From the wayside station a dark, cold little train carried me through the frosty morning. I may have fallen asleep for awhile, but I remember the last violent jerk: Aszód! It was just the same: putrid filth covered the platform. There, on the side of a waggon, was the inscription written in human excrement: “Death to the bourgeois!” The station was if possible even dirtier than before. Notwithstanding the early hour, a sad and sleepy deputation with red flags was waiting there. One of them said at the exit that there was going to be a recruiting meeting, a comrade from Budapest was going to make a speech, his special train was already signalled. This made me hurry. The parcel of food given me before I started was pulled from under my arm, but it did not matter. My valise was already in the cloak-room and I hurried off towards the town. A red flag was floating on the Reformatory like a piece of raw flesh. There were flags everywhere, and strange big posters covered the walls. The lines on them appeared to represent mad knots of tangled intestines. When I looked more closely, my eyes made out the outlines of horrible soldiers, pregnant giant women, skulls, bloodstained workmen, bare to the waist, glaring at me. “Join the Red army!” “Alcohol is dead!” “To arms, Proletarians!” I was so tired that everything frightened me. The bare trees on the sidewalk stood in a row as if waiting for victims to be hanged on them. The dais which stood covered with red under the grey sky in the middle of the market place looked like a scaffold and the houses seemed to watch it wickedly, disdainfully. The streets were covered with mud: the repulsive mess spread all over the place and the houses alone seemed to keep it within its bed. If one of them had been removed, it seemed that the mud would have overflowed the whole country. People lived in these surroundings, dragged themselves resignedly along in the black mire, surrounded by the monstrous posters. Nobody rebelled, they just let themselves sink and drown. This resignation stretched beyond the town, and the whole country surrendered to its fate. A Jew dressed like a townsman except for his cap passed in a carriage, stopped, and beckoned. Two men of the working class ran up to him. He pointed towards the market and gave orders. The men listened respectfully. Then the man in the cap looked at me, and as his gaze fell on me I felt the blood rush to my head, for he turned back as if he knew me. It seemed to me that I too recognised this weak face, these thick, soft lips, these shapeless ears. Perhaps it has bowed before me over the counter of some Budapest bank, this puffy face which now looked slimy and dark as if it had been shaped out of the mud. But it passed from my sight.