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BOX-FOLDER-REPORT: 32-2-162
TITLE:             Laszlo Nemeth: The Journey
BY:                Urban
DATE:              1962-6-6
COUNTRY:           Hungary
ORIGINAL SUBJECT:  Research and Evaluation
THEMATIC SUBJECTS: Hungary--1956-1965, Hungary--Literature, Personalities

--- Begin ---

LASZLO NEMETH: THE JOURNEY

Comedy in four acts

Act I.

(The Karadi's porch. The fact that it is a porch emerges only
from the clouded glass wall on the left whence a door and a
flight of stairs lead to the front door, and from the narrow
corridor leading to the kitchen. One of the vineclad columns
of the veranda is visible. Opposite the footlights a large
double door leads to the waiting room of Professor Horn,
ophthalmic surgeon; ill the right wall a smaller door leading
to the room occupied by the Karadis. In the right wall
immediately next to the door, a barred unlit window opens onto
the porch, which is furnished with a large, heavy table and
four chairs; at rear a coat-rack with mirror.)

Mrs. KARADY	(sits by the table stringing beans for preserving;
		she drops the ends and strings into the apron in
		her lap, the sliced beans into a large bowl at her
		feet. Margit appears from the direction of the
		door with an empty shopping bag in her hand; she
		is looking in on her mother before doing her daily
		shopping. As she opens the door noisily, Mrs.
		Karadi raises a finger to her lips and points
		toward the curtained window.)
MARGIT:		(glancing toward the window, whispering) Has he
		come?


[page 2]

Mrs. KARADI:	(also whispering) Last night,

MARGIT:	Then I was right. Around one wasn't it? I said to
		Pityu: "Listen! Wasn't that mother's door-bell?
		Can Bad have come back?" But he just turned over
		"Don't bother me with your silly imaginings. It's
		probably. the doctor they want. Or your ear was
		ringing"... You know how mad he gets if you wake
		him up.

Mrs. KARADI:	He came at midnight, With the express.

MARGIT:	I went on listening for a bit I even woke little
		Irma and covered her up; but I couldn't hear the
		key in the look, nor the door opening. Your hear
		nothing, there, at the end of the yards you could
		have burglars and we wouldn't know it.

Mrs. KARADI	You can hear a heavy step. But I sneak in and out
		in my felt slippers like a ghost. And the front
		door can be opened noiselessly, not the way your
		husband opens it. You can imagine how surprised I
		was when I found your father out there. I imagined
		it was a patient who had pulled our bell by mistake
		instead of pushing the electric one.

MARGIT:	But how come he's arrived? We expected him tomorrow
		at the earliest. It' 11 be two weeks tomorrow!

Mrs. KARADI:	A relation or something of the delegation leader died
		So they came home a day earlier. He had to carry
		that heavy leather suitcase, at least 25 kilos,
		himself all the way from the. station. At the well he
		met one of his pupils and got some help.

MARGIT:	He's going to have a stroke one day ... But isn't it
		strange how right I was ? I'11 just look in on mother,
		I thought, "before going to fetch little Irma's milk..
		(Looking at the window) He's dead tired, of course...

Mrs. KARADI:	A moment ago, when I went in?? some salieil
		he stirred. But then he ?? down again.

MARGIT:	Did he have to go? What business is it of his?
		(After a slight 
		 We11, and what did he say?

[page 3]

Mrs. KARADI:	He didn't say much. He showed me the big Ukrainian
		doll he bought for Irma. And they gave him a
		little Sputnik.

MARGIT:	(plaintively, in a somewhat horrified voice): A
		Sputnik?

Mrs. KARADI:	(apologetically) Every teacher got-one. A souvenir,
		(Silence)

MARGIT:	How do you preserve these, mother? In vinegar?
		Boiled?

Mrs. KARADI:	Yes, and I add a drop of salieil.

MARGIT:	I should put away some too. But do I have time for
		anything? The kindergarten takes up every moment
		I have,

Mrs. KARADI:	There'11 be some for you too here. I am putting
		away six large pickde-jarsful. It'd be too much
		for the two of us.

MARGIT:	All those kids! I'm so fed up by evening that I
		can hardly look at my own. And Istvan, with all
		his demands. He says he is a physical worker...
		he has to reproduce his working power... And now
		this trip! According to him father should never
		have gone...

Mrs. KARADI:	It's that Tukrosi who tricked him into it! He said
		his hernia was giving him trouble, he couldn't risk
		having to be operated on there.

MARGIT:	And when he volunteered, didn't he have his hernia
		then?

Mrs. KARADI:	That's what I said: he changed his mind. For a
		day or two he was in bed, moaning, then I saw him
		again -- he's got such a strange, hasty, edgy walk
		-- in the market.

MARGIT:	He could easily have gone. He's assistant
		headmaster and they say he is also a candidate
		Party--member.

Mrs. KARADI:	well... it's easy for those who sit next to the
		flashpots. But what about us? The ones who've
		been suspended...

[page 4]

MARGIT:	And whose son-in-law is an ordinary laborer in the
		civil engineering department. And who was given
		a tiny corner at the Museum where Pooz is
		godal-mighty. (Sounds of movement inside. The two woman
		prick up their ears)

Mrs. KARADI:	He's up, it seems...

MARGIT:	We have to go around explaining. Everyone asks
		"Is it true that your father has gone to the Soviet
		Union?" Even my head-mistress sounds ironical:
		"Well, Margit dear, what has Daddy got to say in
		his letters? I wonder what kind of experiences
		 he's had there." And yet, at meetings, she is
		loudest of all in her praise of the glorious Soviet
		Union!

Mrs. KARADI:	Yes, so I've noticed. (She looks toward the double
		door) This Horn, for instance. He moved in here
		on a Municipal Council injunction and still, since
		your father left, he's been pretty cold to me. You
		know that they have taken his department from him
		at the hospital, don't you?

MARGIT:	They take everything from everyone. Though I couldn't
		say I'm particularly sorry for him, How long did he
		want to go ton fleecing people? It's time he got
		pensioned off.

Mrs. KARADI:	He' 11 work in the National Health clinic... But am
		I responsible for that? That Mrs. Tukrosi knew what
		she was doing when she. wouldn't let her husband go.
		Her sister-in-law, Mrs. Kis, she told me it was the
		wife who'd dug in her heels.

MARGIT:	So that was the hernia, that was bothering him!

Mrs. KARADI:	She didn't want to be badgered. I wish I'd had as
		much sense. Bat you know your father, what an
		innocent he is! A geography and history teacher!...
		how could he miss such an opportunity! I thought
		they might even consider it a good point. After
		all it was the district Party secretary himself who
		offered it to him!

[page 5]

MARGIT:	But how easy it would have been to refuse. That
		coronary trouble last year! And then it is net as
		if he were still teaching! Let those go who are in
		a position to hand on... the experience!
		(Opening of a door is heart inside)

Mrs. KARADI:	Quiet...
		(Karadi emerges in dressing gown)

KARADI:	(to his daughter) So you were the second voice!
		(He embraces her) I was looking up at the ceiling
		and listening to your mother exchanging passionate
		whispers with someone.

MARGIT:	(looking at her mother) Yes, it was me. But I
		hope we didn't wake you, Daddy?

KARADI:	Oh no. I've been awake for ages. But somehow a
		man has to find his way back to his own bed, you
		know. Where am I? One tries to become oriented
		with one's vertebrae rather than with one eyes
		and brain. Am I among the polished pieces of
		furniture of the Hotel Ukraine in Moscow or beneath
		the high ceiling and lustre of the Hotel Europe in
		Leningrad? But before one can make up one's mind
		one is asleep again and the jogging of the train is
		back in one's body... as one sat there, the day
		before yesterday, in the moonlight, gazing out at the
		landscape dotted with wooden houses, on the way back
		from Leningrad.

MARGIT:	Still, it must be a pleasure to wake up in one's own
		bed at home.

KARADI:	At any rate the old ship feels it has entered harbor
		when it plops down on these old, rickety springs...

Mrs. KARADl:	What can we do if we can't buy a new spring-mattress...
		Why, was the mattress so good there?

KARADI:	Why sure! It's all new! You don't expect them to
		buy mattresses in the fleamarket!

Mrs. KARABDI:	And the bed-bugs?... But even if there were any you
		wouldn't have noticed.

[page 6]

KARADI:	No, nothing of the sort, None of my colleagues
		complained.

MARGIT:	They wouldn't have dared! Bed-bugs in the Soviet
		Union!

KARADI:	You can't imagine what luxurious hotels they took
		us to.. Dvatzatchestoy, we said to the lift-girl
		who was made up like a film star, and she took us
		up to the twenty-sixth floor reading her book all
		the way.

Mrs. KARADI:	To the twenty-sixth floor?

KARADI:	Yes. But the buffet is on the thirtieth. It is a
		bit silly, if you come to think of it, to build
		towers like that where there is so much space.

MARGIT:	It must be ugly as hell.

KARADI:	Moscow? Well it is beautiful and it is ugly,
		like most large towns. As far as I can judge, they
		have still a lot to learn in matters of taste. It
		is still Leningrad, that large provincial town,
		that leads. But you do notice some improvement.
		The houses they are building today are plainer and
		more attractive.

MARGIT:	Why? Are they building? Joska Franesik says that
		sometimes you see ten television aerials on a single
		wooden hut, the housing shortage is so bad.

KARADI:	It is, rather. In school we learned that Moscow
		had one million inhabitants. Today it has eight
		million. And it's only now that they've got round
		to building houses after having built all. those
		factories That planned economy, It goes in
		jerks: now this, now that, as the brain conceives
		it and the. infinitely long arm carries it out in a
		huge sweep. But today they're building faster than
		anywhere in the world

Mrs. KARADI:	We haven't been anywhere else...

MARGOT:	And are you sure, Daddy, that what they showed you
		was not simply dust in your eye?...

[page 7]

KARADI:	To get to the airfield at Vnukevo one travels for
		30 minutes between new, six-storey buildings and
		there are buildings like that as far as the eye
		can see. There's housing there for two million
		people.

MARGIT:	(listlessly) I can see you aren't sorry you let
		Yourself be tricked into this trip.

KARADI:	NO, why should I be? the very good that I survived
		it! (He laughs) Do you know what was the most
		exhausting part of the whole trip? (Triumphantly)
		The lunches and the dinners. Whenever I could I
		docked out on them.

Mrs. KARADI:	(hopefully) Is their food so disgusting?

KARADI:	On the contrary, it is very good. European cooking
		with a few Russian specialities: borshoh, kievskaya...
		if you stuck your fork into it carelessly the fat
		spurted into your face... But they were
		interminable.

Mrs. KARADI:	Did they give you so much to eat?

KARADI:	That too, they figured eighty rubles per person...
		that's how much they were allowed to spend on us a
		day. But the service was terribly slow. And imagine.
		I had to speak French all the time...

MARGIT:	(after a brief silence) I hear you talked on the
		radio, Daddy...

KARADI:	Did you hear me?

MARGIT:	We didn't, Pista would never allow me to listen
		Moscow... but others did; my head-mistress, for
		instance...

KARADI:	It was only a sentence. They were interviewing
		the leader of the delegacija... there every
		visiting group is a delegacija... and as I was
		obviously the oldest member of the group they let
		me answer one question too. They asked me how I was
		enjoying my trip. I tried to give them an intelligent
		reply. I said I didn't know in which of my two
		subjects I had learned more: as a geographer I had
		looked at a new country, as a historian at the
		workshops of a new era.


[page 8]

MARGIT:	You certainly did them proud, Daddy...

KARADI:	Not more than good manners demanded... and truth
		permitted, daughter.
		(Maoskasi arrives from the direction of frent door)

MACSKAST:	(Embracing Karadi somewhat theatrically) Welcome,
		Joska! (To Mrs. KARADI) Forgive me, dear lady,
		this early visit. But I just couldn't resist a
		whiff of that lovely Moscow smell while it was still
		fresh on him, before going to the office...

Mrs. KARADI:	How did you know, Bandi, that he was back?

MACSKASI:	The whole town knows! "Did you hear that Uncle
		Karadi is back?" "From Moscow?" "Where do you
		think, from Venus? Marci Meszlenyi met him as he
		was coming in from the station."

KARADI:	Yes indeed, he carried my suitcase from the Artesian
		Well.

MACSKASI:	He said It was pretty heavy. It must have been full
		of the gold the Russians gave you.

KARADI:	(smiling) You're not altogether wrong. Thanks
		to bureaucracy we got our little pocket money only
		on the last day, so I bought a few kilograms of
		books.

MACSKASI:	Books? Did they teach you Russian?

KARADI:	That'd have been a bit difficult. But there is a
		People's Democracies Bookshop where I was able to
		lay my hands on some books I've lest: Mommsen,
		Gregorovius...

MACSKASI:	Oh, that's all right. For a moment I thought they
		had invented some funnel to pour languages into
		one's head. That'd be an even greater miracle than
		the Sputnik.

KARADI:	I even bought a Hungarian book: Art Treasures of
		Budapest. It cost half what it costs here.

MACKASI:	Currency conversion, of course. The living standard
		drain. (He tunas Karadi toward the light) But let
		me take a good look at you! Does that great change
		in your world outlook show? (To Mrs. Karadi) No,
		he is exactly as he was before.

[page 9]

Mrs. KARADI:	Thank God.

MACSKASI:	Past...God! In front of an ear fresh from Moscow!
		He is a bit pale and tired, though.	

KARADT:	Well, it was quite an endurance test.

MACSKAST:	They made you admire all their Potemkin villages.
		You saw millionaire kolkhozes, automatised
		corkscrew factories...

KARADI:	No, nothing of the sort. Some of the colleagues
		would have liked to see the Putlloy works, they
		promised we would, but nothing came of it.

MACSKASI:	Of course they don't like anyone to peep under the
		lid. I bet there were lectures until your heads
		burst!

KARADI:	There was some sort of reception at the Teachers'
		House. There were speeches there, of course, but
		otherwise we didn't have a strict program.

MACSKASI:	Do you mean to tell me that they let you go where
		you wanted to?

KARADI:	Well, we had an interpreter: she ate with us, made
		the program for the next day, she helped us about
		queueing, because foreigners are given preference...

MACSKASI:	Ah!

KARADI:	But those who wanted to could go where they pleased.
		She was glad to be rid of them, poor little thing.
		She was a girl from Kobanya, married to a Russian
		aircraft mechanic -- they fell in love at the
		Ferihegy airport -- and all she was interested in was
		her daily allowance. She thanked us if we let her go
		home to her children.

MACSKASI:	(unbelieving) Did you talk to natives at all?

KARADI:	When we had to change streetcars or when we got
		lost. Izvinite, gdje-Bolshoi Tyieatr... Each
		according to his knowledge of Russian...

MACSKASI:	Is it true that Hungarians are much respected?
		(in a low voice) Since...

KARADI:	Well that's something i couldn't tell you When
		they asked us what we were and we replied "vengertsi"

[page 10]

		they nodded happily. But then I have no idea how
		they react to the Ghanaians or Persians... Do you
		know how many nationalities were represented in that
		restaurant? As many flags of the tables as there
		were delegations. Even Paris was not such a Babel
		when I was there... I found that they are very
		nice to foreigners in general...

MARGIT:	They are trained.

MACSKASI:	Of course. Let everyone see that they are better
		then their reputation.

KARADI:	Well, I wouldn't Know. The little old woman who
		showed me the way to the Butirka prison -- a friend
		of mine died there in 1920 -- wasn't making propaganda
		when she smiled at me with her two remaining teeth.
		They are kind, the way decent people are king to
		foreigners here as well.

MACSKASI:	(gloomily) I see, you've been carried away.

Mrs. KARADI:	Bandi, please...

KARADI:	Why do you use such words? Why should I be carried
		away by anything in this world at which I have been
		looking for sixty three years? However, I am not
		sorry that I went. If nothing else, it is a
		satisfaction to use once again some of one's dormant
		capacities. One puts the map on one's knee and watches
		out that the river Moskwa with its twists
		and turns shouldn't trick one's sense of direction.
		Then I see all the things that I have taught.
		The churches of the Kremlin, the Novyj Djevichij
		Nunnery into which they exiled Peter's sister. Next
		to the Red Square there is a large historical
		museum -- unfortunately I didn't understand much
		of the captions -- that's where I spent most of my
		free time... You know, we too have decided to bring
		our archeological material down from the loft...

	(Professor Horn comes out through the double door. After
	carefully closing and looking it he leaves they key in the
	lack. He throws a glance at the people talking around the
	table. bows, and walks toward the front door.)
		

[page 11]

KARADI:	(under the impression the professor has not noticed
		him) Professor...

HORN:		(turns round, without surprise) Oh, there you are.
		Professor... Did you want anything?

KARADI:	Nothing in particular. I just wanted to say hallo
		to you.

HORN:		After the important journey? Welcome back.

KARADI:	I thought of your often, particularly in Leningrad.
		Not as an ophthalmic surgeon but as an art collector.
		As we walked along the corridors of the Hermitage...

HORN:		Yes, even in Czarist days the Petersburg gallery was
		one of the richest. Particularly in Rembrandts.
		Now they have enriched it still further with the
		loot from the manor houses.

KARADI:	The teachers' union presented some of us with a
		little souvenir. I was given an album of the
		Heritage. If you'd let me offer it to...

HORN:		Yes, yes, if you could lend it to me sometime I'd
		be obliged... (he looks at his watch) but now, if
		you'll forgive me, I'm in a hurry...

KARADI:	An important operation?

HORN:		No, nowadays I don't perform important operations.
		I want to be in time for morning Mass.

KARADI:	(surprised) Morning Mass?

HORN:		(turns back) Don't be so amazed, Professor. There
		still are such backward people in Hungary. People
		who go to Mass in spite of the scientific training.
		(he bows once more, then leaves.)

KARADI:	What is got into him? (looks at the others)

MACSKASI:	(moodily, avoiding Karadi's eyes) Forget about him.
		He was only stabbed in the back a bit.

Mrs. KARADI:	He lost his department.

MACSKASI:	Someone wanted it for himself. And now that his
		terrestrial career is ever...

KARADI:	He is trying to win good points in Heaven...

MARGIT:	Don't make fun of him, Uncle Bandi. Horn has always
		been a religious man.

[page 12]

Mrs. KARADI:	Even in 1953. there was a small cross hanging over
			his bed.

MACSKASI:	And now, since he has to prescribe spectacles for the
		peasants streaming in from the collective farms he can
			allow himself to go to Mass openly.

KARADI:	But what has all this to do with me? I am really not
		one of those who stabbed him in the back.

MACSKASI:	(with his eyes on the ashtray) After this trip to the
		Soviet Union you seem, somehow, to have become one of
		them...
			(The telephone rings in the Professor's room)

MACSKAST:	Let me give you some advice, Jeska. You know that you
		are not only my friend, but more than that, almost my
		ideal... The last thing i want to do is to interfere...
			(The telephone rings again, more nervously)

Mrs. KARADI:	To hell with it. He turned the key, I'm not going to
		answer it.

MACSKASI:	Until now the whole town has regarded you with great
		respect...
			(Telephone rings, longer than before)

MARGIT:	We'd better answer it. It may be an important case.
			(She goes in, leaves the door open)

MACSKASI:	Briefly, in your place I'd more careful. All right,
		you went, that cannot be changed, But...

MARGIT:	(Her voice inside) The Professor is not at home... No?
			(Margit pulls the door shut)

MACSKASI:	You must consider people's feelings. Was it necessary
		for you to make a speech in Radio Moscow's Hungarian
		service.

KARADI:	What kind of idiocy is this? Did you hear the speech?

MARGIT:	(emerges, pale) Awful... the Morning Post...

KARADI:	What's in the Morning Post?

MARGIT:	The editor of the cultural column. He wants to meet
		Daddy!
Mrs. KARADI:	For heaven's sake! Pityu predicted this. We'll never
		be left in peace again.
KARADI:	But why shouldn't we?... It may be the Museum, the
		archaeological collection...

[page 13]

MARGIT:	No. It's about your important journey.

KARADI:	Did he say that?

Mrs. KARADI:	Why didn't you say he wasn't here. Or that he is ill?

MARGIT:	Oh, mummy, you know you can't hide from them!

KARADI:	But why should I hide? He doesn't want me to join a
		collective! (he advances toward the room).

MARGIT:	Oh Daddy, please be careful!

KARADI: 	(at the door) I don't quite see what I have to be
		careful about? I didn't steal an ikon from the Tretyakev
		Gallery. (Into the telephone) Karadi speaking.
		(The other three draw closer to the door and watch Karadi
		tensely. Mrs. Karadi folds her hands as if in prayer.)

KARADI:	A little talk? With me?


Mrs. KARADI:	(whispers) They want to talk to ham. Question him!

KARADI:	Frankly, I don't see what I can tell you that others
		haven't said before. Two weeks are a drop in the
		Ocean.

MACSKASI:	(walks up to him. covers the receiver) Ask them to
		send you their questions in writing. You can't talk.

KARADI:	But why can't I talk?

MACSKASI:	You are ill. You have contracted erysipelas, some
		kind of infection... I warned you, Joska.

KARADI: 	(into the telephone) Yes, I'm here. I was thinking
		whether it wouldn't be better if I could get the
		questions of that interview in writing... you know,
		an old schoolteacher... Besides, I am not very well...

Mrs. KARADI: 	Tell them you're in your dressing gown...

KARADI:	Well, perhaps it would be better if you could put
		them in paper. And afterwards, perhaps... (he pulls
		the door shut and talks on)

MACSKAST:	(looks at his watch) My God, I'm late. Now the boss
		can again say: Comrade Maoskasi, couldn't we
		synchronize our watches? (he kisses Mrs. Karadi's
		hand) Take care of him. Don't let him make
		statements. He got back from the Soviet Union ill. That
		might even turn the public mood. "Poor Uncle Karadi,
		God knows what they did to him, he came down with
		coronary thrombosis after this trip to Moscow..."
		Bye-bye, Margit, (Exit)

[page 14]

			(Karadi emerges from Horn's room)

MARGIT:	What have you decided. Daddy?

KARADI:	Exactly what you ordered. Though I am a little
		ashamed of these subterfuges. If that's what I
		want, they'll send their questions in writing...

Mrs. KARADI:	But weren't they offended?

KARADI:	They seemed a bit taken aback. But they were quite
		friendly in the end.

MARGIT:	It is better. if you can think ever your answers in peace, isn't it?

KARADI:	And if you can control them...

MARGIT:	Don't be angry Daddy, but you are so naive
		matters...

Mrs. KARADI:	Yes, exactly as if you were living in the days of
		old Franz Joseph....

MARGIT:	(looking at her watch) I don't think I'll go to the
		market. I'd rather tell Pista what happened.

KARADI:	Why. is he at home? I thought he was digging the canal.

MARGIT:	He had himself put on the sick-list... He is so
		practical....

KARADI:	Yes, I noticed that... in fifty six...

Mrs. KARADI:	My God, what's going to happen to us how, what's going
		to happen to us!

KARADI:	Quite frankly, I can't see what you are so desperate about.

Mrs. KARADI:	You know I'm resigned to everything. We had our little
		corner in the Museum, the pension supplement, and
		what's most important of all, there wasn't a stain
		on your name. Wherever I went in my shabby coat.
		people took their hats off to me with such respect.
		People I didn't even know.

KARADI:	But why should they take their hat off any differently
		now? Or if they do, to hell with them!

Mrs. KARADI:	Bandi says you should go to bed. So they can see how
		ill you are.

KARADI:	Do you want to put a compress on my throat? So they
		can see I am unable to talk. On no, I have to write,
		of course. Perhaps we should put my arm in splints.
		And say I fell out of the window of the TU...

