An Outlaw's Diary E-Book

Tormay Cecile

• Herausgeber: Antelope Hill Publishing LLC
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

With the shout of “LONG LIVE THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT!”, the Hungarian Soviet Republic, formed on the evening of March 21st, 1919 lasted for only 133 days. The violence and intensity of the Red Terror in Hungary rivaled that of Soviet Russia. The scars inflicted by the mass-executions of right-wing dissidents, the destruction of morals in education, and the desecration of holy spaces can still be felt today.

An Outlaw’s Diary: The Commune is Cécile Tormay’s riveting first-hand account of the Hungarian Bolshevik Revolution, from the initial seizure of power to the quick demise under foreign jackboot. A writer, intellectual, and right-wing social activist, Tormay was hounded by agents of the Hungarian Soviet Republic throughout the country. Relying only on the charity of friends and the kindness of strangers, she moved disguised and pseudonymously from place to place. Tormay risked her life to write this diary as a warning to future generations.

She describes not just the despair of the dispossessed Hungarians and the depravity of the communist enforcers – many soviet officers were convicted murderers released from prison and given governmental authority to police the populace – but also the quiet determination of the peasantry and middle classes who, through it all, held faith in God and Nation.

For the first time since its original English publishing in 1923 readers can experience this stirring and lucid account of one of the 20th Century’s forgotten epochs. Antelope Hill Publishing is proud to reintroduce Cécile Tormay’s  An Outlaw’s Diary: The Commune.

Leseprobe

An Outlaw’s Diary:

The Commune

AN OUTLAW’S DIARY

THE COMMUNE

by

C É C I L E T O R M A Y

An Account of the Bolshevik Revolution in Hungary

A N T E L O P E H I L L P U B L I S H I N G

The content of this work is in the public domain.

An Outlaw’s Diary: The Commune by Cécile Tormay first published in 1923, printed in Great Britain, by the Hereford Times ltd., Hereford.

Republished 2020 by Antelope Hill Publishing with the additional subtitle of An Account of the Bolshevik Revolution in Hungary to give added clarity to the modern reader and to present the work as a stand-alone novel, independent of the first volume of this work, which deals with the establishment of the First Hungarian Republic in the Chrysanthemum Revolution.

First printing 2020.

Cover art by Swifty

Formatted by Margaret Bauer.

Antelope Hill Publishing

antelopehillpublishing.com

Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-953730-37-4

EPUB ISBN-13: 978-1-953730-38-1

Table of Contents

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chaptter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Appendix

I

Night of March 21st, 1919.

THERE followed a moment’s silence, the awful silence of the executioner’s sword suspended in the air. Humanity in bondage draws its head between its shoulders, and, like the sweat of the agonizing, cold rain, pours down the walls of the houses. Now…

A bestial voice shrieks again in the street: “LONG LIVE THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT!”

The neighboring streets repeat the cry. A drawn shutter rattles violently in the dark. Street doors bang as they are hurriedly closed. Running steps clatter past the houses, accompanied by two sounds: “Long live… Death…” The latter is meant for us. Shots ring out at the street corner.

“Death to the bourgeois!” A bullet strikes a lamp and there is a shower of glass on the pavement. A carriage drives past furiously, then stops suddenly amid shouts. A confused noise follows and the shooting dies away in the distance. Other cars follow its track into the maddened, lightless town. What is happening there, beyond it, everywhere, in the barracks, in the boulevards? Sailors are looting the inner city: a handful of Bolsheviks have taken possession of the town. There is no escape!

One thought alone contains an element of relief: we have reached the bottom of the abyss. It is disgraceful and humiliating, but it is better than the constant sliding down and down. Now we can sink no lower.

Presently the streets regained their former quiet, and nothing but the throbbing of our hearts pierced the silence. There is no escape for us. The opened gutters have inundated us. St. Stephen’s Hungary has fallen under the rule of Trotsky’s agent, Béla Kun, the embezzler. And all round us events are taking place which we have no longer the power to prevent.

I have no idea how long this nightmare lasted. We were silent: everybody was struggling with his own sufferings. The lamp burnt low, and again the clock struck. I caught at its sound, and counted the strokes: nine. Countess Chotek, who had been with us, was there no longer, nor did I see my brother. Time went slowly on. My room appeared to me like the dim background of a painting; figures sat in the picture rigidly, disappeared, and then were there again. The door opened and closed. I saw my journalist friend, Joseph Cavallier, in a chair which had been empty a moment before. He spoke and pressed me to go—mad rumours were circulating in the town, awful events were predicted for the night. Lieut.-Col. Vyx and the other members of the Entente missions had been arrested, and it was intended to disarm the British monitors on the Danube. The Russian Red Army was advancing towards the Carpathians, the Bolsheviks had declared for the integrity of our territory. Béla Kun’s Directorate had declared war on the Entente. “You must escape to night,” said my friend; “they are going to arrest you. Come to us.”

