# Raggle-Taggle (1933)/Chapter 4

Chapter IV
On the Road towards Budapest
Vagabonds and Vampires
MY adventure with the perverse Anna had cleared my pockets of cash and it was necessary to set about earning something soon. My first experiences were not encouraging. Before leaving Siófok I played at a corner of the street near the railway station, hoping to attract the people who descended from the excursion trains from Budapest. But though I played hard for one whole hour not a solitary coin was thrown to me. Most people passed me by without stopping. Then four little boys came and stood by, making faces at me. At last three fair-headed, athletic Germans accompanied by three Nordic valkyries came up and asked me to play a waltz for them to dance. After exhausting my repertoire and my powers of resistance they departed, having handed me forty filler or fourpence.
I came to the conclusion that a vagabond minstrel should never select a summer resort for his sphere of operations. The people there are sure to be blasé members of the middle class who regulate meticulously their life in its tasks and amusements. When they want to dance or listen to music they go to the dance-hall or to the kursaal concerts, but they never seek for music at odd moments of the day when they are in the streets ​or out on the hills or in the forest. The vagabond minstrel must wander about the countryside where there is no competition of kursaal or dancing-hall and where the peasant, when he is not working in the fields, needs the minstrel to come to him and work a spell upon him.
I set off from Siófok on the country road towards Budapest. It was a grilling day and my legs were not yet used to tramping. I walked heavily on my heels without any fixed rhythm and so by the time I had covered eight miles I was footsore and weary. I then remembered how a tramp had once told me that it was much easier to go on for hours and hours if one jogged forward on the point part of the feet in a shuffling gait, always keeping to the same rhythm. “Once you fall into the jog-trot,” said he, “you move mechanically and feel no fatigue.”
One of the greatest aids to the amateur tramp is singing. The hard-footed, seasoned tramp does not need to sing, for his muscles are pliant and responsive, but the tiro needs to sing aloud to enable him to forget the painful creaking of his stiff joints. I had started off lustily in the morning singing in a loud voice “John Brown’s Body,” because it reminded me of war days and marches in France and Italy, but somehow or other “John Brown’s Body” did not adapt itself to solitary tramping in peace-time. I found the rhythm flagging and unconsciously I turned to the more languid “Little Grey Home in the West.” To sing that tune was a sign of weariness, for nobody can tramp in time to waltz rhythm.
The glaring noonday heat descended upon me like a pall of molten copper and all thoughts of music faded away. Fortunately I soon came to a cool spring beneath some trees, where I rested. One of the most fatal ​things for a tramp to do is to rest by the way, for when he gets up to start on his road again he finds his limbs stiff and he has lost the impulse of the rhythm which had carried him on his way before. I was feeling woebegone when suddenly I came upon a group of hikers who were singing in harmony as they stalked along. They were Austrians and the songs they sang were of two kinds. First they sang sentimental German ballads and then when their steps began to flag they enlivened themselves by rollicking songs that resounded through the woods like pæans to the countryside. They were all dressed in khaki suits and shorts and on their shoulders they carried rucksacks. Hiking was no strain to them, for their bodies were steeled to hardships and their faces were as tanned as shoe leather. With that joyful crew shouting the steps to which we were to march, it was not difficult to advance. But after I had plodded on with them for several hours I felt a longing to return to my solitary wandering. The whole pleasure of wandering consists in travelling alone and it is folly to try to join up with others in a spirit of communal enterprise. When I journey alone I like to divide myself into two personalities and make the two converse together. In company with others we must always sacrifice our own individuality in order to achieve the greatest happiness for all. The Austrian hikers made me feel depressed, as though I had strayed into a future age when all Europe would be crammed with hikers in khaki shorts carrying rucksacks on their backs, travelling along the roads in thousands, all singing the same rollicking outdoor songs which they have heard on the radio, thinking the same thoughts, eating the same food, putting up at the same wonderfully efficient hostels. The only joy of the vagabond is to shun that hiking world and try to meet outcasts, Picaresque knaves, Gypsy ​vagrants who would be ready to pillage the khaki gentlemen if they thought it worth while. I determined to leave my companions, but it was not easy, because they were most civil and generous, and I did not want to wound their feelings. They were on their way to Budapest and they offered to find me very cheap lodgings with them under the ægis of some international society. At the town of Lepsény, which we reached after a weary trudge, I determined to lose them, and I hit upon an excellent expedient. I said to the oldest member of the party, who looked like a college professor out on a reducing holiday, that I was very hard up and I wondered if he could possibly lend me some money. He gave me a startled look and whispered to his companions. They then very ceremoniously lifted their hats to me and stalked away. I had broken one of the cardinal rules of good-breeding among hikers by asking for a loan of money. Hikers always bring just enough money for the bare necessities of life and it is considered bad form for anyone to possess a surplus.
