The Phoenix Land (11 page)
Authors: Miklos Banffy
This trip to Belgrade was to prove the Budapest public’s first great disappointment.
Everyone had assumed that Károlyi would be received as a welcome friend. This belief had been fed and nourished by the government itself who had assured the public that that ‘good Mihály Károlyi’ would go to Belgrade and bring back news that Hungary’s threatened borders would remain intact. It was just about this time that I remember seeing a poster at the corner of Kristoff Square on which was a poem extolling the great success of the Belgrade mission. It was a sort of ballad in antiquated
language
purporting to be by that ‘good Mihály Károlyi’ himself and telling how he had faced the enemy all on his own. In spite of the government’s general gullibility, I do believe that there could have been reason for this. When the so-called Diaz Armistice had been signed by Austro-Hungarian representatives in Verona, it had been specified that the Hungarian armies should withdraw only as far as the existing Hungarian border, no
further. Therefore it may well have seemed justified to prophesy the good news the mission would bring back. They may well have assumed that General Franchet d’Esperey would not be empowered to go further than the terms to which Diaz had put his signature. Therefore, it was safe to attribute this success to the new order. However, their calculation was wrong. The reason was simply that Károlyi, playing the part of the representative of newly independent Hungary, never identified himself with the contract made by the Dual Monarchy’s military leaders but insisted on starting new negotiations. But new negotiations could entail new conditions, and this is what happened in Belgrade. The new conditions were much harsher for, in between the signature of the Diaz Armistice a few days before and Károlyi’s trip to Belgrade, the Hungarian army had
disintegrated
. The new defence minister’s remark about not needing soldiers had its effect here too. It is clear that the French
commander
of the Allied armies knew all about it and probably knew better than did Budapest what it meant; and so, if he was to be enabled to discuss new terms, it meant that these could be
infinitely
tougher and more cruel than those they replaced.
Apart from this fatal error, there were plenty of other
blunders
, starting with the mistaken belief that if now everybody worldwide was a revolutionary, it would do well for the
Hungarians
to show it. Accordingly, they appeared in informal clothes before the French general who had dressed himself in full gala uniform to receive them. What made matters worse was that a number of newspapermen
27
had accompanied the delegation – which would not have mattered if everything had gone well. However, what did matter was that some French officers took one look at the little group, asked who these people were and were told that they were only the delegation’s secretaries. This lie was discovered by a Serb officer before the French general came in.
What resulted is well known. Shamed and humiliated,
disappointed
in all their rose-coloured hopes, Károlyi and his
delegation
returned from Belgrade. In vain did they try in the next day’s papers to make something positive out of
Franchet-d’
Esperey’s advice for everyone to follow Count Károlyi, but the
damage had been done with the shattering effect that the public’s rainbow dream of hope which had so heartened everyone at the end of October disintegrated, disappeared until suddenly there was nothing. Nothing remained of it, not even a memory.
14
. An exile, stripped of his great possessions, forever wandering in foreign lands, discredited and with little influence. When these memoirs were published in 1932 there would have been few
readers
who did not know that this is what Bánffy was implying.
15
. An incident during the troubled years of the 1848 struggle against the Habsburgs.
16
. Led by Lajos Kossuth during the 1848/9 insurrection against Austrian domination.
17
. The extensive ‘Uj épület’ barracks, which were erected in 1786 and pulled down in 1897, covered a vast area which later
comprised
the Stock Exchange building, Szabadság Square and several streets, as well as banks and other large commercial buildings. In 1850 this was a quiet, almost suburban, quarter that only acquired its later importance after the huge parliament building was
completed
on the nearby Danube embankment.
18
. Countess Katalin Bethlen, wife of Miklós Bánffy’s grandfather – also called Miklós – had several daughters, all older than our Miklós Bánffy’s father, including Clarisse, who married first Edward Károlyi and then Sándor Károlyi, and Elise who married a Count Berchtold, a relation of Count Leopold Berchtold, the Austrian foreign minister who wrote the infamous Austrian
ultimatum
to Serbia whose rejection was to bring about the 1914–18 War. Leopold Berchtold’s wife was Nadine (sometimes spelt Nandine) Károlyi, another cousin of Mihály Károlyi.
