While I listened to him I was filled with joy: “Then there is no longer any reason why I should not go home!” At this his face changed suddenly. No, not yet, better wait a little longer.... And as he argued the point I suspected his former statements more and more. So they had only been designed to re-assure me! Hans Freitag, Councillor at the German Legation, had come to see my mother and had warned her that I ought to escape if I were still there. Now the removal of my mother to the hills had a different meaning to me: my mother had to choose between her flat in town and her cottage in the hills. Need for choice came suddenly and she had moved the previous day. But I learnt that the flat was now occupied by very decent people; the Red soldiers who brought them behaved quite nicely. They had put altogether three families and a school into the flat; they were Jews and Proletarians but it was all right, no harm had been done, everything had gone smoothly. Only a little furniture and a few pictures were left behind in the flat. Slowly I began to visualise the whole thing. Red soldiers.... That meant she had been expelled by force. All sorts of insignificant trifles swept through my head. The tiny treasures of the old show-case.... The snuff-box which had a tinkling little tune hidden within it.... The yellow porcelain dame with her crinoline and her unnaturally slender waist.... Where have they gone to, those friends of my childhood? And the ash-tray which used to stand near the clock? Has it gone? And the watercolours? And my mother’s work-basket, her patience cards? The crucifix from Ravenna on my bookcase? Who has removed it? My manuscripts, my books, my pictures? The Jewish Commissary of Education had decreed that books left in houses became the property of the Soviet Republic. All collections of books have to be reported. Valuable pictures become common property. Charles Kiss re-assured me: “Everything is still there,” but I could believe his kind-hearted statements no longer. A torturing picture haunted me incessantly: I saw a home pulled to pieces, strange people in our rooms and the front door, through which my lonely mother had to leave, wide open. The subject had been changed a long while ago, but I had not noticed it. I realised it only when I heard someone say: “It will last longer than we had expected.” I shuddered as a hopeless silence ensued. The ticking of the clock above fell on our ears. One by one the minutes dropped into eternity seeming to make time unbearable. Yet from the silence of despair victorious hope dared to raise its head. “The People’s Commissaries seem to be already quarrelling among themselves,” said Charles Kiss. “They are even said to have come to blows. Számuelly wanted to get the Red army into his own hands.” “Yes, they may quarrel over a question of power, but when it comes to oppressing us they hold together.”