"I'm lost! ... I've been bewitched!" he croaked bronchially, adding a few choice curses for good measure in the Hungarian that neither the committee nor his eminently pious wife would understand.

The citizens of Nimes, and those who had gathered here from Francaroutier, had laid substantial bets, some on the husband, some on the wife. Those who had voted for Richard Stern lost their stake when the committee's decision was made public. The marriage was speedily annulled, the Marquise reverted to being known as des Reaux, her ex-husband was forbidden to set foot on the estate, and his belongings were carted over to the parish cure's, where he found temporary lodging for a second time.

"Accept the dispensation of providence," said the reverend.

"I would appreciate it if you kept at least God out of this!"

He spent three days in Paris, saying his farewells to his friends and teachers. As he recounted the details to Academician Carmillac, the latter shook his head in disbelief. This time Richard Stern added the story of how he knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that this was indeed the woman he was destined to marry.

"Perhaps you were mistaken, and she is not, after all, the one."

Richard Stern shrugged his shoulders and again listed the attributes, like lines of a poem: "Foreign tongue, honey-colored skin, hair as black as night, a triangular birthmark above the breastbone."

As he packed his bags in Francaroutier he saw that he had acquired almost nothing apart from books. He bought a cart with four reliable horses, so that he would not have to depend on the nags of the post-houses on the way. Before he finally turned his back on his life in France, it happened that he ran into the Marquise des Reaux in the marketplace. The woman was on the arm of a gentleman with auburn whiskers and a tall top hat and was tripping among the stalls with a lack of inhibition that made one doubt that it was truly she. An even more striking change was that her hair had become a light chestnut color, the one the French call brunette. Richard Stern cried out: "Marquise!"

The woman did not look up. Coolly she continued on her way. The same day Richard Stern discovered from one of the coachmen on the estate (in return for a ten-franc note) that as a result of scarlet fever in her childhood the Marquise was to all intents completely bald and had worn a perruque perruque ever since. "I am surprised that this is news to Monsieur Storn ... in Francaroutier it is common knowledge!" ever since. "I am surprised that this is news to Monsieur Storn ... in Francaroutier it is common knowledge!"

To Richard Stern the passage of his time in prison seemed like the progress of a rotting boat floating or, rather, just drifting with infinitesimal slowness, somewhere in the outside world. He pondered the mysterious nature of time, as he hung in his cell window, clinging to the bars, made slippery and slightly warm by his sweat. He tried to grip them at a point as high as possible, but sooner or later his fingers began to slither downwards and he landed on the rough stone ledge, gashing his lower arms, which bore traces similar to the raw wounds left by the rubbing of the leg-irons.

Sometimes it seemed that even a quarter of an hour would not pass, and writing about the endlessness of his days seemed even harder than living through them. Nonetheless, somehow, the seemingly unending, snail's-pace crawl of the mornings, afternoons, and evenings began to add up to weeks and months, and when the prisoner least expected it, the first year had passed. In The Book of Fathers he regularly and carefully marked with little strokes the calendar of his days of imprisonment. It was as if the boat, having been stuck fast on a reef, at last pushed off and gathered speed, only to become stranded on a sandbank, with no movement again until who knows when. Somehow, lo and behold, the second year, too, was gone, with a sudden impetus at its end like the lightning swoop of an eagle on its prey, after what seems like an eternity of stillness with its wings spread wide.

Richard Stern was still in Spielberg Castle prison when time's eagle captured its most succulent prey: the century itself. The midnight tolling of the church bells found him kneeling by his bed; in the absence of a table this was also the position in which he wrote in The Book of Fathers. Will anything out of the ordinary happen? After all, it is not every day that the calendar turns the page to a new century.

Nothing.

Well, at least the century is over, he thought. He spent the night awake, first exercising his mind through prayer, then by counting. He stopped when he reached nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine: some unnameable fear gripped him and would not let him utter the figure with four zeroes.

In the early hours of New Century's Day one of the prisoners began to sing in a low, dark voice: The way before me weeps, the trail before me grieves The way before me weeps, the trail before me grieves ... Richard Stern broke down in tears. It was the end of the century in which he was born and the one just beginning was likely to hold in store nothing more than damp cell walls. In Spielberg the window was so high that he was not able to look out at all. ... Richard Stern broke down in tears. It was the end of the century in which he was born and the one just beginning was likely to hold in store nothing more than damp cell walls. In Spielberg the window was so high that he was not able to look out at all.

Still, something did happen. For the first time since the Marquise had tossed him aside, his loins had stirred. He thought that was something to which he had long since bidden farewell. The erectness was palpable. For some time he did not take the trouble to grasp his manhood and would have had it decline. In vain. He was constrained to take it firmly in hand and enjoy it until it yielded relief.

