In a city night is never fully asleep. Somehow, it is forever awake. Here and there it opens its eye in a window and winks. A door opens with a gaping mouth. Steps are about. Their echo strikes the walls of the houses and resounds to the neighbouring lane though no one walks there.
The great river breathed heavily, coolly. The stars spent themselves in the firmament. Christopher turned from the fishmarket to the embankment of the Danube. Now and then he stopped, then he walked on wearily, unsteadily under the slumbering houses. He went on, full of contempt. Was that all? So the grown-ups’ great secret was no more than that? He pulled his hat over his eyes. He was afraid of someone looking into them.
Florian just opened the gate. His broom swished with uniform, equal sounds over the stones of the pavement. When the servant had finished and had retired to the house, Christopher slunk in unobserved by the side entrance.
He looked anxiously for a minute towards the stairs. Candle-light descended from above, step by step. He did not realize at once what it meant. He only felt danger and hid in the wooden recess of the cellar stairs.
Heavy, firm steps came downward. They came irresistibly and their sound seemed to tread on him. He crouched down trembling. He saw his grandfather. He was going to work. He carried a candle in his hand. His shadow was of superhuman height on the white wall. He himself looked superhuman to the shrinking boy. Under the porch his shadow extended. It reached the courtyard. It continued over the wall. It must have dominated the houses too, the whole town. Christopher looked after it; he could not see its end and in his dark recess he felt himself infinitely small and miserable beside the great shadow.
Staggering with exhaustion he stole upstairs. On tiptoe. Along the corridor. One of the big stone steps was loose. He knew it well. He avoided it like a traitor.
He stopped for a moment before Anne’s door. In the clear tranquillity he felt as if some dirt stuck to his face, his hand, his whole body; degrading, shameful dirt.
Later on, he lay for a long time with open eyes in the dark, as he used to in olden times when he was still a child. The darkness was as empty as his heart. What he had longed for was gone. All that remained in his blood was disgust and fatigue.
He was waked by the noise of the clatter of heavy carts under the porch. The steps of workmen were going towards the timber yard. Ulwing the builder was not contented to buy land and houses. Now everything was cheap. He bought building material from the ruined contractors. Enormous quantities of timber, so that his firm might be ready when work started.
Christopher took no interest in this. At this time nothing interested him. Even when he heard that Sophie Hosszu had become the bride of Ignace Hold he remained indifferent. He just thought of the cornelian horse-head which dangled and touched Sophie.
A week passed away. Christopher spoke practically to nobody in the house, but whenever he addressed Anne, his expression was sarcastic, as if he wanted to vent on her his contempt for all that was woman. He had never felt so strong and independent as now.
Then ... one night, like a re-opened wound, a soulless recollection struck him. The recollection was all body. A female body.
The gloom of the night became populated. Figures approached, more and more. The darkness became gradually a huge cauldron, in which bare arms swarmed, soft outlines, white shoulders, vulgar female faces.
Next day, Christopher went towards the fishmarket. He recognised the house. He knocked. And when he came away again from the girl he had learned that for the future he would need money.
He thought of his grandfather, his father. He saw them working forever and ever and they never seemed to spend any money. What were they doing with it? They must have a lot. Strangers had told him so. Even the girl with the bestial eyes knew it, as well as the others, those with the painted faces who winked in such a way that only he saw it. How did they know him? What did they want? Why do they emerge from their dirty houses when he passes by? Why do they lie in wait for him at the street corners? Wait, offer themselves and follow him obstinately.... And at night when he wants to sleep their image comes. The room gets crowded. They sit on his bed. They press him to give them their pay. But whence is he to procure the money?
Suddenly he saw his grandfather before him, as he had seen him from the cellar entrance. The great shadow at early dawn. He shrank. He blushed for every one of his miserable thoughts. It was all dirt. He too was going to work, hard, honestly, like the old ones. He would be kind to everybody. Even to Anne he would be kind. And he would never again set foot in the house of the girl with the bestial eyes.
But when the hour struck, he again became restless. To restrain himself, he called to his mind the image of his grandfather going to work. The image faded, became powerless and the frightful, hideous force attracted him anew. On the stairs he realised that it was useless to struggle; the fishmarket called him irresistibly.
Downstairs, in the porch, he found himself unexpectedly face to face with Anne and his father. Anne had a bunch of fuchsias in her hand.
“Come with us to the cemetery, to Uncle Sebastian,” said the girl, getting into the carriage.
