small white chamber

Here on the TV screen we can see a small white chamber. A black greyish bearded man among retorts and glasses and copper kettles. He picks out two globe-like kettles and he watches them. The door opens and a young woman with cute eyes and falling black hair over her long white dress looks up on him:

"Yehoodah?You promised?It's Shabbath?"

"I know my sweetest?But tonight I'm into a big job?tonight I1ll finish the golem."

"You tell me that every week. Anyway?what does it mean: a golem?"

"It's a secret. Well, it's a machine that can walk by itself. Now, go to sleep."

The bride is touching her cap:

"But?"

The bearded man, probably rabbi Löw is smiling:

"You know I need a golem, because he will obey all my orders. He has three letters of God's name written on his front: aleph, mem, and tav, which mean together: truth. (Emet.) This is why I have to hurry, because if any of the letters are lacking from his front - he might go berserk."

The woman puts her hand before her mouth:

"Ah!"

"or he can even die. You know, since there are those menacing letters saying that the abbot Taddaeus wants to kidnap you to divide us both?"

The woman makes big eyes.

On the other movie we see again the black-haired woman, who watches the dancer from the window-slit. She turns toward the camera:

"Oh my God, what a shame. What a shameless dance."

I am looking at Ko-Z-ma and I think he doesn't understand the scene.

"Why does she say his dancing is shameless?"

"I don't know?"

Should I try to explain to him that in the European culture dancing became the non-plus-ultra of immorality? That Nijinsky was suffering a lot because of being a dancer and being in conflict with religion. Not to speak about the bad conscience that bothered hi, because of his relationship with Diaghilev. I mean, really, how is it on the Easter Islands? But I don't dare to ask. If they cannot even watch themselves in the river.

Now on TV we see an old house and a black coated man with a torch in his hand as he is going stealthily toward the house. As he goes on, the camera closes on one of the windows - as if the curtain would be floating and we see a cap from behind as he moves towards the door. It's probably the evil Taddeaus.

Over there, on the big movie screen - my oil-green-faced new friend is watching mostly that one - we still see the naked dancer, with a rather good music, with drums. The woman stands next to the blue curtain, turns away from the window-slit, her eye's sparkling as the dancer arrives, breathing heavily, sweating, with his coloured garments on his arms. He looks great.

"David!"- the woman shouts. Of course! It was David, who was dancing, when bringing over the Ark of the Covenant to his castle! And this is his wife, Mikhal, the daughter of King Saul.

My feet are beginning to become numb.

"David! You are a king and you dance before the people?like any pagan 'sainted' - separated - male prostitute serving in those temples!"

Now for a second we see the face of the young king:

"Even if..if I would humiliate myself deeper than a saint boy of love, even then, I would be kind before God, the Maker of the World. 'Cause my dancing went before the eyes of God!"

The first-aid male nurse guy is standing at the window and looks out. A fat white-coated girl is bringing huge aluminium kettles, probably the meal.

The guy, as he stands with his back to me, bends his right arm and pulls off his shirt, throwing it on the bannister of the bed, over his grey uniform jacket, one of the shirt's arms touches the floor. His brown skin gets the sunshine from behind.

He nods with his head toward me.

I do not understand.

Does he want to get rid of his clothes? It's hot here, that's true.

On TV we are seeing the small TV set - which is black and white - and we see the rabbi, with the halfglobes, the copper kettles, start for the river's shore.The camera gets there before him - black water over the stone walls, trees and bushes, with the silhouette of the castle in the background. If this movie is about the rabbi Löw of Prague, then it's probably the Hradshin. The captain of the aircraft is just reporting: "We are flying over Prague?Two figures behind the bush, one of them has a cowl, the other is bald, with a small cap.

"What will we be doing, my father? My daughter is the bride of the rabbi since years, but the rabbi will never have enough money?," the bald man says.

"Have trust in me, sir. Take this small bottle and pour it into their wine in your daughters' cellar. Everything else can be left to me. Come on, there is the carriage waiting."

And suddenly something gets moving on the silvery watershore. We are seeing as a human being's figure is getting up, a giant formed from earth and clay. He is standing up, listening into the direction of the other voices?And he starts. As if a piece would still be lacking from his shoulder. And over his thighs too there is only a bit of rag - it's not finished it seems. There are holes on his chest?

He starts going.

The intestines come now. Carefully it has to be rolled up. So. They are singing the sound "lamed". The letter of the mouth of balance, of Tishri. Justice - fear of death, collectivism. The Aquarius. The respect of prestige and anxiety. The learning (that1s the literal meaning). The capacity of begetting or the lack of it. The number thirty. The September. On the screen we see the Jolly Joker of Strength (or Lust). A woman conquers the Lion. The soul conquering the instincts. Lust. Desire. Nemesis. The power-lust. The intestines rolled up at their places. Lion. Lion in german: Löw. But Leva means heart in Hebrew. And Levi means "to accompany". I think.

My heart throbs.

Maybe I'll learn something from my mother about the magic power of the cards? She was doing her cards for decades. The game of lonely hearts: 'patience'. In French it means: patience, forebearance.

He sits down on the bed, in front of me, half naked, and he does the same little nod with his chin now.

He looks very slowly and very kindly into my eyes and he shakes a bit my shoulder. But will the Lord yell at me? And Romola, and Agathe and?I see the road bending, a rock and an abyss - I survived this second and?ssshhh?I run into the haycock.

