The Phoenix Land (25 page)

In Vienna they were still arguing – and bargaining over which posts would fall to whose lot – when more news arrived from Budapest.

The Peidl government, after finding itself powerless because of the occupation by the Romanian army, had suddenly been swept away by István Friedrich, who had seized power himself. This created an entirely new situation and made nonsense of the idea that the Allies should confer with Hungarian political exiles in Vienna when there were now two governments in Hungary, one in Budapest and another at Szeged.

Although no one had much confidence in Friedrich, for his extreme leftwing actions in support of the October Revolution were still too recent to be forgotten, we decided all the same to return at once to Budapest and to start trying to bring about some sort of political unity without bothering too much about personalities.

If I remember rightly, the train that brought back the
Hungarian
exiles from Vienna left about 10 or 12 August.

It comprised a long line of shabby coaches. Of the politicians I recall only Bethlen and Lovászy, but there were also many
private
citizens coming home from Austria. I sat in a compartment with old Gerbeaud, a most sympathetic and intelligent man whom I had known for many years. During our long trip he first of all told me how he had been ruined by the Communists and then proceeded to explain to me all the tricks of the trade in the making of chocolates. It was fascinating, for he was a first-rate specialist in his own line. It was doubly entertaining since it was an age since I had conducted any conversation that did not
concern
politics.

Our journey was a series of fits and start, a slow jolting progress, without incident, passing through one lonely deserted station after another. Finally we arrived at Györ
57
.

The station was hung all over with bunting and flags of the national tricolour.

There was a throng of people on the platform and also in the town, where all the municipal functionaries dressed in their old Franz Joseph uniforms were gathered to greet us. I think it was the mayor who welcomed us, first greeting István Bethlen.

I am cursed by always being fearfully bored by all speeches on festive occasions, for no matter how good they are one always knows, even before the speaker opens his mouth, what he feels and what he will say. So rather than listen I spent the time
scanning
the crowd. Behind the local officials, and quite close to them, stood a half-circle composed of several rows of large women with generous figures, all broad-cheeked and with double chins, richly dressed in silk skirts and tight bodices. Seeing them reminded me of the rich fertility of the Hungarian soil. They were the fishwives of Györ!

These ladies were wreathed in proud, charming welcoming smiles; they had not come only to bid us welcome but also to receive our congratulations, for it was they who had finally brought the Communist sway in Györ to an end, several days before it collapsed elsewhere. It seems that the leading Red
commissar
had so maddened them by some confiscation order or
other that they had stormed the town hall, pushed aside the guards, forced their way up the stairs to the principal floor, seized the unfortunate commissar and flung him out of the window. Judging from their strong arms and their huge brawny hands, the commissar must have had a bad time of it! One had to admit that all this must have taken much courage for if they had not succeeded, bloody retribution would surely have followed. It was lucky for them that the Communist regime was then in its last days and had no time to order punishments. Hearing this tale from the welcoming committee, we went straight over to join the band of heroic fishwives, who seemed overjoyed to receive our praise and grateful handshakes.

Then the train’s whistle blew. It was time to be on our way.

Then came the evening, followed by the night; but the train kept slowly rolling on its way. It seemed a long, long time.

We passed dark, unlit stations, rumbling over screeching points and rails that seemed to cry out. It was as if we only went forward to the sobs and complaints of this lost and ruined land that seemed to have been left behind, just part of the debris of war and revolution…

The night became ever darker, ever more disconsolate until that little joy that had awoken in our hearts because our exile was at last at an end, slowly died away, leaving behind only deep
anxiety
for an unknown future.

The stormy years were over, but those that followed held no pity for our homeland.

Most of the Bánffy papers and archives were destroyed when the retreating German army set fire to the castle of Bonczhida at the end of the Second World War. In June 1945 after the horrors of the Battle of Budapest, Miklós Bánffy, with Countess Bánffy and their daughter Katalin, returned to Kolozsvár to see if any of their possessions could be saved. In November of that year news came that their Budapest townhouse had been occupied by Russian troops and their possessions there thrown out into the street whence a kind relative had salvaged what she could. Countess Bánffy and her daughter rushed back to the Hungarian capital leaving Miklós Bánffy at Kolozsvár (Cluj) as he was still hoping then to recuperate what was left of the family forests. Soon after this the frontier between Romania and Hungary was closed by the military, which meant that the family was
separated
. This lasted until 1949 when Count Bánffy finally obtained permission to rejoin his wife and daughter; he died in Budapest in the following year. These memoirs were started in 1945, when he found himself on his own in Kolozsvár.

