We knew this at home. I never entered the “study” without a sense of awe and self-consciousness. I’d stand before the diplomat table at which no one in human memory had ever been known to work, a desk that only the valet spent time at, every morning arranging and dusting the ornaments. I would gaze at the bearded, unknown men in the portraits, imagining that these dour people with their piercing eyes would, in their own day, have been a member of just such a solemn association of two hundred as my father and his friends at the club were; that they’d have ruled over mines and forests and factories, and that there existed some unwritten compact between life and time, a kind of eternal blood-brotherhood that meant they were stronger and more powerful than other men. The thought that my father was of their company filled me with a certain anxious pride. An anxious sense of ambition, I should say, because I did want to take my father’s place among them at some stage. It took fifty years for me to learn that I was not, nor was fitted to be, one of them; it was not until last year that I stepped out of their ranks, the ranks to which they had admitted me, so that I might “withdraw,” as they put it, from “any kind of business involvement,” though that was not something I could possibly have known back then. That was why I gazed so wide-eyed at Father’s “retreat,” why I pored over the titles of books no one read, why I began vaguely to suspect that something barely perceptible but significant, something perfectly unremitting, was being enacted behind these strict outward signs and appurtenances, and that this was how it had to be, how it was and always would be, and yet there was something not quite right about the whole thing, even if only because no one actually talked about it … For whenever conversation, whether at home or in company, turned to the subject of work, to money, to the factory, or to the society of two hundred, my father and his friends fell noticeably quiet, stared stonily into space, and began to speak of something else. There was a limit, you know, a border with an invisible barrier … but of course you know. I’m telling you this now because once I start I feel like telling you absolutely everything.
I couldn’t even say our lives were frigid or entirely without warmth. Our major family occasions were lovingly, punctiliously, commemorated. There were four or five “Christmases” each year. These occasions, which were not officially red-letter days, were more important in the family’s unwritten Gregorian calendar than Easter or Christmas itself, though the family did in fact have a properly kept written calendar where births, wedding anniversaries, and deaths were duly noted, noted so precisely and in such detail that even a registrar would have examined them with admiration. This book, the book of the clan, the golden book — call it what you will — was in the exclusive care of the head of the family. My great-grandfather had bought the book a hundred and twenty years ago, Great-Grandfather in his furs and braids, the founder of the dynasty, the first worthy begetter in the family, who had been a miller out on the Great Hungarian Plain. It was he who first inscribed the family name in the gilt-edged, black-leather-bound volume packed solid with ivory paper. “In nomine Dei.” He was “Johannes II” … miller and founder. It was he who was first given a state rank.
Once, and once only, did I write in that book, and that was when my son was born. I will never forget that day. It was a beautiful sunlit day in late February. I returned from the hospital in a helpless state of joy and pain, a state one experiences but once in life, when one’s son is born. My father was no longer alive. I went into my study, a room I used as infrequently as my father used his, looked out the locked book in the lowest drawer of the diplomat table, opened it, took out my fountain pen, and very carefully inscribed the letters “Matthias I” along with the date and time. It was a great moment, a symbolic moment. How much there is of vanity, of the second-rate, in the range of human feeling! This was the family marching on, I felt. Suddenly everything had a meaning: the factory, the furniture, the pictures on the wall, the money in the bank. My son would take my place in the house, in the factory, in the society of two hundred … But that was not to happen. I have thought long and hard about this. We can’t be sure that having a child, an heir, is the solution to the deeper crisis in any individual’s life. The law says it does, of course, but life is not a product of law.
That’s how we lived. That was my childhood. I know, there have been far worse. But this is all relative. It was Judit Áldozó I really wanted to talk about, but here we are talking about my childhood.
We celebrated all anniversaries, particularly the family ones. There were Father’s birthday, Mother’s name day, and others like these, all of them redder-than-red red-letter days, complete with gifts, music, dinner, toasts, and flickering candles. Our nurses would dress us up in little sailor’s costumes made of velvet, with lace collars — you know, à la milord. All these occasions were conducted in perfect order, according to unwritten military regulations. Father’s birthday was the grandest occasion, of course. We had to learn verses by heart. The entire household gathered in the parlor, everyone dressed to the nines, eyes sparkling, the servants shiftily, raptly, kissing my father’s hand and thanking him for something, I really don’t know what. Most likely for the fact that they were servants and my father was not. Who knows? They kissed his hand nonetheless. Then came a grand dinner or supper. The most precious plates and the best silver cutlery were fished out of the family vaults. Relatives arrived to celebrate the birthday of the illustrious head of the family with due deference and, naturally, seething envy. We were the head of the clan. Poorer relatives received a monthly donation from Father, a proper stipend or pension. None of them thought it enough in private. There was an old lady, a certain Auntie Maria, who so complained about Father’s meanness that she always refused to join us at the highly ornate celebratory dinner. “I’ll be just fine in the kitchen,” she said. “A small cup of coffee in the kitchen will do me.” That’s how poorly she thought of the money my father voluntarily gave her each month, even though there was absolutely no obligation that he should give her anything. We had to drag her into the dining room and give her the best place at the table. It is very hard striking a balance between the desires and demands of poor relatives. The fact is that it’s impossible. It requires great spirit, an exceptionally great spirit, to suffer the success of a close relative. Most people are incapable of it, and it would be a foolish man who would be angry to see the whole family turn against him, the successful one, in a spirit of wounded sensibility, or mockery, or hostility. Because there’s always someone in the family with money or reputation or influence, and the rest, the tribe, gather round this individual to hate and rob him. My father knew this, and he gave them as much as he thought right while indifferently tolerating their hostility. Father was a strong man. The possession of money made him feel neither sentimental nor guilty. He knew exactly how much each person should have and would not give more. Not in terms of feeling, either. His favorite sayings were “They’ll get that” and “They’ll not get that.” It was a carefully considered judgment every time. And once he had pronounced his verdict he stuck by it, as to a papal decree. There was no arguing with him. I am sure he too was lonely, and had to forgo many things he desired or that would have pleased him, in the interests of the family. But he suppressed such desires and stayed strong — firm on his feet. “They’re not getting that,” he said sometimes after a long silence when my mother or some other member of the family put a request to him, the party in question having already mentioned it several times and dropped various hints. No, Father was not tightfisted or hard-hearted. He simply knew people and understood money, and that’s all there was to it.