My mother called me and I opened her door with apprehension. She was sitting up in bed, propped high between the pillows: her face was livid and appeared thinner than ever. She too had heard the cries in the street, was aware of what had happened, and knew what was in store for us. Her haggard, harassed look inspired me with strength to face our fate.

“Why don’t you come here? Why can’t we talk things over in here?” She did not mean to cause pain, but her words stabbed me. Poor dear mother!

When Joseph Cavallier told her of his proposal she shook her head:

“You live on the other side of the river, don’t you? Don’t let her go so far.” Suddenly she recovered herself and turned to me: “It is raining hard and I heard you coughing so badly all day.”

The others had followed us into her room, and all had something to say. My sister-in-law mentioned her brother Zsigmondy who lived nearby: he had offered me shelter in his home. My mother alone was silent. Though she could not say it, it was she who was most anxious for me to go. She looked at me imploringly. That decided me. “It can only be a question of a day or two,” I said. “Then, when they have failed to find me here, I can come back.”

Did I believe what I said? Did I imagine that things would happen like that? Or did I attempt to deceive myself so that I might bear it the more easily? I noticed a deep shadow that stole suddenly, I knew not whence, over my mother’s face. It appeared on the other faces too, as if all of them had aged suddenly. And beyond them, around us, in the houses opposite, all over the town, people aged suddenly in that ghastly hour.

They all went away and left me alone in my room. I knew I ought to hurry, yet I stood idle in front of the open cupboard. How many, I thought, are standing, hesitating like this tonight, how many are hurrying and running aimlessly about, not knowing whither to turn? Will it be the same here as in Russia? Quietly the door opened behind me: my mother had risen and came to me so that we might be together as long as possible.

“I will take just a few things, very few,” I kept repeating, as if I wanted to force the hand of fate to make my trial short. “Perhaps I may be able to come home tomorrow”

My mother did not answer. She tied the parcels together for me.

“The housekeeper must not know till tomorrow morning that you have gone...” She looked out into the anteroom to see that no one was about, then opened the door herself and accompanied me down the corridor. The house seemed asleep, the sky was black, and the courtyard underneath was like a dark shaft, in which rain-water had accumulated.

Leaning on my arm my mother walked along with me. In silence both of us struggled to keep control over our emotions. At the front door we stopped. Nothing was audible but the patter of the rain. My mother raised her hand and passed it over my face, caressingly, as though she would feel the outlines that she knew so well.

“Take every care of yourself, my dear, dear one!”

I was already running down the stairs. She was leaning over the balustrade, and I heard her voice behind me, keeping me company as long as possible, calling softly, “Goodnight!”

“Goodnight…” I called back, but my voice failed me in a pain such as I had never felt before.

Beyond the street door there was a rattle of gunfire. I tried to keep cheerful, and kept saying: “Tomorrow I shall come back to her, tomorrow.” I groped my way across the dark yard and knocked at the concierge’s window. He came out, looking curiously at me in the glare of his lantern: “There is a lot of shooting out there. It would be wiser to stay at home.” But I shook my head and the key turned in the lock; the door opened stealthily, and closed carefully behind me, as though unwilling to betray me.

Next instant I stood alone in the rain. I shuddered: my retreat was cut off. Home, everything that was good, everything that protected me, was behind that door, beyond my reach.

Motor horns, human shouts, rang here and there in the distance, whilst the rain poured in streams in the broken gutters. The road seemed absolutely empty. Suddenly I heard steps on the other side of the street. They had not approached from the distance but had started quite nearby; someone must therefore have stepped from out of the shadow of the house opposite. Had he been waiting there spying on me? The steps became hurried, passed me, crossed the street. A dark shape hugged the wall under the recess of a door. No bell was rung. I stopped for an instant: the incertitude of the past few weeks reappeared. The knowledge of being watched, pursued, the torture of being deprived of my freedom, made me catch my breath. The threat had followed me so long, appearing and dis appearing in turn, menacing me from under every porch, from every dark corner. Should I fly from it? Should I turn down a by-street?

Suddenly I felt tired and ill: my pulses were leaden and my brain seemed weighed down with heavy stones. For an instant I contemplated giving in. I seemed to be of so little significance compared with the enormity of universal misfortune. The crash of general collapse had drowned the small moans of individual fates.

The shadow suddenly emerged from under the porch and barred my way. We stared at each other. Then a well-known voice said, “Is it you?” It was my brother Béla, who had been watching for me so that he might accompany me.

Only a few lamps were alight on the boulevard, and our heels crushed the fragments of glass from the broken ones. Empty cartridge cases shone in the puddles.

Machine-guns stood in the middle of the street. Some men passed, carrying a red flag; then a lorry, bristling with bayonets, rumbled heavily by, full of armed sailors. One of these shouldered his rifle and aimed at us. He did not shoot, and when for an instant he appeared in the light of a lamp before the darkness swallowed him again, I could see the bestial grin which contorted his face. The lorry disappeared, but we could hear his voice shouting something in Russian. There are many of these here today. “A bourgeois, to hell with him!” The cry of Moscow fills Budapest.