They will not see me there.

And here. A hive is falling down. And there's a little pig!

And there's the trash heap with the little cock!

I just have this small amount of time. I have to realise who I am indeed. I have to realise what I want from life. I am hearing as the head surgeon passes before the room: with a face carved from gum like a brick, a beard that looks like it were not real, and his acid coloured ball-eye never looks at anybody. One glass after the other. I'm so thirsty. I hope I will not throw down the other glasses. During Cosmos?everything is important now. Those guys were not joking behind the barbed wire in 1944 saying:

"The Golden Age can begin at last!"

I would like to get things right since a long time.

The dark grey giant is tottering, stretches his arms, but he doesn't find the coach. On his arse there are two halfglobes made of copper, the Moon is mirrored in them.

Slowly the fog swallows him, his shining lights could be those of a torch.

Only then does the rabbi arrive in his black coat. Is it possible that they show that movie from the twenties that I once saw? Here it is. He disappeared. I'm working on it for years, preparing him from dust, from clay?I couldn't even finish the letters?and it disappears. Yes, there was something left out from the letter "tav" - meaning sign - I remember. If it stays like that it will be a living "if"?that's what aleph and mem make together: the conditional. In certain cases.

I cannot concentrate, I can only hope, that they will be showing this picture once again.

'cause we do know what has happened to King David. In fact, I don't really know the story. I never really read the Bible.

Corridors. The new airport at Budapest is quite modern, and there is enough space here to build even newer ones. But you can see that young people's faces get lined earlier, they don't use any oily creams like in the Bible. They are poor. And this door doesn't move. It's always like that with 'ism's.

"Hello," KoZMa is greeting the customs officer friendly, like in the free world, where relations are clear and even the authority consists of human beings and only material differences are formative - upwards and downwards - in the relations of respect between people. The officer is paid from his tax, he is doing a service, they are equal, and it's clear who is serving who. Once well, once worse - problemsolving is average - that is the basis of real equality. But here, in the East, if you are kind, they become suspicious and even hostile:

"You don't have any packages?"

What can you answer to this. It's not obligatory to. I cannot tell them that tribal strifes broke out on the Easter Islands - who is interested in that?

"Somebody told me you can buy everything in Budapest," he says with a funny Hungarian accent. I didn't know he knows this language. Of course he told about some part of his family - like mine - being Transsylvanian gentry or whatever.

Because of his impertinence we have to go on arguing about my camera for half an hour, filling in different papers. Then a young woman colleague of the officer comes nearer and I remind her that actually I am working with my camera.

"It's his 'tool of work'," she says. And we are through after all.

"I'm lucky you have been coming with me. Yes, why did you come?"

We go by cab to the Gellért. Fields, factories, houses, tubes, smokes and the Danube at last! How beautiful this town really is! Like a pearl.

White pillars, sliding waiters, Hotel Gellért. Then I will rent a room, we cannot live - the two of us - at Mom's place. From the dark brown turn-of-the-century telephone cell I am quickly calling Cosima, and suddenly I don't tell her where I am?No, the aircraft had to land in Prague, so here we are. I have to stop talking now, I have not enough money. Ciao.

Okay, let's go to bathe. Nobody tells us to hurry up, I don't have to pretend I am gay - but I can allow myself to go into a Middle-European Turkish bath, they are here since hundreds of years, who knows still until when?

They give such a small linen apron. It looks good on KoZMa, with his dark skin. I should have gone sunbathing.

I also brought in a scene of the movie, in a transparent nylon file to tell him at last what it's all about. I only hope the other bathing people will not bother us.

So here is Diaghilev, and here is Nijinsky sitting in two huge leather fauteuils, before a gobelin curtain with purple fringes. Nijinsky suddenly springs up to the roof of the cupboard. Diaghilev throws down his cigars' ash:

"Come down, my sweet boy, what's the matter! It's no problem you don't like to talk. If someone asks something, you just look at me and if I'm holding my fingers like this? this second finfer, you see. The two means: 'house', so you just ahve to say something nice about the place you are in.

The boy is squatting on the cupboard. He watches the ceiling: encrusted ikons.

"Look. A man?his back?a little man."

"Yes. He is Christophoros. It was a good saying on your part about the place. But you have to begin these 'two-er' sentences with 'How beautiful?' and afterwards you can tell what you just saw a minute before. When I indicate the hunch of the camel on my chin, this will signify the 'three''. The letter 'gee'. Then you have to talk about yourself, gospodin Nijinsky. Come on, get off the cupboard, in any minute Nadyeshda Semyonova might arrive with the tea.

"I love you."

"Okay. Thanks. Now, if I'm touching my monocle, you will recite an old proverb."

He does touch his monocle.

The boy is jumping, his Russian silkshirt floats on his chest - and he lands on the bed, under the pale purple curtain.

"Gold and silver, jewels and pearls I will leave behind when the Father calls me."

"Very well, son. We won't stay here very long. And abroad we will survive on less, too? Come on?closer."

He is leaning forward, touching the shoulder of the dancer.

A balding gent watches me with some astonishment in his eyes from under the well. I continue. Someone knocks at the door. Romola enters, a charming chestnut-haired girl with warm eyes and, together with her, a journalist arrives too, his name is Kárpáth. They are sorry, but they have heard that the group prepares for Rio de Janeiro and that they still need choralists.