[page 15]

Mrs. KARADI:	You are making fun of me. But you'll see! You are
		pale enough. I do believe you're starting to feel
		that... that tightness round your heart. And that
		numbness in your left arm.

KARADI:	This time it's in my right with which I'm supposed to
		write. Out there my heart moved over to my right side
		and the pain. along with it...

Mrs. KARADI:	You came home ill and so you can only give them a few
		lines. Say that people were nice to you. And that
		Moscow is clean. Francsik said the same...

KARADI:	And it's true, too. You don't see old tickets or
		cigarette butts on the sidewalk.

Mrs. KARADI:	Because there are informers everywhere and these who
		drop something on the sidewalk are interned...

KARADI:	Do you want me to say this?
			(The Karadi's bell rings)

Mrs. KARADI:	Heavens, who is it now?

KARADI:	Perhaps a new type coroner... one who inspects moral
		corpses (Exit).	

Mrs. KARADI:	They are bringing the questions. (to her husband)
		Not you... you go into the room and lie down. (goes
		to front door).
		(Karadi walks up and down on the porch deep in thought.)

Mrs. KARADI:	(brings in Lakatos and Zsizsik; the former is a man
		stressing his importance with slow movements and
		relative taciturnity, the second is small, quick,
		sharp and loquacious)

Mrs. KARADI:	(to her husband) From the Morning Post. (pointing
		to Lakates) The assistant editor... comrade...

LAKATOS:	(introducing himself) Lakatos.

ZSIZSIK:	We've met before. At the Museum. Gyortgy Zsissik.
		You were kind enough to guide me through the stuff in
		the attics. What sort of culture was it exactly?...

KARADI:	Bodrogkeresztur...

Mrs. KARADI:	I don't quite know where to invite the Comrades...
		we have only the one room. And my husband should
		really be in bed. He's in his dressing-gown, as you
		see. He got back from the Soviet Union ill.


[page 16]

ZSIZSIK:	It's perfectly all right here.

KARADI:	(offering them a seat) Some brandy, my dear.

Mrs. KARADI:	(goes into the room, the three men sit down)

KARADI:	Are you, gentlemen, natives of Küngös?

ZSIZSIK:	Cemrade Lakatos has only recently come from
		Budapest. He is, by the way, County Chairman of
		the Journalists' Association. I myself can almost
		be regarded as a native. Many of my friends are
		former students of the Professor. Miska Heja, for
		instance.

KARADI:	I remember him. He graduated, let's see, in fifty...
		or was it fifty-one?

ZSIZSIK:	He talks so much about you, Professer, that I often
		feel as if I too had been one of your pupils.

KARADI:	That's very nice of you. (to Lakatos) I'm really
		sorry for putting you to so much trouble for such a
		bagatelle. You could have sent a messenger boy
		perhaps...

LAKATOS:	I've long wished to meet you, Professor.

KARADI:	In the matter of the archaeological section?

ZSIZSIK:	Partly. But I urged him too. As long as you haven't
		met Professor Karadi, I told him , you wen't knew hew
		far you've got, Comrade Lakatos.

LAKATOS:	And new, after this great trip, it became really
		pressing.

KARADI:	I hope I have not offended you with my request. An old
		schoolteacher, you know, no longer so quick on the
		uptake, likes to think a bit before....

LAKATOS:	Nothing could be more natural...

ZSIZSIK:	Journalists are net as meticulous in their writing. the
		Professer thinks. And one or another of his pupils
		may say to himself: The old man used to grumble about
		my tenses and new he himself...

KARADI:	I didn't mean the grammar so much. Although that too,
		maybe...
		(Mrs. Karadi brings in the brandy and puts it on the table.
		her hands shaking.)

[page 17]

LAKATOS:	I hope we haven't caused you and inconvenience.

ZSIZSIK:	It isn't every day one finds a pretext to break into
		Professor Karadi's Damjanich street sanctum.

Mrs. KARADI:	A fine sanctum indeed! A single back room. They took
		all the front rooms... It was necessary because of the
		housing shortage, I know...

KARADI:	No. I'm just a little tired.

Mrs. KARADI:	Now don't play the martyr. I was up all night changing
		the compresses.

KARADI:	Hm.

Mrs. KARADI:	He had a heart attack last year. and those heavy
		suitcases! He carried them himself all the way from
		the station.

LAKATOS:	Why didn't you cable us, Professor? We'dd have sent
		a oar to meet you.

KARADI:	Let's forget about it. Considering the length
		of the journey and the number of years I carry on my
		back, I feel quite well.

LAKATOS:	I hear you came by TU. It must have been an exciting
		experience. Have you ever flown before, Professor?

KARADI:	No, this was the first time. Until new I've seen
		photographs taken from the air only in geographical
		textbooks and magazines. And now such a landscape unrolled
		before my very eyes. The Carpathians between two clouds!
		And the speed of a magic carpet! We were home in two
		hours.

LAKATOS:	I went to China last autumn. From Peking to Budaypest,
		If I don't count the landing in Irkutsk, fourteen hours.

KARADI:	It took Marco Polo three years. The Earth has shrunk.
		A colleague of mine, a mathematician, and I made a little
		calculation. If we measure the radius of the Earth
		not in kilometers but in hours, on the basis of the
		speed of the fastest means of transport, those six
		thousand odd hundred kilometers equal three and one

		quarter hours. The cubic content of the Earth is 4 R [3]
		pi/3 - that is let's say, 120 hours. It may sound a
		little strange to measure cubic content in hours.

[page 18]

LAKATOS:	No. It's extremely interesting.

ZSIZSIK:	(writes something on his ouff)

KARABI:	But once one has left what is customary behind... And
		do you know how many hours we get if we take the
		maximum speed of our childhood days, that of the
		express train? Ten million. A hundred thousand times
		as much! Taking 80 kilometers an hour as a basis.
		Don't you believe me?

LAKATOS: Of course, I do.

KARADI: And if we take the old stage-coach with its twelve
		kilometers an hour that makes one hundred and fifty
		million. (to Zsizsik) If you want to check my figures
		I'll get you paper and pencil...

ZSIZSIK:	No, thank you... I was only arranging my ouff

KARADI:	My colleague and I were wondering how we could
		illustrate these facts for our pupils. Let's suppose
		the Earth is a melon, in which case... but then he had
		to get out at Szolnok.

ZSIZSIK:	What luck!... I mean that allowed you, Professor, to
		take a nap.

LAKATOS: But don't you think, Professor, that this shrinking
		of the Earth as you described it....

ZSIZSIK: Will have its consequences also in other fields? The
		nations will get closer to each other not merely in the
		physical sense...

KARADI:	Of course. I am convinced of it. And this closeness,
		this will, in the end, settle things also politically...

Mrs. KARADI:	(frightened) May I offer you another drop? (she
		pushes her husband) Oh, I beg your pardon!

KARADI: There was a map there, in the waiting room of the
		airfield: the flight network of the Soviet Union. Only
		the main, naturally. There's direct connection between
		Moscow and every large town in the Union. What a
		perspective -- I thought to myself -- for the geography
		teacher of the future! As a young geography teacher I
		used to conduct study trips every year until I got
		married -- and I married rather late, fortunately (he glanced
		at his wife) -- I mean fortunately from this point of

[page 19]

	view. I wanted to show that child from the lowlands.
	our Lake Balaton, the Balcony Bukk, Mecsek mountains.
	That's how, when transport becomes a little cheaper,
	a Soviet geography teacher can take his class to the
	Crimea, to the Caucasus, to the Tienshan.

ZSIZSIK:	(writing on his cuff) And later Africa, Australia...

KARADI:	Why not? Those as well. For that, however, we must
		await the elimination of the present-day political...
		(Mrs. Karadi overturns her glass)

KARADI:	My wife gets soared when I utter the word polities.
		Reassure her that I haven't said anything wrong.

ZSIZSIK:	On the contrary, everything the Professor said has been
		very interesting and important. Ideologically as well.

LAKATOS:	(to Mrs. Karadi) Please, don't look upon us as enemies...
		waiting to pounce on a wrong word. We are led only and
		exclusively by our deep regard for the...

Mrs, KARADI:	(blushing) Of course I know that...

KARADI:	Besides, they've only brought the questions.

Mrs, KARADI:	(rises) Foregive me a second. (exit via corridor)

ZSIZSIK:	I think I know you well enough, Professer, to assume
		that this is not the only perspective -- although
		this too is very important from the point of view of
		the future geography teacher and future students --
		that you brought back with you from the Soviet Union.
		As a historian, for instance?

KARADI:	You're right. I was just saying the very same thing
		to my friend, somehow he didn't Believe that they allowed
		us to ream around unaccompanied...

LAKATOS:	Indeed? And who is your friend, Professor?

KARADI:	He... But that's beside the point. I walked through
		the Historical Museum four times. I learned a great
		deal, especially in the archaeological department:
		the culture of Tripolje, that was terra incognita for
		me. And the captions... I'm afraid there are too many
		of them. And, so far as I was able to decipher them, 
		there's a bit too much Maxist terminology.

LAKATOS:	(startled) Indeed?

[page 20]

KARADI:	But fundamentally It is very proper that the museum
	should be arranged with an eye to instruction. And if,
	as we were promised, our Museum of Local History is
	going to be enriched with an archeological room...

LAKATOS:	I can see that the Professer benefited from this trip
	also professionally.

ZSIZSIK:	What we are interested in, however, is not so much the
	effect of Soviet archaeology on you, the historian, but
	the effect of history in the making...

LAKATOS: It must hawe been a tremendous experience to look into
	that furnace... 

KARADI:	Yes... as far as I was able to...

LAKATOS: Vita Magister historiae.

KARADI:	If you turned it around on purpose -- for the original
	saying goes: history is the teacher of life - it's
	Just as true. Life becomes the teacher of history.

ZSIZSIK:	This is exactly what Comrade Lakatos meant: that in a
	country like that where life is undergoing such a
	tremendous change - life becomes the teacher of
	history.

LAKATOS:	Yes, That's what I meant.

KARADI:	And you would like to know to what extent the 
	thimbleful of experience I gained in two weeks transformed
	the outlook I had gained from the two or three thousand
	books I have read in my life. Well, to tell the truth,
	I don't believe in that saying. Neither in its original
	nor in its reversed form. History and the present are
	two different things. One is the world of contemplation,
	the other the world of will. You examine one and
	participate in the other. These who can detect the
	causes leading to a historical event will not, 
	necessarily, detect the forces which are in the process of
	leading to another historical event. I can prove this
	contention by pointing to the fact, that historians
	like, Guizot for instance, who took this superstition
	seriously and fancied themselves as politicians played,
	on the whole, a rather inglorious role. (He notices the

[page 21]

cold look in the eyes of his interlocutors) I don't
mean, of course, that a historian cannot try to see
the present as if it were history. At Petersburg...
I mean Leningrad, they took us to the Smolnij which
was the headquarters of the October revolution...
Lenin's room...

LAKATOS:	I know. I saw it.

KARADI:	opposite the Winter Palace that vaulted doorway
	through which the students and sailors went into
	battle! Henceforth I shall think of that too the
	way I think of the Siege of Buda or the battle-field
	of Ozora. Something I experienced with maps and
	descriptions in my hand. (he notices Margit who has
	just entered with her mother and listens, petrified,
	to what he says) Excuse me, this is my daughter. I
	didn't realize you were home. She is a nursery-school
	teacher at the central kindergarten.

MARGIT:	Yes, I asked off.

ZSIZSIK:	Of course on such an occasion!

MARGIT:	I hope I'm not intruding.

ZSIZSIK:	No, of course not. We are having a quiet, informal
	conversation.

LAKATOS:	(after some silence) And did you go to the theater.
	Professor?

KARADI:	Yes, they took us to the Stanislavsky Theater. Do
	you know it?

LAKATOS:	Yes, it's the Arts Theater. I've been there. Don't
	you find it a bit obsolete? It has often been
	oriticized lately.

KARADI:	I really couldn't say; my colleagues were delighted.
	But on the one hand. they are literary men, on the
	other, they Believe there'll be trouble if they don't
	show sufficient enthusiasm for everything...

LAKATOS:	Yes. There are people like that.
	(Mrs. Karadi gives Margit a horrified look.)

KARADI:	Literature, you know, is not my strong suit. It even
	bothered me when our interpreter tried to explain what
	was going on on the stage bending forward to speak

[page 22]

	to the others, or spitting into my ear. I was afraid
	the audience would be disturbed. But they must be
	used to it because they didn't hiss.

LAKATOS:	No, they are very considerate.

KARADI:	And how calmly, how obediently they waited at the
	cloakroom. As if they were queueing for meat.

LAKATOS:	Yes, the Soviet people are more disciplined than we are

KARADT:	Or more patient. It shows that they've had more to
	bear.
	(Mrs. Karadi looks fearfully at Margit, then at the two
	journalists.)

ZSIZSIK:	The Professor means they have made greater sacrifices.

KARADI:	That's what I noticed in the bus also. Those tired,
	worn faces even the middle-aged; one is so pleased
	that at last they have a more peaceful life, a few
	ordinary, middle-class comforts, For let us only
	recall what these people have been through in the last
	forty years. The civil war, years of starvation; the
	purges of the thirties, the permanent fear...

MARGIT:	You talk too much, Daddy.

KARADI:	Why? We are having an ordinary conversation. And
	then the Germans! Five years of them! Then again
	starvation; and clearing up the rubble. And all
	the time competition with the West. All this was
	borne by the same people who were now walking round
	and round in the foyer of the theater, the way we
	used to walk at our dancing class; born as fighters.
	as mothers, as children. And they haven't lost their
	warmth, their human sympathy in the process. That's
	what astonished me most at this theater. I de admire
	Chekhov, it was one of his plays, I've read a couple
	of his stories, but somehow I was unable to share in
	the troubles of that landowner family on the stags as
	far as I could understand them from the whispers of
	our interpreter. Their cherry trees were going to be
	out down. And they were compelled to leave the
	estate on which they never spent much time anyway.
[page 23]

	I feel much more sympathy with old Uncle Török
	whose bit of garden was expropriated by the
	cooperative...

Mrs. KAIADI:	All right, all right, there's no need to make a
	speech you're not teaching your class!

LAKATOS:	let him It's very Interesting.

ZSIZS1K:	Now you understand, Comrade Lakatos, what it means
	to attend Professor Karadi's lectures.

KARADI:	A middle-aged woman was sitting behind me. Too young
	to know what Czarism really meant. Her eyes were full
	of tears. The whole auditorium was snuffling. Even
	our interpreter's friend who was seeing the play for
	the tenth time.

LAKATOS:	Yes, that's how the Soviet people are!

KARADI:	I must confess to you that even at the Leningrad
	Opera House -- they took us to see some ballet - I
	was more taken up with the public than with the
	stage. Three of us, a colleague from Bekescaaba and
	one from Oreshza, were crowded into a box - perhaps
	it was the Czar's, it was a nice, spacious one- there
	were already about a dozen people in it. Well, the
	ballet... Everyone knows that the Russian ballet is
	world-famous. They moved beautifully, there is no
	denying, it, even the statue of Peter the Great danced,
	but as I stood by the railing looking town on the
	public waiting for the curtain to go up, that minute
	or two told me more than anything. I suddenly under
	stood what it was that mate them, on that ship still
	standing, there at the other bank of the Neva...

ZSIZSIK: You mean the Aurora, Professor?

KARADI:	...what made them fire that first gun in seventeen.

LAKATOS:	That's very interesting. What was it that moved you
	so, Comrad Karadi?

KARADI:	To come down to it, a very simple thing. The fact
	that they were all alike. First row, boxes, gallery.
	The same faces, the same clothes, like the -- well, I
	don't want to say barons -- but like the more skilled

[page 24]

	workers, on Sundays of course. Like Uncle Safranek,
	for instance, from the printing shop, when he puts
	on his Sunday best. How shall I express it
	perhaps a more homogeneous society.

MARGIT:	Sorry to interrupt. But father had a coronary 
	thrombosis last year and all this talk...

KARADI:	Let's not exaggerate, the doctor said coronary trouble...

Mrs. KARADI:	It was thrombosis!

LAKATOS:	Whatever it was, we wouldn't tire you for the world,
	Professor.

ZARADI:	Well, I am a little tired indeed. If you, gentlemen,
	would let me have those...

ZSIZSIK:	We only wanted to pay. our respects to the great
	traveller for a few minutes. And if what the Professor
	had to say hadn't been so enthralling...

KARADI:	Yes, once a teacher, always a teacher. But would you
	let me have these questions?

LAKATOS:	(rising) 0h, after this we don't really need them,
	I think...

ZSIZSIK:	What you told us, Professor, in your own words, 
	without constraint... I kiss your hands, ladies.
	(Lakatos bows, they go.)

KARADI:	(seeing them out) But that was what we had agreed
	on... (going toward front door)

Mrs. KARADI:	Awful, the things your father said! I thought they'ld
	telephone for the AVO right away!

MARGIT:	The AVO? Why? He did nothing but sing the praise of
	the Soviet Union!

Mrs. KARADI:	Don't talk nonsense! He said the people walk around
	like sheep during the interval!

MAGRIT:	That they are much better disciplined than we are.

Mrs. KARADI:	And that ordinary workers sat in the boxes!

MARGIT:	But that's excellent! It shows that the social
	differences have been. liquidated. A washer-woman gets
	400 rubles a month, an Academician 40,000!

Mrs. KABADI:	If only he hadn't mentioned the purges!

[page 25]

MARGIT:	That, too, adds to their glory. How they suffered so
	that we may live in this Garden of Eden!
	(Karadi returns)

KARADI:	(his excitement abating) Well, you see, they are not
	cannibals.

MARGIT:	Because they listened to your lecture, Daddy?

Mrs. KARADI:	You said the most awful things! That's why I ran to
	fetch Margit. I said, come and shut your father up
	or we'll all end up in jail.

KARADI:	Don't be silly, I didn't say anything that could in
	any way be considered compromising.

MARGIT:	That's what you think, Daddy.

KARADI:	I showed quite a bit of cunning, I think. When he
	tried to catch me out as a historian. Or weren't
	you here then? 

MARGIT:	You were very smart, Daddy. You tricked them
	beautifully. And these questions? Of course you
	didn't get them, did you?

KARADI:	I asked for them but they said we no longer needed
	them now.

MARGIT:	(walks up and down) Good Lord, where will this end?

Mrs. KARADI: That's all we had left: our honor. And now even
	that is gone! (she calls into the yard, almost crying)
	Pista! Pista! Come on in!

ISTVAN:	(with a. shoe-brush in his hand) Why? What's happened?

KARADI:	Nothing. female hysteria. (He tries to embrace his
	son-in-law) Hallo, son! I haven't had a chance to
	greet you yet.

ISTVAN:	(freeing himself from the embrace, to his wife) What's
	happened?

MARGIT:	These journalists. They tricked Daddy. It was agreed,
	they said so themselves that they would send the
	questions. Then we could have chewed them over
	together.

KARADI:	(begine to understand what is wrong) You're making a
	mountain of a molehill. I said nothing out of the
	ordinary. I considered your... so-called honor!

[page 26]

ISTYAN:	(to his wife) Of course they didn't bring them.

MARGIT:	I don't know whether they did or not. But Daddy
	began to talk. All kinds of things. And when, in
	the end, asked for the questions...

ISTVAN: There were no questions. I could have told you in

Mrs, KARADI:	I thought it was suspicious that there were two of
	them!

MARGIT:	And that short fellow... he was writing on his cuff
	all the time. He had on of those nylon shorts with

Mrs. KARADI:	You're rights, I noticed it too. Even your father
	remarked on it. He said: if you want to write I'll
	give you some paper.

KARADI:	Well, only because we were referring to some 
	calculations.

Mrs. KARADI:	(to Istvan) Pista dear, you have such a practical
	mind...

ISTVAN:	It's a little late to think of that, mother. There's
	nothing we can do now, except demand to see the
	proofs. And if there is something he didn't say...
	or didn't say in quite that way, it must come out.

Mrs. KARADI:	Yea, that's what you must do. Call the paper
	immediately.

KARADI:	But they have Just gone...

ISTVAN:	It's still a question whether they'll agree.

KARADI:	For heaven's sake, why shouldn't they? It is a
	perfectly reasonably request. (He enters Horn's
	waiting room, but probably cannot find the telephone
	number because he calls for his daughter) Margit, will
	you come and kelp me? (Margit follows him)

ISTVAN:	It s all your fault, mother. Yon should have been
	firmer then. They don't let a man travel gratis...
	by the most modern means of transport... in the end
	they present the bill.

Mrs. KARADI:	Yes, you said so quite true.

MARGIT:	(on the telephone) Has Comrade Voros returned yet?
	(She passes the receiver to her father)

[page 27]

KARADI:	(on the telephone) Yes? Already back? By car.	
	Of course. You are writing it? Well, that's just
	what, I was going to ask. The proofs, when you have
	them... You know how it is... an old professor
	(he laughs) Yes, now it's my turn to answer at the
	blackboard and I shouldn't like my former pupils
	to... Thank you very much, Comrade Zsizsik. Good
	bye. See you again. Don't mention it.

Mrs. KARADI: Well?

KABADI:	They'11 send the proofs, of course. (he strokes his
	wife's hand) Now don't fret mother. I may be a
	little senile, but I'm not quite such a moron as you
	seem to think.

[page 28]

Act II.

(The Karadi's room. The dark room opening not from the yard but.
from the porch, that has once been the bedroom of a large 
apartmeat, gets its light from the barred window in the back of the
seens on the right. Next to the window is the door opening onto
the porch. In the left-hand wall a glass door opening into the
part of the apartment inhabited by Professor Horn; fitted into the
door frame are book-shelves stuffed with book, on the upper shelf
are boxes, above them more books. To the right is the bed surrounded
by a lace curtain hanging from a stand. In the center of the room
an old-fashioned large table with four chairs making it rather 
difficult to move about in the room. In the recess between bed and
wall a toilet-table, in the left-hand corner in the back a chest of
drawers with a mirror, in left foreground a wardrobe. On the table
a large rubber plant for which it must be difficult to find a place
during meals. It is the afternoon of the same day; Karadi is
arranging the books he has brought from Moscow, his wife is darning
a sock.)

Mrs. KARADI:	Didn't ask you to put on another pair when you noticed
	a hole in one of them?

KARADI:	I did, but on the fourth day I had to begin all over
	again. You only gave me four pairs.

Mrs. KARADI:	That's all you have. These books, too, it's easier
	to buy them than to find a place for them.

KARADI:	I'll take the back numbers of Századunk up to the
	left. (silence)

Mrs. KARADI:	What did they say? When are they sending those proofs?

KARADI: Obviously before they make up the pages. (silence)

Mrs. KARADI:	Shouldn't you remind them of it?

KARADI:	And if they have no intention of putting it in the
	Sunday issue? Or what if they don't write it up at
	all because the editor in chief vetoes it? Shall I
	remind them? As if it were important to me that they
	write about me?

Mrs. KARADI:	You're right there. We'd be glad if they didn't.
	(Telephone rings in Horn's flat)

Mrs. KARADI:	I hope it isn't for us again. He's been over three
	times already this afternoon. And just now, when he
	is so cool toward us...

KARADI:	We can't help it if they've found out they can bother
	us on his telephone... We took his calls often enough.

[page 29]

Mrs. KARADI:	(listens) He is coming.

HORN:		(knecks and sticks his head in)

KARADI:	(a little apologetically) Telephone?

HORN:		No, this time it is only a message.

KARADI:	From the printers?

HORN:	No, from the grammar school. They are having their
	pre-opening meeting tomorrow and they'ld be very
	pleased if you would attend it.

KARADI:	Me? Not once in eight years, ever since they
	suspended me, has it ever occurred to them to invite
	me !