At Lepsény I had more good fortune than at Siófok, for in a small café I met a lonely woman who wanted my music. We were the only occupants of the café, with the exception of a sleepy waiter, for it was the siesta-time. The woman with a yawn pointed to my fiddle and asked me to play. As there were no Gypsy musicians who might have claimed the spoils, I played for the woman, and she gave me a pengö for my pains and stood me a bottle of beer. Thus fortified I set out again along the road towards Budapest. The state of my finances did not permit me to look for lodgings on the way, for my wallet contained the exact sum of two pengös and forty filler, and this sum had to last me until I reached Budapest, where some money was deposited in my name at the Poste Restante.
​Travelling along the roads in Hungary is a pleasant experience, because the Magyars are a hospitable and agreeable people and the roads have not yet become impossibly motor-ridden. The roads, in fact, still exist for the horse vehicle and the pedestrian, and many varied types may one see in the course of a day’s wandering. A great many peasant carts passed me on their way back from fairs, and the majority would slow down and offer me a lift. Then there were many vagabond types trudging towards Budapest, the Mecca of their dreams. I met a soldier in a very ragged uniform ambling back to his barracks after furlough. He had more money than I had and insisted on treating me to wine at every inn we came to. I tried to pay him back in fiddle music, until I found that each Hungarian friss I played made him drunker than he was before and there was danger that he might become a total casualty. Pedlars there were in plenty along that dusty Budapest road, sharp-eyed, crafty little fellows, all with an eye to the main chance. One of them who was hawking silk patterns and bead ornaments insisted on playing on my fiddle and then wanted to buy it from me for fifty pengös! When I refused to part with it he became threatening and I began to wonder whether my legs were fleet enough to escape. What should I do alone and defenceless on the plain of Hungary without a fiddle? No other resource had I save the power of playing tunes, and that coarse brute of a pedlar might seize my violin or else break it in the course of the struggle with me. Ignorance of the Magyar language proved my safeguard, for the man, after loosening the floodgates of abuse upon me in that language and seeing that I remained unmoved, began to hesitate and pause. I supose he expected me to retaliate in equally forceful language, whereas all that I could do was to reiterate ​firmly: “Nem szabad, köszönöm.” Finally I avoided him by dashing down a side lane to where some peasants were standing.
Beneath a clump of trees near the village of Tácz I came across a few Gypsy tents, but their inmates were so dark and sinister-looking that I hesitated before I approached their leader. He was lying on the ground asleep and around him three scrofulous youths were amusing themselves by firing stones at a mark on a tree with deadly-looking catapults. As soon as I appeared there was a shout and from all sides there gathered a host of naked children, naked-breasted women, dogs and villainous men. They did not understand the words of Romany I fired at them, but they thought that I was a luscious object to prey upon and they felt me all over, thrust their hands into my pockets, pushed me about and acted generally like a pack of mangy dogs smelling a juicy bone. I felt helpless. All the Borrow, the Leland, the Wlislocki I had read was of no use to me. I tried to resist their onslaught, but in vain. The stench of their grimy bodies mingled with the pungent smell of garlic stifled me, and I could feel on my neck the soft flutter of countless bugs and lice that had forsaken the verminous Gypsy rags. At last I managed to grasp in my hands the forty filler the Germans had given me at Siófok and then with a wild cry—“Ja Kebeng,” I cast the few coins far from me into the ditch at the back of the tents. As soon as they saw the coins fly away all the Gypsies let go with one accord and dashed away wildly in search of the treasure, all but one fellow who had his arms round my neck. With a shove I liberated myself from his clutches and darted back on to the main road. Two of the boys then turned and began to fire pebbles at my retreating figure, but on this occasion the gods were kind to me and the missiles ​whistled around me without reaching their mark. The Gypsies soon gave up their chase, for I was on the main road and a Gypsy will always respect the King’s high road, and it is only when the traveller forsakes the highway and turns aside into the lonely green lanes that the Romany tribe find their prey. As I wandered along, puffing and blowing through my recent exertions, I thanked the gods that I was alone on my expedition. Supposing some friends had accompanied me on the quest of the raggle-taggle Gypsies and expected me to play the modern George Borrow, what a disappointment I should have given them! “What a strange kind of Gypsy-lover you are! Why, they routed you out after five minutes