The water is sparkling nicely. I see my legs under it. KoZMa closed his eyes. It was silly to lie to Cosima that we are in Prague. But maybe she will realise she is much more able to find documents there, that here, and then she might even be grateful for me.

I go out into the steam and then quickly to the cold water - as I'm coming back, KoZMa is just explaining something with open arms and fallen head to a curly bearded young man, who disappears at once when I arrive.

"Wha does Diaghilev show his forefinger?" KoZMa asks.

"Oh..yes. It's a sign-talk. That's how they agree, how they will solve the problem of Nijinsky not being able to concentrate on what people ask from him. He is constantly stormed by questions. But it also means, my opinion is, he was not suddenly turning crazy, later, here in Buda, but?that he never was able to concentrate on words?he was a bit dyslexic, he could not talk or think relatedly. And only at the end did he stop speaking completely, not moving for decades. Except when he saw the new invention: the picture screen. He could jump high as a man, without even running for it. Others say he converted and in the Pravoslav community you are allowed to spaek only if necessary.

"You mean he was like the golem in that movie?"

The balding man is watching us continuously, mainly KoZMa is interesting for him. I start getting out of the water.

1974.

The boys were so beautiful: on their tight trousers the sparkling glances. Machine-gun shots in the TV on the other channel: hit-parade. You could caress the air, caress softly, escaping carefully the points where the shining brown looks are meeting in the past that1s loose and shaking. If I could ever see him again?The beautiful boy and the church. As a grey haired tourist I'd run on, with downcast eyes, explaining to my wife the stone miracle, the tenth century - she would be half asleep. The metro would rattle with metal sounds: "point of interrogation", "double point", "shoot", "fire".

Moses II.33.18

And Moses said: Show me your glory! And the Lord answered thus: I will make proceed before you all my might and I will tell before you the name of the Lord. I pity who pity and I am merciful to who I am merciful. My face you cannot see - he said - because man cannot see my face and live. And the Lord said this: There is a place there, stand on that stone rock! And when my glory will be proceeding I will put you in the slit of the rock and I'll cover you with my hands, until I have passed. And then I raise my hands and you can see me from behind, since my face is to be ssen by no one.

Mem. The belly. Referring to 'mayim', meaning 'water'. The center of the Ego. Jesus Christ (in Roman and Greek), which is Yehoshooah in Hebrew, and Hamashiah - meaning Anointed (with oil), Christos in Greek. It means the Saving Hepl is Oily Smooth.

The water.

G sharp.

A falt.

Deep blue.

Initiation. Baptism. Death.

The crystal gaze.

Jolly Joker: the Hanged Man.

Loss: fatal or voluntary.

Tiphereth - Beauty - at this point at the belly: balancing between Hesed (Kindness, Love) and Gevoorah (Stern Truth).

The middle letter of the aleph-beth on the front of the golem.

Myrrh. Eagle. Snake. Scorpion. Sign: Pisces. Insight. Unselfish.

Duty.

Pale blue.

I grasp the snake-like golden fence and I get out of the water, drops fall from my belly.

Well, I go on explaining it, in the script there used to be a scene, where the maid of Romola sings some song about the Prague wonder-rabbi, who made that terrible clay-man, this automat...I don't remember if the song mentions also the name of the rabbi Löw, it would be a funny coincidence.

And Nijinsky prepares a golem-dance on this melody. That1s how Romola is able to approach the dancer of God: shining blue sea, white tennis garments, golden hairs on his bronzed arms. And real love too.

But all this will be left out of the movie, 'cause Cosmos says not enough people know the story of the golem, and anyway this meeting with the golem-legend is not proven or is it? It's a pity, because it's much easier to understand this woman from the way she sends out her maid to sing as a bait - she comes from a family of famous people, her mother was one of the greatest actresses of the age, Emma Marcus - so she had to catch an even more famous husband. And she was used to getting her wishes fulfilled.

"To me too it sounds funny. You know I grew up without knowing about these Easter Island legends about those stone statues, you know. I was grown up in the Bronx and in Berlin ," KoZMa says, musing.

Yes, me too, I was envying those friends, who had 'names', who had one more adjective. And if I wouldn't have fled when I was twenty, i could even be among the winners at least. But this way. A beginner at the age of thirtythree? No chances.

I still tried to persuade Cosmos I told him the City Guides send everybody to the grave of rabbi Löw in Prague, since, according to legend, "wishes come true" there, but the Doctor was just laughing at "those sillynesses".

He even went to the Jewish Library in Berlin and looked it up, and told me afterwards, that the clay man is just a legend, a folklore, it means 'rough matter' in the Bible, it contains all the pictures that ever aropse during the cosmos' existence. Unfortunately, at the beginning the Cup of Stern Judgment has overflown and, in the shadow of the manlike form, made of ten Cups, was created the Chaos, the golem where the root of the soul of the Saviour (Yeshooah) is imprisoned. It should be freed.

III.

Why is this boy so silent?

Okay, let's go upstairs to get dry.

There are these cabins here, you can lie down on white linen sheets, you also get one on your back, it's even warned, it's very comfortable. We have two cabins in a corner. And I get off the sheet - I feel somebody watches me from behind.

I'm turning back.