19
. Mihály’s paternal grandmother, born Countess Caroline Zichy.
20
. In the Károlyi palace in Egyetem utca in Budapest. The story goes that he had been sentenced to be hanged but that, to save him that indignity, Caroline Károlyi had smuggled a stiletto to him (hidden in a loaf of bread and carried by a French abbé) with which he wounded himself in the neck and so, as befitted his rank, he was shot instead. The dagger bore the legend
‘Ora et semper’
(‘Now and always’). It was over his coffin that Caroline is reputed to have issued a terrible curse against the Habsburgs. Years later, when asked why she had never written her memoirs, she replied that she could not write the truth and refused to write lies.
21
. During the last quarter of the seventeenth century, a powerful movement in Transylvania, which had formerly been a
semi-independent
principality, rebelled not only against the imposition of direct Austrian rule but also of the integration of the province in the kingdom of Hungary. ‘It was at this time,’ state the editors of
The History of Transylvania
(Akadémiai Kiado, Budapest, 1994), ‘that the exiles assembled along the Transylvanian border began to be called
“kuruc”
. The origin of the expression is
uncertain
. From the late 1670s a
kuruc
was anyone who took up arms against the Habsburg’s rule in Hungary…’
22
. Bánffy uses here a Hungarian phrase which, literally translated, means ‘to grind pepper under their noses!’
23
. This is not quite accurate since Mihály Károlyi’s
great grandmother
had been Georgina de Dillon, daughter of the French general known in Paris as
‘le beau Dillon’
, and so through her he was related to the Polignacs and many other grand French families. Others of his forebears had extensive French connections, and some of them lived for years in Paris and Menton.
24
. It is interesting to note that Mihály Károlyi himself tells how it was his uncle who had first given him Karl Marx’s
Das Kapital
as a counterbalance to his early materialistic ideas. He too pondered on how this book had influenced him in ways that would have horrified his uncle.
25
. This enormous townhouse still exists and houses the Petöfi Museum as well as a suite of apartments still preserved as they were in the Károlyis’ days. The extensive garden is now a public square. The property, confiscated with all the rest of Mihály’s holdings in Hungary in the early days of the Horthy regime, was restored to him in 1946 at the same time as the street was renamed Mihály Károlyi utca. After the fall of Communism it regained its original name, which in English means ‘University Street’.
26
. Károlyi himself only mentions these difficulties obliquely when, in a footnote in his memoirs, he writes that: ‘At the last moment, the Soldiers’ Council nominated Captain Csernyak as its representative … and we were therefore bound to include Csernyak in the delegation, for it would have been unsafe to snub this powerful organization, which would have caused serious trouble at home during our absence.’ This is the closest he gets to admitting how limited was his real authority. The suspicion cannot be dismissed that at that stage not even Károlyi himself had noticed.
27
. Among them was Baron Hatvany, a leading Jewish newspaper owner, to whom Bánffy refers in some detail in Chapter Eleven.
Chapter Four
The Eastern Train Station was packed with people. In the great hall, the waiting rooms, the long corridors, and on all the
platforms
covered by the gigantic glazed vaulting, there was a huge crowd of people milling about, pushing, struggling. There was very little light, and in the darkness of that winter evening one could sense rather than see the mob around us. It was 31 December 1918.
They were nearly all men, mostly clad in dirty ragged
uniforms
. Some had their rifles, which they repeatedly banged on the ground. Among them were a few civilians, and here and there a frightened woman was to be seen crying and beseeching the people to let her by as she had to get home by morning because of her husband, or a sick child … for the love of God, please would they let her through? But almost no one paid any
attention
, and if one or two let her by the next would push her back roughly or would stand their ground, legs spread wide, or shrug their shoulders unconcerned – man’s unkindness to man is always made worse by the dark.