Frightened forms ran across the openings of the streets on the other side, and the air was filled with wild movements and lurching fear. At last I rang the bell of the front door which was to shelter me, and my brother wished me Godspeed and turned back. It was some moments before the door opened, and a woman came along, dragging her feet. She looked at me suspiciously and seemed frightened. Where was I going?

I murmured something, crammed some money into her hand, and brushed past her. Here too the courtyard was absolutely dark. I hesitated in front of the door of one of the flats: something urged me to go on, something else drew me back. At last I knocked, and a friendly face appeared. The table was still laid under the welcoming light of a swinging lamp: how peaceful was the sight of that quiet little home after the howling, dirty, soaking street! Michael Zsigmondy and his wife welcomed me, but whether or not they had expected me I cannot say; at all events they seemed to consider it quite a natural thing that I should have come.

“What is the time?”

“Past eleven.”

There was a knock at the door… We looked at each other. A tall, dark young man entered. “Count Francis Hunyadi,” announced Zsigmondy, relieved. He did not mention my name, and they carefully avoided addressing me. The newcomer spoke:

“Nobody knows what is happening. It is said that the Communists want to hand the town over to the rabble to plunder.”

I thought of my mother, who was surely thinking of me too. Behind her I saw more faintly other faces: brothers, sisters, friends, acquaintances. I began to tremble for all those I loved.

Zsigmondy went to the telephone, but the exchange gave the invariable answer: “Only official communications are permissible.” Then that stopped too. The telephone exchanges have passed into the hands of the Communists. The rain stopped; the streets livened up, and now and then the howls of the excited rabble came up to us: “Long live the Dictatorship of the Proletariat!”

The children were taken into another room, and my bed was made up in the night nursery. Bright pictures of fairy tales were on the walls, lead-soldiers and toy horses on the floor. However long I may live I shall never again feel as old as I felt in that nursery.

* * *

March 22nd.

THE day was already breaking when weariness overcame me and lulled me into something resembling sleep. It must have lasted a short time only, then an almost physical pain about my heart woke me. I felt like a person who has lost someone very dear to him and on awakening is reminded of his bereavement not by memory but by grief. I shrunk from complete awakening. Not yet, not for just one more minute! But it was in vain I tried to hide from consciousness, swiftly I remembered everything. Hungary was no longer. She had been betrayed, sold. Finis Hungarice.

I found myself moaning inarticulately. My heart was wounded and bleeding, and the blood that was flowing was ‘the blood of all those who were Hungarian. I pressed my clenched fists to my eyes, pressed them so hard that my eyeballs hurt and red flashes passed before them. Then I opened them quickly and the grey dawn stared at me with dimmed eyes. Their day had come!

The street seemed dead, but it was only resting from the night’s revels. It must have been an hour later when steps interrupted the silence—a hunchbacked little monster was coming down the street with a sheaf of posters over his arm and a bucket in his hand. Now and then he stopped, smeared his paste over a wall, and when he went on red posters marked each of his stopping place.

“Long live the Dictatorship of the Proletariat!”

The town must be given no chance to regain its breath, to recover consciousness. When it wakes its whole body will be covered with the red eruption. It will be everywhere. It will cover the barracks, the royal palace, the very churches.

I turned away from the window: it was useless looking out: everywhere it was the same thing. A morning paper was lying on the table. Yesterday’s compositors strike was over. Socialist compositors had set the papers of the Communists and the red was pervading the black print: “Unite, Proletarians of the World!” This was followed by Károlyi’s proclamation:

To the Hungarian people! The government has resigned. Those who till now have governed by the will of the people and with the support of the Proletarians have come to the conclusion that circumstances require a new orientation. Orderly production can only be secured by handing over the power to the Proletarians. Besides the danger of anarchy in the productive activities of the country there is the danger of foreign politics. The Peace Conference in Paris has secretly decided that nearly the whole of Hungary is to be occupied by armed forces. The mission of the Entente has declared that the lines of demarcation will be considered in future as political frontiers. The obvious reason for a further occupation of the country is that Hungary is to be made the battle ground of the war against the Russian Soviet troops, now fighting on the Roumanian frontier. The territories robbed from us are intended as the reward of those Czech and Roumanian armies which are to be used to defeat the forces of the Russian Soviet. I, the Provisional President of the Hungarian Popular Republic, am obliged by this decision of the Paris Conference to appeal to the proletariat of the world for justice and help; consequently I resign and hand over the powers of government to the Proletariat of Hungary.—Michael Károlyi

I was filled with disgust. He admits that it was he who has handed it over! I felt with horror that this proclamation was nothing but the base documentary evidence of the sale of a betrayed nation.

