Yanna was keen for Otto to marry as soon as possible, and Nanna Eszter urged him likewise. “I want six boys, as many as your good mother bore, and while I am still able to enjoy them.”

Of course, his mother and grandmother imagined some well-to-do Jewish girl by his side. Otto Stern knew-he could see-that he would have only one child and it would not be a Jewess who brought it into the world. But he had no wish to dishearten Yanna and Nanna Eszter.

The following morning he gritted his teeth to bring up the thousand florins at the breakfast table, but Richard Stern was unwell and did not come down to breakfast. The following day Otto Stern spent at Rakamaz, so again support for Hungarian culture went undiscussed at the Stern residence. Richard Stern, Yanna, and Nanna Eszter learned of his magnanimous gesture from the columns of the Magyar Society’s Gazette, which was sent to all the generous patrons of the Society. Otto Stern’s morning greeting received a whiplash response from his father: “Have you taken leave of what little sense remains in your skull? What makes you think I am going to reach into our coffers for this latest idiocy of yours? Have you no shame? Are you glad to lose your self-respect before everyone? Because you will! Because we are not going to pay! You have waded waist-deep in the family fortune for long enough!”

Otto Stern held up his arms to shield his head from the blows raining down on it. “But Father, how can the sorrowful state of the Hungarian language and the arts leave you cold? You, of all people!”

“Hungarian language and the arts, my foot! Did you swallow all that eyewash? Did you read, at all, what you have put your name to? Why should you squander money on that? A few hotheads getting all worked up will not lead to the cultivation of the language! If you want to support culture, you should give your money to the poor Collegiums, which are on their last legs! What did I do to make you such a prize idiot? And this is the example you set your brothers! Out of my sight, you useless piece of…” he bellowed, lashing him with the whip right, left, and center.

Otto Stern held him down. “That’s enough, Father, because I cannot vouch for myself!” He was a head taller and quite a bit wider than Richard Stern. For a while, as they both panted, they tried to stare each other down; then the son turned and walked out. He went up to the library and lay down on the bearskin before the fireplace. Thoughts whirled round his head. If his father did not pay up, he would be branded with an indelible mark of shame and have to leave the area. On the other hand, in terms of the future that he had foreseen, there was room for him elsewhere, somewhere new, where his son would come into the world, a son whose name would be-if the signs were to be believed-Szilárd.

He heard his father arguing with his mother, before Nanna Eszter joined in, and then the door slammed as Richard Stern rode out to work off his anger. I wonder where my brothers might be?

Silence reigned in the house, only the sound of the brook burbling outside could be heard. Lying on the floor, Otto Stern could see out of the leaded window: the crown of the garden willow had grown so huge that someone trim could easily have climbed out onto it. But perhaps vice versa, someone could get in with evil intent; he should have a word with his father about having the branches lopped. A sweet spicy smell tickled his nose. Honey bread… his favorite delicacy. He hesitated: should he go down the creaky stairs to ask for a slice? But it could just as well be his senses playing tricks on him. Outside the sun beat down fiercely. If Clara smiles with the sun at me, a fine crop of apples there will be, he thought-it was Clara’s name-day the following week. I shall take her flowers. And a case of the best vintage, if Nanna Eszter lets me. If not, I shall just filch a case myself.

He turned on his side. The floor under him gave a creak. One of the floorboards rose perceptibly. What is this? The top floor had been added by his father the previous year; the tipple-prone builder had made many mistakes and Richard Stern had held back some of the payment, some temporarily, some permanently. Otto Stern folded back the bearskin. One of the floorboards was warped and was on the verge of slipping onto the joists. He was about to adjust it when he noticed that it was loose. He lifted it up, revealing a long gap padded with pieces of felt. There was a large metal cask lying there and two books wrapped in white lawn. He could see that one of the volumes was French, a Bible of some considerable age. The other was… well, well… The Book of Fathers. He knew of its existence from any number of sources, but he had never been vouchsafed a look. Any such request was decisively rejected: “You will have it when the time comes!”

Otto Stern hesitated. Dare he open it? If his father found him here poking about in the stuff hidden under the floorboards, he would surely strike him dead. But he was unable to resist the temptation. With trembling fingers he opened the battered folio, at the very end. Three hundred and twenty numbered pages had already been filled. Richard Stern had even scribbled over the inside covers.

From this day on Otto Stern took every possible opportunity to hang around the library and secretly read The Book of Fathers. Richard Stern was uncomprehending: “What has got into you, my boy? You never read anything before!”

“I have taken a decision, Father,” he lied. “I shall pull myself together and apply to go to the Collegium.”

“Well said!” Richard Stern compiled a long list of basic works that he had to know without fail.

Otto Stern placed a few of these around him on the floor, but the moment he was on his own, he took out The Book of Fathers. He felt that the most important knowledge lay within its covers. He made slow progress, able to concentrate only when there was no danger of being caught book-handed.

He had little difficulty with the neat script of Kornél Csillag, though he had to make a guess at many of the Latin tags. Kornél Csillag must have been a meticulous person: not only was the date clearly given, but he had produced a balance-sheet of his assets and liabilities every year. Otto Stern found his last will and testament just as he found his views on the more important affairs of the world, as well as a summary of everything that Kornél Csillag knew or professed to know about his late father Péter Csillag and the Grandpa Czuczor who had brought him up, including the latter’s keepsake volume, of which the contents followed on twenty-four pages under Kornél Csillag’s title: Committed to paper to the best of my recall.

Bálint Sternovszky filled fewer pages and his spidery scrawl was much harder to decipher. It seemed that he was interested only in music. At the bottom of one page he had doodled a bouquet of musical notes in a circle.

István Stern had recorded his family’s tragedy at Lemberg in impassioned detail, as if the successful depiction of these horrendous scenes in The Book of Fathers would ensure that they haunted him less thereafter.

Otto Stern sobbed all the way through the diary of Richard Stern’s imprisonment, biting his lips to ensure he did not let out a sound.

When he had read every word, he understood why Richard Stern would not allow him to open The Book of Fathers before the time was ripe. Not only his father but also his grandfather had described their suspicions of the future and from this he knew that he would not have a long life himself: his death would be sudden and quick. At the same time the prophecy of István Stern regarding Otto was the same as that which he had foreseen himself: that he would have but one son, named Szilárd. The danger was still a long way off, he thought to himself, since I have not even married and a child would be conceived only after that. He tried to recall whether in his own visions his wife-to-be had made an appearance, but he found no trace of such a person. Would it be Clara? Or someone quite other?