I see KoZMa watching me from the mirror - but not my face. Further down.

I'm shuddering. I am just standing and I find him in my mirror. I am watching him as he is watching me. My legs.

I pull in my curtain furiously. I never dared in my life to?such a?er?I don't understand?Maybe it's okay after all?

I hear his curtain being pulled off and I do the same.

Kozma is standing there. I stop drying myself, I should tell him something in anger, but then, as I see his face - and his innocent eyes - suddenly I pretend as if nothing had happened, I am turning back to Nijinsky again:

"Imagine, they are travelling on this ship (I rub my arms) and Romola and her maid, who is called Marfa in Romola's diary, well, they find out how to try to make Nijinsky interested in Prague. Of course he doesn't look at them. He is watching a sailor who is bending over a fence, letting down some bucket."

The ship is swaying.

The sea is blue.

Shining bodies take sunbath.

The comtesse and her maid are immersed in chattering - behind them a deep blue jacket, white trousers: the dancer watches the sea.

Romola is just saying:

"Sure Ive been to Prague, yes?You know, there is this cenmetery, the Jewish one, where there is a grave, on which, if you put a stone and you are wishing something - it is fulfilled?I just wished to get accepted into the chorus of the ballet Russe!"

The maid shows her a small Jesus-statue:

"Only Jesus can help, mademoiselle?This is the Little Jesus of Prague?If you are praying to this, then your wishes get fulfilled."

"Then too, sure. In the Jewish cemetery too, it's Jesus, the Saviour, that they call Yeshooah - he is the one who helps everywhere, darling. They consider Rabbi Löw to be the Mashiah, the Anointed saviour of that generation."

Well, I tell him, while rubbing my hair, I hope it's not too much from legends for you?

I realise KoZMa is not paying attention at all - he watches my legs.

I grab my spray to throw it at him, but it slips from my oily hands and upon this I get so angry - I'm still epileptic - that I slap him on his face: but at the very same moment I already realise he didn't deserve that.

For a second the world gets dark. Then I see that, from the next cabin, a bespectacled man looks out: I am helping KoZMa, who sat down in astonishment on the floor. To the bathmaster coming up I'm explaining in restrained calm sounds that there was a misunderstanding, and we are already leaving. KoZMa is clasping strongly my shoulder and only then do I realise that now I have to fight - we fell on the floor both of us.

Catch as catch can.

Our bodies are shining from oil.

The floor is wet underneath.

I should try to get him off my body, if we could turn?.No, I wouldn't believe that there is so much strength in this bird-boned boy.

The first-aid guy is sitting in front of me, watching me. At last he could manage to gett off his uniform shoes with one of his feet from the other one. It seems to me he wants to strip down.

Maybe it's some kind of experiment? That if I'm upset I will suddenly recognise myself. Or?he too, he saw on TV the way Diaghilev used his body-parts as an alphabeth. In those series they are always showing the cards, maybe the tight foot and the left one and the belly, the shoulders, the head and the two arms?well, they all have a letter, and if I knew them?It's absurd to think that a naked man's body means nothing else to me than homoerotic desires like I had in puberty. Maybe a man's body - and the whole world - is a secret writing.

On screen: the appendix comes. Yes. They are humming the sound 'noon'. Meaning grandson. Fifty is its numerical value. It's along the hips. He is forming the hips too. It will be light and soft. Mercy. Love. Justice. The walking. Here begin in two legs. The artist. The magus. The fighter. The ocean. The Venus. The skeleton on the Jolly Joker called: Death.

Yes, that's the hip.

The rabbi leans over parchments. What to do if the golem ran loose. So we have to construct another machine, with which he will be finding it. A box. Like this. There is a hole on the front of it, on which the pictures will emerge. Laterna Magica.

For one second we see Abraham, his eyes are closed. And now it's king David - he is carving his slingshot on the field. There's a fire somewhere. And there?yes?a Russian dancer in a small whitepainted room, sitting before a picture-case. If only he would be looking up. But the male nurse is just knocking on the door. The family Mahler waits downstairs in the foyer. He nods "no". I'm shaking my head.

A minute ago I quite remembered his name?not me?but that person in the future who will find some traces of the relationship between me and Agathe, if it's possible. As if there were a face between the pictures and as if?but it was just "as if".

I saw some high, tall building with pillars and purple carpets and some stone floor with water on it?But because of the knocking on the door I forgot everything again.

In the fight, KoZMa's foot got caught into his trousers behind the curtain and it fell down into the water. I try to stop him. I see, as his wallet slid out of his 'hind pocket. Lots of German marks. A passport. A notice book. Tickets. Photos. Hungarian money, its' name is "florida" or what.

On the photo up there, a small black-grey skinned child, eating ice on the bank of a pool.

And on the picture behind?that blondine?But that's Cosima!

Cosima is laughing, turning this way, her yellowish hair put up into a bun. And another one: she is looking a bit frustrated at the same pool next to the ice cream bar.

What does that mean? By chance they have met once and the guy didn't realise Cosima is also there when he was hiding in the linen basket? Otherwise he should have talked about it. Or is it a serious business? Why would he carry photos of her otherwise?

He is clutching my head under his arm, and when I am free again, the whole package has disappeared. I was struggling too much, maybe I kicked it under the sofa.

I will not raise questions. Where did they meet? And what if they have been really "together"?