“I alone can save Hungary!” It was with these words that Michael Károlyi started his lies on the 31st of October, 1918. “I hand the powers of government to the Proletariat of Hungary,” he declares on the 21st of March, 1919, when lies fail him. In the interval he has squandered and sold Hungary. The mask has fallen, and behind it appears boldly the rabble which he calls the Proletariat of Hungary. Practically all its leaders appear in the list of the “Revolutionary Government Council.” Just as in Károlyi’s Government it is headed by a deceptive Christian clown; Alexander Garbai is the President. The others are all foreigners. All the People’s Commissaries are Jews, there is now and then a Christian among the assistant commissaries, then again Jews and still more Jews. Jews are to administer the capital, Jews are at the head of the police. A Jew is to be governor of the Austro-Hungarian Bank.

This list gives one furiously to think. The puppets of the October show have been swept from the stage by the events of last night. The demoniacal organizers, the raving wire-pullers and prompters have taken their place, and for the first time in the long history of Hungary, Hungarians are excluded from every inch of ground, whether in the hills and the vales of the Carpathians; or on the boundless plains. The country has been divided up among Czechs, Roumanians, Serbians and Jews.

The newspaper continues to address “Everybody.” The Revolutionary Council proclaims haughtily that, it has taken over the government and that it is going to build up its workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ councils. Hungary becomes a Soviet Republic. The Revolutionary Council will start without delay a series of fundamental changes. It decrees the socialization of big estates, wholesale businesses, banks and means of communication. The land reform will not take the shape of dividing up the land into small holdings but of organizing it into socialistic productive co-operative societies. The death penalty will be imposed on the bandits of the Counter-revolution as well as on the brigands who indulge in looting. It will organize a powerful proletarian army. It declares its intellectual and sentimental community with Soviet Russia. It offers an armed alliance to the Russian Proletariat. It sends brotherly greetings to the working masses of England, France, Italy and America, appealing to them not to tolerate any longer the looting expeditions of their capitalistic Governments against the Soviet Republic of Hungary. It offers an armed alliance to the workers and peasants of Bohemia, Roumania, Serbia and Croatia. It appeals to German Austria and Germany to ally themselves with Moscow... “Long live the Dictatorship of the Proletariat! Long live the Hungarian Soviet Republic!”

I thought of the stories related by returning prisoners of war, the vague news of the Russian Revolution, the distant outlines of its nefarious actors and its beginnings at Petrograd. Russia’s awful fate filled me with anguish and apprehension.

This was the first ordinance of the Revolutionary Council:

MARTIAL LAW: Anybody resisting the orders of the Soviet Government or inciting to rebellion against it will be executed. Revolutionary tribunals will sit and try the criminals. Budapest, March 21st, 1919.

I jumped up: I felt I should choke unless I did something. “That soldier down there is still walking up and down,” said Mrs. Zsigmondy quietly.

“It is lucky that the house has entrances on two streets. I shall go out by the other.”

A sharp wind, cleared by rain, was blowing on the boulevard. The carriages seemed to have disappeared, and only motor-cars were rushing about, armed sailors standing on their steps and long-haired Jews, smoking big cigars, sitting inside. The shops were closed, and red posters flamed from their lowered shutters.      

“Long live the Soviet Republic allied to Russia!”

The wind blew the torn down posters of the Károlyi Government over the unswept pavements. Now and then hurrying pedestrians passed with bent heads, their eyes expressing stunned bewilderment. They could not understand what had happened.

A chemist’s shop was open: that was the only concession. My head was on fire and my chest torn with coughing. I went in. Many people were waiting for their prescriptions. Two people whispered to each other: “The resignation of the Government was simply a sham to frighten the Entente into re-establishing the old lines of demarcation.” “Goodness no, my dear sir, there has been too much of Károlyi’s cowardly pacifism. The Bolsheviks want to reconquer the whole of Hungary.” A lean young man standing by began to gesticulate wildly: “If that is so, every Hungarian ought to stand by them.” The other nodded: “We shall soon go home to Pressburg.1”

I was staggered. So they are still credulous, they still believe! I went on sadly. When I reached the offices of the National Federation of Hungarian Women I was taken aback. There was nobody waiting there, the ante-room was empty.

What a great thing we had been attempting, we women! To stop a cart running down a slope! We wanted to spread light and confidence and strength into the homes and people of Hungary. Was it to be all in vain, our sufferings, our labour?

As I opened the door into the inner office there was a sudden silence within, and the secretary rose from his table. Familiar faces turn d to me, but they looked at me in silence, as if a question were on their lips, as if they expected something.

Faithful, brave women! In this moment I felt that after all everything was not lost. What we had sown could not be trampled down, the flames we had lit could not be extinguished.

A young girl looked in and nodded. “Soldiers are gathering in front of the house…”

We began to hurry. One gathered the list of names, another threw our appeals into a basket: “There is a corner of my house where they won’t look for them, I shall hide them there.” Another tied some documents together: “My husband will hide them somewhere in the National Museum.”

“I will take these to a decorator who has hidden many other dangerous documents,” said the secretary.

I wrote a farewell letter to my collaborators at the long table on which I had done so much work. “We won’t dissolve and we won’t cease to exist. Let everyone continue our work as best she can till we meet again. And if there is any trouble and anyone is persecuted, say that I am the cause of all.”