HORN:	Well, all I'm asked to do is to give you the message...
	It's up to you, Professor to guess the motives. He
	retires)

KARADI:	On the one hand people behave toward me as if I had
	committed some crime. On the other, everyone wants
	to see me. As if that crime had suddenly made me
	interesting to them.
	(Telephone rings again in Horn's room)

Mrs. KARADI:	Heavens, I hope it isn't us again?

KARADI:	Why should it be? After all he has patients. Some
	of them might ring him.

Mrs. KARADI:	His door is opening.

KARADI:	It isn't You're seeing things. (knocking) to hell
	with every wire that lets people stick their noses
	into your private life...(opens the door) Not for
	me, is it?

H0RN:	(almost gloatingly) Now they want you personally,
	Professor...

KARADI:	Why didn't you tell them to go to fell?... Who the
	devil is it this time?

HORN:	It's the secretariat of the intellectual club.

KARADI:	Secretariat?

HORN:	Don't let me disturb you. I'll stay out on theporch
	until you've finished.
		(Karadi goes to the telephone)

Mrs. KARADI:	(stands at the door. To Horn) I am so sorry you are
	constantly being bothered because of us, Professor.

[page 30]

HORN:	The curse of fame, Mrs. Karadi.

Mrs. KARADI:	It's fortunate there is nothing seriously wrong
	with your patients.

HORN:	That is my permanent fortune nowadays, Mrs. Karadi.
	(He is obviously moving away, for Mrs. Karadi draws
	back into the room and stands there, watching the
	door.)

KARADI:	(returns) Anti Hantai. Im completely forgot that
	he was the secretary. Secretariat, indeed! It sounds
	as if a whole roomful of secretaries was ringing you
	Up.

Mrs. KARADI:	And what did they want?

KARADI:	He wants to know whether I wouldn't like to drop in
	tomorrow There'11 be a few people there.

Mrs. KARADI:	And you promised?

KARADI:	Don't sound so horrified. That's all you can de;
	sound horrified. My socks, my books, the telephone!
	Hantai was very nice. Uncle Jozsi this, Uncle Jezsi
	that. He didn't make me feel at all that he was
	horrified by my trip. On the contrary, he is very
	pleased to get some objective information at last.

Mrs. KARADI:	But his father-in-law is a kulak...

KARADI:	You see! And he doesn't think, like this Horn -- and
	like my beloved son-in-law -- that I've left the family's
	honor in the Kremlin.

Mrs. KARADI:	The door...

KARADI:	Well I didn't hear the telephone this time... Or is
	my hearing also...

Mrs. KARADI:	You were hard of hearing already...

KARADI:	That is something, my dear, that only you tried to
	prove.
	(Horn knecks, then opens the door)

HORN:	Please, forgive me for intruding. I wished to let
	you know that I have put the telephone on the table
	on the porch. Would you have the kindness to attend
	to it?

KARADI:	But... your calls, Professor?

[page 31]

HORN:	There are considerably fewer of those nowadays. But
	should someone want me...

KARADI:	I can't tell you how sorry I am to be such a nuisance.
But in a day or two, let's hope, I'll cease being a
miracle.

HORN:	Yes. Human adaptability digests even the greatest
	miracles in a day or two. (he starts off)

KARADI:	(taking him by the elbow) Forgive me, I'm just
	unpacking my suitcases. And here is the Hermitage
	album I mentioned.

HORN:	Yes? (goes to the table somewhat hesitantly)

KARADI:	And I just discovered that I brought one from the
	Tretyakov Gallery as well.

HORN:	(leafs through the pages)

Mrs. KARADI:	Do sit down, Professor!

HORN:	Thank you (remains standing, then, after some 
	hesitation) You know, I am beginning Id reach the point
	where no matter how wonderful a work of art, if it
	is in...

KARADI:	Yes, I've heard of the trouble you had while I was gone.

HORN:	I am like the people. However good a film is, if
	lt's Russian they won't go to see it. They won't
	even read Tolstoy.

KARADI:	As far as I know they do go see the films. Unless
	they are bad. And they do read Tolstoy as well.

HORN:	In that case I am even less tolerant. I don't even want
	Rembrandt if he tempts tourists to go to Leningrad...

KARADI:	Well, yes: I understand your state of mind, Professor.
	But as a man without dependents...

HORN:	Yes, I am very lucky that my only son is allowed to
	live rootless, in exile...

KARADI:	If I remember right he is a scholarship student at
	the University of Innsbruck. Or is he in Pittsburg
	already? I know it is sad for you. Still you've
	got your pension and your pictures.

HORN:	Should I sell those too? You may be right, after all;
	that's all that is left to a decent person here; to
	sell out. In this case, however, it is not a matter
	of money.

[page 32]

KARADI:	But from a moral point of view this is really not a...
	stigma. You long ago reached pensionable age,
	Professor...

HORN:	That is so. And if someone wants my place then there
	is really nothing I can... Well, once you have made
	up your mind to it: nothing is easier than to justify
	their actions.

KARADI:	Look, if there is anyone who can understand your state
	of mind it's me. I was fifty-five years old when I
	was sacked. And I wasn't pensioned off, either. The
	little something I get was wangled for me by my
	pupils later. My daughter was at grammar school then,
	there wasn't a chance of her being admitted to the
	university... But even then I said to my wife: the
	advantage that we, historically trained people enjoy
	is that we understand what is happening to us. We
	can separate our affair which I considered then and
	still consider totally unjust, from the great historical
	process of which we are the casualties.

HORN:	I never heard you talk like this, before your trip to
	the Soviet Union.

Mrs. KARADI:	Well, he did say...

KARADI. Do you really believe, Professor, that a little
	episode like this which was, of ocurse, very 
	interesting in many respects and rather electrifying, could
	wreak such a decisive change in a man of sixty-three?
	I should have to regard myself a third-rate mind
	indeed, if I hadn't known at home what I saw out
	there.

HORN:	Nothing could be further from my mind than to pry
	into your affairs of conscience, Professor. All I
	can say is that this trip -- and I am not the only
	one to feel it -- was not merely a trip but to a
	certain extent a deed. And, as a Catholic,
	believe -- you Protestants think somewhat differently,
	I know, -- that it is in his deeds that a man's
	character is reflected.

[page 33]

KARADI:	Yes, it is with our deeds that we deserve salvation
	or, of course, damnation. Yet, though it was a
	Christian religion I lost somewhere in the way, I
	know something else about Christianity. That it
	leaves the weighing of motives to God and itself
	selects the most advantageous of the given 
	possibilities.

HORN:	In this case, for instance?

KARADI:	In this case, for instance, when an opportunity
	presented itself, an old (geography teacher couldn't
	resist the sinful temptation of the world forgetting
	that something in which his dulled, somewhat senile
	judgment discovers nothing evil, may yet appear to
	decent Christians

Mrs. KARADI: Jozsef!

HORN:	The Professor is irritable. Before his Soviet trip
	I never knew him to show irritation.

KARADI:	Sensitivity due to guilt.

HORN:	As I said before, I have no intention of playing
	the role of conscience in someone else's inner 
	struggles. Still -- as a man of discrimination --
	for I don't think I am wrong in believing that the
	essence of culture lies in the capacity to 
	differentiate, I should stop and consider what you,
	Professor, defined simply as "when the opportunity
	presented itself". You may say that I am
	meticulously accurate not merely in my inner life
	but also as a result of my professions ophthalmology;
	I, however, cannot help differentiating between the
	nature of such "opportunities". Whether I visit
	the country in question as a tourist, or as a guest
	of the powers that be Had you, Professor, shown a
	desire to go as a tourist, even I should have been
	in favor of, so to say, sending you up as a periscope
	from our underground depths...

KARADI:	You would have sold your Rippl-Ronai!

[page 34]

HORN:	Perhaps I wouldn't have done that, tout there were
	quite a few of your admirers here who, now that the
	IBUSZ has begun arranging trips to the Soviet Union,
	would have found a way...
	(Karadi bursts into laughter that turns into a
	nervous spasm)

MACSKASI:	(arrived in a state of great excitement but, hearing
	the laughter, stops) What's so funny? You really
	have every cause for laughter. Oh, Professor Horn
	is here? (he looks at them suspiciously)

KARADI:	We were arguing about religion. The Professor, who
	is a Catholic and who in addition, was given a
	very high-class education under the monarchy,
	explained to me the essential difference, from the
	point of view of salvation, between a tourist and
	an exchange-teacher.

HORN:	You can scoff, Professsor, as much as you want to,
	but I am indeed proud of the fact that my father
	was president of the tribunal under the old Emperor,
	and although I don't regard it as a virtue, neither am
	I ashamed to admit that I learned to differentiate
	in such matters under the Hapsburgs.

MACSKASI:	(carried away by his latent antipathy) And you've
	kept on practising it not only in Catholic but also
	in ideological seminaries. I've heard from Karosi
	Nagy that it was always you, Professor, who gave the
	best answers at the seminar.

HORN:	Could I have allowed them to say that I, chief
	ophthalmologist, once University Professor, cannot
	recite the contents of a Lepeshinskaya book?

MACSKASI:	You could have refused to attend the seminar.

HORN:	Forgive me but we are again talking about two 
	different things. I have never asked anyone to deprive
	themselves and their children of their daily bread.
	Or to Jeopardise the existing order of an institution,
	in this case, my former department, just for the hell
	of it. The trouble begins when someone volunteers!

[page 35]

MACSKASI:	He didn't volunteer either. He was invited by the
	district Party secretary; just as you were,
	Professor. And had he refused he too would have
	been fired from his small job.

KARADI:	But my dear friend, it wasn't a bit like that!
	They offered it to me most politely!

Mrs. KARADI:	Which does not mean that they wouldn't have fired
	you. . .

MACSKASI:	Very politely. That was a fine distinotion.

HORN:	I am afraid I am walking over a veritable mine-field:
	not only the Professor's sensitivity but also that
	of his admirers... The situation may not be suitable
	for purely theoretical arguments. (To Mrs. Karadi)
	Forgive me, it was not my intention to intrude. Nor
	did I want to hurt anyone's feelings. 

Mrs. KARADI:	(seeing him out) But you didn't! It's still that
	trip, poor darling...
	(Horn and Mrs. Karadi out)

EARADI:	You shouldn't have laid into him like that I know
	from experience that it is not funny at all when
	such an old fish is forked out of the pool it's used
	to. No wonder he is irritable.

MACSKASI:	Well let him rage and swear -- behind closed doors,
	of course -- but not set up a code of honor.

KARADI:	To speak the truth I must admit that after my
	suspension -- only for a short while, of source --
	I too welcomed every sign indicating that the
	injustice I had suffered sprang from the very nature
	of the thing. I had to calm down a bit before I
	could differentiate between the two.

MACSKASI:	I had to vent my fury on someone.

KARADI:	Why? Has something happend to you?

MACSKASI: Yes. I am furious.

KARADI:	Furious? With whom?

MACSKASI:	With you... My dear Joska, I'm sure you know how
	much I admire you. My wife often said, you don't
	just love Karadi, you idolize him! Let's be frank:

[page 36]

you were my God. And therefore you mustn't take it
amiss if I tell you openly: Joska, you are acting 
like a fool.

KARADI:	I know. The Soviet trip.

MACSKASI:	Not only the Soviet trip. What sort of interview
	did you give the Morning Post?

KARADI:	I didn't really give them any interview...

MACSKASI:	They weren't here at all?

KARADI:	Yes, immediately after you left. I thought they were
	bringing the question... As you advised.

MACSKASI:	But you had a little talk with them.

KARADI:	Look they may be right that an informal conversation
	-- as they called it -- is much more sincere and
	relaxed. It isn't starched for public consumption.
	Of course I remembered your warning and was careful
	to talk only about the most indifferent subjects.

MACSKASI:	They took you in old chap.

KARADI:	What do you meant?

MACSKASI:	It's an expression I learned from my son.

KARADI:	Do you know something I don't?

MACSKASI:	You know Uncle Safranek, don't you?

KARADI:	The printer? Of course. We talked about him today.

MACSKASI:	You also know that he lives opposite, in the Szal
	house. He was sweeping the pavement in front of the
	house when I came home from the offive. "Well, what
	do you think of your friend Karadi, -- he called out
	to me before I even got there -- the things he's
	seen in Moscow!..." My holy aunt, I thought to myself,
	that interview! For we always rib each other, the
	old man and I, he needles me with the big hunts I
	used to go on, and I badger him with the XX. Congress,

KARADI:	Has he seen the interview?

MACSKASI:	He was the foreman in the first shift... Did you say
	that they put you, a simple Hungarian schoolteacher,
	in the box from which, in the past, the haughty Czars
	used to watch the nude dancers of the Petersburg
	Opera?

[page 37]

KARADI:	Of course I didn't say that. I said they put the three
	of us in a large first tier box. Perhaps I added that
	it might have been the Czar's box.

MACSKASI:	And that you envy the Soviet geography teachers who
	take their pupils to the Crimea and to the Far Bast
	in these wonderful TU and IL 18 planes?

KARADI:	That's silly. It was just a Jules Verne dream! I
	said it might happen in the future. Perhaps only
	Uncle Safranek interpreted it like this.

MACSKASI:	And that this trip has been a tremendous lesson to
	you professionally. And that you intend to
	reorganize the municipal museum after what you saw

KARADI:	Did they put this in the article?

MACSKASI:	And it's not only Uncle Safranek's interpretation. 
	Someone has already told your boss about it.

KAHXDI:	The Director?

MACSKASI:	Yes. When I was on my way here he ran out of the
	Szarvas espresso to talk to me. You know he always
	drops in there about now for a coffee. He wanted
	to know why you went to the Soviet Union, and what
	you could have seen there in so short a time that you
	wanted to apply in the Museum. He is obviously afraid
	that you want to wangle his job with this Soviet trip.

KARADI:	But that's crazy!

MACSKASI:	Still, that would be the only sensible thing to do.
	For let us admit, how does he compare with you in
	local history, knowledge, character? I reassured him.
	of course. Joska Karadi do a thing like that?
	Karadi, whom a Kövi was able to get suspended?

KARADI:	But this is awful! I am not going to wait for those
	proofs any longer. If the article really contains
	what you say I won't allow publication.

MACSKASI:	Won't allow! You are a saint, after all. Joska!
	(While Karadi looks up the number in the directory)
	But I don't believe you'll be given an opportunity.
	The Morning Post goes to press in the evening so that
	out-of-town subscribers can get it in the morning.

[page 38]

KARADI:	(off) Morning Post? Karadi speaking, I want to
	speak to the editor. Not there? In that case please
	give me assistant editor Lakatos. Gone? Since noon?

MACSKASI:	They went into hiding.

KARADI:	(with determination) But Comrade Zsizsik is there.
	I want to speak to him at once. (To. Macskasi) They're
	looking for him in the printing shop...

MACSKASI:	I've got a premonition, Joska!

KARADI:	(in telephone) Gyorgy Zsizsik? I've been waiting for
	those proofs all day. The whole town knows what's
	in my statement only I wasn't given an opportunity...
	But you definitely promised me. Why I didn't come
	in? (Lengthy silence)

KARADI:	Well, I won't accept this. I'm sorry but you have
	simply... tricked me. (Long explanations) I'11 see.
	My information doesn't tally with what you say...

MACSKASI:	They have printed it.

KARADI:	He says Comrade Forgacs, the District Party Secretary
	insisted on seeing my statement before publication.
	That's why they were late...

MACSKASI:	And they couldn't run off another copy...

KARADI:	They didn't want to until they had his approval.

MACSKASI:	They didn't want to bother you twice... And Forgacs?

KARADI:	He was enthusiastic about the article. He said:
	this should please old Karadi. At last our press
	speaks of him with the esteem he deserves.

MACSKASI:	(sadly) So you see.

KARADI:	He said I can rest assured that there'11 be nothing
	in it that will offend me. Nothing politically
	pointed. Only what I felt like telling them while
	my memories of the journey were still fresh.

ISTVAN:	(calling off-stage) Is Dad in his room?

Mrs. KARADI:	What's happened now?

ISTVAN:	(Enters, with forced biting calm) Your statement
	has appeared Dad.

Mrs. KARADI:	Heaven preserve us!

[page 39]

KARADI:	Yes?... Have you seen it?

ISTVAN:	Yon can read it yourself. (He pulls it from his
	pocket) Here it is... "I envy the Soviet geography
	teachers".

Mrs. KARADI:	(Horrified) Is that the title?

ISTVAN:	In quotation marks.

KARADI:	(takes it from him) Well, I do envy them. Nobody
	persecutes them if they take a trip to Hungary,
	(he reads) "A Küngös teacher in the Soviet Union...
	The passengers off the midnight express hurrying
	along the stone pavement toward the town center,
	carrying their parcels, might never even have
	noticed the tall, lean man walking along beside them
	had not one of his former students, greeting him
	loudly and taking his suitcase from his hand, called
	attention to a name held in high esteem by the
	entire town, a name whose clean ring even the 
	misunderstandings of the last few years eould not mute."
	Well, the beginning isn't so bad.

Mrs. KARADI:	Every word is true. Joska had admirers even in the
	Council. (Her eyes fill with tears.)

TSTVAN:	You just wait, mother!

KARADI:	"It was Jossef Karadi, the town's Professor. Karadi,
	who had Just returned from the Soviet Union. He was
	the first of all the teachers in Küngös to go on this
	great trip". - That's not true. There's a young
	instructor at the technical school who studied at the
	Lomonosov University ! (Reads on) "We considered it
	our pleasant duty to visit the brave traveller who,
	regardless of age and illness, had gladly obeyed the
	flattering invitation, at his Damjanich street home.
	As we pulled the bell..."

Mrs. KARADI:	He's even got that. I've been saying over and over
	again that we must have a proper electric bell put in.

ISTVAN:	He wanted to stress the old patrician atmosphere of
	the house.

KARADI:	"... a grey-haired man in a dressing-gown came to
	meet us."

[page 40]

Mrs. KARADI:	It wasn't him at all! I went, and my teeth were
	chattering.

MACSKASI:	That's style, Teresa dear!

ISTVAN:	There'll be more of it. "Karadi still looked tired
	after the journey... but his eyes sparkl, his speech
	betrays that he is only half at home yet, his brain
	is still in a trance cast upon him by the shattering
	experiences."

KARADI:	These, of course, are journalistic frills, but
	basically it is true, - intelligent readers will get
	at the facts. (He reads on) "He answers our questions
	willingly, with the loquaciousness of the true
	teacher giving interesting and original information
	from which, for the time being, we can give our
	readers only excerpts."

MACSKASI:	So there'11 be more of it!

KARADI:	(reading) "First we question him about the journey
	itself. Professor Karadi and his colleagues travelled
	more than ten thousand kilometers... (interpolates)
	six thousand... by rail, automobile and the 
	wonderful TU 104, all of this giving them a taste of the 
	achievements of the most advanced Soviet technology.
	He and one of his colleagues even calculated how the
	ever more breath-taking speed records of the Soviet
	aircraft make the Earth shrink. If the radius of the
	Earth is sixty thousand kilometers..." The idiot !
	Six thousand!

ISTVAN:	One zero got stuck to hiss cuff!

KARADI:	"... and if we suppose, as the Professor said in his
	picturesque way, that the Earth was, hitherto, equal
	to a Kungos melon, a so-called Koty, then it is today no
	larger than a good-sized pea and by the end of the
	seven-year plan will have shrunk to the size of a
	poppy-seed. However, Professor Karadi did not stop
	at figures. He sees also the moral and political 
	aspects of this development. The Soviet engineers,
	he says, deserve admiration not only for the

[page 41]

	construction of the miraculous Sputniks; they are,
	in fact, the best allies of the peace-fighters of
	the world. By helping the nations to grow 
	psychologically closer to each other they make it impossible
	for the Western exploiters to drive them into war.

MACSKASI:	Did you really say this?

KARADI:	The hell I did! ... unless indirectly. (Reads under
	his breath and even faster) "Professor Karadi spoke
	with great admiration of the discipline shown by
	the Soviet people, that manifested itself in many
	small ways, While in Budapest people literally attack
	the buses, in the Soviet Union even two or three
	passengers will automatically queue up at any small
	station. At the theater there is no pushing and
	shoving at the cloakroom, but while the eyes, used
	to important historical events, are still filled with
	the tears pressed from the deep Soviet soul by the
	masterworks of the Russian classics, people line up
	with military discipline..." I'm not going to read
	this trash!

ISTVAN:	Why? It is deeply inspiring.(He picks it up and
	reads it aloud, almost proclaiming)... and wait for
	their turn. We asked Professor Karadi, which moment
	of his journey affected him most deeply. The 
	grey-haired traveller stood for a moment deep in thought,
	behind his lively features we could almost follow
	the onslaught of competing memories, then finally
	he said: The most impressive moment, perhaps, was when
	I looked down from our box in the Leningrad Opera
	House upon the brightly lit, beautiful theater. From
	where, a few decades age, the haughty Czars watched
	the movements of the semi-nude dancers and where,
	apart from them, only their boot-licking adjutants
	were allowed the enter, now simple Hungarian teachers
	looked down upon the public in which it was impossible
	to dintinguish who was a worker, who a doctor, who
	a leader, because equally well-dressed people with
	intelligent faces watched the beautiful performance
	with bated breath."

[page 42]

KARADI:	The people of Kunges know my voice. They won't
	believe that two weeks in the Soviet Union have so
	completely changed its tone.

ISTVAN:	(reads on, furiously) "As a historian it was, of
	course, a tremendous experience that I could visit
	the Smolnij when Lenin and his general staff
	launched the glorious October Revolution. In my
	mind I saw the sailors and students attack the
	Winter Palace and chase out the shaking Kerenskij
	and his cadets, thus opening a new chapter in the
	history of the world."

KARADI:	I told you to stop it! (he takes off his dressing
	gown, opens the wardrobe door and begins to dress
	behind it, For a while one hears only rummaging,
	then, still behind the door) You are of course all
	wrong if you believe that the way you look at it
	settles this questions. That a handful of men had
	the initiative to start it! and that a giant, but
	on the whole uneducated nation agreed to lend itself
	to the experiment! (he emerges from behind the door)
	And the experiment came off; - the way such
	experiment a will came off on our Earth, but it did
	come off!

Mrs. KARADI:	(to Istvan, frightened) What is father talking about?

ISTVAN:	Didn't you get it. What the radio's always blaring
	about in the market square. The glorious October
	Revolution!
KARADI:	Do you think it was easy to get rid of all the
	external and internal enemies, to collect such
	national wealth with the help of that poor, slovenly
	people, to recover from the insanity of the old leaders?

ISTVAN:	But the cruelty? The suffering! Just think of what
	it brought us here, at Küngös!

KARADI:	Is it my fault? It's history! History is not like 
	lard from which the butcher moulds? a pig for his
	shopwindow. It is rook! It's you, your hard head!
	And that can only he blown up.

[page 43]

Mrs. KARADI:	It's awful, the things he says!

ISTVAN:	The effect of the Soviet trip.

KARADI:	I wouldn't have done it, God is my witness, I wouldn't.
	I wouldn't have lifted a finger... or at the most,
	as a gentle girondist.

MACSKASI:	(thinking over this outburst) Your never used to
	talk like this, Joska...

KARADI:	No, of course not. Because you never attacked me.
	And I knew you had enough to worry about. You, because
	they deprived you of your hunting license: the joy
	of your life. Istvan, because he had to take that job
	with the engineering department. Should I have
	explained that you deserved it? Even if you didn't
	deserve it personally? Besides, it would have been
	in vain. The fact that I was sacked made me -- as
	far as you were concerned --- one of you. And when I
	said something sensible, something to bring you to
	your senses, because I did say them, even to Istvan, 
	you regarded it as some sort of scholarly objectivity.
	Because you knew better. You were so cock-sure it
	wouldn't last. (He takes his hat and stick.)

