“We cannot have a meeting to-day in the village,” I was told. “Another time, next week ... there is a Social Democratic mass-meeting in the town hall, and a memorial service for those killed in the war at the cemetery. There is a lot of excitement, and I’m afraid the meeting of women would be interfered with.”
We listened to the speeches from a window of the town hall. They differed widely from Budapest’s orations. Here, the half-hearted war-cries were shouted under the national colours and mixed with hero-worship. It was the same in the cemetery. Then suddenly a drunken soldier stood up on the mound of a grave. Hatred was in his face and dark threats poured from his lips: “Let the gentle-folk learn. We are going to teach them. They cheated the people, and drove them into death. But just you wait now that we have got the power....”
Night was falling when our crowded train entered Budapest. There were no cabs, they have been on strike for the last four days, and I couldn’t get on to an electric car. A soldier shoved me aside and dragged me off the steps. I watched him pushing his way in among the passengers to make room for himself. Apparently somebody shoved him back, for he drew his revolver and began to shoot at random. The car stopped, the passengers jumped off, women shrieked and there was a panic.
I walked along the streets. Nearly everywhere the pavement was pulled up and here and there red warning lamps blinked near the holes, but there were no road-menders. I thought of an old engraving of the French revolution. In the picture there were narrow old houses, and between them barricades on which figures in tight check trousers, and with top hats, but without coats, were shooting with very long guns with fixed bayonets. Barricades? Why, these paving stones practically offered themselves for that purpose.
What is it preparing for, this town which becomes stranger every day? What is it scheming now, when nearly every voice in it has been silenced and only the mind of the rabble finds expression? As I passed under the mass of the cathedral I looked up at its tower where a big bell hangs, high above all the towers and bells of the town. I remembered its voice. If only it might speak—but not to call to Mass. I want to hear it sound the tocsin, in desperate appeal....
March 17th-18th.
People speak to me and I answer them; what I say sounds quite natural, yet I am only partly there, only bodily; the rest of me is walking ahead of myself and counting the hours.
I made a speech at a meeting to-day, and then wrote letters in the office, after which I had a talk with the secretary. Perhaps people didn’t notice that my mind is now haunted by a single idea, an expectant desperate idea. The secretary had been in the country.... Bad news.... He had spoken to Bishop Prohaszka, who told him that a sharp plough is being prepared to tear up the soul of the Hungarian people. It will make a deep furrow, but it has to be, so as to make the ground the more fertile.
“It will be so,” I said, as if I had heard the words of the bishop with the soul of Assisi repeated in my dream.