A girl leant against a cupboard and covered her eyes, while two others dragged a heavy basket through the door: it contained our office outfit. Suppressed sobs were audible near the wall underneath the high crucifix. We shook hands, no one said a word, and they let me go alone. But when I turned back from the door, I saw they were all looking after me.

The guardians of the house were some quiet, gentle nuns. I knocked at their door and the Mother Superior opened it as if she expected me.

“I thank you for your hospitality and pray your forgiveness if our presence brings you misfortune.”

“Nothing happens but what God wills,” answered the nun, with a resigned expression on her gentle face bordered with white veiling.

Meanwhile the soldiers had retired from the vicinity of the house, so I, as usual, bent my way towards home. Only when I reached the beginning of my street did I realize what I was doing. It was too late to turn back. Something attracted me painfully, as though my heart were attached to an invisible thread which was being drawn rapidly towards the further end of the street. There it was that I used to turn in other times when I felt weary. If only I could go there, just for the time necessary to open the door, look in, and nod. And the thread pulled me harder and harder, with ever increasing tension. I crossed the street. Just one more step to be nearer. Just one more! As I leant forward I put my hand to the wall of a strange house. For an instant I perceived our entrance and saw the windows shining above. I looked at each of them separately. The fifth was that of a room of many memorable evenings, my mother’s window. I bowed to it, as if in greeting. Someone quite near to me bowed at the same time. What was that? It was only my shadow that followed my movements on the sunlit wall. Had anybody observed me? How ridiculous I must have seemed! With hastened steps, very fast, I returned to those who had given me shelter.

Hours followed which have escaped my memory. News from the impenetrable tangle filtered through in the afternoon. The town has become more and more strange and incomprehensible: it has put its neck into the halter while talking of reconquering the country. Reliable news is now obtainable of Károlyi’s resignation, and the proceedings of the ministers’ Council have been divulged by journalists. Before the meeting Károlyi had a long secret talk with Kunfi; thence Kunfi proceeded directly to the prison, where he made formal compact with Béla Kun and the Communists in the name of the Social Democratic Party. The agreement was drawn up in writing. Meanwhile, in the old House of Parliament, Pogány-Schwarz proclaimed the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. After that everything went quickly: barracks, arsenals and munition depots had already been given up to the Communists. Now the post office and the telegraph have come into their power.

Kunfi obtained from Károlyi an order for the release of Béla Kun and his fellow prisoners; he then drove to fetch them and they left their prison, as Hungary’s allpowerful masters, to occupy the sleeping capital.

Meanwhile Károlyi was sitting with his Countess and the former Prime Minister Berinkey in a room of the PrimeMinisterial Palace. The town was getting restless in the dark night. Wrapped in a blanket, Károlyi shivered and asked what was happening out there. When he was told that his proclamation had already been read in the Workers’ Council he asked sleepily, “What proclamation?”

“Why, your resignation!”

“Impossible! I scarcely remember what it contained, I was so hurried to sign it. Its publication must be prevented.”

An official told him that he was too late. “It is already being printed by the papers and will appear in the morning.” Károlyi stammered that he had no intention of withdrawing it, he only wanted to alter some passages. But the Communists had taken good care that by then it should have already been telephoned to Vienna. The wires carried the news of Károlyi’s resignation and his disgrace, and the document, as edited by Kéri-Krammer, is preserved for the edification of a horrified posterity.

This is not a tale, not a figment of imagination devised to make people’s flesh creep. In the night of the 21st of March Károlyi stood with his narrow head bent to one side, his hollow chest heaving, in the room formerly occupied by Stephen Tisza, and before the cock crowed thrice...

This morning someone met Károlyi and his wife walking on the embankment of the Danube. A big red carnation was glowing in his buttonhole, and his wife wore a bright red hat in the shape of a Phrygian cap and a red collar on her coat. Both looked happy and were laughing. “I am so pleased,” Countess Károlyi said to a friend, “Hungary has never been so happy as it is now.” At the Prime Minister’s house, when taking leave, Károlyi expressed himself in the same sense, declaring:

It must not be forgotten, that, though it may ruin a few individuals and now and then inflict hardships on certain people, it has to be borne in the interest of the community. Let us pour oil on the wheels of the new Government and let us do all in our power to make it a success, because that is the interest of the Hungarian people.

They speak like that. Adorned ostentatiously with red flowers and a red hat—wearing the hangman’s colors—these two human beings walk about after having achieved their work. One of their confidants, a Communist comrade, said of them: “Károlyi and his wife wanted a revolution that he might become the President of the Republic. Now they want Bolshevism that in the reaction which they hope will follow in its suit they may rule as autocrats.” And the confidant grinned as he spoke. Is this the solution of their enigma? I don’t know. Those who say so have stirred the witches’ cauldron with them.

