“Elsa, you hear this? Wonders will never cease!”

The deal was completed that summer. Sándor Csillag had the whole shop renovated. He had gas lamps fitted to the two wrought-iron chandeliers at the entrance; they were the wonder of the street for the evening strollers.

“Not such a big deal,” said Sándor Csillag. “In Budapest the best streets have had electric light since 1873. You have to keep up with the times.”

On the new shop sign it said: Straub & Csillag, since he thought dropping the well-established name would have damaged the firm’s reputation. He offered the Straubs the chance to continue to manage the shop for a fee that was so high they could not refuse. Soon the attention of mothers with marriageable girls was also attracted to the ambitious young man, who was regarded as a good match. He, however, spent little time in Pécs, despite having also purchased the house in Apácza Street. The rumor was that he was busy wooing some aristocratic lady in his home town, which they took to be Homonna; some spoke of a baroness, others of the daughter of a count.

Sándor Csillag took every opportunity to visit the capital. He maintained a permanent suite at the Queen of England Hotel. Nightfall generally found him in houses with red lights. His generosity was suspended in the case of the ladies of the night, whom he paid only as much as he absolutely had to. He was rough with them.

“This one scratches and pinches, like a scorpion,” one of them complained to the madam.

“You would die if that were true,” she replied. A romance set in South America was doing the rounds in that house.

In the mornings Sándor Csillag would sit in the Hotel Bristol, staring at the Danube and the bridge arching over the gray waters, over which carts trundled on their way to Buda. It was the month of November; snow fell in a soft drizzle. He ordered yet another Viennese coffee. He shook his head when the blue-uniformed young waiter brought the plate in his left hand, grasping the handle of the jug in his right. “Just one hand,” he ticked him off strictly.

He was reading the Books of Fathers for the umpteenth time. It was time to start writing his own section. From Gorove and Partner’s stationery shop he ordered an album in a large format, which even came with a tiny little lock. As soon as he bought it, he carried it with him, for a while wherever he went. He kept the key in the watch fob of his waistcoat. He spent days caressing the pristine white pages with deep satisfaction. There is something sublime in the fact that they are all blank, he thought. He kept putting off the day when he would disturb their blankness and was himself surprised when he asked for pen and ink at the Bristol.

Let the third one begin. I wish Sándor Csillag and his descendants that only joyful matters should grace these pages.

PRAYER

If only I had enough strength not to squander my abilities on lowly enjoyments. These shake my whole being, yet the greater the ecstasy, the emptier I become. I must conquer my mortal passions, otherwise they will conquer me. My task: to kill the miserable, inferior being within me, so that, being purified, my spirit might guide me to the world of rationality.

My clan possesses the exceptional gift of memory, a privilege that belongs to the first-born; sometimes even the gates of the future open before us. But whither have we got by means of this? Our fate has been no easier, our life has not been better; we have not managed to spare either ourselves or our loved ones from an evil fate. It is wiser to concentrate all our strength on today, for yesterday has gone and perhaps even the future is foreordained. As Horace says: carpe diem.

As long as the Straubs were spared the assaults of gout, the travels of Sándor Csillag had little effect on the trade of the Straub & Csillag shoe shop. But later they had little strength to spare for the supervision of the newly recruited employees. These were not as loyal to their masters as the former owners; their sticky palms and nonchalance had a cumulatively damaging influence. Sándor Csillag could observe this whenever he ran his eye over the books, yet he showed little concern. The cost of my way of life is amply covered by the shop. Why should others be denied their share? he thought.

In the life of the nation Gyula Szapáry had now been replaced by Sándor Wekerle as prime minister and it was preparing to celebrate the millennium, a thousand years since the first Magyars arrived in their homeland. The face of Budapest was being made up like those of girls at their coming-out ball. There was a lively debate in the newspapers about the construction of a viaduct for the tram to run on the Pest side of the Danube. The majority thought that such a long viaduct would disfigure the corso, the prime venue for the citizens’ strolls. Yet without a viaduct, the tracks would have to be laid along the quayside, which was prone to annual flooding. Sándor Csillag backed the viaduct. “One must keep up with the times!” He adored every form of transport.

New Year’s Day 1896 found him staying the night in Pest, the carillon of bells that rang out in honor of the millennium long reverberating in his head. A few days later he traveled to Venice. He took the tram to the Western Station and boarded the fast train to Trieste; this left at eight in the evening and arrived in Venice at two-thirty in the morning. At night, after the bed had been made up for him, he stood for a long time in the corridor, smoking a cigar and staring out at the landscape shrouded in darkness. He had a flash-forward of a sudden: in a hundred years’ time, people would travel on this train just as today, though-oddly-the journey would take only an hour less than it does today, even though it will be powered by an electric engine that belches neither smoke nor soot. Is that credible? An electric engine? Where from? How? Ach… stuff and nonsense.

Despite his best efforts and resolutions, in Venice, too, the hectic in his blood drove him to women of easy virtue. Not only to the downmarket type hovering around the Rialto, but to the courtesans, who here held court on a small island, whither the gondoliers would carry you for a hefty extra fee. Sándor Csillag penned ever-new pledges and oaths and vows in The Book of Fathers about self-restraint, a pure and spiritual life, and a sedulous life. And when he failed to honor these, he added remorseful, repentant lines to his text.

He had a sudden craving for complete peace and solitariness: from the albergo near the Accademia he moved to the Lido. This summer resort was almost entirely deserted in January; only one hotel was open and even that had only half-a-dozen occupied rooms. As he found out in the dining room, most of the guests had come for a salt cure, recommended for weak lungs by some doctors.

Sándor Csillag forgot that he had come here in order to be alone the moment he heard the sound of Hungarian being spoken in the room. Bowing as he clicked his heels-something he had learned from old Miksa Straub-he presented himself at the table of his compatriots. The Goldbaum family-father, mother, and two young girls-burst out in vibrant laughter in four different pitches when they learned that the person bowing before them was none other than the second element of the Pécs firm of Straub & Csillag.

“We have been buying our footwear from you for years,” said Helene Goldbaum, the mother.

“Come over and join us!” urged Manfred Goldbaum, the head of the family. “How long have you been in these parts?”

As they partook enthusiastically of coffee à l’italienne, in the course of the rambling conversation it transpired that the Goldbaum family lived in Beremend, half an hour’s ride from Pécs. Manfred Goldbaum had begun as a trouser cutter and taken over as owner of a clothing firm employing fourteen qualified tailors and cutters, working for him on foot-treadle sewing machines imported from Germany. The daughters, Antonia and Ilona, were of marriageable age with-and at these words Manfred Goldbaum gave a knowing wink-substantial dowries. Sándor Csillag’s mouth drew itself into a smile.