Borbala had taught him that whatever one does on the first day of the New Year, one will be doing all year long. Ah, if this was true for the first hours of the century ... then I shall have no end of trouble. And from that day few were the mornings that he did not bedew. Because of this he was racked by guilt. In his childhood, in the years in the turret, the reverend priest would visit them to celebrate mass and to teach the children. At his bidding, Richard Stern duly reported how he played with himself. The reverend priest shook his head and hissed: "You must not practice self-abuse! It is the work of the Devil! It will rot your brain!"

In the semidarkness of the cell, stewing in his own juices, he consoled himself by saying that there was no more rotting left for his brain to do. In the crawl of his days this was the only event of note. The space allotted him in Spielberg was very small, only half the amount he had afterwards in Munkacs.

"MY TIME IS TOO MUCH, MY SPACE IS TOO LITTLE!" he wrote in The Book of Fathers, in capital letters. He pondered whether he had chanced upon some philosophical truth. Could it be that to him whom God had given such a small space-his cell was no more than five paces by five-He would allot a great deal of time? And vice versa: he who is blessed with a vast open space will have only a limited amount of time? Indeed, his ancestors had traveled over much of their land and over the world, and none of them had a very long span. And while he, Richard Stern, was traveling around France, the weeks and months had galloped by; yet here, entombed in a dark, stone box, it was as if, alongside him, they had also captured time.

Looking back upon his youth, he now saw that his childhood had been neatly bisected by the Lemberg tragedy. The smell of the warm nest during one's first years in the Stern family is hard to forget, even more so the heady honey smell of the vineyards at Hegyhat! His skin remembered still the rough yet soothing touch of Grandfather Aaron's beard, and he could hear still the Jewish prayers, whose words, left unexplained, the children were made to learn by heart in the Talmud class on Sunday. Some of them Richard Stern could still recite under his breath, if he closed his eyes: Baruch ata adonai Baruch ata adonai ... Odd, it does not work with your eyes open. ... Odd, it does not work with your eyes open.

For the children the world of the Sterns was a veritable paradise, which he wept for in the cold turret where Borbala used a willow withy to punish smaller infractions, using a riding crop for graver ones. Little Aszti, Richard Stern's little monkey, found it even more difficult to endure the regime, and soon after the Lemberg catastrophe began to show signs of breakdown, climbing into the most impossible places for the night. He squeezed himself through the larder's tiny ventilation flap and by morning the floor was awash with honey, fat, jam, and broken pieces of crockery. Borbala demanded that Istvan Stern get rid of "that monster!"

Richard Stern clutched his father's palm, sobbing: "Daddy dearest, don't, please! Daddy dearest, please don't let her!"

Little Aszti escaped that time. Next time, however, he insinuated himself into the oven, which was being fired up for baking, managing to singe his arms, brow, and stomach coal black, and ran up and down half-mad and shrieking with pain, wreaking further havoc among the plates and pans and glass; then, as he was being pursued, he squeezed himself through one of the embrasures onto the outside wall of the turret and jumped onto a ledge, ripping down a shutter on the way. His desperate howls were outdone only by Borbala's ear-splitting ravings.

"My dear boy," said his father, "we have no choice but to return little Aszti whence he came."

In vain did he sob and plead, and the little monkey disappeared from his life forever. The story went that they managed to find the Gypsies and returned him to them. Now, thinking back, he was sure that somehow or other they had done away with Aszti, though obviously his father was not responsible. Istvan Stern's heart was too gentle for that.

The first fiasco stemming from my looking into the future was my marriage in Francaroutier; the second my liberation from Munkacs. I believed that my prison gate would never open, that my imprisonment would last until the end of my days. It was in anticipation of this that I wrote about myself and my experiences in so much detail in this book. No longer might I hope that the prophecy that had miscarried, alluring me with thoughts of six fine sons, could ever come true. I suspected I would not have issue who might have the benefit of my admonitions and counsel. But it seems God had second thoughts and decided to do otherwise with me. I was set free as unexpectedly as I had been arrested all those years ago in so much detail in this book. No longer might I hope that the prophecy that had miscarried, alluring me with thoughts of six fine sons, could ever come true. I suspected I would not have issue who might have the benefit of my admonitions and counsel. But it seems God had second thoughts and decided to do otherwise with me. I was set free as unexpectedly as I had been arrested all those years ago.

Richard Stern put his signature to the German-language document that set him free; he gave it only a cursory glance, as he knew what it was about: in connection with his imprisonment he was not entitled to make any claim of compensation, whether now or in the future; furthermore, in the future he undertook to respect without fail the legal system of the Austrian Empire.

Respect! That I did in earlier times, too; yet here I am. My crime amounted to no more than the fact that I corresponded concerning the grammatical problems of the Hungarian language with a few worthy literati, unaware that they were members of the Freemasons' lodges. To this day I have no clear notion of the aims of that secret and secretive society; all I know is that my intention was no more than to attempt to stir up the stagnant waters of the Hungarian arts and sciences. If that is against the law, the law is an ass.

