Debts of Honor | Page 4

in his arms. Then suddenly he heaved a deep and terrifying sigh, and in a low voice stammered in my ear:
"Father--is--dead."
I was one of those children who could not weep; who learn that only with manhood. At such a time when I should have wept, I only felt as if some worm were gnawing into my heart, as if some languor had seized me, which deprived me of all feeling expressed by the five senses--my brother wept for me. Finally, he kissed me and begged me to recover myself. But I was not beside myself. I saw and heard everything. I was like a log of wood, incapable of any movement.
It was unfortunate that I was not gifted with the power of showing how I suffered.
But my mind could not fathom the depths of that thought. Our father was dead!
Yesterday evening he was still talking with us; embracing and kissing us; he had promised to take us to the country, and to-day he was not: he was dead. Quite incomprehensible! In my childhood I had often racked my brains with the question, "What is there beyond the world?" Void. Well, and what surrounds that void? Many times this distracting thought drove me almost to madness. Now this same maddening dilemma seized upon me. How could it be that my father was dead?
"Let us go to mother!" was my next thought.
"We shall go soon after her. She has already departed."
"Whither?"
"To the country."
"But, why?"
"Because she is ill."
"Then why did she laugh so in the night?"
"Because she is ill."
This was still more incomprehensible to my poor intellect.
A thought then occurred to me. My face became suddenly brighter.
"Lorand, of course you are joking; you are fooling me. You merely wished to alarm me. We are all going away to the country to enjoy ourselves! and you only wished to take the drowsiness from my eyes when you told me father was dead."
At these words Lorand clasped his hands, and, with motionless, agonized face, groaned out:
"Desi, don't torture me; don't torture me with your smiling face."
This caused me to be still more alarmed. I began to tremble, seized one of his arms, and implored him not to be angry. Of course, I believed what he said.
He could see that I believed, for all my limbs were trembling.
"Let us go to him, Lorand."
My brother merely gazed at me as if he were horrified at what I had said.
"To father?"
"Yes. What if I speak to him, and he awakes?"
At this suggestion Lorand's two eyes became like fire. It seems as if he were forcibly holding back the rush of a great flood of tears. Then between his teeth he murmured:
"He will never awake again."
"Yet I would like to kiss him."
"His hand?"
"His hand and his face."
"You may kiss only his hand," said my brother firmly.
"Why?"
"Because I say so," was his stern reply. The unaccustomed ring of his voice was quite alarming. I told him I would obey him; only let him take me to father.
"Well, come along. Give me your hand."
Then taking my hand, he led me through two rooms.[2] In the third, grandmother met us.
[Footnote 2: In Hungary the houses are built so that one room always leads into the other; the whole house can often be traversed without the necessity of going into a corridor or passage.]
I saw no change in her countenance; only her thick white eyebrows were deeply contracted.
Lorand went to her and softly whispered something to her which I did not hear; but I saw plainly that he indicated me with his eyes. Grandmother quietly indicated her consent or refusal with her head; then she came to me, took my head in her two hands, and looked long into my face, moving her head gently. Then she murmured softly:
"Just the way he looked as a child."
Then she threw herself face foremost upon the floor, sobbing bitterly.
Lorand seized my hand and drew me with him into the fourth room.
There lay the coffin. It was still open; only the winding-sheet covered the whole.
Even to-day I have no power to describe the coffin in which I saw my father. Many know what that is; and no one would wish to learn from me. Only an old serving-maid was in the chamber; no one else was watching. My brother pressed my head to his bosom. And so we stood there a long time.
Suddenly my brother told me to kiss my father's hand, and then we must go. I obeyed him; he raised the edge of the winding-sheet; I saw two wax-like hands put together; two hands in which I could not have recognized those strong muscular hands, upon the shapely fingers of which in my younger days I had so often played with the wonderful signet-rings, drawing them off one after the other.
I kissed both hands. It