“Kata, open up! Open up at once, I say!” boomed the voice of Imre Farkas II.
“If you hold your life dear, run for it!” shouted the girl, jumping out of bed and half-pushing, half-tugging the lad in the direction of the window. He seemed not unwilling to comply, but could not bear to take his eyes off Kata’s face and the snow-white skin of her arms and legs left uncovered by her night dress. This was no time to worry about modesty, it crossed Kata’s mind. “Coming, father dear!”
By the time Bálint reached the ladder outside the window, the door had yielded to the shoulders of Imre Farkas, who was holding a three-pronged candlestick in one hand and a drawn sword in the other. He took everything in at once. He leapt to the window and in the light of the candles saw Bálint Sternovszky scuttling down the ladder. “Stop!” he cried, and when there was no response, he flung the heavy candlestick after him. As they fell the candles flew in three different directions and went out. Down below a shadow flew by, then came the sound of footfalls dying away.
Imre Farkas wasted no time in questioning his daughter, but to little avaiclass="underline" whatever Kata said he would not believe. He even slapped her across the face, just to be on the safe side. “You will get a hundred times that if I ever see him hanging around you again!”
Imre Farkas stormed round to his master’s first thing and demanded to be seen. Secretary Haller did not let him in. “Later, master glassmaker, he is just breaking his fast.”
“So what?” said Imre Farkas, pushing the wizened old man aside and bursting in.
Kornél Sternovszky was just stirring his tea, which he had reinforced with a tot of rum. “What is your business here?”
Haller was hovering in the background: “I did say to him, master…”
“I found your son Bálint in my daughter’s bedroom last night.”
“How do you mean?”
“I demand an explanation.”
“Haller, you may go.” Kornél Sternovszky placed the palms of both his hands on the table. He waited until the secretary had closed the door after him. “I find it hard to believe that my son would leave my house in the dead of night.”
“Is your grace suggesting that I am a liar?”
“That is not what I said. What I said was that my son Bálint is not in the habit of leaving my house without permission.”
“Yet that is what he did. Ask him.”
“I shall. Presently he is still abed, as indeed I believe he has been all night.”
“I tell you: he has not!”
“What is this tone that you take with me? Remember whom you are addressing!”
“It were not easy to forget.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
“Suppose what you will, it does not change the facts. But I will not allow the smallest blot on my daughter’s reputation!”
“How much longer do you expect me to tolerate your impertinence?”
“Let us not stray from the topic. If ever again I see your son hanging around my daughter, I swear he will bring home his head on a plate!”
“A threat? Are you threatening me? What an outrage!” Kornél Sternovszky rose from the breakfast table, knocking over as he did so a cup filled with tea, which rapidly soaked into the white damask tablecloth. “You are dismissed herewith! Leave at once!”
Imre Farkas II broke out in a cackling laugh of such vehemence that Kornél Sternovszky thought he had taken leave of his senses. He edged back, trying to reach the bell to summon his servant or Haller. Farkas was quicker off the mark and pushed the bell out of his reach as he bellowed: “You can’t get rid of me, I built the glassworks from the ground up, it will never function without me!”
“It will function if I will it to! You are not the only master glassmaker in the world. You will be amazed, Farkas, how quickly your name will be forgotten! Get out of here!” And Kornél Sternovszky took a step towards him.
The master glassmaker snorted like a wild boar: “Master thinks he can do with me what he will? Thinks his offspring can dishonor my daughter by way of amusement? That you can just throw me out, like some used washrag? That I will put up with anything and everything?”
“I have nothing more to say! Out!”
Kornél Sternovszky gave his master glassmaker a push in the chest. Imre Farkas II was in good shape and his chest barely registered the gesture. He began to shout out at the top of his voice unconnected words like “compensation,” “contract,” “complaint,” “courts,” and the like, until Kornél Sternovszky grabbed hold of the teapot and threw its hot contents in his face. For a fraction of a second the master glassmaker could not see. Then he drew his sword, as did Kornél Sternovszky his own, but the glassmaker was quicker on the draw and at the first clash of the blades wrenched Kornél Sternovszky’s weapon from his grip and with the same movement plunged his blade deep into his chest. For this Farkas was some months later duly hanged in the main square of Felvincz. By then Kornél Sternovszky lay in a copper-plated coffin six feet deep in the soil of his homeland. Kata’s mother came to take her away and Bálint never saw or heard from her again.
Three years after his father’s funeral Bálint Sternovszky took over from his mother the running of the glassworks. He also inherited Kornél Sternovszky’s papers and folio. His brothers were jealous, coveting especially the glassworks, for which they would both have given their eyeteeth. Yet Kornél Sternovszky himself truly hated the glassworks, as well as all master glassmakers, every one of whom brought Kata to mind. He married as soon as he could. The daughter of the miller of Felvincz brought less in the way of a dowry than a gentleman of his station was entitled to expect, but when his mother raised this topic, Bálint silenced her with the words: “She will make a good wife. That is what matters.”
The decline of the glassworks began as the young couple were enjoying their honeymoon. One night the drying kiln burned to the ground. Bálint dismissed the news with unconcern: “It could have been worse. At least we shan’t have to dry the glass for a while.”
Haller, who had retained his post, clapped his hands to his head: “But sir, that’s impossible. It will crack!”
“Less fussing, Haller! Some of the glass will, some won’t.”
No one could understand how Bálint Sternovszky could remain so indifferent to the rapid decline of the glassworks. He would spend long mornings in the forests he had inherited alongside the glassworks. He told his wife he was looking for mushrooms.
“How is it, husband mine, that you are always looking for mushrooms, yet never find any?”
“Find them I certainly do! Only they are poisonous, like your good self.”
In fact, mushrooming was not how he spent his days. The moment he found himself in the thick of the forest, he would sit down and eat his rations. Then he would burst into song. He sang all day long, as the locals could testify. When he was in full flow he could be heard many miles away.
Betimes he would wander so far that he would not return home for the night. He preferred to sleep under the open sky rather than seek the hospitality of others. He liked to lie in the dark on the grass or on the sand and examine the stars, as he ground his memories ever finer in the windmills of his mind. It was during such reveries that it dawned on him that he had to make the trip to Kos to find the house of Great-Grandpa Czuczor, or rather the garden with the rose bushes where he could dig for the iron casket and get hold of the treasure he had buried. He was certain there was a reason that God had blessed him with the rare gift of seeing into the past. It was compensation for all he had endured.
So when one afternoon he came upon the forest that had grown over the old village, he recognized it at once. Ankle-deep in black dust, he knew that the rains and the snows had still not washed the soil clean of the black ash that was all that remained of the houses burned to the ground all those years ago. He looked first for traces of Great-Grandpa Czuczor’s house. In a landscape almost entirely reclaimed by nature he found it hard to make out the building that had so vividly appeared to him. The road up the mountain was overgrown with scrub; the only sure sign of the route was the jagged cliffs. Bálint Sternovszky was almost beside himself with excitement as he hacked his way through the prickly bushes and fought off the trailers twining round his legs, careless of the bloody scratches from the spines and spikes of the vegetation. He did not mind. He knew that no one can blunder into the past without paying the price.