and you did not draw a single word of Romany out of them. What an inglorious ending to your meeting with Gypsies!” I felt ashamed with myself and I wondered why all the authors I had read on Gypsy adventures had not given any advice as to what course should be adopted in such circumstances. In George Borrow’s adventures with Gypsies he was always the Romano rai and the noble patron who looked on the Gypsy with benevolent tolerance. He was always able to answer the Gypsy back in his own lingo and meet blow with blow and insult with insult. When it came to wrestling he was able to throw the Flaming Tinman and any other champion of the roads, aye, and box round after round without losing his freshness. There was only one occasion when the Gypsies got the better of him, but it was not in fair open fight. Like Hercules, he was defeated by a woman, and it was Mrs. Herne who played the part of Omphale. She it was who baked the poisoned cake that laid him at death’s door out on the Moor. Borrow was a giant, and when he wandered among Gypsies he described his exploits as feats of Gargantuan prowess. There must have been ​occasions when he was unable to take the front of the stage, but like a good story-teller he omitted those paltry incidents and preserved only the adventures which would show him off as a romantic hero. Nowadays it is very difficult for the Gypsy-lover to act the romantic part in tourist-ridden Europe. To have been romantic I should have lain bleeding on the ground after my struggle with a great number of Gypsies. Then, gathering the pieces of my violin which had been broken in the fight, I should have crept to the nearest village and telegraphed for press reporters to take down my grim story which could be published in the papers next day with the heading in capitals: “English Professor Mangled by Gypsies after Fierce Struggle. Professor acts the minstrel but fails to soften heart of Gypsy Amazons who leave him for dead on the plains of Hungary.” Alas! I had no thoughts for any romance or publicity. I only felt conscious of my own complete powerlessness in the midst of the evil-smelling band, and I felt bug-ridden, lonely and despondent. If I had only been a boxer or a wrestler, instead of a flabby-muscled musician, I should have played a more glorious part. But then I consoled myself by remembering the advice of a friend who had lived out in the wilds of Africa among Zulus: “When you are among primitive races and you are attacked, don’t hit back: it is much better to turn the other cheek: it is no use standing up to fellows who are much tougher than you are. My advice is: turn the other cheek and see out of the corner of your eye if there is a side-exit handy.”
It was now dark, and I determined to spend the night in the open, for the air was balmy and the moon made the country look like fairyland. In the daytime the meadows looked parched, the roads were dusty and the heat was exhausting, but at night on the Hungarian ​plain there was a delightful, cool breeze and everything in nature seemed to awaken to life. The moonlight shining through the trees carved everything into queer, fantastic shapes. In some places the white light made the foliage look like silver filigree work; in other places the branches became shadowy, ghostly forms. It is difficult to explain in definite words the sensation of mystery and romance that the wayside traveller finds in Hungary. The scenery seen by the light of day is uninteresting, for the whole country is just a huge plain. But at night in the moonlight the fields of corn, the clumps of trees, the little knolls here and there become meeting-places of fairies. It is the mixture of races that has given to this countryside its poetical charm. To the Magyar mind all that country is inhabited by invisible beings that spring to life when the sun goes down, and I have met peasants who were afraid to wander in the light of the moon for, as they said, the fevers descend on the earth when the moon rides in the sky. The primitive Magyar is pantheistic in his attitude towards nature and translates this sentiment into the little folk-poems he improvises to the sound of his rustic flute or the Gypsy’s fiddle. The Hungarian projects his personality on to his external surroundings. The forest is in mourning because his love lies on her death-bed; Sari has sowed violets and awaits their growing because they symbolize the home-coming of her lover; the shepherd tending his flocks by the Tisza river looks up at the starry sky and thinks of his mother far away in Transylvania or his sister sweeping her room with rosemary boughs. In the northern countries of Europe the scenery is more majestic than the Hungarian plain, but the peasants do not look on their country through the veil of their own folk-lore or folk-music, nor do they associate each legend and melody with ​definite events in their country’s history to the same extent as the Magyar does. Every step that the lonely traveller makes through the plain is accompanied by songs, dirges and dances until his mind echoes and re-echoes to a mighty symphony composed of countless fragmentary tunes.
