Sulemain
Banned
With singing! And animal sidekicks!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9KyBdPeKHg
My response to your evil!
Malê Rising
- Thread starter Jonathan Edelstein
- Start date
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9KyBdPeKHg
My response to your evil!
Hey, it worked in Aladdin and The King and I!
Also, sorry for causing a crisis of faith in you.
Ah, Weisz was my favorite, so it's good to see his continuing influence.
Well, there's always going to be a strange connection between Hungary and Buganda - as I've mentioned, 21st-century tourists will be amused by the number of loanwords in the language.
Tippu Tip's malaria isn't butterflied away?
He's spent much of his life on campaign, being sultan takes a lot out of a person, and 68 was a lot older then than it is now. He didn't get sick in quite the same way as OTL, but he still got sick, and by 1903 he realized he wasn't going to get better.
I'm almost tempted to do it, just so that one of them can eventually migrate east and have a child in Kenya. The movement to Africa probably won't happen early enough for the Romneys, though - I'm setting this story up for Hnau, who figures it will happen in the 1920s-30s.
She's finished as a ruler, but not as a player in the region's history.
Relevance is certainly what he's looking for - he realizes he can't be a warlord anymore if he wants to survive, and he's become genuinely attached to Sud-Kivu (which he originally thought of as only a starting point). He now sees himself as an adventurer-prince who is both European and African, somewhat like the Brookes did in Sarawak.
Whoa, no love lost between the last Tsar and his daughter from the tone of what she wrote!
Well, first he committed a lot of atrocities, then he lost his throne and fell to brooding, and finally he tried to stop her from getting married. What's not to like?
There will be something of a reconciliation when he dies and Anastasia's brother becomes Tsar of Quite a Bit Less than All the Russias, but yes, the split will have consequences.
He tried to get the state established on an institutional basis, and his son is continuing with the institution-building, but it's taken root much more in some parts of the empire than the others. The Swahili coast and some of the nearer interior areas are very integral at this point, but the rest of the interior is still a patchwork, and Oman proper still feels like the stepchild. It will be a race to see whether the centrifugal forces or the growth of state institutions win out.
The cultural influence will be enormous - they're getting a lot of their idea of modern institutions from Russian expats. It will become especially apparent in the 1910s and 1920s when Tewodros starts to modernize the whole state (Menelik concentrated on the capital city, rail transportation and the army).
It's still the early twentieth century, and the great majority of the judges are Europeans who have classically colonialist attitudes toward pre-state African societies (if not so much toward state-level ones). But there will be many more cases. The International Congo may end up becoming the only colony to sue its way to freedom.
There were some 19th-century restrictions on African immigration in OTL, but as far as I know, nobody ever proposed decoupling British subjects from British citizens. In TTL, though, there's more nativist pressure due to higher immigration levels and the colonial peoples' greater political prominence, although it's still only a small minority arguing for this.
India is definitely more industrialized - wartime investment combined with the partial political concessions made to the Congress.
The Great Lakes peoples and Congolese are the ones getting modernity thrown at them all at once - they were among the most isolated regions before the colonial era, without the level of sporadic contact with the European and/or Arab worlds that the coastal peoples, Sahelians and southern Africans had. So they're looking at the new ideas without any preconceptions. Also, the Great Lakes states are remote and economically marginal enough that in TTL they're regarded as not worth the trouble of colonizing, so they can assimilate the new ideas in their own way rather than being subject to the dictates of missionaries or colonial administrators. As a result, they'll adopt these ideas in a way that seems strange to Europeans and for that matter other Africans. In 2013 TTL, many Africans will still see the Great Lakes peoples as the slightly dotty cousins (which of course is not how they'll see themselves).
At any rate, the cultural blending, especially among the Baganda, will be a glorious thing - consider the twists that Japan has put on Western culture, and translate that to an African setting with European, Arab and Asian influences.
Zola was born right around the time of the POD, so he is actually the same person in TTL. His career, like Verne's, has been somewhat more political than in OTL; he's a lawyer and a liberal parliamentary deputy as well as a literary figure.
