Voyage into Savage Europe: A Declining Civilization by Avigdor Hameiri

Author:Avigdor Hameiri
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Academic Studies Press
Published: 2020-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

The Living Scarecrow

“Damn you to hell, my dear friend, what have you been doing ‘there’ all this time? Seventeen years ago, we were sitting together in Café New York in Budapest, when you suddenly got up and said: ‘Excuse me please, I must go out for a minute: I’ll be back soon.’ You left, but I am still waiting for you to return! What have you been doing ‘there’ for the past seventeen years?”

Thus, the welcome of one of the friends of my youth: a Hungarian writer who has done hard time in jail for the sin of writing a poem on 1 May 1919 in honor of the socialist revolution.

“My friend, no Hebrew writer has yet merited such ‘payment,’ for services rendered,” he tells me, describing his suffering in jail. “One other man was granted such a ‘lecture fee’ for a talk he gave on the Mount of Olives in Palestine, but he turned traitor, changed his mind, and subsequently attained a high position.1 I am not particularly proud of my current honored status, even though I too have gone up in the world. I live like a Hungarian count here.—And you? Have you become a Rothschild yet?”

“Rothschild stubbornly refuses to become a Hebrew writer, and I won’t become a Rothschild.—But how did you become a Hungarian ‘aristocrat?’”

“Very simple—I have no land to plough, so we are all in the same boat. The Romanian government has simply divided up the land amongst the people without any insight or forethought, so we all starve together.”

“Has the Hungarian breadbasket been emptied?”

“What is the ‘Hungarian bread-basket’ but the region of Transylvania, richer in cereal crops, vegetables, and fruit than any other region in Central Europe?”

“Hell has emptied, not it. On the contrary, it is full to bursting. Travel through the length and breadth of our country, look at the fields and gardens, and know what a clown your God Above is—just like that old Habsburg idiot, who caught one of his servants stealthily licking at his Kaiserschmarren. What was his reaction? He ‘showed him his ass,’ unctuously ushered him to the beautifully laden table, closed the door, and said with royal courtesy: ‘Now eat, my dear man, eat to your heart’s content.’

Our granaries are full of grain, our gardens exude heavenly fragrance, but farmers are burning their produce. They have no room for it and it cannot be exported. Conquering without war is not sufficient: one must also know how to use the booty—and that doesn’t happen here. Our storerooms are full of every type of produce—and we yearn for bread. But at least we share that privilege with the Hungarian aristocracy.”

“What about the Jews?”

“The Jews? Brătianu—that cleverest of Wallachians—concentrates all his efforts and talents onto forcing Jews to leave the country.2 This is a little difficult because Jews don’t want to leave a country that forces them out. But the shrewd Wallachian Brătianu says: ‘The cow was thin and entered through the narrow gate. Now it has become fat and must be made thinner again, so that it can leave the same way it came.

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