Sure. I’m an educated man, remember? Yes, code …
Answer me: when they put The Prince back in the truck you all left the square. Under whose orders? Describe them. Who told you what to do? When you got to the post office, whose idea was it that you should split into smaller groups?
What an imaginaton you have!
Give me the name of the man in command.
We only have one leader. And you’ll not catch him.
How do you know he has escaped? Did he tell you? Did he tell you where?
You will never catch him!
Is The Prince some devil out of hell?
Oh, it’s not as simple as that. He’s flesh and blood, but his flesh and blood are different.
If nothing matters to you, explain to me how he got you all under his spell? Does your Prince exist at all? Why attack the town? Why did you come here? To lay it waste? With your bare hands? What do you want? I don’t understand you.
I can’t answer so many questions at once.
Then tell me this: were you involved in the murders?
Yes. But not enough.
What?
I told you. Not enough.
You killed a child at the station and I am asking you, not as your interrogator but as man to man: is there nothing sacred to you?
Man to man, I’ll tell you: nothing. When are you going to give me that gun?
I think I’d rather wring your neck. Very slowly.
I had nothing to do with the child. But go on, wring it.
Are all those people in the square, those hundreds, are they all like you?
How should I know?
I feel like vomiting.
You seem to have lost your patience after all. Why is your whole face twitching? Where’s your military discipline?
Stand to attention!
I already am. You’ve handcuffed me, I’ve got an itchy nose.
Interrogation over. I’ll hand you over to the military tribunal! Get over to the door!
You said you’d give me a gun.
To the door with you!!!
A smart soldier boy like you, and a liar. Military tribunal. Where are you? Hasn’t anybody told you nothing’s working? Military tribunal indeed.
I told you. Move. To the door!
You’ve gone really red. Redshank. The name fits. But I don’t give a shit. See you, redshank.
Two soldiers stood in the doorway and when the man in the quilted jacket reached them they grabbed his arm, dragged him from the hall and shut the door behind them. One could still hear them as they started down the stairs, then everything fell silent, the lieutenant adjusted his tunic and the rest watched him wondering whether he’d regain control of his temper. It wasn’t clear who precisely was counting on what, but in any case it seemed that those in the hall — all, with one exception — were waiting for the lieutenant to make a remark addressed individually to them, something that, unlike the depravity of the man in the quilted jacket, might have the effect of drawing them together and in response to which they might be able to give voice to their own sense of outrage. The one exception was Eszter, for the effect of the interrogation was quite different on him; what he discovered from the man with his wrists handcuffed behind his back, in the course of cross-questioning, did not infuriate him but left him in an even more advanced state of apathy than before, for it confirmed his worst fears that Valuska, having got mixed up with people like this, would certainly not have survived to tell the tale. It wasn’t simply that he no longer wanted to explain anything himself, he wouldn’t have had the strength to do it; he couldn’t even raise enough energy to contribute to the furious muttering that ensued once the lieutenant had calmed down and neglected to address some ‘individual remarks’—any remark that might have elicited a vehement display of communal emotion — to those by the wall, who were desperately anxious to express a view, for it was all the same to Eszter if ‘the man was an absolute scoundrel’; he didn’t care whether ‘such people could be killed with guns at all’; and when his nearest neighbour, Mr Volent, clearly expecting some form of approval, whispered to him, ‘Death is too good for him, don’t you think, the godless swine?’ he responded to his friendly overture with the merest nod and continued sitting immobile, a silent interloper in the chorus of whisperers, who persisted in staring straight ahead of him with a deeply troubled expression on his face even after the rest had suddenly fallen silent. The door opened but he did not hear it, someone quietly swept before him but he did not raise his head, nor did he notice it when the lieutenant called one of those sitting by the wall into the middle of the room, and, when he finally looked up, he was almost surprised to find his fat neighbour standing in the place formerly occupied by the prisoner, and, somewhere in a corner at the back, to discover Harrer, who seemed to be feverishly relating something to Mrs Eszter; Eszter, however, showed no sign of surprise and this sudden change in the cast of actors failed entirely to rouse him from his state of indifference, so he did not see any particular significance in the fact that Harrer — once the woman had left him in the corner and went over to approach the lieutenant, presumably in order to convey a piece of useful information — first winked at him then clearly tried to communicate something to him with a few reassuring hand gestures. He had no idea what was going on, nor what all this winking and ever more public form of gesturing from the opposite corner might mean, but whatever