Suddenly I saw Béla Kun. I saw him as he had appeared to me on New Year’s Eve at the barracks when he went to incite the soldiers. Károlyi let him, Pogány helped him. Now they sit all together. And Számuelly is with them, so are Kunfi, Landler and Böhm. They have not yet recovered from the first shock: their good fortune has surpassed their wildest expectations. Even in their dreams they had never hoped for so much.

At Limanova and at Doberedo the Hungarians showed themselves obstinate heroes; who would have thought that they would so easily bend their heads under the yoke?

The all-powerful Peoples’ Commissaries are already moving. The people are crowding in front of the editorial offices of ‘The Red Newspaper,’ where Számuelly’s belongings are being packed on a carriage. Béla Kun too is leaving the two rooms which he had hired with Russian money under the name of Dr. Sebestyén. Whither are they going? Into the royal castle? Into the Prime Minister’s palace, or elsewhere? They have the widest possible choice: everything is theirs.

There was a knock at my door. One friend after another came in bringing news. Béla Kun has sent Communist agitators all over the country. They drive through the villages in motor-cars, beflagged in red, and shout: “The Dictatorship of the Proletariat has been proclaimed! Kill the gentle-folk!” A new order has been issued: it is forbidden to wear arms; even revolvers have to be delivered to the authorities. Only the ‘reliable people,’ Red soldiers, factory guards and workmen’s levies, are allowed weapons. The shops remain closed: their goods are declared common property. The newspapers are to be communized or prohibited. The buildings of the conservative Budapesti Hirlap have been occupied by the editorial staff of ‘The Red Newspaper.’ Armed men occupy the tables, and on the front of the building the Red flag floats.

A message reached me from Elisabeth Kállay: she and her family have gone into the country and she asked me to come to them. But I shook my head; tomorrow I return to my mother.      

Many have left town. Those who could went by train, others fled by carriage, on foot, by whatever means they could manage. All traces of them disappear—they simply exist no longer. One political party after another pronounces its extinction. The general officers and high officials have disappeared from the scene. Nobody attempts to raise a dam against the deluge, though yesterday a sluice-gate might have stopped it.

October 31st has returned like a haunting spectre and we live the evil day again. Then the trap was baited with the device: ‘Independent Hungary,’ now it is: ‘Territorial Integrity.’ The whole thing is like the semi-conscious feeling during a nightmare that one has dreamt the same horrors before.

Where are those who used to be always ready to give advice to the King in Schönbrunn and the halls of the Vienna Burg? Why do they not advise our unfortunate nation now? And where are now those who during the war were ready to order thousands ‘over the top’ into the jaws of death whenever a single trench was in danger? Where is my whole haughty race which used to go so proudly, singing a merry tune, to face death on foreign fields? Why does it stand now, with glaring eyes, inactive, on our fields at home? Since Károlyi’s treason, four and a half months have passed. And this new danger finds us again without a leader, without organization. Running shapes are in flight. Shadows are disappearing in the distance, shadows which once were thought the great realities of Hungary. And those who stay with us, in offices, in poor officers’ quarters, are but hungry, ragged, grey little shadows with bended heads.

Wherever the red hand of Bolshevism has grasped the rod of power it has always raised a spirit of resistance. The streets of Moscow, Petrograd, Helsingfors, Berlin and Altona have run with the hot human blood of revolt—Budapest alone has submitted in dizzy apathy. Is the hideous enchantment more powerful here than elsewhere? Here, where in the time of Károlyi’s revolution there were no more than two hundred and sixty thousand organized workers and even yesterday no more than five thousand Communists? What has happened? Austrian bugles have called on Hungarian troops for too many charges during the war. Those who might have saved us today are dead.

I felt a desperate longing for action: to do something even if one had to die in the effort, to do something which would break the charm and free the energies benumbed by its humiliating spell! I clenched my fists and shook my head in frenzy; it cannot remain like this. Tomorrow –tomorrow I shall go home. And wearily I shut my tired eyes. The hours dragged on so slowly that they never seemed to come to an end. Night was falling. The lamp was lit in the next room. The street door was locked;... What was that? The slamming of it resounded as if a lid had been banged violently on a giant box. And we are all sitting in the box and waiting helplessly for our fate to be decided out there. As long as the house doors were open the houses along the street seemed to hold each other by the hand, and if one had got into trouble the slightest movement would have been enough to warn the others. That is so no longer. When the doors are shut the houses release each other’s hands and each is left to itself with its own misfortune.

Out there in the dark threatening streets the stolen motors are racing to and fro without a stop, carrying treacherous plans, hostile orders, all over the town. And behind the doors no one is safe until these plans and orders have decided his fate.

It was just before midnight when the bell rang in the ante-room. Its sound choked the breath in our throats. Zsigmondy went out to open the door. It was all right: only my brother Béla had sent me a message not to go out tomorrow till he had spoken to me.

Then we retired for a restless sleep. A lamp was burning on the table of the night nursery; my bed was made, but I sat for a long time on its edge, waiting like a patient in the surgeon’s waiting room. There was a smell of printer’s ink somewhere: if only one could read in these times, I thought. There was a newspaper on the table. No, not that. I turned from it in disgust. I wanted to escape the present.

