Thus while the women of the family made money, led by the reigning Sarah, the men of the family made music, led by the reigning Munk. But in keeping with the new matriarchal traditions of the family the first-born male in each generation, the new Munk, was never the son of a Munk but always the son of a Sarah, and therefore the eldest nephew of the last Munk, a confusing line of descent not easily understood by anyone but the Szondis.
The Szondi women naturally spent long hours doing research in the family archives in connection with their business training, but the Szondi men also had a special obligation in that regard.
Each spring they put aside their music and returned to the roomy old kitchen of Sarah the First, there to spend the months of annual awakening immersed in the bookshelves that contained the sources of the family's material and artistic success, amidst the twitterings of the birds outside in the garden and the heady fragrances of new flowers wafting into the kitchen on gentle breezes, perusing at their leisure those thousands and thousands of tender love letters a wandering Szondi husband had once sent to his loyal Szondi wife.
The future Munk of Jerusalem poker, born in 1890, chose the cello as his musical instrument and naturally he mastered it. But he was also an exception among male Szondis, because music didn't seem enough to him in life. Vaguely he yearned for something quite different, although what it might be he didn't know.
In fact as a boy, young Munk tried every conceivable occupation for a week or a month, avidly pursuing his new role. For a while he was a postman, then a fireman, then a railroad conductor. In the spring of his ninth year he was a surgeon operating in his bedroom, only to turn that summer to hunting lions and elephants in public gardens. By the following autumn he had already tried horticulture and painting and carpentry, and served as a distinguished judge.
When he was eleven he fell under the spell of the letters of his great-grandfather, the tireless Johann Luigi Szondi, and proceeded to relive those prodigious travels up and down the Nile and across the Middle East. He too marveled at the deserted stone city of Petra and marched through Nubia eating dates, covering nine hundred miles in a month, then paused to measure Rameses' ear as three feet, four inches long before pushing south from Shendi to the Red Sea.
But eventually none of these lives satisfied him, not even the splendid journeys of his great-grandfather, perhaps because those journeys weren't originally his. He did come to learn, however, that he wanted to get away from his family and their traditions, which he was beginning to find oppressive. Yet the Szondis never sensed this because young Munk lived so much within himself as a boy. Had they known him better, they might have realized he strikingly combined the qualities of the first Sarah and her wandering husband, energy and imagination and a passion for details.
What are you going to do, young Munk? his relatives asked him again and again in exasperation.
But Munk only smiled and shrugged and said he didn't know, then returned to the family archives to try to discover the secret he knew must be there, the secret of an unusual life, made unique because lived according to its own nature and nothing else.
What was the secret that had driven his great-grandfather to do all the incredible things he had done?
Simple curiosity? A fascination with strange customs? To see what others hadn't seen?
In the comfortable kitchen of Sarah the First, surrounded by the enormous bookshelves with their thousands and thousands of love letters, young Munk sat gazing out the window not really seeing what lay beyond it. Certainly his great-grandfather must have had all those feelings, he was aware of that. But what else had there been for Johann Luigi? What had driven him? What was the secret?
At the age of eighteen, with his family insisting he choose a profession, he finally made a decision. And when he announced his choice they received it in utter amazement.
But why that, Munk? If you're not interested in being a musician, then trade at least would be understandable. We certainly did that for a long time. Or scholarship or one of the professions. Your great-grandfather was both a scholar and a medical doctor, after all. Or chemistry or languages, he did that too. But a Szondi in the army? In the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Army? A Szondi pursuing a military career? It's unheard of.
Yes, said Munk quietly, smiling. I thought so myself.
But after being trained and serving for a short time with a regiment of dragoons near Vienna, young Munk realized everyday soldiering wasn't for him either.
He applied for duty overseas, and as luck would have it an aide to the Austro-Hungarian military attaché in Constantinople died that very week as a result of having eaten bad Turkish meat. Thus in the summer of 1908, Munk found himself seconded to the capital of the Ottoman Empire.
He had been there little more than a month when the Austrian annexation of Bosnia brought on yet another Balkan crisis, causing the Turks to undertake secret military preparations. Lieutenant Szondi's reports from the field proved so valuable he was promoted to captain early in December.
Then on Christmas the attaché and his entire staff, except for Munk, were violently stricken by food poisoning while consuming a holiday feast of contaminated wild Turkish boar. Munk escaped the poisoning because he had been eating large amounts of garlic since entering Turkey, having learned of this simple yet effective antidote to bad meat from the letters of his great-grandfather, who had used the remedy successfully throughout his travels.
A few of his fellow officers lingered into the new year, but all were dead by Epiphany. Since there was no one else in Constantinople who could fill the position, the ambassador named Munk acting military attaché, an astonishing responsibility for one so young.
But Munk's rapid rise had only begun. The former attaché had not had time to submit his annual summary of the situation in the Ottoman Empire, and Munk took the opportunity to completely revise it.
Of course his superiors had no way of knowing he was able to draw on the vast accumulation of information he had learned as a boy while studying the secret Szondi archives in Budapest. What they did know was that another incident involving foul Turkish meat, a hazard faced by all Europeans in Constantinople, had suddenly brought to their attention a brilliant young officer with an unsurpassed knowledge of the Ottoman Empire.
Munk received a letter of commendation. He was promoted to major and made the permanent acting attaché.
Now Munk had found something that did interest him. For the next four years, eating handfuls of garlic and happily indulging his passion for details, he traveled extensively in the Balkans analyzing the impossible confusion there as Ottoman power disintegrated. None of the other European military attachés could keep up with him, crippled as they were by bad Turkish meat. In recognition of his achievements he was duly promoted to lieutenant colonel.
Then in the autumn of 1912 the Turks announced maneuvers near Adrianople and all the Balkan states mobilized. The first Balkan war broke out with the Bulgarians and the Serbs and the Montenegrins, the Albanians and the Macedonians all rising up against the Turks. Meanwhile Russia and Austria-Hungary prepared for war against each other to support their various interests.
In this vast maze of intrigue and threats and sudden attacks, young Munk moved recklessly from front to front gathering information, all the while pursuing clandestine meetings in Constantinople and elsewhere with equal abandon.
Tireless and daring, young Lieutenant Colonel Szondi acquired a notoriety that would soon become intolerable to the chief enemy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.