Only when he was in the street did Christopher realise that he had given no answer. He looked after them.
The carriage was disappearing in the direction of the Danube.
On the wooden pavement of the chain-bridge the sound of the wheels became soft. The bridge swayed gently, in unison with the river as if it had petrified over the Danube out of the elements of the water and recalled its origin. Anne had the feeling that the bridge and the river were but one and that the carriage was floating. Before her eyes the sun played on the iron supports of the bridge as if they were the strings of a giant harp. The sky looked ever so high and blue over the castle hill. Beyond, on the old battlefield, dense grass had grown out of the many deaths. Behind the acacia trees little double-windowed middle-class houses were visible: arched green gates, steep roofs, touching one another.
“How small everything is here....”
John Hubert looked up.
“One day a city may rise here too. Pest was not even as big as this when your grandfather settled in it.”
In front of the carriage the geese fled with much gabbling in all directions. Dogs barked. At the Devil’s ditch a shepherd played the flute.
Anne looked about bewildered, thinking of an old toy of hers. The toy was a farm. The goodwife was taller than the stable and stood on a round disc. Trees, geese and the gooseherd all had round foundations. Instinctively she looked at the shepherd’s feet and then laughed aloud. The whole place seemed unreal to her.
Farther on in Christina-town the houses separated. They stood alone, broad, gaudy, like peasant women, surrounded by kitchen gardens.
At the communal farm, they left the carriage. They continued on foot towards the military cemetery. The citizens of Buda had buried Uncle Sebastian there.
“Why?” asked Anne. “He was not a soldier.”
“But he was a hero,” answered John Hubert, though he had never been quite able to understand Uncle Sebastian’s death. His father kept silence about the details. On the other hand, the citizens in the castle told confused stories of great deeds. He liked to believe what they said because it flattered him. And whenever the exploits of the clockmaker were mentioned, he observed modestly, but with satisfaction, that the hero was one of his close relations. He grew used to the honour thrust on him. He bore it with erected head as he wore his high collars.
Anne remembered something. Three years ago, her grandfather had said to her, looking fixedly into her eyes: “The citizens of the castle consider Uncle Sebastian a hero. They may be mistaken. You are the only person in the world who is sure not to be mistaken if you believe him to be one.” She remembered it well. He said no more. But from that day he, whom till then she had merely loved, became also the object of her admiration and the hero of all around her.
The trees grew between the graves like a wood, a wood where people were buried. Here it was not the graves that decided the trees’ position; they had to take their places as the wood decided. And life here drew abundant strength from death’s rich harvest. In many places the stone crosses had fallen or sunk into the moss. A weeping willow drooped over a crypt. It bent over it like a sylvan woman, whose green loose hair covered a face which was doubtless weeping in the shade.
Anne prayed for a long time at Uncle Sebastian’s grave. Then they went on in silence. Around some graves the gilt spearheads of low railings sparkled in the grass. Railings, frontiers, even around the dead, to separate those who loved each other, to isolate those whom nobody loved. But Anne felt hopeful that in the ground, underneath the obstructions erected by the living, the dead might stretch friendly hands to each other.
On the hillside the graves ceased. Death vanished from between the trees, life alone continued. The wood was their only companion in the summer’s quietude.
On the edge of a small glen a straw hat lay on the grass. They looked up surprised. A bare-headed young man stood in the glen turning towards the sun. The approaching steps attracted his attention. His eyes were brown. His gaze seemed darker than his eyes. He appeared vexed. Then his eyes fell on Anne. Her small, girlish face tried hard to remain serious, but her eyes were already laughing ironically and her lips were on the verge of doing so. The stranger felt embarrassed.
John Hubert Ulwing raised his beaver, ruffled by the boughs. He asked for the footpath leading to the communal farm.
The young man indicated the direction. His handsome, manly hand was elegant and narrow. He wore an old seal ring with a green stone. He walked a few steps with the Ulwings. When they reached the footpath, he bowed in silence.
Anne nodded. The waves of her soft shepherdess hat of Florentine straw threw for an instant a shadow over her eyes. She was rather sorry the footpath had been so near. The steps behind her were already receding. She bent down and picked a flower. Only now did she notice how many flowers there were in the wood.
She hung her hat over her arm. One more, one more ... and the bunch grew in her hand. A Canterbury bell gave itself up, root and all. The roots, like infinitely small bird-claws, held on to the moist soil. For the first time Anne smelt the perfume of the earth. And when the carriage entered the porch between the two pillar men, it struck Anne that this was the first occasion on which wild flowers had come into the old house.