Mrs. KARADI:	Where are you going?

KARADI:	Where do you think? I'm going to give those
	scoundrels hell! (He bangs the door shut.)

ISTVAN:	I thought he was going on a propaganda tour. He's
	been well enough prepared for it.

Mrs. KARADI:	You should go after him, Pista dear. He might really
	say something...

ISTVAN:	You don't have to worry... Now you have seen for
	yourself, Uncle Bandi, how they work. Where they
	sense a little weakness, they start drilling...
	And one step brings another. They tricked him into
	making a statement and now, even if he feels ashamed
	of it, he must defend what he said. He showered more
	abuse on us than a seminar instructor in the Rakosi
	era...

MACSKASI:	There may have been something in what he said...

[page 44]

Mrs. KARADI:	Don't forget his age, son. He isn't the man he once
	was. Even his bearing, though he refuses to admit
	it...

ISTVAN:	That's all very well. I've been telling Margit all
	along: he's getting a bit senile, your father, the
	trouble is only that we'll have to pay for it!

MACSKASI:	That's not so certain, son. We must admit that the
	old man's instincts have always been good. Remember
	what he said in fifty-six.

ISTVAN:	Perhaps it was nonsensical. I'm not sorry it
	happened.

MACSKASI:	All right, but what do you think will happen if all
	of us, decent Hungarians, continue to think that way?
	Your father-in-law may be right there: we'll be
	barred from everywhere because of our eternal
	opposition.

Mrs. KARADI:	(to Istvan) I think you should go after him. All
	that excitement might make him ill...

MACSKASI:	Yes, let's go and see what he is up to. (On the
	porch) Perhaps it'll be the way it was under the
	monarchy, when in a pure Hungarian town like Küngös
	Bauer, the brick factory owner owned the world!
	(The closing of the street door is heard, Mrs. Karadi
	puts away her husband's dressing gown, pulls out a
	chair, sits down, wrings her hand, then it seems as
	if she were praying, yawns deeply like someone whose
	anxiety is dulled by age ant tiredness. Someone pulls
	the bell.)

Mrs. KARADI:	Heavens! Who can that be? (She goes out, for a minute
	the stage is empty, then Mrs. Karadi's voice as she
	leads in the guest, puts on the light). I'm sorry but
	I can only take you in here... As I said, my husband
	is not at home. Had you come ten minutes earlier...

PORGACS:	That's all rights All I wanted was to congratulate
	him... You know who I am, don't you?

Mrs. KARADI:	Of course Comrade Forgacs, the District Party
	Secretary

[page 45]

FORGACS:	Yes... But there's no need to be alarmed. I wanted
	to shake him by the hand...

Mrs. KARADI:	His hand?

FORGACS:	Yes, because of that article... in the Morning Post...

Mrs. KARADI:	You've seen it?

FORGACS:	Yes indeed in proof... And I can tell you that I
	was delighted...

Mrs. KARADI:	It has been published since...

FORGACS:	Well, and what do you think of it?

Mrs. KARADI:	Very nice, but... I don't know whether I should say
	it...

FORGACS:	Of course, my dear Mrs. Karadi. As .if you were talking
	to an old friend...

Mrs. KARADI:	The journalists, you know...

FORGACS:	They touched it up a bit?

Mrs. KARADI:	And that put him in a state... What he wanted was...
	well, that it should be the way he said it...

FORGACS:	Of course. I get annoyed, too, at times, at the way
	they render my words if I don't give it to them in
	writing. For instance what I said at the opening of
	the exhibition on Constitution Day. But that's style.
	We must leave it to them. Newspaper readers get used
	to it, or they just ignore it. But as far as your
	husband's statement is concerned, there are nice big
	pieces of meat in that journalistic sauce that are
	obviously not the brain-children of some scribbler but
	come straight from Jozsef Karadi's travelling bag.
	For instance what he said about the study-exoursions
	of the Soviet students.

Mrs. KARADI:	He's so very painstaking, you know. He re-writes things
	five times before handing them over. And he wanted
	a thing like that, that everyone will read...

FORGACS:	It's excellent as it is... of course some people, will
	be annoyed...

Mrs. KARADI:	Exactly... One has nothing left but one's And all
	that excitement is bad for him. I've just sent them
	after him. Because he left in such a rage.

[page 46]

FORGACS:	That's only the excitement of the first few days.
	It will pass

Mrs. KARADI:	What he needs is a lot of rest.

FORGACS:	He won't bee disturbed. If those journalists try
	to badger him, just send them to me.

Mrs. KARADI:	Thank you very much indeed, Comrade Forgacs. Last
	year the doctor diagnosed a coronary soleresis.

FORGACS:	That's one reason why it is so good that those 
	misunderstandings around him should now have been
	dispelled. Ha needs rest and we need his knowledge
	and work.

Mrs. KARADI:	Work... the work me was trained for... was always
	a joy to him.

FORGACS:	That's just what I means the work he was trained
	for. (Looking around.) How are his working 
	conditions?

Mrs. KARADI:	He has a tiny room at the Museum. He shares it with
	all these moth-eaten stuffed birds.

FORGACS:	And at home?

Mrs. KARADI:	You can for yourself... We sleep there, behind
	the curtain. And one can't get from the sideboard
	to the chest of drawers without running into a piece
	of furniture.

FORGACS:	You have this one room?

Mrs. KARADI:	There were two more in the front but they were
	requisitioned. I know, that's what we have a right
	to, one room for the two of us...

FORGACS:	You Just leave it to us: what you have a right to
	and what you haven't... But tell me, how did this
	happen?

Mrs. KARADI:	It was in fifty-two, when Horn come here as head
	physician... And my daughter and her husband live
	down there, in the yard, in that one room and kitchen
	house... we built it for a wash-room. I understand
	it, of course: the housing shortage... Others don't
	even have that much. The Virags, for instance who
	used to be public notary...

[page 47]

FORGACS:	We'll have to do something about this? Which Horn
	is it, the ophthalmic surgeon?

Mrs. KARADI:	Yes. A very nice man. We are quite used to each
	other...

FORGACS:	But you wouldn't mind, would you, if those two
	front rooms were to be yours again and your
	daughter's?...

Mrs. KARADI:	God forbid that we should get him put out of here by
	intriguing against him. And just at this time !

FORGACS:	It's not an intrigue. We'll give him a flatlet in the
	new housing area. He'11 fee nearer the church there.

Mrs. KARADI:	No,. please, no. I shouldn't like it to happen just
	now. People would say... Besides we are used to
	things as they are. A little back room... that's
	just right for two old people.

FORGACS:	And your daughter? Your grandchild?

Mrs. KARADI:	That's not their principal worry, either. My 
	son-in-law built a second little room from the tool-shed.
	He is with the engineering department...

FORGACS:	An engineer?

Mrs. KARADI:	No, he is not an engineer. He graduated from technical
	college. But now... he is a toiler, poor boy. That's
	what he calls himself.

FORGACS:	Fifty-six?

Mrs. KARADI:	He didn't do anything. You know yourself that
	nothing happened here, at Kungos.

FORGACS:	Let's not exaggerate...

Mrs. KARADI:	He was so popular with the workers that they elected
	into that what's-it-called. He was at the foundry.

FORGACS:	Yes, I think I recall. He was interned, wasn't he?

Mrs. KARADI:	For one month. Then we got him out. A student of my
	son's who is now Party Secretary in Transdanubia.

FORGACS:	Of course, I heard about this.

Mrs. KARADI:	It didn't cost us much to get him out. He hadn't done
	anything.

FORGACS:	And hasn't he tried; since, to get a white-collar job?
	Why, even in the Party program you'll find we've arranged
	to liquidate the consequences of such little mistakes...

[page 48]

Mrs. KABADI:	My daughter tried, but they said it was too early
	yet.

FORGACS:	Send him up to see me, Mrs. Karadi, will you?

Mrs. KARADI:	My son-in-law?... He is a little stubborn, you know.
	Or rather, modest. He says t hay'11 find him when
	his work is needed.

FORGACS:	It's right that he should have some pride. "I made a
	mistake, I paid for it." We respect such people. You
	know what, send up your daughter. Does she work? 

Mrs. KARADI:	As a nursery teacher, poor girl. We weren't in a
	position to give her a better education.

FORGACS:	She and I will discuss matters. (He rises, takes
	Mrs. Kradi's hand in his own) Don't you worry, dear
	Mrs. Kradi. Everything will be settled. We know
	what your husband deserves and now, that he has given 
	us the opportunity... And if there should be anything...
	you come to me as if you were coming to your own son.
	(Prepares to leave.)

Mrs. KARADI:	Wait a second, let me put on the light. (Sees him
	out. As seen as he leaves, front door bangs, Mrs.
	Karadi watches in alarm. What next? Margit enters
	panting.)

MARGIT:	I saw a car leave. Was it from here?

Mrs. KARADI:	(hesitantly) Car?

MARGIT:	I saw it from the corner. Good Lord I thought, is it
	standing at our door? I started to run and that big
	Zis just left...

Mrs. KARADI:	Comrade Forgacs was here.

MARGIT:	Forgacs: The Party Secretary? What did he want?
	Daddy again?

Mrs. KARADI:	He wanted to congratulate him. To shake his hand.

MARGIT:	Forgacs? We are in a nice mess... And Daddy? 

Mrs. KARADI: He wasn't at home.

MARGIT:	What luck. We must tell him to write nothing, promise
	nothing. Did he say where he was going?

Mrs. KARADI:	To the Morning Post. Because of that statement.
	(Anxiously) You know it was published, don't you?


[page 49]

MARGIT	Was it?... How should I know? I was busy doing the
	weekly report. The headmistress pushed it off on me
	again. Well and? ... It's awful...

Mrs. KARADI:	Listen. it isn't so awful. They wrote about Daddy
	with great esteem. It begins by that he was
	carrying that heavy suitcase home from the station ....
	when he was greeted by Marci... Our deeply honored..
	and such like.

MARGIT:	Don't get emotional about it, mother. It's the bird
	call. They want to get him in even deeper.

Mrs. KARADI:	There 'd no need to think that everybody is evil.

MAGIT:	And Daddy? Was he flattered? Has he gone to make
	another statement?

Mrs. KARADI: God forbid! On the con??, he was furious.

MARGIT: Did they write something different from what he said

Mrs. KARDI:	Not exactly, but they touched it up, journalist
	fashion... And what made him angriest was that they
	didn't bring round the proofs for his approval.

MARGIT:	Not a chance !

Mrs, KARADI:	Perhaps it wasn't their fault ... Forgaos said he
	wanted it to be in Sunday's issue, it was ac good..

MARGIT:	Good for him! That's why he came to congratulate
	Daddy.. And we, we'll be spat at by everyone...
	But where is the article?

Mrs. KAHADI:	Daddy put it in his pocket...

MARGIT:	The things that happen to us! And he... how was he?

Mrs. KARADI:	Forgacs? Very nice. I'd never have believed it.
	All one hears from you is: the Party Secretary this,
	Party Secretary that. He even embraced me?

MARIT:	You?

Mrs. KARADI:	He just said it. To show him, mother?
	son.

MARGIT:	But why should you go to him,9 mother?

Mrs. KARADI:	He just said it. To show his good will. He was
	shocked to think of Jezsef Karadi living in a black
	hole like this. Not proper working conditions, he
	says.

[page50]

MAHGIT:	That's just great when they start complaining about
	Daddy's working condition! Did you remind him,
	mother, who shoved him out there?

Mrs. KARADI:	He said it was before he became Party Secretary.
	He know it what the Party ewes Jozsef Karadi

MAGIT:	I see. That's why they sent him to the Soviet Union.

Mrs. LARADI:	Listen, I could see that he was sincerely ashamed.
	He'd have been capable of moving Horn out right there
	and then.

MARRIT:	God forbid!

Mrs. KARADI:	I had to beg him to leave Horn alone.

MARGIT:	He's hardly back from Moscow and already he gets
	his co-tenant kicked out.

Mrs. KARADI:	That's what I thought too. But perhaps it wouldn't
	have been so bad for Horn, poor soul... He could
	have had a flatlet on the new housing project near
	the church...

MARGIT:	So he'd everything out and dried! Not on your life.
	Let's stick to our honest poverty.

Mrs. KARADI:	That's what I said. We don't want anything.

MARGIT:	Well, yon didn't have to say that, mother!

Mrs. KARADI:	I wish that was our biggest headache!

MARGIT:	Did you say that too?

Mrs. KARADI:	It slipped out, somehow.

MARGIT:	He didn't react to that, of course...

Mrs. KARADI:	He did. He made me tell him everything. Even the
	internment.

MARGIT:	The internment?... You think he didn't know? they
	never forget anything.

Mrs. KARADI:	No, he was surprised that Istvan hasn't found another
	job yet. He says the Party gave because of fifty-six.
	that nobody should be persecuted because of fifty-six.

MARGIT:	The Party! Up these! But the personnel managers!
	Well, Pityu shouldn't be so proud.

Mrs. KARADI:	Margin, you won't believe me if I tell you what he
	said. He said they like people with some backbone.

MARGIT:	That's right, something to break.

[page 51]

Mrs. KARADI:	And that he should like to get better acquainted
	with Pityu Perhaps he could come in to the Council,
	one day...

MARGIT:	I hope you didn't promise, mother?

Mrs. KARADI:	Of course not. I said that wouldn't be any good...

MARGIT:	I don't suppose you told him Pityu wouldn't stoop
	to talk to him?

Mrs. KARADI:	Of course not. What do you take me for? Besides,
	he said himself that perhaps it would be better to
	talk to his wife first.

MARGIT:	To me?

Mrs. KARADI:	He said he is there Sundays too, at the Municipal
	Council.

MARGIT:	Tomorrow?

Mrs. KAHADI:	You could go and see him in the morning.
	(Karadi enters and finds the two women deep in conversation.
	He comes in slowly, a little shamefacedly, walks up and town
	the room, tripping over chairs, The two women watch him.)

Mrs. KARADI:	Didn't you meet Bandi?

KARADI:	Bandi?

Mrs. KARADI:	He and Pityu followed you.

KARADI:	Something new?

Mrs. KAHADI:	No, of course not. But I was worried, you were so
	excited.

KARADI:	Did they go to the Morning Post? Then they are still
	there ...

MARGIT:	Or opposite, at the Little Mug.

KARADI:	The front entrance was looked. Zsizsik and I came
	out by the back-door.

Mrs. KARADI:	And? Did you have any success with him?

KARADI:	What on earth do you expect? You think they'll scrap
	the Sunday paper for my sake?

Mrs. KARADI:	Calm youself, you don't have to blow up at everything
	I say. Didn't I say there was no point your-going
	there?

MARGIT:	It's a little late in the day to complain. We'd only
	make ourselves ridiculous.

[page 52]

KARADI: You should have heard him call me "Master". As if
	he were honoring a cesspool cleaner by calling him
	fine names.

Mrs. KARADI:	What did he have to say in his defense, that scoundrel?

KARADI:	Defense? He asked me to imagine his state of mind.
	What a madhouse these editorial offices are when the
	paper goes to press. Forgacs gave orders that the
	article must not be O.K-d until he had seen it: and
	Forgacs had to be present at a collective farm meeting.
	They called him three times and he hadn't read it yet.
	And the editor wouldn't hear of letting me have. the
	proofs before Forgacs's O.K. He almost went out of
	his mind. "I've given my word. You know how exacting
	such a professor is". And if it was so important to
	me why didn't I come in, I could have read the proofs
	on the spot?

Mrs. KAHADI:	He's right there: That's what I told you too:

MARGIT:	And that he tricked Daddy? That he didn't bring those
	questions?

KARADI:	He swore that they were there, in his pocket. He
	started hunting for them on the desk among all those
	papers. He didn't find them, of course. And that
	they changed their minds only because I was in such

Mrs. KARADI:	That's true, too. Someone should have put a cork in
	your mouth.

KARADI:	And that this informal tone was much more impressive.
	And that I should show him a single paragraph in the
	article containing something we had not discussed.
	Ant he pointed with his dirty nail at paragraph after
	paragraph. True, there was a little printing error
	in the radius of the Earth, someone had already called
	his attention to it...

Mrs. KARADI:	And what did you say! Didn't you lose your patience?

KARADI:	Oh, I stammered something About the style. That I
	never use such adjectives. As bad luck would have it
	I pointed to the Smelnij. But where are the adjectives?	

[page 53]

	he asked innocently. He'd quoted me as saying
	glorious October Revolution, well they were used to
	calling it that. But if I don't consider it glorious...

MARGIT:	Why should you?

KARADI:	But damn it all, I do! But I don't like saying it...
	By then he'd got the upper hand. So he says to me.
	"Shew me anything in the article you don't agree
	with". He would then report it to the chief editor.

Mrs. KARADI:	I hope you didn't part on bad terms?

KARADI:	He walked with me to the corner and reassured me that
	the article had made a very good impression. The
	printing ink wasn't even dry on it yet.

Mrs. KAHADI:	But he was right. Forgacs came here to congratulate
	you.

KAlADI:	Forgacs? Here? And you say it just like that?
	(Margit winks at her mother)

MARGIT:	He stopped his car just for a moment.

KARABID:	And what did he say?

Mrs. KAKADI:	He wanted to congratulate you. And he was surprised
	that we were living in such a dark hole.

KARADI:	Is that so?

MARGIT:	It's of no importance. The essential thing is that
	you shouldn't excite yourself, Daddy.

KARADI:	(Surprised) You say that?

MARGIT:	It's silly to make a mountain out of a newspaper page.

Mrs. KAHADI:	It will go down the drain.

KARADI:	And Horn? Macskasi?

Mrs. KAIADI:	Macskasi has also changed his mind... He explained
	things to Pityu.

KARADI:	Yes?

Mrs. KARADI:	Forgacs said everything would work out for the best.

MARGIT:	But it doesn't matter what he said. The important
	thing is that Daddy should have a good night's sleep.
	(To her mother) Aren't you coming down? You haven't
	seen baby today. My sister-in-law is with her. (The
	two women depart).

[page 54]

Mrs. KARADI:	There's some meat left over from dinner in the larder.

KARADI :	I don't feel like eating.
	(The two women leave by the corridor, Karadi walks up and
	down, then he takes the food from the cupboard and puts it
	on the table. At this moment the Admirer knocks.)

ADMIRER:	Please, don't be alarmed... I used to be a pupil of
	yours, Professor.

KARADI:	I am net alarmed... just wondering how you got in...

ADMIRER:	The front door was open.

KARADI:	Did I leave it open?... I must have been pretty

ADMIRER:	And I... To tell the truth, I couldn't resist the
	wish to drop in for a moment...

KARADI:	Is that so?... And what was the cause of this
	irresistible wish?

ADMIRER:	My admiration. I honor you, Professor, the way I
	honor my father.

KARADI:	Hmm... that's nice of you.

ADMIRER:	This admiration of long standing, several decades, in
	fact, has lent, me the courage to come and ask you,
	Professor... (in a low voice) Stop, before it is too
	later!

KARADI:	So that's it.

ADMIRER:	Professor... my whole world has fallen to pieces...

KARADI:	When?

ADMIRER:	Just now... when I bought the Morning Post at the
	News-kiosk in Market Square.

KARADI:	And you came straight here to advise me.

ADMIRER:	I didn't really intend to...but something made me
	come... Professor, we had nothing left to us in this
	town... except that there was a man here living among
	these wa1ls... we could look up to.

KARADI:	And that's what this article has deprived you of...
	Could you explain just how?

ADMIRER:	It's terrible that I have to say this to your face!
	But it is terrible that we should live to hear the
	slogans, we have had perforce to listen to so often
	from Professor Karadi's lips... (He falls silent, fights
	back his tears.)
[page 55]

KARADI:	What do you do, my friend?

ADMIRER:	I earn my mouthful of bread at the Municipal Council.
	I am deputy town-clerk... And I may as well be frank
	and admit that my Job often compels me... though it is
	not always in harmony with my convictions... But it
	is so terrible that the man who laid the foundations
	of my philosophy and ethics, to whom I look up as to
	a superhuman being, that after having stood it all
	heroically, he should...

KARADI:	... break down at the finish...

ADMIRER:	I didn't say so...You are not angry with mef are
	you? It was really only my admiration,

KARADI:	I'm not Why should I be?... But you know what I
	find so strange? That a while back I hadn't an inkling
	of this admiration.

AMIRER:	What do you mean, Professor?

KARADI:	Perhaps you know that in fifty-one I was suspended.

ADMIRER:	Of course... They removed you from the place where
	you raised generations of young people...

KARADI:	You see... And I don't recall any irresistible wish
	on your part to drop in here then...

ADMIRER:	Didn't you notice how we bowed to you every time, we
	met you in the street?

KARADI:	But perhaps it would have been better had you broken
	in here then the way you did now, and said to me: I
	hear you're out of a job, Professor. Would you allow
	me to offer you twenty eggs as a sign of my respect?

ADMIRER:	(with conviction) But you wouldn't have accepted,
	Professor! We knew you well, enough to realize that.

KARADI:	Well, that's quite possible... Nevertheless, I'd, have
	appreciated it... And you would have had more right
	to refer now to the blow to your admiration and the
	collapse of your world...

ADMIRER:	I didn't think of it.. But anyway... forgive me
	Professor no moral values were in danger then...

KARADI:	I see. The most that could have happened was that
	the Karadi family starved to death but by. this act

[page 56]

	they would have deserved a place of honor in the
	pantheon of your soul. Whereas now I may be destroying
	the very foundations on which you built that pantheon.

ADMIRER:	That's about it.

KARADI:	And were you really so deeply influenced by my lessons?
	What did I teach you, history?

ADMIRER:	Yes, in the last three years. I was always top of the
	class.

KARADI:	Indeed? (He looks at him more attentively.) When did
	you graduate?

ADMIRER:	In forty-seven. I was in Karosi Kadar's class. 

KARADI:	In forty-seven. (He opens the wardrobe.) What's your
	name, my young friend?

ADMIRER:	It's not important. I am one of the many.

KARADI:	But you have a name, I suppose?

ADMIRER:	Giozis What are you looking for?

KARADI:	My note book for forty-seven Well, you weren't top
	of the olass... but you passed... I didn't like failing
	pupils...

ADMIRER:	That didn't prevent me from understanding hints,
	Professor...

KARADI:	Do you mean to say that I larded my lectures with hints
	from which reactionary ideas dripped like fat?

ADMIRER:	An ironical smile was enough for us.

KARADI:	In that case you were in complete agreement with those
	who suspended me.

ADMIRER:	I should hope not!

KARADI:	For this is exactly what they said. Perhaps, they get
	it from you. Could you try to remember at least one
	of these hints?

ADMIRER:	After all these years!

KARADI:	Of course you retained only the general impression.
ADMIRER:	We11, for instance what you said about Hungarian
	history. That each era began with some catastrophe.
	Majteny, the Martinuzzi conspiracy...

KARADI:	Martinovics. But where was the hint in that?

ADMIBER:	In forty-five The year of liberation?

KARADI:	I see.

[page57]

ADMIRER:	And that we had always modelled ourselves on Europe.

KARADI:	Of course. Since ST. Stephen. And that the Hungarian
	people has always shown its resourcefulness by adapting
	the model to itself, and filling it with original,
	Hungarian life. If you were looking for allegories in
	everything I said you should have concluded from this
	that the task honey, with good Hungarian diligence.
	given hive with honey, with good Hungarian diligence.

ADMIRER:	In this case that was absolutely impossible.

KARADI:	Why impossible?

ADMIRER:	You ask me, Professor? You who were among the first
	to stand aside? Whose family suffered perseoution?

