Kornel blushed. "So far I ... I have not considered it timely."

"It is. You have land, you are held in high esteem, there is nothing to prevent you from starting a family. Years unmarried are years fallow. Time you wed."

Kornel lacked any experience in this field. He had all his life been ashamed of his crooked legs and would never, if he could help it, undress in the presence of another. Racked by temptations of the body, he often felt his sap rising, especially at the break of day, so that it was enough for him to lie on his stomach for it to spill forth. It happened to him on horseback, too. Yet he had not touched a woman. Just once, in England, after much wrestling with his conscience, he had paid for a whore, only to change his mind after all and snatch back half his money as he chased the cursing, wailing wench from his rooms. He rarely sought out society-not that on the Galocz plateau there was much society to be sought-while in town he was still given the cold shoulder; behind his back, his rolled German r' r's were mocked unmercifully.

The next time they met the General suggested one of his nieces, who came with a decent dowry. Kornel did not feel that he could say no this offer, and in any event trusted his patron implicitly.

"Well then, when can I take you to inspect the young lady?"

"There is no need. She who pleases my good master needs must please me."

The wedding was held later in the year. General Onczay was best man. Janka Windisch certainly pleased Kornel, her pale skin, especially, and the thick bunches of flaxen hair. The Windisches were barons of Austrian stock, whose alliance with the Onczays, initially displeasing to both sides, now dated back a century. The notion of Kornel Sternovszky as groom met with hardly a murmur of dissent, in part because General Onczay's recommendation carried a good deal of weight.

The honeymoon was spent with the Windisches' kinsmen in Tergestum, the Adriatic Trieste. They spent some uncomfortable days jolting in the carriage and arrived exhausted at the manor house on the hillside, which in virtually every direction offered a wide and wonderful panorama of the sea. Kornel was so spellbound by the endless body of water that he spent their first night in a deckchair on the canopied balcony. His newlywed waited for him all night. The following night Janka took her husband by the hand and led him to the bedchamber's four-poster. Kornel halted uncertainly, eyeing the fireplace ablaze with thick logs. Janka turned her back and removed one layer after another of her outer-and then underwear. Her naked back had an ivory sheen that glinted with the reflected light of the flames. She slipped under the Venetian lace sheets. "Husband mine, what is keeping you?"

Kornel stood stock-still. Desire flared within him, yet he did not follow his bride into the bed.

"First put out the light!"

"You are ashamed in front of me?"

Kornel did not reply, but himself turned down the wick of the oil-lamp. The chief difficulty posed by his crooked legs was how to wriggle out of regular trousers, which is why for his everyday wear he chose the lawn pantaloons sported by the stable lads. He rolled over to Janka, the duvet cool to the touch. He was on fire, trembling. He had no idea how to proceed. No one would have thought him so wet behind the ears. General Onczay's parting words had been: "See you take care of the main thing!"

Janka had been vouchsafed a certain amount of information by her mother and her aunt, the gist of which had been that it was up to the man to take the first step, she had but to endure and to maneuver herself into the best position possible to alleviate the pain. So she waited, patiently. Quite some time passed. She could hear sharp intakes of breath from her husband. Summoning up her courage, she touched him on the shoulder. He responded in kind, and their hands began, slowly and hesitantly at first, an age-old dialogue of discovery, surprised at encountering this part or that of the body, as if one part said: "Goodness, is that what that's like?" and the tenderly touched part responded: "Indeed, come and get to know me better!"

The tinder within caught fire, veins and arteries began to pound, simmering streams of air commingled, astonished sounds split lips asunder. Kornel was almost beside himself. And then it happened.

Images, living dioramas. Scenes not unfamiliar, scenes he seemed to have seen somewhere before, a long time ago. The wedding night of some others. In the first tableau a lumbering figure nervously fingered the precious red stone inlay of his belt buckle and Kornel simply knew he was seeing his father, long dead, on his wedding night; the young woman with the masses of curly hair could be none but his mother, that crooked smile having given birth to his own. There followed a man with a deformed spine and jet-black eyes and hair, certainly his grandfather: only the furniture was different, the expression on the face and the hesitancy were exactly the same. Then his grandmother Gisella, hitherto glimpsed only in a locket as a young girl. It was her death that had turned grandfather's hair white. And now it was his great-grandparents, in their hastily built wooden cabin, high in the snow-covered hills, their troubled faces lit by the billowing flames of the open hearth. And so it went on, back through great-great-grandparents, and their parents, and theirs, back to unknown ancestors, back twelve generations. Kornel stared and stared, the images of the past burning themselves into his memory.