I halted for the night at the foot of a knoll where there was a small rustic graveyard nestling peacefully in the moonlight. At the back of a big sheltering tombstone I made a fire of twigs and prepared to bivouack in Gypsy style in this desolate spot, feeling sure that no one would come to disturb me in a cemetery. I had some cheese and bread in my rucksack and my wineskin was full. As the night continued and the fire burnt low I began to feel acute melancholy and loneliness. I was sorry that I had chosen a graveyard for a bivouacking ground, for graveyards brought thoughts of Vampires and Werwolves to the mind. I tried to dispel this attack of the shivers by music, but my violin sounded harsh and discordant like a danse macabre. I nearly dropped the bow in terror, for all of a sudden there was a soft whirr of wings and something brushed past my face: it was a bat. Round and round the bat circled like a spirit of evil omen and I thought of “Dracula” and shuddered.
When I settled down I found that sleeping out of doors, even on the torrid plain of Hungary, is not an unmixed enjoyment for the traveller whose skin is not as weather-beaten as that of a Gypsy. The night became for me a series of hopeless struggles with mosquitoes and every other species of stinging insect. As long as the fire was burning merrily the insects gave me a wide berth, but later on in the shadows of the night I heard the ominous high note like the tuning of countless violins by a phantom orchestra and the hordes began ​their descent upon my unarmed flesh. Soon I felt my face swell under their attacks and sleep became an impossibility. At night, too, in Hungary, in contrast to the day, there were spells of cold and the sleeper in the open would feel his limbs stiffen. When I lie awake in the country all my senses become extraordinarily keen and sensitive to sounds. On that night I understood how the Hungarian peasants people their country graveyards with vampires: I heard the crackling of twigs and I imagined I saw two fiery eyes gleaming at me from behind some bushes. Then something dark darted beside my leg and I fancied it was a rat. Even in normal life at home the proximity of a rat would fill me with a sickening anguish, but here I felt inclined to shriek my helplessness. Another distressing feature of outdoor sleeping was the prevalence of such crawling beasts as earwigs and woodlice, not to mention the sprightly flea. When I started to doze in a short period of respite from the mosquito orchestra, I felt an ominous tickling sensation on my neck. I found that a legion of ants was advancing in extended order over my body.
After a dreamless sleep I awoke suddenly at the sound of a dog yelping near by. When I looked up above my tombstone I saw at the other side of the cemetery a light burning over one of the graves. For a moment I thought that I was still wandering through the halls of sleep, but then the horrible thought struck me that I might have been unlucky enough to enter a vampire-haunted graveyard. The yelping of dogs and the flickering lights over graves were sure signs of the dreaded vampire. My first thought was to take to my heels, but the whole scene seemed so eerie and unreal that my feelings of curiosity overmastered my fear and I stood my ground. The flickering light came nearer and nearer: I then saw that it was a small lantern carried by ​an old man who was hobbling on a stick and tugging after him at the end of a rope the dog I had heard yelping. He was a strange little old man like one of the goblins in Grimm’s fairy stories. He walked with bent shoulders and his long white beard neatly touched the ground. His clothes were ragged and grimy, but here and there they were patched up with pieces of gaudy colours. So loosely did this ragged raiment hang on his cadaverous form that he seemed to be clothed in a garment of reeds mixed with the plumage of birds. So emaciated was his face that he looked like the figure of death in the medieval masquerade. He hobbled over to me and rasped out some unintelligible words in Magyar. I then answered in German and he continued in the latter language. “What are you doing in this graveyard? said he. “Don’t you know that the tomb you are resting on is haunted by a nachtoeber? When I saw you in the distance I took you for one of them and I made the sign of the Cross to drive you away. Look here, mein Herr, look on that tombstone and you will see two holes: that is the sign that the tomb is inhabited by a vampire: at any moment before dawn it might fly forth and attack you. Have you no garlic upon you to stop up those holes and prevent the foul demon from coming out?” The little old man’s voice rose to a shriek as he spoke and his eyes were those of a madman. “I tell you no one can escape those vampires once they begin to go after you: I have striven for years to escape their visitation, but they have taken everything I have in the world and they would take me were it not for my prayers.” So saying he pulled out of his coat a crucifix of black wood and blessed himself, muttering prayers in a low voice all the while. As he prayed the dog kept up an accompaniment of snarling and growling, as though it was terrified of something. The old man then ​called out to the dog trying to soothe it, but the beast slunk behind him and began to tremble violently. “Look at my dog,” said the old man; “he knows the werwolves are about and he won’t approach that grave.”
