It wasn’t how things turned out, nor could it have been, since Mrs Eszter knew very well whom she was dealing with and thought it natural that she, who — as her friend, the chief of police, daily whispered in her ear — was, ‘in terms of height and body-weight, positively gigantic … not to mention the other things’, should, with her inborn sense of superiority and notorious intolerance of opposition, flatten the resistance of stubborn Mrs Plauf. After sugaring her up with a few crooned ‘my dears’, she adopted a ringing manly tone and proclaimed that while she herself was in absolutely no doubt about the time of night, it was of vital importance that she should speak to her then and there on ‘a private matter that could not be deferred’, and thereupon taking advantage of the brief and predictable paralysis suffered by the shocked Mrs Plauf, she simply bundled her through the gate, stormed up the stairs and, bobbing her head out of habit (‘I wouldn’t want to give it a painful crack’), passed straight through the open door into the hall where, to divert attention from the urgency of her visit, she engaged in little formalities about the ‘excellent situation’ of the flat, the ‘ingenious pattern’ of the hallway carpet and the general ‘enviably refined good taste’—a taste of whose ‘common vulgarity’ she was convinced by the time she had darted a few glances about as she hung up her coat. It would be hard to state with any certainty whether the ‘diverting her attention’ ploy truly represented the precise nature of her intentions, since the fact was that her aim — having regard, that is, to the urgency of her need to spend a quarter of an hour or so with Valuska’s mother before the day was over, so that, if they chanced to meet the following day, she could refer to the visit — might have been achieved in any number of ways; however, despite this, she did not after all choose the solution closest to hand (which was, in fact, immediately to sit down in one of those repulsive armchairs and steer the conversation round to ‘that desire for renovation and rejuvenation so evident in the country at large and, in this context, the now-in-every-way-more-energetic work of the keenly enthusiastic local women’s committee’), for though she had made allowance for it, the cosy comfiness, the stolid air of inactivity, the treacly prettiness of this ‘filthy little viper’s nest’ had such a strong effect on her that, suppressing her repulsion with a great effort born out of tactfulness, she was constrained to examine every item in her hostess’s armoury with the gre-a-test of care. Accompanied by Mrs Plauf, who in her fury and confusion hardly dared to breathe a word, but ran along behind her, red-faced, treading on her heels and readjusting each disturbed item, she ran her eyes carefully over each nook and cranny of the flat, stifling under its load of bric-à-brac, and, with feigned appreciation (since ‘it wasn’t yet time to lay one’s cards on the table’), she deployed her booming alto voice to declare, ‘Yes, undoubtedly, women lend meaning to the lifeless objects around them; it is women, and only women, who can provide what we call that individual charm,’ while struggling desperately with the ever more intense temptation to crush one of those little knick-knacks in her enormous palm, to snap it as one would the neck of a chicken, since, damn it all, these comb racks and lace doilies, that swan’s-neck ashtray, the velveteen ‘Persian’ carpet, the ridiculously wispy tulle curtains and, behind the glass of the showcase, those straggling sentimental novels with their hot, sticky, airless contents, most graphically demonstrated to her where the world had got to with its petty unbridled indulgence in ‘idle pleasures and feeble desires’. She saw and made a mental note of everything, nothing escaped her attention, and taking it all in, having summoned all her self-control, she tortured herself further by taking a bitter delight in breathing in the scent-polluted air of the flat, which reminded her so precisely of ‘the sickeningly dainty pong of doll’s-houses’ and which, even a mile away, eloquently proclaimed the pitiable condition of its inhabitant, it was a stink from which she shrank, especially as, even on the threshold, it induced in her — or so she was wont to remark with withering sarcasm to the chief of police whenever she returned from one of her informal visits following her election — an earnest desire to vomit. Whether it was just her tendency to mockery or a genuine case of nausea, her friend could be quite certain that she was being subjected to no ordinary trials and tribulations, for ever since ‘the spirit of communal will had finally been recovered’ sufficiently to elevate her from the position of leader of the local male-voice choir (a post which occasioned her some humiliation and one whose demands were relieved only by that so-called ‘exclusive repertoire’ of marches, work songs and odes to spring) to president of the women’s committee, a figurehead of iron will, she had had to fritter her days away (‘hours at a time’) in such flats, if only to demonstrate to herself, again and again, that what she had suspected all along was in fact true beyond the shadow of a doubt. For clearly as she saw that it was precisely in such debilitating circumstances — among over-sweetened preserves and fluffy eiderdowns, among rugs with their fringes combed straight and armchairs protected by tightly knotted covers — that every powerful urge came to grief; that it was in this fatal slough — populated by those who considered themselves to be the cream of local society, who in their ridiculous house slippers devoured equally ridiculous operettas and treated simple healthier folk with contempt — that each decent impulse sank to oblivion; she understood the phenomenon all too well, and saw that despite, for example, the months of work following the presidential launch of the epoch-making campaign for renewal, the movement had unfortunately been frustrated. To be honest it was no more than she had expected so she wasn’t really surprised when this fine society of parasites, saturated by their own sense of self-worth, coolly rejected her carefully considered arguments, since behind the eternal excuses (such as, for example, ‘A clean-up in December? Perhaps later when it’s time for proper spring-cleaning …’), Mrs Eszter saw straight to the heart of their opposition, understanding that their impotence and craven servility sprang from an unreasonable, though, to them, justified, fear of all enterprise that aimed at general renewal, a renewal which, to them, might look like general decay, for in all passionate espousals of the new, people were liable to detect traces of an equally passionate drift towards chaos, and — quite rightly — suspect that the powers unleashed, instead of protecting that which was irrecoverably dead and buried, would smash it to pieces in the good cause of replacing the featureless boredom of their selfish