"Something the matter?" asked Janka.

Kornel's smile was reassuring: "Never in my life have I had such a moment of grace."

He was dimly aware that he had lived through such a deluge of images at some earlier time, but he could not remember when. He committed what he had seen to the pages of the folio.

In the course of their married life Kornel gave his wife unsparingly of the joys of Venus, but that descent into the realms of the past was never to be repeated. Why was it on the second day of his honeymoon that this world was illuminated? It was a question to which he was never to find the answer.

Later, a young man and skillful, as he rode with his flintlock for the first time into the depths of the forest he had just inherited, he was equally unsure what made him announce in the middle of a clearing, with great solemnity: "In this sacred place we shall set up a manufactory for glass." He repeated these words, changing only "this" to "that," when he reached home.

"Why?" asked Janka.

"So that we can trade in light," he replied, his face transfigured.

Neither his wife's sensible arguments nor his estate manager's facts and figures could dent his resolve, still less the fact that even tinted spectacles could not protect his weak eyes from the glassworks' incandescent furnace. He imported two master glassmakers from Saxony and within a year the first glass panes for wooden window frames were in production. After these came glass bottles, containers for shipping wine, wine decanters, and countless other glass products. The goods sold well, orders came in from all over the country. Janka asked him a hundred times: "How on earth did you know?"

He dared not admit that his knowledge was unearthly. Now, on his deathbed, when he could no longer communicate what he could see to his wife and three sons, the flow of images unexpectedly began anew. Finally he understood what it was that, at the age of thirty, and as a successful stud-farmer, had made him build a glassworks in the middle of the forest inherited from his wife's kinsmen. There unrolled before him in a series of drab tableaux the history of the clan of the Csillags. He could see his father, Peter Csillag, and his father's father, Pal Csillag, who had ended up in Bavaria and made his living as a shoemaker, but had previously owned a prosperous glassworks in the Slovak Highlands destroyed by the Ottoman Turk. He saw his paternal great-grandfather Janos fleeing his home as a youth and then being killed in one of the Turkish campaigns of the legendary Miklos Zrinyi: a cannonball tore him apart as he was scraping the mud off his boots.

He could see himself, as a boy, clinging onto a starved dog with matted fur. Yes ... then, a long time ago, there in the clearing he had had a vision, until he lost consciousness, but he had not realized that he should have preserved on paper these seemingly chaotic images. And now he saw Grandpa Czuczor, burying some kind of casket at the bottom of the garden, under the rose bushes.

"The treasure! Grandpa's treasure! The roses ..." he wanted to cry out. No words issued from his lips.

His grieving relatives heard a rattle from his throat and thought Kornel Sternovszky was no longer for this world. Someone placed a damp dressing on his brow; the cool droplets ran down his temples. Exhausted, he closed his eyes. He could hear his loved ones whispering, the swish of skirts and coats on the wooden floor; this troubled him. He thought again what a blessing it would be if they just let him alone. He saw the dog Male, then his sole companion, dying in his arms. Perhaps Male, too, would have preferred to take leave of the world by himself.

He had been scared to death when the sky had darkened in the middle of the day, when the sun was swallowed up by blackness. Later he was told that there had been an eclipse. His eyes never recovered from that burning; thereafter they watered frequently and were always weak.

The final tally, then: in the course of my life I received from God the wondrous gift of the Vision no fewer than three times. It is no use sorrowing that the third came so late. Boundless is His power, inscrutable are His ways. Might I hope that His kindness will extend to my children also?

He felt a leaden tiredness in his limbs. He arranged his arms across his chest as he had seen on sarcophagi. My time is done. I give myself into His hands. Fiat voluntas tua Domine Fiat voluntas tua Domine.

Why did he go and throw that boiling tea in the master glassmaker's face? And why, to cap that, did he go and draw his sword on him? After all he, Kornel Sternovszky, was hardly a distinguished swordsman, whereas the brute of a master glassmaker was said to be a veteran of a dozen duels. At the first clash of blades, the glassmaker had wrenched the weapon from his hand, with the same downward movement stabbing him deep in the chest. He could feel distinctly the foam of blood spatter across his chest.

