“It is odd that you should expect the salvation of the country to come from those who denounce patriotism.”
“I see things differently,” said the man. “That is just the trouble in Hungary. They always talk of the country, the nation. There is no such thing as a country and a nation. It is the same to me where I live, in Moscow, in Münich or in Belgrade. It is all the same to me as long as I live well. That is the thing we have to drive at, and it is only through socialism that it can be attained.”
“The ultimate end being communism?”
“Later, sometime, some day, yes,” the man answered in a low voice.
“And the Russian example? Do you think that what is going on there is the realisation of human happiness?”
“That is only the stage of transition.”
“Transition which may mean annihilation.”
Rain began to fall. It drifted in dense silver threads between the hills. The cottage, its inhabitant and its garden disappeared from my memory. I saw another picture. It was evening. My mother was sitting silently in the hall, lit up by the shaded lamp, and, as she was wont to do every year, she was winding the ivy wreath for my father’s grave.
“It is better for him not to have lived to see this,” she said abruptly, quite unexpectedly.
I looked at her. It was as if her words had opened a gap through which I could get a glimpse of her soul. I now knew that, though she never said so, she was worried by premonitions.