Jaurès has an ATL-sibling who was part of Verne's peace government and later a minister in the socialist cabinets, although he's a bit too intellectual and impractical to become premier. He is, as in OTL, a supporter of regional cultural preservation.
There is a Lingala language of sorts, but not the same as the Lingala of OTL - there are loanwords from many European languages rather than only French, and also a strong Tshiluba component. It could almost be called Esperanto over a Bantu substrate.
Everyone also speaks their local language, and the languages of administration are German, French and English, although education in these languages is not yet widespread.Broken Glass is definitely going on my reading list - I just bought the Kindle edition.
Europeans in TTL certainly consider Ethiopia a "real" country in a way that the pre-state peoples aren't. Given its history and faith, it's considered a cut above even the Sahelian states or the Yoruba - in the contemporary racial hierarchy, it's on a level with Oman or Egypt.
Still, a European royal marrying into the Ethiopian dynasty wouldn't be considered the done thing, much like marriage to an Indian maharajah might be regarded. There will be a lot of argument as to whether Anastasia or her sisters (all of whom married minor European princes) made a better marriage, and some whispering about how the Romanovs' "Asiatic" background has come to the surface. It will become more accepted later as Anastasia and Tewodros put their stamp on the region.
To TTL's incalculable benefit, Disney will not exist.
There will, however, be movies about Tewodros and Anastasia, as well as many romance novels inspired by them - romances featuring East African princes will be as popular in TTL as those involving Arab sheiks are in OTL. Some will be better than others, and some will be awful.One does feel that the tsar is playing with fire by antagonising the Ethiopians - like it or not the best hope for the Romanov dynasty is probably to marry into the Ethiopian royal family and eventually fuse the two thrones [which they could argue turns Ethiopia into a "fourth Rome"] As it stands, the Ethiopians could seize Eritrea pretty much whenever they want, and might even try to under the pretext of reclaiming Emperess Anastasia's inheritance, if the tsar's son dies early.
teg
teg
Deleted member 67076
Jonathan, this is a bit of a while from now, but how will comic books develop ITT?
Quick question: how is the development of film coming along ITTL? Were any films made of the Great War? I know we talked a lot about "motor wagons" in terms of tech development, but how about photography? IOTL film (the photographic kind) was developed in 1884 by Kodak - is it similar in this world?
Cheers,
Ganesha
Cheers,
Ganesha
But there's plenty - the Faith and Ferment one about the Sahel, East Asia in the Great War, the one called Africa's 20th Century, etc. Tons of books after 1958.
Cheers,
Ganesha
I was going to say, there were plenty of books made after 1958, but Ganesha's beat me to it.
How could I have missed them?! Please forgive me, oh elephant headed god
Just say a few of these and you'll be good.
Cheers,
Ganesha
As far as Menelik is concerned, he already has Eritrea - after all, it's his feudal vassal. Tewodros is less feudally minded, and will want Eritrea as an integral part of the empire, although he'll be willing to concede it some autonomy and call it a kingdom rather than a province. If the present Tsar is still in power then, there might be trouble.
Most of the Russians in Eritrea, including the governor, do realize that Anastasia's marriage could be a very good thing for the Romanovs and for them. This is a part of the world where dynastic marriages still matter, and Anastasia has essentially brought the Russians into symbolic partnership with the Ethiopian dynasty. She and Tewodros have a great deal of support among the rank-and-file Russians in the region. The Tsar, however, is too consumed with resentment to agree.
I'm not really sure. If they evolve from TTL's dime novels, which seems like the most natural progression, then they'll have a large African-American authorship and readership right from the start, maybe with some heroes out of West African legend. Both the black and white heroes will go through plenty of pulp-style adventure - lost worlds, Great War stories, westerns, the works.
BTW, just wait until the Baganda get hold of the genre.