I am even more astonished at my sudden anger.

It's like when somebody gets up on a bus and sees a wonderful pair of eyes and in a second they both realise that they are both boys so they glance away in fright and of course, they are angry at the other one.

After all, this guy has been brought up on the Easter Islands and it cannot be in his guts that you cannot watch or touch or even like men. Other gods don't say about this a word. But the God of Gods must know something we don't know if He stresses:

"Don't covet?Don't have desires?"

Or is it a question of youth? While we are young, how could we guess what it's all about? Why should we believe those religious persons who were killing each other all through the centuries while preaching love? When you are young - you feel free, you feel everything is possible, you can do what you want.

And only?er?I am panting, my heart throbbing..oh, God?h e is stronger, that I am: no, it's impossible?er?er?one realises only later, that those ten counsels (commandments) are coming good sometimes.

You really are free - to choose the right way.

Now KoZMa would look into my eyes if I wouldn't touch his chin with my shoulder. He is not moving. I am clutching him tightly.

Throbbing heart.

Yes, I see.

On the stone floor, in the mirror of water he glimpsed his own face.

It was on the place, where he was figuring his head to be.

Downstairs the pedicure man is scratching - his wife made her hair into curls, warming herself before the television, since she knows how big a marrow her husband got from the wife of the butcher, outside the cabs are standing in line, the one with the small moustache reads the Crossword Puzzle, worrying he cannot buy concrete and that other woman is thinking suddenly of forty-four when her husband was taken and killed.

Romola was never interested in such things.

Luckily women were not really finished by all those wars and?nothing. If there were a shelf in this room I would take the Bible now.

I'm always embarrassed when I take it.

I look at my right hand coming now, with hissing the sound of 'samech' in the background, when breathing out. It's already November. The month of Kislev. The stern judgement and magnanimity. The sign of the Sagittarius. The number of Sixty. The shield to defend. Michael. Mercurius. Wednesday.

The Balance. The Measure. New cultures. The world where robots and wealth reign. One of them is just prepared.

On screen: the card of the Measurement, a Jolly Joker. An angel is pouring two cups, one into the other.

Golden section.

Right hand. With five small tubes, the fingers with a shining shield on them, the nails. Small hairs.

I feel, as he leans forward very calmly, and grabs one of the buttons of my shirt at the slit of the pullover.

It's difficult to go on. It's always distorting when one is too enthusiastic, but this light, modest, sober, loving, careful, selfless, fine and deep man I got acquainted with - well, such things come to my mind, it's lucky I cannot talk - but still, that's what I think.

Should I be shrugging my shoulders? But I am feeling such a strong love in my heart - and I am thankful to my Fate that I am able to feel like that at all - and I am really moved, when I think about you - or, to be more definite, when I think about that light, soft shirt-collar and that movement of the hand - at that glance. And there are so many other things which are indescribably interesting in the whole of it.

I don't know how you feel about all this. I do know that these feelings will pass away. I will get embarrassed: Imake myself ridiculous with my enthusiasm, nobody is that much fantastic as I have imagined them to be - and this desire of touching, this is a constant faulty switch in my heart: however, I try to restrain it since years, it still gets confused with attraction and love.

It's great that I became mute, now my silliness goes on only in my head. I am looking at his shoes. It's shining.

I'm breathing out.

Kozma is snorting. It's the end of our fight.

He weighs on me.

Leopold Löw (1849, my great-great-grandfather)

Of course we would have decided in the morning to send an estafette (post) about my discharging from the prison, but we started from the assumption, that it takes a lot of money. Then it became clear, it's not the case: but you need an official permit to send a courier. So, after a meal, I went to the city council, but the Lord Lieutenant Szentistványi, to whom I was sent, was not there, so the courier was skipped.

In Father's company we went to Haynau and Machio, where we offered our thanks, then we visited Kapovitz, who was not at home, so we were talking to his wife.

During the afternoon I was at david Osterreicher in the Neugebeude and at Mrs. Goldberger. Beforehand I had ordered my coach to Gyõr.

Possibly I will already travel tomorrow afternoon, but maybe just in the morning of Tuesday. I believe that at 10 or at latest 11 on Wednesday i will march in. In what colour our meeting floats before my eyes and that you'll be mine again - you can imagine.

I can barely control my restlessness.

My dear Life, it's the first time ever that I'll bring you some present.

We already made the necessary steps. I hope you will be glad too. For Feitel I also want to bring a book.

When I arrived at the Neugebeude in the evening, they were just ringing the bell. What feelings these sounds evoked in me, I shouldn't be telling. Schwanfelder is in prison.

We will spend this evening at Schwimmers. We are invited.

When I return from the society I will not be writing, tomorrow I will be occupied, so probably these are the last words of my diary.

Monday, the 17th of December, 1849, at noon.

Yesterday evening we spent a few agreeable hours at Schwimmers. The company: Lublin and his wife, Barnay and wife, and Bach. Meal: Soup and hours d'oeuvres (sardelles, herrings, smoked salmon) mutton, Baigel, cake, fruit, black coffee.

We stop fighting. Sure he did hit back. I look at myself in the mirror next to the coat rack. It cannot be ssen. I hope. I'm an idiot - I'm an imbecile! I don't even know him. Who knows why did he watch me?

