In December 1954, on the last day before winter break, as I recall, a sizable delegation of grim-looking men showed up at our school. They arrived in huge black automobiles. They all wore dark hats. From our classroom window we saw the hats disappear in the doorway downstairs. All teaching ceased. We had to sit in silence. Footsteps echoed in the corridors, never just one but several pairs of footsteps, and then silence again. Some people were being led somewhere. Not a peep out of anybody, hissed our most hated instructor, Klement, when somebody would stir to change position. The door opened. The janitor called out someone, barely whispering the name. Footfalls. Then the waiting: will he come back? After a short while the student would come back, looking pale, and sidle into his seat, followed by our curious stares, and the door would close again. Trembling lips and ears rubbed red told us that something must have happened. Something was going on. But the most unlikely people were taken out; I saw no pattern, so I could draw no conclusion.
Nevertheless, after a while I had the feeling we were being surrounded.
Klement had a huge bald head with tiny watery blue eyes. A stomach the size of a barrel. He weighed at least three hundred pounds. He carried a small cardboard valise. Now he was sucking candy, clicking his tongue, and smacking his lips in the silence. With deep moans and long wheezing sounds he kept himself busy with himself. He'd pull up his socks, which had slid down to his swollen feet. Or he'd open his sorry little valise, check his bunch of keys, then close the valise, but you could tell he was still thinking about it. He kept scratching his nose. Pinched something from it with his nail, examined the extract intently, then smeared it on his pants. After cracking his knuckles for a while, he kept sliding his rings over his pudgy fingers. Or he'd clasp his fingers over his stomach and twiddle them, with the thumbs always touching a little as they circled each other. He was like a living, breathing machine. He'd raise his bottom slightly, pull a handkerchief from his back pocket, unfold it, bring up phlegm and spit it into the hanky, and then, as if to guard some rare treasure, carefully refold the handkerchief. It wasn't excitement that deliberate cruelty evoked in him but the most voluptuous sense of self-satisfaction. So from his behavior we could only surmise that we were in trouble, worse trouble than ever before.
My mind was whirling like a windmill grinding grain. To all the questions they might have asked, I answered with a definite no. Looking straight into their eyes, I'd deny everything, even things that by their standards would be helpful to me. I would even deny knowing Prém. And deny poisoning the dogs, though we never went through with that. He wasn't being called yet, and neither was I. The only reason such a deathly silence could be maintained for so long was that this wasn't the first time. Nobody dared ask to go to the toilet. About two years earlier they had found a little poem on the wall of the third-floor boys' bathroom, written in the style of one of our classics: "Don't ask who said it, Lenin or Stalin, it's all the same. If you're up to your neck in shit, hold on to the rising standard of living. It might've been Rákosi who said it. So make him your guiding star." I didn't quote it in metric feet because the authorities weren't interested in poetics either. They could always find something if they wanted to. So how could anyone think of going to the bathroom at a time like this? Two years before, the investigation had lasted two whole days. They interrogated everyone, lined us up, took writing samples, photographs, searched through schoolbags, pockets, pen cases — we couldn't easily forget that.
I couldn't control my anxiety. Prém and I caught each other's eye, but he didn't have much to grin about either. I could go on vehemently denying everything, but it wouldn't help. I felt as if I were perfectly transparent. As if anybody could read my thoughts. As if I couldn't hide myself, not even behind myself. I don't want to bore anyone with an in-depth analysis of this state, but I would like to say something about the useful experience I gained while in this situation.
If someone has to be afraid of his own thoughts, because he must fear other people's thoughts, then he'll try to substitute his own evidently dangerous thoughts for those of others. But no one is capable of thinking with somebody else's brain, for the thoughts thus produced are merely his own brain's assumptions about how others may think about the very same thing. So not only must he eliminate the telltale signs of his own thought process and pretend to be second-guessing somebody else's thoughts on the subject, and then substitute these for his own, but he must also eliminate the uncertainty that this substitution is based on a mere assumption. And if one is forced to make one's brain play this game long enough, one will no doubt learn a great deal about the mechanism of thinking, but the real danger is that one can no longer distinguish between one's assertions and assumptions.
At least an hour and a half went by. When my name was called, I felt utterly unprepared. Still, I was glad I could spring up and at last go somewhere. Just then, Klement threw another piece of candy into his mouth. The janitor was standing in the doorway. But Klement, while shifting the candy with his tongue and smacking his lips, said to me, "You, Somi Tot, you can really count yourself out." I was crushed by his comment. It implied that I couldn't possibly have had anything to do with the terrible crime, of which he of course had full knowledge. Yet the pitying tone of his comment couldn't have implied that I was therefore off the hook. It couldn't have, even if there was something vaguely encouraging and even kind about it, an acknowledgment of my high standing in the class. He smashed to smithereens the system of assumptions I had constructed during the past hour and a half. I felt the way I had in the hospital when the nurse, out of sheer kindness, mentioned my mother. In the ruins of my system of assumptions and defenses, there was no other assumption to cling to. Besides, there was no time to go over all my calculations in the light of the new data provided by Klement. All things considered, my feet were carrying me rather steadily. Like those of a fleeing animal, through the only possible opening, straight into the trap.
We passed through the empty teachers' room, and when the office attendant threw open the door to the principal's office, nothing could have topped my astonishment. The razor-sharp blade of the guillotine had already chopped off my head. I died. But my eyes were still peeking out of the sawdust-filled basket, I could see that what was waiting for me on the other side was not horrible but rather bright, festive, and friendly. An alfresco breakfast. Picnic on the hillside. A stag party with the smell of fine Havanas.