The camera technology is at roughly the same level as OTL, but production is more widely distributed - the European countries are all promoting their own cinema industries as part of the recovery from the Great War, and there are also emerging industries in Dakar, Ilorin, Bombay and Stamboul. The wartime developments in mechanics have also made special effects somewhat advanced over OTL, especially with Méliès using what he learned in the French technical corps to produce spectaculars in Paris. The French film industry has been strongly influenced by Verne's futurism, while the American industry is less spectacle-oriented and more story-oriented. *Bollywood (which will never be called that in TTL) puts out a lot of light entertainment but also many politically-charged dramas.
Hmmm. For presidents, we've got Lincoln from 1860-68, Grant from 1868-76, one or more Republicans from 1876-84, one or more Democrats from 1884-92, and William E. Chandler from 1892 to 1900. I'm open to suggestions for the missing names (we know the missing Republican wasn't Blaine, because he ran and lost in 1888) - the elections before 1860 can be assumed to have gone as OTL, and I'll discuss the post-1900 presidents the next time we visit the United States.
For British PMs, I've mentioned Palmerston and Gladstone, the latter of whom was as much the Grand Old Man in TTL as in OTL. I'd guess that Derby and Disraeli also had careers similar to what we know. It's known that Gladstone was PM in 1887 when Usman visited London, Lord Cranbrook held office for the Conservatives from 1891 to 1899, and Asquith for the Liberals from 1899 to 1911. Again, I'm open to suggestions for systematizing the 1840s through 1880s.
BTW, you can take it to the bank that there will not be a major nuclear war in TTL.
Sulemain
Banned
Stamboul=Constantinople, right? Any reason for the preference?
That still leaves room open for a minor one, although I would prefer to avoid it, it'd be interesting; everything goeses well until a minor border dispute some-place develops, and a four engined heavy bomber carries a lump of nasty physics somewhere...
That still leaves room open for a minor one, although I would prefer to avoid it, it'd be interesting; everything goeses well until a minor border dispute some-place develops, and a four engined heavy bomber carries a lump of nasty physics somewhere...
Hnau
Banned
Jonathan Edelstein said:
And thank you for that! I was glad to see Samuel's kingdom included in the most recent update and I think you'll find it even more interesting after I put my story together. And an aside: I'm worried about East Africa! It looked like things were going so well there and now we've got a potential civil war? Yikes!
Interlude: Scenes from a war
The Officer:
The rain came down in sheets, reducing the horizon to a few meters and adding to the misery of the men in the trenches. The command post, where canvas had been rigged overhead, was only slightly less miserable; the men inside were protected from the downpour, but the water still ran in rivulets below, turning the trench floor into mud and flushing the rats out of their holes.
We could bear it, back in the days when the whole world was like this,László Tóth remembered. But now – now, it’s only here, and it seems like it will never end. It’s still 1897 here, and it will always be 1897 – a slow, endless defeat…
“Colonel?” someone said, and Tóth looked up to see a young lieutenant from division headquarters, drenched to the skin, with an oilskin pouch in his hand.
“Sit down, Lieutenant,” he answered, waving down the other officer’s salute. “You have a message?”
“Yes, sir. A radio dispatch. General Gabor has failed to break through. He’s falling back toward Nagyvárad.”
It was amazing, how ordinary the news of one’s doom could sound. “We’re cut off, then?”
“It would seem so, sir. There’s no one else who can reach us.”
“Then we’re cut off.” In truth, Tóth had never thought that Gabor could make it. Hungary had fared well enough against the Romanian army, but in northwestern Transylvania, it was fighting an entire nation. He’d fought there for two years before being pushed back here, and it was a horror of ambushes and raids in which every roof might hide a sniper and even a child might be an enemy. The soldiers had left the place a burned-out shell by the time they were finished, but the Romanian people had thrown the Hungarians out where the Romanian army could not.
“Are there orders for us?”
“Not from Budapest or Nagyvárad, sir…”
“What does that mean? Where else would orders come from?”