KARADI:	And who has been hit in the solar plexus not more
	than an hour ago! And you expect this to prevent me
	from seeing that hundreds of students who, in the
	old days, would have stayed swine-herds all their
	lives have gone through grammar school and university?
	That the Greek Anthology is published in an edition
	of ten thousand? That when I wanted to buy a copy
	of Suetonius, I couldn't get one, because it was sold
	out here, at Kungos? That there are no ragged children
	in the municipal park?...

ADMIRER:	Take a look at the collective farms?

KARADI:	The collectives are also like Vajk's counties. They
	were imposed from outside. But it is from inside.
	that one should...

ADMIRER:	And the AVO! That too is a foreign form?

KARADI:	You talk about it now when it n longer grabs you!
	Do you think I don't know all the arguments? I know
	at least ten times as many as you. There are arguments
	against everything. This is why politics is bitter
	bread for men with finicky consciences. Because a
	man feels as responsible for what his follow
	Party members do as for what he does himself. I read a bid
	book about Cromwell recently. Anabaptists, Episcopalians,
	Crowmwellians, republicans, royalists; even at a
	distance of three hundred years I can't decide which I
	would have joined. But Milton, he knew! Because there

[page 58]

	is another say of looking at things. As a whole!
	Including the murdered Irish and the stupid
	Major-generals! Whether the nation rises or not in that
	framework...

ADMIRER:	And does it rise in this?

KARADI:	If we. subtract and add up everything, I think, on the
	whole, it does. At least I shouldn't have the
	courage to allege, as you do, that it doesn't.

ADMIRER:	Forgive me, I didn't expect to find such a staunch
	advocate of the regime in this house...

KARADI:	You hope to find an ideal which you could take to
	task, a rag-doll which, you like to think, is filled
	with your sawdust and if...
ADMIRER:	Every time I passed this house I used to take my hat
	off.

KARADI:	After this you-can spit, if you like. And not only
	metaphorically.

ADMIRER:	(With theatrical melancholy) Good night to you
	Professor Karadi! (Leaves.)

KARADI:	Go to hell and take your admiration with you?

Mrs. KARADI:	(comes running) Who was that? I heard the front
	door slam.

KARADI:	Who? The people I spent my energy on. My students.
	My admirers!

[page 59]

Act III.

(Smaller room of the Intellectual Club. To the right, door to
the large room where they have conferences, lectures. This
room serves the members as a recreation room: in center a billiard
table, left rear, a smaller card table. On the left wall a
photograph of Attila Jozsef, next to it a discolored patch, one wonders
whose picture has been taken down. At extreme right two men are
playing chess at a small table. One seems an excitable type, he
sits forward on his chair as though waiting for a starting signal;
he wrings his hands and keeps his eyes glued to the chessboard.
The other is an older man smoking a cigar; through the smoke he
views the chessboard with a happy smile; sometimes he smiles at
Attila Jozsef. A head appears at the door of the next room, then
another. - "0h:" it says and withdraws.)

NERVOUS CHESS-PLAYER:	(Turns impatiently like someone who has to
	make a move and is not given peace to think)
	What's up? Why do people keep on locking in?
	That was the fifth.

CIGAR SMOKER:	(It is his move but he talks while making it)
	I don't know what it's all about. At other times
	not even a fly will come in here.

NERVOUS PLAYER:	(Wrings his hands, stares at the board) As if
	they were looking for something.

CIGAR SMOKER:	What could they be looking for? At the Intellectual
	Club?

NERVOUS PLAYER:	Again!

CIGAR SMOKER:	(Calls after retreating figure) Listen, Lajcsl!

CIGAR SMOKER:	I'd like to know what all this excitement is
	about. (He rises, looks into the other room) At
	least twelve people. On a Sunday morning!

LAJCSI:	What? Didn't Hantai ring you? Of course he
	knows you are always here at this time, playing
	chess.

NERVOUS PLAYER:	Well, that's exactly why he should have rung.
	So we could have gone somewhere else.
	absolutely impossible to concentrate here!

CIGAR SMOKER:	Yes, but why drum all these people together? Has
	the board resigned? (Lajcsi shakes his head)

[page 60]

	A foreign guest? (Another bead-shake) A deputy
	minister?

LAJCSI:	Stop bidding! Uncle Jozsef Karadi has returned
	from the Soviet Union,

CIGAR SMOKER:	He has? Good for him? And what now? Are you
	going to exhibit him?

LAJCSI:	Don't you read the Morning Post?

CIGAR SMOKER:	Yes. But in rather a negative way. Just to see
	whether there is something I should know about.

LAJCSI:	And you didn't see this? We'll have to restore
	the "Szabad Nep Quarter of an Hour!" (He picks
	up a paper) The article takes up the whole third
	page.

CIGAR SMOKER:	(Reads) "I envy the Soviet geography teachers."
	I seem to remember... but who on earth would have
	thought that he was that envious fellow... Have
	you moved yet, Saudi?

NERVOUS PLAYER:	(Picks up his bishop) Not yet... (Looks around
	resolutely) I have, now... Though it wouldn't
	be surprising . . .

LAJCSI:	Read it, you cam learn from it How the Earth
	will shrink by the end of the seven-year plan.

NERVOUS PLAYER:	But what's got into the old man? Has he gone
	out of his mind?

LAJCSI:	Or he's seem the light...They say it happened
	in a box at the Czar's palace... That's where
	they mate the old man sit.

CIGAR SMOKER:	What the devil?

NERVOUS PLAYER:	Impossible to concentrate here!

CIGAR SMOKER:	But it's my move! (he moves) And what comes now?
	Is he going to explain his statement?

LAJCSI:	I don't quite know myself...Hantai called me.
	He said all bigwigs are going to be here, I'd
	better put in an appearance...
LAJCSI:	Uncle ???
	(Macskasi looks in)
LAJCSI:	Uncle Bandi! Come in for a moment. We are

[page 61]

	talking about Uncle Karadi. What got into the
	old man?

MACSKASI:	He got back. Considering the circumstances in
	rather good condition.

LAJCSI:	But that article!

MACSKASI:	The old man was careless. He let the journalists
	embroider it too much.

CIGAR SMOKER:	Didn't I say so? I said that the old man couldn't
	possibly have written it.

MACSKASI:	But apart from the frills, the essence...

LAJCSI:	It's easy to recognize his style. The radius of
	the Earth, the Tien Shan... Though I didn't
	read it very thoroughly...

CIGAR SMOKER:	But how is this possible? I saw him three weeks
	ago... I had some business with his superior...
	Made your move, Sandi? (As before, without
	speaking) That child, of course. When one has
	reached a certain age one can no longer be so
	sure of oneself... That's what chess is good for:
	it warns you. (The nervous player gets to his
	feet to show that he doesn't consider this a
	proper game) All right, I'll concentrate (He
	turns back to the chessboard. Exeunt Macskasi
	and Lajcsi).

LAJCSI:	(To Macskasi) Perhaps his family talked him into it...
	I hear they are rather badly off...

MACSKASI:	It's exactly the other way round. I had to calm
	down his son-in-law. That's why we sat round
	at the Little Mug until almost midnight. (In a
	low voice) I told him exactly what I am telling
	you now. Don't you believe, Pista, that the old
	man's wheels are slowing down...

LAJCSI:	You think they offered him a position?

MACSKASI:	For that he is far too puritanical by mature
	(Whispering) He's come to the conclusion that
	things cannot continue this way. After a while
	there won't be a single good Hungarian in a post
	higher than a janitor's. If we don't learn to

[page 62]

	flatter them a bit... (They draw back behind
	and picks up one of the papers lying on the
	billiard table.)

MUSEUM DIRECTOR:	(Follows him and pulls his jacket) Forgive me,

HORN:	I am at your service, Comrade Director . . .

MUSEUM DIRECTOR:	Let's drop that comrade business. I'm not any
	more of a comrade than you are, Professor:
	they'll call me that until somebody wants my
	job. One builds up an institution of European
	standard, as you did for your ophthalmic
	department... But that's not what I want to talk about..
	Why are we here?

HORN:	I think we are here to hear Professor Karadi's
	report on his trip.

MUSEUM DIRECTOR:	Then let me ask: why is he coming here? What
	does he want with all these reports?

HORN:	He was obviously much impressed by his
	experience...

MUSEUM DIRECTOR:	But even so... this unusual craving for publicity!
	On Radio Moscow, the newspapers, here! I hear he
	intends to speak at the grammar school as well.
	Perhaps I should ask him to deliver an address
	at the Museum. As it is anyway his intention to
	reorganize the Museum on the basis of what he saw
	there...

HORN:	Perhaps he has indeed returned home with a
	well-stuffed suitcase.

MUSEUM DIRECTOR:	All right, I'm am old socialist myself... a
	sincere admirer of the Soviet Union, but don't
	you feel that his statement in the Morning Post
	was... so to speak... in rather poor taste? You
	know I hold him in high esteem... It was I who got
	him a job at the Museum when he wasn't so well
	placed as today ... But this unexpected turn...

[page 63]

H0RN:	What can he do if he has suddenly seen the light?
	Consistency, they say, is the virtue of mules.

MUSEUM DIRECTOR:	But at the age of sixty-three? I'd have 	
expected
	greater consistency of him. And to tell the truth,
	I don't quite believe... You live in the same
	house, Professor...

HORN:	We meet very rarely. We just said hallo to each
	other after his return home.

MUSEUM DIRECTOR:	And the Museum? What plans does he have?

H0RN:	Museum? He talked only about the Hermitage. He
	showed me an album of it. Excuse me. (To LaJcsi)
	I haven't asked you yet, is your mother satisfied
	with the glasses I prescribed for her?

LAJCSI:	Oh, yes, they're perfect... (whispering) What
	did the old kangaroo want?

HORN:	I think he was trying to get me to say something
	disparaging about Professor Karadi's behavior.

LAJCSI:	He is scared. And not without cause, if what I
	heard from Macskasi is true.

HORN:	Anyway, he didn't get what he wanted out of me.

LAJCSI:	Of course, you're too smart for that, Professor.
	Why let him bandy your name around? (Pointing
	into the other room) He looks prostrate. Well,
	old man, you got rid of Tamas Kis in the same way,
	and what a folklorist he was!

HORN:	If there's nothing left but this, heaven earth
	then it is logical that we should fight for the
	apple.

LAJCSI:	Stilly somehow I can't understand this Karadi.
	I never studied under him... I never graduated,
	but... I'd like to know what you think of it,
	professor.

HORN:	To me, as a physician, he is a mystery. (Lowering
	his voice) The lack of a sound religious
	foundation cannot go unpunished, it seems.

HANTAI:	(Breezes in with a bulging brief-case under his arm, he
	Speaks fast and stammers a bit, for fun rather

[page 64]

	than because of an impediment) What's that?
	Uncle Karadi not here yet? (Looks at his
	wristwatch) He makes a habit of being on time.

LAJCSI:	Perhaps he has improved in this respect also.

HANTAI:	Hardly... they punish late-comers very severely
	there... (To Macskasi) Don't you know what's
	happened, Uncle Bandi?

MACSKASI:	There wasn't a word about all this yesterday?
	I learned about it only from your telephone call.

HANTAI:	But is he coming? Is he? Professor, do you mind
	if I ring them on your telephone?

HORN:	But of course. I've already bequeathed it to
	them. It's more productive that way. Fifty-five.

HANTAY:	(On the telephone) Fifty-five, Miss. Professor
	Horn's consulting room...Mrs. Karadi? Has the
	old gentleman left yet? NO?! This is impossible.
	He isn't even allowed to die? The Comrade Party
	Secretary, the comrade council chairman have both
	declared their intention to come. But please, Aunt
	Teresa, you mustn't mention, that to him. (He
	looks around) I don't get it. The old man can't
	have changed-that much?. .(Into the receiver)
	Greetings, Uncle Jozsi... You have put me in a
	spot, you know; a lot of people have come, you
	know how difficult it is to entice them? No, of
	course not, just a few. It would cause bad blood.
	It's the last time, Uncle Jozsi... no, just an
	informal conversation... (He cradles the receiver)
	Damn! For a moment I thought he was going to go
	stubborn on me

MACSKASI:	But the informal conversation reassured him, of
	course...

JULIA:	(grabs Hantai's sleeve and pulls him aside) Tell me, Anti,
	what's going on here? What are you preparing
	for my heart?...

HANTAI:	For your heart, my dear Julia? I was going to
	ask you to prepare...

[page 65]

JULIA:	You know that Karadi is my special pet. Ever
	since we were day-students at the college. You
	remember, the first girl students, four of us, in
	the front row...

HANTAI:	How could I forget? Mrs. Kovacs doesn't come in
	on Sundays, and we must offer the bigwigs
	something... I've heard you make marvelous coffee.

JULIA:	Don't even mention it... We diluted it with our
	tears. That Giczi came to see me last night.
	After reading that horror in the Morning Post he
	couldn't resist running to see the old man. He
	was inconsolable, poor boy. In fact, that was
	the root of our relationship: that he, too,
	adored old Karadi... And that we played the pools
	together.

HANTAI:	You still have the pools. And days out together
	are perhaps an even stronger tie. . . You know
	where the espresso machine is don't you? (Pushes
	Julia out)

HORN:	(Looks in from the other room) Here is the hospital director...
	with my successor... Let's retire.

HOSP.DIRECTOR:	(To his companion) It appears that people are
	still interested in moral phenomena. Surprising
	how many of us showed up for Professor Karadi's
	lecture. (To Hantai) And the star?

HANTAI:	He'll be here in a minute, Comrade Director. . . Oh,
	the ground coffee!... I left it in my brief-case...
	(He hurries after Julia, rummaging in his case)

HOSP.DIRECTOR:	(Noticing Horn) Hallo, my dear boy! You're
	looking marvelous...There's nothing like a
	part-time job... I wish I could follow your example
	with my full time overtime

HORN:	Unfortunately I can't help you there, (to Lajcsi)
	just as you couldn't help me...(Someone sticks
	his head in; in a voice of humble admiration:)
	Comrade Forgacs! (The men pass the word:) Comrade
	Forgacs? (Everybody stiffens, all faces turn to
	the door, even the cigar-smoking chess player,

[page 66]

	only the nervous one continues to stare at the
	board. Forgacs enters with a veritable retinue,
	among them the journalist Zsizsik.)

FORGACS:	(To Hantai) Professor Karadi?

HANTAI:	He is on his way, Comrade Forgacs. He is on his
	way. He lives quite near here.

FORGACS:	I know. I've been there. (To Horn) Good day,
	Professor. Well, do you have to prescribe many
	spectacles for the new collective farm members?

HORN:	Yes, indeed. There is a veritable scramble for
	this new benefit.

FORGACS:	They feel they should profit at least from this!
	... (Polite laughter) Well, they'll find out
	its other advantages later... I have a request
	to put to you. I'd like you to accept the
	chairmanship of the committee classifying
	invalids...

HORN:	I am at your service...

FORGACS:	(To Macskasi) Well, my dear Macekasi, what do
	you think of your friend's conversion? (To
	Hantai) If I remember correctly, it was on some
	journey or other that St.Paul was converted as
	well...

HANTAI:	Sorry, I was never much good at religion.
	(Everyone assumes an air of innocent ignorance)

HOSP. DIRECTOR:	Could that have-been on-his jouenry to Damascus?

MACSKASI:	I am very pleased, of course...

FORGACS:	(ironically) At last you are in the same camp...

MACSKASI:	And we'll remain in it, I hope.

FORGACS:	This is a very ambiguous hope. (He goes up to
	the chess players. The cigar smoker rises but
	the nervous player has to be nudged) Don't let
	me disturb you, please. Chess is a trance, one
	must not be awakened from it. (Everybody laughs)
	(To hospital director, drawing him aside) Have
	you read the article in the Morning Post?

[page 67]

HOSP. DIRECTOR:	Of course. I read every newspaper. It's a highly
	significant document. (He draws the Party
	Secretary still further away from the others). But
	do you seriously that this two-week trip
	has turned old Karadi, whose good and bad sides
	we all know, into a sympathizer?

FORGACS:	Look, the old man is an important factor in
	Kungos. And it is much better if he plays this
	role than if he played the other.

HOSP. DIRECTOR: But don't you think that old, tested 	comrades
	will be hurt by all this cheering ? The whole
	third page! The Museum Director who is not a
	genius, of course, but who does his job quite
	well among his stuffed animals, has already spoken
	to me... and others as well...

FORGACS:	I know, I know. Don't worry, we worn't let the
	trees grow to the sky. (He pulls an article from
	his pocket) I've ordered a short commentary to
	be put into the county newspaper ...

HOSP. DIRECTOR:	The "Monday". (He takes the typed pages) "Better
	late" ... I see.

FORGACS:	That Zsizsik is a smart lad. The "Monday"
	expressed its joy at the article published in the
	Morning Post but adds a few drops of irony to
	the converted reactionary's drink...Read it if
	you are interested. (the two men withdraw behind
	the philadendron)..

HANTAI:	(Who had left the room, bursts in) Karadi is
	here? (He looks around) Comrade-Forcacs?
	Professor Karadi is just taking off his coat...

FORGACS:	Indeed? Then we can begin, perhaps...

HANTAI:	Five minutes more, Comrade Borgacs. Let's wait
	five minute s. The chairman of the council says
	that if the rice-growers let him, he'll come
	over.

FORGACS:	(Glancing at the hospital director) Well, well.

KARADI:	(Enters, greatly upset, looks around, then to Hantai)

[page 68]

	What's going on here, please? I was told only
	the usual two or three people... (Notices the
	journalist) You're here too?

ZSIZSIK:	Only as a listener, Professor,

KARADI:	Without your cuffs? Or have you taken to
	shorthand?

HANTAI:	There's no need for shorthand, Uncle Jozsi. I
	had the tape-recorder brought over. You know
	that the grammar school was given one. (He
	introduces Lajcsi) Lajcsi Sebestyan... he'll
	operate it.

KARADI:	This is another trap, if you'll pardon my saying
	so.

FORGACS:	(Approaching) Here you are at last, dear
	Professor Karadi. I haven't had a chance yet to welcome
	you after your splendid trip. True, I did my
	best. Did they tell you at home that I called?

KARADI:	You don't suppose they'ld have kept that to
	themselves!

FORGACS:	I wanted to congratulate you on your interesting
	statement.

KARADI:	Yes, so they, told me... although, it is rather
	Mr. Zsizsik you ought to congratulate.

FORGADS:	Yes, I know you had an argument. You reacted
	as some people do to the Radio, Professors they
	don't recognize their own voices. I hope we can
	soon make up for the conversation we missed.

KARADI:	If you think so...Anyway, I am glad we didn't
	meet yesterday.

FORGACS:	Would you hare said some thing rude?... We are
	used to it. (He puts his arm round Karadi's
	shoulder) Now, really, have you taken this
	little man's blunder so much to heart? That the
	diameter of the earth is 6,000 kilometers? 

KARADI:	If you want to quote him: that the radius is 60.

FORGACS:	And it should have been six? There, I have
	failed, too... 1 can see that this is particularly

[page 69]

	infuriating for a geography professor, but do
	believe me, nobody else will notice it.

KARADI:	There are other things they will notice.

FORGACS:	For instance?

KARADI:	For instance that Professor Karadi didn't go to
	Moscow at all, but perhaps to Stockholm where
	they performed a brain operation on him and this
	is why he uses expressions that he has never used
	in 60 years.

FORGACS:	Oh yes, the glorious revolution! (Zsizsik slips
	away)

KARADI:	That, too.

FORGACS:	Let me tell you something, Professor, It is not
	the words that are important, Not even your
	statement which, in site of these ornamental
	frills was so obviously made by a teacher... and
	that's just why, it is beautiful and convincing...

KARADI:	What is important then?

FORGACS:	That it dispelled the misunderstanding around
	your person, Professor. And that by your trip
	you made it clear on which side you stand.

KARADI:	I stand on the same side where I've always stood.

FORGACS:	Perhaps you did, but we were not aware of it. And
	not only we, but your admirers were not aware of
	it either.

KARADI:	My admirers? You should have asked my students...
	the intelligent, the honest ones, of course.
	That's where you could have used your
	tape-recorder.

FORGACS:	Unfortunately they had not yet invented the
	tape-recorder in those days. Besides, the students
	soon lose interest in what's on the tapes... If
	I am not mistaken, that trouble...

KARADI:	My suspension... yes, it was based on the
	testimony of misled students...But there is also
	written proof.

[page 70]

FORGACS:	Written?

KARADI:	Yes, you should read what I wrote in the teachers
	journal. "Changes in the life of the school". You
	will see that in my educational program... forgive me
	an expression which is not in keeping with my position...
	I tried to foresee the changes that were then only in
	the air...

FORGACS:	I shall have it dug up.

KARADI:	Collectivization... cooperative production... these
	words are already there in the paper of the poor little
	professor sacked from his job.

FORGACS:	I'm awfully sorry, but all this happened before my time
	as Party Secretary I inherited Professor Karadi, as
	a persecuted hero, the idol of reaction.

KARADI:	A phantom that it would have been easy enough to blow
	away. And in its place you would have found readiness
	to help. After the injustice done to me I continued
	to safeguard the interests of the town, of science, in
	my little room at the Museum, just as if I had been
	given the Order of the Red Flag.

FORGACS:	I am convinced of it. That why I wanted you to go
	to Moscow.

KARADI:	I don't mean, of course, that I was a Communist or
	that I became one.

FORGACS:	We won't expect you to. That terrible name...

KARADI:	Not as if I felt it was up to me to quibble with what
	you were trying to do. I chose to be an official.
	Why should. I object if it ends up with every citizen
	of the country becoming an official? As a teacher,
	I should be pleased by it.

FORGACS:	Can you tell me what still separates you from us?

KARADI:	What? (Struggling with himself) This very thing?
	Everything that's happened to me in the last 24 hours.

FORGACS:	What have we done? We praised you. We praised you so
	much that some of our comrades are beginning to take
	it amiss.

[page 71]

KARADI:	Before I could draw breath you were all over me, making
	me pay a debt that wasn't even included in our terms.
	You didn't worry about my self-respect, about, what's
	human in man, about nothing except political conceptions
	that, to my mind, are false.

FORGACS:	I'm afraid you are being intimidated by your 	reactionary
	friends, Professor. This Macskasi, for instance!

KARADI:	We aren't talking about me? We are talking about aims,
	and about the methods applied to realize them. If
	necessary, I am ready to believe that in gigantic
	operations like this one must treat people like
	molecules, according to the rules of some rudimentary
	psychological technique. It is probable that a kulak's
	son will never be loyal to us, so don't let's allow
	him to study. Of curse it is quite possible that he
	would become loyal to us. I am an historian, and I know
	that it is with such methods that history achieved
	much that was good; but how much more that was evil...

FORGACS:	Well, then?

KARADI:	That's why I became disgusted... to a certain extent...
	with what I know.

FORGACS:	And what do you suggest: should we, too, become
	disgusted and leave Hungarian history in the hands of
	people like Mindszenty, for instance?

KARADI:	No, but you should revise your methods. For instance,
	are they expedient? In my case they aren't because
	I made a special point of separating my judgment and
	the injustice I suffered. But what about people in
	general? What you have to do is a painful operation
	anyway. So you should have performed it as an operation.

FORGACS:	Under anaesthetic?

KARADI:	No, but with as small a number of incisions as possible.

FORGACS:	But our patient kicks and struggles...

KARADI:	He was tied town.

FORGACS:	He is being incited, as you know from your own experience

KARADI:	Even so, it was the wrong way. It wasn't expedient...

[page 72]

	Do you never wonder sometimes why, though you've done
	such a lot of good, you have excited so much resistance
	even among those whom you helped? I admit that in this
	respect there is a change for the better. But if I
	think about what happened to me. . .