When he was four, he had been found by good people-traveling Gypsies-with barely a sign of life in his body. As he recovered, there were days when he could only howl and scowl, and it was weeks before he was speaking again. Now, as he is laid out, he can no longer make the smallest sound. Now there comes to cover him again the odious dankness of the dark.

II.

THE BURNING ORB OF THE SUN BLAZES A PATH ACROSS THE heavens, like some truculent sovereign sultry on high. The crops are chiffon scarves waving in the wind. The air is pale blue and restless with flurrying things: a broken twig, a fluttering feather, small scraps of cloth, grains of sand, fallen rose blossoms, as if Mother Earth sought to shake off whatever she deemed superfluous. As the air warms up, so the countryside fills with the joyous sounds of nature. From the stalls and stables sounds of braying and grunting and neighing fill the air at all hours of the day. Birds burst into song, as do the children in many a house. heavens, like some truculent sovereign sultry on high. The crops are chiffon scarves waving in the wind. The air is pale blue and restless with flurrying things: a broken twig, a fluttering feather, small scraps of cloth, grains of sand, fallen rose blossoms, as if Mother Earth sought to shake off whatever she deemed superfluous. As the air warms up, so the countryside fills with the joyous sounds of nature. From the stalls and stables sounds of braying and grunting and neighing fill the air at all hours of the day. Birds burst into song, as do the children in many a house.

That year estate manager Karoly Bodo was determined that the maypole would be of quite outstanding height. He took the trouble personally to select from the thick of the forests of the estate the tallest of their magnificent maples, which took the foresters hours to fell. Four of his men had endless trouble hauling it out onto the track, where they could at last maneuver it onto a cart. For displaying the maypole, manager Bodo had picked a spot on the gentle slope in front of the tiny artificial lake in the park of Castle Forgach. There were groans aplenty from the men: there was no stonier ground in the entire estate and they would have to dig extra deep if the winds were not to bring it down on the gardener's lodge or, on the other side, the delicate tracery of the wooden bridge's balustrade. All in vain. Manager Bodo brooked no opposition: his word was law.

Manager Bodo knew what he was doing in insisting on this site. Planted here, the maypole could be seen with equal ease from the road, from the garden, and from the spacious first-floor terrace, the venue for most of the festivities.

The delicate curly leaves of the estate's renowned two-hundred-year-old walnut trees had turned a deep green and, as every autumn, manager Bodo had had the crop carted down to the plain where they fetched a very acceptable price. The trees yielded walnuts the size of smallish hen's eggs. Their shells were so thin they were almost transparent, and it was the work of a moment even for a small child to crack them open. Manager Bodo himself was particularly fond of walnuts and could hardly wait for them to ripen, sometimes having them shaken down as early as July and delightedly consuming his share of the crop dipped in honey or crumbled onto strips of pasta, or even raw, keeping a handful stuffed in his pocket. He liked to have something to chew on: pumpkin seeds, a sweetmeat of some kind, or even the stem of a pipe.

Manager Bodo had served the Count's estates for many a year. A distant relative of the Countess's mother, he had been taken on after her premature death, more or less out of kindness, but with his industrious nature and sharp mind for business, he had quickly proved he needed no favors. He presented just one enduring problem: he could not stand music. He had been born cloth-eared-in both ears. Count Forgach and his wife, however, could not live without the sound of music, and their many visitors and guests were entertained by concerts, amateur operas, and choral singing every weekend, especially around Whitsuntide and in the Christmas season.

On Tuesday mornings manager Bodo would meet with the master of the Count's music, whose proper title was "maestro," to learn of the program planned for the weekend, and invariably argued against performances by visiting musicians, as he hated to spend money needlessly-even other people's money. The Count had in his permanent employ no fewer than seventeen musicians, including two singers; why could the caterwauling not be done by them, for the not inconsiderable annual sum they were paid? However, it was the maestro who tended to win the argument, as the Count was invariably on his side.

"I am all ears," began manager Bodo.

"The pianoforte needs attention. I've already sent word to master Schattel. It will be 80 dinars plus the cost of transport," said the master of music.

"So be it. Anything else?"

"Accommodation to be arranged for the scholars from Rimaszombat, coming for the choral singing."

"Number of persons?"

"I have not yet had word."

"Round figures: Five? Ten? A hundred?"