She met Christopher on the staircase. Her brother held his head rigid and seemed to be listening. She too heard her grandfather’s voice. It came from far away, from the timber yard.
Amidst heaps of dry chips a carpenter had lit a pipe. The builder was just then inspecting the yard. He perceived the bluish little cloud of smoke in the air at once. The blood rushed to his head. He threatened the man with his fists. The carpenter, awestruck, knocked his pipe out and stamped on the burning tobacco. Next to him, a journeyman began to split a fine big oak beam; in his fright, he deviated from the right angle.
Old Ulwing’s face became dark red with anger. He pushed the man aside and snatched the axe out of his hand.
“Look here!” he shouted in a voice that made all the men surrounding him stop work. Then, like a captive bird of steel, with a swing the axe rose in his grip. The chips flew. The oak recognised its master and split at his powerful will.
Christopher Ulwing forgot everything. His chest panted and inhaled the savour of the oak. The inherited ancestral instincts and movements revived; though displaced for a long time by strenuous intellectual work and rendered superfluous by long prosperity, the gigantic strength of his youth awoke again. There was nothing in the whole world but the timber of the oak and himself. For a moment the men got a glimpse of the great carpenter whose former strength was the subject of endless and ever increasing tales, told by the old masters of the craft to the younger generation.
They saw him for one moment, then something happened. The raised axe fell out of his powerful hand and dropped helplessly through the air. It fell to the ground. The builder grasped his forehead as if it had been struck by the axe and he began to sway slowly, terribly, like an old tower whose foundation gives way. Nobody dared touch him. Meanwhile the workmen stared in amazement.
Füger was the first to regain his presence of mind. He tendered his shoulder to his chief.
John Hubert ran as pale as death across the yard.
Supported by two powerful journeymen carpenters the master builder staggered along. His bent arms were round the men’s necks. His elbows were higher than his shoulders. The face of the old man looked sallow and masklike between the youthful faces of the men, crimson with their effort.
“Not there,” he said scarcely audibly when they tried to drag him to his bed in his room. He pointed with his chin to the window. They pushed an armchair in front of it.
Soon the shrivelled face of Gárdos, the proto-medicus, appeared in the door. When he left the room, he made the gesture of respectful submission which is only known to priests and physicians. Priests make it at the altar, in the presence of God, physicians when they face death.
“The children....” The builder made an effort to turn round. His halting look went slowly round the room.
Christopher clung trembling to the edge of the table. He had a feeling that if this great searching glance were to find him, it would strike upon his pupils and press his eyeballs inwards. Everything shrank in him. His body wanted to vanish into space.
So death was like this! He had never seen it yet, though he had guessed that it hovered everywhere and whispered fear into men’s ears. It had whispered to him too when he was a child and he had to hide under his blankets or run out of the room when the candle went out. But then he did not yet understand the sibilant voice and his fear went astray among phantoms, deep silence and darkness. For all that, it had always been death.
He saw the others near him in a haze. His father, Füger, Gemming and Feuerlein. The pointed long face of Tini was there too. It moved correctly, with an appearance of unreality, between the washstand and the armchair. It came and went. A wet towel in her hand. In the corridor the workmen. Subdued, heavy steps. Changing, frightened faces in the door. One pressed against the other, as if looking into a pit.
Suddenly he perceived Anne. How pale she was. Yet she moved calmly. Now she knelt down near the armchair and her face was clasped by two waxy hands. A grey head bent over her and gave her a long look, a look insufferably prolonged. If he were never to release her? If he were to take her with him?
Christopher sobbed. Someone pushed him forward. Now he too was kneeling near the armchair. Now, now.... The fading eyes had found him. Two hands of wax reached searchingly into the air, the fingers stretched, tried to grasp something.
The boy fell to the floor without a sound. He was not aware that he was carried out of the room.
Slowly the room became dark. The steps of the priest interrupted the solemn silence of the corridor. Steps came and went. The smell of incense pervaded the porch. The choir-boy’s bell rang along the street. He rang as if he were playing ball with the sounds while one house was telling another the news:
“Ulwing, the master builder, is dying....”
There was a throng on the staircase. The heavy, syncopated breathing of the builder was audible in the corridor. Upstairs in the room, anxious, tearful faces leant over the armchair.