I only once saw a worse mob at the station. It was night then too, but everything was brilliantly illuminated. All around were recruits in their thousands, newly called to the colours by general mobilization: It was in the first week of August in the year 1914. I was on my way to join my regiment in Transylvania. Even the streets outside the station were thronged with men hurrying to join their comrades. Most of them were working-class, with kitbags on their shoulders. There were a few gendarmes on the sidewalks outside the station, while inside some
non-commissioned
officers were trying to marshal the crowd into some order. With the men there was a mass of women, wives,
sisters, sweethearts who all wanted to remain with their men-folk until the last possible moment and who, desperately frightened, clung to their arms and shoulders. Some of them were just crying silently, while others called out to let their men pass because, Dear God, they’d shoot him if he hadn’t reported to his unit by the morning, for such things were then still firmly believed. Many of the men were drunk, and one of them nearly attacked me as I was trying to get through the crowd. I was dressed in ordinary country clothes and was carrying on my shoulder my Mannlicher sporting rifle in its hard leather case. All of a sudden a man next to me with big whiskers and
bloodshot
eyes started to shout, ‘Look! The gentlefolk are going
shooting
while we go to war!’ I tried to calm him down, saying I was off to enlist too, and that we were both going the same way, but he went on shouting just the same. Some others nearby pulled him away, and somehow I was able to move on; but even when he was far behind me I could still hear him shouting: ‘The
gentlefolk
go shooting to amuse themselves! Shooting!’
The mood of the crowd had changed. Four years before everyone had been hurrying straight to the trains: all going in the same direction. Now many of them were milling about, while others stood around lazily or sat down, lolling on baggage or piles of sacks. It looked as if many of them had already been waiting for days, and that no one knew how long it would be before they were able to travel. With all this delay the angry tired crowd would all of a sudden start to whirl about without any apparent goal, so that people were carried along, turning from left to right, treading on those who were lying down and
upsetting
the ones who were seated. It was just like floodwater making whirlpools over unknown depths until the swirling muddy waters above pile up any debris they may meet.
The four of us had great difficulty getting through the crowd, even though Miklós Vadász, who was forging our way ahead, was a most powerful fellow. How he did it I never knew, but it was he who organized our whole trip even to getting us a First Class compartment for three people, which at that time was
miraculous
, a gift from Heaven. He even found a porter who in some mysterious way managed to get all of our luggage onto the train.
After struggling on in front of him, pushing our way in single file through the mob, we were guided by some railway official through the former royal waiting rooms (the velvet-covered sofas and chairs now under dust-covers) to the platform where a
carefully
guarded compartment awaited us. Everything was
wonderfully
organized by our guide and when we had settled in he received our thanks with a modest and mysterious smile. My thanks were especially warm, as I realized that all these favours had not been done for me but for Andor Andorján, who was a close friend of Miklós Vadász while I only saw him at art committee meetings and through my connection with the
Est
newspaper.
The man said his goodbyes and left, while we settled down to sleep if we could.
We were tightly squeezed into our little compartment, for where our feet should have been was the mountain made by Mrs Andorján’s luggage, a mountain because she was going back to her home in Paris and was bringing out all she could. After a long and complicated struggle getting all this into place, we managed to contrive some sort of bed for the lady and a somewhat more limited space for ourselves. Then we were able to settle down and wait – no one knew for how long – until the train started.
The most important person in our compartment was Mrs Andorján’s dog Lolotte: her comfort came first. Lolotte was a strange animal, one of whose parents seemed to have been some sort of ratter while the other was certainly a dachshund. A fox terrier, out of wedlock no doubt, came in somewhere, and she also seemed to have a dash of pointer in her. One grandparent must have been a pug. From this multiracial mix had emerged Lolotte, six inches high, long-bodied and weak in the limbs, very odd-looking with a tail shaped like a trumpet, a small head and a tiny pointed nose, pointer’s ears and a white-spotted coat. She was swathed in cushions. She was also so overweight that when she begged she could have remained upright forever – a short little column supported by her own fat.
Her character was not a sweet one. She growled and barked and also bit, although not very successfully since her teeth were so bad. In spite of it all, I have to admit she was a nice creature of whom I later grew very fond.
We also had to arrange a bed for
that
Very Important Person; and more than that, it had to be a bed that was to her liking and that she would consent to use! This was not easy, but in the end we succeeded.
We waited. The corridor was thronged with people, and sometimes quarrels would break out, loud altercations
conducted
with hard words by tired men, occasionally broken by some woman’s voice raised in endless complaint or by a child crying. Then again someone would try to force their way into the crowded carriage only to be pushed back by all those already on board who suddenly stopped quarrelling among themselves and joined forces to repel a common enemy. Then we could hear the sound of running steps as the disappointed boarder chased down the platform hoping against hope, poor man, to find a place somewhere else on the train.