I see, as the yellow-green guy who is fleeing the power of kingly priesthood takes very quickly his white-yellow courderoy jeans and his stripped green-orange shirt, and he is running downstairs - of course they won't let him go out just like that, the cabin master is white trousers stops him, he has a black moustache too.

I'm putting on my shirt too and bending, through the wooden fence I say:

"Let him go, I'll pay?"

Still I would be happy if he wouldn't disappear now.

The bathing masters look at each other. As if something understandable would have happened.

I reach him in the front hall.

I'm limping a bit, because I cannot get into one of my jogging shoes, it's not closed yet.

"I am sorry..er?er," I am stuttering.

He looks up at me, I see wonder in his eyes.

"I really didn't want to hit you," I begin.

"Don't plead for mercy. You were acting rightly. You, whites, you are murderers of minutes. Jews and Christians are acting from the point of view of the saviour arriving at end-point of Eternity. It's a nice thing. So, the enjoyments of the body, the joys of the present minute are taboo. And, of course, when two bodies touch each other, either because of sex, or without it on the level of seeing - well, it always does mean something from the point of view of the whole world. So, I do know that, if I like somehing, I have to watch it. We cannot know how the message will be solved for us?"

"Oh, yeah?I mean?well, I always think it's about me?You?you?you are not afraid that, if you understand something?well, you might get crazy?"

"let's drink something. What's written on that board?" Kozma points at it.

"There are juices and cocoa, " I am explaining. The board is here by chance, the writing says only: "Sunbathing terrace is closed." And there are those cakes.

"I'd like some cocoa. Take it easy. Nothing happened."

"I have to call my mother. I have spare keys, we could go there without a word, but?her heart?I'm afraid she would get scared. She is worrying too much about me. Too much."

"Hallo?Hallo, where do you call from?"

"Well?"

"You are at home! Where do you call from? From the river of the Danube? What are you looking for on the riverside of the danube? I hear the noises. A friend of yours? An actor? Well, take him here!"

My hand is shaking.

Even now.

I shouldn't have hit him?I left a lot of money in the Hotel Gellért, at the baths and everywhere, but I'm not in a mood to stay there after such a scandal, so we are standing at the riverbank, neons sparkling in the water, the letters falling apart. We are gonna go to my mother, Nyanyi will surely be happy or, if not, she will pretend so. I didn't want to visit her since she always talks a hole into my head about what I should do and what I shouldn't do and how I should do things and how not. Anyway, we have to sleep somewhere.

I feel awfully tired in my limbs, my back is aching, i cannot hold my eyes open, i cannot bite close my teeth - an epileptic should not quarrel, and the bath in itself makes one tired?

After all a cab stops, three others didn't like us, they probably thought we are Gipsies or Arabs. Hungarian people are not used to the personal presence of different people: for them, a stranger is still a problem, or even an enemy?Well, this will stop?..It even has a small tv-screen in it.

So we don't have to start talking with the driver.

"Hi. We would like to go to the Cool Valley: I'll tell you how, after the Shell station."

On Tv, here too it's the movie on the Golem. They probably bought these series, or it's on satellite.

With a huge read beard - now it's not black-and-white - a fat man is sitting in a golden fauteuil, it's apparently Rudolph, the Emperor. Next to him, with a rectangular hat, a man with a straight nose - it's probably Kepler, and the Emperor tells the third one, between the bailiffs - we recognise him from his beard: the Maharal, the High Rabbi Löw with a funny watchlike machine in his hand in a box, with a shining hole at its side, the laterna magica.

"You know, master, Kepler states that the earth is?er?like a globe?.They discovered the Indies toward the West. This means there might be other globes like this?er?So we have to prepare machines and automats.

Machines that will be working instead of humans?"

"They say you have been creating some kind of wonder-man. Is that it?" The Emperor points at his box.

"No, sire. The wonder-man?disappeared. So this is a tele-vision, which I constructed to find it with."

He puts down the machine, he is pottering with it?and then some light is dawning on it?And in the light there appears a nice young man in a long garment and another one, just behind him. The first one has reddsh hair,the other one is dark. The first one is saying:

"Yonathan?Tomorrow I am going out to the battlefield top see that gol?gol?gol-what? His name begins with 'gol'?or..what?"

"Golem?I mean, not golem, Golyath. Yes, Golyath.

The taxi driver is switching the button.

So we see a kissing pair on the picture machine, and a voice is saying:

"We prepare different objects...But you are giving presents.

Music.

Logo.

Fishes are swimming in the screen aquarium.

"Suddenly merchant-fishes appear before the eyes of the divers. They begin to float upwards. The unpleasant sea-bees are also there. It's a wondrous view. During the course of time the world of the corals has disappeared four times. At last the anchor gets loosened and the Calypso can follow its course?We know that this beautiful world is wounded and it can do nothing against the humans. Ten or forty million years, until such a world appears?"

Now we see a sunglassed face - the Jolly Joker of the Devil.

The left hand can come?You have to say the sound 'ayin', the sign of the Seventy, that is a vocal, like the aleph too. The sign of the Moon and Gabriel. And of December, Tevet. Of braveness. Of laughter (Yitshak in Hebrew).

"The light of my eye is lacking to save you."

The letter of the eye, ayin - belonging to the Devil, the Blocker, the one who doesn't see well something. The silly mistake.

The sign of far-seeing, tele-vision.

The sign of coincidence.