At the time of Richard Stern's arrest the case against the main perpetrators of the Jacobite conspiracy had been concluded. Ferenc Kazinczy, the distinguished litterateur with whom he had corresponded while in France, was sentenced to death. This enraged Richard Stern and he composed, jointly with Balint Csokonya, a letter to His Majesty begging for a royal pardon and had it countersigned by many former students of Latin at Sarospatak. The case concocted against him was based chiefly on this letter, which had not even been sent: the court ruled that the line of reasoning employed by the signatories was tantamount to treason.

When he was released, he had no idea which way to turn. He had received the sad news of the death of his grandmother Borbala at about the time he was sentenced. At her request, she was laid to rest in the garden around the turret, next to her son, Istvan Stern, who had gone to his Maker while Richard was a student at Sarospatak. His first pilgrimage was to these twin graves, though he knew that the turret now belonged to strangers, as his punishment had included the confiscation of his property.

Grandmother Borbala had then moved to Debreczen, her way of life becoming extremely circumscribed. His uncle Janos had disappeared without trace. One of his drinking partners claimed he was living in Vienna as a captain of dragoons, under the name Johann Sternov. But to his letters of inquiry to the various military command posts he received identical replies, consisting of a single, if complex, German sentence: "Following exhaustive inquiries carried out in response to your written request, we have the honor to inform you that, in relation to the person you seek, in this division of the army of His Majesty there exists neither in armed nor in noncombatant service any person bearing the surname Sternov, Stern, or Sternovszky."

Richard Stern placed bouquets made of lilies of the valley on the graves of his father and grandmother, and knelt there from noon until sunset, mourning, remembering, praying. Then he commended himself to the mercy of God, cut himself a stave from the tree behind the graves, and set off into what seemed like endless space, of which he now had plenty. I wonder how much time I have left? He no longer dared believe in the images of the future, which had returned to haunt him even while he was on his knees, chiefly in the form of a wife and six sons. But the bride always resembled the Marquise des Reaux, whom not the least fiber of his being desired, so he shook himself free of the vision with a shudder.

He began to enjoy having not a penny to his name and no particular aim, and chose the carts to travel on according to the warmth of the carters' invitation. By a long and roundabout route he came to Sarospatak, where the gatekeeper at the Collegium, glancing at his dress and unkempt beard, had no hesitation in leading him to the modest shelter maintained for the gentlemen of the road. Here he was also given a bowl of gruel and a jug of fresh milk. The following morning he opened his eyes to find a man sitting on a stool next to him, half-lit by the slanting rays of the morning sun. The man was watching him. He seemed familiar, at least the dark eyes with their suffused glint.

"Richard! Richard Stern!" the man exclaimed.

"Good God, Balint Csokonya!"

"Richard ... what has become of you? Where have you been?"

They embraced but could not speak; they wept with the soundless sobs that lie deep in men's hearts. A while later they were calmer and each gave the other an account of his sufferings in prison, the disasters that had befallen their families, and exchanged news of others. Balint Csokonya had been held throughout in Kufstein, compared with which Spielberg or Munkacs was a spa resort. This was the first news that Richard Stern had of Kazinczy, whose death sentence had been by the King's grace commuted to life imprisonment; so he was in jail still, though shortly after Richard's release he had been transferred to the prison at Munkacs, which Richard Stern knew so well. Was Kazinczy able to look out onto the hill, he wondered, or did he get one of the cells on the side of the slope? To this question, Richard Stern received an answer only many years later, when he read Kazinczy's diary of his years in prison.

Balint Csokonya was an assistant instructor in Greek and Latin at the Collegium. He had been free for some nine months. He warned Richard Stern that spies and informers were everywhere and that he should comport himself bearing this in mind.

"Sometimes even the walls have ears!" he whispered.

He promised Richard Stern that he would have a word with the eminent Professor Telegdy, head of the faculty of grammatical studies at the Collegium. And thanks to Balint Csokonya's influence, Richard Stern gained employment in his alma mater as an assistant in French. It fell to him to keep the French books of the library in proper order and to revise the catalogue. He found this work congenial, and as soon as he secured suitable reading glasses-his eyes had been much weakened by the years in prison-he would crouch or kneel all day among the precious books in his care. Rarely did he pick up a volume without reading at least some part of it. He settled quickly to this way of life and had no difficulty imagining that he might spend the rest of his days as a bespectacled bookworm.