FORGACS:	Don't you think, Professor, this is not the most auspicious
	place and time for this argument? Let's talk about
	something more agreeable. . . Your daughter has been to
	see me.

KARADI:	My daughter Margit?

FORGACS:	 I think I can fulfill her request.

KARADI:	 Her request?

FORGACS:	 Don't you know about it, Professor? Forgive me then,
	I haven't said anything. . .

KARADI:	No, no! Please tell me. Has my family asked for
	something?

FORGACS:	I quite understand that they didn't want to cause you
	anxiety. . .

KARADI:	But now I am anxious.

FORGACS:	You have no cause to be. We talked about your
	son-in-law.

KARADI:	 Did he ask for a job?

FORGACS:	 It was due, anyway. We are liquidating 58. Gradually.
	Forgive and forget, that's also part of our ruthless
	method. . .

KARADI:	But just now? One day after I get back from Moscow?

FORGACS:	The two things are not connected.

KARADI:	Just as this meeting here is independent of my trip
	to Moscow.

FORGACS:	I inquired about conditions at home. . . that's how the
	question came up. . .

KARADI:	Then I must beg you to forgive me, Comrade Party
	Secretary.

FORGACS:	Why?

KARADI:	For what went before. . . for my sermonizing you. . .

FORGACS: We like frankness.

[page 73]

KARADI:	I had no right to it.

FORGACS:	But why not dear Professor Karadi?

KARADI:	Because it seams that men who have families cannot
	have self-respect as well.

HANTAI:	(Calls in) The comrade council chairman...

COUNCIL CHAIMAN:	(Enters, greets company) A very good morning
	to all. (To Forgacs) Hallo, Comrade Forgacs!

FORGACS:	Glad to see you, Comrade Nagy.

COUNCIL CHAIRMAN:	I didn't know the intellectual Club was such a
	Popular place!

HANTAI:	We do our best to keep it lively, Comrade Nagy.

COUNCIL CHAIRMAN:	(To Karadi) Comrade Karadi, am I right? If
	you will accept that form of address from me.

KARADI:	You honor me as in everything indicating
	acceptance...

COUNCIL CHAIRMAN:	After your interview I felt I had the right...

KARADI:	Oh, that interview! Is that going to be my
	right to being alive?...

COUNCIL CHAIRMAN:	I was very glad that this trip to the Soviet
	Union has had such an excellent effect on you,
	Professor. I too found the three weeks I spent
	there a great experience. Although, of course,
	the things that impressed me were entirely
	different. Nor could I have summed up my
	impressions with such pedagogic enthusiasm...

KARADI:	You mustn't look down on school-teachers...

C0UNCIL CHAIRMAN:	You know, I am one of your students too, in a way...

KARADI:	You?

COUNCIL CHAIRMAN:	Yes, in spite of these grey hairs of mine and
	my 67 years. Not at the college, of course,
	that was not for a bricklayer's apprentice in
	those days. There was a young teacher here at
	the Commercial High School; he tried to revive
	the old workers' grammar schools. He called
	them free universities. It must have been
	toward the end of the twenties when the White
	terror had abated a little...

[page 74]

KARADI:	Yes, I know, His name was Szabadi.

COUNCIL CHAIMAN:	Only one professor from the college agreed to
	cooperate...

KARADI:	Well, don't give me any of the credit ...I was
	interested is the experiment.

COUNCIL CHAIRMAN:	I was greatly impressed with what you said. But
	you gave only a few lectures, then the whole
	thing was shut down.

KARADI:	I taught political geography.

COUNCIL CHAIRMAN:	Considering conditions in those days, they were
	very progressive lectures.

KAKADI:	Considering conditions in those days, they were

COUNCIL CHAIRMAN:	That's why I was so surprised when I god back
	and heard...

KARADI:	... that old Karadi was one of the pillars of
	reaction... just as I am going to be a Communist
	agitator here today...

FORGACS:	We must take that affair of yours under review,
	Professor ... Your suspension was one of the
	Rakosi 'regime's mistakes.

COUNCIL CHAIMAN:	Well, I don't know. I was away at the time.
	They almost suspended me too (he makes a gesture)
	... I mean literally. I can safely say I was
	more innocent than you, Professor...

FORGACS:	Comrade Nagy spent four years in loss of freedom.

COUNCIL CHAIRMAN:	I'm saying this only to show you that others
	besides you have cause for recrimination.

HANTAI:	Perhaps we could begin, comrades. (He takes
	Karadi's arm) Kindly step this way, my dear
	Uncle Jozsi...

JULIA:	(arrives with coffee) Oh, just a moment... the coffee...
	Comrade Council Chairman, a cup... (To Karadi,
	in low voice) Careful, Uncle Jozisi...

COUNCIL CHAIRMAN:	Well, if Conrade Pakezdi has been kind enough
	to make the coffee there is nothing for us but
	to drink it. (To Forgacs) How many have you
	had?

[page 75]

FORGACS:	I didn't even count them.

COUNCIL CHAIRMAN:	(To Julia) This is your magic potion. That's
	what makes an intellectual out of a bricklayer's
	assistant. (Julia laughs respectfully, with
	his cup in his hand the Council Chairman pulls
	Forgacs into the foreground) He seems a bit
	excited, the old man.

FORGACS:	Perhaps the lecture...

COUNCIL CHAIMAN:	He is a teacher. It is not as strange to him
	as it was to us at first,

FORGACS:	And the enemy, Comrade Nagy. They drone round
	his head like a disturbed wasps' nest, you can
	imagine...

COUNCIL CHAIRMAN:	Wasn't that statement of his a bit too
	beautiful, Comrade Forgacs? I often say, with my
	simple peasant mind, that I don't like things
	that are too beautiful.

FORGACS:	The old man was a thorn in our side at Kungos.
	We had to pull it out.

COUNCIL CHAIRMAN:	But the result, Comrade Forgace, will it be what
	we expected? For 10 or 15 years we talked
	about him as about the bridgehead of reaction,
	then we sent, him on a two-week trip and now we
	pull him out of the hat like a freshly graduated
	Party-school student. Won't some people ask
	how we achieved this unnatural change?

FORGACS:	But others, who still grumble, will say to
	themselves: well, if even Uncle Karadi... And
	if not, we have at least killed the prestige of
	a man who interfered with our work. finally
	even he will benefit by it.

COUNCIL CHAIRMAN:	I see. And this lecture? Aren't you afraid,
	Comrade Forgacs, that the old man might prove
	stubborn? The things he said here were strange
	enough...

FORGACS:	I hold all the cards... he asked for something...

[page 76]

COUNCIL CHAIRMAN:	Has he?

FORGACS:	A job for his son-in-law... Naturally, he knows
	nothing about it... it was all done behind his
	back... And he was greatly surprised when I told
	him his request was granted.

COUNCIL CHAIRMAN:	Well, perhaps that's what has upset him...
	Forgive me, my friend, I'm an old man...
	Communist or no Communist I sympathize with
	him. Well, let's go. They are very quiet over
	there, (They hand their cups to Julia) You could
	make a living running an espresso, Comrade
	Pakozdi...

	(The two Party officials go into the other room which is filled
	to capacity. Someone opens the door so that a few necks and
	heads are visible. Hantai, Forgacs, Council Chairman are not
	visible only their voices are heard. Four pairs remain in the
	smaller room: the two chess, players continue their game, the
	nervous player keeps his eyes on the board, the cigar smoker turns
	his chair so as to see into the other room, but continues to play.
	Macskasi hides behind the ?? Member so as to be invisible from
	the other room. Julia sits down next to Horn. The hospital
	director and the Museum Director draw back under the Attila Jozsef
	picture.)

MUSEUM DIRECTOR:	Well, I am curious. What kind of hare will sump
	from this bush?

HOSP. DIRECTOR:	Let's listen to it sitting down. My ears are
	better than my feet. Not even a waiter wears
	out his soles the way we doctors do.
	
HANTAI:	(from the other room) Dear Comrades. In the first place,
	let me greet the representatives of our Party
	who are here present, Comrade Pal Nagy, Chairman
	of our Municipal Council (applause) and Comrade
	Tibor Forgacs, District Party Secretary (applause).
	Their presence as well as the large number of .....
	members who have shown up demonstrates the great
	importance our town and county and every thinking
	person -in this ease the intelligentsia.--
	attribute to the appearance of our honored guest...
	excuse me follow-member... I think I can say
	that ... among us.

[page 77]

FAT MEMBER: (To Macskasi) We came for the laughs.

HANTAI:	In this town generations have grown up under
	the care of Professor Karadi... a student's
	respect prevents me from calling him comrade.
	There are among them men in high, positions,
	university professors, even a deputy minister,
	and also smaller fry like ourselves who can
	give only our sweat as an adhesive material to
	the building of socialism.

SOMEONE IN

NEXT ROOM:	Well, well...

HANTAI:	But I can tell you from my own experience that
	wherever two or three of these former students
	met, in a dining car, in a minister's waiting
	room, or even in prison (laughter) their third
	word was Professor Karadi...

HORN: (To Julia)	Every second word after this!

JULIA:	Don't even talk about it. I stayed out here so
	I won't have to see the poor man.

HANTAI:	If there is any one man enjoying the esteem of
	all in this town... I mean among the old
	inhabitants of Kungos,...

HOSP. DIRECTOR:	That was meant for Forgacs... accompanied by a
	placating smile...

HANTAI:	... a public figure ... as they used to say... it
	is without' a doubt Professor Haradi (first
	scattered, then massive applause)

HOSP. DIRECTOR:	First a few shy soloists, then full orchestra.

MUSEUM DIRECTOR:	It was obviously Forgacs who gave the sign.

HANTAI:	After a long pause, due to an unfortunate
	misunderstanding, Professor Karadi is again
	lecturing to us, grown-ups. He will talk to us
	about an exciting, highly important matter which,
	I think I can safely say, makes all our hearts
	beat faster.

JULIA:	Not to speak of the lecturer... just think of
	the condition his heart must be in...	

[page 78]

HANTAI:	He will tell us about his trip to the Soviet Union.
	The Morning Post has already given us a taste of
	this report and to us, his former pupils, that too
	was an unprecedented experience: we recognized in
	manner, his own way of looking at things...

MACSKASI:	And comrade Zsizsik's style...

HANTAI:	Comrade Zsizsik's interview, however, was only an
	appetizer. We are invited to the feast...

JULIA:	... at which the main dish is a man.

HANTAI:	The Professor, when we brought him in here, looked
	around him astonished in his great modesty, as
	someone who has been, so to say, led into a trap.
	I must explain myself, though... it was really only
	the usual few...

MACSKASI:	Slip of the tongue!

HANTAI:	... a few of our friends who I invited for an
	informal conversation, but interest was so great
	in the whole town...

JULIA:	Well that's true enough, worse luck...

HANTAI:	... that it was enough to mention it to a couple
	of people...

HOSP.DIRECTOR:	He rang me up at dawn.

HANTAI:	... and the telephone just never stopped ringing,
	everyone wanted to be present, also those best
	qualified... at the lecture. I now call on
	Professor Karadi to begin.

JULIA:	(Presses Horn's hand)
	(At first Karadi's voice is barely audible, then it grown
	increasingly stronger and more excited to the end of the scene.)

KARADI:	Honored audience! Our friend Hantai is right:
	although I've had quite a number of surprises in
	the last 24 hours I was not prepared to see such
	a large and illustrious company assembled for an
	informal conversation. There are, of course, many
	kinds of interest, and I hope that the brand,
	shown here, concerns only the subject, about which,
[page 79]

	after many important reports in the past I can
	hardly say anything significant, and not the
	according to many, he should now find himself.

MACSKASI:	Quite a witty opening.

KARADI:	Antal Hantai spoke of me as a man enjoying general
	esteem; he eves called me a public figure, However,
	there are many kinds of public eminences. Some,
	like the light of the moon, gain their brilliance
	from the rays of power falling on them, and in this
	respect, let us recall, the old county sheriffs
	and educational councilors could also be described
	as public figures.

HORN:	(To Julia) And those today?

KARADI:	It is not this kind of eminence Antal Hantai was
	speaking of... in my case it would hardly fit...
	(laughter)

JULIA:	The pet! It's the old Karadi.

KARADI:	I "believe, however, that the other kind of eminence,
	created by the magic of the person's merit, isn't
	always worth much more than the former...

HOSP.DIRECTOR:	Listen to the old boy?

KARADI:	It is a hackneyed platitude, that we honor the
	dead rather than the living. But also society has
	its dead. People who have no opportunity to speak-
	their minds are Just as convenient, or even more so,
	to be garlanded with our sympathies, antipathies and
	fixed ideas woven into the wreath of general
	esteem, as those who are already dead. While these
	people remain in this state of suspended animation,
	there's nothing wrong with the general esteem. But
	once they begin to talk and express not our fixed
	ideas but their own opinions however plain and
	modest, then suddenly there is no general esteem,
	but all the more adjectives...

FORGACS: Heart Hear! (loud applause)

[page 80]

CIGAR SMOKER:	What was that?

MACSKASI:	Fergacs. He began to clap.

KARADI:	Just like power, as long as we say what it likes
	to hear, it is ready to adorn us with its
	stereo-typed decoration...
	
	(RIGID SILENCE)

HOSP.DIRECTOR:	His eyes have certainly been opened!

MUSEUM DIRECT.:	(Joyfully) He's certainly getting cheeky...

KARADI:	I'm coming to that in a minute. But this is part
	of it.

CIGAR SMOKER:	What was that?

PAT MAN:	Hantai told him to speak about his trip.

KARADI:	But what is a public eminence to do if he is com-
	pellet to speak? They drag him... pardon me...
	they invite him and ask him to report, although it
	is obvious that he knows nothing apart from the
	tone he uses. What is he to stick to if neither
	public eminence nor even 40 years of hard work can
	protect him from a single adjective waiting to be
	fired.

FAT MAN	(To people behind him) Forgacs is getting nervous!

KARADI:	I think he must stick to the facts. To the things
	he has. really witnessed. He must never let go the
	hand of naked truth.

COUKC.CHAIRM.:	Hear! Hear!

HANTAI:	This is realism?

KARADI:	Let's begin, then, by saying that after two days
	of travelling we arrived at the Kievskaya, that is
	 Kiev railway station... This station is
	approximately like the Eastern Station in Budapest. It was
	obviously built under the Czars; it is from here
	that the heroes of the classical novels must have
	set out to the Crimea. Whether it is cleaner or
	dirtier, I couldn't say. Perhaps a bit cleaner.

HORN:	I thought so!

[page 81]

KARADI:	The Hungarian interpreter hadn't shown up yet, our
	colleagues in the Russian language department had
	traveled as a separate group, and so one of our
	hosts tried to talk French to us. Whether his
	French was good? 1 couldn't answer that question.
	If he wasn't a French teacher it was surprisingly
	good, if he was, then it was rather poor...I
	cannot give you a reliable assessment of the
	knowledge of foreign languages in the Soviet Union
	even on the basis of later experiences. I'm sure
	the French bits in WAR AND PEACE could not be
	published without footnotes. On the other hand,
	I met English and French interpreters who had never
	been over the Soviet border and who spoke these
	languages perfectly. What is more, I even met a
	woman who spoke Hungarian. She spoke faultlessly,
	except that she palatalized everything. If I didn't
	know what mimicry can do I'd say their talent for
	languages is superior to ours, their knowledge of
	languages inferior to that of the old Russian
	intelligentsia. I am an old man, however, and not
	bold enough to draw conclusions from six or seven
	cases... But let's go on.

HORN:	High time, too.

KARADI:	From the station they took us to the Ukraine Hotel.
	The hotel is only a few steps from the station, still,
	they put us in automobiles. Perhaps because of
	our luggage; perhaps to impress us. I don't know.
	Cabs, by the way, are cheaper than in Budapest.
	Some many not like this, nevertheless, this is the
	case. Petrol is also cheaper. The drivers, when
	they have no passengers, seem to be reading books.
	Whether it is trash or classless, I wouldn't know.
	I picked one up, it was some kind of travelogue.
	Reading is very widespread in general. They come
	up the steps of the Metro reading. Why they read?
	To acquire culture? Or to kill time? Again,

[page 82]

	I wouldn't know.

MUSEUM DIRECT.:	He is backing both horses, is old Karadi.

KARADI:	(In a dry voice but more, and more passionately)
	The Hotel Ukraine is a skyscraper. We,
	school-teachers, were given rooms on the 26th floor.
	I am not an architect and I neither love nor hate
	skyscrapers. Some of my colleagues were enthralled
	when we entered the foyer. They were promptly
	disillusioned by our guide. He said that this
	kind of building, and especially the Leningrad
	Hotel, needed nothing more urgently than a
	three-ton bomb. (Laughter.) Of course this is an
	exaggeration. He merely wanted to indicate that
	they have outgrown this sort of thing. These
	skyscrapers were built 10 years age; then, he said,
	their self-respect required it. In my opinion the
	Ukraine Hotel fulfilled its task. Besides, today
	these high towers ?? part of the landscape. When
	we were walking on the bank of the Moskva - alone,
	if you please - they reminded me of Babylonian
	Ziggurats. The new buildings, however, are indeed
	in better taste. One evening they took us to Lenin
	are rows of seven-floor buildings along both sides
	with rows of eight to ten year old maple trees.
	It was all very effective in the are-lighting at
	least.

HORN:	He's pretending to be objective but trying to be
	flattering at the same time.

KARADI:	On the whole the hotel was populated with
	foreigner. Foreigners are placed in a few of these giant
	hives. Why not in town, scattered in small hotels,
	as in Paris? I wouldn't know. Let everyone answer
	this question according to his convictions. I won't
	say that in this way they are assured greater comfort,
	nor will I say that in this way it is easier to
	keep an eye on them.

[page 83]

JULIA:	He's talking very strangely. I hardly recognize
	him.

CIGAR SMOKER:	(Pushes the Fat Man aside to see better) Get over
	a bit, old chap.

KARADI:	The things that interested me at the Hotel Ukraine
	were quite different...For instance that there
	were only lifts, no staircase... Perhaps there was
	one, but we weren't permitted to use it.

FORGACS:	What if there's a fire?

KARADI:	It may be ridiculous, but, as a native of Kungos,
	I am a bit suspicious of lifts. Here we had a lift
	only in the apartment block, but that was mostly
	standing still.

HANTAI:	Except when it fell down the shaft.

KARADI:	However, the lifts in the Ukraine worked; the slow
	one that took the British to the more elegant
	floors, and the express lift that took us, teachers,
	to the 26th floor. And though for the first two
	days I didn't feel very comfortable stepping into
	it, toward the end I almost delighted in my
	defeated resistance. I noticed that other foreign
	colleagues felt the same way, they went back up
	even when it wasn't absolutely necessary, for a
	book, a handkerchief... Later it was as a geography
	teacher that I began to feel uncomfortable. In the
	hall, in the dining room, there were people of
	different color at every table, at the table next
	to ours, for instance, a very dignified and
	soot-black Negro, he should have been at least the King
	of Senegalia. Others may have had different ideas
	seeing all these foreigners: 10, the new Home?
	Hadrian's forum must have been such a medley of
	blond Anglo-Saxons and black Ethiopians. Or some
	may have thought like some of my listeners here:
	this is where they fill the mines that will blow
	up the whole world, with borshch and shchi...
	(Murmurs in the audience. The nervous chess
	player looks up too)

[page 84]

HOSP. DIRECT.:	This is beginning to be a little odd!

KARADI:	Don't be afraid. I didn't think anything of the
	kind. Or, to be more exact, I know that it was
	possible to think such thoughts (more and more
	excited). For after all, these thoughts can be
	bought ready-made in every... I was going to say
	toy-shop, for indeed, as long as they are wound
	up, one can run round in them like on
	the rails of a children's railway. However,
	I don't like this sort of toy. And if I have to
	be a child, I'd rather be one in my own way. This
	is one of the reasons why it was a pity - to invite
	me here, for instance. I am a plain geography
	teacher. However improbable it sounds, it made me
	feel bad that I didn't know the different races
	of man. I thought one curly-headed young man was
	a Dravidian and it turned out that they had a
	were guessing, I said he was an Indonesian, turned
	out to be a Ni...well, he wasn't an Asian, but an
	African, Ni...mi...

HOSP.DIRECT.: What's up? Can't he pronounce it?

HORN:(To Julia) Perhaps he Means Nigerian.
	(EVERYONE RISES, even the nervous chess player)

HANTAI: Some water, Uncle Jozsi...

COUNC.CHAIRM.: He's not well, let him lie down.

FORGACS: Calls into other room) Is there a doctor here?
	(Horm, Hospital Director hurry out)

JULIA:(Takes cigar smoker's hand) Can you see? Is he dead?...
	I'll die if I lose him!

CIGAR SMOKER: He isn't dead! He's sitting on the divan!

FORGACS: (To Hantai) Call the ambulance...And they say there is
	no enemy... His reactionary friends, they got him
	into this condition!

MACSKASI: (From the other room) What's the matter, old man?
	Those journalists, isn't it?

[page 85]

JULIA:	(To cigar smoker) Are you telling me the truth? He isn't
	dead?

CIGAR SMOKER:	He isn't even unconscious, I tell you!
	(Horn returns)

HORN:	Well, they don't need an ophthalmic surgeon anyway?
	The hospital director took command.

HOSP. DIBECT.:	(Calls in) Is the ambulance coming?

HANTAI:	There's no answer.

HOSP. DIRECT.:	Call my hospital. Tell them to prepare a bed
	in a double room.

JULIA:	(Holding onto hospital director) What's happened?

HOSP.DIRECT.:	Perhaps it's only his circulation...

CIGAR SMOKER:	That's their pet-name for a small-scale brain
	haemorrhage nowadays.

JULIA:	(sadly) Will he recover? (Pulling Horn to the front of
	the stage) Perhaps it is better so. He said
	such blood-curdling things...

HORN:	Yes, as if conscience had added a word to a
	stereotyped report.

JULIA:	In the past they would have said that God had taken
	a hand.

HORN:	Even in this new world we cannot know, dear Julia,
	how biological processes, such as for instance the
	rupture of an artery, and the forces ruling the
	world, law, ethics, or, if you prefer it, God's
	punishing hand... hang together.

[page 86]

Act IV.

(Narrow double room in Hospital; at the end, door to the corridor.
Right and left beds and bedside tables, between them a narrow
passage toward front of the stage. To one side of the door coat-rack,
to the other small table with medicine bottles, and chair. The
two patients, Karadi and the chicken-farmer sit on their beds
facing each other, each in his striped hospital gown and slippers,
talking.)

PATIENT:	I always thought I'd have a stroke, for ever since she
	left I've had high blood pressure, and you see, it'
	thrombosis. I've been here two months.

KARADI:	With me it was the other way round: we always thought
	there would be trouble with my heart and now I've got a
	stroke. On one side for the time being.

PATIENT:	Do you know what's worst of all? That I've got thrombosis
	and she living in her element and still, it's me that has
	the conscience. I lie here, looking up at the ceiling
	and I can almost see it written down: if you had taken
	her to the cinema more often... if you had bought that
	television set, even on loan...

KARADI:	Well, that's how things are. Only those who have a
	conscience can feel its pangs. Ever since I got a bit
	better I too have been thinking... perhaps I shouldn't
	have taken it on the thing that caused all this trouble.
	Perhaps, though I never thought of it consciously. I
	expected that things would improve a bit. Or perhaps
	I just felt flattered. Anyway now I've got my reward
	for being so hasty.

PATIENT:	Is yours family trouble too, buddy?

KARADI:	Mine? No, my wife is an old woman. If we run away
	from each other it will be into the grave.