“There’s been a dispatch from István Bethlen. All troops in eastern Transylvania are to hold in place…”
The lieutenant trailed off under Tóth’s stare, which had suddenly become dangerous. The regency council had proscribed Bethlen as a traitor, and if the division was accepting dispatches from him…
“Why is Bethlen sending us orders,” he asked as evenly as he could, “and why are we listening to them?”
“I don’t know if we’re listening, sir. I’m just reporting what we received. But Bethlen has declared himself King of East Transylvania.”
“King of what?” Tóth burst out, but suddenly it all made sense. Bethlen had claimed the Hungarian throne since the beginning of the civil war, and he’d lost any hope of making that claim good since the regency council sent him fleeing east, but now that these provinces had been cut off…
“Is the division… recognizing his claim?”
“There’s been no decision yet, Colonel, but some people are saying that he can make peace with the Romanians.”
“Maybe he could,” Tóth mused. The Romanians surely knew that they’d have as hard a time occupying this part of Transylvania as Hungary had further west, and that their troops would find no shelter. We made sure of that, didn’t we? All the times we routed Romanian villagers out of their houses and sent them packing with what they could carry… all the times we shot the ones who didn’t want to go. Romania will rule a wasteland to the west, Bethlen might rule one here.
He let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. I marched all the way across Africa for this? Weisz had the right idea – if I’d known what I was coming back to, I’d have stayed just like he did.
“… There’s another message, Colonel,” the lieutenant was saying, and Tóth forced himself to pay attention. “From the division. They want all the battalion commanders at headquarters for an officers’ council. That would mean you, sir.”
“I do still know who commands this battalion, Lieutenant. Things haven’t become that bad.”
“Begging your pardon, sir…”
“No, don’t worry about it. Let me get my coat and we’ll go.” He would be soaked through by the time he got there, he knew, and a long night of arguing lay ahead of him. Maybe they would all be traitors come morning, or maybe they were just doing the only thing they could.
Good luck to you, András, wherever you are.
The Patriot:
Private Počiatek stood to attention at the captain’s command.
“They’ll be coming out in a few minutes,” the officer called. “Now remember what I told you last night. No cheering, no shouts, no name-calling. Just let them go. It’s part of the terms, see?”
“Yes, sir!” the soldiers chorused. For his part, Počiatek was far too exhausted to cheer; after the last year’s campaign, victory brought only a sense of relief that there would be no more fighting. He was perfectly willing to let the Hungarians go quietly if it meant that they wouldn’t shoot at him anymore.
And besides, they fought a clean war here. Things were brutal in the Banat and Transylvania, and not much better in Croatia, but when the regency council tried to retake Slovakia, it was army against army, and both sides followed the rules. Not that it had done the Hungarians much good, especially once Austria, Bohemia and Poland started selling weapons to the Slovaks and letting volunteers get through. None of them had joined the war, as the Austrians had done in the Burgenland, but Austria had seen a chance to pick up Pressburg and Poland Cieszyn, and the Bohemians and Poles had clearly preferred to have a border with Slovakia rather than Hungary.
Some of the proof was right next to Počiatek’s own company – a line of Laurin & Klement armored wagons on treads with turret-mounted machine guns. They hadn’t been developed in time to help the Austrians in the last war, but they’d certainly made a difference for the Slovaks in this one…
“Attention!” the captain shouted again, and Počiatek braced along with the other soldiers. The Hungarians were coming out now, columns of tattered soldiers marching along the main road out of Košice. They looked as tired as Počiatek felt, but they didn’t show any of the dejection they surely felt; they marched as if they were going to battle rather than returning home in surrender.
“Present arms!” called the captain, and the Slovaks saluted their enemy. Počiatek was glad to do it. Fighting their way into Košice would have been a horror, and though he’d been happy enough to volunteer for his country’s freedom, he was even happier to have survived.
Look, there are some black men in the Hungarian army. I wonder how they got there. But Počiatek would never be able to ask them, and soon they were gone, to be replaced by a column of artillery and wagonloads of ammunition.
At last the Hungarian soldiers stopped coming, and a knot of Slovak and Hungarian officers entered the city to verify that no snipers had been left behind. A few minutes later, the flag of the Slovak Republic rose over Košice. And then, the soldiers did cheer.