He took Balint Csokonya's advice and would not let his guard down when conversing with anyone. But he could not, or did not want to, resist renewing his correspondence; in prison it was perhaps this that he had missed most. He wrote on the yellow-veined paper of the Collegium and sealed the couverture with a purple wax seal. He sent news of his liberation to Academician Carmillac, but the terse reply from the University of Paris said only that the Maistre had retired two years earlier and soon after that had departed this life. The cure at Francaroutier informed him that where his windmill had once stood a house of ill-repute had been opened by an exotic dancer from Toulouse, of whom it was rumored that she had been expelled from all the major towns of southern France. The Marquise was in good health; she was childless still; and her second husband had gone to his grave as the result of a devastating illness which some said was a variety of African syphilis.

He also picked up the threads with his literary friends. His most faithful correspondent was Endre Dembinszki, who had married Balint Csokonya's sister and moved to Debreczen to teach at the faculty there. In cooperation with two other professors at Debreczen he was working on a revision and new edition of the pioneering 1795 Debreczen Grammar. In this connection Richard Stern addressed a long memorandum to them, taking issue with the Debreczen triad's fundamental beliefs, which he considered excessively beholden to traditional views.

Not only is it legitimate to form new words regularly from old, on the basis of analogies borrowed from other languages not alien to the spirit of Hungarian; we must actively encourage writers and scholars to create such words; and word formations that appear in literature and are adjudged to be useful should be made available to all in the form of lists and dictionaries.

Balint Csokonya was resolutely opposed to this view, as was his brother-in-law. "The language of our fathers is sacred and inviolable. It is not meet to patch and mend it under the slogan of modernity, like some torn item of clothing!"

In the evenings the debates in the rooms in the Collegium would become so heated that their fellow teachers complained about the noise. This was the time that Ferenc Kazinczy was set free from prison, a person they both esteemed as an authority, and as soon as they obtained his address they turned to him in a joint letter with their questions. No reply ever came from Ferenc Kazinczy; it may be that the couverture for some reason failed to reach his hand.

Richard Stern was surprised at the suddenness and the intensity with which he felt the absence of his parents, having assumed that such feelings had long died in his heart. He had dreams and images, more of them and more often, of his mother, both at night and by day. The image he held of her in his mind was but enchantment by the passing of time: gradually the crow's feet disappeared, the warty growth was smoothed from her brow, and the manifold chins shrank down to one. Her figure became slimmer in her son's imagination. Her stubby fingers lengthened and grew thinner, the heavy ankles became trim and delicate. The same kind of magical transformation affected his father, Istvan Stern, and to a lesser degree his two brothers Robert and Rudolf, who would not grow old as he had grown old, not even in his imagination.

These wishful thoughts prompted him to write to the Sterns, his relatives in Hegyhat. He weighed carefully every word committed to the writing paper; he did not know who was still alive of those he remembered, and how much remained of the hostile feelings with which Grandfather Aaron had cast out his son-in-law after the Lemberg tragedy. The reply came with unexpected speed, from Grandfather Aaron himself, who-as the opening lines informed him-on account of the tremor in his hand was no longer able himself to write and had dictated this letter to his great-granddaughter Rebecca. Rebecca was the second child of his grandson Benjamin, the son of Aaron's daughter Eszter. He, Aaron Stern, registered with astonishment that he was in his seventy-ninth year and the whole family was making fevered preparations to celebrate his eightieth birthday. They think reaching such a ripe old age is something of an achievement, but it is more a burden, he wrote, as the number of tormenting memories just grows and grows. At this point in the letter the great-granddaughter inserted a bracketed comment: Uncle Aaron loves to complain, but at this rate he will live to be a hundred.

Letter followed letter, and soon Richard Stern received a cordial invitation to pay his respects to Uncle Aaron on his eightieth birthday, on which occasion there would be a gathering of the clan, from near and far. He thanked them warmly for the invitation.

I set off on the third day of September. I begged lifts on carts. Nightfall found me in a field, but the following day I reached Tokay. I set off thence on foot for Hegyhat, arriving a day earlier than I was expected.As I reached the village, the sun was high in a sky decked by puffy clouds. My heart was in my mouth as I skirted the serried ranks of vines laden with clusters of swollen grapes. It would be a good year for the vine-harvest.

The road turned sharply, like a man's elbow, and there on the hill was the cemetery. He stepped into the garden of the dead with head bowed, donning his hat in accordance with Jewish custom. From behind his brow there rose from the dregs of a distant past the forms of the Hebrew characters, as he traced with his index finger the incisions on the gray-brown stones, gleaning the names, more or less. His insides were quaking and he dreaded the pain that would follow if among these ancient symbols he were to stumble upon someone who was family or friend. But he found none such. Later he heard that Grandpa Aaron had wanted to raise a memorial to those who perished in Lemberg, but Rabbi Ben Loew-then still very much alive-had not allowed it. The Rabbi's own headstone, in accordance with his will, bore only an ancient Jewish blessing.

