The latest rumours I got from worthy Béni Csányi, who had taken my wife to Pest, driving his four horses himself all the way from his stable door to the capital. They were evil times there. Haynau had appropriated even the National Theatre for the German players. But the director, worthy János Simoncsics, formerly a Conservative celebrity, protested against the proceedings of the high-handed tyrant, and when Haynau began to haggle with the stiff-necked old magistrate as to how many days a week he would allow the German players to act in the Hungarian National Theatre, brave old Simoncsics replied in his own peculiar Buda-German: "Wen i reden musz, so sag i: amol; wen i reden darf, so sag i: komol."[62] And "komol"[63] it remained.
[62] If I must speak: once; if I may speak: not at all.
[63] Not once.
My wife counselled me not to write to her through the post-office, as the whole town was full of spies. When she wrote to me she would send the letter to her father at Miskolcz, directed to Judith Benke.
Even now I often draw out those love-letters which were written to me and began "My dear Juczi."[64] Even now they light up that endless darkness which I call the cancelled portion of my life.
[64] Contraction for Judith.
From August to the middle of October I knew absolutely nothing of what was going on in the world.
It was a corner of the earth where no visitor ever came, and where the inhabitants themselves went nowhere. Now that winter was approaching, there would be a sledge drive, and communications would be opened up between Tordona and Miskolcz. Then one would be able to convey timber into the town. Of timber there was no lack. Csányi had four hundred acres of virgin forest to forty acres of arable land.
Day after day I rambled up and down these forests that had never heard the voice of man. Never did I meet a fellow creature. However many heights I might ascend, I saw from thence nothing but the smoking chimneys of Tordona. I discovered the source of the stream that sped through the valley. "Linden-spring" was the name they gave it. It was entirely circled by lindens. I hit upon the childish sport of cutting a water-mill out of elder-tree wood, piecing it together, and placing it across the little stream. Thus I amused myself.
One day I received a box of water-colours from my wife. I was immensely delighted. I now had something to occupy myself with all day. I filled a whole album with my landscapes. Then I painted that journey through the plain with a horse and a half in the covered car. I painted my own portrait on a piece of paper no bigger than a finger-nail, which could be inserted in a medallion. I sent it to my wife. Béni Csányi's wife asked me to paint her a portrait of her "old man" also. She wanted it about the size of a kidney bean; she had a medallion just as large as that. This was my only work in that terrible year.