The Exile:
Thomas Wieser’s wife hadn’t wanted him to take a job in a factory – she was sure the work was dangerous, and even surer that it was beneath him. But it had been that or live on his sister’s charity. Liesel and her husband were generous souls, and they’d have maintained Thomas’ family forever, but he didn’t want to be a burden on them, and living on charity – even his sister’s charity – was galling.
His job brought in enough to rent three rooms in a working-class part of Warsaw, far more cramped than Sári and the children were used to, but livable. They hadn’t been able to keep Zosia, but Liesel had needed a new housekeeper and had taken her on. By now, Thomas was almost used to it. It was better to work in a cutlery plant in Warsaw than to be in a grave in Hungary, and there were compensations.
Such as the men across the table. He was far from the only refugee in Warsaw, and far, even, from the only one working at his factory, and they’d got in the habit of drinking together after work. They were a motley dozen: Germans like him, Jews, Poles who’d lived near the Galician border, socialists. They rarely agreed on much, but it made for interesting conversations.
“It looks like things are just about finished in Croatia,” said Béla Horvath as he poured the beer. He’d stopped on the way from work and picked up one of the newspapers that the Hungarian refugees published. “The regency council has offered autonomy, and the Croatian government has accepted.” He said the last with a sardonic edge; since the pro-Hungarian faction in Croatia had won its civil war, the government was a puppet of the regents. “Just the Romanians to deal with now, and Gabor Bethlen.”
“So you can go back, Horvath?” asked Bronisław, one of the Poles. Horvath meant Croatian, although none of Béla’s ancestors had seen the kingdom for centuries. It wasn’t that funny, but jokes always seemed to be better in the company of friends, and Thomas laughed as he drank his beer down.
“No, not me,” Béla said. “They like socialists down there even less than the regents do. I’m no more looking for a gallows in Zagreb than one in Budapest.”
“All you socialists are gallows-birds,” Bronisław said – he was very Catholic and very conservative, and he’d sometimes get in street fights with the socialist parties during election campaigns – but just as jokes were funnier at this table, insults were banter. There wasn’t really any bad blood between the two, and Bronisław was always the first one to demand one of Béla’s stories about his long march through Africa. Three years he’d marched and fought, and then come back to fight the Romanians, only to flee the army a step ahead of the regents’ secret police.
“Enough of that, Bronisław,” said the other Béla at the table, the one whose last name was Frankel. He’d been on that march through Africa too, and he’d had just as cold a welcome upon his return. “Lay off, or I’ll kill your god again.”
Thomas drew in his breath. He was still a gentleman in spite of everything, and that kind of humor was far too coarse for him. And besides, Liesel’s husband, who was also Jewish, had told him how deadly accusations of deicide could be at Easter or election time. But Bronisław just said something about how the mohel must have circumcised Frankel’s brain rather than his dick, and poured him another beer.
A streetcar passed by, its bells clanging loudly. Somewhere in Hungary, the war continued. Here in Warsaw, the refugees had made peace.
The Officer:
The rain came down in sheets, reducing the horizon to a few meters and adding to the misery of the men in the trenches. The command post, where canvas had been rigged overhead, was only slightly less miserable; the men inside were protected from the downpour, but the water still ran in rivulets below, turning the trench floor into mud and flushing the rats out of their holes.
We could bear it, back in the days when the whole world was like this,László Tóth remembered. But now – now, it’s only here, and it seems like it will never end. It’s still 1897 here, and it will always be 1897 – a slow, endless defeat…
“Colonel?” someone said, and Tóth looked up to see a young lieutenant from division headquarters, drenched to the skin, with an oilskin pouch in his hand.
“Sit down, Lieutenant,” he answered, waving down the other officer’s salute. “You have a message?”
“Yes, sir. A radio dispatch. General Gabor has failed to break through. He’s falling back toward Nagyvárad.”
It was amazing, how ordinary the news of one’s doom could sound. “We’re cut off, then?”
