‘Yes. Europe doesn’t value traditions anymore. They don’t care about us,’ he said with a hurt pride that wasn’t his own.

Gergő finished oiling the first chain. He coiled the metal up carefully on the floor and took out a new chain.

‘Well, yeah,’ he said. ‘Only a few of us still do it the traditional way. Although it was the EU that gave us funding for the guesthouse. That’s why we put the EU flag and sign out.’

Hugó cleared his throat; he felt he needed to say something again.

‘Well, at least there’s some use to those bureaucrats in Brussels,’ he said finally.

Gergő nodded and lit a cigarette. He didn’t speak again.

They oiled the chains all night long.

Women start working at dawn. They wake before sunrise, consume a light breakfast, and then set out to work in the kitchen in the purple haze of the early hours. They boil the juice of the snail for hours on end, preparing it for later, when it will be used to reach the essence, a most important step in the process of the harvest.

Andrea never got up before nine, but she knew how important this trip was to her husband. She was surprised when she awoke even before her phone’s alarm sounded. She dressed and joined her hosts in the kitchen to help with the work. She began chatting to her hosts, since that was the one thing she definitely knew how to do.

‘Hugó works at MOL,’ she recounted as she plucked fat snails out of their shells. ‘He’s in the economics department, but he’s very intrigued by the world of agriculture. That’s why we were so happy to learn that you host visitors during the harvest. We’re also saving up for a property in the country for our old age. That’s his big dream anyway.’

She sighed deeply, as if she could already smell the bleach-scented happiness of those elderly years, when all their troubles would be behind them. Hugó’s constant speeches about the countryside were too abstract to attach emotions to, but this imagined calm she had associated with Hugó’s obsession was something she could grasp.

‘Watch out, don’t let the shell fall into the mash,’ Erzsébet said, while rapidly crushing the snails’ shells with professional movements, one after the other, like a machine. She wore plastic flip-flops, jersey pants, and a faded Pepsi T-shirt.

‘Jesus,’ Andrea said with disgust. The snail in her hand was still alive. Its slimy internal organs trickled down her fingers, but it was still moving and writhing, clinging to its crushed life to an unnatural extent. Andrea found the experience disturbing, yet somehow exciting.

‘That’s perfect,’ Erzsébet said. ‘Put it in the smaller bowl. These are the ones we’re looking for. They’re bait.’

Andrea nodded and threw the agonizing animal into the plastic yellow bowl. For one terrible moment she thought the dying body had attached itself to her fingers and would never let go. She shook her hand and the animal dutifully dropped into the bowl to go on dying with its peers.