PATIENT:	It's the job, then. You see, I was lucky with my job.
	As I told you, I am a chicken-breeder on a state-farm.
	It's good work; you're on your own, the only one who
	understands the incubator. Even the overseer says:
	"Leave old Sulle alone"... No, I had no trouble with
	my job until they sent her to me, she was still a young
	girl, they wanted me to teach her. The idea was we'ld

[page 87]

	form a brigade ... You had trouble with your boss,
	hadn't you?

KARADI:	Me? No. I went on a trip. :

PATIENT:	A trip? (suspiciously) But not across the border,
	buddy, or did you?

KARADI:	(surprised) Yes. Across the border.

PATIENT:	And... you had to come back...

KARADI:	Yes, I did. I wish I hadn't. Or that I hadn't
	gone at all...After all, why shouldn't I have
	gone? Has a man no right? To go some place where
	he might see something? You see, I don't even know
	anymore whom to blame, what to blame.

PATIENT:	Well, these trips, you know... pretty dangerous
	they are... But think how much worse it could have

KARADI:	Worse? How?

PATIENT:	Well if you'd stepped on a mine and lost a leg.

KARADI:	A mine? Of course. Though I don't know whether I
	haven't lost more. In any case, you are right.
	Compared with what mankind suffers, my 1ittle
	stroke...that little ring of death's bell shouldn't
	frighten anyone.
	(Nurse pokes her head in)

NURSE:	Uncle Karadi, I've brought you a little medicine.

KARADI:	Arm or bottom?

NURSE:	No, a well-tried home-concoction. But don't tell
	the doctor, will you? (She brings in Mrs. Karadi.)

Mrs. KARADI:.	(Looks first at other patient) Good Heavens! Jozsi!
	(She begins to sniff quietly.)

KARADI:	(His chin trembles too, while he kisses her) And
	you?

Mrs. KARADI:	(Holds out a jar of stewed fruit) The Nurse let
	me bring it in myself, so I could see you with my 
	own eyes.

PATIENT:	Oh, he's quite well, Uncle Karadi. He'll be out
	before me though I've been here two months last
	Friday.

[page 88]

Mrs. KARADI:	Can you speak? They said you'd lost your speech. ..
PATIENT:	Can he speak! We've been complaining to each
	other for the last hour... Say something, mate,
	so your wife can hear you...
KARADI:	What do you want me to say? I've still a little
	difficulty in speaking. But don't worry, I can
	even quarrel...

Mrs. KARADI:	That's what I want to hear! you, quarrelling like
	a dove! Let me look at your face. (Turns him
	toward the light) It seems to be smoother here,
	around your mouth. Move it a bit...

KARADI:	(Moves his mouth left and right, the right
	movement is a little shorter) Do you want me to
	whistle? The way the doctors make me?

Mrs. KARADI:	It's still a little distorted.... I wish I could
	take a picture of it before it is quite gone...
KARADI:	Do you want to keep it in your album?

Mrs. KARADI:	Only because people talk so much. There are those
	who said that you haven't really lost your speech.

KARADI: That I just played dumb.

Mrs. KARADI:	They said all sorts of things to poor ,innocent me.
	They said you got seared of where all this would
	land you and that's why you dried up...

KARADI:	Yes?...And what else are they saying?

Mrs. KARADI:	Why should I bother you with it? I was like a
	madwoman! The Nurse said: You can go in, Aunty
	Karadi, but don't say anything to excite him. By
	the way, Macskasi asked me to tell you, I met him
	in front of the Town Hall, "Tell Jozsi, not to give
	a damn - pardon me, but that's what he said -
	everything will torn cut right. Now people are sorry for
	him. This sickness and the other article have
	turned the tide."

KARADI:	What other article?

Mrs. KARADI:	You see, it slipped out. A tiny little one in the
	"Monday". - "Better late..." A commentary on the
	one published in the "Morning Post". A little

[page 89]

	heckling. Bandi says it If better that it's been
	published. He was wondering himself for a while
	what they may have promised that Karadi! But now
	everyone can see that you are innocent.

KABADI:	(rises and takes a couple of excited steps but
	cannot get but of the corridor between the "beds.
	The patient rises and stands at the foot of the
	bed. Now Karadi can pass.)

Mrs. KARADI:	What are you jumping about for, dear? I hope I've
	said nothing to excite you! I told you, everything
	is perfectly in order. (To the patient) Oh dear
	I hope he hasn't lost his power of speech again!

PATIENT:	Of course he hasn't! Speak up, mate! Don't
	frighten her!

KARADI:	What shall I say? That I am jumping about for
	joy? (Kindly) I am very glad that everything is
	now in order, my dear. It's nice to think that I
	am pitied rather than loathed.

Mrs. KARADI:	They pity you, indeed they do, my love. But why
	am I talking about all this when there's good news
	from home?

KARADI:	Good news? Don't tell me or I'll really have a
	stroke!

Mrs. KARADI:	Pityu is getting a job, it seems. A decent job
	fit for a gentleman. They say he can count on it
	as if he already had it.

KARADI:	I know. This is indeed good news! That's what
	gave me a stroke yesterday... I mean my joy!

Mrs. KARADI:	But how do you know? Did they tell you?

KARADI:	Yes. Yesterday. Before the lecture.

Mrs. KARADI:	Before the lecture? But Pityu...

KARADI:	I heard it from Forgacs.

Mrs. KARADI:	That was something else, darling.

KARADI:	That Margit went to see him? And that Pityu gets
	a new job? Assuming his principles allow him to
	accept it.

Mrs. KARIDI:	But that wasn't a good job. Assistant book-keeper,
	or something. And Pityu did not accept it.

[page 90]

KARADI:	His intransigent heart didn't let him!

Mrs. KARADI:	But imagine what God did. As Forgacs was going
	away he brought me the news... (Karadi gestures)
	He was very kind and considerate. He even put his
	arm around me because I cried. "We shall cure
	Comrade Karadi completely. If it is necessary we
	shall send him to the Kekes Mountain..." Only the
	job wasn't what Pityu wanted...

KARADI:	And God?

Mrs. KARADI:	What do you mean, God?

KARADI:	Well didn't you says imagine what God did?

Mrs. KARADI:	Of course. Well, he ran into your former student
	and his friend, that Mircsa or Mircse.

KARADI:	But isn't he somewhere in Transdanubia?

Mrs. KARADI:	He was here visiting his parents. Just like the
	time when he intervened for Pityu. As if it were
	God's will... I know you don't like me to say that.

KARADI:	Go on, say it. That's the least upsetting of the
	things you say...

Mrs. KARADI:	By them they knew what had happened and they began
	questioning him. First about you, than about
	himself.

KARADI:	Well, and what did they promise you in exchange
	for my stroke?

Mrs. KARADI:	That other one, imagine, he is personnel officer
	at the Watch Factory...

KARADI:	And seeing that hie father-in-law had made a
	statement in the "Morning Post"...

Mrs. KARADI:	Yes, he said that was very good... if they should
	ever call him to account...

KARADI:	Of course. And what job is he getting?

Mrs. KARADI:	He'll be a dispatcher.

KARADI:	Dispatcher?

Mrs. KARADI:	Margit doesn't know either what it means. But Pityu
	is pleased. Especially because he got it like that,
	without pull...

KARADI:	He came out of it with his honor unblemished.

[page 91]

Mrs. KARADI:	Yes, he said it was a good idea to show some back-
	bone. The Communists respect one for it.
	(Outside: telephone. The Nurse calls in)

NURSE:	You are still here, Mrs. Karadi? I told yon: five
	minutes only! And you Uncle Karadi, why are you.
	standing there? Has she said something to excite
	you?

Mrs. KARADI:	Oh, no, I haven't, have I, dear?

KARADI:	She did nothing, poor soul, but reassure me. Can't
	you see how calm I am?

NURSE:	(Pushing Mrs. Karadi toward the dorr) All right,
	all right! All we need now is for the house-doctor
	to find you here. There's a sign on the door: No
	visits! He just telephoned that they were coming
	up.

KARADI:	(getting ready) Some sort of injection?

NURSE:	He's bringing a friend up to see Uncle Karadi.
	(Exit.)

PATIENT:	In that case I'll take a walk in the corridor.

KARADI:	Why? You stay where you are. I have no secrets.

PATIENT:	But I'm only half-cured. A few more people to
	reassure you... and I'm finished. (Shuffles out,
	stepping out of his slipper.) 
	(A white-clad arm opens the door, pushes Mirese
	forward but the owner of the arm remains outside)

HOUSEMAN:	(voice) Then I'll leave our patient in your care,
	Zoli. I'll let you know when the old man comes
	from the director's office.

MIRCSE:	Thank you very much, Arpad. If we shouldn't meet...
	(he shakes the hand reaching in through the door.
	He hastens to Karadi's side and makes to embrace
	him, but sees something in the old man's face
	which prevents him, so they only shake hands) My
	dear Uncle Karadi! I hope I may call you that!

KARADI:	We have just talked about you, young man.

MIRCSE:	About me? With whom?

KARADI:	Hmmm. With my wife. But let's forget about her.

[page 92]

She was smuggled in by the nurse.

MIRCSE:	I was smuggled in as well. In spite of the warning on
	the door!

KARADI:	Yes, but that was the house-man!

MIRCSE:	(laughs) I can see that you find your way about in our
	world...with your local knowledge acquired in the old...
	But you're sure, we're not being a nuisance two in a
	row?

KARADI:	On the contrary. It will help me. The second will
	help me to get rid, of what got stuck in my throat
	during the first.

MIRCSE:	Fine, that's what I am here for.

KARADI:	I hear you got some sort of a job for my son-in-law,
	young man...

MIRCSE:	That isn't worth talking about. Besides, it wasn't me
	but a friend of mine whom he met by accident while with
	me.

KARADI:	Don't protest: I have no intention of thanking you for
	it. I only want to warn you. I am human waste and
	there is no point in doing me favors.

MIRCSE:	Uncle Jozsi!

KARADI:	And in addition, a stubborn, ungrateful person who
	refuses to show gratitude for anything, henceforth.
	Neither for my son-in-law's job, nor for the adjectives
	in the "Morning Post", and not even for the steak I had
	on the TU 104...

MIRCSE:	I think I understand ... But perhaps it's right to have
	that warning on the door if you are in such a state,

KARADI:	Go on, say it!

MIRCSE:	That you can't differentiate... but let's leave it...

KARADI:	Between what you did for me, and between what they
	obliged me with now?

MIRCSE:	Let's not talk about it.

KARADI:	But why not? Then you did it selflessly, out of pity
	for the old Professor; at personal risk. And I am
	grateful for it. But now I must ask you, as a student

[page 93]

	and a Party functionary, not to do anything out of pity...
	neither for me nor for my daughter... nor any descendant
	of mine.

MIRCSE:	Is sympathy an offense too?

KARADI:	It is at least suspicions... besides, I don't deserve it.

MIRCSE:	You, Professor?

KABADI:	I think the things that happened to me were absolutely
	logical. I got exactly what I deserved. The contempt
	of my fellow-citizens as well as your treatment.

MIRCSE:	How can you say such a thing?

KARADI:	I wasn't horn yesterday. I should have known the
	purpose of such a trip. It's useless for me to try to hide
	behind the curiosity of a geography teachers such
	travelers' reports have their ready-made framework. Did
	you read the "Morning Post"?

MIRCSE:	Yes. I could separate almost word for word what you
	said, Professor, from the... what was ready-made in it.

KARADI:	I could have saved myself the whole thing. All I'd
	have had to say was that I was old, that I wouldn't go.
	But some devil in me said: go, see for yourself. And
	another devil, whispering: perhaps it will help.

MIRCSE:	Those devils were right. I don't see at all why you
	shouldn't have gone... you of all people. And why
	should it put you under obligations that you went?

KARADI:	Don't you see? It obliges me to remain silent when
	there's something I don't like... don't like the least
	little bit...

MIRCSE:	Well, yes. There are certain rules of behavior. But
	we've always had such rules. And if honor begins by
	running our head against them...

KARADI:	Then to hell with honor.

MIRCSE:	Besides, this, is something everyone expects someone
	else to do. Uncle Jozsi, I've been going around since
	yesterday like a private detective. I talked to
	everyone. Forgacs, Hantai, Zsizsik, your son-in-law. So I
	know a great deal more than the victim. That's why I
	broke in here. To explain...

[page 94]

KARADI:	...that this is nothing, that there's no point in paying
	too much attention to it. All that has happened is that
	I've been shifted from the vertebrates into the molluscs.
	Thank you for taking so much trouble. Do you know who
	could help me, at least a little? Someone who could
	unroll his magic carpet and whisk me away from here
	somewhere where nothing is known about me... not even
	that I visited the Soviet Union...

MIRCSE:	Perhaps I can say something about that magic carpet as
	well... But first explain to me where this...not the
	indignation, that is justified...but where this infinite
	bitterness comes from. Who should know if not you
	Professor Karadi, that all this dirty rainwater will run
	down and the rock will gleam all the purer afterward.

KARADI:	Perhaps I was spoiled. True, they sacked me, and wrote
	a couple of offensive articles, but fundamentally, I 
	was spoiled. I believed that my character was my own;
	nobody could take that from me. I thought that even my
	enemies recognized that when, they were alone in their
	den.

MIRGSE:	You were right. I can confirm that.

KARADI:	And then I climb into a wide-gauge railway and all this
	is finished... They tear at my alleged property as if
	it were a rag, puppies sharpen their teeth on it...

MIRCSE:	Let's wait for the end.

KARADI:	And perhaps it is not only in their eyes that this
	character doesn't exist... perhaps it really doesn't!...
	For why did I have to get into the train? And why do
	I think that if, in the eyes of my friends, I turned
	into a venal scoundrel who is no longer worth listening
	to because of what he says but only to guess why he says
	it; and if you, excuse me, Forgacs and the others treat
	me like a soul asking for its price... why shouldn't they
	be right? 

MIRCSE:	This is, really ridiculous! That at the end of the game
	the victim should justify his tormentors!

KARADI:	Do you know what I was thinking about last night, after

[page 95]

	that red fog had passed from my brain?... Whether I was
	a reactionary or not?

MIROSE:	How could you have been one? I attended your history
	classes for four years.

KARADI:	Wait a moment... I said what I did about Hajnoczi and
	perhaps even Tancsis... But at the same time I was good
	friends with, Bandi Macskasi.

MIRCSE:	Uncle Bandi! (laughs) I had to stop him from becoming a
	renegade. He wanted to quit reaction!

KARADI:	I laughed at him, sometimes I put him right. But never
	really seriously. As if one had to leave him his
	misconceptions so that he should be able to live, somehow,
	even without his lost hunting license...And the others!
	Even if I thought differently, I was somehow tied down
	to them...

MIRCSE:	By your loneliness... But you made up for it with your
	lectures... for yourself as well as for us...

KARADI:	My lectures!... It was because of them I was suspended!
	...And perhaps they were right there too...

MIRCSE:	We, your students, know better. I was already at the
	Gyorffy-College at the time, but I questioned the kids.
	For although that was the time when the fever of the
	neophyte burned hottest in me, I had to know everything
	that happened to Professor Karadi. Looking back on it
	I can see quite clearly: the whole thing was due to
	jealousy.

KARADI:	You mean Kovi?

MIRCSE:	He wanted to be the most popular professor. But how
	could he have stood comparisons?... As an ambitious man
	 he immediately followed the right course...

KARADI:	He is in Australia, I hear...poor fellow...

MIRCSE:	But all this is unimportant. Except that it deprived
	those coming after us of what we still enjoyed.

KARADI:	They were in no position to explain to each other my
	alleged hints.

MIRCSE:	Do you know what those alleged hints gave me? If you
	mean your philosophical remarks...

[page 96]

KARADI:	You mean as a politician?

MIRCSE:	I mean as a Communist.

KARADI:	Careful, you are exaggerating your consolation... It
	was mice that, as an old man, I could give vent to my
	complaints...

MIRCSE:	At first, when my faith was new and superficial, I too
	thought, of course, that Professor Karadi was a good,
	intelligent man, but...

KARADI:	...They shaped his head a long time ago.

MIRCSE:	Yes, But then, when it became more and more difficult
	to be a Communist, not only because of the country, but
	because of the comrades, the shocking injustices, then
	suddenly I recalled Professor Karadi's teaching. What
	difficult material history is, what toughness, almost
	fanaticism it requires to mould it. No sooner have you
	cut one head off the monster than another grows in its
	place. And it needs tremendous force, the constant
	heroic heartbeat of many people, to prevent the level
	from sinking. And how much more force if we want to
	push up that giant mass, the nation, as if by hydraulic
	force!

KARADI:	But this is the very thing for which I was suspended!
	That I deflate... in an underhand manner - that's what
	hurts me most - the optimism of youth...

MIRCSE:	It was these sayings that kept my optimism afloat. For
	instance what you said about CREDIT. Szechenyi
	proclaimed it as a sacred idea and what became of it by
	the end of the century? And that capitalism was
	necessary. We have to take large historical steps even if
	the foot does not reach quite as far as the intention.

KARADI:	If I hadn't said that I could have taught for another
	ten years.

MIRCSE:	I, on the other hand, In fifty-six, who knows... (stops
	short)

KARADI:	So you think I wasn't such a reactionary worm, after
	all?

MIRCSE:	I owe you the greatest thing on earth, Professor: my

[page 97]

	double insurance. Most of us have just one belt round
	our waists by which we hang suspended from the power.
	Around my waist there is a second one by which the
	people sends me up like a mountain climber into the
	world of action to investigate its possibilities.

KARADI:	Well, if this is true...and even if it isn't quite true
	...it was very nice to listen to. Nobody can be given
	a greater gift on earth than another man who understands
	his motives. Since we have lost God...

MIRCSE:	But we have met since then. Not very often, true. But
	every time you gave me a word or other...

KARADI:	For instance? I've become insatiable now.

MIRCSE:	For instance what you said around the time you were
	suspended. Not about that, of course. About the
	injustice of great historical periods in general. That
	the French Revolution executed Lavoisier, and still,
	both the French Revolution and Lavoisier were great.

KARADI:	I didn't mean to say, of course, that we should now go
	ahead and execute all the Lavoisiers!

MIRCSE:	What I deduced from it, however, was that we must judge
	great movements in their entirety. And if I do what I
	do with real faith, there will always be an excuse for
	me in Professor Karadi's heart, in spite of his own
	grief.

KARADI:	Well, it was very nice of you to tell me all this. But
	now you are going away, aren't you?

MIRCSE:	It's because of this I stayed over until noon.

KARADI:	Yet how nice it would have been, had you sometimes
	greeted me in front of the Cafe Szarvas. And I could
	have sensed that double insurance in the way you waved
	 your hat. But now? People may great me in the street
	...but you know, the worst thing of all is that, in the
	condition I am in, one's senses react too sharply to
	what people think of one. As if every forehead were a
	television screen and on it Karadi, a hundred Karadis,
	the sly, the idiot, the trapped: depending, on what
	they think of me. No, I tell you, that magic carpet

[page 98]

	would still be the best solution. If I could talk to
	the natives like a poor, old, indifferent foreigner. A
	village, for instance, in the mountains above Florence...
	If I'm wishing for something anyway, why not wish for
	something really good. Of course there would have to
	be a purse on that magic carpet as well. Not a large
	one, just enough for a dish of spaghetti a day...

MIRCSE:	If you really mean it, Professor, I have such a carpet.

KARADI:	What?

MIRCSE:	My own selfish interest. It wouldn't fly you to the
	banks of the Arno, of course... you see I even know
	what river flows through Florence... but to the shores
	of the Raba. And I could even put a small purse on
	that carpet.

KARADI:	What generosity!

MIRCSE:	We discovered some graves there. You know, probably,
	that there was also an older burial ground there...

KARADI:	Of course. From the Slav-Avar age.

MIRCSE:	Well, I thought we might set up a small local historical
	museum.

KARADI:	And you would exhibit me in it as well.

MIRCSE:	You could write the captions...

KARADI:	The way I wrote that article in the "Morning Post".

MIRCSE:	And deliver a few lectures.

KARADI:	Lectures, of course. Now, that I've been to the Soviet
	Union, they would even allow me to lecture.

MIRCSE:	Not because you've been there but because they would
	believe me and convince themselves what they had won
	in you, Professor.

KARADI:	The functionaries?

MIRCSE:	My friends. You can't imagine what a delightful lot of
	people have assembled there. Perhaps because it is a
	Council, formerly a gardener on a large estate, is mad
	about plants, the Committee Secretary...
	(The door opens, two orderlies enter with a portable
	chair)

[page 99]

I.ORDERLY:	We've come to fetch Comrade Karadi.

KARADI:	With, this throne?

I.ORDERLY:	We have to take you for X-ray and EEG.

KARADI:	Can't I use my own two legs?

I.ORDERLY:	Our orders are to take you in the chair.

II.ORDERLY:	(the ruder of the two) Do you think we tote people
	around for our own amusement?

KARADI:	But I have a guest now.

MIRCSE:	Shush... You take that chair. The guest has another
	half hour. (To orderlies) Will you be through by
	then? 

II.ORDERLY:	The comrade knows what X-rays are and the EEG, you
	can figure it out for yourself.

I.ORDERLY:	If they send a chair for him, they'll probably take
	him right away.

KARADI:	(looking at Mircse) You see, this, too, because I
	was out there.

MIRCSE:	Never mind. We shan't pat it into your curriculum
	vitae. (They take Karadi away. Mircse sits down
	on one of the beds. Patient steals in, looks
	anxiously at Mircse, then begins to rummage under
	his pillow.)

MIRCSE:	Excuse me, am I sitting on your bed? (Rises)

PATIENT:	That's all right, I just want my handkerchief.
	(He takes notecase from under pillow and looks into
	it, turning away)

MIROSE:	You found it?

PATIENT:	(scared) What?

MIRCSE:	Your handkerchief! (Patient sticks his nose into
	his notecase and blows)

MIROSE:	Had you met Professor Karadi before, comrade?

PATIENT:	Professor? I thought he was in animal husbandry.
	When I said I raised chickens...

MIROSE:	He said so did he... Do you know how I envy you?

PATIENT:	Me? Why?

MIRCSE:	Because you can spend the whole day with him.
	Listening to him.

[page 100]

PATIENT:	(suspiciously) I'm not listening to him! I'm not
	curious!

MIRCSE:	Yet, it would be worth your while...

PATIENT:	(scared stiff) Indeed...Pardon me...just a moment...
	(Hospital director ushers in Council Chairman. The
	patient draws back into a corner, then steals out.)

HOSP.DIR.:	This is it... We gave him the quietest room. There's
	only one other patient in it- a coronary case.

COUNC.CHAIRM:	(Introducing himself to Mircse) Pal Nagy... what
	the hell:... Mircse! Since when do you have
	coronary thrombosis?

MIIRSE:	I'm only going to have it, Uncle Pal.

HOSP.DIR.:	(Who does not know his patients) You two know ,
	each other? But why are you dressed? Have you
	been given your walking papers?

MISCSE:	Sorry, I am not a patient. Neither am I a
	detective.

HOSP.DIR.:	Detective? 

MIRCSE:	Now that you're caught me redhanded: I was smuggled
	in by persons unknown to see Professor Karadi.

COUNC.CHAIRM:	Zoltan Mircse...member of the Party Committee...in
	comity Rabauj.

MIRCSE:	I must ask you to forgive me for breaking in here...
	But I thought that perhaps I too could give our
	patient an injection.

HOSP.DIR.:	Are you also a colleague?

MIRCSE:	No, God gorbid! Or rather, unfortunately. I meant
	a psychological injection.

COUNC.CHAIRM:	And the poor patient? Where did you put him?

HOSP.DIR.:	Indeed, where is the patient?

MIRCSE:	They took him down to the X-ray department.

HOSP.DIR.:	X-ray? Who gave him permission to go down?

MIRCSE:	He didn't go. They carried him.