“It would seem so, sir. There’s no one else who can reach us.”
“Then we’re cut off.” In truth, Tóth had never thought that Gabor could make it. Hungary had fared well enough against the Romanian army, but in northwestern Transylvania, it was fighting an entire nation. He’d fought there for two years before being pushed back here, and it was a horror of ambushes and raids in which every roof might hide a sniper and even a child might be an enemy. The soldiers had left the place a burned-out shell by the time they were finished, but the Romanian people had thrown the Hungarians out where the Romanian army could not.
“Are there orders for us?”
“Not from Budapest or Nagyvárad, sir…”
“What does that mean? Where else would orders come from?”
“There’s been a dispatch from István Bethlen. All troops in eastern Transylvania are to hold in place…”
The lieutenant trailed off under Tóth’s stare, which had suddenly become dangerous. The regency council had proscribed Bethlen as a traitor, and if the division was accepting dispatches from him…
“Why is Bethlen sending us orders,” he asked as evenly as he could, “and why are we listening to them?”
“I don’t know if we’re listening, sir. I’m just reporting what we received. But Bethlen has declared himself King of East Transylvania.”
“King of what?” Tóth burst out, but suddenly it all made sense. Bethlen had claimed the Hungarian throne since the beginning of the civil war, and he’d lost any hope of making that claim good since the regency council sent him fleeing east, but now that these provinces had been cut off…
“Is the division… recognizing his claim?”
“There’s been no decision yet, Colonel, but some people are saying that he can make peace with the Romanians.”
“Maybe he could,” Tóth mused. The Romanians surely knew that they’d have as hard a time occupying this part of Transylvania as Hungary had further west, and that their troops would find no shelter. We made sure of that, didn’t we? All the times we routed Romanian villagers out of their houses and sent them packing with what they could carry… all the times we shot the ones who didn’t want to go. Romania will rule a wasteland to the west, Bethlen might rule one here.
He let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. I marched all the way across Africa for this? Weisz had the right idea – if I’d known what I was coming back to, I’d have stayed just like he did.
“… There’s another message, Colonel,” the lieutenant was saying, and Tóth forced himself to pay attention. “From the division. They want all the battalion commanders at headquarters for an officers’ council. That would mean you, sir.”
“I do still know who commands this battalion, Lieutenant. Things haven’t become that bad.”
“Begging your pardon, sir…”
“No, don’t worry about it. Let me get my coat and we’ll go.” He would be soaked through by the time he got there, he knew, and a long night of arguing lay ahead of him. Maybe they would all be traitors come morning, or maybe they were just doing the only thing they could.
Good luck to you, András, wherever you are.
*******
The Patriot:
Private Počiatek stood to attention at the captain’s command.
“They’ll be coming out in a few minutes,” the officer called. “Now remember what I told you last night. No cheering, no shouts, no name-calling. Just let them go. It’s part of the terms, see?”
“Yes, sir!” the soldiers chorused. For his part, Počiatek was far too exhausted to cheer; after the last year’s campaign, victory brought only a sense of relief that there would be no more fighting. He was perfectly willing to let the Hungarians go quietly if it meant that they wouldn’t shoot at him anymore.
And besides, they fought a clean war here. Things were brutal in the Banat and Transylvania, and not much better in Croatia, but when the regency council tried to retake Slovakia, it was army against army, and both sides followed the rules. Not that it had done the Hungarians much good, especially once Austria, Bohemia and Poland started selling weapons to the Slovaks and letting volunteers get through. None of them had joined the war, as the Austrians had done in the Burgenland, but Austria had seen a chance to pick up Pressburg and Poland Cieszyn, and the Bohemians and Poles had clearly preferred to have a border with Slovakia rather than Hungary.
Some of the proof was right next to Počiatek’s own company – a line of Laurin & Klement armored wagons on treads with turret-mounted machine guns. They hadn’t been developed in time to help the Austrians in the last war, but they’d certainly made a difference for the Slovaks in this one…
“Attention!” the captain shouted again, and Počiatek braced along with the other soldiers. The Hungarians were coming out now, columns of tattered soldiers marching along the main road out of Košice. They looked as tired as Počiatek felt, but they didn’t show any of the dejection they surely felt; they marched as if they were going to battle rather than returning home in surrender.