"Perhaps fifteen. Expected Friday night."

Manager Bodo nodded grudgingly. "And what can that lot do that the village lads' choir cannot?"

"Polyphony. Madrigals, on sight." As the light of understanding failed to dawn on manager Bodo's face, the master of music began to explain: "They will perform from Gyorgy Marothy's psalter, we shall accompany them. They know the music by heart, the bass will accommodate to the tenor, the alto, and the treble ... you will hear, master Bodo, what a glorious sound they make!"

Manager Bodo was sure only of one thing: that he would not hear. As soon as the concert began he would slip out into the kitchen, saying that he had to oversee the preparations for supper.

By the time the master of music left, the lads had raised the maypole. It lifted up manager Bodo's heart to see the colorful ribbons on the branches dancing and shimmering in the dew-laden breeze. The master of the Count's music was also watching the scene from the garden. The air is too damp, he thought, the instruments might be damaged if the air's not dry. But why should it not be dry? We have a whole week to go.

"Maestro!" Count Forgach was gesturing from the terrace.

The master of music bowed low towards him.

"A word, if you would be so kind. Broken your fast yet?"

Sweeping up his papers in his arms, the master of music loped over to the Count. "Indeed I have, your grace," he panted. He could see that the Count had just risen from the breakfast table: at the end of his moustache there hung a small piece of egg-yolk.

"What will be the leading attraction at the ball?"

"May it please your grace to recall that we have invited the choir of the Rimaszombat Collegium."

"Ah, yes. What is it that they will be singing?"

"Psalms, most splendid psalms, with orchestral accompaniment."

"Psalms, yes ..." the Count nodded, a little unhappily. "Any soloists?" He was remembering the pleasure he had taken last time in the performance of that Polish soprano.

"Not on this occasion ... Manager Bodo is none too pleased with this visit as it is."

"What does that matter? It is I who pay, not manager Bodo! See to it at once."

"Your grace's wish is my command."

The master of the Count's music hurried back to the manager to report the good news. Though he took some pleasure in getting his own back on the manager, he truly had no idea where to turn for a decent singer at such short notice. He asked the manager for a conveyance, and was offered, with some diffidence, his carriage and pair. By the time the maestro reached Varad, it was late evening. He roused the conservatory's gatekeeper, who recognized him and opened up the visitor's lodge and even sent up a cold supper. The maestro had spent eight years at the conservatory of music. Early the next day he presented himself at the dean's office. The bespectacled clerk failed to recognize him and made him wait a good quarter of an hour, which earned him a royal dressing-down from his employer: "Making master Titusz Angelli kick his heels, eh? Our most distinguished scholar and musician? The deputy head of our old boys' association?"

"Begging your gracious pardons, your honors," he said, bowing and scraping in fear to all points of the compass.

The maestro and the dean embraced, each patting the other gently on the back.

"Well, my dear Titusz, how goes it? What brings you to these parts?"

"I have come to find a soloist, a solo singer."

The dean ushered him into his office where, as for the last twenty-six years, the scent from a pot of basil filled the air. The dean had a weakness for delicate fragrances. The maestro settled himself on a stool and recounted the Count's wishes, which he had somewhat misunderstood, for the Count certainly had in mind a female singer. The dean shook his head: trained singers do not grow on trees, and there was no one currently studying at the conservatory whom he would dare recommend as worthy of the distinguished guests at the Count's ball.

But he did have an idea. The wandering minstrels of arpad Javorffy had recently come to town; perhaps in their ranks there was someone suitable. The bespectacled clerk was at once dispatched to make inquiries. The company had already set up their tents in the market place the previous evening.

It was around noon by the time arpad Javorffy presented himself at the dean's office. Despite a great deal of bowing and much sweeping of his headgear across the floor he was unable to help, as his company offered only circus-style entertainments. He was about to propose his equestrienne Lola, who sang earthy Italian songs while playing the mandolin and riding a dapple-gray, but the dean would not even let him finish the list of her accomplishments: "Out of the question."

As the disappointed Javorffy departed-he had been hoping to get at least a luncheon out of the invitation-the secretary suggested they ought perhaps to consider Balint Sternovszky.

"Goodness me. No," said the dean immediately.

"Who is this Balint Sternovszky?" inquired the maestro.

"He's a landowner in this area. A curious figure. Even his house is not exactly run of the mill ... It were best to show it you. You will not have seen its like."