HOSP.DIR.:	Excuse me, I must look into this...

COUNC.CHAIRM:	Leave him be... I only wanted to see him a minute...

ORDERLY:	(enters) Comrade Director, you are wanted at the

[page 101]

H0SP.DIRECT.:	The deputy minister... I must leave you... I'm really
	sorry...

COUNC.CHAIRM:	Go ahead... let's stick to the protocol. (Looks at
	Mircse) At least I can talk to you for a while.
	(Director exits)

MIRCSE:	I'm glad we met

CONC.CHAIRM:	How is your poor mother?

MIRCSE:	Thank you. She died.

COUNC.CHAIRM:	Oh... and the others?

MIRCSE:	They are all right too. But it's about Professor
	Karadi that I'd like talk to you.

COUNC.CHAIRM:	A strange case, isn't it?... That he should have a
	stroke while reporting on his trip ... Painful, that...

MIRCSE:	Execrable manners. He should have waited till he got
	home.

COUNC.CHAIRM:	(Laughs) Well, yes, that would have been more political...

MYRCSE:	Or even a couple of days... Then it could have been
	completely...

COUNC.CHAIRM:	(Smiles, then seriously) I see this thing is worrying
	you too. That's why I came. Something seemed to drive
	me. We are alone here, so I can tell you: It is my
	impression that Comrade Forgacs made a mistake here.

MISCSE:	Mistake? We are giving it a beautiful name.

COUNC.CHAIRM:	Quiet now. You are still young. Zoli, hotheaded.
	Although in this case... I said so to Forgacs: Comrade
	Porgacs, I said, I don't like results that are too
	beautiful...

MIRCSE:	Well, this was indeed a beautiful result!

COUNC.CHAIRM:	I told him, because that Julia Pakozdi held us back
	with her black coffee. I said, Comrade Forgacs, is the
	old man all right? Haven't you overdone this business?

MIRCSE:	They ever did it, indeed. And I believe it would be
	worthwhile submitting this overdoing to a little
	Marxist analysis.

COUNC.CHAIRM:	You may be right.

MIRCSE:	Or simply examining it in the light of socialist (he
	stresses the word ironically) tactics. Por what has
	happened, Uncle Pali? The foremost teacher of Kungos,
	(at the chairman's gesture) all right, let's say the
	most scholarly.

[page 102]

COUNC.CHAIRM:	The old man will never really, be our man.

MIROSE:	...Because he got his education from books? And not
	from the working class movement or the Party school.
	I knew that too. But that's not what we are talking
	about. This first class teacher... yes, yes, I was
	his student... whom we kicked out when an over- 
	ambitious colleague denounced him, undertook this
	study trip to the Soviet Union

COUNC.CHAIRM:	That's true, Undeniably.

MIRCSE:	That in itself would have been enough. It was obvious
	to Kungos that whatever had happened to him, Professor
	Karadi harbored no resentment against the regime.
	And that he found it worth-While to take a look at what
	was going on there.

COUNC. CHAIRM:	Worth-while! I should say so! That farm exhibition,
	for instance the Georgian and Armenian pavilions...

MIRCSE:	Then he came home. As he is an honest and truthful man
	it was obvious that he would tell no lies the detriment
	of the Soviet Union. On the contrary: he would
	appreciate more than anyone what has been accomplished
	there. And because he is a decent, person, he is always
	glad when he sees something good...

COUNC..CHAIRM:	And there he did indeed.

MIRCSE:	And precisely therefore, it would have been enough
	for us, if as if from a hidden well, the good news
	had begun to trickle from him and penetrated a little...
	of the sand we have to work in...

COUNC.CHAIRM:	Hold your horses, son! There's a lot of positive public
	opinion today!

MIRCSE:	And he would have enriched it. We, however, are not
	 satisfied with a small, active source. We want right
	away a whole cistern, a whole lake ... a sea of negatives ...

COUNC.CHAIRM:	That's what I'm warning you against, you hotheads...

MIRCSE:	If someone is converted, comes ever to our side, finds
	out the truth, even then it's tactless to rub it in.
	It is also impractical because we make him look like a
	weather-cook. It is we who make people suspect that
	 there is a weakness of character behind the opinions
	that are favorable to us.

[page 103]

COUNC.CHAIRM:	Quite right. We must praise his new ideas. That's
	what I always do.

MIRCSE:	However, in Professor Karadi's case there is no question
	of this. A man of sixty three will not undo the
	tissues of his brain. He couldn't, not even if he
	tried. What is happening here is that we are trying to
	show him up, now from this side, now from that.

COUNC.CHAIRM:	Look here, Mosoow, you know, that might turn even an
	old man around!

MIRCSE:	In that case what do you think of this, Uncle Pali?
	(He pulls out the Monday)

COUNC.CHAIRM:	The Monday? Well, you see that's something even I
	can't understand.

MIRCSE:	After introducing him triumphantly as a convert they
	proceed immediately, to make fun of him in their other
	paper. In order that there should be no misunderstanding!
	as to the meaning of the comedy and our part in it...

COUNC.CHAIRM:	Forgacs says it's the membership. He says they had
	to be reassured. We were here, fighting, in the most
	difficult years -they say -- and then this' Karadi
	arrives and reaps all the praise.

MIRCSE:	Praise? A stroke.

COUNC.CHAIRM:	Look, there must have been some damned unfortunate
	slip-up here. Forgacs telephoned to have it taken out
	of the paper, but some typist... But perhaps it's
	just as well... It makes the whole thing less serious.
	If the old man's illness were really, grave, they
	wouldn't write about him like this...

MIRCSE:	Perhaps we should go along with the reactionaries
	and say what they're sayings that the old man is only
	pretending to have lost his-power of speech to get
	out of a fix. Perhaps we should indoctrinate the
	doctors too, to say just that!

COUNC.CHAIRM:	New don't lose your head, boy. Let's behave like good
	Party men. (Bursts out) Why are you attacking me, damn
	it all? Did I arrange this whole business? You see I
	am here. To make good the mistake. But we have to be
	careful with this Forgacs. Up there, he is the stronger.

[page 104]

MIRCSE:	But only because you handle him with care, Uncle Pali...
	Perhaps there is someone "up there" who, if you had the
	courage to tell him the truth, would agree with you!

COUC.CHAIRM:	Our voice doesn't reach up there. Middle cadres, you
	know...

MIRCSE:	So are we Middle cadres! The question is, who is right.
	If I didn't believe we were I'd walk out of the whole
	 thing today!

COUNC.CHAIRM:	Idealism. That's what we need most.

MIRCSE:	What do you think, Uncle Pali, are there so many Karadis
	in the whole country that we can afford to make a
	present of him to the reactionaries? (Karadi enters
	quietly) All right, the old man has a stroke. Then
	a second and a third. But what do you think, who will
	own his memory? Even if they abuse him today? (Council
	Chairman not ices Karadi, pulls Mircse's sleeve)

KARADI:	I'm back...

MIRCSE:	Not in the chair? 

KARADI:	The chair bearers have disappeared, perhaps they went
	out for a smoke. And I prefer to walk on my own feat.

MIRCSE:	Down in a. chair, up on foot. There must be some method
	in this madness. In the meantime there are no patients
	left here, only guests.

KARADI:	(to Council Chairman) Is it indeed me you've come to
	visit?

COUNC.CHAIRM:	Only for a minute, Comrade Karadi. First of all, to
	express my joy.

KARADI:	About my stroke?

COUNC.CHAIRM:	That even its traces have so quickly disappeared.
	Besides, it wasn't a stroke at all, as I heard, only
	an artery crisis. My poor Aunt Borka had seven of
	them -- and they weren't artery crises-- and even
	after the last one she dragged on for two years...
	But I don't intend to behave like a quack... I'd like
	to tell you how sorry I am if, in their exaggerated
	zeal, the comrades may have, perhaps...

KARDI:	Forget it, Comrade Council Chairman.
[page 105]

COUNC.CHAIRM:	Good. It will be enough if you will let me shake your
	hand as a Hungarian, and, if I may say so, socialist
	brother. And when you. are completely recovered and
	I hope that'll be soon, and you are hankering for some
	work that really to your taste, please come and see
	me. The council of Kungos knows what it owes Professor
	Karadi.

MIRCSE:	You are too late with your offer. Professor Karadi
	and I have agreed...

KARADI:	Forget about that too, son...

MIRCSE:	But I have your word, Uncle Karadi. We want to open
	a Museum at Rabaujlak, that's where we want you as
	director.

COUNC.CHAIRM:	Blast it, man! Are you a kidnapper? Now that we have
	at last discovered him you want to take him away from
	US?

MIRCSE:	If Kungos has another Karadi, you'd better discover him
	not in forty or fifty... but let's say in twenty years...

COUNC.CHAIRM:	And yet, we thought of the same thing here... the
	Museum.

KARADI:	Thank you. You don't have to raise your bets. I'm
	staying... gratis.
MIRCSE:	What's that? Have you changed your mind, Uncle Jessi?

KARADI:	You must forgive me. I wish you and your colleagues,
	if there are any, at Rabaujlak all the best. Keep up
	your efforts for the nation...It's good to know that
	there are such things as well. But I am tied down here
	by my short program.

MIRCSE:	What caused you to change your mind? The few words you

COUN.CHAIRM:	That was only pure oration. That's how we, Communists,
	argue with each other.

KARADI:	No, don't worry yourself with that. I'd rather tell
	you, if you want me to. Wait, do you know that game
	you can play following the knight's moves of your
	thoughts backwards?

MIRCSE:	I do it myself... It calms me to...

[page 106]

KARADI:	Perhaps it was there, under the X-ray screen that I
	began. The doctor made me cough and blow and watched
	my heart. I remembered what we talked about, son.
	That it may not be so bad to have a God who, like that
	doctor with his rubber gloves, sees into one's heart
	and says: it may be enlarged an inch or so, but it's
	a decent heart nevertheless. Of course it's a possible
	that he would see a number of faults and unsuspected
	adhesions. I was thinking about this already on my
	throne on which they carried me to the electrical
	department. There I had to wait a bit, because there
	were women inside, and as my orderlies disappeared
	just then... I got off my throne and sat down next
	to another waiting patient. He, to return the
	friendly gesture, put an open newspaper on my knew.
	There was no intention in it, he had no idea who I
	was, or who this Karadi was he had been reading about.

COUNC.CHAIRM:	Was it the Monday?

MIRCSE:	That's my luck!

KARADI:	I told you not to worry. It's like a circus. One
	gets used to the cap and bells in time. If you want
	to know, it was in that very trend of thought that
	my young friend here wanted to hide from me, it was in
	that I found the two or three words that, if I may use
	that expression, gave me back my self-respect.

COUNC.CHAIRM:	Well, you see...

MIRCSE:	(gloomily) I can't imagine how...

KARADI:	That's what the patient sitting next to me asked, too.
	You are smiling, sir, he said when he saw that while
	reading it (although I felt the blood rushing to my
	head) I suddenly burst out laughing. "Could you
	please tell me what you find so amusing in this
	news-paper? I read it from the first page to the last but
	it bored me to tears." That's why it is good. I told
	him, if someone is a teacher. 
That's what I am, and
	during the war, when there was such a shortage of
	teachers, they entrusted me also with teaching

[page 107]

	of what' s going on here, at Kuggos, that all the
	papers, the entire homework of the class, is written
	by two or three people , a few of the poorer but more
	gifted students, a university student home on leave,
	or a couple of the more ambitious parents...

COUNC.CHAIRM:	(laughing) That's how it was. (he remembers in time)
	under the Horthy regime.

KARADI:	Well, while correcting the papers I amused myself
	with separating them and guessing which could have
	been written by whom: which was X's work, which Y's.
	It was not always easy, because they would disguise
	their style, lowering it, according to the client,
	 to medium or even rather bad.

MIRCSE:	I's beginning to understand.

KARADI:	Usually it was a turn of phrase that betrayed the
	writer something he couldn't help using in several
	papers. Listen to this expression for examples:
	"The cubic space of the theater". This individual by
	the name of Karadi whom he needles here, was taken,
	by God's special mercy, to the Leningrad Opera House
	and there, stepping up to the railing of the box,
	he threw an admiring glance at the cubic space of
	the theater. This "cubic space" must be some
	childhood memory, connected perhaps with the cubic capacity.
	The writer of the article wanted to make the reader
	feel how much space, how much room there is between the
	boxes and the stage curtain of that Opera House. It
	is not a bad expression at all. I would not
	underline it, still, when one notices that one has come
	across this unusual expression before and one had,
	 allegedly, used it oneself...

MIRCSE:	(exploding) In short, you found out... (To Council
	Chairman) That "cubic space" was in the Morning Post
	as well... You are absolutely right, Professor. If
	you are deeply offended...

KARADI:	But I'm not... you heard me, my boy, I laughed aloud...
	I rediscovered the professor in myself (to Council Chair-

[page 108]

	man) Because what have we here? Just a student
	prank... as demonstrated also lay the repetition of

COUNC.CHAIRM:	Indeed, it isn't more... these journalist, really...
	they ought to be disciplined...

KARADI:	Well, it isn't only the journalists ... but I wouldn't
	bother them for the world...

MIRCSE:	C.K. let's find, a scapegoat!

KARADI:	It's the whole class. I might also say, two parallel
	classes, A and B, that are allegedly hostile but have
	now joined forces to play a joke on the teacher... you
	know how students are...

MIRCSE:	You are perfectly right: parallel. The traditional
	reactionaries and the Communist ones, because we are
	beginning to have them too. One lot sticks to
	obsolete ideas, the other to outdated methods.

KARADI:	(Still to the Council Chairman) Your comrade... no
	doubt motivated by some important consideration, threw
	 this article up like a ball; and my so-called
	partisans hastened to catch it.

COUNC.CHAIRM:	You mustn't take it too much to heart. We old men
	know what people are.

KARADI:	That's perfectly true. No teacher can commit a graver
	mistake than to take a childish prank to heart. To
	old so-and-so almost had a stroke! One couldn't
	commit a greater (stresses the word) tactical error...
	when they made me lie down on the divan in the EEG room
	and that little lady-doctor with her hair dyed silver
	began to tickle my soles with her instruments, I saw
	all this perfectly clearly. And I was ashamed of
	myself.

MIRCSE:	That too?

KARADI:	Of course. That I should have permitted myself to
	lose control to this extent. There I lay, while they
	were conducting mild currents down from my heart to see

[page 109]

	whether it had been damaged by the... artery crisis...
	brushing my face. Instead of me walking outside, under
	the Kossuth memorial -- even if it cost me some effect--
	to show them: "He took it well, the old devil, look	
	how he smiles and nods..."
COUNG CHAIRM: That's it! I did the same when they went for me in
	Nepszabadsag because of the rice-fields!
MIRCSE: But that's irony! The famous Karady irony! At any
	rate, it's a good sign that it's back. However, this
	affair has a serious side to it as well.
KARADI: I know. When I ran away from the chair-bearers and
	walked up the back stairs nice and slow, I thought
	it all out. That after all, this is the true dignity
	of the human race: that there is no screen, no ray,
	no eye that can penetrate into the real depths of the
	heart, the true motives, and still, even in mockery,
	in ugliness, it hangs on to what it believes to be
	true. And that there isn't much sense in hanging on
	only to what nobody see.
MIRCES: (presses his hand) Uncle Jczsi!
KARADI: So that when I came in here I had already made up my
	mind not to leave. It would be a come-down to go
	Rabaujlak.
COUNG CHAIRM: (Puts his arm around his shoulder) I can see that you
	are my man, Professor. And don't you fear, not only
	will this affair leave no blemish on your prestige...
KARADI: And if it does! If my prestige is woven of such weak
	thread... Then it is better to dress in our own
	self-respect. (Move simply) These things, you know, seem
	like a treasure as long as one has a feeling that
	perhaps one was at fault... And this thing was
	churned up so quickly... I'm really ashamed of myself...
	there wasn't even time to relax a bit after my trip...
	(Hospital director enters panting. Behind him the nurse)
HOSP. DIR:	I must ask you, comrades, to forgive me.
COUNG CHAIRM: Has the Deputy Minister left?
HOSP.DIR:	That wasn't a Deputy Minister at all. Only a
	departmental head. And from the Ministry of Constructions...

[page 110]

		A secretary like mine is enough to drive a man crazy
		(Notices Karadi) Have you been X-rayed, Professor?
KARADI:	X-rayed and EEG-d, both.
HOSP.DIR:	I shall immediately ask for the findings. (calls to
		the nurse who is standing behind him) Nurse, please!
KARADI:	We've been putting our heads together in the meantime...
		my medical comrades and I. And we've decided on the
		most urgent thing for me to do.
HOSP. DIR:	Yes? And what is that? It's up to you, of course...
KARADI:	A little walk along Lajos Kossuth Avenue...
HOSP.DIR.:	A walk? All in good time...
KARADI:	No, we must have it now, in this beautiful September sunshine.
HOSP.DIR:	(now serious, offended) Pardon me, but we did nothing
to justify this tone... (to nurse) Where is the
		House-man?
KARADI:	Let's not bother him, poor man. The hospital did
		everything in its power and could the nurse please bring
		me my clothes? I have no other request.
HOSP. DIR.: (looking at the two guests) But gentlemen... I cannot
		agree to this... In this condition...
KARADI:	I am leaving on my own responsibility.
MIROSE:	(looking at the floor) I think, indeed, this will be
		the best.
COUN.CHAIRM:	Do you feel strong enough, Professor... would you
		like a cab?...
KARADI:	No, all I'll do is take my friend Mirese's arm. And
		if you want to do me a favor, Director... tell people
		that there was nothing... not even an artery crisis.
		A little exhaustion from the trip, stage-fright. The
		old man has lost the habit of talking in public.
HOSP.DIR.:	(looks the three men over) I see... political interest.
		(nervously) But if it doesn't come off? If...
KARADI:	I shan't have a stroke. I can't have one for at least
		six months.
HOSP. DIR.: Six months?

[page 111]

KARADI:	Until I see whether my happiness of mind -- the
		happiness I used to have and which has now come back
		to me -- can penetrate the fog into which my trip led
		me.

End

(July-August 1961)


[page 112]

NOTES ON THE JOURNEY

When the reader recognizes reality in some detail of a
novel or a drama, he likes to grope on, on the basis of that
recognition and try to open all the doors of the work with this
"key". I might also say, he himself writes the "roman a clef",
forgetting that a genuine writer cannot write one even should he
want to, even if every one of his characters has his counterpart in
life: the light falling on them from the central though (or let
us say: idea) of the work will not only show them in a different
illumination but will make them hover in the world like different
beings.

Knowing this more or less understandable curiosity of the
reader it was with a great deal of hesitation that I finally decided
to publish this comedy. For it is rather well known that I too
went on a trip to the Soviet Union at approximately the same
time as Professor Karadi went on his, and that some of my Moscow
experiences are verifiably identical with his. I was therefore
afraid that this conspicuous little hillock may lead some people
to dig up such assumptions -- hardening into conviction -- which
could cause some close or truly valued acquaintances of mine,
trouble or annoyance.

Beyond any debut there exists a connection between the
two journeys. I am telling those who are more interested in reality
than in the mirage, that the basic idea of the comedy, the "leading
on" process, has been tried on me too (though with little success)
by the journalists; and, to be very exact, they also published
an ironical little article like the one Professor Karadi is shown
in the waiting room of the ECG department. But there similarity
between the two cases ends and it is indeed only my sense of
responsibility for other people's peace of mind that compels
me to analyse this allegation of mine which, in the eyes of the
experts, is probably made convincing by the very demands of the comedy
genre.

Of the large scale genres it is the novel which lends
itself best to the setting on a higher plane, the mirage-like
vibration, of details taken form life; the comedy is the least suitable.
Of all genres the comedy is the most abstract, or, if you prefer,
the most deductive, by which I mean that it is the comedy that most
completely deduces its characters from the central idea and the least
likely to put them together inductively from the angle of observation.
The though, of course, as in every case, is shaped by the
Mass-pressure of a tremendous experience (and it would be no use denying
that in "The Trip" a great many experiences embracing decades are
transmitted into laughter), but once it is shaped and we make up our
minds to elaborate it, the nimble fingers of the Comedy's Muse will
no longer tolerate rough, natural lumps in the mass; she will mould
everything and it is she who invents the characters. As I make the
characters of "The Trip" much along before me as if I were a
recruiting officer, even I am surprised (Though I would indeed gladly
hide the betraying mark of my hand in the Phantom-glove pulled form


[page 113]

the hand of reality) that apart from the outlines of the two
journalist, the play does not have a single character "stolen
from life" - except, to be sincere, a secondary character already
provided with its name and role, but which when it appeared on the
scene and began to talk, suddenly took on the shape of a close,
well-liked acquaintance.

To begin with the hero: except in one comedy I have no
other hero who so little resembles his author; if he resembles
anyone at all, it is, if only because of his profession, my father.
Neither was I so naive a traveller as Karadi; in Moscow I was
asked to write a short article on the Moon-rocket and the American
trip of Prime Minister Khrushchev that was just taking place; to
this I added a five-point survey of the political forces shaping
the world (which can be read in the Sajkod evenings): and I added
it with the purpose of dispelling to a certain extent the phantom
created jointly by my reactionary "friends" and Communist "enemies",
and to express at last in Moscow that which I had written, during
the first days of my illness, in "Salvaged Thought". I cherished
no illusion -- please read the end of my "Toast" -- that this might
make things easier for me at home; on the contrary, I felt certain,
as I did when I was engaged in writing this comedy, that I would
stir up a storm in front of me as well as behind me.

There is no similarity (not to speak of the difference
in the two families' intellectual level). between the way Professor
Karadi's family reacted to the Professor's trip and mine. My wife
accompanied me to the Soviet Union. one of my daughters kept secret
from me a grievous insult which, she believed, might have decided
me to stay at home, and among my sons-in-law, the one who could
figure in the play, was the most enthusiastic advocate of my trip
and of what it meant. Nor is there any living person among the
circle of friends either. One or two of Horn's sentences may have
been heard by my Budapest acquaintances from a living person; if
we consider his way of life, some people in the provinces might be
led to suspect someone else, however, they cannot but feel that the
character of the oculist is entirely different from both. Bandi
Maoskasi is a very well-known type, and not the worst, either; it
is obvious that I needed no model to create him. The "Admirer"
is also a natural-historical figure pieced together from many
hundreds of specimens, his traits are identical perhaps all over
the world, in Hungary, any rate, they are (as our children call it)
"constant". His admiration is directed at his own narrow world of
ideas; where help is required he is absent but where we diverge
from the program he prescribes for us with his admiration he is
immediately there to express his disapproval.

The Communist characters of the play are even more the
creations of deductive portrayal. The Council Chairman is a decent
leader grown out of the working class movement who has, however,
lost his former courage in the forst of power where unexpected
possibilities lurk (he had been jailed. for instance). Forgacs is the
"good Party functionary" of the Rabesi era; whatever he does, he does
if for the good of the cause but at the same time he thinks it is
obligatory to engage, again in the interest of the cause, in ascertain
Machiavellism; he regards people as a pack of cards and therefore
he can turn even the good into evil, Mircse, the youngest, is the new,

[page 114]

desirable type, at he says himself, a Communist wearing two safety
belts; not only the one by which safety attached to the Power he
hangs down into the nation, but also the mountain climber's rope
by which the nation sends him up into the heights to prospect for
new possibilities. The way he proposes to work with Karadi at
Rabaujfalu is the way the Party leaders should work with the best
among the intelligentsia.

For, of course, such a play has also another purpose
besides portrayal. This purpose can be only one thing: to put a
step to distorted, false reactions by mocking them, and to promote
the emergence of a wiser, more humanistic public spirit in keeping
with the circumstances.

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