How often have I found consolation in books during sad hours! But is there a book that could lull the present sorrows to rest? I remembered having read Faust during a great storm at sea till the night had passed, and during an evil night of the war my mother and I had read Toldi till the morning came. I wondered if today the armed knight could carry me off with him as he rides to Buda to fight a last fight for Hungary’s honor, to kiss faithfully great King Louis’s hand? I shook my head. Was there nothing? Hamlet, with visionary raving eyes, came and went, but did not arrest me. Niels Lyne and The Idiot, and rusty, armored Don Quixote.

A patrol passed under the window. A soldier pulled his bayonet over a corrugated shutter as if sharpening it for some future victim. The others laughed, then they went on. Silence followed, the silence of a huge wicked town that gapes.

How long will it last? Why can I not think of anything else? If I were at home now I would count my books to pass the time. One, two, three... I imagined myself faking an old volume from the shelf. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. What good is that? At the other end of my bookcase there is another book in a parchment binding as smooth and cool as ivory: the Iliad. I thought of it—I had bought it in Siena, a long time ago. Bright, great heroes, Homeric songs, would mean nothing to me now. And Dante. No, I do not want him. His Inferno knows nought of the tortures we endure.

The horn of a solitary motor resounded through the night, and volleys were fired in the direction of the barracks. Quietly, so as to make no noise, I began to walk up and down in the nursery. There were books lying about among the toys; picture-books, colored animals, big, funny alphabets. I looked at several; and thus a much used, shabby story book came into my hand.

I sat back on the edge of the bed, the book open. It brought to me the memory of holidays, old Sundays, mild childish illnesses... Someone is reassuring me, kisses me, hushes me and reads in a subdued voice at my bedside, strokes the hair from my forehead... The pages turn quickly. And where neither Goethe nor Arany nor Dante nor Kant could succeed in carrying away my thoughts this revolutionary night, the eternal fairy-tale, that consoler of children, of sick and of suffering, triumphed.

 

 

 

II

March 23rd.

ONE gets the impression that things have been like this for ever so long, though it all started only the day before yesterday. Good Friday was just two days ago. Today is Sunday—but not Easter. The resurrection has failed and the grave-diggers sit grinning on the tomb.

In some churches the bells were ringing, in others the people had gone to Mass, my brother’s message kept me at home. Again there was a newspaper lying on the table. In huge black letters Béla Kun’s proclamation to the proletariats of the world was glaring at me: “To Everybody!” It was revolutionary incendiarism, inciting hatred. In their old-fashioned way the church bells appealed above the roofs for love and goodwill. Meanwhile the wireless had spread broadcast the news of Hungary’s shame and misfortune. And from Moscow there came the triumphant answer. It is published in The People’s Voice:

This afternoon at five o’clock the Hungarian Soviet Republic got into wireless communication with the Russian Soviet. The Hungarian Soviet called Comrade Lenin to the apparatus. Twenty minutes later: Moscow answered: “Lenin speaking. Request Comrade Béla Kun should come to wireless station.” But Béla Kun was at the meeting of the People’s Commissaries, so another comrade answered from the wireless station: “Last night the Hungarian Proletariat seized all powers, established the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, and greets you as the leader of the International Proletariat. The Social Democratic Party has adopted the Communist point of view and the two parties have united. We call ourselves the Hungarian Socialist Party. We ask for instructions in this matter. Béla Kun is Commissary for Foreign Affairs. The Hungarian Soviet offers the Russian Soviet a defensive and offensive alliance. Fully armed, we turn against all the enemies of the Proletariat and ask for information concerning the military situation.”

At nine in the evening Moscow called again:

Lenin speaking... Hearty greetings to the Hungarian Soviet’s Proletarian Government, in particular to Comrade Béla Kun. I have just communicated your message to the Congress of the Communist Party of Bolshevik Russia. Enormous enthusiasm... we will send a report on the military situation as soon as possible… A permanent wireless connection between Budapest and Moscow is absolutely necessary.

With Communist greetings,

Lenin.

‘Lenin speaking’... How terrible these two words sound; how terrible the deathly silence that follows them! ‘Lenin speaking’... So he is there now, with his bald head bent sideways, his enigmatic smile frozen on his broad mouth, his Kalmuk eyes open wide and his nostrils expanded as though he smelt blood. ‘Lenin speaking’… And Trotsky is there too, his bestial, cruel face peering over us; his mouth broadens and the red beard on his chin shakes. All the other Russian Jewish tyrants are there too, and they wave their bloody hands. They may give their orders; their lieutenants will obey, and we shall live or die according to their good pleasure and instructions.

My brother Béla came into the room and I learned from him that I could not go home any more. In hasty excited sentences he told me that yesterday evening when he had gone to see our mother the glaring lamps of a big car had suddenly lit up the dark street. It stopped in front of the next house, though this has no entrance from our street. Three men dismounted from the car and kept our street door under observation.

