‘They always want that. They wanted the same thing back when they locked me up. They wanted it during the war. Now it’s what they want again. But I didn’t break from the beatings in prison, I didn’t break from the torture, I didn’t break when they raped me with a broomstick. And you must never break either, little girl.’

Only he speaks no such words. This is what he would say if he could speak now, just as he’s already said these things several times before, in the illegal church and in the TV studio, in panel discussions and in his autobiography. Still, he is not capable of speech at the moment.

He thinks about Márti. In his mind he is back in her room, two days earlier. He bursts into tears as he holds her bony hand. Time dries out everything, he muses, and he recalls the night about thirty or forty years ago when they both committed adultery. Márti was so beautiful back then, tall and strong, high cheekbones and legs to make you go crazy, her hair worn in a trendy ’80s style, and her eyes, oh, those eyes! The way she could look at you. . .

His mind drifts back to that moment, that one moment he holds dearest, the moment he wishes could last forever.

‘I love you,’ says Márti. They’re in bed, always in bed together, naked, warm and wet, her dark eyes shine and they are young, so young, even though they see themselves as old already. They are not even forty yet. It’s a perfect moment, the most perfect moment of his life, the only time he is truly happy.

Márti believed that compromise was the right way to go. She organized his television appearance. In that studio Peter talked about his years in prison, the grievances he suffered together with other believers, those who didn’t make it out alive, or died shortly thereafter. Márti chose him because he was handsome, his eyes bright. He evoked sympathy.

That broadcast in 1986 marked a turning point. They knew it right away from the change in atmosphere in the studio during the taping. From hatred to sympathy. The change was accomplished by Peter, but it was engineered by Márti.

Two years after his television appearance the belief in the Faceless and Nameless and Sleeping Great Lords was no longer punishable by prison in the territory of the Hungarian Republic. The believers were allowed to establish sanctuaries and churches, provided they were outside the city limits and not within a five kilometer radius of any school, prison, church of another religion, or grocery store. Following a lengthy process of tough negotiations even the Sunless Slaves were allowed to remain in the church’s possession. Only a few small concessions had to be made for the sake of basic human rights, but – refuting the greatest fears of anti-compromise church members – the Slaves did not legally become full-fledged citizens. With this, most of the believers accepted the new setup.