Richard Stern pushed on, further and deeper into his own past. In the sharp bend of the stream, the old Sonntag hostel still stood, now boasting an extra floor and an additional wing; on the sign, freshly painted: Rabinowitz and Burke Rabinowitz and Burke. A smaller notice declared: First-class koshere food and drink First-class koshere food and drink-Do not aske for credit. Richard Stern felt an urge to correct the spelling on the notice, but suppressed his teacherly instincts and continued along the steep path. The synagogue seemed considerably bigger. It had been rebuilt using large slabs of stone. Behind it a section of the river-bed had been widened and a few granite steps now linked it to the bank. Four very elderly men sat hissing and clucking in the swirling cold of the water, eyes closed, their white beards floating on the surface like rafts of wood-bark. A ritual bath, thought Richard Stern, recalling vaguely sharing one with his father and grandfather and feeling the flow of the icy water on his skin.

"Richard! Richard Stern!" cried the voice of one of the Methuselahs as he rose from the stream, a hand waving towards him like a shivering bird.

"Grandpa Aaron," said Richard Stern, stumbling out the words, deducing rather than recognizing. His grandfather had been a strong, powerfully built figure; this old gentleman was more like a child, his skin dried around his bones like parchment, his loin-cloth revealing parts of parts turned gray; Richard Stern had to force himself to look away. "I must go over, embrace him, kiss him!": the feelings from the past came welling up, and as he enclosed in his arms the ancient, time-worn body, as he touched the damp, goose-pimpled skin, as he heard again the high-pitched voice repeating his name again and again, laughing and crying, he knew, he suddenly knew, that he had at last come home.

In the house where he was born there now lived his aunt Eszter. Everything was so familiar, yet somehow alien.

Richard Stern took the evening meal with his grandfather Aaron. The news of his arrival had brought over, that same day, all the relatives living in Hegyhat, one after the other. At first Richard Stern was unable to put faces to the names, though the latter he did manage to note. Without anyone ever mentioning it, his newly rediscovered family knew, just as Richard Stern knew himself, that in the future he would be living here, with them, for them. At the end of the academic year he bade farewell to the Collegium in Sarospatak and moved to Hegyhat. At first he enjoyed Grandfather Aaron's hospitality, but the following spring the male members of the family joined together to build him a house on the hill above the cemetery.

He continued his work as a teacher, bringing to the pupils at the Hegyhat yeshiva his aptitude for foreign languages, while remaining unremitting in his own pursuit of know ledge. He studied the Hebrew language, particularly exploring the Talmud, and at the same time he did not abandon his studies of Hungarian. He played an important role in the countrywide efforts of the writer and editor Ferenc Kazinczy to cultivate the language. Six words that he created for the Hungarian language passed, in time, into general use, and he lived to see them admitted by the dictionaries. His income was spent entirely on books.

When he discovered that Kazinczy, on his marriage to the Countess Sophie Torok, some twenty years younger, had found himself in financial straits and therefore sold his books to the Collegium at Sarospatak, Richard Stern was furious. He wrote a thunderous letter to the poet. It is not meet to profit from the Collegium, may it be blessed a thousand times It is not meet to profit from the Collegium, may it be blessed a thousand times. To this letter, too, he never received a reply. This prompted Richard Stern to draw up his will: on his death his books and writings would go to the Collegium, gratis.

His aunt Eszter often shook her head: "Better you were wed."

"It's too late for that."

"Stuff and nonsense!" Eszter began to list grooms from Hegyhat's present and recent past, all of whom were about his age. The triumphal list went on until Richard Stern broke in: "No more, dear aunt ... Remember, I have had a taste of marriage and I didn't like it enough for a second helping!"

"Once bitten is not twice shy, it just needs a second try! We will find you a treat of a girl who will have you licking your lips!"

Richard Stern wanted to bring this exchange firmly to a close: "My bride must have skin the color of honey, locks as dark as night-real ones, not a wig-and a triangular birthmark on her breastbone. And to cap it all, she must speak a foreign tongue. That is how I dreamed it. Dictum, factum, punctum! Dictum, factum, punctum!"

He was sure he was asking for the impossible and was very much bemused when he was introduced to the marriageable girls of the region, all of whom spoke a foreign tongue, such as Slovak, Ruthene, or Yiddish. Nor was there any shortage of skins the color of honey or genuine black hair-only the triangular birthmark was lacking. The women of the Stern family put their heads together: we can make a birthmark, all we need is a little ink! But before they could carry out their plan, there came to visit them from Prague a very distant and very poor relative, Yanna. The moment he set eyes on her, Richard Stern was thunderstruck.