For a long time we stood motionless by the tomb, while the old man continued to ramble on in his rasping voice and told me his story. From time to time I had to interrupt him to say that the fire had burnt low and that it was necessary to add sticks. I was terrified to stay listening to stories of vampires without the protection of a fire, for the old man’s superstitious nature had already infected me and I felt that all this experience had something supernatural about it. We sat by the fire and the old man’s voice gradually droned me into a state of drowsiness and my eyes would close involuntarily. Then he would whine out in a shriller tone and I would awake with a start,
The Old Man’s Story
“You wonder why I talk thus about vampires. My story will show you that I have good cause to fear their terrible vengeance.
“I was born in a village near Budapest, of peasant stock. As a young man I left my homestead and wandered afar, taking the rough with the smooth. I fought in the Turkish War of 1878, and as a legacy was left a wound which crippled my left leg, as you see. The soldier’s life in those far-off days was a cruel one, and more than once I thought my greatcoat was to be my shroud. From being a soldier I became a commercial traveller and wandered from village to village in Turkey and Bulgaria. It was at the town of Rustchuk that I met a very beautiful Bulgarian farmer’s daughter and paid court to her. I married her and we came to settle down in Hungary in the town of Szeged. Three children ​we had, a boy and two girls. The boy, who was called Sándor, grew into as fine and strapping a youth as you would see any day: why, he was as reckless and dare-devil as a young colt on the Hortobágy. Aye, it was horses ruined him, for he would wander off with dealers and the copers and there was no holding him at all. I was glad the day came when he put on the grey uniform and I thought army discipline would tame his spirit. After his service he returned home, bringing with him a stranger whom he introduced to the family as his benefactor. He confided to me that the stranger had helped him on more occasions than one when he was in difficulties through gaming debts and had lavished money on him. Naturally we all welcomed the stranger as the friend of Sándor, and he soon looked upon our house as a home. At first I was astonished at Sándor’s infatuation for the stranger, seeing that he was at least twenty years older, but then I saw that it was the older man who pursued the younger. He monopolized my son’s attention: not a thought would come into the latter’s head which was not inspired by the stranger, and from being a wild, irresponsible youth he turned into a silent and thoughtful man, always day-dreaming. The stranger had something Mephistophelian about his appearance: he was tall and thin, with aquiline features and a small pointed beard. His eyes were strained and had a wild look in them like those of a cigány: his mouth coarse and brutal, with very red lips, and when he spoke he would frequently lick them and show his teeth, which were brilliantly white and sharply pointed like those of a dog or wolf.
“He was the life and soul of our family, for he had a soft, caressing manner, in spite of his sudden fits of passion when his eyes would blaze and he would show his canine teeth. He would come and visit us in the ​afternoon and delight us by his many accomplishments. He was the man of the world and we were the humble village folk whom he was pleased to honour. There was something fantastic about the stranger who had travelled all over the world enduring exciting adventures, and Julcsa, my eldest daughter, would call him the fairy prince, and she said that he was sent to our house by the Délibáb or Fata Morgana. We never knew when he would come, for he gave us no warning of his arrival in the town. He seemed to glide in unperceived, and after some days of consecutive visits he would suddenly depart on the pretext of urgent business. I could never find out what his business was, for he contented himself with telling me that he had to travel far and wide. As time went on Julcsa became more and more attracted towards him. She would sit for hours listening to his stories of travels and he seemed to hypnotize her by his cold, piercing, grey eyes. Everything about the mysterious stranger thrilled her: his brown, close-fitting squire’s costume, his polished top-boots, his purple neck-tie, which gave him the air of an Oriental prince, his long white fingers like those of a woman, with sharp nails cut to a point. Poor Julcsa, she was distracted with love for her cavalier, and she would confess to me with tears in her eyes that she loved him madly, but she was always terrified lest he might one day vanish away into the distance like Lohengrin on his fairy swan.