They climbed into the conservatory's brake. Two and a half hours' riding in the puszta puszta brought them to the narrow path where a carved sign informed them: brought them to the narrow path where a carved sign informed them: CASTLE STERNOVSZKY-KEEP OUT "He is not noted for his hospitality," remarked the dean. He instructed the driver to wait for them and set off along the path, using both hands to raise his cape high, as in places the grass was spattered with mud. The maestro followed doubtfully. Soon the building came into sight. The maestro had to rub his eyes. An Italian turret in the shape of a five-pointed star stood in the thick of the forest, but without ramparts. It was as if storms had ripped it from a fortress elsewhere and dropped it in the middle of this wild terrain. Instead of windows the gray walls sported only embrasures, slits for shooting arrows. A long ladder as to a hen coop led up to the first-floor entrance, which was more like the narrow opening of a cave than a door. They climbed up. A copper bell dangled at the end of a cord; they gave it a pull. There was nothing to indicate that it had been heard within. The dean, a noted bass in his day, boomed out: "Anyone within?"

"Who may that be?" came the reply.

The dean gave both their names.

"What business have you in these parts?"

"We have come to see milord Sternovszky, our business being singing!"

A deal of shuffling could be heard behind the wooden structure barring the entrance, and soon this moved aside to let them enter the turret. There was total darkness, so at first they could see nothing. Two flambeaus blazed on the walls. A hump-backed figure with a soot-lined face led the way up the spiral stairs: "Sorr's steward. Sorr will be with yer honners presently."

To the maestro it was like climbing inside a beehive. They reached a level where there was some planking, a bare, unadorned dining area, with two long benches lining one corner and a dining table between them, the table supported on four thick pillars of the hardest oak, with wide footrests which in that region they called "swelpmegods." At the head of the table was placed a large armchair similarly furnished with a footrest; it was practically a throne, with the family coat-of-arms carved in the wood of the back: a precious horn-shaped stone splitting a rock in twain.

The steward offered them seats and then disappeared. They remained standing. The three sooty oil-lamps barely made an impression on the semidarkness. On the far side of the dining room there was a large fireplace, burning a sizable fire. Two foxhounds lounged before it, their tongues lolling; one of them gave a bark as the strangers entered.

When Balint Sternovszky entered, the floorboards creaked under his feet. He was a well-built man, with pale skin and luxuriant chestnut-colored hair brushing his shoulders; a thick but untrimmed beard covered much of his face. He wore ceremonial garb, with lavishly embroidered hose.

"God grant you a good day."

"And you also," they responded politely.

After introductions they settled down, Balint Sternovszky taking the armchair. Though he sat very much at his ease in the chair, he still towered above those sitting on the benches below. The dean sang the praises of the maestro, who in his turn elaborated the nature of the performance that he had the honor of inviting his honor Sternovszky to participate in, should he be willing.

"What makes you so convinced of my skills as a singer?"

"It's the talk of the county," said the dean. "We thought you would very kindly give us a demonstration."

Balint Sternovszky gave a mellifluous laugh. "I might and I might not."

"What can your honor sing and in what part?"

A watch-chain dangled from Balint Sternovszky's trouser pocket, which he proceeded to withdraw; at the end of it was a deerskin-covered timepiece in the shape of an egg, the top of which he flicked open and then said: "Night is drawing on. You gentlemen will be my guests for dinner. We shall resume this conversation thereafter," and he clapped. Two servant girls entered and quickly laid the table for four. The dean did not forget his coachman, whom Sternovszky gave orders to be provided for in the lower kitchen.

Soon there appeared the lady of the house, Borbala, who at the sight of the visitors showed neither pleasure nor displeasure on her face, which reminded the maestro of a knotted breadroll. The dinner was superb. The two servant girls piled everything high on the table in the Transylvanian manner. There were loaves made with hops, beef with horseradish, fowl au poivre, and pasta with lashings of butter. The red wine, from the vintage three years back, went very well with the meal and was much praised by all.

"Your honor," began the dean, "how is it that you built your lodge so much out of the way and not in some secure town?"

"I don't trust people. They are capable of the utmost evil. It is better to withdraw. If you are not in the public eye, you will not attract trouble."

"I see what you mean," said the dean, though his eyes showed otherwise.

"And where did you learn to sing?" asked the maestro.