They stopped again at Györ, then continued across the plain, where the heat rose in a silvery haze from grasslands and cornfields. Broad, low, farmhouses floated past; cars queued patiently at a level crossing; shadows indolent as moat water surrounded the blackened walls of an old Soviet-era industrial plant. László leaned his head against the window and fell asleep. Immediately, he began to dream, discovering himself in a street he did not quite recognize, one of those urban settings collaged by the unconscious from a dozen different cities; places lived in, or seen from the window of a taxi, or on a cinema screen. He was dressed in a baggy black suit like a type of circus clown, and dragged behind him an enormous overpacked suitcase tied shut with lengths of string. At the corner of the street, garbed in the outfit of a Mexican bandido, Emil Bexheti leaned against the wall with his arm around the shoulders of a beautiful woman, who laughed shrilly to see László stumbling up the dust of the street. And yet the mood of the dream was not oppressive. In spite of the sense that he could not possibly carry his burden much farther, he was content, almost cheerful, in the dogged fashion of a man who acts out his fate knowing that there can be no other. And after a while he ceased to hear the woman’s laughter. The city abruptly ended and he was out in the country, hauling the case – which now he dimly recognized as the one he had left Hungary with, his father’s case, a thing of solid burnished leather with the initials ‘A.L’ stencilled on the top – along a white road that undulated into the remote distance; a white ribbon threaded through a deserted arcadia, which would lead him, unerringly somehow, to his final destination...

He woke as they were pulling into Kelati station, the spell, the unexpected peacefulness of his dream, replaced by a great agitation of noise and movement. In a panic he reached forward, cursing himself and scrabbling under the pages of the newspaper that had fallen from his lap while he slept, and then, in his relief, laughing out loud as his fingers grazed the waxy sides of the bag.

He clambered with it down on to the platform, weaving through the gangs of accommodation touts, tough-looking women mostly, holding up cards with ‘Room to rent’ spelled out in English and German and Italian. Above their heads, pigeons flew in swift formations, their wings rippling the light that fell in a wash from the great fan window at the city end of the station. Émigré, playwright, international courier, László Lázár was back, and in his old language he silently greeted his old home.

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