“My wife had always looked with misgivings on the stranger in spite of all his charm. ‘He is an adventurer,’ she cried, ‘and he will seduce our Julcsa and then depart in the night like a thief.’ In my mind I agreed with her, but I sympathized with Julcsa. When we tried to reason with Julesa there were tears and lamentations. I could see she was hopelessly infatuated and I was afraid she might do something desperate. The best course ​seemed to me to say farewell to the stranger and forbid him to visit our house any more. Our leave-taking was stormy, and I saw a look of demoniacal hate in his grey eves and his mouth was twisted into a grimace of sardonic triumph. In order to distract Julesa’s thoughts from her sufferings we closed our house and went to live for awhile in the country near Temesvár.
“One night when all the household had retired to rest and all was as still as the grave, I heard the sound of horses’ hoofs clattering on the road. The night was dark and misty, but when I looked out of the window I saw dimly in the distance a carriage drawn by four black horses galloping away in a cloud of dust. I am naturally superstitious and the sight of those four black horses paralysed me with horror, for I knew they were of evil omen. My first impulse was to rush into Julesa’s room. She was not there. The bed was tossed and one of the sheets twisted into a rope hung from the window. On the table I found a note saying: ‘Dearest Father and Mother. Forgive me for what I am doing and pray for my soul. Julcsa.’
“I cannot describe for you the grief of all of us. We searched high and low, we informed the police, we searched the country for miles round, but no definite news did we get of Julcsa. As so often happens in such cases of disappearance, many came forward to say that they had seen her here or there, accompanied by an elderly man, but the clues led to nothing. As for my wife, she was convinced that Julcsa had been carried away by a vampire and what agonized her more than the loss of her eldest daughter was the terrifying thought that Julcsa if she once came into the power of the vampire would turn into one herself. The stranger was a vampire,’ she cried. ‘Did vou not notice his pointed teeth, his red lips? The four black horses were his and ​he now possesses her body and soul. When he has sucked her blood she will become as he is and haunt us to our ruin.’ She spent her whole day in prayer. Each moment she thought she heard poor Julcsa crying out and she fancied that Julcsa would appear in the night in the form of a bat to haunt her remaining daughter Sari or else Sándor. She hung crucifixes in every room and at night she would insist on hanging garlic leaves over Sari’s and Sándor’s bed to protect them. Her mind gave way and she would wander aimlessly round the house with a vacant stare on her face calling out Julcsa’s name and blessing herself as though to exorcize her. Some months after that I followed her hearse to the cemetery.
“As for Sándor, he left home after his mother’s death and I was left alone with Sari in our house of mourning. From time to time Sándor wrote to me telling me of his life. He had obtained employment as a clerk in an office in Budapest and from his letters I inferred that he was satisfied with his humdrum life. Then for a long time I had no news of him until one day a letter came telling me to go at once to him as he was seriously ill. When I arrived at Budapest I went straight to his lodgings and I found him lying in a filthy room looking as if he would die any minute. He was as white as a sheet and he could just open his eyes and give me a sad, weary smile. The doctor, who was standing by his bedside, told me that Sándor had not many days to live for he was in the last stages of galloping consumption. All the life seemed to be ebbing fast from my son. At times he would cry out faintly for Julcsa and he told me of a strange dream he had had. He dreamt he met her outside the arched gate of a city and she stood within the arch and beckoned to him to enter. She was dressed in dazzling white and looked ​radiantly beautiful and happy, but her face was as white as her dress and her lips were like a scarlet wound. She beckoned again and again to him, but though he strove hard he was unable to cross the threshold of the gate. Then he awoke in a state of terrible anguish, and he felt so weak that he thought he was going to die. He could not understand the reason why he had felt so sad, for the dream had been a happy one and Julcsa had seemed so radiant. Night after night the dream repeated itself and on each awakening he would feel the sense of overwhelming weakness. Then one night in the dream she had drawn him through the arch and he had followed her through the town and along a road until they came to a clump of trees where he saw grev tombstones dotted about. Sándor used to rave for hours incoherently, trying to recall the place where he had seen the tombstones. ‘If I could only remember the name I should know where to find Julesa,’ he cried. Each day he became weaker in spite of the doctor’s treatment and the drugs that he consumed. But I knew that all the medicine in the world would be of no avail, for it was Julesa’s spirit which was consuming him. Just as my dear wife had done, I placed garlic plants about his bed and a crucifix over his head. At night I never left him alone and I would watch him tossing about in the bed trying in vain to find peace. There was a look of wild yearning in