The schizophrenics.

Mystics.

The electromagnetic forces.

The spleen, the milt.

The Gemini.

How easily the left hand is turning on its joint. Yes.

His arm, his hand are sparkling.

Buttoning my shirt.

Now he pulls off with two hands my pullover. I will get up at once and I will go out to the corridor. If I have to do just a little bit of something during this Cosmos - than I have to be related to Djinny Geniusky as well as to Abraham or that KoZMa on the screen: than I have to have enough moral strength to stand up and if I have no voice, I can signal it with my head: "no" I should say.

Outside the wind is crackling in a plum coloured mass. My ambiguous-coloured socks are on the floor. Shelve: the books are hiding into shaking dust.

Max Weber. Mannheim. Wittgenstein. Thomas Mann. Attila József. Milan Füst. Sigmund Freud.

All dedicated to us: I should try out if I can read in Hungarian.

Also there are two matches on the floor.

A good feeling. Coincidentally.

My feet are drumming on the floor the rhytm of a song. Is it possible I will finish in some horrid rented room? No, it'snot very plausible. And even there I'llhave a screen. Agathe is angry if I say at her girlfriend, Marthe Vago:

"A tadpole with a hairdo!"

 György Kecskeméti 1921 (my grandfather)

Why hiding from yourself? Afraid of being sincere?

You're a coward, a coward! Now I'll put you questions!

What did you do until now? Tell me what didya do here,

In what you call past and what will be your Fashion?

Why is it that slowly - you're too late from all things -

And your past is filled with lots of aching points?

That you are covering with sensitive balkings

That are harmed by the lights and which no oil can oint?

No, this won't do like this - the game is over this way:

Either you'll have the strength and you will finish at once

With all that raggy whining or you'll have to decay

Forever?as it happened already when not knowing whence

You came - your mind stopped. But now I really ask you,

Roughly and brutally. And the poem will be a prose text

Whose symbols and metaphors your mind will have to eschew.

And now we see C. G. Jung, the doctor of Nijinsky on the TV-screen:

"The believer supposes that the common religious symbols are created by god revealed to man. The non-believer thinks them to be inventions. They are both wrong. The non-believer is right insofar as a symbol of the religion is the result of a hundred-year-long work. The believer is right in stating that the origin of the symbols disappears in the puzzling depths of the past, so they seem to originate from no human. In reality they are collective imaginations that are based on the earliest human dreams and fantasies. Insofar they are spontaneous phenomenons and not deceitful inventions."

The taxi is sliding, we watch the pictures. The World as it is. Sparkling screens, hopeless dreams. The big question: why to be rather good?

And the answer: the friend of a friend of a friend said so. I mean the star I've seen on TV who was the neighbour of my grandmother and to her ancestor Abraham was explaining that there is a "God", a Maker giving us Ten good counsels and whoever echoes them is entitled to await the Saviour.

Don't have other desires than that which you receive from Him.

"You are the first man?,"KoZMa is whispering, and I see he is watching his hands, "you are the first man..er?"

"God, don't tell me you love me?," I am telling myself.

"You are the fist man from whom I am not?afraid?I was not afraid?," his whisper is barely audibl.

I shouldn't have hit him. There are some who you just should not hit. Sure it was not deliberate. Still.

We sit in the cab silently.

We are arriving.

I am paying.

The Golem, if it gets two different, contradictory orders - then he stands still, shaking and immobile, he just stands, says nothing, stays standing.

Love!

Don't love!

And if only one letter is not at its' place on its' breast from the word "Truth"("Emeth"), then the golem, the rough matter of our personality gets wild and turns mad.

"Nowadays they are projecting always such Jewish movies?"

"Yes, they are beginning to realise that the Jews (meaning Echoers originally) were historically the first "Christians"(stemming from the Hebrew 'Anointed') too, so this controversy is full of misunderstandings, " I tell this to the driver and I close the door: i see the bearded rabbi Löw mirrored in the doorknob.

I see then my mother, in her beige costume, as she comes down on the stairs in the garden - as if her head would shake a bit and her steps are uncertain. She passes the gate of the wine-cellar - for old residents it's the entrance of a hidden cave-labirynth under our hill.

I am introducing Kozma.

"Oh, these blacks are so sweet?"

I don't begin to explain. I imagine what she would say if somebody whould think she is an Arab. Still I tell her: "He comes from the Easter Islands, he is not a Negro."

"Oh, my God, you see how I am, you see? Thank God he doesn't understand what I am speaking about, does he? Ain't we discourteous?.Mr. Kozma?er?how do you like it in Budapest? " she continues in English:" Silly question."

How beautiful laughter she has.

All the while we arrived through the battered stairs - yes, the whole country is like that, this is what one forgets if one isn't here, that everything is battered, the plasters are falling, the sidewalk and the floor is bumpy, the walls are grey from the dust and the smoke, the fences are rusty.

Inside, we go through the wooden-plastered antechamber and to the hall.

A small black forged iron standing lamp, the old furniture of a "salon" with covers, since it's the same on which Bartók, Kosztolányi and Karl Mannheim or even Freud had sat, of course Mom never speaks about them, but you can feel it. On the screen a woman is talking: "If spending of blood would happen outside of working time, than the whole health care service would have to be dealt with accordingly?And I wish this country had only as many work hours lost as there are spent in the spending of blood?"

