Free The Book of Fathers by Miklós Vámos

own design, in that clearing. “This is where it has to be!”
    No one was clear why he wanted it built in just this spot or why he wanted this kind of structure as his home. The cost of the works regularly exceeded the budget. Bálint Sternovszky was unconcerned. “What has to be done, must be done.”
    The family despaired when it learned that he had bought himself property many hours’ ride away from Felvincz, and that it consisted of two wholly ruined villages complete with the woods and meadows they shared. Nor could they find any explanation for where he had found the money for this purchase and for the building works. Income from the glassworks had declined steeply since Kornél Sternovszky had given back his soul to his Creator. His son Bálint was less successful as a businessman and devoted to it little of his time or energy. He was never very happy to be working; he preferred to sleep or to lie around dreaming of castles in Spain or Transylvania. However, he would have neglected the glassworks even if he had been of a more industrious nature. He hated the glassworks. In the absence of close supervision the master glassmakers who followed one another in rapid succession had little of his interest at heart and rather more of their own. The matriarch Janka summoned the family council with increasing frequency, but to no avail: neither carrot nor stick had any effect on Bálint Sternovszky.
    His two younger brothers shrugged helplessly: they had no say in the running of the glassworks.
    When the debts were such that they made the production and sale of the glass products no longer viable, Bálint Sternovszky received with equanimity the news that the glassworks would soon come under the hammer. “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away,” he said quietly.
    Borbála was pregnant with their third son (whom the Lord would later be pleased to call to Him while he wasstill at the breast) and held her swollen stomach before him: “Do you not see that we shall be thrown out of our own house? Where will I go with my two infants? Where will I give birth to this third one? Have you not thought of this?”
    “I have. Be of good cheer. I have done everything that I could.”
    More than this he was not prepared to say. Only when they had loaded what remained of their belongings onto the oxcarts and everyone had clambered up on top of them, was he willing to vouchsafe the following: “Take the road in the direction of Kos.”
    “Kos? Where on earth is Kos?”
    “Westwards. Keep going west until I say the word.”
    The caravan set off. For several months Bálint Sternovszky and his family had fallen off the edge of the world as far as his relatives, friends, and creditors were concerned.
    He was born so small that the midwife did not think he would live to see the dawn of day.
    Bálint Sternovszky came into the world at about nine of the clock in the evening. He did not cry, only after hot and cold baths did he give a little squeal. His head had turned blue from the strain of the birth but it was already covered in unusually thick coils of hair. By the next evening his skin color had become more normal and his face had assumed the dreamy look that it was to bear all his life.
    From a very early age his talent for music amazed his parents and teachers. He had only to hear a tune once—just once—and he was able to repeat it, immediately, note for note, even weeks later. Whenever his father sat him on his knee, he hummed Kurucz songs in his ear, despite his wife’s oft-repeated warning: “You’ll get us into trouble one of these days!”
    “Janka, don’t go on! Surely one is allowed to sing!”
    Allowed and aloud: certainly, Bálint did not stop all day. When he was not singing he would be humming a tune, and when he wasn’t humming a tune he would be whistling like a blackbird.
    One day when he was eight he woke up hardly able to breathe. The little air that was getting through his throat was producing a dreadful,