An unpleasant tremor went through me.
“By what right?” I was on the point of asking, but I thought better of it. I remembered the hidden silver. The best thing would be to show no opposition—“After all, if those are your orders....” and I handed him my keys. One went in this direction, another in that, and I had to keep my eyes on the hands and pockets of all three. Meanwhile I remembered with extraordinary rapidity everything I had forgotten to burn. In awful anguish I thought of these notes, behind the books. What if they found them? I was thinking so intently about this that I was afraid they might read my face. Suppose my thoughts were to guide them!... One of the soldiers looked into the stove and at the same moment I caught sight of the other extracting cigarettes from a small box and stuffing them into his pockets. The civilian sat down at the table and pulled out a drawer.
“Do you know anything about the organisation of the counter-revolution?”
“Yes,” I answered ... “I got it from the columns of ‘The People’s Voice.’” (this is the Socialist’s own paper.)
The stupid round eyes of the man stared at me and suddenly I began to feel dangerously gay. I took heart and was almost grateful to them for being so conveniently superficial. Why not give them all my cigarettes? What nonsense! I pulled myself together and straightened my face.
A bundle of letters lay on my table and the man took them up one after the other. Then he turned the pages of a little book which mother had been reading yesterday, Albach’s Heilige Anklänge. Suddenly I was seized with disgust. I wanted to be rude. How dare these strangers touch my things like this and obliterate the contact of beloved hands! They come in, open the cupboards, fumble, search, and all this in “the golden age of the people’s liberty,” just because I am Hungarian.
When the three varlets left after searching in vain I felt hopelessly tired. I opened the window and kept it open all the evening just to air the room.
February 11th-13th.
Even in my dreams my worries pursue me. I know it, because when I wake with a start I find myself planning, planning, planning. Why can I never rest in peace?