starting out as a hawker, then vacuum-cleaner salesman, later office worker at Ford, meets Ödön Fuchs… Jenö Fuchs… Richárd Fuchs… Aha, these Baradlays from Jókai’s masterpiece, The Sons of the Man with the Heart of Stone. So it’s Rezsö Fuchs that Miklós Klein meets, and by then they’ve become Ray Fox and Mike Kline, and deciding to open a car showroom with a garage for servicing, they win Ford’s approval, the business prospers, they go from strength to strength, right until the Crash, when…

No, they must have been flourishing here even last year, as the oil marks are quite fresh. He had left the scrapyard behind and was wheezing, so he put down his suitcases and sat down on them. When he continued on his way, he felt pitifully weak.

Is it possible that some grandfather or great-great-grandfather of mine also came to America?

He had to pause more and more often, his jacket and trousers were drenched; fat slugs of sweat lodged at the roots of his hair, stinging his scalp.

He was quite close to the Project, as the bleak housing estate where Shea’s mother lived was known, built at the end of the Fifties as part of the comprehensive urban-renewal plan to help the poorer families of New York. Every inch of concrete surface had been painted some garish color by hippies? addicts? the homeless? God knows who.

He could still hear the roar of Grand Central Parkway and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway-it was the latter that made Shea’s mother’s life hell. The noise now reminded Vilmos Csillag of Niagara Falls. Like a million other Americans, that was where they had gone on their honeymoon. He would never forget the moment in the mountainous seas of the bay when the motorboat took them beneath the foaming torrent. Enhancing the visuals was the sound of a thousand billion drops of water cascading onto the agitated surface of the bay. Niagara Falls, Vilmos Csillag said, imitating his wife’s accent not entirely successfully.

“Whassup?”

Two colored men were kneeling on the concrete, by some burning rubbish, the acrid whiff of which just at that moment stung Vilmos Csillag’s nostrils. He couldn’t reply; he had first to clear his throat. “Just a minute,” he said in a whisper.

“Is this jug talkin’ to us?” said one of them, in a worn-out black leather jacket, and trousers of similar stuff, which allowed strips of his knee to be seen.

Vilmos Csillag didn’t understand the word “jug”: “Whassup?”

“You mockin’ me, shithead?” The other guy was somewhat younger, twenty to twenty-two, jeans but stripped to the waist. His chest, shoulders, and arms were a riot of colored tattoos.

Vilmos Csillag didn’t understand this either. He was amazed at the way the designs on the man’s skin merged into each other. He was still coughing.

“Git yo ass out of here fast!” said the leather jacket.

“Yo kin leave the stuff!” said the younger one.

Vilmos Csillag was not familiar with Bronx slang and clung to the handles of the suitcases in some uncertainty. From the tone of voice he understood aggressive intent of some sort, but didn’t think that his insignificant goods or person could prompt anyone to act. As soon as he had caught his breath, he gave a sort of nod and said: “Nice to meet you.” Then he walked on.

He had learned that this was a harmless greeting. He did not for a moment suspect that the original sense of these words might, in this particular circumstance, be regarded as an act of aggression. Before he knew it the two black men had knocked him to the ground and begun to kick him. The one with the naked torso had a pair of Doc Martens, the other basketball shoes or sneakers. Vilmos Csillag tried to roll towards the latter. He waited for them to stop; after all, what was the point of all this? A Hungarian sentence came to his lips: “Enough already… I’ve nothing against negroes!”

“Nigger? Did you say nigger?”

A hail of heels and toecaps hit him in the groin, in the eyes, on his nose, and when the Doc Martens got him in the testicles he lost consciousness. He saw again Niagara Falls -overexposed color Polaroids taken by Shea, and black-and-white images shot by himself.

After a while the two men tired of battering the motionless body.

“Is he still “live?” asked the leather jacket.

“Look, he’s still movin’.”

“Lessee his stuff.”

They took everything he had, splitting his money and throwing his wallet and papers on the fire. The leather jacket wanted to keep his credit card, but the other took it from him and threw that too on the fire: too risky. They tore open the suitcases, but took only a pullover and a pair of shoes. The presents brought from Budapest all ended up on the fire, and the items that burned most fiercely were the matrioshkas that Vilmos Csillag had bought from an unshaven trader in the underpass by the Astoria Hotel. They opened the two small bottles of Tokay, but found it too sweet.

Vilmos Csillag came to at dawn. He felt his body weighed several tons and had been trodden into small pieces. Something dreadful had happened to him, yes; at first he was unable to recall what. He drifted in and out of consciousness. He saw what remained of his belongings: his favorite velvet jacket lay like a wet washrag in the dust.

As the evening cooled he finally managed to sit up. He was horrified to find, on touching his face, that there was an aching knot where his nose had been. A thin sound that must have been weeping seemed a miserable comment on his helplessness. He needed food, drink, a doctor, otherwise… He had lost his past and he was now very near to losing his future. I must stay conscious, he mumbled to himself. The sound bubbled out of his mouth unarticulated; he was missing four or five of his teeth.

He had a feeling that his cries for help would not be answered; at most he would attract the attention of figures like his attackers, if anyone. He crawled forward, in pain, on all fours, towards lights that shone more intensely. He saw jagged stars jumping around before his eyes.

Those lights came nearer only very, very slowly.

He did not notice that he had reached one of the open spaces near La Guardia, in the opposite direction to where he was originally headed. Large notices warning NO TRESPASSING indicated that strangers were not permitted here. Despite this, the local boys played baseball and football here on Sunday mornings, until the security guards chased them off. Vilmos Csillag himself had once played softball here with his fellow employees.

He reached a bushy patch and could only zigzag ahead. He was shivering with cold, though the first rays of the sun had begun to light up the land. I’ll have a little rest, he thought, and sank to the ground. He lay on his side, in the position of the embryo in the womb; this was the way his vertebrae were least painful.

What will my son say if I turn up looking like this?

This was his final, his very final thought. He sank into a sleep from which he was never to awaken. Above his head blossomed the American version of the laburnum. It slowly let fall its blazing yellow blossom on Vilmos Csillag.

Two weeks later his body was found by three children who ran into the bush to pick up their frisbee. The sheriff of Great Neck visited the scene. At the end of the year the file was placed in a drawer marked “Unsolved.”

No prospect of further evidence coming to light.

Perpetrator or perpetrators unknown, victim unknown.

File closed.