it was intended to signify left him utterly cold, and much to Harrer’s obvious annoyance, he turned his head away. He gazed at the officer who kept giving tiny nods as he listened to Mrs Eszter’s message, but what the subject of the conversation was remained a mystery until the lieutenant rewarded the whispered account with a confidential look and, interrupting the hardly begun interrogation of the new witness, turned on his heels, marched over to the presidential chair and, standing to attention, spoke: ‘Colonel, sir! The man we dispatched has returned. He says the chief of police remains in his flat, but is still under the influence of alcohol, not sober enough to produce’. ‘What was that!’ a furious voice snapped back, as if its owner had been rudely roused from a state of deep contemplation. ‘He’s pissed as a newt, sir. The policeman we were looking for is drunk and unconscious and no one can wake him.’ Eszter strained his eyes for a while, trying to penetrate the general gloom which was particularly thick on the far side of the hall, but in vain; it was impossible to see anyone from where he was sat and had been sitting since his arrival, nevertheless, knowing that the chair, which was surely intended for giants, must be occupied by somebody hidden behind its high back, he did eventually locate a hand in the darkness just as it was slowly descending to the chair’s ornately carved right arm. ‘What a dump!’ the voice crackled out again. ‘One gets smashed out of his head, another is shit scared and stays at home indoors and won’t come over even with an escort. What do you think we should do with these gutless bastards?!’ ‘One must draw the appropriate conclusions, colonel, sir!’ ‘Correct! Clip a pair of handcuffs on them both and get them round here on the double!’ ‘Yessir!’ The lieutenant clicked his heels together, then, passing the order on to the two soldiers outside, added, ‘Should I continue the interrogation, sir?’ ‘By all means, Géza, my boy, by all means …’ came the answer, in a tone that, to Eszter, suggested a kind of listless intimacy: the invisible occupant of the chair recognized the necessity of correct procedure but wished at the same time to imply that he found it personally distressing that his lieutenant should be saddled with tasks so clearly below his station. How far he was right or mistaken in indirectly attributing this state of mind to the colonel, Eszter — who, for the first time, had regained the trace of a capacity to transcend his own depressed state of mind — learned only much later, because for the time being, when he started to examine the mysterious circumstances he seemed to be faced with as best he could, all he could discover was that beside the chair in the middle of the bare hall, which served not only as the seat of the man who appeared to want to remain in the background while having overall charge of interrogations and possibly of all military operations, there was also an enormous gilt-framed picture that practically covered the dark-green hangings of the notable hall, showing a battle appropriate to the historical dignity of the place. This was all, and no more, that he could make note of in that first minute, and even these impressions appeared as uncertain hypotheses rather than facts, though any further questions regarding this particular leader of the army of liberation, questions regarding the exclusion of light, for instance (‘Possibly reasons of security …?’), like why, if they drew the curtains, did they not switch on the two chandeliers that dangled from the ceiling, or what the lieutenant-colonel in the chair, with his back to people but facing the historical scene in the painting, was actually doing in this darkened temporary HQ, did not lie in his immediate power to answer, if only because at that point Harrer sneaked over to him from the far corner, sat down in the recently occupied chair, and, now that the lieutenant had returned, acted as if he were interested only in the newly commenced interrogation of Eszter’s ex-neighbour, never taking his eyes off them, but cleared his throat and tried to tell him that he had moved closer only so that he might succeed in informing him of something that all his winks and hand gestures had failed to convey earlier. ‘Everything is all right with him — you know who I mean,’ Harrer whispered, eyes still fixed on the lieutenant; everyone’s attention, including the three men watching beside him, as well as the officer himself, was fully focused on events in the centre of the room. ‘But not a word, professor! You know nothing! If they ask you tell them you have seen neither hide nor hair of him since yesterday! You understand?’ ‘No,’ Eszter looked up at him. ‘What are you talking about?’ ‘Don’t turn to me!’ Harrer warned him, hardly able to disguise his anxiety that he might have to name the individual concerned, and repeated as if explaining the matter to a child: ‘Him! I found him at the station, I told him which direction to take in order to escape, he should be miles away by now, all you have to do is deny everything if asked!’ he gabbled, and when, glancing up at Volent, he noticed that the rest seemed to be aware of the whispering, he added simply, ‘Everything!’ Eszter stared uncomprehendingly before him (‘What’s there to deny …? What … him?’), then, suddenly, a hot flush shot through him, his head snapped to attention and, not giving a fig for Harrer’s firm injunction but suppressing an outright cry, he burst out, loudly enough for every eye to be turned on him, ‘Is he alive?!’ The other grinned confusedly under the lieutenant’s furious gaze, and spread his arms apologetically as if to shift the responsibility, intending to imply that he could not be held responsible for what the man sitting next to him cared to do, but the increasingly desperate smile he presented to the officer only made the latter more angry, and it even seemed likely that he would not let the matter rest there, so Harrer thought it advisable to get up immediately and, in order not to disturb the interrogation with the sound of his shoes, to tiptoe carefully back into his corner behind Mrs Eszter, who never once took her eyes off her husband. Eszter would have loved to follow him, but when he leapt up to do so, the lieutenant barked at him (‘Silence!’), so he was compelled to sit down again and — having thought through the matter at lightning speed — quickly realized that there was no point in throwing questions at Harrer, since he would only repeat what he had already said in that roundabout way of his. He didn’t need to hear it again, it was as clear as day now what was meant by ‘Him’, the ‘station’ and by the expression he was ‘miles away by now’, but the fear of disappointment warned him to remain calm and not to allow the meaning of the words to enter directly into his consciousness; he sipped at them, carefully, and concluded that he should investigate the reliability of the information as thoroughly as he could, but then the news broke through the shaky barriers of his scepticism and more or less swept all his fears away, so he abandoned all thought of investigating the truth of Harrer’s story. Because what he had heard brought Mrs Harrer’s account to mind and in that moment he knew that the story must be true in every detail; the present report validated what he had heard at dawn and that, in turn, validated the present without a shadow of doubt as far as he was concerned, and, as in a single flash, he saw Harrer on his way to the station, speaking to Valuska, then saw his friend beyond the town’s precincts, and suddenly he felt an extraordinary sense of relief, as if an enormous weight had been removed from his shoulders, a weight he had carried from the moment he set foot outside his house in Wenckheim Avenue. What he felt was indeed relief and, at the same time, some entirely new excitement seized him, for, having thought the matter through, he quickly realized that the chance, or rather, misunderstanding, that had brought him here could not have brought him to a better place, for he was precisely where he might settle the affair of his friend, where, if some kind of charge had really been mistakenly levelled at Valuska, he could persuade the authorities to drop it. Not a trace remained in him of his previous helplessness and despair, in fact he was running a little ahead of the tasks that confronted him, but when he started to get lost in the details of Valuska’s return he pulled himself up, reminded himself of the need for sobriety and concentrated entirely on the effort to catch up with events in the hall and follow the course of the interrogation in the middle, since he had concluded that the best way of putting together a clear picture of all that had happened was by assembling information from the various witnesses and drawing the appropriate conclusion. He completely shut out everything else and, after a few sentences, it became obvious to him, as to everyone else, that the current witness, the enormous man who had been his neighbour, was none other than the circus manager, or rather the director, as the man, who reminded Eszter of some Balkan landowner, kept delicately pointing out to the lieutenant in his own highly courteous manner, if only because the lieutenant, who held some documents in his hand at which he glanced from time to time, insisted in using the language of the ‘work permit’ by referring to him, despite every attempt to correct the term, as simply ‘the head of the company’, that is to say whenever he managed to interject a question in the endless stream of words issuing from the mouth of the witness. However he tried though, however frequently he commanded the man to ‘answer only the question put before you’, he did not seem to be having much success and looked ever more exhausted in the process, and as for stopping his flow, that was impossible, for the director, while acknowledging each warning with a slight bow and an ‘of course, naturally’, was not to be shifted for a moment, and not only picked up each sentence precisely at the point where he was impatiently interrupted but never once lost the thread of the argument he had been pursuing, talking ever more loudly as if with the purpose of addressing the far end of the hall, stressing and restressing the importance of ‘helping the officers present to a clearer understanding of the principles of art, and particularly the art of the circus’. He talked of the nature of art, and the thousands of years of neglect that led to misconceptions about the liberties that should be accorded to it (‘as in our case!’), drawing a wide circle with the dead cigar between his fingers as he explained that the unexpected, the shocking, the extr