In the person of Yanna I came to know someone more wonderful, both within and without, than I could ever have imagined. The description fitted her perfectly: her skin like this season's honey, her hair the color of ebony, and she could manage only broken Hungarian, her mother tongue being Czech. True, when on our wedding night I parted her from the shimmering bridal gown, I found no birthmark on her alabaster body; but I at once hung around her neck a triangular stone, black, on a gold chain, which I had bought her. Thereafter she would not be seen without this precious stone, day or night. Thus was the prophecy fulfilled, the vision that I, of little faith, had not for years dared hope to live without this precious stone, day or night. Thus was the prophecy fulfilled, the vision that I, of little faith, had not for years dared hope to live.

In due course their first child was born, a son, hale and healthy. He was christened Otto. He was followed, at intervals of approximately two years, by Ferenc, Ignac, Mihaly, Jozsef, and Janos.

Richard Stern lived to a ripe old age in the bosom of his family.

Perhaps now at long last the seven lean years have passed. My ancestors and I have had our share of suffering; from this day forward let years of happiness beckon. If we had a star, it would last for eternity, or even longer.

V.

DESPITE THE RISING WAVES OF WHITE HEAT NOT A LEAF stirs; time seems to slow to a halt. Like shimmering aspic the heat dribbles down even into the depths of the cellars. The wine is on the turn, viscous, its fire and its bouquet slowly evaporate. Languid bees lazily loop the sweet malvasia grapes. In the fields are ever-widening fissures in the ground, which the oldest mavens think it unwise to inspect lest their faces be singed by a blast from hell. The song of the whitethroat, the crested lark, and the titmouse is heard rarely in the land. Only the cry of the cuckoo breaks the silence now and then, and the persistent tap-tap of the woodpecker on the desiccated trunks. stirs; time seems to slow to a halt. Like shimmering aspic the heat dribbles down even into the depths of the cellars. The wine is on the turn, viscous, its fire and its bouquet slowly evaporate. Languid bees lazily loop the sweet malvasia grapes. In the fields are ever-widening fissures in the ground, which the oldest mavens think it unwise to inspect lest their faces be singed by a blast from hell. The song of the whitethroat, the crested lark, and the titmouse is heard rarely in the land. Only the cry of the cuckoo breaks the silence now and then, and the persistent tap-tap of the woodpecker on the desiccated trunks.

The gentry regularly visited the Nagyfalu hostelry to seek, and find, amusement. Benedek Bordas had started out as a common tapster in Varjulapos, but as the years went by he realized that the more moneyed the class of customer, the better he fared. He sold his wayside alehouse and had a hostelry built in Nagyfalu, close by the lock-keeper's cottage. Here the best of Gypsy bands played for all they were worth, the finest cooks from Transylvania bustled about the kitchens, and eye-catching wenches from Ruthenia served the oaken tables. The full-bellied gentlemen were able to take their ease and recover from the orgy of culinary delights in the hostelry's spacious guest rooms. Benedek Bordas took care always to keep freshly filled the china lavoirs of the mirrored washing table, with a crisp napkin on the side; and on the bedside tables a bowl of fruit, with knotted rolls fresh baked that dawn.

Keen young wenches frequented the hostelry by the dozen, some without the knowledge of their families, others-particularly from the wrong end of Basahalom and Kazarbocor-with their heads held high. A particularly dissolute group of regulars liberated Benedek Bordas's heavy bunch of keys and took off with it to the Lesser Tisza, intending to throw it in the river, declaring that "Henceforth the Nagyfalu hostelry will never shut its doors!"

And it never did. The finest wine drained unceasing from the barrels into the wineglasses, while in the fire they grilled and roasted vast quantities of game and fowl, in the belly of which the Transylvanian cooks always liked to conceal some surprise: perhaps a smaller bird roasted whole, or a pierced apple stuffed with heart and liver. But the gentlemen did not always demand such masterpieces of the cook's art; simpler, homemade delicacies regularly featured on Benedek Bordas's bill of fare and enjoyed great popularity: pork crackling served lukewarm, for example, or fried dough with bacon.

In the entrance hall a wooden board proclaimed: "Any dish prepared on request, if ingredients available." Visitors sometimes put Benedek Bordas's claim to the most severe of tests, but he almost always managed to keep his promise. The only guests who shrank his stomach to a walnut-sized dumpling were the Vandal Band. These rough fellows were the terror of the neighborhood. The Vandal Band feared nothing and no one and rarely did a week pass without stories of their duels or revels or other adventures reverberating round the barstools. One August, after a night of drinking and carousing, they painted the Nagyfalu calvary red and-God forgive them their sin-stuffed a lemon in the mouth of the Christ on the cross. Another time they forced the Gypsy band to strip and hung them upside down from the branches of the oak tree by the hostelry entrance and ordered the mortified musicians to play their favorite tunes as they hung. The mirrored great saloon they smashed up almost every month. Though their moneyed parents invariably paid for the damage, Benedek Bordas could not abide them. Every time he heard their horses' hoofs thundering in the puszta-his ears were keenly attuned to it by now-he prayed: "The pox consume you all!"

