1st Movement: Allegro, Scene 8
(Roland and Kálmán sit on bar-stools, Győző stands at the window, making a call on his mobile phone but we can’t hear his words) GYŐZŐ (puts away the phone and raises his voice)
We went on various trips with grandmother.
We’d get on the bus at Joliot-Curie Square,
And head for Virágvölgy or on to where
The leaves turn red at Csillebérc, and beyond,
Past houses, to the meadow, a floral meadow
Full of people flying kites in summer;
But there was nothing magical down here:
The corner grocery, dust, tobacconists.
The square not derelict, just gradually emptied,
Grew soft and tired, like an abandoned lover,
No fountain there, no waterfalls, no rapids,
Not even a place where we could queue for pancakes;
Above all, no bronze statue, no Miraculous Stag,
No Turul bird, just a cinema, the Ugocsa,
Exhausted Sunday afternoons, the walls
Flaking loose plaster, a heavy dose of boredom. KÁLMÁN
And yet the place retained a kind of charm,
A real hill-fortress feel, the air of something
Unmistakably protected, locked away. GYŐZŐ
An oasis of calm, you might say… It still is calm,
Though now there is the White Box on the corner.
And I am here too so it’s just granny missing.
All else is changed. The girls in the Tora-Bora
Opposite us have done their big game hunting,
And now pursue the nearest Alpha male;
The boys at the bar, the kiddies, are convinced
That, Buda hills being closer set to heaven,
Living there makes them citizens of the world.
Hills offer us the celestial perspective:
One’s always looking down from the high crags,
While those below must look up here to see us.
Naturally, we love the plain below
Without the plain we’re nothing very much.
Occasionally we make a sally there
And even strike the odd deal with the natives.
We love the flat plain, love its manners, at least
From a distance; cool breeze, the panorama!
We can relax while keeping our ears open:
You don’t get the loud street racket up here. KÁLMÁN
We peer out of our glass aquarium.
That’s not the vanity of living on a hillside,
It’s simply curiosity, that’s all. GYŐZŐ
Pest, the big smoke, is full of labouring proles,
Juicy with gossip about us on the hill.
Down there the streets are cordoned off. Cops know
They need not cordon streets off up in Buda. KÁLMÁN
I’m faintly aware of a sickening distant buzz:
Here we go again: they’re burning cars.
Here we go again: uproot that call-box.
Here we go again: the piercing sirens.
Here we go again: streets full of teargas.
GYŐZŐ
The White Box wouldn’t even notice it.
They wouldn’t notice it if half the city
Were to be wiped clean off the face of the earth.
Should Pest be full of corpses, should Buda itself
Just vegetate, they’d go on vegetating,
If the whole city were nothing but a graveyard
The White Box would still welcome visitors.
ROLAND (to Győző)
Ah what a year, what a year that was! KÁLMÁN (to Roland)
Do you remember Pest? Remember when
The Number 2 tram ran right along the cordon? GYŐZŐ
It’s not a country worth wasting your breath on.
Its mind is gone, don’t waste good breath on it.
Accountants, incumbents, presidents, residents,
Of any hue, at any time you choose… KÁLMÁN
It’s not a year to waste one single breath on. ROLAND
A whole era not worth wasting breath on. (He goes) GYŐZŐ (glancing up at the chandelier)
A whole sky up there not worth wasting breath on.
A whole sky-nation not worth wasting breath on,
And down below – romantic Budapest.
Translated by George Szirtes Previously on HLO | 