lives with ‘the elevating passion of communal action’. One couldn’t deny that in this evaluation of the unusual and anarchic events of the immediate past — her confidant, the captain, and one or two right-minded people excepted — she probably stood alone in the town, but this gave her no cause for concern, nor did she think it necessary to reconsider her position, because something whispered to her that ‘the victory that justified all’ would not be long delayed. As to the question of what this victory would consist of, she could not have answered it in one or two simple sentences, but her faith was so firm that however resistant or numerous ‘these refined coteries of slippered old pantaloons’ might be she would not be cowed, for not only had she really nothing to fear from them, but she knew full well that the true enemy — and this was why this battle for hearts and minds had become such a personal struggle for her — was György Eszter himself, a man generally regarded as an eccentric hermit living in absolute isolation, but in fact merely sickly and lazy, Eszter, her semi-respectable husband-in-name, who, unlike her, ‘had no record whatsoever of involvement in civic affairs’—who had attained an ambiguous celebrity in town by spending years lying in bed so that (‘let us say’) once a week he could take a peek out of his window … Could he be the true enemy? He was more than that: for Mrs Eszter he was both ‘the hopeless and insurmountable walls of hell’, and, at the same time, her only hope of maintaining her well-earned place among the most influential citizens, in other words a snare, the perfect, faultless trap whose effectiveness it was vain to doubt, one she could neither escape nor wreck. Because, now, as always, Eszter continued to be the key to the operation, the decisive link in the chain of the fulfilment of her high ambition, the very man who, years ago, when, owing to what he called his ‘back problems’, gave up the directorship of the local school of music, told her quite simply and with boundless cynicism that he ‘no longer required her household services’, and she had had to dig deep into their savings to rent herself a flat by the marketplace, the very man who, to compound his deed — as an act of revenge, for what else could it be? — abandoned such few commitments as they had shared, and resigned his post as director of the town’s orchestra, because, apparently, as she was to hear from others, he was no longer interested in anything but music and did not wish to take up his time with other things although Mrs Eszter, if anyone, could have told the world what ear-splittingly false notes he jangled out on that del-i-ber-at-ely out-of-tune piano, only, of course, if and when he could bring himself to rouse that body of his, enfeebled as it was by his habit of lounging about, and extricate himself from his monstrous piles of soft cushions and travelling rugs. When she thought back on all those years of endless humiliation, she would happily have given anything to have taken a handy axe and chopped her insufferable husband into tiny pieces there where he lay, but she knew very well that this was the one expedient not even remotely open to her since she had to admit that without Eszter the town would remain closed to her, and that whatever she set her mind on she would continually be running up against him. Explaining their separation by reference to her husband’s need for solitude and quiet working conditions, she was forced to maintain the appearance of marriage, and to suppress even the thought of a fiercely desired divorce; worse still she had to resign herself to the fact that with the assistance of Eszter’s disciple and favourite, the terminally lunatic Valuska, Mrs Plauf’s degenerate son from her first marriage, her husband — at first secretly but later quite openly so the whole town knew about it — had taken to doing all the washing, including the ‘filthy underclothes’. The situation looked undeniably grave but Mrs Eszter was not to be defeated: though she didn’t know whether personal revenge or ‘the struggle for the common good’ was the more appropriate, or whether it was more important to pay back Eszter (‘for everything!’) or to render her own rather unstable ‘position’ impregnable, of one thing she was certain, that this unfortunate state of affairs could not last for ever, and that one day, perhaps even in the not-too-distant future, once she had achieved a fully deserved power and attained high enough rank, she could finally settle the hash of this pathetic scoundrel who was ‘determined’ to make a laughing stock of her and make her life a misery. And she had sound enough reasons for thinking that things might turn out like this, because (for it wasn’t simply a case of, ‘It must be so, therefore it will be so’) the office of president not only presented the opportunity of ‘a free hand and the unfettered exercise of power’, but was also an encouraging sign of her growing independence from him — not to mention the fact that since she had discovered how to gain the support of the obstinate bourgeoisie for the drastic measures envisaged by the committee and, at the same time, re-established her useful connection with Eszter, her self-confidence, which had been sadly lacking, was now boundless and she was fully convinced that she was on the right road and that no one could stop her marching directly towards her goal … The plan was foolproof after all, and, naturally, like all ‘strokes of genius’, simple as pie, it was just that, as is usually the case, it was hard work achieving that unique and peculiarly appropriate resolution; of course she had clearly seen, right from the beginning when the movement was first advertised, that indifference and opposition to it could be overcome only by bringing Eszter ‘into play’; if only he could be forced into taking part, persuaded into the figurehead role, the programme represented by the empty slogan of A TIDY YARD, AN ORDERLY HOUSE, which had been up till then a contemptible failure, might form the basis of a wide-ranging, genuine and powerful initiative. Yes, but how? That was the question. It took her weeks, nay months before, having discarded a whole range of impractical methods from simple persuasion to force of arms, she stumbled on the one sure way of putting him on the spot, but ever since then, once she had realized that her scheme depended on no more than ‘that soft creature, Valuska’ and his mother, Mrs Plauf, who was commonly known to be estranged from and therefore all the more passionately adored by him, such an utter sense of calm had descended on her that nothing or no one could shake her out of it; furthermore, now that she was sitting among the spongy carpets and overpolished furniture of this tiny (‘… yet so very buxom’) woman, she was vaguely amused to see how, every time she dropped and scattered ash from her cigarette, or when she approvingly tasted the cherry preserve remaining on the table, Mrs Plauf’s ch