“Mother’s housekeeper has been talking to them this afternoon, probably to inform them that you have left. She had scarcely returned when the car pulled up before our door and the men asked for you. They wanted to come up to our flat. They insisted, affirming that they came from the police, and had to see you personally. The concierge told them that you had left town and banged the door in their faces. The car, however, remained where it was and kept the house under observation. The men only left at dawn, hoping to see you return.”

While he told me all this I had a feeling as though an ugly hand were groping for me in the dark, trying to get hold of me, but missing me, passing beside me. It was the hand of Lenin.

My brother said, following up his own thoughts: “You cannot remain with the Zsigmondys. It is impossible for you to go home. They informed the concierge that they would come and fetch you today.”

My mother’s face appeared before me, a haunted expression in her blue eyes. It would be terrible for her to see me arrested. What was I to do? I had sent a message to Count Stephen Bethlen this morning, but he had already left home. Everybody for whom I send has disappeared. The threads are broken. How shall I start? Left to themselves, what can women do at a time like this?

I had not noticed that the Secretary of the Women’s Union had entered. He told me that in a few days it would be impossible to travel without a permit and advised me to leave town while it was still possible. The Kállays had been prevented by the crowds at the station from leaving by train today, but would start tomorrow, and invited me to go with them.

I hesitated; but, after all, it was only a question of a few days. So as soon as I was alone I wrote to my mother and told her I should leave next day, though I did not yet know my destination, and asked her to spend the evening with me.

Hours have never passed so slowly. When it was quite dark I escaped from the house. A cold wind blew through the empty streets. The tired town had once more resigned itself to its fate and now suffered in silence; the posters alone spoke; huge sheets covered the walls. The same words everywhere: Proletariat... Dictatorship... Proletariat... The broken street lamps had not been repaired, and the pavement was covered with refuse: for days the streets have not been swept.

The staircase was in darkness. A single lamp was burning in my sister’s sitting-room. And there, in the dim light, I saw my mother again. I was shocked by her appearance: she seemed to have become shorter since we had parted and her face was much thinner. Did she fret for me? Was I the cause of this change? Never in my life did I feel so moved in her presence as then.

And yet she seemed quite calm, and on one occasion she even laughed, with her own hearty laughter. We talked of all sorts of things, except the fact that I should no longer be with them on the morrow. The children seemed quite happy, chattering among themselves in a corner. The hours passed so happily for me that now and then I had the illusion that the old times had returned for a moment before disappearing forever.

One or the other would say: “At most it can last a week or two.” Or again: “Colonel Vyx has been locked up and an English officer has been assaulted in the street. Insults of this kind will surely not be taken lying down by the Great Powers. It is impossible that the Entente should suffer the establishment of Bolshevism in Hungary. She knew how to send ultimatums demanding lines of demarcation, so that the Roumanians and her other friends could loot at leisure, now she is sure to display more energy when her own interests are at stake.”

“Let us put no hope in anybody but ourselves,” said my brother-in-law. “It was the Entente who brought us to this.”

One of my nephews said: “That is the reason why so many people are rather pleased that the Communists display hostility to the Entente. Who knows, perhaps our territorial integrity...”

“Don’t expect any good from these people,” I interrupted. “Among the apostles of Communism there may be some idealists, but those who apply it practically are all scoundrels. It is impossible, man cannot withstand nature.”

Suddenly someone asked if I had decided where I was going to. Should I accept the Kállays’ invitation, or should I attempt to get across the river Ipoly to Pressburg and thence into foreign territory?

“Do the Kállays realize what this invitation means in these days? “

“You must not accept it otherwise,” my mother said.

“Wherever you go, you must mislead those who are after you,” said my brother-in-law.” Write a letter and have it posted in another part of the country.”

My mother rose: “It is time to go.”

My heart stopped beating. But she held her head high and there were no tears in her eyes. Only when leading her down the stairs did I feel that she leaned more heavily on me than she used to. Who will lead her when I am gone? My nephew, Alexander Eperjessy, took her home. I asked him to occupy my room and stay with my mother, otherwise I should not be able to tear myself away.

“Don’t worry about me,” mother said; “and don’t you come back till you can do so openly and without danger.”

I have been with her almost daily as long as I can remember, yet it was only this evening that I really learned to appreciate her. She had never asked for anything and yet was always ready to give. She never spoke of herself and listened to everybody. She had no words of endearment, she kissed vaguely and her arms were rarely caressing. She was never demonstrative, the seat of her affections was her heart and not her lips. And while we were walking side by side through the dark night on our short, sad road, I felt that if this heart were one day to stop, then mine would throb but haltingly ever after. We had passed the house which had given me shelter.

I thought my mother had not noticed it, being accustomed to go on towards home. But suddenly she stopped, and, as was her wont on rare occasions, she drew my head to her quickly and gave me a kiss which went half into the air.

“Now, my dear, God bless you!”