But the pox had other matters to attend to, and never did consume the Vandal Band. They rode in every week; sometimes, to the owner's chagrin, every day. Those who had already had the pleasure avoided them at all costs; in the barroom no one ever sat at their table. Their cordovan knee-boots redound roughly on the floor as they enter, and the last one slams the door behind them. Reaching the corner table, they slap down their riding crops and Otto Stern, the senior Vandal, with mane of reddish hair like a lion, immediately bellows: "Wine! White! The roughest!" His powerful voice commands respect: the barflies fall silent, and only the hum of the fat kitchen flies can be heard.

Old orzse, whose job it is to keep the tables clean, rushes over with the dishcloth, but without turning her back on them, else she is bound to get slapped on the rump. The six goblets are empty in a flash and Benedek Bordas can bring over the second round. And very soon the third. The Vandals know how to drink, no two ways about it. Little Janos, the youngest, constantly wants to dance with all the waitresses, sometimes even dragging orzse round the tables. The other visitors dare not laugh; they have learned the unwisdom of getting involved with this lot; bloodshed is never far away. Following these visits, Benedek Bordas nearly always found it necessary to take to his cart and seek out their parents with the handwritten bill, often several pages long, which offered a history, indeed a blow-by-blow account, of the particular night's revels. Their father, Richard Stern, was a keen historian of these accounts. "It completely passes my understanding what they find so amusing about smashing up an inn," he grumbled to himself as he rummaged in his leather pouch.

"They are but young and giddy-pated!" Yanna purred.

Benedek Bordas reflected that if these Vandals were his own, he would break them in two, but he kept his views to himself. Richard Stern was a bookish man held in great esteem in the locality and was therefore forgiven the antics of his six sons. The Sterns managed the region's most highly respected firm of vintners and retailers of wine, though it seemed that it was mostly the women who did the work to enable their menfolk to spend the money on their whims. The office with its solid, weathered floor was in the hands of Nanna Eszter, a bent old lady nearing eighty. With her pebble glasses she had to peer so closely at the folded sheets of the accounts that she often had ink on the tip of her nose.

It was said among the traveling wine merchants that until you have tried to make a deal with Nanna Eszter, you do not know what haggling is. Behind her back Nanna Eszter was known as Jew ultimo Jew ultimo, this being the term at the time for the Pagat, the first card in the Hungarian tarot pack. No one dared cast her ancestry in the face of this sharp-visaged old woman or her family since she had all but blinded a Romanian trader with a whip for insulting her. She had been only about seventy at the time but her strength had diminished little since. Her gray, waist-length hair was always carefully coiled into a severe chignon; whenever her temper rose, a lock of hair would break free and begin a life of its own, fluttering like a miniature pennant.

Yanna, Richard Stern's wife, now close to completing her fifth decade, retained her original colors, the complexion and hair for which her husband would have walked all the way to Pest-Buda; neither the honey of her skin nor the silky ebony of her hair had faded, only little crow's feet around her eyes suggested the passing of the years. Yanna became the right hand of Nanna Eszter. She picked up the mysteries of viticulture with such natural ease it was as if she had been born a Stern. These two women understood each other without recourse to words. There was no man that Richard Stern was jealous of, save Nanna Eszter, who seemed to require Yanna's services for very considerable periods of time. If he protested, Nanna Eszter would stop him short with the words: "Not a word, Richard. Someone has to mind the shop while you bury yourself in your books in the ivory tower."

Yanna was responsible, in Richard Stern's name, for the formulation of the rules of conduct for the vineyards on the entire hill, which subsequently gained the acceptance of all the producers. The charter, affirmed by the initials or marks of all, hung in the office of the Master of the Guild of the Hill's Vineyards and its text was drummed out once a month. The Vandal Band would even sing it, accompanied by the Gypsy band, at the climax of a night out, to the tune of the subversive Kurucz song "Csinom Palko."

Since the creation of too many paths is damaging to the vines, it is hereby ordered that everyone will keep to their traditional paths. If a stranger walks the paths, the Master of the Guild shall arrest him and whatever is taken from the stranger is his to keep.If anyone steals of the grapes and takes them to his cellars, upon proof of theft he will lose those grapes. If it be a child stealing but without the father consenting, the above punishment may be excused.Affray on this hill will result in a fine of eighteen florins, five to accrue to the municipality, the rest to the owner. If there be damage in consequence, it will be assessed and a further fine levied.If swords or flintlocks be carried in a hostile manner, the Master of the Guild will arrest the party and lock him in his house. Those with fences who fail to maintain them and in consequence let cattle stray shall pay due compensation.No one may sell their grapes directly, nor transfer his lease, except with the knowledge of the Master of the Guild. Those who do so nonetheless will pay a fine of twenty florins ...