The reference to Fortéjos Deák Boldizsár (the Crafty Deak Boldizsár) in Bánffy's Introduction is to the eponymous author of the fictional
The Memories of the Crafty Deak Boldizsár,
which Bánffy wrote and published in Kolozsvár in 1930 in his ancestral home. He wrote it in archaic Hungarian, and used the literary device of stating that it was edited from an ancient manuscript he had
discovered
in the Bonczhida archives. This was believed by a number of literary historians at the time until Bánffy, who loved to tease, revealed the joke. Soon after this he started work on the trilogy
Erdélyi Történet – The Writing on the Wall,
of which the first volume,
Megszámláltattál – They Were Counted
was published in 1934.

Patrick Thursfield and Katalin Bánffy-Jelen

It is just twenty years since Hungary was forced to sign the Treaty of Trianon. In this treaty the Hungarians had been branded as war criminals even though none of us had wanted war until we were dragged into it by foreign powers who forced us into battle and the death and annihilation of our country. It was to be the same twenty years later.

Today we are once more surrounded by ruins, worse ruins now than before because the land in which we lived has been laid waste by war as if trampled over by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Our cities and villages are all in ruins; our economy and our agriculture are destroyed. Hundreds of thousands have been made homeless.

Everything that we worked so hard to achieve after Trianon and which we had built up over the first ten years of struggle; all the fruits of our self-sacrifice, care and dogged determination, have now been taken from us.

The annihilation that the second catastrophe Fate has brought down upon us is infinitely worse than the first.

Even to think about it is beyond bearing: terrible to
contemplate
what led up to it all, terrible to know that all our efforts to rebuild were for nothing.

For someone like myself, who was one of those who worked so hard for the rehabilitation of our country after the First World War, all that is now left is to ponder on the past and recall
something
of what actually happened. After a long life this is the only treasure I still possess. And yet, in a way, I do have another
treasure
in the experience of politics, which I acquired – sometimes as an active participant although mostly as a passive one – over the last fifty years. Although much still remains, even this will die
with me. I have made no notes and have never kept a diary. Countless documents, letters and
memoranda
which I did keep have now been either burnt or dispersed. I only have what is in my mind, and that only until I cross the river of life. Once the crossing has been made, even that will vanish as well. It is
uncertain
how long I have, but the end cannot be far away.

It was these thoughts that have made me start these memoirs. I want to describe what I know of those events, both at home and abroad, which led the Hungarians from Trianon firstly to the Vienna decisions of 2 September 1938, and 30 August 1940, and finally to that fatal road to ultimate disaster. I wish to tell what I myself did, because only he who has really achieved something has the right to judge. I want to explain the reasons why and also to describe some of the people who have played a decisive part in the shaping of our history. I want too to look critically at the
conduct
of our affairs and to look at it particularly from a foreign point of view because since 1900, when I had a diplomatic post in Berlin, although I have (twice) been both a member of
parliament
and a prefect, this has also been my own.

Of course everything I put down today will be somewhat sketchy, partly because to go into full detail would require many volumes and also because it would take years to write. And at my age, although I now have plenty of free time, I cannot see myself undertaking such a task.

All the same, I can still put down some of the essentials as well as some of the conclusions that, by learning from the past, we should now be drawing from it all. Perhaps in some way this work of mine may prove useful to my countrymen even though I have always been all too aware of the truth I once put into the mouth of one Fortéjes Deák Boldizsár, a character in one of my books, where I made him say: ‘Perhaps this story can bear
witness
, if not for the many then for a few, that it is with sorrow that I have experienced with my own writings that it is rare indeed for a man to take the written word to heart and become any the wiser for it’. Yet I feel impelled to set down what I remember, if not to help others then at least to serve as proof of our feelings at the time and the zeal with which we tried to rebuild our country. Perhaps also my tale of one man’s experiences will serve as a
useful source to someone in the future wishing to study what happened to Hungary twenty-five years ago.