He decided to adopt this as his motto in his new life and copied it into The Book of Fathers on his last night in Eger. Mariska Zalay, the troupe’s soubrette with the unfading smile, had captured his heart. Kálmán Jávorffy, learning of his skills as prompter, offered him casual work and Szilárd Berda-Stern knew he had to accept; he had no other choice. He bundled up his earthly goods and early in the morning loaded them onto the covered wagon. He found Mariska Zalay even more attractive when he was sleepy-eyed than at any other time and held her hand tight when they settled into their seats in the second cart.
They bade farewell to the town in a biting, hair-ruffling wind. They headed for the Hatvani Gate, and constantly had to pull aside to avoid the laden peasant carts rattling along the uneven cobblestones as they headed for the weekly market. The southern gate’s open doors were hung with motionless chains; above them, darkly, loomed the fortifications.
Eger had almost disappeared from view when they caught sight of the scaffolds, from which swung the now-black bodies of seven convicted thieves. The women of the troupe began to shriek. The heavy smell of decay hung about the clearing; Mariska Zalay snatched up her pocket kerchief doused liberally with eau-de-cologne and thrust herself in some agitation into the arms of Szilárd Berda-Stern. He tried to play the tough man, though he knew that in his dreams these seven unfortunates would loom large for some time.
From the second stop on the tour he managed to send word to his mother as well as to the Sterns, asking for their blessing and approval of his decision. Instead of his mother, it was Béla Berda who replied with an icy, threatening letter, full of unlesses and without ados, and eight occurrences in all of the words disown and disinherit. Yanna was briefer: How you make your way in the world is up to you. I want you to find a space where you can make the most of your talents. Into the couverture there had been slipped a high-denomination banknote. Szilárd Berda-Stern pasted both letters into The Book of Fathers with starch gum.
His duties were described by Kálmán Jávorffy as follows: “My boy, you are going to be the maid of all work. So if someone asks for boiling water, you jump to it and boil her some water, and if she demands cold water, you blow on it until it cools… do you get my drift?”
He nodded his assent. He had no wish to alert the company manager to the fact that he well knew what the ladies of the stage were like, from somewhere very close to home. What he really loved in his job was the prompting, when he felt as if the success of the whole performance depended on the sharpness of his wits. It filled him with an almost lascivious thrill that the audience knew nothing of this. It was like the work of the anonymous authors of codices: we discover many things in their codices but almost nothing about these humble faceless servants of the spirit.
When he asked Mariska Zalay whether she would consent to be his partner for life once he came of age, the wonderment on her face masked two different kinds of emotion: “Szilárd, my darling boy, how can I know that? You are still only in your seventeenth year, are you not? And in any event, do not forget I am eight years your senior. By the time you might marry me I would be on the verge of old maidenhood.”
Szilárd Berda-Stern protested and when Mariska Zalay still refused to utter “yes” to his proposal of marriage, he moodily withdrew into himself. He felt he had been betrayed. He had quit the Lyceum in the belief that he had now found his better half. How long was he to live in such uncertainty? He thought with increasing sorrow of the Lyceum. Of his daily life there what he missed most was the time spent among the stars, and he decided that as soon as he had the time and the wherewithal he would make himself a telescope, so that he could continue his wandering among the night sky’s wonders. When he stared into the light of distant stars he had the same feelings as when he was able to look into times gone by.
Mariska Zalay insisted that wherever they lodged in a new town, she was accommodated in a room of her own, claiming that if she had to share with another she would be unable to prepare for her performance. Szilárd Berda-Stern was always obliged to share with one of the coachmen, though he was nauseated by the latter’s powerful smell of sweat. Some nights he would slip into Mariska Zalay’s room: they had agreed that if a candle or lamp was lit in the window, he could come; otherwise he was to keep out. As time went by, there was a gradual diminution in the number of nights that the flickering light appeared on a range of window ledges. Szilárd Berda-Stern suffered in silence. His agony was noticed only by Kálmán Jávorffy, and on one occasion he offered the lad what was intended to be a consolatory lecture on the inconstancy of women who worked on the stage. “You can better trust a viper than one of them!”
Szilárd Berda-Stern strove not to show how shattered he was by what he had heard. But the more he thought about it, the clearer it became to him that the manager was right. After all, he should have known from his mother what sort of a woman she was before she married. Nonetheless it took him the better part of a year to build up the courage to break with Mariska Zalay; moreover, he had to quit Kálmán Jávorffy’s troupe to do it. He joined the Hungarian Theater of Pozsony, in a role similar to his position hitherto, though the recompense was half as much again.
In this town, where there is a permanent Hungarian theatrical company, I found what I was seeking. Beside my theatrical work, I secured some income from teaching the Latin language by the hour. In a curious twist of fate I met a lady, Margit Galántay, a fanatical devotee of the theater, and when I had made clear the seriousness of my intentions, she told me that her father Márton Galántay was the town’s clerk. Appealing to this chance congruity, I sought the consent of my mother and stepfather to my marriage, which subsequently I did indeed obtain.
His wife presented him with a boy and a girl. Their names Mendel and Hannah were taken by their parents from the heroes of plays fashionable at the time, but this was not something they made a great deal of fuss about. The Berda-Sterns’ doors were open to all, and many of the town’s most distinguished citizens passed through their gate. On Thursday afternoons they organized five o’clock tea, where gifted amateurs read from their poetry. Particular success was enjoyed by Bendegúz Tolnai, the teacher of Hungarian language and literature at the gymnasium, whose work, The Silence Before the Storm, saw print in the Anthology. The Berda-Sterns subscribed to numerous literary and scientific periodicals, which Szilárd felt could not be missing from the educated person’s bookshelves. He gladly spent money on these. Though, it must be said, not at all gladly on other things. Their family bliss was frequently punctuated by rows that were invariably to do with financial matters. Margit often accused her husband of being a tight-fisted Harpagon. Szilárd Berda-Stern countered by accusing his wife of profligacy and even wanton squandering of their money.
Disturbing news came from Pest-Buda, where the young writers were constantly at odds with the censor’s office. In the salon of the Berda-Sterns the names of the novelist Jókai and the poet Petöfi were mentioned in awed tones. The evening after the latest Pictures of Life arrived bearing the headline “The Press Is Free!” they held an extraordinary meeting at the home of Bendegúz Tolnai. The poet, trembling with an intensity of emotion that appeared truly life-threatening, wanted to read out the journal in its entirety to the gathering, but as he could nowhere find his eyeglasses, he devolved this honor onto Szilárd Berda-Stern. The editorial opened thus: The revolution has begun. Magyarland begins to live its days of glory. Our correspondents in the regions will know what they must henceforth write about. These words were received with joy unconfined. The company did not disperse until midnight or perhaps later, the March Youth were repeatedly toasted, along with the revolution and the breaking of the new Hungarian dawn.