The Book of Fathers

On the sixteenth a

He traveled over fields and forests, sometimes on foot, sometimes hunched on jolting carts. There were decent folk in the country at whose tables he would be offered food and drink; if asked about himself, he replied he was a wandering scholar, looking for his father. He had no particular goal; he just followed his nose along roads virgin to him. Along many byways, by twists and turns, he reached the countryside that he recognized from his visions, where the shoots of the vine curl upwards hungrily on the vine-stocks.

He had no need to seek the sharp bend in the stream-all of a sudden he was there at the edge of the water, his ears caressed by the soft murmur of the stream. Small fish flung themselves out of the water, plunging back with a little plop.

“Well, this looks like it,” sighed Szilárd.

He had no need to ask after the house of Richard Stern, his legs carried him there on their own. He stood for a while before the door, waiting for someone to come out or go in, but no one did. Then he wandered over to the other side of the street, to the building that housed the Stern & Stern Wine Emporium, which had had an attractive pavement laid in front of it since he could last have seen it, if that is indeed the right verb to express the way he had learned about this landscape.

Brand-new wine barrels were being loaded onto an oxcart by the laborers, under the direction of a gray-haired old lady whom Szilárd recognized as Ya

Szilárd could not reply. Moved, he surveyed the family resemblances in the old woman’s face. Ya

She led him through the ground floor of the house, where a dozen men were writing away at desks facing each other. At the far end of the three interco

“Szilárd Berda, at your service. But truly… I don’t dare.”

Ya

“My sixteenth.”

“A grown man, then.”

At this Szilárd finally gave a smile, flashing tiny, pearly teeth.

The scribes did all in their power to make him feel unwelcome during the meal, pointedly looking right through him. Each had his own wooden plate and spoon. Ya

When Ya

“Well now, out with it!” said Ya

“Well, you see… I know it is something of a surprise… but… I… well, I also belong here… as I am a Stern… a Stern from the wrong side of the blanket.”

“What!”

He told her what he knew. Ya

“I have no demands. Perhaps I could make the acquaintance of Uncle Richard, may God preserve him…”

Ya

“I truly beg your pardon.”

“The pardon is in His hands,” said Ya

That evening she introduced the newcomer to the family. They listened with suspicion. Could they really be seeing the offspring of Otto Stern? They all awaited the decision of Uncle Richard. Richard Stern was in his sixty-sixth year, the tremor in his hands and neck meant that he could take liquids only through a straw. He observed the boy, taking his time to study the most minute details. He recalled the day that he had himself arrived here to seek out his long-unseen family and was astonished to detect in the boy’s eyes the very mirror of his feelings at that time. He gave a mollified wheeze. “Can you support your words with some concrete proof?” he asked in a creaky voice.

Szilárd showed him the pocket timepiece and the medallion he guarded with his life. Ya

“You have aged a lot since… since… you know…” Szilárd stammered. His voice was drowned by the clamor from the thirty-odd members of the clan. Questions rained upon him by the dozen. His mother? His stepfather? Where was he born? Whereabouts did he live? Why had he not made himself known to them before? How did he come to be called Berda?

Szilárd’s answers were full of detail. Then he asked his grandfather to show him the completed Book of Fathers, which he kept under the floorboards. Richard Stern gladly took him into the library where he knelt down and conjured up the dust-covered folio. That evening and night Szilárd did not set foot in the guest room made up for him, but lay on his stomach in the library, burning candle after candle down to the stump. Greedily he devoured and enacted in his imagination everything that he had hitherto known about only from his visions. He spent ecstatic hours on the worn carpet pockmarked with cigar burns. He was particularly struck by the realization that some of his ancestors were vouchsafed not just the past but, to a lesser degree, also the future. He, to the best of his knowledge, knew nothing of what was to come. Although he could not elucidate certain images he had seen, these could just as easily be the harbingers of things still to come. We shall see, he thought.