“Present arms!” called the captain, and the Slovaks saluted their enemy. Počiatek was glad to do it. Fighting their way into Košice would have been a horror, and though he’d been happy enough to volunteer for his country’s freedom, he was even happier to have survived.
Look, there are some black men in the Hungarian army. I wonder how they got there. But Počiatek would never be able to ask them, and soon they were gone, to be replaced by a column of artillery and wagonloads of ammunition.
At last the Hungarian soldiers stopped coming, and a knot of Slovak and Hungarian officers entered the city to verify that no snipers had been left behind. A few minutes later, the flag of the Slovak Republic rose over Košice. And then, the soldiers did cheer.
*******
The Exile:
Thomas Wieser’s wife hadn’t wanted him to take a job in a factory – she was sure the work was dangerous, and even surer that it was beneath him. But it had been that or live on his sister’s charity. Liesel and her husband were generous souls, and they’d have maintained Thomas’ family forever, but he didn’t want to be a burden on them, and living on charity – even his sister’s charity – was galling.
His job brought in enough to rent three rooms in a working-class part of Warsaw, far more cramped than Sári and the children were used to, but livable. They hadn’t been able to keep Zosia, but Liesel had needed a new housekeeper and had taken her on. By now, Thomas was almost used to it. It was better to work in a cutlery plant in Warsaw than to be in a grave in Hungary, and there were compensations.
Such as the men across the table. He was far from the only refugee in Warsaw, and far, even, from the only one working at his factory, and they’d got in the habit of drinking together after work. They were a motley dozen: Germans like him, Jews, Poles who’d lived near the Galician border, socialists. They rarely agreed on much, but it made for interesting conversations.
“It looks like things are just about finished in Croatia,” said Béla Horvath as he poured the beer. He’d stopped on the way from work and picked up one of the newspapers that the Hungarian refugees published. “The regency council has offered autonomy, and the Croatian government has accepted.” He said the last with a sardonic edge; since the pro-Hungarian faction in Croatia had won its civil war, the government was a puppet of the regents. “Just the Romanians to deal with now, and Gabor Bethlen.”
“So you can go back, Horvath?” asked Bronisław, one of the Poles. Horvath meant Croatian, although none of Béla’s ancestors had seen the kingdom for centuries. It wasn’t that funny, but jokes always seemed to be better in the company of friends, and Thomas laughed as he drank his beer down.
“No, not me,” Béla said. “They like socialists down there even less than the regents do. I’m no more looking for a gallows in Zagreb than one in Budapest.”
“All you socialists are gallows-birds,” Bronisław said – he was very Catholic and very conservative, and he’d sometimes get in street fights with the socialist parties during election campaigns – but just as jokes were funnier at this table, insults were banter. There wasn’t really any bad blood between the two, and Bronisław was always the first one to demand one of Béla’s stories about his long march through Africa. Three years he’d marched and fought, and then come back to fight the Romanians, only to flee the army a step ahead of the regents’ secret police.
“Enough of that, Bronisław,” said the other Béla at the table, the one whose last name was Frankel. He’d been on that march through Africa too, and he’d had just as cold a welcome upon his return. “Lay off, or I’ll kill your god again.”
Thomas drew in his breath. He was still a gentleman in spite of everything, and that kind of humor was far too coarse for him. And besides, Liesel’s husband, who was also Jewish, had told him how deadly accusations of deicide could be at Easter or election time. But Bronisław just said something about how the mohel must have circumcised Frankel’s brain rather than his dick, and poured him another beer.
A streetcar passed by, its bells clanging loudly. Somewhere in Hungary, the war continued. Here in Warsaw, the refugees had made peace.