Slowly everything became quieter, although one could still hear, on the platforms, the rumbling uneven throbbing of
countless
feet as the crowd milled to and fro.
We remained motionless for a long time.
No other trains arrived, and I fancy that none departed. Under the vast glazed vault the only movement was that of the crowd. There were plenty of men, but few trains. Sometimes we could hear an engine in reverse, shunting aimlessly it seemed, in and out of the station, blowing its whistle and puffing out clouds of steam and smoke, before backing out again, and all was still once more.
It came almost as a surprise when at last we seemed to be under way, with much hesitant jerking and some heavy jolts, for we could feel that the engine could hardly cope with so many
carriages
all crowded with passengers. After more rumbling and a noise like thunder … and several false starts, we really did begin to move. After noisily crossing a series of points at last we began to hear the familiar three/four rhythmic clicks as we were carried through the night to worlds of unknown turbulence.
***
We all tried to sleep. I leaned back and closed my eyes, but sleep did not come. Out of the unceasing rhythm of the wheels below
us there rose up sharp and painful memories of those last few weeks, which had been so filled with menace and foreboding, with every day a new fear and a new anguish. And to these thoughts was added the awful uncertainty about what I might encounter on my journey.
All sorts of questions rose up to haunt me. Could it be true that the whole world was on the brink of revolution? Could it be that after our revolution in Budapest I was now heading for
similar
upheavals abroad? Had those four terrible years of war led only to a universal destruction of order?
The Hungarian press had been full of stories of revolution breaking out everywhere, mostly issued by the government’s press office. I tried to recall some of them. On 8 November, I remember it was, they told how there had been a Bolshevik uprising in Zürich which, the story went, had spread to the whole canton. This one happened to be true, although no one told us of its suppression, nor that after a few days the other cantons had firmly finished it off. Then, in December, we had learned that in Berlin one Liebknecht had attempted a
Communist
takeover under the name of ‘Spartacus’ from which the
government
in Weimar had only managed to extricate itself by some intricate bargaining. Other stories concerned uprisings and army mutinies in France and Italy, where whole regiments were said to have hoisted the Red Flag!
No one knew if these stories were true, as few foreign papers reached Budapest. We read these stories with profound
reservations
, especially those about those countries who had won the war, since everyone knew that Károlyi’s politics were firmly based on his belief that revolutions would break out everywhere.
We did not know much more about what was happening in Vienna. All that was certain was that the Socialists were in power and that those feeble politicians that the revolution had banished from their velvet-covered bureau chairs had been swept away God knows where.
At home in Budapest we were faced with a disturbingly imprecise picture of what recent events had brought about. It was like the multifarious little segments of a mosaic, which had to be fitted together to form the finished picture. All those
spontaneous, enthusiastic public demonstrations were long past, while members of the new government tried to restore general confidence by slandering their enemies while praising
themselves
. The last of these festivities was to be the declaration in parliament, and to those gathered in the square outside, that Hungary had become a republic. After that, nothing. And so it was not long before it turned out that whenever there was a public demonstration, it was not for Károlyi but against him.
At this final mummery it was clearer than ever before – far more so than on that evening of revolution earlier in October – how the unrelenting grind of the war had deadened all feelings of faith and confidence in men’s hearts, and that these qualities had now been replaced by a general sense of timidity and
passivity
. On that first night of revolution the people of Budapest were still alive, ready to express their opinions freely, with zest, pleased surprise and enthusiasm. This was no longer true today, principally because the government (the ‘People’s Government’, as they liked to be called) had now taken to handling all matters in a tamer, less assured manner.
Desperate to avoid being accused of achieving their aims by force, they decided to consult the leaders of both Houses of Parliament. The president of the Upper House, Gyula Wlassich, insisted on strict application of the law. He declared that by law the parliament could only be dissolved by established legal procedure. Therefore his powers extended only to adjourning the House for an indefinite period. He persisted in this view, partly out of sheer captiousness, for it was clear that the consultation was a mere formality, but also, and this was more important, because in those troubled times it was essential, if possible, to maintain the principle that the rule of law should be inviolate and that one should not humble oneself before an upstart power.