An excerpt from the novel ‘Swan Song’
by Miklós Vámos
Translated from the Hungarian by Ági Bori Mottern
As Lieutenant Márton faced the bayonets aimed at him, he was to remember
that blurry afternoon from the past when his uncle took him to discover light.
Flexible light! The highlight of the Flower Festival in the town’s gymnasium.
From then on, János Márton was nicknamed Jancsika the Brave in family circles, after the Lazlo the Bravepuppet show, which he had seen at least four times in the tent of a traveling sideshow that arrived for the exhibition. Before that, they would call him Jancsika, but he didn’t like that name. In addition to the moniker, Jancsika also received a small, tasseled sword, as if his father had foreseen his future career. But, in the end, he became a gunner officer instead of a hussar.
His uncle read out loud to him that the six lights were equivalent to the illuminating powers of three thousand six hundred candles. The incandescent bulbs frightened him. He didn’t care how much more beneficial they were than the gasses currently used for the streetlights. He grabbed onto his uncle’s fingers and kept pulling him away. Even the chance of seeing world-famous men among the visitors would not convince him to stay. Understandably, the unfamiliar names—Ferdinand Lesseps, Dreyfus, Delibes, Massenet—left him unmoved.
For a long time, János Márton found the use of electric current—his uncle called it elasticity—strange, and he didn’t mind the swaying flames of petroleum lamps and candles. He dismissed with a wave of his hand those who argued for modern lighting, and insisted he didn’t need that much light. If his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather could do without it, so could he.
His uncle (his mother’s younger brother) came to town for a short visit. He booked himself a suite in the classy Nádor Inn. There were indications that he favored Jancsika the Brave more than others out of the whole clan, so the child was allowed to dine—on more than one occasion—at the inn’s restaurant, in the company of his parents and his uncle. On warm summer nights the cupola was moved aside with a handy contraption, giving the starry night’s faint dawn and the singing birds a chance to enhance the dinner ambiance.
His father briefed him: If you are nice to your uncle, he’ll make you his heir, and you’ll become ein gemachter Mensch right away. Do you understand, my dear Jancsika? He nodded, although he didn’t understand. The additional information, namely that Uncle has no wife and children, because he is…well…you know…different, he understood even less. But, once again, he was afraid to ask what it meant to be different. And because of this, it’s best to keep him at arm’s length, do you understand, Jancsika? He nodded again. At arm’s length? That’s how I am with everyone anyway, he thought.
The uncle’s excessive generosity made him well known all over town. He gave large tips to the waiters, servants, and vendors. He enjoyed selecting artworks that various deliverymen had then brought to the inn and stacked on top of each other along the walls of his suite. When he completed a purchase, he never missed the opportunity to hand over his business card, adorned with a single rose. Jancsi Márton didn’t understand why he was handing out the silky and seemingly opulent cards at every turn, but he was afraid to ask.
When the uncle left for Paris, he invited the brave little boy to visit him in the city of lights. The city of lights? wondered Jancsika. Paris, then! said the uncle. He embraced the boy, then ascended the stairs that led into the lavishly furnished coach.
What is he thinking? It’s out of the question! his enraged father shouted. As soon as the uncle left on the train toward Paris, respect toward him dissipated, and he was no longer referred to as Uncle, but the (bleep) Sanyi instead.
Fancy envelopes came in the mail from Paris, and in return, ordinary letters, folded into the shapes of envelopes, were sent back. Their contents were not revealed to Jancsika. He pieced together the overheard sentence fragments and concluded that an invitation has been mentioned. His father was stubbornly against it. They finally came to the agreement that Jancsika could go, but only if his mother, whose pet name was Édes in the family circle, chaperoned him. Her husband sometimes called her Édös to match her region’s dialect; the fragile woman hailed from the outskirts of Szeged, from the Southern Great Plain of Hungary.
Édes took the preparations seriously. The carefully sorted old and newly acquired goods filled seven suitcases for the journey to France. Márton Sr. didn’t grumble about the huge amount of money spent for a change: Let the (bleep) Sanyi see that even though we’re not made of money, we don’t live from hand to mouth. Jancsika lay low. There was no reason to upset his father. Jancsika knew they didn’t really live in the land of milk and honey; the latter his father didn’t mind, but he hated milk with a passion, and even drank his coffee black.
The trip to Paris didn’t turn out to be as entertaining as Jancsika hoped, and he grew increasingly feeble during the lengthy train ride. The end of spring enshrouded Europe in an unusual heatwave for a few days, so he and his mother were sweating profusely as they listened to the wheezing of the locomotive and the clacking of the wheels. They had to transfer in a strange town’s station house, where Édes had difficulty conversing with the helpers. Jancsika felt neither dead nor alive when he finally descended the train’s steep stairs in Paris. Uncle himself was the welcoming committee, jovially articulating the following sentence: C’est toi! Bienvenue à Paris, mon ami!—Jancsika tried to free himself from the tight embrace but, instead, his nose kept getting burrowed deeper and deeper in the rough material of his uncle’s sport coat.
From that point on, Sándor Hattyú spoke to him only in French, assuming that the child would easily absorb the melodious language of the Gauls. Jancsika Márton fought back with stubborn silence. Édes admonished her sibling to stop: Let him be! He’s too young for this!
Her efforts were rewarded with Sándor Hattyú bombarding her with detailed reminiscences about all the things he did when he was the same age as Jancsika. Adhering to his own principles, he organized for the three of them activities suitable for adults only. During these outings, Jancsika was bored to death, and it was only to quell his mother’s repeated requests that he tried with all his might to conceal his boredom, with not much success.
