FAREWELL

Someone died in the house again. The trumpets of Jericho were silenced, while the choir of the archangels was silenced... A stormy Zhivago wind raged outside, but strangely enough it did not tear the fluttering veil of the cedar. The light of the tiny, pissy tea-tubes illuminated the garbage bin next to the lift, where cockroaches and beetles often fought their petty power struggles among themselves for some food.

Is life that simple?! Dust and ashes, stray memories left behind? An old, delicate lady, in the form of Miss Daisy, always offered me freshly baked meringue, and while I was curiously looking in her library room for secret manuscripts and books, long since lost, I could hear some of Mozart's and Beethoven's musical overtures coming through from the living room. When he was in a bad mood, he preferred to play Chopin and Schubert.

Where could all these years have gone? And where have his selfish, despicable family members and relatives gone, scattered?! His mysterious and highly intelligent being was both a creator and a preserver of culture; the image of János Arany with his snow-white beard and the seriousness of Babits was enthroned above his comfortable armchair, while he leafed through a dictionary of synonyms and other manuals. His handwriting was not to be forgotten. With a poopy, goose-feathered fountain pen he lightly scratched artistic hieroglyphics on the paper and even without a line guide, threadbare sentences and quotations left his fingers. Calligraphy should be taught again!

The circle of her life danced in a circle and then returned to itself. Perhaps we can understand the intricate system of interconnections, always pregnant with injustice and inequity, if we take note of the double metaphors of Birth and Death.