The Gifted House

 

Nothing had changed for Viktor Lascorsi for the last twenty years since his birth except for the fact that he had grown up.  He resided at the same house and in the same town following the same daily routine for many years.  His parents, Alonzo and Merina, were very vocal about their intentions of not moving out of their ancestral house of Alonzo, which his ancestors had got as a gift from a king of Medieval Hungary, Matthias Cornivinus of Hungarian dynasty.  It was a very well-known fact that Alonzo’s ancestors had worked for the Royal Kings’ palace. Post the death of the King in the year 1490, his ancestors had moved out of the palace to this house which the king had gifted them. It was since then that the Lascorsi family were residing at this place. Viktor had often heard stories from his grandmother that the female ancestors of his family had been very close to the queen and it was through the queen’s request that they had managed to get this house in which he was born and continued living. But what also intrigued Viktor was the fact that often in the stories narrated by his grandmother, there were certain mysteries surrounding the house hinting towards some special reason for which the house was gifted.

 Viktor had analysed that it was a long time since the house was erected and handed over to the Lascorsi family, so it wasn’t really best of the times to investigate any aspect of the house which could lead to the actual reason for this house being made.  The year was 1750 and it turned out to be one of the coldest in Hungary that made Viktor take cover in his woolen garments especially during the nights. Budapest was the largest city of the country of Hungary since ages and living in this county was the gift which was passed on by generations after generations of the Lascorsi family. Though Viktor wanted to travel the world and live at different places, his home at Budapest which consisted of two floors and a beautiful green lush garden was his world. His friends would often suggest him to move out of the city with them, but his family would often tell him that the ancestors had said that till they all live in this house they would never face any problems in their lives. So, it was a wish which couldn’t be overruled.

 Viktor was not much fond of the climatic environment of the country.  Showers would spell its cast without any warning and summer would bring in heat but without humidity though. Also, the fact that apart from the summers, the city received very little sunshine did not actually impress Viktor.  To kill his time, he would often spend his time in the city library which was known as the Bibliotheca Corviniana library which housed Europe’s greatest collection of historical chronicles, philosophic and scientific works. Co- incidentally one of the reasons for Viktor frequenting the library was the fact that the same Library was once the personal library of the last great King Matthias Cornivinus, the same king who had donated the house to his ancestors in which he currently lived. 

 The library turned out to be a soul stirrer for Viktor. Once he entered the building for the first time he was awestruck. The mammoth collection of books and historical chronicles actually made him fall in love with the library. Since his first visit he would spend at least an hour every evening in the library reading through whatever he could get his hands over.

 Since childhood itself, Viktor loved questioning. He questioned everyone about everything and didn’t stop when he got the answer because he would then question the logic of the answer itself. His parents would often link this habit of questioning to one of their ancestors whose stories they had heard from their grandparents.  So, whenever Viktor would read books, he would come home and ask questions about the same to his parents. His parents had by now become an expert in making stories about any of the question which Viktor would ask. So, what Viktor did was, he rechecked what his parents informed him with the books in the library.

 It had always intrigued Viktor that the King had donated this house to his family and why not to the other families. Though his mother had repeatedly made him understand that their ancestors had been very close to the queen through whom the request was sent to the king for construction of this house, the reply actually never did convince Victor.

 He could hardly find any reference of his family in any of the ancient books which he read about the king or the queen and the royal family. Days passed in months. Viktor continued with his daily life but would often come back to the library. 1750 turned into 1751 and Viktor grew one more year unaware that his twenty first year would finally reveal him his one-year-old cherished question about the house.

 During one of the reading sessions in the library, Viktor chanced upon a book which was written back in the year 1475 by a local scholar named Isaac. It was an untitled book but it had a sub title going by some ancient Hungarian language which was later interpreted by Viktor to mean “The Royal palace”. It took Viktor more than three months to translate the ancient language into the one which he was more conversant with.  It was during this read where he had pounced upon certain pages that described about the mammoth proportions of jewels hidden by the king in separate small houses which the king had created and gifted to his most trusted staff members. The relevant paragraphs mentioned that there were more than hundred such houses which were erected in between 1450 and 1470 underneath which huge volumes of jewels were hidden. Viktor learned that the King feared that the ottoman kingdom would invade Hungary and hence before they would fall, he wanted to disperse all the treasure into different locations which could be used for the kingdom at a later date. Viktor felt intrigued and amazed at this discovery. He read the book in detail over the next two months and discovered that each house was constructed over a very big pit that was made to hide those treasures subsequent to which the pits were covered by voluminous concentrations of cement and muds upon which one storey and two storey houses were constructed. It had taken more than twenty years to hide all of the treasures.  What also surprised Viktor was the fact that all of the hundred houses had a secret underground pathway to the palace through an underground tunnel that was constructed at the time of the erection of the houses. He looked at a hand drawn map which was printed inside the book. It gave away the points where such safe houses were constructed.  Viktor found it difficult to locate his own house, but he was sure that unlike as informed, his was not the only house which was gifted by the king, and there were ninety-nine others like his house.

 That night as Viktor went home and stood inside his room, he could imagine under his feet, thousands of feet under, a mammoth proportion of treasure which was hidden from the Ottomans but which could never be put to use or discovered and the secret to which lay in a book that was preserved in the library that was created by the king himself. Of course, Viktor was not going to search for the treasure.  He felt that the knowledge of the treasure under his house and under the other ninety-nine ones were in itself a discovery which should be preserved for the future.  Sometime later in life, Viktor thought that he would surely try to search for the treasure and until then the knowledge of the same itself was enough for him.

 Alonzo and Merina, over the next few weeks observed that Viktor had stopped asking questions about the house. Why would he? He had got his answer !