The only thing that made him excited was the gigantic iron tower. He could not sense from the ground how unbelievably high its top reached. Trois cent metres, said the uncle who, this time, seemed willing to convey the technical data in Hungarian, too. This is the highest structure in the world, three hundred meters tall, and I’m good friends with the architect. He’s my client and he’s waiting for us right now!
As they ascended to the top, Jancsika had a chance to learn that the tower had been built for the World’s Fair using an unparalleled technical solution that utilized twelve hundred pieces of iron plus a million pieces of nails, all of which held the tower together. Is it safe? asked Édes. Don’t worry, the uncle reassured her, this is the eighth wonder of the world.
Jancsika’s jaw dropped as they rose up in the humming glass cabin. The uncle explained that it was hydraulic. When he looked down, Jancsika felt like they were in the sky. The wind howled. His mother mumbled something about not even birds being able to fly up this high. She was a bit worried and didn’t let her son lean against the iron railing, though it enclosed the entire space and was roughly equivalent to the average height of a man.
A little later they were allowed entry to the spacious office where an old man, sporting a goatee and mustache, welcomed them with an affable handshake. Gustave Eiffel, the warm-hearted engineer!—proclaimed the uncle, like servants announcing in wealthy homes: Ladies and gentlemen, dinner is served!
Their chatter was garnished with the uncle’s obsequious laughter. Jancsika noticed the piano in the corner, carefully opened its top, and ran his fingers across the keys. Édes scolded him: Stop it! But the warm-hearted engineer signaled with a calm wave of the hand and greenlit the boy to play. Jancsika Márton pitter-pattered the segment his teacher, Ágota, had beaten into him during piano lessons. Gustave Eiffel listened with interest. Jancsika was elated to play in the sky and never missed a beat. Only he and his mother were unaware that the song was a lullaby, written by the German Johannes Brahms. The uncle announced in French and Hungarian that the genius composer lived in Vienna and gave lots of concerts in Budapest. He also wrote Hungarian dances. Dances? marveled Jancsika. Well, their music, added the uncle.
The genius engineer then talked about the famous French composer Charles Gounod, who was a frontline protester against the construction of the tower, and he had even written a petition with Dumas Jr., Maupassant, Zola, Sully Prudhomme, Rouget de Lisle—the composer of Marseillaise, the French hymn—and others, whose names he couldn’t remember. We didn’t care about them, Eiffel reminisced, but eventually I invited Charles Gounod up to this room, and when he saw the piano, he sat down and played it for me, and we became friends.
Sándor Hattyú translated all this. He also told them in Hungarian that Gustave Eiffel designed the Pesti Indóház, the stunning railway station in the heart of Budapest, from where trains left for Vienna, which is Bécs in Hungarian. All the foreign names were too much for Jancsika Márton. He was deeply touched that he could feel the same keys on the piano that the composer of the music did. Their visit in Gustave Eiffel’s office was short, but when Jancsika later invoked those memories again and again, the visit gradually grew longer in his mind.
Édes said that Sándor Hattyú’s elegant apartment was like a real museum, and everything had to be treated with special care. Let the child be and look over here! interrupted the uncle. Using a golden key, he opened the bottom drawer of a desk whose legs resembled the legs of a lion and took out an item that looked like a book covered in drapery. It turned out to be a hardcover notebook. Jancsika was allowed to thumb through the pages and study the unfamiliar handwriting, look at the drawings of trees, roots, and plants that were then followed by naked women. My goodness, Sándor, this isn’t appropriate for Jancsika! interjected Édes, to which the uncle replied: You know very well what I used to do when I was his age. He went on, but in a whisper.
The uncle called the notebook the Swan Manuscript. He said he would leave it to his nephew in his will, and he made sure to add that one day the family would find out that it’s worth a lot of money. He was eager for Jancsika to be excited, but the boy didn’t understand the weight of the will or the potential privileges the money would bring. What a bore this child is, commented Sándor Hattyú.
János Márton was convinced that his uncle must have named the manuscript Swan Manuscript after his own name—he failed to notice the long-necked birds in the drawings. Some of the letters, those distinctly curling upward from the lines, he retained in his memory as long as he lived. He had already seen similar ones somewhere else. But it didn’t dawn on him that it was the King of Hungary’s signature that began with a similar letter F. Franz Joseph, His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty, Emperor of Austria by the Grace of God, King of Hungary, Czech Republic, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Galicia, Lodomeria, Rama, Serbia, Cumania, Bulgaria, Illiria, and Jerusalem, had passed away exactly a year later. He died of old age in his own bed, his head resting comfortably on a pillow.
Lieutenant Márton, on the other hand, had died in the prime of his life. As he stood facing the bayonets aimed at him, he remembered that blurry afternoon from the past when his uncle took him to discover light. Flexible light, the highlight of the Flower Festival, held in his town’s gymnasium. Then the pages of the Swan Manuscript twirled in his mind. He was waiting for the sharp cracks and for the bullets to pierce his skin. His upper arm had been shot before during a duel, so he knew what to expect. He was surprised that the pain, increasing at lightning speed, didn’t have an end point. He then concentrated on not losing consciousness—a graduate of the Ludovika Academy had no other option but to hang in there for as long as he could. As an officer of the armed forces, he made certain to stare the defiant privates in the eye until the last moment. However, he couldn’t stop the wrinkles from forming on his forehead.
His ears picked up French words. What the hell, are they not Italian? He assumed that he was only thinking this, but he was murmuring: We are on the Italian battlefield, aren’t we? Gustave Eiffel and Uncle flashed through his mind, along with the Swan Manuscript, which, apparently, he wouldn’t inherit after all. What a mistake it was to choose a military career despite all the pleas and demands of his parents.
The shots were fired. Deep inside his last shred of consciousness he heard a sanctimonious voice from above:
You won’t be given another chance in this world.
Note from the editor:
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