his face and he would mutter the name of Julcsa again and again. I knew that he was hypnotized by her spirit as a humming-bird is by the snake’s eye. Every prayer that came into my mind I said over him and every incantation I had learnt from old Gypsy women, but it was in vain. At a certain moment of the night I would feel drowsy, and a mist would gather before my eyes. After dozing off momentarily I would awake. Sándor would be sleeping peacefully, but his ​face would look still more deathly than before and from the corners of his mouth I saw a thin stream of blood trickle down his white neck. Each hour I watched by his death-bed became more terrifying than the last, for I watched him gradually change from my poor, dying son into the deathless vampire, ready to work evil on others. Then one night in the midst of a troubled sleep he suddenly shrieked out: ‘The tombstones, the tombstones: I know where they are: I can see the trees and the low wall. The name of the town is Lepsény. Go through the town and then along the long road mile after mile until you come to the graveyard.’ When he awoke he was so exhausted that he would not speak and he did not remember his dream. But my mind was made up. I determined to seek out the graveyard and discover Julesa’s tomb and rid the world of the terrible vampire. After handing over the care of Sándor to a trusted relative I set out from Budapest accompanied by an old Gypsy woman I had known for many years. She was to be my confederate in the grim task which lay before me. She was one of the “cohalyi”, as the Gypsies call the witches in Hungary, and as we tramped along the road she muttered incantations in the intervals of giving me advice how to rid myself of the vampire pest. When we reached Lepsény we turned back along the road and after a weary search we came to this cemetery where you and I are seated now, and I discovered that it tallied with the description my son had given in his dream. Tomb after tomb we examined and after a long search we came to one in a corner on whose stone the name Julcsa was engraved in big letters. She had died the year before. How had she died? who had closed her eyes? Did she die in poverty and if so who had raised the tombstone over her grave? Who knows?
“The night after I had discovered the grave I returned ​with the old woman to carry out my grim task of liberation. It was a stormy night, the wind was whistling through the trees, and rain and sleet lashed our faces. No moon was shining and I thanked God for that. A moon would have exposed our sinister work and perhaps drawn the suspicious peasantry after us. At midnight I started to dig down into the grave while the old woman stood by and muttered incantations. After digging for some time I knocked with my spade against the coffin. The sound of the spade striking the coffin filled me with such horror that I nearly fainted, but the old woman called sternly to me to break open the lid with the spade. With difficulty I did as she commanded, and when I had wrenched open the lid I gazed on all that remained of my poor Julcsa. For a moment I thought I was the victim of an hallucination, for Julcsa looked as if she were sleeping peacefully. Over her eyes there was spread a filmy substance and her lips were bright red as though she had recently fed on a loathsome repast in the land of the living. Again I hesitated, for my eyes were riveted on the corpse in the coffin. Again the old woman’s sharp voice broke in upon my meditation: ‘Make haste and use this knife. You must cut her head off and bury it in another part of the cemetery. If you do that her spirit will trouble you and your family no more.’ The old hag with these words handed me a sharp knife she had brought with her and straightway began to gather twigs to make a fire near by. Hardening my heart I tried to do her bidding, but my strength failed me. The witch then seized the knife from my hands and with one slash severed the head from the trunk. I shut my eyes, but it seemed to me as if the corpse moaned and the blood spurted over me. After fastening down the coffin-lid and piling the earth over it we buried the head in the opposite side of the cemetery, ​and we departed on our way towards Budapest. Before she took leave of me the old woman said: ‘Be sure to go back to that cemetery and pour wine on the grave of your daughter, for there is nothing like wine for laying the ghost to rest.’ When I reached my son’s bedside I found him at death’s door, but he had no longer the wild look in his eye, only a serene peace, and he was just able to beg my prayers before he died. I buried him in the same cemetery as his sister, and once every month I come to visit the two graves. To-night when I came in here I was frightened when I saw the fire, and I was afraid someone might have discovered my secret.”
The old man, after finishing his story, led me over to the opposite side of the graveyard, where he pointed to a recently erected tombstone, and on it I read the name Sándor.
Dawn was now breaking and the air was grey and misty. The old man, pulling his dog after him, and I made our way out of the cemetery. At the top of the hill I saw a woman coming towards us. The old man said to me when he saw her: “There is my daughter Sari: she always comes to fetch me after my long night’s vigil.” The woman when she came near us ran up to the old man and kissed him. I then saw them depart on their way towards Lepsény.
I turned my face resolutely towards Budapest.