Yanna felt proud to have her words sung. Richard Stern, however, was beside himself: "Wretched curs! You hold nothing sacred!"

It was generally every two months that he completely lost his temper with his sons. He would line them up in the dining hall filled with heavy, dark furniture and give them more or less the same dressing down each time. Well now, what on earth do you think you are doing? Why did they think they could do as they like? That they owned everything including the walnut trees? How many more times would the family have to pay for their frolics? Would they ever grow up?

The boys listened to the speech with eyes firmly fixed on the ground. When their father had unburdened himself, Otto acted as spokesman for them all. "Father dear, may it please you not to be too upset; we were just amusing ourselves!"

By then they had drawn the sting of Richard Stern's words and he excused them with a shaking head. "For Heaven's sake, do something useful!" he said and disappeared into his study. That year he was translating some Hebrew prayers into Hungarian, so that those without knowledge of the Old Testament language could also pray when they would. (He was also the first to produce a Hebrew-to-Hungarian glossary, of which the printing house of Izidor Berg printed 150 copies almost nine years later. As he surveyed the clarity of the printed page and the quality of the binding, Richard Stern could not help thinking that this would have gained the approval of his ancestor, Grandpa Czuczor.) The six Vandals were back in the Nagyfalu hostelry that night. Otto Stern demanded a virgin and when he was offered one, chased her out of his room at the point of his sword, bellowing that if this whore was a virgin, he was Pegasus. Eventually his brothers managed to calm him down. Little Janos suggested a game of cards. Otto Stern was reluctant: "Why should I take the shirt off my own brothers' backs? Let's play with others!" But no one really wanted to share the green baize table with the six Vandals. "I am bored!" boomed Otto Stern. "Let's ride down to the Greater Tisza and have a swimming race!"

"We've done that twice already this week ... and you always win!" said Mihaly.

"A fencing competition then!"

"You always win that as well."

"Then tell me a story!"

But his brothers were not as skilled at the storyteller's craft as he. They could guffaw, and guzzle wine and spirits, but in the end it was Otto Stern who told a story to the others, about all that he saw in his visionary moments about the past and the future. His brothers were unsure whether to believe him or not. The most inclined to believe him was the fourth-born, Mihaly, who was still in short pants when he declared that he was going to be a famous general or statesman. His hero was Alexander the Great. He hoped that in his career he would encounter a knot like that of Gordius, which he would be able to cut with his saber at a single stroke. He was taken aback when Otto Stern informed him: "You will not be a general, but you will be elected a senator in Parliament ... next century there will be a street named after you in Pest-Buda ... that is to say in Budapest."

"Budapest?" All five young men burst out laughing. In fact all six, as the word had an amusing ring for Otto Stern as well.

The prophecy was the cause of endless banter from the other four brothers, who thenceforth called him Nobby Nobody. Otto's claims were not taken seriously. The only thing he himself could not understand was why it was his eyes that had been chosen by the heavenly powers to be opened to the flow of time. In his childhood he had thought that the past and the present were visible to all, at least sometimes. He wanted to convince especially his brothers that this was no laughing matter. If only he could have offered to prophesy something in the near future that would soon have come to pass! But no such opportunity arose.

Of the six, Nobby Nobody was the most serious, the most industrious, and the most intelligent. The two lads who were his elders, Ferenc and Ignac, were in the same league as Otto as regards physical strength, but not in respect of their mental power. They rarely spoke, and if they wanted something they simply took it by force. The girls went in fear of them, even the humblest. With Mihaly, however, it seemed as if some other kind of blood had transfused into the family, and little Jozsi and Janos, who followed him, were more in his image than in Otto's. Though the three youngest lads joined in the amusements of the brothers, the destruction and violence was nearly always wrought by the others.

Otto Stern organized the activities of the Vandal Band with military precision, brooking no opposition when he gave an order: "We shall swim the Tisza and ride to the fair at Eszlar!"

They all suspected that at the fair there would be some rumpus for which their graying father would once again have to reach into his pockets and give them a telling-off, and rightly too. During these ritual reproofs it often occurred to Otto that it was perhaps time to bring down the curtain on this revelry, or at the least to spare Mihaly and little Jozsi and Janos this wastrel way of life; in their case it was worth educating their minds. "They could be sent to the Collegium!"

Yanna would not hear of it. "Far better they roister about here. The vineyards will come into their hands sooner or later, and the ins and outs of that life are best learned round here."

Richard Stern did not agree, but by this time he had lost much of his ability to concern himself with the ways of the real world. It seemed that none of the six would ever get a decent education. This sometimes vexed Otto Stern, but he flicked the thought away, as an animal's tail might a fly.

Otto Stern brought his clenched fist down on the solid wood table of the Nagyfalu hostelry: "Reveille! What are you waiting for?"

Benedek Bordas scampered up. "What can I do for you, sir?"