"You are not watching the movie about the rabbi Löw?"

"Oh, don't bother me with that?Last week he invented laterna magica to find with it the lost golem?Who started to save the bride of the rabbi?It's ridiculous?"

Oh, my God, home again?Outside, the cherry tree is whispering to the nut tree, except that this one has no more strength to whisper back. It's dying.

Down there the city is sparkling, like a fisher's net pulled out of a nightly sea.

"Do you want a tea before going to bed?" my mother asks. And she adds:

"Do tell me about you!"

>From the way she queries, my stomach gets knotted.

What should I tell her about?

There is always something?"Now, you know I'd like to shoot a movie in Budapest, it will be about Nijinsky, you know, he was a Russian dancer, so this dancer friend of mine from the Easter Islands, he is the one to play the main part you know?"

"Now, now?you see: dreams come true."" Nyanyi is saying as she puts down the tea. She looks before herself.

How old did she become. In 1951 they say she already once had a child, who then was put into the Orphanage?because my mother got sick..er?and?er?she never speaks about it?of course nobody can find this child because of the Stalinists..They gave the child to some Italian family. Oh, no she shouldn't begin to talk about the war, I rather tell her that scene we are working on today, "you know there is this grand bourgeois interieur, just like this, a canapé from the empire, it's green, and this round table next?.And the tea would be sweating on its top and the charming, young Romola Nijinskaya, ho just married in Rio de Janeiro, has just invited a few of her friends to introduce them to her husband, the well-known famed person."

All this seen through the window, over the garden, where Agathe Keller is mixing the cards.

"Oh, no, no, no, you can't put me into.." she is waving, but I see she is interested.

"And here he arrives, Louis Kárpáth, the journalist who was the only journalist daring to question the Russian Ballet vbout their faults?And this is Miss Emma Ritooók, a fan of mother Emma Markus and a friend of her husband from childhood, you know. Dame Emma will only descend if 'the Russian' comes out too?.Nijinsky went for a walk on 'God's Mountain' - where we live - or 'Little God's Mountain', as some call it, the German's Hill (its' official name). He went for hours. It's evening already?they cannot go on talking. Then Louise, tha maid runs in panting:

"The crown prince was shot!"

they spring up all at once and that very minute the door opens and the Dancer arrives - his tuxedo, his tie, his shoes are full of mud. Shit! Clay and like if he would have rolled over in the mountain, the sheet gets off the statue of Beethoven in the park, leaves are flying and as he enters, he doesn't even look around, he tears off his clothing, his vest, his shirt, his trousers...There he is standing stark naked as if born from his mother's womb. Like he would be whispering all along: " Blood! Blood?blood."

IV.

We are watching each other. We watch each other on the screen. A high building. A tower. The lightning strikes it just now. The crown falls down. Falling people. Devastation. Inventions.

The invention of far seeing, tele-vision. (1919-1949)

And xeroxing too?I come to the left nose-hole, I will form it here. Sighing the sound 'pai', the letter of the mouth, of the West, of the Spring, of making the desert fertile. The Wednesday.

The colour purple. The sound "G". The ugliness and the beauty. The sin and the mercy. The ruin. The new machines. The atom.

"Godly forces are standing next to me. I am choosing my goals again and again."

The left nose-hole. It will tremble softly when all is ready. We are rubbling our noses slowly?Yes, that's how, you, behind-the-scene cosmic movement-artist, who frogets who he is..like me too, if my guess is correct.

A hand touches my waist.

Yes.

The hand of my friend.

We sit in front of each other, naked to the waist.

The god-dancers on the screen, they are completely naked already. Sure.

Put on your trousers!

I'm hearing the voice of Goti ( mother Agathe), although I didn't even pull them off. The guards are not letting me read. Iron discipline.

A demonstration under black-painted flags.

The garden that has atomisrays is not visited by the butterfly.

The screen of the TV set will shield you, this person cannot fight me, cannot attack me, we cannot kick off the window of the picture shield?Calmly. If you want you can take off your linen slip too. Just relax. I'm watching TV anyway.

A big fish is a big fish whatever you think.

The death of millions is more important than your own?

No, I'm not interested. I leave you a paper:

"I went to the mountain."

To Cosima I'm whispering: drop dead, just drop dead, you fucking?fucking..you slut, you animal, you?just fuck off! Drop dead. Nothing is important to you? Drop dead. Double danger of life: the dark-skinned people who want to get Kozma, they are able to do anything, so it's life-endangering to Kozma, and it can be another life-danger if he goes into those gigs, I mean it's quite dangerous. O.K. let's forget it, w all die at the end of our lives, don't we?

I hope so.

György Kecskeméti 1926 (my grandfather)

He was covered by a damp and infinite humility: behind each darkness on the other side of every closed door, in all shadowy corners - 'GOD' was watching him, the terrible night: his soul was panting like a light feather in his hands, that were abla - he felt that - to ruin the whole world and raise him all alone, among howling windstorms to some glorious mountains, sacred to His Kingdom alone. That's when that 'curious, lonely' life began, that never ever left him from that time. Since he felt himself every time he desired the proof of His might - and as he was waiting for the final Answer, it was not important any more, that his being sacrificed to 'God' should be proven to everybody - the waiting itself was enough.

Now it's Professor Jung himself who will read something to the prisoner: