The Book of Fathers (51 page)

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.”