Since the priest had gone, Christopher Ulwing had opened his eyes no more. He was speechless and in the silence his brain fought desperately against annihilation. It was too early. He was not yet ready. He rebelled against it. So many plans.... He wanted to say something. He sought for words, but could find none.... The words leading to men were lost.... Colours appeared suddenly between his eyes and the lids, hard splints of colour, which seemed to drop into them, pressing on his eyeballs. Yellow spots. Black rings. Red zigzags. Then he felt a pleasant, restful weariness, just like long ago, when he was a child and his mother carried him in her arms into his bed. And Brother Sebastian ... they wandered together, quietly, without fatigue.... A town becomes visible, church-towers, houses; much waste land, on which he is going to build. It is morning and the church bells ring.
John Hubert bent over his father. He was still breathing. It seemed that his lips moved.
“It is morning!” The builder said that so loud that they all looked to the window.
Above the further end of the timber yard a wonderful gleam appeared. Füger looked at his watch: it was not yet midnight.
The gleam spread every minute. Red dust and sparks; at first one or two, then more and more.
The little book-keeper began to perspire. He recalled all of a sudden to his mind a man with a leather apron, knocking his pipe out and trampling on the burning tobacco. Now he remembered clearly the workman’s heavy boots in the sawdust. With desperate self-accusation he remembered that after that he had thought no more of the matter....
A man ran through the courtyard.
“Fire!”
The cry was repeated, every corner of the house re-echoed it. Under the steep roof the walls became orange. An unnatural red glow spread. Through the window panes light streamed suddenly into the rooms.
“Fire!”
Now they were shouting it in the street, persistently, sharply. Carts were thundering towards the Danube.
John Hubert rushed to the door. At the threshold it looked as if he were going to fall. He staggered and turned back. He began to calculate, perspiring with fear. His brain added and multiplied confusedly, intensely. The loss was gigantic. The quantity of timber and building material was enormous. The firm might be shaken by it. Helplessly he stared at his father. But in the armchair there sat but the ghost of an old man, smiling like a mask into the light of the conflagration. Nothing more could be expected from him. His knees began to shake.
Anne was worn out and looked wearily towards the window. She did not dare to move her head. Something was giving way behind her brow.
Black figures were starting up on the walls of the yard. They pumped water on the fire. People were standing on the roofs of the opposite houses too.
Sooty horrors staggered in the air near the tar boiler. A suffocating smell of burning poured through the windows. The conflagration spread with awful speed. It raced towards the wall of the back garden.
A burning pile collapsed in the timber yard.
In the ominous light of the rooms Tini and the maidservants were gesticulating madly before the open cupboards.
Anne leaned against the wall. “They want to abandon the house, they want to flee.”
“Save it, save it!” she shrieked with a bloodless face.
Augustus Füger dropped panting into the room. He brought news. Now he was gone. Now he was back again.
The fire had reached the roof of the toolshed. The air quivered with heat. Hoarse crackling, spasmodic hissing, mingled with the cries of many human voices.
The half-closed eyes of the builder rarely moved. He heard, he saw nothing that happened around him. He was mysteriously distant from all that.
Under the window the wasted leaves shrivelled up with a dry crackling sound. The pump in the courtyard creaked uniformly. A fire engine started to spray the hot walls.
In that instant a heavy, clipped voice floated through the air, like a round disc of metal....
Something passed over the face of Christopher Ulwing.
“The church bells! It is morning and the church bells ring.”
All looked at him awestricken. The hands of the builder gripped the armchair. John Hubert and Florian supported him on either side.
“Let me go!” That was the shadow of his old voice. He did not know that nobody obeyed him any more.
“To build ... to build....” His chin went all to one side and his body straightened itself with a frightful effort. The dying Christopher Ulwing towered by a whole head above the living....
Then, as if something inside him had given him a twist, he turned half way round. John Hubert and the servant bent under his weight. In their arms the builder was dead. He had died standing and the gleam of the burning oak remained in his broken eyes.
New water carts arrived below. Bugles shrieked along the streets. Ladders climbed into the red air.
Long, panting snakes began to work: the pumps spat flying water among the flames. But the fire retreated reluctantly, slowly ... gradually it collapsed with a hiss.
The alarm bell of Leopold’s Town went on shouting its clamour, asking for help, calling, complaining. All parishes responded. The whole of Pest was alarmed. Sooty débris floated in the air rent by the tolling of bells. Smoke covered the yellow walls. The water from the pumps flew down the window panes.
In that night the old house became really old.