I shivered as I pondered these things. Then some noise outside interrupted my thoughts and I remembered the night’s warning.... Hours may have passed since I sat down at my writing-table. The light of my shaded lamp fell in a narrow wedge on to the sheet of paper in front of me, my head was still between my hands.
What was that?... Again the same noise. Then suddenly with relief I realized what it was. Near my window some mortar from the tiles had rolled from the roof into the gutter, quietly, like a shiver passing over the lonely house. I listened for some time, then I buried my face again in my hands and my thoughts wandered back by the path of recent events, picking up on the way fading memories which had been thrown to oblivion.
The picture of our great past was grand and full of dignity. Details stood out. Scenes gained colour. The expression of people’s faces became clearer, and now and then one could look behind the veil of things. That which was far away had become history, whereas the present was warm, throbbing, human life.
How did it happen? And when? At the time train after train was rolling across Hungary, long military trains, carrying the troops from the freed Russian frontier towards the Italian and French fronts. The end of the war had never seemed nearer. The hope of victory carried all hearts with it. Even the prophets of evil portent became mute, and the possibility of an honest peace appeared like a mirage on the horizon. The frontiers of Hungary will not change: that was our only condition of peace—we have never wanted anything else. And then the road will be clear for the second thousand years.
But then, all of a sudden, a shining blade seemed to pierce the air. There was a flash of light, and the light lit up a new wound. What had happened. Who had caused it?
In the first days of January some people unknown had introduced revolutionary literature into the arsenals and munition factories. “Workers!... Brethren!... Soldier-brothers!... Not a penny, not a man for the army!” Those who had an opportunity of reading these pamphlets could have no doubt that they were produced by people who were opposed to Hungary’s interests. What we imagined in horror had become a reality. A foe was in our midst and was attempting to achieve here what he had failed to accomplish on the other side of the front. Who are the guilty? The nation, fighting for life, clamoured indignantly for the mask to be torn off them. And when the mask was torn off they stood there in the light, with blinking eyes, caught in the act: a pseudo-scientific organisation of the Freemasons,[2] the International Freethinkers’ branch of Hungarian Higher Schools, and the Circle of Galilee with its almost exclusively Jewish membership.
Others, who were equally implicated, withdrew suddenly into the obscurity of the background. As far as he was concerned, however, Michael Károlyi thought caution superfluous. He continued to remain in the foreground of the scene; and though doubtful strangers sneaked through the entrance of his palace, nobody interfered with him. Even the police left him alone, though it knew full well that when the revolutionary documents were drawn up he had been in close contact with the Galileist youths, and had even spent many hours in their office. He was observed from a neighbouring house. But invisible powers protected Michael Károlyi, and it was said that his confidential friends in official positions always informed him in time when his position was becoming dangerous.
Public opinion became nervous in those times, and waited with impatience for retribution. The headquarters of the Galilee Circle was sealed up by the police. Arrests were made. Then the names of some of the accused reached the public through the doors of the secret court—names with a striking sound. Even now I remember some of them: Helen Duczynska, Theodor Singer-Sugár, Herman Helfgott, Csillag-Stern, Kelen-Klein, Fried, Weiss, Sisa, Ignace Beller, and about three more Russian Jews, among them a prisoner of war called Solom, who possessed a multiplicator. There wasn’t a single Hungarian among them. Obscure foreign hands had fumbled at our destiny! But nobody spoke of that. And yet the very names of the arrested Galileists were an indication of future events. Alas! the Hungarian nation has never known how to interpret the future by the warnings of the present.
The trial of the Galileists came to an end: the court martial inflicted two remarkably lenient sentences and acquitted the rest. That was all. Then there followed silence, a silence similar to the one which in the autumn of 1917 hid Károlyi’s journey to Switzerland and stifled the whispers that he had betrayed there to the French the German offensive which was preparing and had hobnobbed with Syndicalists and Bolshevists. Only when the sailors of Cattaro revolted was there another commotion. Notwithstanding the secrecy of the army command, rumours got about. The batman of a high officer brought a letter sewn in the lining of his coat.