*******
The Stranger:
Six years after the Budapest commune had been crushed, the Café Andrássy still smelled faintly of chlorine, and the bullet holes from when the regency council’s soldiers had fought Republican snipers were still not completely repaired. But life went on in the city, like new growth after a fire, and for Leila the Magyarab, it was a job.
Six years after the Budapest commune had been crushed, the Café Andrássy still smelled faintly of chlorine, and the bullet holes from when the regency council’s soldiers had fought Republican snipers were still not completely repaired. But life went on in the city, like new growth after a fire, and for Leila the Magyarab, it was a job.
It was hard to imagine now how glorious Hungary had seemed when she and Ismail had first seen it: a world of cities and marvels bigger than anything she could have conceived of when they’d lived on the Nile, and a paradise after years of weary march through Africa. And the regency council had loved them then – Hungarians come home from exile after four hundred years under the Turk. There had been parades and speeches…
But the Magyarabs’ shine had worn off quickly, especially once it became clear that most of them had no intention of becoming Catholic. Some of the men wanted to build a mosque in Budapest after they fought so hard to reconquer it, and that news had been less welcome than three-day-old fish. “Have we shed so much blood curing Budapest of the Jewish cancer,” one of the regents had said, “only to let Mussulmen take their place?” They’d gathered for worship in Ismail and Leila’s apartment instead.
They’d stayed, though – where else was there to go now? – and the men had gone to fight other battles. Leila had found work in the café to keep herself and baby Amália fed while Ismail was away in the Banat, and then in Croatia. And it was there, supporting the pro-Hungarian faction in Croatia’s three-way civil war, that Ismail had fallen. He was in a military grave now; Leila hoped to go there one day when it was safe.
“Good morning, Leila,” she heard, and saw a woman seating herself at a table; it was Erzsébet, the neighbor who was nearly always the first customer of the day. Leila shook herself into awareness – it wouldn’t do for the owner to catch her daydreaming – and returned the greeting. “What you always have?”
“Yes, and a newspaper if you’ve got it yet.”
She went behind the counter and fixed the coffee the way Erzsébet liked it, with plenty of cream and four teaspoons of sugar, and put a couple of cakes on the tray. The newspapers had indeed come, and she laid one ceremoniously on the table as she served the coffee.
“Look at that, an armistice!” Erzsébet said. “Not that it hasn’t been coming for a while, but it’s wonderful news, isn’t it?”
Leila bent her knees and looked at the paper herself, risking her boss’ displeasure. Yes, it did seem that an armistice had been declared with the Romanians. The front lines would be the border, which meant that Hungary would keep Nagyvárad and about two thirds of the Banat, including Temesvár. The parts where they settled enough refugees and drove out enough Romanians and Germans to make their own, Leila realized, remembering what Ismail had told her about the fighting.
“Just mopping up now,” said Erzsébet, and it was true; there were a few Croatians who still didn’t accept the terms of autonomy that the regency council had agreed, and one last claimant to the throne still causing trouble in the west, but neither would be more than a nuisance. Peace had finally come – a word that Hungary had almost forgotten.
But Leila also noticed something else. “What’s this?” she asked. “Something about subscriptions to go to Africa.”
Erzsébet scanned the article briefly; written Hungarian was still hard for Leila to follow, and the neighbor could make sense of the story much more quickly than she could. “Oh, that,” she said. “There was a Hungarian colonel who fetched up in Buganda – the middle of Africa somewhere – and some people here are getting together money to join him. Jews, mostly.” She shook her head and lowered her voice. “I can see why they don’t want to stay, with the regents being so against them, but why go there of all places?”
She paused, expecting an answer, but Leila had stopped listening. So that’s where Weisz got to. Buganda, is it? “Who’s getting that subscription together?”
Erzsébet looked back at her, surprised, and then back down at the newspaper. “It says that it’s a man named Kasztner. A rabbi at the Kazinczy Street synagogue.”
“Kazinczy Street,” Leila repeated. “Do you know where I can find it?”
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Looks like Hungary is finally settling down, though I wonder just how much is going to change there in the future, given the circumstances.