Were he able to do what the Rabbi suggested, he could find out now what awaited him-awaited them all. The thought made him break out in a cold sweat. He recalled the Gypsy who had told his fortune in Tokay. The entire family had gone by cart to the fair and everybody got a souvenir. Richard got the little monkey that a large Gypsy family was exhibiting for a fee; it was no bigger than a medium-sized hare. Aaron Stern thought it must be a baby monkey, but the Gypsies swore it was twelve years old and called it Aster. After this, only the haggling separated Richard and the frightened little creature, which had now settled on his shoulder and clung to him like a baby to the breast. Aaron Stern gave up the haggling more than once, but each time István Stern resumed it and in the end it was he who paid. He was ashamed to admit that he was taken with the little monkey perhaps even more than was his son. From that night onwards, despite his mother’s protestations, he slept with the little creature in his bed, cuddling and kissing it constantly through the day, calling it Aszti, my little Aszti.

The oldest female member of the Gypsy family, a vast rotund creature dressed in red silk from top to toe, inhabited the darkness of the tent and would read one’s fortune from one’s palm, using cards, or her glass ball. To general surprise Aaron Stern paid for all the male members of the family to have their fortunes told. István Stern was the last to reach the fortune-teller’s table, which was host to a lazy black cat curled around the iron base of the magic ball.

“What’s it made of?” asked István Stern, thinking of the mysteriously shining ball.

“Just show me your palm!” said the Gypsy, grasping his hand and drawing the palm into the pool of light under the oil-lamp suspended close to her head. For a long time she studied the various lines and grooves, touching here, prodding there. István Stern thought her stocky fingers were sticky and wanted to draw back his hand, but the fortuneteller would not let it go. “I see great fires,” she declared at length with some solemnity.

“What sort of fires?”

“Blazing fires, flames as tall as a human being.”

“What is ablaze? Stubble? Logs of wood? Or a roof?”

“Snow-white, square birds tumble into the flames, burning to death.”

István Stern could extract nothing more from the Gypsy. Later he asked his father-in-law: “What can it mean?”

“Nothing good.”

“I still don’t understand it.”

Aaron Stern grimaced: “And for this I paid good money!”

István Stern imagined the scene a hundred times. He saw the snow-white birds as doves; it was his own house that had burst into flame, the wings would be trying to extinguish the fire-that’s why they dive onto it in suicidal frenzy, the smoke darkens the tapestry of the heavens. But he kept coming up against one thing: who has ever seen a rectangular dove?

One summer night, when a seasonal storm burst over the house with ear-splitting rolls of thunder and heavy rain, the past was again summoned up in István Stern’s mind and when he had again lived through what he had lived through so many times before, the Rabbi’s question occurred to him, as well as the Gypsy’s prophecy. Now, he thought, now or never! Eyes shut, he waited for the superhuman powers to launch in him the visions, this time the visions of the unknown regions of tomorrow. As his heartbeat accelerated, so it grew louder and began to shut out the roaring of the heavens. Then, then, oh, there came shreds of the first tableau, which eerily resembled the Gypsy’s prophecy: vast flames leaped from somewhere and white blotches flew about, which perhaps resembled scraps of white lawn more than birds. But he had no chance to make them out properly. He could not even be sure that what he had been vouchsafed was indeed some tiny fragment of the future and not just images of the Gypsy’s prophecy.

Rabbi Ben Loew hummed as he listened to István Stern’s account, as if he both believed it and did not. “Was that all?”

“That’s all I saw.”

“Don’t give up hope. Whoever gave you this will give you more, when the time comes.”

The profit from the vineyard that year was especially bountiful. The late summer heat had ripened the grapes to bursting and the mountain yielded a superlative nectar. Orders for István Stern’s S-branded containers came pouring in from every quarter. Aaron Stern winked happily at his son-in-law: “If it goes on like this, we might even get rich!”

With István Stern it was not only his family, but the entire Jewish community of Hegyhát that was extremely satisfied. He was a model husband, who gave his wife the respect and material security that was her due. A strict but warmhearted father, for whom his sons would give their right arm if necessary. A generous patron of the poor in the whole region. An assiduous visitor to the synagogue. At the forefront of those who observe the law and maintain the customs. Intelligent, comfortably off, yet without putting on airs. There was little evidence that he was nonetheless… in actual fact… to put it bluntly: that he joined the community of his own free will. He was equally respected by the Calvinist tenant farmers: in matters viticultural he would be the first they turned to; his word was widely respected even when the issue was the taste of the wine. Some tenant farmers would cheat by sugaring their wine or even watering it: to deal with them the Wine Protection Union of Hegyhát and Tokay was formed, with Tivadar Frank as its president, after István Stern had categorically declined this high office-whereupon he was elected deputy president, by acclamation.

Éva Stern was proud of her husband and liked to say that she was the only woman who gained her own name on marriage for a second time. She admitted to only one weakness in respect of her husband’s activities: his visits to the marital bed were not as frequent as she would have liked. This weakness she ascribed to her husband’s excessive devotion to the successful business; he often came home late and it was commonplace for him not to join the family at dinner. Éva did not even suspect that it was not always overwork that kept István Stern from the bosom of his family. Not infrequently he spent his evenings in the house of a widow of substance whom he had encountered in the course of plying his trade, since from her late husband she had inherited one of the finest model vineyards of the Tokay region. It was one of Éva’s regular pleas to her husband that they should shed the daily yoke of labor and go somewhere where they could take their ease for a while. István Stern was not minded to have his bones shaken on the way to some far-off place. But slowly the whole family came round to Éva’s view, and even Grandfather Aaron urged them to take a rest: “Off with you! Years have passed without your taking a rest from your bottles!”

A suitable opportunity arose in the form of a warm invitation from Tadeus Weissberger, a merchant from Lemberg, for István Stern, together with his whole family, to visit him in his castle. “We are but a quarter of an hour from the town, by the shores of the lake, you can swim, sail, enjoy the sun!” he said in his broken German, their common language since István Stern was not able to speak Yiddish.

There were extensive preparations before cart and carriage were filled with the five members of the Stern family, two coachmen, three footmen, a chambermaid, nine travel trunks, six bundles of clothing, three hatboxes, and the small monkey. Éva sat with her two younger sons in the direction of travel on the carriage couch; facing her sat István, Richard, and his little Aszti. There was a footman by each of the coachmen up on the coach-box; the third had to squeeze onto the cart with the chambermaid, among the trunks that they had to constantly watch out for, in case they fell on top of them. The journey took four whole days, the nights spent at unmemorable lodgings.